Mediterranean responsible tourism

Mediterranean responsible tourism

Tuesday 14 October 2014



Shared heritage, central of local culture in Bled Friguia (Tunisia)

A trip within a Mediterranean trilogy: olive, vine and wheat



According to Magon, (the father of husbandry as a rural science)  the Carthaginians grew wheat and barley, vine, olive, and fruit trees, and reared horses, mules and oxen, but favored fruit trees and breeding.
Magon’s treatise in twenty-eight books, includes practical indications on pre-Roman agriculture and bears witness about the growth of the rural economy.
Country of cereals, Tunisia ancient Africa, has also well deserved its very flattering nickname assigned by ancients: Granary of Rome. Pliny recorded that the soil of Africa ' was adapted for grain’ The ‘Empire of Ceres’, providing Rome with wheat and barley.
Tunisian wheat has a great gustative and continues to those days giving to the Italian pasta, the prestige that has acquired all along its history.  It's the durum wheat, that when ground, gives semolina for making couscous, the Tunisian’s emblematic traditional dish.
The most cultivated kind of wheat in Tunisia is called Gamah, particularly in the north, in lands of Beja, Bled friguia (territory of Bled Friguia) ….  The soft wheat or farina, is a recent introduction (nineteenth century) and it’s used mainly as breadmaking trade.
The territory of Bled Friguia is located in the North-west of Tunisia, between the northern coast of the country and the prosperous valley of the Majerda, in Arabic: واد مجردا known as Bagrada in ancient times. It’s  also a strategic river in North Africa, it was fought over and settled many times in history by the Berbers;  local population, Phoenicians, Punic, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines , Arabic, Spanish, Italian, French.
 The extension of the Atlas mountain range, characterizes these lands: the Kroumirie mountains, is peaking at 1000 meters, and the highest Mogods reach 500 meters.
This region receives the greatest amount of precipitation and extra supply of water from the Majerda River, was suited to agricultural development and provides important water resources to the whole country. 
The various flora, including the coastal areas, is similar to the southern Europe plants and includes meadows, scrubland, especially oak forests and cork oak.
The countryside is characterized by a dense hydrographic network and a wide range of landscapes: hills covered by forests and extensive vales with fertile alluvial soils suitable for growing wheat and barley.
The economic activities in the area were developed and deployed all along the local network of routes. the program of Roman agricultural restructuration of the countryside into ager and saltus, wasteland put under cultivation (olive, vine, wheat, and fruit trees) by the distribution of plots of lands to army veterans regulated by agrarian laws promulgated by the Antonines and Severi and engraved on stelae uncovered near imperial estates in Beja region.
And since the territory of Carthage itself had been declared ager publicis, domain of the Roman people, a first wave of 6,000 Italian colonists who were settled in the Lower Majerda Valley (Bagradas) on the initiative of the Gracchi.
Important Cities were installed surrounding these fertile lands. They were well connected to the road networks and along the both sides of the major axis connecting Carthage   with Theveste in the Roman Colonia of Africa Proconsularis  (Tunisia).
In the Roman period, the cultivation of the olive has developed considerably in connection with the general improvement of living conditions and with its commercialization. The imperial initiative aimed to insure supplying Rome with agricultural produces. The ‘booming Mediterranean olive oil market’ had its acme thanks to a vast urban and military trade network of agricultural products.
Nowadays, the numerous wine and oil presses and small oileries, latin inscriptions, pottery, stonework, mausoleum,  and various places of worship (temples, churches and marabouts ..) have also been discovered last years, strengthening the expert opinion specifically Dr. Muhamed Ben Jedou, in GIS and  Landscape Archaeology in Northern Tunisia;  that at the era, the country attend its economic heyday  and an  important part of the local production was exported  to the majority of Mediterranean countries but it was also treated on site to reduce transport costs.
The agricultural prosperity of Provincia Africa under Pax Romana, gave rise to important internal exchanges which developed thanks to a well-organised road network. Several towns at crossroads grew into regional market towns draining the agricultural produce of the countryside from a surrounding ‘zone of influence’ or ‘territorial zone’, the Roman pagus or colonial administrative district.
From Early Antiquity the vine was grown in North Africa, favored both by the geographical location and the optimum conditions of soil and climate. Notably Magon’s treatise, talk about African viticulture.
in the IV century BC. Wine-growing has insured a significant role in the agricultural production of Africa Proconsularis.
 Pliny describes bunches of grapes that ‘exceeding the body of an infant child in size’ and explains that because of the bitterness of African grapes, the wine was frequently sweetened with plaster or lime.  As regards quality, according to Pliny , African ‘straw wine’ was second in rank to Cretan wine.
Initially planted on slopes, the vines were spread to the plains. At the end of the nineteenth century, the recurrence of viticulture crises in France brought about the intensification of vine-growing in North Africa cities to their ‘territorial zones’.
The European who settled in Tunisia during the French Protectorate (1881-1956) used the Roman precedent as a model, in particular establishing farms on the same locations as villae on the plains and plateau on a zone corresponding to fertile soils best suited to the cultivation of wheat and the planting of fruit trees.
The city of Beja, is situated on the sides of a mountain facing the greening meadows. Its white terraces and red roofs are dominated by the imposing ruins of the old ancient fortress. Beja is among the most important rural centre in all Tunisia, and also a centre for crafts.
 At the entrance of the city, three storks, birds associated with its famous fertile soil, that drew all the masters of the Mediterranean, welcome visitors.
Because of the key position of Bled Beja, leading to the roads of Tabarka, Mateur, Bizerte and Algeria, the World War II broke the long period of peace that had known for many centuries.
On November 1942, Commonwealth and American troops made landings in North Africa especially on the northern hills of countryside of Beja. The Germans responded immediately by sending a force from Sicily to northern Tunisia, that checked the Allied advance east of Beja.
The War Cemetery contains Commonwealth burials of this Second World War, notably from The Sidi Nsir battlefield in Beja
The countryside remains a picturesque town with wide horizons, a healthy climate,  rich and fertile soil. Another distinctive feature is its family life, its traditional friendliness and hospitality towards foreigners.
 The sister city of Tunisian Beja is a Portuguese city and called also Beja. It’s a municipality which is located in the Alentejo region.