1911 violent confrontation in Tunisia
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. Over the course of two days, it became a series of fights and attacks in the streets, primarily involving Tunisians and Italian settlers. 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.
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. 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; once in trust it could not be bought or sold. 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. 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.
Nationality laws.
Just as changes to the ownership of habous eroded a long-established religious institution and advanced French property rights, 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. 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, 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.
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, and as a result, France called up troops in Tunisia to fight in Morocco. 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. Libyan refugees were soon crossing the border into Tunisia, fleeing the invasion.
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, while a 1910 estimate indicated that there were 105,000 Italians in Tunisia, compared with only 35,000 French people. Many Italians arrived in Tunisia poor 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.
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. 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. However, certain individual French members of the municipal council had also submitted applications to register parcels of cemetery land in their own names. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. The surveyors left, and Espiau sent his officers away, except for a dozen which he kept on duty at or near the cemetery.
According to the French press, it was only after this official business had been completed that serious trouble began. The Mayor of Tunis, Sadok Ghileb, arrived at the cemetery, and crowds pressed around him, demanding that he have the gates of the cemetery opened. To reassure them, he did so and went inside with a number of them. The crowd was not calmed however, and began demanding the release of those who had been arrested earlier in the morning. Ghileb then sent for Espiau, who returned to the cemetery and gave the crowd assurances about the release of those being detained. The crowd however continued to grow larger and angrier, and Espiau decided to go and bring police reinforcements. He made his way with difficulty through the mass of people, and as he headed off he was struck from behind by a number of stones. A scuffle began, with the police trying to get Espiau and Ghileb safely away from the cemetery, striking protesters with their batons while the crowd threw pieces of rubble at them. Brigadier François Franchi was killed, while two police inspectors and four or five other officers were injured. The French press reported that the police fired on the crowd, but did not report numbers of dead and injured among the protesters at the cemetery. Police were mustered from stations in other parts of the city but they were unable to gain control of the situation.
As the fighting spread, both the zouaves and the chasseurs d'Afrique were called out to restore order. The zouaves formed a line between the city and the cemetery, preventing more protesters who were now crowding the streets from reaching it. Abdeljelil Zaouche tried to urge calm, but the protesters still in the cemetery, behind the zouaves, began hurling stones at them. The zouaves made a half-turn and fired on the crowd, killing around fifteen people. As the morning progressed, there were other attacks on Europeans in different parts of the city, some leading to fatalities and others to serious injury. Fighting was particularly intense in the area between Bab Jedid and Bab Alioua, where the population was a mix of Tunisians and Italians. The Italians barricaded themselves in their houses, and those with weapons used them, shooting down from their balconies into the streets. At some point a Tunisian boy, Rebah Degla, was killed by an Italian bullet, and this provoked greater anger against the Italians across the city.
A detachment of sixty zouaves under Lieutenant Pinelli was attacked with stones, and responded by fixing bayonets and charging the crowd. As the newspaper "Le Temps" put it (9 November 1911) 'not a single bayonet had not been reddened with blood.' At around ten o'clock the Attorney General found himself surrounded by a threatening crowd which refused to disperse. Again the zouaves arrived and managed to rescue him, this time by firing into the air. As fighting continued here and there across the city, the chasseurs d'Afrique charged with drawn sabres at eleven o'clock near Bab Jedid. For the most part, order had been restored across the city by one o'clock in the afternoon. 
Here and there across the city, there were attacks and fights during the afternoon. Mostly these were isolated, though they led to more deaths. More fighting occurred at Bab Souika, where the killing of an Italian brought 600 other Italians out to avenge him until they were driven off by the artillery. When two Italians were brutally killed at Halfaouine, fifty others massed to fight with Arabs, and had to be driven off with live rounds, which killed another. In the afternoon, more troops arrived from Bizerte and Hammam-Lif so that by evening, there were 1,000 soldiers deployed across the city maintaining an uneasy calm. The city was placed under curfew from nine in the evening, and newspapers were banned. All cafes were forbidden to open, and all licences to carry weapons were summarily revoked. According to the newspaper 'Le Temps' (10/11/1911) that night there were three French and four Italian dead. The number of Arabs dead was reported as ten.
Events on 8 November.
Levels of violence were much