Hi, 

All these families seem very interrelated. I've hit a brick wall in the early 1800s in Libya. I'm pretty sure they mostly came from Tunisia 1810-1830 which is why I've hit a brick wall. Is anyone else researching this area?

Hi,

There has always been a lot of movement between the South of Tunisia and Libya - my own grandfather, born in Tunis, spent a year in Tripoli at one point. And we have some MIMOUN/MEÏMON/etc. in Tunisia, which might match your MIMON in Libya. For the other names, they're mostly unheard of in Tunisia, except LABI which we generally think came from Libya in the first place... To me these names sound a lot more Libyan than Tunisian - with the small proviso that we are rather poor in BMD records for the Tunisian South bordering Libya, so I might get the wrong impression. But we do have tombstones indexes (in Zarzis and Gabès), and these names don't appear in them afaik.

Also, it seems quite an achievement to have arrived to the early 1800s in Libya, I would love to hear more on how you did this. But the brick wall in Tunisia at this period is at least as hard as in Libya, if not harder, especially for the Tunisian South. The earliest records we have are those of protected subjects of the French consulate in Tunis from the 1830s (see my book here, together with L. Nedjar: https://www.genealoj.org/fr/boutique/proteges-israelites-consulat-france-tunis-1830-1913), with very few Libyans. There is for instance a SERUSI of Tripoli (de Barbarie) in 1832, a couple of ZARD in 1850 and 1890, an AÏNOUS in 1846, a HASSAN in 1893. There are a few Libyan Jews in the archives of the French consulates at Tunis and Tripoli, held at the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques in Nantes, France, but mostly from the second half of the 19th century / early 20th.

I hope this helps,

Thierry