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The Visible history of Libya is a flux of stronger and weaker control by outsiders. The ''invisible'' unwritten history of Libya includes the history of its rich mix of peoples added to the indigenous Berber tribes. For most of their history, the peoples of Libya have been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control. The modern history of independent Libya begins in 1951. ANCIENT LIBYA (TRIPOLITANIA AND CYRENAICA) TO 647 CE Since Neolithic times the climate of North Africa has been drying. A reminder of the , cairns, underground cells excavated in rock, barrows topped with huge slabs, and step-pyramidlike mounds. Most remarkable are the Trilithon s, some still standing, some thrown down, which occur isolated or in rows, and consist of two squared uprights standing on a common pedestal that support a huge transverse beam. In the Terrgurt valley "there had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it" according to Cowper. In ancient times, the Phoenicia ns and Carthaginians , the armies of Alexander The Great and his Ptolemaic successors from Egypt, then Romans , Vandal s, and local representatives of the Byzantine Empire ruled all or parts of Libya. The territory of modern Libya had separate histories until Roman times, as Tripoli and Cyrenaica. Tripoli , was originally a group of Phoenician colonies dependent on Carthage . Phoenicians founded the three great cities (''tri + polis'') of Oea , Sabrata and Leptis Magna (site of magnificent Roman ruins). Carthage and its dependencies fell to Rome after the Third Punic War . Tripoli is the ancient sea port at the terminus of three great caravan routes linking the coast with Lake Chad and Timbuktu across the Sahara. Near the port of Tripoli stands a Roman triumphal arch with four richly sculpured fronts of white marble, the blocks being held together with cramps. It was begun in the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius , according to a still-unmutilated dedicatory inscription, and finished under Marcus Aurelius . Cyrenaica , by contrast, was Greek before it was Roman. It was also known as Pentapolis, the "five cities" being Cyrene (near the village of Shahat) with its port of Apollonia (Marsa Susa), Arsinoe (Tocra), Berenice (Bengazi) and Barca (Merj). From the oldest and most famous of the Greek Colonies the fertile coastal plain took the name of Cyrenaica. ISLAMIC TRIPOLITANIA AND CYRENAICA 642-1911 With tenuous Byzantine control over Libya restricted to a few poorly defended coastal strongholds, the Arab horsemen who first crossed into Pentapolis, Cyrenaica in September 642 encountered little resistance. Under the command of Amr Ibn Al-A'as , the armies of Islam conquered Cyrenaica, renaming the city of Pentapolis, Burqa. From Burqa, Uqba bin Nafe led a campaign against Fezzan, marching to Zaweela, the capital of Fezzan. No resistance was offered, and the entire district submitted to the Muslims agreeing to pay Jizya. A clause was further inserted in the peace treaty that part of the Jizya coming from the district was to be spent on the poor of the area. In 647 an army of 40,000 Arab s, led by Abdallah Ibn Al-Sa’ad , the foster-brother of Caliph Uthman Ibn Affan , penetrated further into western Libya. Tripoli was taken from the Byzantines, followed by Sufetula , a city 150 miles south of Carthage , where the Exarch Gregory, was killed. The campaign lasted fifteen months, after which Abdallah's force returned to Egypt after Gregory's successor Gennadius promised them an annual tribute of some 330,000 nomismata. Gennadius also sent the usual surplus of revenues over expenditures to Constantinople, but otherwise administered Africa as he liked. The new Exarch's greatest source of strength was from the Amazigh tribes—the Sanhaja-Awrabi, Zenata, Shawia, Hoda and others. When Gennadius refused to pay the additional sums demanded from Constantinople, his own men overthrew him. Following the revolt Gennadius fled to Damascus and asked for aid from Muawiyah , to whom he had paid tribute for years. The caliph sent a sizable force with Gennadius to invade Africa in 665. Even though the deposed exarch died after reaching Alexandria , the Arabs marched on. From Sicily the Byzantines dispatched an army to reinforce Africa, but its commander Nicephorus the Patrician lost a battle with the Arabs and reembarked. Uqba Ibn Nafi and Abu Muhajir Al Dinar did much to promote Islam and in the following centuries most of the indigenous peoples converted. However, the social character of Libya remained overwhelmingly Amazigh. In 750 the Abbasid Dynasty