ʻĀm al-fuzūʻ, 1864

ʻĀm al-fuzūʻ, 1864 ("The Year of Terror, 1864") is a Tunisian historical novel by Ḥasanayn Bin ʻAmmū built on documentary research into one of the defining upheavals of nineteenth-century Tunisia: the great popular revolt of 1864. When the government of Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey doubled the mejba poll tax — from 36 to 72 riyals — the tribes and townspeople of the interior rose up under the leadership of Ali Ben Ghedhahem, and the country was convulsed by rebellion and brutal reprisal.

The novel moves between the historical record of these bloody events and an invented cast of characters who live alongside the real figures who shaped the uprising, so that the sweep of political and fiscal crisis is felt through ordinary lives. It traces how oppression, taxation, and misrule pushed a people to revolt, and how that revolt was answered.

Written in Arabic, the book is both an investigative reconstruction of the 1864 rebellion and a meditation, offered to modern readers, on power, injustice, and the recurring temptations of tyranny.