Germaniciana

Abbir Germaniciana also known as Abir Cella is the name of a Roman and Byzantine-era city in the Roman province of Africa proconsularis in North Africa. The city was also the seat of a Christian bishopric in the ecclesiastical province of Carthage. It is best known for Cyprian of Carthage, its bishop around 250 CE.

Abbir Germaniciana no longer exists as a community and its location remains in dispute.

Location

The site of Abbir Germaniciana is in the coastal region of North Africa, known as the Magreb. However, its exact location has never been verified. There are several theories:

• The historian Adolf Harnack in the early 20th century suggested that Abbir Germaniciana was near the town of Membressa in the Medjerda River Valley in present-day Tunisia.
• The writer André Mandouze and academic Sylvain Destephen in 1982 theorized that the village of Henchir el Naam, near Sebkhet el Kourzia Lake in Tunisia, was the location of Abbir Maius, another lost Roman city. That would place Abbir Germaniciana on the Meliane Wadi in Tunisia
• The Ravenna Cosmology, an 8th-century geographic work, lists Abbir Germaniciana as "the Germana". The Antonine Itinerary, a listing of Roman roads created in the 8th century, lists the city as "Ad Germani". Both sources place it near the former Roman colony of Theveste in present-day Algeria.

• Other sources suggest that the Roman ruins of Ksour-el-Maïete in Tunisia are actually Abbir Germaniciana.

Bishopric

Abbir Germaniciana was the seat of a Christian bishopric for at least 200 years. During the Roman Empire, the city appears to have been Christian before Rome started persecuting Christians during the Diocletian Persecution of 303 to 311 CE. It became part of the Vandal Kingdom in 429 CE. After Arab armies took Tunisia from the Byzantine Empire in the late 7th century, the bishopric of Abbir Germaniciana disappeared as its population converted to Islam.

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