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Libya
Medieval Cyrenaica and Fezzan
Cyrenaica lay outside the orbit of the Maghribi dynasties, its
orientation on Egypt. From the time when Saladin displaced the
Fatimids in 1171 until the Ottoman occupation in 1517, Egypt was
ruled by a succession of Mamluk (caste of "slave-soldiers," in
Egypt often Kurds, Circassians, or Turks) dynasties that claimed
suzerainty over Cyrenaica but exercised little more than nominal
political control there. The beduin tribes of Baraqah, as Cyrenaica
was known to the Arabs, willingly accepted no authority other
than that of their own chieftains. In the fifteenth century, merchants
from Tripoli revived the markets in some towns, but Cyrenaica's
main source of income was from the pilgrims and caravans traveling
between the Maghrib and Egypt, who purchased protection from the
beduins.
Turbulent chieftains of the Bani Khattab dominated Fezzan. Their
importance, like that of the Garamentes, derived from their control
of the oases on the trade route over which caravans carried gold,
ivory, and slaves from the western Sudan to markets on the Mediterranean.
In the thirteenth century the king of Bornu, a Muslim state in
the Lake Chad Basin, invaded Fezzan from the south and established
a client regime that for a time commanded the trade route. Fezzan
was always a target for adventurers, one of whom, the Moroccan
Muhammad al Fazi, displaced the last of the Bani Khattab early
in the sixteenth century and founded a line at Marzuq that remained
as undisputed rulers of the region under Ottoman suzerainty.
Data as of 1987
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