TRIPOLITANIA

 

Tripolitanian countryside, town of Yefren, courtesy,
ToursLibya.com

This article is a brief follow-up to the previous Tripoli article and covers the province of Arab-occupied Tripolitania in the northwestern section of Arab-occupied Libya. It is also a historic region dating from the era of the Roman Empire. The native Berbers, had inhabited the area for centuries before the arrival of the Romans, or the Arabs (8^th century). Today, the majority of its population, as with Libya as a whole, is of Arab-Berber ancestry. Communities of Berber-speakers live in the Jebel Nafusa region, the town of Zuwara on the coast and the city-oases of Ghadames.

The region first came to prominence as part of the Phoenician Carthaginian empire. The city of Oea, on the site of modern Tripoli, was founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century BCE. It was conquered for a short time by the Greek colonists of Cyrenaica, who were in turn displaced by the Punics of Carthage. The Greek name Τρίπολις "three cities" referred to Oea, Sabratha and Leptis Magna. Following Rome’s defeat of Carthage in the Punic Wars (146 BCE), the empire organized the region (along with what is now modern day Tunisia), into a province known as Africa, and placed it under the administration of a proconsul. The area prospered during this period. The Latin name Regio Tripolitania dates to the 3rd century. During the Diocletian reforms of the late 3rd century, all of North Africa was placed into the newly created Diocese of Africa, of which Tripolitania was a constituent province.

After the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, Tripolitania changed hands several times between the Vandals and the Byzantine Empire, until it was taken during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 8th century. In the 1140s, the Italo-Normans invaded Tripoli, but were ousted by the Almohad Caliphate in 1158. Abu Zakariya Yahya, an Almohad vassal, established an independent state in Tunisia in 1229 and took control of Tripolitania shortly after. Then the Hafsids would control the region until the Ottoman conquest of 1553 and the establishment of Ottoman Tripolitania.

For more information on Tripolitania, see previous posting on Tripoli or that on Libya.