Libyaليبيا

The Libyan coast was settled from two directions. Phoenicians founded trading ports in the west — Oea (Tripoli), Sabratha and Leptis Magna — which later passed to Carthage; Greeks from Thera founded Cyrene in the east around 631 BCE, one of the great cities of the Greek world. Inland, the Garamantes built an irrigated kingdom in the Fezzan using underground channels. Rome absorbed the whole coast; Septimius Severus, born in Leptis Magna, became emperor in 193 and rebuilt his home town with marble forums and a harbour.

Arab armies arrived in the 640s. Over centuries the region passed between Egyptian and Tunisian dynasties, Norman and Spanish raiders, and from 1551 the Ottomans, who ruled Tripoli partly through the local Karamanli dynasty; Tripoli's corsairs fought the United States in the Barbary Wars of 1801–05. In the east, the Sanusi Sufi order became the main political and religious force of Cyrenaica in the 19th century.

Italy invaded in 1911. Resistance led by the Sanusi teacher Omar Mukhtar held out in the Jebel Akhdar until his capture and hanging in 1931; Italian forces deported and interned much of the eastern population in camps where tens of thousands died. After the Second World War, Libya became independent in 1951 as a kingdom under the Sanusi leader Idris. Oil was found in 1959 and transformed a poor country.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi seized power in 1969, closed foreign bases, nationalised oil and created the 'Jamahiriya', a state of people's committees that in practice he controlled. Libya was isolated after the Lockerbie bombing and reconciled with the West in 2003–04. In February 2011 an uprising began in Benghazi; NATO intervened under a UN resolution, and Gaddafi was killed in October. Elections in 2012 were followed by fragmentation: from 2014 rival parliaments and governments in Tripoli and the east, backed respectively by Turkey and by the UAE, Egypt and Russia, fought for control. Khalifa Haftar's 2019–20 offensive on Tripoli failed; a UN-brokered ceasefire in 2020 and a unity government in 2021 followed, but planned elections were postponed indefinitely and armed groups clashed in Tripoli again in 2025 (check later developments).

Most Libyans are Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school, organised in extended families and tribes whose loyalties matter in politics and in the armed groups. Amazigh communities in the Nafusa mountains and the coastal town of Zuwara speak Tamazight and many follow Ibadi Islam; their language was banned under Gaddafi and has revived since 2011.

In the south, the Tuareg around Ghat and Ubari and the Tebu of Murzuq and the Tibesti borderlands move across borders with Algeria, Niger and Chad, and have clashed with each other and with Arab tribes over smuggling routes. Before 2011 Libya employed around two million foreign workers; today it is also a transit country for migrants heading to Europe.

Sufism has deep roots — the Sanusi order shaped Cyrenaica — but Sufi shrines were attacked by hard-line groups after 2011. Libya's small Jewish community left after 1948 and 1967, and Italian settlers were expelled in 1970.

Over 90% of Libya is desert. The coastal strip, green around Tripoli and the Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain) in the east, holds most of the people. Inland lie sand seas such as the Ubari and Murzuq ergs, the black basalt of the Haruj, and the Tadrart Acacus mountains near Ghat with rock paintings thousands of years old.

Libya has almost no permanent rivers. Gaddafi's Great Man-Made River, begun in the 1980s, pumps fossil groundwater from deep aquifers in the south through thousands of kilometres of pipes to the coast; it supplies most of the country's drinking water and is vulnerable to damage and power cuts.

Summers are extremely hot inland and the ghibli, a hot dust-laden wind from the south, can raise coastal temperatures sharply in spring. Storm Daniel in September 2023 showed another risk: torrential rain in the Jebel Akhdar collapsed two poorly maintained dams above Derna, and the flood swept through the city, killing thousands.

Libyan food mixes North African, Ottoman and Italian influences. Bazin, a dense barley dough shaped into a dome and served in a stew of lamb and tomato, is the traditional dish eaten by hand from a shared bowl. Couscous, sharba (a lamb soup with orzo and mint eaten in Ramadan), usban (stuffed tripe sausage) and Italian-style pasta — macaroni imbakbaka, cooked in a spicy tomato sauce — are everyday food. Tea is brewed strong and topped with foam, sometimes with peanuts.

Hospitality is central, and weddings are multi-day affairs with separate gatherings for men and women. The malouf of Tripoli, Andalusian in origin, and the zukra bagpipe music of weddings are the traditional sounds; Libyan writers such as Ibrahim al-Koni, a Tuareg novelist of the desert, and Hisham Matar have found international readers.

Architecture tells the layered history: Roman cities by the sea, the Ottoman medina of Tripoli with the Karamanli mosque and Red Castle, the Italian arcades of central Tripoli and Benghazi, and the mud-and-palm houses of Ghadames, built in covered lanes to beat the heat, with women's walkways on the rooftops.