Capsa (Roman colonia)
Capsa was a Roman colonia located in the south of modern-day Tunisia. Before Roman times Capsa was a center of the Capsian culture.
After Roman centuries it was a center of the last Christian and romance speaking people in the Arab Maghreb. The corresponding modern city is Gafsa.
History[edit]
The modern city of Gafsa was called Capsa when was part of the Roman Africa and was an important city near the Fossatum Africae.
The Roman city was conquered by the Vandals, but soon was independent: Capsa was the capital of a Romano-berber kingdom in the sixth century until the Byzantine invasion.
The “Roman pools” are three basins with high walls of reused ashlar. Set in the open air, around springs rising from the bottom of the pools, they are aligned E-W according to the direction of the outflow of the water and connected by underground channels. The W pool consists of two covered rooms. Princeton E.[1]
What remains of Roman Capsa are two pools, dedicated to Neptune and the nymphs (these are the only visible monuments of Roman times and actually are a tourism attraction). Roman cisterns are still evident in the city ruins and still can be used. Indeed the pools consist of two 4 meter deep pools enclosed by high walls made of cut stone, that bear traces of inscriptions. The two pools communicate with each other through a dry-walled vault and are reinforced by small arches: they are fed by springs that gush out at the bottom of the tanks at a temperature of 31 ° C.
Little remains of the ancient Gafsa, but can be still seen the wonderful Roman tanks, deep more than eight meters wide, seventeen and twenty-three long.[2]
However a number of ancient finds have been made in the "casbah" area of actual Gafsa; for example, a large mosaic (4.7 x 3.4 m) was found 300 m E in an undetermined Roman monument of Capsa. Now at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, it depicts an amphitheater scene.
Capsa is considered, by historians like Camps and Laverde, the place on north Africa were survived until the thirteenth century the last speakers of the African Romance. Spoken Latin or Romance is surely attested in Capsa and Monastir by al-Idrisi in the XII century[3].
During the Roman era the city was the seat of an ancient bishopric[4]
Documents give the names of a few of the bishops of Capsa[5]. Indeed in the 3rd century, Donatulus took part in the council that Saint Cyprian convoked in Carthage in 256 to discuss the problem of the "Lapsi".
In the 4th century, at the Council of Carthage (349 AD), Fortunatianus of Capsa was present, mentioned as the first among the bishops of Byzacena. A Donatist bishop of Capsa called Quintasius was at the council held at Cabarsussi in 393 AD by a breakaway group of Donatists led by Maximianus. In the 5th century, at the joint Council of Carthage (411 AD) presided by Marcellinus of Carthage and attended by Catholics and Donatists, Gams and Morcelli say Capsa was represented by the Donatist Donatianus, and that it had no Catholic bishop. According to the more recent Mesnage, Donatianus was instead the Donatist bishop of Capsus in Numidia, and Capsa in Byzacena was represented by the Catholic Fortunatus and the Donatist Celer, whom the earlier sources attributed to Capsus. All three sources agree in attributing to Capsa the Vindemialis who was one of the Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 AD and then exiled. However, the latest editions of the "Roman Martyrology", which commemorates Vindemialis on 2 May, call him bishop of Capsus in Numidia.
Capsa still had resident bishops at the end of the 9th century, being mentioned in a "Notitia Episcopatuum" of Leo VI the Wise (886–912), but a community may have lasted until the early 12th century (or even the early 13/14th century[6]).
Notes[edit]
- ^ Capsa
- ^ Archeological findings in Capsa (in Italian)
- ^ Al-Idrisi, Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Qurtubi al-Hasani as-Sabti (1154). Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi'khtirāq al-āfāq (The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands). pp. 104–105
- ^ Map of Christian churches in Roman times, showing Capsa
- ^ J. Mesnage, L'Afrique chrétienne, Paris 1912, pp. 69–70
- ^ The last Christians in Berber Africa
See also[edit]
Bibliography[edit]
- Baradez, J. Fossatum Africae. Recherches Aériennes sur l'organisation des confins Sahariens a l'Epoque Romaine. Arts et Métiers Graphiques, Paris, 1949
- Lewicki, Tadeusz (1958). Une langue romaine oubliée de l'Afrique du Nord. Observations d'un arabisant (in French). Vol. (1951–1952) 17. (Rocznik Orient. XVII-1958), p. 415–480