The First Year of the Tunisian revolution

When Mohammed Bouazizi, age twenty‑six, set himself on fire in front of the governorate of Sidi Bouzid on December 17, 2010, this sacrifice not only sparked a revolutionary process that washed away the twenty‑three‑year‑old Ben Ali regime in less than a month. It also triggered a wave of political turmoil all over the Arab world that has been described as the “Arab spring”, as the Arab equivalent of the 1789 French revolution or of the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall, and as the “Arab revival”. My own historical interpretation, which complements other disciplinary approaches, is that this “Arab revolution,” developing through a “democratic uprising,” is rooted in the two‑centuries‑old experience of the Nahda/Renaissance and is fulfilling the promises of the “Arab liberal age,” which Albert Hourani situated from 1798 to 1939. Tunisia and Egypt stood at the forefront of this historical movement, just as they did in 2011..