SFAX, a city of Tunisia, 78 m. due S. of Susa, on the Gulf of Qabes (Syrtis Minor) opposite the Kerkenna islands, in 43' N., io° 46' E. The town consists of a European quarter, with streets regularly laid out and fine houses, and the Arab town, with its kasba or citadel, and tower-flanked walls pierced by three gates. Many of the private houses, mosques and zawias are good specimens of native art of the 17th and 18th centuries. Sfax is the market for the phosphates of the Qafsa region, with which it is connected by a railway; other railways and good roads link it also with Susa and Tunis on the one hand and with Qabes on the other. Olive oil is manufactured, and the fisheries are important, notably those of sponges and of octopuses (exported to Greece). The prosperity of the town is largely due to the export trade in phos phates, esparto grass, oil, almonds, pistachio nuts, sponges, wool, etc. There is, in the Gulf of Qabes, a rise and fall of 5 ft. at spring tides, which is rare in the Mediterranean. A harbour, to which a channel, 3 km. long and 22 metres wide, gives access, was built 1895-97, and has since been deepened at different times. The phosphates company of Qafsa has built huge stores there ; the loading of ships is effected by apparatus with endless chains worked by electricity. Sfax has the greatest tonnage of any
Tunisian port ; its trade exceeds two million tons (especially phosphates). It is also an important fishing port. The 1926 pop. of the town itself was 27,723, of whom 17,574 were Muslims, 3,265 Jews and 6,884 Europeans (3,237 French and 2,590 Italians). One must add 44,00o natives, who live in the outskirts and in the gar dens in the neighbourhood of Sfax, which brings the total popula tion of Sfax to more than 70,000. The local museum contains mosaics and other antiquities from Thaenae (mod. Thyra, marked by a lofty lighthouse), 8 m. south-west. Pop. (1931) 39,968.
Sfax is on the site of a Roman settlement called Taparura, of which few traces remain. Many of its Arab inhabitants claim descent from Mohammed. The Sicilians under Roger the Norman took it in the 12th century, and in the 16th the Spaniards occupied it for a brief period. The bombardment of the town in 1881 was one of the principal events of the French conquest of Tunisia.