The Kasba

The kasba of Bizerte controls the northern side of the entrance to the port. It is a madina in miniature, with its own mosque and houses. The site goes back to the Hafsid period, but the kasba as it is now is mainly from the early Ottoman period with the exception of the very strong south eastern bastion at the very entrance to the port. That was built in the 17^th century.

The curtain walls of the bastion are as much as 20 metres thick on the eastern (seaward) side. They consist of two stone walls with the space between them packed with earth. The gate at the eastern end is the entrance to the gun emplacements along the top of the walls: a wide rampart runs along the eastern and northern side, which leads into the kasba proper though a heavy wooden gate. The only way into the kasba from outside is though a narrow, gate, Bab al-Madina, with a dog's-leg passageway through it.

Outside the walls is a fountain erected by Uthman Dey, who built up the Tunisian corsairing fleet at the end of the sixteenth century. His palace is in Tunis.