Ahmad Bey Husayn
1806 - 1855
Bey, 1837 - 1855, who attempted to Westernize Tunisia and detach it from the Ottoman Empire.
Ahmad Bey's mother was a Sardinian slave captured in a raid on San Pietro in 1798; his father was Mustafa ibn Mahmud (bey of Tunis, 1835 - 1837). Ahmad was the tenth bey of the Husaynid dynasty. Ahmad Bey received a traditional education, learning the Qurʾan by heart. Besides studying the traditional Qurʾanic sciences and Turkish, Ahmad learned European history and geography. The latter knowledge influenced his efforts to modernize Tunisian society and turned his foreign policy orientation away from the Ottoman Empire and closer to Europe.
Ahmad Bey's upbringing introduced him to palace intrigues and political disputations. A month before his ascension to power, he participated in the execution of a prominent Mamluk official, Shakir Sahib al-Tabi, keeper of the seal. He had been the most powerful official in the bey's court. When Ahmad Bey assumed the throne in October 1837, he quickly consolidated his authority and built his own patron-client political machine. To do so, he appointed his own clique of friends, mamluks, and clients to key positions.
Ahmad had two primary goals: to maintain Tunisia's relative independence vis-à-vis the Ottoman Empire and France's colonial regime in Algeria, and to strengthen Tunisia's internal political order. To accomplish the first, he avoided implementing the Ottoman Tanzimat reform program that had begun in 1837. He also sought international legitimacy through recognition by nations of Europe (especially France). To placate the Ottomans, he continued to send the obligatory annual gift in exchange for the firman (decree) of investiture while avoiding implementation of the Tanzimat by pleading Tunisia's lack of resources to do so. Ahmad Bey maintained good relations with France, and continued to seek France's guarantees of Tunisian independence and to deny Ottoman claims of sovereignty. In the 1850s, he sent troops to the Crimea to show support for the Ottomans rather than to reject their sovereignty.
Ahmad Bey's goal of reforming the fabric of the state has been criticized for attempting too much and accomplishing too little. Inspiration for his reform efforts came from Napoléon's France, Muhammad Ali's Egypt, and the Tanzimat program. All of these taught him that military strength was paramount. Wedged between France's colonial regime in Algeria and a resurgent Ottoman Empire in Libya, Ahmad saw modernizing the military as one way to maintain Tunisia's territorial integrity against the aspirations of its powerful neighbors.
In 1831, Husayn Bey had begun reforming the military by inviting Europeans to train a nizami corps of infantry based on the latest European and Ottoman models. The term nizami was borrowed from the Ottoman designation nizam-i cedit (new order), applied by Sultan Mahmud II to Ottoman military modernization efforts. The Tunisian nizamis wore European uniforms and Tunisian shashiyas (small red hats with tassels).
Mustafa Bey accelerated the expansion of the nizami corps by developing a conscription system. An informal system of recruiting troops (in exchange for returning an earlier batch to the same area as reserves) was developed in order to minimize friction between recruiters and the local populace. To avoid antagonizing the Turkish military elite, the bey maintained Turkish-Mamluk domination of the upper ranks. The army thus remained top-heavy in inefficient higher-rank officers who were traditional in outlook and ill-suited to the disciplinary codes of modern armies. The lower ranks and non-commissioned officers were reasonably motivated but poorly led. As a result, the reforms largely failed to produce the desired results.
From a small contingent of about 1,800 men at the beginning of his reign, by 1850 Ahmad Bey had expanded the nizami forces to between 26,000 and 36,000, with 16,000 actually in service at any one time. Seven regiments of infantry, two of artillery, and a partial one of cavalry comprised the corps. In the last two years of his reign, financial constraints forced Ahmad Bey to drastically reduce the size of the military.
A critical step in Ahmad Bey's military reform efforts was the establishment in 1840 of a military academy (maktab harbi) adjacent to the Bey's Palace at Bardo (a suburb of Tunis), to train young Mamluks, Turks, and sons of prestigious Arab families in the military arts. The school prepared an elite cadre of graduates who later led reform efforts in the 1870s, during the administration of Prime Minister Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi (1873 - 1877). It set the precedent for Sadiqi College (established in 1875), which trained Tunisians in modern subjects. Its graduates were members of the Young Tunisians in the 1890s and early 1900s. Most Tunisian nationalists who formed the Destour and Neo-Destour political movements studied at Sadiqi, including independent Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba.
Seeking to make Tunisia self-sufficient in military-related goods, Ahmad ordered the construction of a cannon foundry, a small arms factory, powder mills, tanneries, saddle/leather factories, a textile factory, and other industries. He imported European technicians to train Tunisian workers in modern manufacturing techniques. These efforts provided the Tunisian elite and some workers with a rudimentary understanding of European industrialization practices.
Between 1841 and 1846, Ahmad Bey abolished slavery, initiated with the closing of the slave market in Tunis (the Suq al-Birka) and culminating with the January 1846 decree officially abolishing slavery in Tunisia. At al-Muhammadiya, about ten miles southwest of Tunis, he built a magnificent governmental complex, which he intended to serve as Tunisia's Versailles. Europeans designed and furnished this complex with the latest European gadgets.
The last five years of Ahmad's reign were a period of financial chaos, declining agricultural production, his poor health, and overall ruin of his accomplishments. His need for money to finance his military reforms led him to depend on a ruthless tax farmer, Mahmud ibn Ayad. Ahmad Bey tolerated the financial oppression of his subjects so long as ibn Ayad increased the state revenues. The decline of those state revenues between 1849 and 1852 culminated in the flight of ibn Ayad to Paris and his subsequent attempts to sue Tunisia's government. Khayr al-Din arbitrated the matter in Paris, but recovered none of the funds ibn Ayad had taken.
In July 1852, Ahmad Bey suffered a stroke, which impaired his ability to rule. In 1853, he was forced to disband his army due to financial problems. Ahmad Bey died in May 1855, at age forty-eight. He had sought to modernize a backward and traditional state and society through emphasis on military reforms. He established positive precedents in the Bardo military academy and the conscription of native Tunisians, and negative ones in the lack of accountability of his leading ministers and in his own financial irresponsibility.
Bibliography
Anderson, Lisa. The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830 - 1980. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1986.
Brown, L. Carl. The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837 - 1855. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.
Nelson, Harold D., ed. Tunisia: A Country Study, 3d ed. Washington, DC, 1986.
Perkins, Kenneth J. Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 2d edition. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1997.
— LARRY A. BARRIE