overthrew the Ummayad caliph and shifted the capital to Baghdad , with emirs retaining nominal control over the Libyan coast on behalf of the far-distant caliph. In 800 Caliph Harun Ar-Rashid appointed Ibrahim Ibn Al-Aghlab as his governor. The Aghlabids dynasty effectively became independent of the Baghdad caliphs, who continued to retain spiritual authority. The Aghlabid emirs took their custodianship of Libya seriously, repairing Roman Irrigation systems, restoring order and bringing a measure of prosperity to the region. In the last decade of the 9th Century , the Ismailis launched an assault on the Sunni Aghlabids. The Ismaili spiritual leader, Grandmaster Ubaidalla Said of Syria , was installed as the imam of much of the Meghreb, including Tripolitania. The Amazigh of Libya eventually came to accept the imam as the Mahdi (Promised One). The Shiite Fatimid Dynasty conquered Misr (Egypt) in 972 and set up their caliphate in Cairo . The difficulty of maintaining control of Libya plagued the Fatimids, as it had almost every other authority preceding them. At the beginning of the 11th Century , Bulukkin Ibn Ziri was installed as the Fatimid governor but he quickly returned Libya to orthodox Sunni Islam and swore allegiance to the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad. The Fatimid anger at what they considered a gross betrayal profoundly altereed the fabric and makeup of Libyan society. Two tribes from the Arabian Peninsula, the Bani Hilal and the Bani Salim (or Bani Sulaim), were co-opted into migrating to the Meghreb. The Bani Salim settled in Libya, particularly in Cyrenaica, while the Bani Hilal spread across North Africa. The Amazigh tribespeople were displaced from their traditional lands, their farmland concerted to pasture and the new settlers cemented the cultural and linguistic Arabisation of the region. Tripoli was pillaged in 1146 by the Normans of Sicily. In 1158 , the supporters of the Almohad dynasty arrived in Tripoli from Morocco and established their authority. An Almohad emir, Muhammad bin Abu Hafs, ruled Libya from 1207 to 1221 and established the Hafsid Dynasty , which outlived the Almohads. The Hafsids ruled Tripoli for nearly 300 years. There was significant trade with the city-states of Europe and Hafsid rulers encouraged art, literature and architecture, and gave scholarship priority. In 1321 the Beni Ammar established an independent dynasty there, which lasted (with an interval, 1354-1369, during which two sovereigns of the Beni Mekki reigned) until 1401, when Tripoli was reconquered by Tunis. Meanwhile, in the Fezzan in the 13th century, King Danama of Kanem (near Lake Chad) annexed territories as far north as the Al-Jufra oases. His Toubou viceroy founded the autonomous Bani Nasr dynasty, which ruled the Fezzan until the 14th century. They were followed by the theocratic kingdoms of Kharijite sectarians, including the Bani Khattab in the Fezzan. In the early 16th century, the Libyan Sahara fell under the control of Muhammad al-Fazi from Morocco who, early in the 16th century, founded the Awlad Suleiman dynasty in Murzuq. Ottoman Rule By the beginning of the 15th century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. Hapsburg Spain occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port that with the inconveniences of administering a colony. Ferdinand The Catholic Of Spain took Tripoli and in 1528 gave it to the Knights Of St John of Malta. In 1538 Tripoli was reconquered by a pirate king called Khair ad-Din (known more evocatively as Barbarossa , or Red Beard). It was the that coast became renowned as the Barbary Coast . When the Ottomans arrived to occupy Tripoli in 1551, they saw little reason to reign in the pirates, preferring instead to profit from the booty. The Europeans were expelled in 1553 by Turkish corsairs Dragut and Sinaii, acting under loose control from Ottoman Constantinople. Dragut, who afterwards fell in the battle at Malta, lies buried in Tripoli in a much venerated tomb. After Dragut's death, the connection between Tripoli and Constantinople seems to have been considerably weakened. Under the Ottomans. the Meghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a pasha appointed by the sultan in Constantinople. The sultan provided the pasha with a corps of Janissaries , which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or Bey . The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a divan (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role. In 1711, Ahmed Karamanli , an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. In May 1801 Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which