The Ottoman Tripoli: a Mediterranean Medina

THE OTTOMAN TRIPOLI: A MEDITERRANEAN MEDINA

Ludovico Micara

It is not an easy task to isolate a specifi c historical period as Ottoman in the history of the urban development of Tripoli. Cities indeed grow on themselves, reusing and transforming the traces inherited from the past, unless a natural or artifi cial event breaks the continuity of their development, producing early endings and new beginnings. This can be observed in a clearer way in the cities of the Islamic world where the urban fabric is organized in a way that overcomes any crisis, no matter how severe. In the case of Tripoli the disastrous Spanish occupation and the resulting urban decay that affected the city for a period of about forty years (1510–1551) strongly modifi ed the urban topography, deleting important traces of its ancient past.1 Such destructions, nevertheless, have not been able to block the process of formation of the urban fabric and, on the contrary, stimulated the development of the city. During the Ottoman period and particularly under the reign of the Karamanli dynasty the present image of the Medina of Tripoli was consolidated. The achievement of a strong urban image was the result of different building activities that concerned great religious, collective, and com- mercial institutions, together with the careful design of the defensive

1 The common identifi cation of the cardo of the Roman Tripoli, Oea, with the long street called Sciara Arba{a Arsat and Sciara Jama el-Druj is questionable. The direc- tion of this road is, in fact, different from the orientation of the openings of the Arch of Marcus Aurelius that was the very centre, umbilicum, of the Roman city; whereas the supposed decumanus is perfectly in axis with the main openings of the same arch. Moreover the cross streets of the cardo are not orthogonal to it, but are oriented in the same way as the decumanus. We may speculate therefore, in lack of more advanced archaeological researches, that the destructions caused by the Spanish troops and the Knights of Saint John in the urban area to the west of the Castle, (see the following footnotes 11 and 12), together with the demolitions made by the Ottomans in order to conquer again the city, produced the obstruction of the ancient cardo and its shifting westwards. Darghut Pasha, who built also the Jama Darghut Mosque and its connecting street that is the only orthogonal to the new cardo, probably determined its direction. Apparently his palace was also in the same neighbourhood. 384 ludovico micara walls, bastions, and the castle, as well as the creation of particularly refi ned houses and residential spaces. The establishment of good rela- tions and active collaboration between the Islamic ruling community and the dependent Jewish and Christian communities also enriched the urban image. The specifi c features of the urban fabric of Tripoli are due to a process of assimilation of models belonging to other urban cultures of the Mediterranean world. This explains the particular way the houses open, through windows, balconies, and terraces, towards the street, unlike in other Islamic medinas, as well as the polarization of the urban routes on the waterfront that was clearly a Roman heritage.

The Making of a Mediterranean City

In the articulated structure of the plan of Tripoli, we can distinguish a series of urban patterns that can be referred to specifi c historical periods of the city. The orthogonal grid of the streets recalls the order of the classic Roman layout based on cardo and decumanus; the irregular and curvilinear passages generate the dead-end alleys of the Arab-Islamic city; and the polygonal geometry of the walls are typical of the sixteenth century system of fortifi cation. These urban patterns reveal, diachronically, the different moments of the complex formation and evolution of the city and, synchronically, suggest the composite character of the Mediterranean urban culture, through the overlapping historical traces. In this sense, the Medina of Tripoli constitutes a typical case. In fact, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, under the Kara- manli dynasty, the different communities were strongly integrated. This resulted in a less rigid division between the quarters where the walls were demolished.2 The composite organic urban fabric corresponded, until the beginning of the twentieth century, to the cohabitation and integration between Moslems, Hebrews, Maltese, Sicilians, Nigerians, and Sudanese, each specialized in different arts and crafts. Another element that underlines the Mediterranean character of Tripoli is the careful choice of the site. In fact, the Phoenicians settled in Uiat, later Oea, the ancient Tripoli, in a place that ensured a deep

2 P. Cuneo, Storia dell’Urbanistica. Il mondo islamico (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1986), 393.