Borj El Kebir

Borj El Kebir, also known as Borj El Ghazi Mustapha, is an ancient castle in Houmt El Souk, Tunisia on the island of Djerba. It is the largest and best preserved local castle, and is one of the most visited historical sites on the island.

Borj El Kebir
Borj El Ghazi Mustapha
Borj El Kebir (1599)
Location within Tunisia
General information
Architectural styleMoorish architecture
LocationHoumt El Souk, Tunisia

Etymology

The name Borj El Ghazi Mustapha comes from the Qaid who settled in Djerba in 1559. This qaid extended the castle and gives it its actual architecture.

Localistation

The castle is located in the north of Houmt El Souk near the fishing port.[1]

History

It was built in the end of the 14th century over the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Griba, after the deportation of the soldiers of Alfonso V of Aragon following the orders of the hafsid sultan of Tunisia.[2] In 1450, the castle got extended. On July 28, 1881, during the French occupation, French troops settled in the castle after invading the island.

In 1903, it became a property of the Tunisian authorities who gave it the status of a national historical monument on March 15, 1904 and transformed it into a museum.

Description

The borj has a rectangular form.

Nowadays, the monument has two mausoleums: Sidi saad, and Ghazi Mustapha, for Ghazi Mustapha Bey.[3]

  • Entrance of castle
  • View of the walls
  • One of the tours of the castle
  • Sidi Saad and Ghazi Mustapha mausoleums
  • The hall
  • An old tool found in 1975
gollark: What might be interesting is completely departing from the whole "sequentially executing C-like code as fast as possible" thing. Though I guess that's... basically GPUs now?
gollark: I mean, that's... two architectures, and IIRC they're bad in different ways.
gollark: I expected to basically just use it for portably accessing stuff at home, but it turns out that most of my workloads run fine on this and my desktop's GPU was (still is, but I replaced it with a much worse one so I could use it workingly as a server) a bit broken so I use it for most stuff now.
gollark: The main issue is that I did not buy enough RAM for it, and the screen is bad.
gollark: That's an infinity percent return on investment.

References
  1. Éternelle Djerba, Tunis, Association de sauvegarde de l’île de Djerba et Société tunisienne des arts graphiques, 1998, p. 21
  2. http://www.patrimoinedetunisie.com.tn/fr/monuments/borj_ghazi.php
  3. Kamel Tmarzizet, op. cit., p. 153

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