Obba (town)


Obba was an Ancient town in Roman North Africa. It is now a Latin Catholic titular see.

Location

Obba was near Carthage, in modern Tunisia, and is placed in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis by the Annuario Pontificio. Sophrone Pétridès is a lone voice in placing it in the split-off Roman province of Byzacena, further south.
According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, it is the modern Ebba.
Pétridès says the town was situated on the highway from Carthage to Theveste, seven miles from Lares and sixteen miles from Altiburus.
Werner Huß sees as the most likely location modern Henchir Bou Djaoua or Henchir Merkeb en-Nabi.

History

Polybius mentions the town, under the name of Abba, as the place Syphax retreated to in the Second Punic War after Numidian king Masinissa and the Romans burned his camp near Utica, and Livy mentions it as where Syphax linked up with a body of 4000 Celtiberian mercenaries raised by Carthage's Hasdrubal Barca.

Ecclesiastical history

A diocese was established there around 200 AD and of Africa and Christian bishopric, a suffragan of Carthage, the Metropolitan see of the North African ecclesiastical province, in the papal sway.
Three of its bishops are historically known :
It was suppressed having faded, presumably with the 7th century advent of Islam.

Titular see

The diocese was nominally restored as circa 1890 as Latin titular bishopric of Obba / Obben.
It has had the following incumbents, albeit with some intervals, mostly of the fitting Episcopal rank, with a single archiepiscopal exception, both secular and regular :