Nassim Shamama or Nessim Scemama (Arabic: نسيم شمامة) (born Tunis, Ottoman Empire, 1805 – died Livorno, Italy, 24 January 1873)[1] was a Tunisian businessman and philanthropist.
Son of Rabbi Salomon Samama and Aziza Krief,[1] he was considered "the head of the richest and most regarded Jewish family in the entire Tunis regency".
One of his clients, General Benaïd, was dazzled by his skill, speech and calculation abilities, and this allowed him to rub shoulders with the senior administration of the regency.
[6] The harshness of the sentence against Sfez aroused great emotion in the Jewish community and among the consuls of France and the United Kingdom, Léon Roches and Richard Wood.
Local accounts retain the memory of him as an unparalleled philanthropist: he made marriages and provided dowries for poor girls and helped the needy in the city.
He was one of the architects of rapprochement between Tunisia and France; in 1860 he met Empress Eugenie and Napoleon III, who made him a Knight of the Legion of Honor a few years later.
Following the Mejba Revolt and the suspension of the Constitution of 1861, Shemama left for Paris on June 8, 1864, officially on a mission to negotiate a new loan, but actually escaping the country taking with him key financial dossiers, compromising documents and twenty million rials, accumulated through abuses of his position.
Ben Ayed's case failed, but with the Bey of Tunis still seeking restitution, Shamama's heirs sold their interest in the estate to Baron Erlanger for 11 million francs in 1879.