Tunisia's Working City — the second-largest city has the largest intact medina in Tunisia, no tourist infrastructure, and genuine North African urban life: olive oil, fishing boats, phosphate, and a walled old city that tourists skip entirely on their way between Tunis and Djerba
Sfax is Tunisia's second-largest city and its economic engine — a working port and industrial city with the largest intact medina in Tunisia that almost no foreign tourists visit. This is precisely its appeal: the Sfax medina is a genuine working city rather than a preserved museum, its souks selling industrial hardware, automotive parts, olives, fish, and fabric to locals rather than carpets and tagines to Europeans. The walls of the medina (Kerkouane) date to the 9th century CE; the Great Mosque (850 CE) is one of the oldest in Tunisia. The region around Sfax is Tunisia's olive oil capital…
The site of Sfax was inhabited in the Phoenician-Carthaginian period; the Roman city of Taparura occupied the same coastal position. The Islamic foundation of Sfax dates to approximately 849 CE, when the Aghlabid dynasty built the medina walls and the Great Mosque — making Sfax one of the oldest planned Islamic cities in North Africa. The city was a major centre of trade between the Sahara (gold, slaves, ivory brought via caravan routes) and Mediterranean maritime routes under the Aghlabids, Fatimids, Zirids, and then Hafsids. The city was sacked by the Norman Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II…