that government had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce from piracy. The demand was refused, an American naval force blockaded Tripoli, and a Desultory War dragged on until 3 June 1805 . In 1835, the government of Sultan Mahmud II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority and held it until the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senussi Movement, led by Islamic cleric Sayyid Mohammed Ali as-Senussi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Al-Jaghbub while his ''ikhwan'' (brothers) set up ''zawiyas'' (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion. The highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Mohammed Al-Mahdi , who was a skilled administrator and a charismatic orator. With 146 lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra . Harsh Ottoman rule only fuelled the appeal of the Senussi Movement's call to repel foreign occupation. Remarkably, Mohammed al-Mahdi succeeded where so many had failed before him, securing the enduring loyalty of the Amazigh tribes of Cyrenaica. Over a 75 year period the Ottoman Turks provided 33 governors and Libya remained part of the empire-- although at times virtually autonomous-- until Italy invaded in 1911 , as the Ottoman Empire was collapsing. ITALIAN COLONY, 1911-1951 The attempted Italian colonization of the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica was never wholly successful. On October 3, 1911 , the Italians attacked Tripoli, claiming somewhat disingenuously to be liberating Libya from Ottoman rule. Despite a major revolt by the Libyans, the Ottoman sultan ceded Libya to the Italians by signing the 1912 Treaty of Lausanne. Tripoli was largely under Italian control by 1914 , but both Cyrenaica and the Fezzan were home to rebellions led by the Senussis. Several reorganizations of the colonial authority were made necessary, in the face of the armed Libyan opposition. From 1919 ( 17 May ) to 1929 ( 24 January ) the Italian government maintained the two traditional provinces, with separate colonial administrations. A system of controlled local assembies with limited local authority was set up, but it was revoked 9 March 1927 . In 1929 Tripoli and Cyrenaica were united as one colonial province, then in 1934, as Italy struggled to retain colonial power, the classical name "Libya" was revived as the official name of the colony, which was split into four provinces, Tripoli , Misurata, Bengasi , and Derna. In 1920 ( 25 October ) the Italian government recognized Sheikh Sidi Idris the hereditary head of the nomadic Senussi , with wide authority in Kufra and other oases, as Emir of Cyrenaica, a new title extended by the British at the close of World War I. The emir would eventually become king of the free Libyan state. Fighting intensified after the accession to power in Italy of the dictator Benito Mussolini . Idris fled to Egypt in 1922. From 1922 to 1928, Italian forces under Gen. Badoglio waged a punitive pacification campaign. Badoglio's succesor in the field, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, accepted the commission from Mussolini on the condition that he was allowed to crush Libyan resistance unencumbered by the restraints of either Italian or international law. Mussolini reportedly agreed immediately and Graziani intensified the oppression. The Libyans continued to defend themselves, with the strongest voices of dissent coming from Cyrenaica. Omar Mukhtar (1858 - 1931), a Senussi sheikh, became the leader of the uprising. After a much disputed truce on 3 January 1928 , the Italian policy in Libya reached new depths of brutality. A barbed wire fence was built from the Mediterranean to the oasis of Al-Jaghbub to sever lines critical to the resistance. Soon afterwards, the colonial administration began the wholesale deportation of the people of the Jebel Akhdar to deny the rebels the support of the local population. The forced migration of more than 100,000 people ended in concentration camps in Suluq and Al-'Aghela where tens of thousands died in squalid conditions. It's estimated that the number of Libyans who died - killed either through combat or starvation and disease - is at a minimum of 80,000 or even up to half of the Cyrenaican population. After Al-Mukhtar's capture September 15, 1931 and his execution in Benghazi, the resistance petered out. Limited resistance to the Italian occupation crystallized round the person of Sheik Idris , the Emir of Cyrenaica. In March 1937 Mussolini made a spectacular state visit to Libya, where he opened a new military highway running the entire length of the colony. Cynically, he