Jellaz Affair

The Jellaz Affair (Arabic: أحداث ٱلجلّاز‎‎ Aḥdāth ul-Jallāz) (French: Affaire du Djellaz) 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.

Several factors led to the escalation of tension in Tunis in the months before November 1911.

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 (Arabic: حبوس‎‎) (known in many other countries as a waqf (Arabic: وقف‎‎). 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.

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