The Jellaz Affair ( ) () was a violent confrontation in November 1911 between Tunisian protesters and the authorities of the French Protectorate of Tunisia which began at the Jellaz Cemetery.'Un 7 novembre en cache toujours un autre…' accessed 27/12/2016 Over the course of two days, it became a series of fights and attacks in the streets, primarily involving Tunisians and Italian settlers.'Les grands jours de Tunis, Gil Blas, 4 June 1912, pp.1-2 accessed 28/12/2016 It was the most serious outbreak of violence in Tunis, and the first time French soldiers fired on the civilian population, since the establishment of the Protectorate in 1881. It was therefore a critical juncture in the development of the Tunisian nationalist movement.Sophie Bessis & Souhayr Belhassen, 'Bourguiba', Editions Elyzad 2012 p.12Derek Hopwood & Sue Mi Terry, 'Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia: The Tragedy of Longevity', Springer 2016 p.114Mary Dewhurst Lewis, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881-1938, Univ of California Press 2013 p.142
Background Several factors led to the escalation of tension in Tunis in the months before November 1911.
Religious trusts and land ownership
The Jellaz cemetery was of great religious and cultural significance to Tunisians. It was named after Sheikh Abu Abdallah Muhammad Taj ad-Din al-Jallaz (d.1205) who had acquired the land and endowed it as a religious trust, or habous () (known in many other countries as a waqf ()). On the cemetery hill stood the first zawiya founded by the medieval Moroccan sufi Abul Hasan ash-Shadhili, and in 1911 this was the spiritual base for some 5,000 men in Tunis who were members of the Shadhili sufi order he founded.Arnold H. Green, The Tunisian Ulama 1873-1915: Social Structure and Response to Ideological Currents, Brill Archive, 1978 p.65-66 Another zawiya, of Sidi Al Bashir, also stood in the cemetery, and many of the most illustrious families of Tunis had their dead relatives buried there. Under Islamic law, habous property was donated by a benefactor and held in trust for some public benefit;'Le habous, le domaine public et le trust' accessed 27/12/2016 once in trust it could not be bought or sold.Arnold H. Green, The Tunisian Ulama 1873-1915: Social Structure and Response to Ideological Currents, Brill Archive, 1978 p.111 However a series of colonial laws since the 1880s had allowed the French in Tunisia to acquire the title or use of growing amounts of habous land. 'Les terres domaniales en Tunisie' accessed 27./12/2016 'législation foncière et colonisation de la Tunisie' accessed 27/12/2016 Thus land endowed for the benefit of local communities steadily came under the private control of French landlords and in some instances Tunisians occupying or working the land were displaced.Kenneth Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, Cambridge University Press, 2014 p.60
Nationality laws Just as changes to the ownership of habous eroded a long-established religious institution and advanced French property rights, 'législation foncière et colonisation de la Tunisie' accessed 27/12/2016 so changes to nationality law were divisive of the population. On 3 October 1910, a French Presidential decree significantly broadened the grounds for claiming French nationality, to include volunteering for military services; holding two degrees or the title of doctor of medicine or of law; marrying a French woman, or exceptional service to the French state.'De Tunis à l’Orient: la Grande Guerre de Victor Sebag' accessed 26/12/2016 This law did not make any explicit provision for Tunisians of the Jewish community, but was understood in Tunisia to be largely of interest to them,Reeva Spector Simon, Michael Menachem Laskier, Sara Reguer, The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, Columbia University Press 2003 p.448Mary Dewhurst Lewis, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881-1938, Univ of California Press 2013 p.109 It was therefore seen by Arab nationalists as divisive since it encouraged a group of native-born Tunisians to renounce their loyalty to their homeland and identify with the occupier.محمد الازهرالغربي <تونس رغم إلإستعمار> المنهل,2013 p.126
Agadir and Tripoli
Developments in neighbouring countries intensified a feeling of anger and injustice among Tunisian Muslims in 1911. First, a rebellion against the Sultan of Morocco led France to deploy troops in Fez in April, precipitating the Agadir Crisis,Carl Cavanagh Hodge, Encyclopedia of the Age of Imperialism, 1800-1914: A-K Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008 p.15 and as a result, France called up troops in Tunisia to fight in Morocco.https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2665770/Lewis_%20Geographies.pdf p.820 accessed 27/1/2016 As France took effective control there, the other European powers demanded to be 'compensated' in regions they considered vital to their interests, and this led to an Italian declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire on 29 September 1911, followed by the invasion of Libya.'World War 100: 1 July - The Agadir Crisis of 1911' accessed 26/12/2016 Libyan refugees were soon crossing the border into Tunisia, fleeing the invasion.https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2665770/Lewis_%20Geographies.pdf p.818 accessed 27/2/2016
