Release date is 2026-05-21

Galo Flordelis

"La région du Haut Tell en Tunisie (le Kef, Téboursouk, Mactar, Thala)" by Ch. Monchicourt is a geographical monograph written in the early 20th century. It examines the High Tell of northwestern Tunisia through physical and human geography, clarifying terrain, climate, water systems, vegetation, agriculture, and settlement around Kef, Téboursouk, Mactar, and Thala. A key aim is to define and subdivide the Tell in relation to the Friguia, Sahel, and Sahara, drawing on extensive fieldwork, maps, and historical sources.

The opening of the monograph presents a detailed bibliographic survey (Arabic historians, European travelers, scientific reports, geology, climate, flora and fauna, agriculture, cartography), notes the patchy meteorological records, and explains the author’s reliance on multi-year field exploration and local testimony. It then launches the introduction by unpacking the shifting meanings of Ifriqia/Friguia from medieval sources to modern usage, recasting Friguia as the cereal-and-grassland country defined by reliable rains. Monchicourt analyzes “tell” as a clayey soil kept moist by ample precipitation and “sra” as high, cold, arable plateaus, concluding that the Tell is the region where such soils dominate; he contrasts this with the coastal Sahel (olive country) and the more arid Sahara, and proposes a rational tripartite division (Tell, Steppe, Sahara) based on rainfall, rejecting the vague “Hauts-Plateaux.” He subdivides the Tunisian Tell into a humid Tell Septentrional, a western high Haut-Tell, and an eastern lower Tell Inférieur, distinguishes the contrasting sections of the Medjerda valley, and sketches the northern Tell’s three faces: the forested Kroumirie, the surrounding cereal lands (Béja region, Regba/Dakhlat/Mateur plains), and the Bizerte littoral focused on maritime trade and olives. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Paris: Librairie Armand Collin, 1913