First of all - what is a Ribat - Well it's a defensive structure, like a fort or a castle. This one is on the town of Monastir, which is on the East Coast of Tunisia. Monastir meaning monastery in Arabic
It was originally built in 796, but perhaps unsurprisingly it's had a few addtions over the years so I doubt all of the bricks are close enough to 1400 years old.
The military personal assigned to the ribat lived here so there are many rooms, including two mosques, some of these are no museums with some interesting artifacts, unfortunately I read neither Arabic or French so much of the displays we lost on me, but there is something about just being in a building/complex this old and this foreign to me.
And if it looks fimilar to you, well it was a filming location for Life of Brian, the Monty Python movie, and they were using it because it had just been used by the Jesus of Nazereth mini-series. Tunisia in the late 1970's must have been an amazing place, between those and Star Wars you would have been tripping over movie stars every five paces.
In terms of what I was doing here, well exploring, maybe we spent a couple of hours here, we climbed up the tower and looked out across Monstir and across the sea (no Byzantine fleets coming in)
It not surprising is on this coast as it was used to scan the sea for hostile ships and as a defence against the attacks of the Byzantine fleet.
And will most things in Tunisia, it was quiet, you'll not no people in these photos, and although that is a slight misnomer as it's partly good timing angles and cropping there were maybe 20-25 people there. What is weirder is that this masterpiece of architecture, and extremely important historic building is about a 30 minute drive from Sousse, home to maybe 10,000 tourists all sitting around pools in resorts. Seems like such a shame
