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Spain and Venice felt more and more threatened by the Ottomans and their corsair allies after losing against Barbarossa Hayreddin's Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Preveza in 1538 and the disastrous expedition of Emperor Charles V against Barbarossa in Algiers in 1541.Especially when Piyale Pasha had captured the Balearic Islands and together with Turgut Reis raided the Mediterranean coasts of Spain in 1558. Taking advantage of the piece made between Spain and France ;the initiative came from Maltese Knights who appealed to King Philip II of Spain to organize an expedition to retake Tripoli from Turgut Reis, who had captured the city from the Maltese Knights in August 1551 and had subsequently been made Bey (Governor) of Tripoli by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.The naval Battle of Djerba took place in May 1560 near the island of Djerba, Tunisia. It is believed by most reputable historians that the fleet assembled by the allied Christian powers in 1560 consisted of between 50 and 60 galleys and between 40 and 60 smaller craft. For instance , the official historian of the Knights of St John Giacomo Bosio, writes that there were 54 galleys. Fernand Braudel also mentions about 54 warships plus thirty-six supply vessels. Carmel Testa who had access to the archives of the Knights of St. John made more accurate listings. He lists precisely 54 galleys, 7 brigs, 17 frigates, 2 galleons, 28 merchant vessels and 12 small ships. These ships and their supplies were supplied by a coalition that consisted of Genoa, Naples, Sicily, Florence the Papal States, and the Knights of Saint John. Giovanni Andrea Doria, nephew of the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, took the command of the fleet which assembles in Mesina. The fleet first sailed to Malta, where bad weather conditions and the hard sea forced it to remain for two months. Around 2,000 men were lost there, due to bad conditions and contagious diseases.Finally the fleet set sail for Tripoli on 10 February, 1560. Unfortunately we do not know the exact number of soldiers aboard. Braudel gives 10,000-12,000; Testa 14,000; considering the number of men a sixteenth century galley could carry, old figures like 20.000 are completely exaggerations.The expedition came to shore near to Tripoli but the lost of too many soldiers and the bad condition of the remaining soldiers changed the objectives. They decided to take Djerba first to use it as a command centre for the operation that was to made to Tripoli. Then the expedition returned to Djerba which they overran quickly. The Viceroy of Sicily, Don Juan de la Cerda, Duke of Medina Coeli, ordered the fort in the island to be strengthened.By that time Piyale Pasha was ordered to patrol in the Mediterranean and to sieged a small island of Malta, he learnt a Christian fleet occupied Djerba to occupy later Tripoli. The Turkish fleet changed it?s course and head to Djerba after taking necessary precautions. The fleet arrived at Djerba on 11 May 1560. Since the Christian forces did not expect it to come before July it was a complete surprise for them. With the help of the strong winds, Piyale Pasha had closed the Gap between Istanbul and Djerba in less then a month.The battle was over in a matter of hours, with about half the Christian galleys captured or sunk. Anderson gives the total number of Christian casualties as 18,000 but Guilmartin more conservatively puts the losses at about 9,000 of which about two-thirds would have been oarsmen.Giovanni Andrea Doria the commander of the fleet managed to escape in a small vessel and the remaining forces took refuge in the fort that they had strengthened just days earlier, which was soon attacked by the combined forces of Piyale Pasha and Turgut Reis. The garrison surrendered after a siege of three months and Piyale Pasha took the prisoners back to Istanbul, including the Spanish commander D. Alvaro de Sande, who had taken command of the Christian forces after Doria had escaped. The accounts of the final days of the besieged garrison are irreconcilable.The victory in the Battle of Djerba represented the apex of Ottoman naval domination in the Mediterranean. Soon The Ottomans made an unsuccessful effort on Malta in 1565, the new base of Saint Jean Knights who were expelled from Rodas. Although the Ottomans had captured Cyprus from Venice in 1571 the legend of the invincible Ottoman fleet continued until the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 where the Turkish naval forces were destroyed by the Christian fleet.Shortly after The Ottomans were able to build another large fleet in less than a year after Lepanto, and recaptured Tunis from the Spaniards and their Hafsid vassals in 1574.

