Kalaat es Senam

Kalaat es Senam, Kalaat Senan, or Kalâat Snan (Tunisian Arabic: قلعة سنان) is a town in western Tunisia in the Kef Governorate. It is the administrative center of Kalaat Senan Delegation and had 15,621 inhabitants (As of 2014 census). The town is a market town for the agriculture in the area, where wheat and oats are grown and cattle and sheep are grazed.

Map of Kalaa Senan, Tunisia

Kalaat es Senam is named after the nearby fortress (qalat) built upon the Jugurtha Tableland (a mesa). The Jugurtha Tableland at an altitude of 1,255 m covers an area of 80 hectares and rises 200 m vertically above its base. The fortress on its flat top was reconstructed by the 18th Century local leader "Senan", a rebel whose long resistant to the troops of the Bey of Tunis gave the town and area its name. Local drinking water comes from the Ain Senan spring at the edge of the Jugurtha Tableland.

Senan was not the first to occupy a fortress there. Jugurtha, who gave the mesa his name, used it to hold off the Roman legions in his long war with them, 112 to 105 B.C. Legend holds that Masinissa, the first king of Numidia and ancestor of the Kabyle people, built the first fortress there around 200 B.C.