Tunisian Fundamental Pact of 1857

[2] This pact brought revolutionary reforms: it proclaimed that all the inhabitants of the regency were equal before the law and before taxes, established freedom of worship and trade and above all gave foreigners the right to access property and exercise all professions.

All these very costly reforms pushed Ahmed Bey and his Minister of Finance, Mustapha Khaznadar, to contract loans by accepting often usurious rates which caused the debt to swell.

[5] When Muhammad II ibn al-Husayn succeeded his cousin Ahmed on 30 May 1855, he inherited Mustapha Khaznadar as Grand Vizier and surrounded himself with competent ministers, such as Hayreddin Pasha or Generals Hussein and Rustum, and devoted advisors, such as Mohamed Bayram IV and Mahmud Qabadu.

The Bey had no intention of reforms but the accumulation of circumstances favored this project: on the one hand the risk of an uprising of the population because of a new tax, the Mejba, on the other hand the reformist wishes of Hayreddin Pasha, Ahmad ibn Abi Diyaf, Bayram IV and Mahmud Qabadu, and especially the threat of the French navy squadron, stationed at La Goulette under the command of Admiral François Thomas Tréhouart, to satisfy the requests of the consuls of France and the United Kingdom concerning the reforms demanded following the Batto Sfez Affair.

The Fundamental Pact consists of eleven articles that are situated on two levels, that of principles (security, equality and freedom) and that of the rights of foreigners in the regency.

Considering this act as a stroke of political genius, Napoleon III awarded the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor with diamond insignia to Mohammed Bey.

[8] On 17 September 1860 in Algiers, Napoleon III awarded Muhammad III as-Sadiq, brother and successor of Mohammed Bey, the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor after he received from the latter a magnificently bound volume of the Fundamental Pact as well as the text of the new Constitution, which came into force on 26 April 1861 but was suspended in 1864 due to public unrest linked to the insurrection led by Ali Ben Ghedhahem.

Ceremony of promulgation of the Fundamental Pact on 10 September 1857. From left to right: the caids, generals and senior officials, Ibn Abi Dhiaf reading the proclamation, the two bach-muftis of the regency, Mohammed Bey and his grand vizier, then the diplomatic corps.
First page of the Fundamental Pact of 1857.