In the second half of the 19th century, after the French took over Algiers, Tunisia became the scene of fierce rivalries between European and Ottoman imperial forces. This situation triggered increasing litigations between local populations and Europeans over land tenures, legal statuses, public and private funds (Clancy-Smith; Lewis). In this context, two prominent Tunisian dignitaries, Mahmud b. Ayyad and Nessim Scemama, in charge of the State finances, absconded to Paris with substantial portion of the state treasury respectively in 1853 and then 1864. The Tunisian state brought legal suits against these former officers before European courts. Their legal cases were labeled in French sources as “affaires Scemama” and “Ben Ayad,” in Italian as “affare” and translated into Arabic as “nawazîl.” As a consequence, the notion of “affair” which became prevalent in European newspapers and courts was spreading in North Africa as a legal and moral category in the hands of European officials to point out the so-called inabilities of Ottoman provincial authorities to manage the administration of the Ottoman provinces of Tunis and Tripoli. But more interestingly, what this paper will show is that the notion of “affairs” broke up in specific files and fields of knowledge a web of connected legal litigations through which North Africans were playing their own game. By the 1870s, while their own country has became the battle field of power struggles between French, Italian and British forces, the Tunisian state officials involved in these legal cases did not try in any way to put an end to the affairs. On the contrary, they complicated wittingly these affairs, by prompting other litigations in order to showcase their own moral vision, their own political agenda in European newspapers, courts and public opinions. More broadly, the blossoming of such affairs, controversies and litigations in an era of strong imperial rivalries had a second major effect. To be heard by European courts, newspapers and public opinions, Tunisian involved in these affairs produced an increasing number of written evidences, investigations and printed pamphlets. This profusion of such written documents contributed to the radical transformations of the uses of printing, literacy and legal culture in modern North Africa.