had himself declared ''protector of Islam'' and was presented with a symbolic sword. Mussolini's publicized encouragement of the Arabic nationalist movement suited his wider policies of confronting Britain and France. He also sought to fully colonise Libya, introducing 30,000 Italian settlers which brought their numbers to more than 100,000. These settlers were shipped primarily to Sahel al-Jefara in Tripolitania and the Jebel Akhdar in Cyrenaica, and given land from which the indigenous inhabitants had been forcibly removed. In 13 September -15 1940, Mussolini's highway sped the invasion of Egypt by Italian forces stationed in Libya. Counterattacks of British Allied forces from Egypt, later commanded by Montgomery and their successful two-month campaign ( Tobruk , Bengasi , El Argheila ), and the counteroffensives under Rommel , 1940-43, are part of the wider history of World War II . In November 1942 the Allied forces retook Cyrenaica; by February the last German and Italian soldiers were driven from Libya. In the early post-war period, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica remained under British administration, while the French controlled Fezzan. After almost three decades of Italian occupation, a quarter of Libya's population had died. In 1944 , Idris returned from exile in Cairo but declined to resume permanent residence in Cyrenaica until the removal in 1947 of some aspects of foreign control. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies , Italy relinquished all claims to Libya. In July 1999 the Italian government offered a formal apology to Libya and it is reported that Italy agreed to pay USD $260 million as compensation for the occupation. Some pictures of the Italian occupation can be found here MODERN LIBYA On November 21 , 1949 , the UN General Assembly passed a resolution stating that Libya should become independent before January 1 , 1952 . Idris represented Libya in the subsequent UN negotiations. When Libya declared its independence on December 24 , 1951 , it was the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations and one of the first former European possessions in Africa to gain independence. Libya was proclaimed a constitutional and a hereditary Monarchy and Idris was proclaimed king. The discovery of significant Oil reserves in 1959 and the subsequent income from petroleum sales enabled what had been one of the world's poorest countries to become extremely wealthy, as measured by per capita GDP . Although oil drastically improved Libya's finances, popular resentment grew as wealth was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the elite. This discontent continued to mount with the rise throughout the Arab world of Nasserism and the idea of Arab unity. On September 1 , 1969 , a small group of military officers led by then 28-year-old army officer Mu'ammar Abu Minyar Al-Qadhafi staged a coup d'etat against King Idris, who was exiled to Egypt. The new regime, headed by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic. Qadhafi emerged as leader of the RCC and eventually as de facto chief of state, a political role he still plays. The Libyan Government asserts that Qadhafi currently holds no official position, although he is referred to in government statements and the official press as the "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution." Qadhafi took control of Libya from the Senusiyyah . They gained support by opposing Italian and British occupiers. Their rise in power followed a similar path as that of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia , although with obviously different endings. Since he took power in a 1969 military coup, Qadhafi has espoused his own political system - a combination of Socialism and Islam - which he calls the Third Universal Theory. The new RCC's motto became "freedom, socialism, and unity." It pledged itself to remedy "backwardness," take an active role in the Palestinian Arab cause, promote Arab unity, and encourage domestic policies based on social justice, nonexploitation, and an equitable distribution of wealth. An early objective of the new government was withdrawal of all foreign military installations from Libya. Following negotiations, British military installations at Tobruk and nearby El Adem were closed in March 1970 , and U.S. facilities at Wheelus Air Force Base near Tripoli were closed in June 1970. That July, the Libyan Government ordered the expulsion of several thousand Italian residents. By 1971 , libraries and cultural centers operated by foreign governments were ordered closed. Qadhafi rejected both Soviet Communism and Western