The Economic Ideas of Two Tunisian Statesmen: Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi and Bayram al-Khamis

Abstract

During the early nineteenth century, Tunisia and Algeria in the west and Egypt and Syria in the east formed two wings of the Ottoman Empire. As the main body itself became sick, the joints were not very strong, and with the passage of time they weakened further. As a result, France in 1881 and a year later Britain established their hegemony over Tunisia and Egypt respectively. As Tunisia was passing through political and economic crisis, a good number of its benefactor ‘ulamā’, scholars and statesmen, thought and worked for its politico-economic strengthening, and at the forefront of such efforts were Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi and Bayram al-Khamis. In this chapter, we discuss the economic thoughts of these two prominent Tunisian statesmen.