©Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd Libya Includes Ancient Ruins & Saharan Sand Understand Libya is an ancient crossroads of civilisations that be- Libya ............................101 queathed to the Libyan coast some of the finest Roman and Libya Today .................101 Greek ruins in existence, among them Leptis Magna, Cyrene History ........................101 and Sabratha. Libya also has some of the most beautiful cor- People ........................ 104 ners of the Sahara Desert, from seas of sand the size of Swit- zerland and sheltering palm-fringed lakes (the Ubari Sand Religion ...................... 104 Sea) to remote massifs adorned with prehistoric rock art Environment .............. 104 (the Jebel Acacus), labyrinthine caravan towns (Ghadames) Food & Drink .............. 104 and an isolated black-as-black volcano (Wawa al-Namus) in the desert’s heart. The upheaval caused by Libya’s revolution in 2011 and 2012 continues and the whole country remains off-limits to Fast Facts travellers with chronic instability and ongoing conflict. Capital Tripoli Population 6.54 million Libya at a Glance Languages Arabic, Berber Leptis Magna One of the world’s best-preserved Roman Area 1.759 million sq km cities looks out across the Mediterranean. Libyan dinar (LD) Currency Tripoli An atmospheric whitewashed medina and a world- class museum. Ghadames The Sahara’s most enchanting oasis town with a labyrinth of covered passageways shadowed by palm gar- dens. Cyrene This extraordinary ancient city has some of North Africa’s finest monuments to Ancient Greece. Jebel Acacus A jagged Saharan massif with 12,000-year-old rock art, Tuareg inhabitants and extraordinary scenery. Ubari Lakes Idyllic lakes surrounded by exquisite sand dunes in one of the world’s largest and most beautiful sand seas. Waw al Namus A black-sand volcano sheltering multi- coloured lakes and otherworldly scenery. 101 UNDERSTAND LIBYA WARNING There is nowhere in Libya that is cur- Libya Today rently considered safe to travel. Terrorist Libya is a country awakening from a night- attacks and the threat of kidnapping re- mare, but it’s not over yet. Qaddafi may no main extremely high across the country. longer rule over the country, but the coun- Although fighting is not constant every- try is deeply divided, not in two, but rather where, car bombings and the escalation into as many fiefdoms as there are armed of tensions into outright military conflict militias. It’s difficult to see from where true are a serious risk. peace will come, but if the number of Liby- ans who turn out to vote is any indication, they haven’t quite given up hope yet. Meanwhile, the fall of the Punic capital In the west, militias from Zintan and Mis- at Carthage (in Tunisia) prompted Julius rata each control large swathes of territory Caesar to formally annex Tripolitania in 46 and refuse to recognise the elected govern- BC. The Pax Romana saw Tripolitania and Cyrenaica become prosperous Roman prov- ments. In the east, around Benghazi, rene- LIBYA gade General Khalifa Haftar battles militant inces. Such was Libya’s importance that a Islamists in a devastating turf war that has Libyan, Septimius Severus, became Rome’s destroyed large parts of Libya’s second city. emperor (r AD 193–211). TO UNLIBYA Into the power vacuum has stepped the so- der called Islamic State, including many battle- Islamic Libya hardened veterans of the war in Syria and S By AD 643, Tripoli and Cyrenaica had fall- T D Iraq; for a time they controlled Derna and AN en to the armies of Islam. From 800, the AY Sirt. And all the while, rival governments – D Abbasid-appointed emirs of the Aghlabid one in Tripoli backed by the UN as a unity LIBYA dynasty repaired Roman irrigation systems, government, one in Tobruk voted to power restoring order and bringing a measure of in earlier elections – claim to be the rightful prosperity to the region, while the mass mi- administration. In the short term, Libya’s gration of two tribes – the Bani Salim and future looks bleak. The path to a peaceful fu- Bani Hilal – from the Arabian Peninsula ture is a complicated one that must resolve forever changed Libya’s demographics. The or remove at least two major roadblocks: the Berber tribespeople were displaced from ongoing power of armed militias and the dif- their traditional lands and the new settlers ficulties of the government – whoever that cemented the cultural and linguistic Arabi- may be – in asserting effective control over sation of the region. the country. After centuries of rule by local and other North African Islamic dynasties, the Otto- mans occupied Tripoli in 1551. The soldiers History sent by the sultan to support the Ottoman pasha (governor) grew powerful and caval- The Great Civilisations of ry officer Ahmed Karamanli seized power Antiquity in 1711. His Karamanli dynasty would last From 700 BC, Lebdah (Leptis Magna), Oea 124 years. The Ottoman Turks finally reined (Tripoli) and Sabratha formed some of the in their erstwhile protégés in 1835 and re- links in a chain of safe Phoenician (Punic) sumed direct control over much of Libya. ports stretching from the Levant around to On 3 October 1911 the Italians attacked Spain. Traces of the Phoenician presence in Tripoli, claiming to be liberating Libya from Libya remain at Sabratha and Leptis Magna. Ottoman rule. During almost three decades On the advice of the Oracle of Delphi, in of brutal Italian rule, a quarter of Libya’s 631 BC Greek settlers established the city population died as a result of the occupa- of Cyrene in the east of Libya. Within 200 tion, whether from direct military attacks, years the Greeks had built four more cities starvation or forced migration. of splendour as part of the Pentapolis (Five With the onset of WWII, devastating Cities), which included Apollonia. But with fighting broke out in the area around Tob- Greek influence on the wane, the last Greek ruk. By January 1943, Tripoli was in British ruler, Ptolemy Apion, finally bequeathed the hands and by February the last German and region of Cyrenaica to Rome in 75 BC. Italian soldiers were driven from Libya..