capitalism and claimed that he was charting an independent course, portraying himself as a champion of "oppressed peoples" and Third World nations seeking to assert their independence on the international stage. In the 1970s, Libya claimed leadership of Arab and African revolutionary forces and sought active roles in international organizations. In 1974 , Libya and Tunisia briefly planned to merge and create the Arab Islamic Republic . Late in the 1970s, Libyan embassies were redesignated as "people's bureaus," as Qadhafi sought to portray Libyan foreign policy as an expression of the popular will. The people's bureaus, aided by Libyan religious, political, educational, and business institutions overseas, exported Qadhafi's revolutionary philosophy abroad. Viewing himself as a revolutionary leader, Qadhafi used oil funds during the 1970s and 1980s to promote his ideology outside Libya, even supporting militants abroad to hasten the end of Soviet and U.S. Hegemony . On August 19 , in the Gulf Of Sidra Incident (1981) , a dispute over whether the Gulf Of Sidra was international waters or not, two Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets engaged two United States F-14 Tomcat s operating from U.S. aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68) operating in the gulf near the "line of death." The U.S. jets shot down the Libyan fighters and the United States placed an Embargo on Libyan Petroleum imports starting on March 10 , 1982 . Libyan military adventures failed, e.g., the prolonged foray of Libyan troops into the Aozou Strip in northern Chad was finally repulsed in 1987 . (blue) in Chad between 1976 and 1987]] U.S.-Libyan relations quickly deteriorated following the inauguration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in January 1981 . The Reagan administration saw Libya as an unacceptable player on the international stage because of its uncompromising stance on Palestinian independence, its support for revolutionary Iran in its 1980 - 1988 war against Saddam Hussein 's Iraq (''see'' Iran-Iraq War ), support for international terrorism, and its backing for "liberation movements" in the developing world. In March 1982 the U.S. declared a ban on the import of Libyan oil and the export to Libya of U.S. oil industry technology; Europe did not follow suit. The U.S. attacked Libyan patrol boats from January to March 1986 during clashes over access to the Gulf Of Sidra , which Libya claimed as territorial waters. Later, on April 14 , 1986 , Reagan ordered Major Bombing Raids against Tripoli and Benghazi that killed 60 people following U.S. accusations of Libyan involvement in a bomb explosion in a German nightclub frequented by U.S. servicemen on April 5 , which had killed 3. Among the victims of the 14 April attack was the daughter of the Libyan leader. After Libya's role was exposed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie , Scotland , UN sanctions were imposed in 1992. UN Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs) passed in 1992 and 1993 obliged Libya to fulfill requirements related to the Pan Am 103 bombing before sanctions could be lifted, leading to Libya's political and economic isolation for most of the 1990s . The UN sanctions cut airline connections with the outer world, reduced diplomatic representation and prohibited the sale of military equipment. Oil-related sanctions were assessed by some as equally significant for their exceptions: thus sanctions froze Libya's foreign assets (but excluded revenue from oil and natural gas and agricultural commodities) and banned the sale to Libya of refinery or pipeline equipment (but excluded oil ''production'' equipment). Under the sanctions Libya's refining capacity eroded. Libya's role on the international stage grew less provokative after UN sanctions were imposed. In 1999 , Libya fulfilled one of the UNSCR requirements by surrendering two Libyans suspected in connection with the bombing for trial before a Scottish court in the Netherlands . One of these suspects, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, was found guilty; the other was acquitted. UN sanctions against Libya were subsequently suspended. The full lifting of the sanctions, contingent on Libya's compliance with the remaining UNSCRs, including acceptance of responsibility for the actions of its officials and payment of appropriate compensation, was passed 12 September 2003 , explicitly linked to the release of up to $2.7 billion in Libyan funds to the families of the 1988 attack's 270 victims. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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