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SFAX (Arabic Asfakis or Safakus, the ...

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Originally appearing in Volume V24, Page 756 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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SFAX (Arabic Asfakis or Safakus, the cucumbers)  , a city of Tunisia, second in importance only to the capital, 78 m. due S. of Susa, on the Gulf of
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Gabes (Syrtis Minor) opposite the Kerkenna Islands, in 340 43' N., 1o° 46' E . Sfax occupies the site of the ancient Taphrura, of which few vestiges remain . The
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town consists of a
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European quarter, with streets regularly laid out and
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fine houses, and the Arab town, with its kasbah or citadel, and tower-flanked walls pierced by three gates . Many of the private houses, mosques and zawias are good specimens of native
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art of the 17th and 8th centuries . North-east of the native town is a camp for the European garrison . Sfax was formerly the starting-point of a caravan route to Central Africa, but its inland trade now extends only to the phosphate region beyond Gafsa, reached by a railway which, after skirting the coast south-wards from Sfax to Mahares, runs inland past Gafsa . With Susa there is
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regular communication by steamer and motor car . Olive oil is manufactured, and the
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fisheries are important, notably those of
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sponges and of octopuses (exported to
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Greece) . The prosperity of the town is largely due to the export trade in
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phosphates, esparto grass, oil, almonds, pistachio nuts, sponges, wool, &c . There is in the Gulf of Gabes a rise and fall of 5 ft. at spring tides, which is rare in the Mediterranean . Formerly the only anchorage at Sfax was 2 M. from
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shore; but a harbour, completed in 1900 and entered by a channel If m. long and 212 ft. deep, now renders vessels
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independent of the tide . There are
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separate basins for fishing boats and a
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dock for
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torpedo-boat flotilla .

Round the town for 5 or 6 m. to the north and west stretch orchards, gardens and country houses .
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Dates, almonds, grapes,
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figs, peaches, apricots, olives, and in rainy years melons and cucumbers grow there without irrigation . Two enormous cisterns, maintained by public charitable
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trusts, supply the town with
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water in dry seasons . Sfax is on the site of a
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Roman settlement . Many of its Arab inhabitants claim descent from Mahomet . The Sicilians under Roger the Norman took it in the 12th century, and in the 16th the Spaniards occupied it for a brief period . The
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bombardment of the town in 1881 was one of the
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principal events of the French
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conquest of Tunisia; it was pillaged by the soldiers on the 16th of
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July, and the inhabitants had afterwards to pay a war indemnity of f250,000 . The population, about 15,000 at the time of the French occupation, had increased to 50,000 in 1906 .

End of Article: SFAX (Arabic Asfakis or Safakus, the cucumbers)
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