This dissertation analyzes the ongoing attempts of Omani Ibadis to re-envision Islamic identity in the modern era. Arguably Islam’s oldest distinct sect, Ibadism has offered alternative formulations of Islamic belief and jurisprudence that never claimed the adherence of a majority of Muslims, but thrived in enclaves in Arabia and North and East Africa. Omani Ibadis’ encounter with modernity began around the turn of the 19th century and accelerated after 1970 under Sultan Qaboos. Like Muslims across the globe, the Ibadis of Oman have navigated the transformations of modernity, striving for coherence between their sectarian identity and the evolving world around them. A mixed methodological approach combines textual analysis and fieldwork to examine the modern religious discourse of Ibadi ʿulamāʾ primarily, and of lay Ibadis secondarily. Interviews with 58 diverse individuals offer a window into the reality of public religious life in Oman. The survey of the works of contemporary ʿulamāʾ encompasses books, articles, pamphlets, video lectures, and social media postings. The study of these resources enables a set of observations about the engagements of modern Ibadis with their textual tradition. The modern state’s control over public religious life, the centrality of fear as a recognized and valued tool for inspiring positive behavior, and the concern with presenting Ibadi identity in a way that appeals to a broad Sunni audience are important themes that recur throughout the chapters. Additionally, the language of tolerance emerges as a ubiquitous idiom in contemporary Omani Ibadi discourse, and scholars and lay believers alike express their sect’s distinctiveness in terms of positive relations with religious others. I argue that the spread of Saudi Salafism presents an enduring challenge to Ibadism’s place within the international umma. Here, a study of Salafi scholars’ opinions on Ibadism informs a subsequent exploration of contemporary Ibadis’ responses to those opinions as well as their own discourse on Salafism. Finally, this dissertation documents the recent emergence of the tayyār ʿaqlānī (rationalist stream) of Ibadism, a movement that challenges the state-affiliated Ibadi mainstream and advocates for internal criticism in order to better integrate Ibadism into modernity.

Since the so-called 'Jasmine Revolution' of 2009 in Tunisia, the idea of heritage has been destabilized following a series of attacks on religious and cultural sites across the country by militant Salafi groups. Thus far, sites of Jewish heritage have been the most affected. Cultural heritage from Tunisia's rich ancient history, redolent for certain Islamists with associations of Jahiliyya, has also been targeted. The well-publicized attack on the Bardo Museum in March 2015 was perhaps the most famous symbol of this trend. However, less publicized have been attempts to reclaim some sacred sites, resulting in the occupation of local mosques on the island of Djerba and in the town of Le Kef. In the wake of these events, some Djerbian civilians have stood up to defend what they consider as intrinsic parts of the patrimonial identity of their island. But as they have been defending these mosques against extremist groups, new considerations related to their preservation have surfaced, calling into question their very patrimonialization. In the context of this radical politicization of Tunisian heritage, this article explores the struggle over who defines the meanings and uses of heritage in Tunisia and the new challenges and opportunities that Salafi attacks have created for the heritage sector since the revolution.

La leçons de vie d'un amazigh de Djerba (Tunisie)

Depuis les années 1960, l’historiographie mozabite a affirmé avec insistance la participation des populations berbérophones et ibadites du Mzab au « mouvement national algérien ». Un contexte très marqué par la lutte anticoloniale explique ce positionnement, rendu aussi nécessaire par la situation de minorité linguistique et confessionnelle des Mozabites. Ce récit nationaliste est toutefois problématique. Focalisé sur le militantisme partisan, il minore d’autres formes d’engagements. Plaquant a posteriori les catégories du nationalisme sur les actions et les discours, il unifie et appauvrit les trajectoires des acteurs. Enfin, il oublie que l’ancrage des Mozabites était souvent plus régional ou transnational qu’algérien. Les oulémas-journalistes auxquels est consacré cet article, Abū Ishāq Attfayyish (1886-1965) et Abū al-Yaqzān (1888-1973), sont des figures connues de l’historiographie mozabite, qui met en exergue leur combat pour établir une presse arabophone libre de l’entre-deux-guerres, dans un contexte colonial très répressif. Plutôt qu’une lecture de cette presse comme uniquement « arabe et algérienne », je propose ici d’envisager la façon dont les journalistes mozabites ont contribué à la naissance d’un espace public algérien, autonome par rapport à la sphère du pouvoir colonial, et qui permette la publicisation des opinions privées et le débat public. En l’abordant par ses marges ibadites, je souhaite aussi interroger et éclairer la structuration et les contours de l’espace public algérien…

Not Sunnis and not Shi’is, the Ibāḍī Muslims of Oman and some areas of North Africa form a “third branch” of Islam, with their own version of the Sharīʿa law. The development of this law displays many interconnections with the political history of the Ibāḍīs, which spanned from an independent sultanate in Oman, through minority status under Sunni rule in Tunisia and Libya, to isolated desert communities in Algerian Sahara. This article gives an overview over such interconnections between the political (state authority) and the legal, through history and in contemporary North Africa, with some examples of legal discussions from the “Ibāḍī renaissance” (nahḍa) in the twentieth-century Saharan oasis of Mzab.