MAHDIYAH, AL-

also spelled Mahdia, or Mahedia, town and fishing port on as-Sahil (coastal strip), eastern Tunisia. It lies on the narrow rocky peninsula of Cape Ifriqiya. The town owes its name to the mahdi (Arabic: mahdi, the rightly guided one) 'Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, founder of the Fatimid dynasty, who established the town in 912 and in 921 made it his capital. Abandoned about 973, al-Mahdiyah was reestablished as a refuge capital of the Zirid dynasty in the late 11th century. Sicilian Normans occupied the town in the mid-12th century, and thereafter it was no more than a small village and the principal place of southern as-Sahil. In the late 16th century it was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. A contemporary minor port, its economic activities include olive cultivation, olive-oil milling, fishing and fish canning (sardines and mackerel), and handicraft industries. The site of a 10th-century mosque, al-Mahdiyah also contains a 16th-century Turkish fort and ruins of an ancient wall. Roads and a railway link it to Susah (Sousse), 20 miles (32 km) northwest. Pop. (1984) 26,602.