Tensions with the Italian community Tensions between Muslim Arabs and Italians in Tunis played a major role in the Jellaz Affair. Italian immigration to Tunisia had grown rapidly under the French Protectorate, and by 1900, Italians made up around seven-eighths of the colony's European population of 80,000 people. In 1903, the Italian consul calculated that here were 80,000 Italians alone,Mark I Choate, The Tunisia Paradox: Italy's Strategic Aims, French Imperial Rule, and Migration in the Mediterranean Basin, California Italian Studies 1, "Italy in the Mediterranean" (2010): 1-20 p.6 while a 1910 estimate indicated that there were 105,000 Italians in Tunisia, compared with only 35,000 French people.Smeaton Munro, Ion, Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy, Books for Libraries Press, 1933 p.221 Many Italians arrived in Tunisia poor 'Exodus in reverse: 100 thousand Sicilian migrants in Tunisia' accessed 27/12/2016 and they were banned from employment on public works or in the colonial government unless they adopted French citizenship. Instead they often pursued the trades they had followed in Italy - fishermen, shopkeepers, labourers, farmers and miners. These and similar occupations meant that they were often likely to find themselves in competition with native Tunisian workers and traders.Mark I Choate, The Tunisia Paradox: Italy's Strategic Aims, French Imperial Rule, and Migration in the Mediterranean Basin, California Italian Studies 1, "Italy in the Mediterranean" (2010): 1-20 p.3Kenneth Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, Cambridge University Press, 2014 p.26
Abortive registration of Jellaz land
As a habous, the Jellaz cemetery was administered by a special agency, but the municipality of Tunis had, some twenty years previously, acquired the responsibility for protecting and maintaining it.Révolte et société: vol 2: actes, Colloque d'histoire au présent, Fabienne Gambrelle, Michel Trebitsch, Publications de la Sorbonne 1989 p.169 However, in 1911, the cemetery was not well-managed and not clearly demarcated from other properties around it, so in various places the graves gave way to small quarries and skid-roads for felled trees. In addition, builders routinely pilfered materials from the cemetery for use in construction projects elsewhere.
On 26 September, the people of the city learned that the municipality of Tunis was planning to remove the cemetery from the habous agency and register it as its own property. This was being done with the stated intention of protecting it against the encroachments it was suffering.'Troubles à Tunis', Le Temps, 9 November 1911 p.2 accessed 28/12/2016 However, certain individual French members of the municipal council had also submitted applications to register parcels of cemetery land in their own names.Taoufik Ayadi, Mouvement réformiste et mouvements populaires à Tunis (1906-1912), Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1986 pp.164 The municipality was a mixed institution - the mayor was a Tunisian Muslim, Sadok Ghileb, but his two deputies were French, and eight of the seventeen seats on the municipal council were reserved for French people.David Lambert, Notables des colonies: Une élite de circonstance en Tunisie et au Maroc (1881-1939), Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009 p.69 Ghileb had not been consulted about the proposed registration of the Jellaz cemetery land, and the Deputy Mayor Jean-Baptiste Curtelin tried to keep the matter off the agenda when the municipal council met on 2 November. Nevertheless Abdeljelil Zaouche spoke vehemently against the registration and in the end, the council agreed to abandon the idea. The plan had been to finalise the application for registration on 7 November, but the council voted, instead, to withdraw the application altogether. This decision was relayed to the public at a large meeting at the Zaytuna Mosque.'Troubles à Tunis ', Le Temps, 9 November 1911 p.2 accessed 28/12/2016
However by this time, Ghileb had ensured that posters were put up all across Tunis, urging people to attend the meeting on 7 November to make their objections known, as the law provided for. While the council was at odds over what to do, rumours were spreading in Tunis. It was widely believed that the municipality intended to demolish part of the cemetery to build a tramway - perhaps based on the fact that a few years previously, in Casablanca, the French authorities had indeed built a tramway through a Muslim cemetery. Having mobilised people to oppose the registration, insufficient efforts may have made to inform them that it was being abandoned, or perhaps this news was simply not sufficient to allay popular outrage. While all this as going on, anger was spreading in Tunis about the Italian invasion of Libya. Italy's ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire was issued just a few days after the news broke of the registration plans, and Italy proclaimed its annexation of Libya on 5 November, two days before the registration had been scheduled.Waniss A. Otman and Erling Karlberg, The Libyan Economy: Economic Diversification and International Repositioning, Springer, 2007 p.13
Events on 7 November On 7 November, a survey was due to be undertaken to establish the boundaries of the cemetery land. The police had learned that a demonstration was planned for that morning at the cemetery, so at six o'clock in the morning, Police Commissioner Espiau went to the cemetery with 150 officers, and found some 2,000 people already gathered there near the gates. A small number of people were arrested for obstructing the police as they made their way to the cemetery.'Les bagarres tunisiennes', Le Temps, 24 November 1911, p.3 accessed 28/12/2016 Although posters calling people to defend the cemetery had been put up across the city, most of the demonstrators who gathered on 7 November were local people who lived near the cemetery.
Soon, administrators of the agency which managed the habous arrived, along with various other Tunisian notables, and told the crowd that the municipality had decided to drop its application to register the land. At seven o'clock the surveyors from the land office appeared, and posted the minutes of the meeting cancelling the application to register. All of this happened without incident, and many of the crowd began to disperse.'Les grands jours de Tunis', Gil Blas, 4 June 1912, pp.1-2 accessed 28/12/2016 The surveyors left, and Espiau sent his officers away, except for a dozen which he kept on duty at or near the cemetery.