Nessim Samama

Nassim Shamama or Nessim Scemama (born Tunis, Ottoman Empire, 1805 – died Livorno, Italy, 24 January 1873) was a Tunisian businessman and philanthropist. As a Tunisian Jew, he held the role of caïd (head) for the Jewish community of the country. He also worked for the Husseinid beys, occupying the post of Receiver General and then Director of Finance. After amassing a huge fortune from his official positions he left Tunisia and after his death his estate became the subject of several famous and protracted international lawsuits.

Early life and public career Nassim Shamama was born in Tunis, then at least officially under the Ottoman Empire, in 1805.

Son of Rabbi Salomon Samama and Aziza Krief, He held the post of director of finance from April 1860, becoming so rich that in May 1862 he offered a loan of ten million rials to Khaznadar at an interest rate of 12%. Mohammed Bey sought thereby to allay public resentment arising from the earlier execution of a Muslim accused of having killed a Jew. Shamama himself was safe from the Tunisian authorities because he enjoyed French consular protection. The harshness of the sentence against Sfez aroused great emotion in the Jewish community and among the consuls of France and the United Kingdom, Léon Roches and Richard Wood. They exerted pressure on the bey so that he issued a declaration of liberal reforms similar to those promulgated in the Ottoman Empire in 1839. He contributed to the building and improvement of places of worship, including the construction of the Great Synagogue of Tunis. He also persuaded the bey to exempt the Jewish community from corvée labour. Local accounts retain the memory of him as an unparalleled philanthropist: he made marriages and provided dowries for poor girls and helped the needy in the city. He had a large house (known today as Dar Caïd Nessim Samama) built for himself on El Mechnaka Street, which later housed the school for young girls of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a synagogue bearing his name and a very well-endowed library. He was one of the architects of rapprochement between Tunisia and France; in 1860 he met Empress Eugenie and Napoleon III, who made him a Knight of the Legion of Honor a few years later.

Flight and exile Following the Mejba Revolt and the suspension of the Constitution of 1861, Shemama left for Paris on June 8, 1864, officially on a mission to negotiate a new loan, but actually escaping the country taking with him key financial dossiers, compromising documents and twenty million rials, accumulated through abuses of his position. He moved to number 47 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, buying hotels in the rue de Chaillot, a country house in Beaumont-sur-Oise and a property in Sèvres. Prime Minister Mustapha Khaznadar came to an arrangement with three of Shamama's heirs to settle all claims in return for 5% of their inheritance, but it transpired that this money would have been kept by Khaznadar himself and not remitted to the state treasury. The heirs in Tunisia then sought assistance from the French and Italian consuls and left Tunisia for Livorno. Central to the disputes was a disagreement about who had jurisdiction over Shamama's affairs; born a Tunisian, he was rumoured to have adopted Italian nationality. In 1878 a Livorno court decided that he had died stateless, having renounced his Tunisian nationality.