As a Portuguese Livornese Jewish community amongst the Francos, the Grana community in Tunis was unusual in its plethora of rabbis and their communal authority . As opposed to the Francos of Livorno who In light of the breakdown of commercial autonomy and governance dispersed and migrated to eastern Mediterranean commercial centers like Salonica, Istanbul, Izmir, Damascus and Aleppo and prospered in commerce, advanced secularization and Western education, in Tunis the Grana formed a well-established rabbinical class of first-rate erudite Torah scholars, Halachic decisors, multi-general rabbinical lineages and innovative religious thinkers. The lineages included the following families: Bonan, Valensi, Boccara, Carvalho, Lumbrozo, Darmon, Levy, Elhaik, etc. The earliest luminaries were Rabbi Yitzhak Bonan in 1688, the Valensi rabbinic family settled before 1690, and Rabbi Samson Abu Qara/Boccara (d.. 1769) was a dayyan in Tunis, and followed by Abraham Abu Qara (d. 1817) was the first chief rabbi of the Grana community at the end of the 18th century. Later Abraham Abu Qara III (d. 1880), author of Dinei Ha-safeq (Laws of Doubtful Cases) supported the formation of the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools in Tunis and Tripoli. They also preserved Judeo-Arabic; mostly unknown in Livorno and amongst the Francos in the Balkans and Damascus. Several were luminaries in kabbalah, and others made contributions to local law and commercial law. Several had past rabbinical posts in Livorno or left Tunis to serve in the Livorno as chief rabbis, judicial dayanim, & other religious functionaries and educators. The Livornese Jews began migrating to Tunis in the late 16th early 17th century, established their own Grana synagogue group in 1685, and by the 18th century they laid an active rabbinical base in Tunis, and in 1710 they broke off from the veteran Touansa community and formed their own autonomous community of Portuguese Livornese Jews, called Grana.