Paul Sebag (Tunisian Arabic: پول صباغ) (26 September 1919 – 5 September 2004) was a French-Tunisian sociologist and historian.
Biography
After having begun studies in law and philosophy in Paris interrupted by World War II and the anti-Jewish laws of the Vichy regime, Paul Sebag in Tunisia took an important part in the action of the Tunisian Communist Party (PCT) against the partisans of Vichy. Arrested and tortured, he is sentenced by a Bizerte court for life. However, he spent only ten months in prison. Released in the aftermath of the allies' landings in North Africa on 8 November 1942, he resumed his political activity in the PCT illegally.
In 1943, after the Liberation, he became a journalist and edited the party newspaper. He then completed his studies and became, from 1947 to 1957, professor of letters at Lycée Carnot in Tunis. He also published several studies in urban sociology that led him to teach at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Tunis and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tunis. In 1977, due to the non-renewal of his contract by the Tunisian authorities, he obtained a job at the University of Rouen, where he worked for two years before claiming his pension rights. He devoted himself to his work as a historian and publishes various books devoted in particular to the history of Tunis and that of the Tunisian Jews.
In 1994, he was awarded the Tunisian Order of Cultural Merit.
A volume of posthumous homages is published in his honor in 2008.[1]
Main publications
Personal works
La Tunisie. La culture et les hommes (in French). Paris: Éditions sociales. 1951. p. 237.
La course tunisienne au XVIè siècle. Publications de l'Institut des belles lettres arabes (in French). Tunis: Institut des belles lettres arabes. 2001. p. 74.
Paul Sebag; Tawhida Benzina-Ben Cheikh; M. Lahmi; B. Lazar; J. Lévigne; H. Nizard; Jean Poncet; M. Turki; Georges Valensi (1956). Enquête sur les salariés de la région de Tunis. Publications de l'université de Tunis. Mémoires du Centre d'études de sciences humaines (in French). Paris: Presses universitaires de France. p. 79.
Paul Sebag; Jean Claudian; Mustapha Ben Salem; Hannah Taïeb (1960). Un faubourg de Tunis. Publications de l'université de Tunis. Mémoires du Centre d'études de sciences humaines (in French). Paris: Presses universitaires de France. p. 90.
Claude Roy; Paul Sebag (1961). Tunisie. Neuf (in French). Paris: Delpire. p. 160.
Pierre Grandchamp (1966). Études d'histoire tunisienne. Publications de l'université de Tunis. Histoire (in French). Paris: Presses universitaires de France. p. 200.
Paul Sebag (1968). Toute la Tunisie (in French). Tunis: Cérès Productions. p. 111.
Jean-Pierre Allali; Annie Goldmann; Paul Sebag (1989). Les Juifs de Tunisie (in French). Paris: Éditions du Scribe. p. 263. ISBN2-86765-011-9.
Text editions
Une relation inédite sur la prise de Tunis par les Turcs en 1574. Sources de l'histoire tunisienne (in French). Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis. 1971. p. 248.
Une histoire des révolutions du royaume de Tunis au XVIè siècle. Histoire et perspectives méditerranéennes (in French). Paris: L'Harmattan. 2003. p. 202. ISBN2-74755-532-1.