Tripolitania

Tripolitania
طرابلس (
Arabic)
Tripolitania; طرابلس ( Arabic)
	Historical definitions of Tripolitania
Capital	Tripoli

Tripolitania

Arabic: طرابلس), historically known as the Tripoli region, is a historic region and former province of Libya

.

The region had been settled since antiquity, first coming to prominence as part of the Carthaginian empire. Following the defeat of Carthage in the Punic Wars, Ancient Rome organized the region (along with what is now modern day Tunisia and eastern Algeria), into a province known as Africa, and placed it under the administration of a proconsul. 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

Aghlabids and later the Fatimid Caliphate were practically independent. The native Berbers, who had inhabited the area locally for centuries before the arrival of the Arabs, established their own native Hafsid dynasty over Ifriqiya in the 13th century, and would control the region until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, who established Ottoman Tripolitania as a distinct province. Tripolitania became an Italian colony

in 1911.

After the 1934 formation of Libya, the Tripolitania province was designated as one of the three primary provinces of the country, alongside Cyrenaica province to the east and Fezzan province to the south.

Definition

Historically, the name Tripoli designated a region rather than a city, just as today in Arabic the same word Tarablus (طرابلس) is used for both the city and the region. The Arabic word used alone would be understood to mean only the city; in order to designate Tripolitania in Arabic, a qualifier such as "state", "province" or "sha'biyah" is required.

The region of Tripoli or Tripolitania derives from the Greek name Τρίπολις "three cities", referring to Oea, Sabratha and Leptis Magna. Oea was the only one of the three cities to survive antiquity, and became known as Tripoli. Today Tripoli is the capital city of Libya and the northwestern portion of the country.

In addition to

Khoms (near ancient Leptis Magna), Tarhuna and Sirte

.

History

Antiquity

The city of Oea, on the site of modern

Justinian the Great and his general Belisarius

.

Middle Ages

In the 7th century, Tripolitania was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, and its successors, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, inherited it.

The

Isma'ili Muslims in 909 in Raqqada, Tunisia, ruled the area from Tunisia to Syria. In the 1140s, the Italo-Normans invaded Tripoli and created the brief Kingdom of Africa, which the Almohad Caliphate destroyed in 1156. Abu Zakariya Yahya, a vassal of the Almohads, established an independent state in Tunisia in 1229 and took control of Tripolitania shortly after. He founded the Hafsid dynasty, which controlled the region until the 16th century. During that century, wars between the Ottomans and the states ruled by the House of Habsburg repeatedly led to the region changing alliances, although the Hafsids continued to rule. Hafsid rule ended when the Ottoman Empire brought Abu Abdallah Muhammad VI ibn al-Hasan

to Constantinople in 1574 and executed him.

Modern history

Tripolitania Vilayet

(1864–1911)

Ottoman Turkish: ایالت طرابلس غرب) extended beyond the region of Tripolitania proper, also including Cyrenaica. Tripolitania became effectively independent under the rulers of the Karamanli dynasty in 1711 until Ottoman control was re-imposed by Mahmud II in 1835. Ottoman rule persisted until the region was captured by Italy in the 1911–1912Italo-Turkish War

. Italy officially granted autonomy after the war but gradually occupied the region.

After

Paris Peace Conference, which drafted the Treaty of Versailles. It was the first formally declared republican form of government in the Arab world, but it gained little support from international powers and had disintegrated by 1923. Italy, under the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini

, had managed to re-establish full control over Libya by 1930.

Originally administered as part of a single colony, Italian Tripolitania was a separate colony from 26 June 1927 to 3 December 1934, when it was merged into Libya. The Italian fascists constructed the Marble Arch as a form of an imperial triumphal arch at the border between Tripolitani and Cyrenaica near the coast.

Tripolitania experienced a huge development in the late 1930s, when the Italian Fourth Shore was created with the Province of Tripoli, with Tripoli as a modern "westernized" city. The Tripoli Province ("Provincia di Tripoli" in Italian) was established in 1937, with the official name being Commissariato Generale Provinciale di Tripoli. It was considered a province of the Kingdom of Italy and lasted until 1943.

During

Allies, with the British moving west from Egypt after their victory at El Alamein in October 1942 against German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps and the Americans from the west after landings in Operation Torch in Morocco and Algeria in November 1942. From 1942 and past the end of the war in 1945 to 1951, when Libya gained independence, Tripolitania and the region of Cyrenaica were administered by the British Military Administration

. Italy formally renounced its claim upon the territory in 1947.

Tripolitania retained its status as a

Jabal al Gharbi, Misrata, and Tarabulus

.

The Modern Latin missionary jurisdiction was called the

Apostolic Vicariate of Tripolitana but was later renamed after its episcopal see

, Benghazi.

References

External links

32°54′00″N 13°11′00″E / 32.9000°N 13.1833°E / 32.9000; 13.1833

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