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Libya
Tripolitania and the Phoenicians
Enterprising Phoenician traders were active throughout the Mediterranean
area before the twelfth century B.C. The depots that they set
up at safe harbors on the African coast to service, supply, and
shelter their ships were the links in a maritime chain reaching
from the Levant to Spain. Many North African cities and towns
originated as Phoenician trading posts, where the merchants of
Tyre (in present-day Lebanon) eventually developed commercial
relations with the Berber tribes and made treaties with them to
ensure their cooperation in the exploitation of raw materials.
By the fifth century B.C., Carthage, the greatest of the overseas
Phoenician colonies, had extended its hegemony across much of
North Africa, where a distinctive civilization, known as Punic,
came into being. Punic settlements on the Libyan coast included
Oea (Tripoli), Labdah (later Leptis Magna), and Sabratah, in an
area that came to be known collectively as Tripolis, or "Three
Cities" .
Governed by a mercantile oligarchy, Carthage and its dependencies
cultivated good relations with the Berber tribes in the hinterland,
but the city-state was essentially a maritime power whose expansion
along the western Mediterranean coast drew it into a confrontation
with Rome in the third century B.C. Defeated in the long Punic
Wars (264-241 and 218-201 B.C.), Carthage was reduced by Rome
to the status of a small and vulnerable African state at the mercy
of the Berbers. Fear of a Carthaginian revival, however, led Rome
to renew the war, and Carthage was destroyed in 146 B.C. Tripolitania
was assigned to Rome's ally, the Berber king of Numidia. A century
later, Julius Caesar deposed the reigning Numidian king, who had
sided with Pompey (Roman general and statesman, rival of Julius
Caesar) in the Roman civil wars, and annexed his extensive territory
to Rome, organizing Tripolitania as a Roman province.
The influence of Punic civilization on North Africa remained
deep-seated. The Berbers displayed a remarkable gift for cultural
assimilation, readily synthesizing Punic cults with their folk
religion. The Punic language was still spoken in the towns of
Tripolitania and by Berber farmers in the coastal countryside
in the late Roman period.
Data as of 1987
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