Most of the land consists of a large chunk of the Sahara(2) Desert, the world's largest expanse of dry waste. The exception--other than oases--is the end of the Atlas mountains in northwestern Tunisia; the highlands of northeastern Tunisia are also related.
South of the Atlas is a depression with its chain of salt lakes (chotts) that crosses central Tunisia. Farther south the desert is duller--a windy, dusty plateau of rock (hamada) and gravel (areg).
There are a few islands in the Gulf of Gabès--the indent on the east central side of Tunisia.
This is within the part of north Africa in which speakers of Maghrebi(3) Arabic(4) and Sunni Moslems are the majority.
The capital, Tunis, is the only city with a million or more people.
Thousands of years ago, according to Christopher Ehret, speakers of the Boreafrasian dialects of Afroasiatic moved here when the climate was wetter, giving rise to the Berber languages.
The Punic people's colonized cities along the seashore as did the Greeks in Libya. Later the Roman conquerors introduced Latin and their conquerors introduced a Germanic language. All ethnic traces of these peoples has vanished. These people introduced new religions: the Punic people worshipped gods under generic names like Baal, El or Meloch; the Greeks worshipped gods like Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite and Poseidon; the Romans initially worshipped gods like Jupiter, Juno and Apollo, and later became Christians. North African Christian had great diversity in belief and so the Roman and Byzantine Empire treated them viciously as heretics, setting the stage for a big switch.
The Arabs conquered the region in the seventh century and changed the majority language and religion.
Turks ruled the coasts loosely in the early 19th century but have left no traces.
France conquered the area by the early 20th century, but largely departed in the second half, leaving only handfuls of native French speakers, but the language persists in administration and international relations.
Jews settled here during the Roman Empire, then left for the most part when Israel(5) was founded.
north, and east of the north and center
southeast
west
(1) Tunis in transliterated Arabic.
(2) Translates from Arabic as wilderness.
(3) Maghrebi means western in Arabic.
(4) Some would consider this several languages, others would subsume it under Arabic.
(5) Yisrael in transliterated Hebrew.