The Medina of Sousse is a

Medina quarter A medina (from ) is a historical district in a number of North African cities, often corresponding to an old walled city. The term comes from the Arabic word simply meaning "city" or "town". Historical background Prior to the rise and intrusi ...

Sousse Sousse, Sūsah , or Soussa (, ), is a city in Tunisia, capital of the Sousse Governorate. Located south of the capital Tunis, the city has 271,428 inhabitants (2014). Sousse is in the central-east of the country, on the Gulf of Hammamet, which ...

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

. Designated by the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

in 1988, it is a typical example of the architecture of the early centuries of

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

Maghreb The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb al ...

. It encompasses a

Kasbah A kasbah (, also ; , , Maghrebi Arabic: ), also spelled qasbah, qasba, qasaba, or casbah, is a fortress, most commonly the citadel or fortified quarter of a city. It is also equivalent to the term in Spanish (), which is derived from the same ...

fortification A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Lati ...

s and the

Great Mosque of Sousse The Great Mosque of Sousse () is a historical mosque in the coastal city of Sousse, Tunisia. The construction dates back to 851, during the rule of the Aghlabid Dynasty, Aghlabid dynasty, vassals of the Abbasid Caliphate. It was commissioned by t ...

. The Medina today houses the Archaeological Museum of Sousse. A number of Punic steles were discovered in the Medina, between the Ribat and the Great Mosque, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

History

The Medina of Sousse is located in the

Tunisian Sahel The Tunisian Sahel () or more precisely the Central East Tunisia is an area of central eastern Tunisia and one of the six Tunisian regions. It stretches along the eastern shore, from Bouficha in the north to Melloulèche in the south, it in ...

and forms an outstanding archeological site. This was primarily because of the time it was built at the dawn of Islamic civilization, making it one of the earliest constructions after the

Islamic conquests The early Muslim conquests or early Islamic conquests (), also known as the Arab conquests, were initiated in the 7th century by Muhammad, the founder of Islam. He established the first Islamic state in Medina, Arabia that expanded rapidly un ...

in the

. It was also because of the location of the Medina, a site that required protection against piracy and plunder. The constructions comprised in its precincts witnessed the early post-conquest civilisations. Its architectural style, from the time of the Aghlabid, is representative of the military coastal constructions of the era, meant to be stout and imposing, so as to ward off foes. Remparts de la médina de Sousse, 23 septembre 2013 (33).jpg, Tower of the Medina of Sousse Remparts de la médina de Sousse, 23 septembre 2013 (06).jpg, Wall of the Medina Remparts de la médina de Sousse, 23 septembre 2013 (02).jpg, Medina of Sousse Sign of UNESCO World Heritage Remparts de la médina de Sousse, 23 septembre 2013 (24).jpg, Walls of the Medina of Sousse Remparts de la médina de Sousse, 23 septembre 2013 (26).jpg, One of the gates of the Medina Medina of Sousse-130324.jpg, Mosque of the Medina of Sousse Medina of Sousse-130323.jpg, Ribat of the Medina of Sousse

Climate change

As a coastal heritage site, Medina of Sousse is vulnerable to

sea level rise The sea level has been rising from the end of the last ice age, which was around 20,000 years ago. Between 1901 and 2018, the average sea level rose by , with an increase of per year since the 1970s. This was faster than the sea level had e ...

. In 2022, the

IPCC Sixth Assessment Report The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth in a series of reports which assess the available scientific information on climate change. Three Working Groups (WGI, II, ...

included it in the list of African cultural sites which would be threatened by

flooding A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant concern in agriculture, civi ...

and

coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of Wind wave, waves, Ocean current, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts ...

by the end of the century, but only if

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

followed RCP 8.5, which is the scenario of high and continually increasing

greenhouse gas Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the gases in the atmosphere that raise the surface temperature of planets such as the Earth. Unlike other gases, greenhouse gases absorb the radiations that a planet emits, resulting in the greenhouse effect. T ...

emissions associated with the warming of over 4°C., and is no longer considered very likely. The other, more plausible scenarios result in lower warming levels and consequently lower sea level rise: yet, sea levels would continue to increase for about 10,000 years under all of them. Even if the warming is limited to 1.5°C, global sea level rise is still expected to exceed after 2000 years (and higher warming levels will see larger increases by then), consequently exceeding 2100 levels of sea level rise under RCP 8.5 (~ with a range of ) well before the year 4000. This means that unless effective adaptation efforts such as

sea wall Sea Wall or The Sea Wall may refer to: * Seawall, a constructed coastal defence * Sea Wall, Guyana * ''The Sea Wall'' (novel), 1950 French novel by Marguerite Duras * ''The Sea Wall'' (film), 2008 film based on Duras' novel See also *'' This Ang ...

s can be constructed to deal with the sea level rise, damage and the potential destruction of Medina of Sousse is a matter of time.IPCC, 2021
Summary for Policymakers
In
Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
[Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 3−32, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.001.

References

{{World Heritage Sites in Tunisia Archaeological sites in Tunisia World Heritage Sites in Tunisia Medinas of Tunisia

History

Climate change

See Also

References