In the mid-sixteenth century a group of Genoese moved to the island of Tabarkaa short distance from the coast of Tunisia, to cultivate coral and control the trade route. Before them, for four hundred years, the island had been the territory of the Pisans. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Genoese left Tabarka because the coral had run out and relations with the local populations were becoming problematic: they then founded the city of Carloforte in Sardinia, where the dialect is still spoken today. “tabarchino”a specific idiom of Tabarka.
The name “Tabarka” means “good refuge for ships”, precisely because it was a safe haven, used since ancient times thanks to the sheltered bay that opens along the north-western coast of Tunisia, and it still exists today, but it is no longer an island because the sand has covered the short distance from the sea connecting it to the mainland.
The arrival of the Italians on the island of Tabarka on the coral route
The story that binds the “coral island” to Italy begins in 1167 when the Bey of Tunis – a noble title that resembles our “Lord” – Abdallah Bockora, ceded to Pisa, at the time a Maritime Republic, the ownership of the island of Tabarka, near the border with Algeria.
The first compatriots to undertake commercial, and consequently also cultural and social, relations with Tunisia were the Pisans, who were interested in the cultivation and then the trade of the main resource of the place, coral. The name “coral island” by which Tabarka is still known today comes from here: for four hundred years, Pisa maintained control over the location and the trade routealso interested in commercial mediation between Italy and North Africa, of which Tunisia was one of the entrances.
The Genoese in Tabarka: the story
The structures changed in 1542 when the Ottoman commander Khair ed-Din Barbarossa, to balance political structures with the corsair Dragut, his ally, transferred the property of Tabarka to the LomelliniGenoese aristocratic family linked to Andrea Doria and the Grimaldis. The commercial interest of the Lomellinis was, clearly, the coral: to manage its cultivation and specific interests in the area, a mass transfer was organized from the Genoese neighborhood of Pegli to the island of Tabarka. For two hundred years, since 1542 to 1738the Genoese inhabited this islet on the Tunisian coast, taking the name of “tabarchini”.
The people of Tabarka left Tabarka because the coral reefs, after almost a century of processing and exploitation, were no longer fertile, and the presence of the foreign population on the island was creating friction with the local Tunisians.
A small part of them remained on the island, but the vast majority moved to Sardinia, where founded the city of Carlofortenamed in honor of Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy, who had promoted and facilitated their new settlement. When, shortly afterwards, the Bey of Tunis invaded the island and enslaved the remaining inhabitants of Tabarka, the last remaining Genoese demanded ransom and left. Some reunited with their compatriots from Tabarchini in Carloforte, others moved to Spain, where they founded New Tabarcaothers still in the Sardinian area of Calasetta.
The Tabarchian language, still spoken in Sardinia
THE tabarchini of Carloforte and Calasettaeven today, keep alive the link with the language that their ancestors spoke two centuries ago on the coasts of Tunisia: the Tabarchian language is a Ligurian language, contaminated by Tunisian, which then developed in Sardinia.
In fact, some Arabic words are also part of it, such as for example facussaa term that indicates a type of courgette grown in Tunisia and imported into Sardinia, or the word cascameaning couscous, pronounced in the Tunisian way.
The Sardinian regional law n. 26 of 15 October 1997 protects the valorization of the regional linguistic and ethnographic heritage, but the subsequent national law on historical linguistic minorities – law no. 482 of 15 December 1999 – does not recognize the tabarchino. Despite this, the language is known, spoken and protectedevidence of a bond and the long period of settlement of the Genoese in Tabarka.
