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Libya
GEOGRAPHY
Regions
With an area of 1,760,000 square kilometers and a Mediterranean
coastline of nearly 1,800 kilometers, Libya is fourth in size
among the countries of Africa and fifteenth among the countries
of the world. Although the oil discoveries of the 1960s have brought
it immense petroleum wealth, at the time of its independence it
was an extremely poor desert state whose only important physical
asset appeared to be its strategic location at the midpoint of
Africa's northern rim. It lay within easy reach of the major European
nations and linked the Arab countries of North Africa with those
of the Middle East, facts that throughout history had made its
urban centers bustling crossroads rather than isolated backwaters
without external social influences. Consequently, an immense social
gap developed between the cities, cosmopolitan and peopled largely
by foreigners, and the desert hinterland, where tribal chieftains
ruled in isolation and where social change was minimal.
The Mediterranean coast and the Sahara Desert are the country's
most prominent natural features . There are several highlands
but no true mountain ranges except in the largely empty southern
desert near the Chadian border, where the Tibesti Massif rises
to over 2,200 meters. A relatively narrow coastal strip and highland
steppes immediately south of it are the most productive agricultural
regions. Still farther south a pastoral zone of sparse grassland
gives way to the vast Sahara Desert, a barren wasteland of rocky
plateaus and sand. It supports minimal human habitation, and agriculture
is possible only in a few scattered oases.
Between the productive lowland agricultural zones lies the Gulf
of Sidra, where along the coast a stretch of 500 kilometers of
wasteland desert extends northward to the sea. This barren zone,
known as the Sirtica, has great historical significance. To its
west, the area known as Tripolitania has characteristics and a
history similar to those of nearby Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
It is considered with these states to constitute a supranational
region called the Maghrib (see Glossary). To the east, the area
known historically as Cyrenaica has been closely associated with
the Arab states of the Middle East. In this sense, the Sirtica
marks the dividing point between the Maghrib and the Mashriq (see
Glossary).
Along the shore of Tripolitania for more than 300 kilometers,
coastal oases alternate with sandy areas and lagoons. Inland from
these lies the Jifarah Plain, a triangular area of some 15,000
square kilometers. About 120 kilometers inland the plain terminates
in an escarpment that rises to form the Jabal (mountain) Nafusah,
a plateau with elevations of up to 1,000 meters.
In Cyrenaica there are fewer coastal oases, and the Marj Plain--the
lowland area corresponding to the Jifarah Plain of Tripolitania--covers
a much smaller area. The lowlands form a crescent about 210 kilometers
long between Benghazi and Darnah and extend inland a maximum of
50 kilometers. Elsewhere along the Cyrenaican coast, the precipice
of an arid plateau reaches to the sea. Behind the Marj Plain,
the terrain rises abruptly to form Jabal al Akhdar (Green Mountain),
so called because of its leafy cover of pine, juniper, cypress,
and wild olive. It is a limestone plateau with maximum altitudes
of about 900 meters. From Jabal al Akhdar, Cyrenaica extends southward
across a barren grazing belt that gives way to the Sahara Desert,
which extends still farther southwest across the Chad frontier.
Unlike Cyrenaica, Tripolitania does not extend southward into
the desert. The southwestern desert, known as Fezzan, was administered
separately during both the Italian regime and the federal period
of the Libyan monarchy. In 1969 the revolutionary government officially
changed the regional designation of Tripolitania to Western Libya,
of Cyrenaica to Eastern Libya, and of Fezzan to Southern Libya;
however, the old names were intimately associated with the history
of the area, and during the 1970s they continued to be used frequently.
Cyrenaica comprises 51 percent, Fezzan 33 percent, and Tripolitania
16 percent of the country's area.
Before Libya achieved independence, its name was seldom used
other than as a somewhat imprecise geographical expression. The
people preferred to be referred to as natives of one of the three
constituent regions. The separateness of the regions is much more
than simply geographical and political, for they have evolved
largely as different socioeconomic entities--each with a culture,
social structure, and values different from the others. Cyrenaica
became Arabized at a somewhat earlier date than Tripolitania,
and beduin tribes dominated it. The residual strain of the indigenous
Berber inhabitants, however, still remains in Tripolitania. Fezzan
has remained a kind of North African outback, its oases peopled
largely by minority ethnic groups.
The border between Tripolitania and Tunisia is subject to countless
crossings by legal and illegal migrants. No natural frontier marks
the border, and the ethnic composition, language, value systems,
and traditions of the two peoples are nearly identical. The Cyrenaica
region is contiguous with Egypt, and here, too, the border is
not naturally defined; illegal as well as legal crossings are
frequent. In contrast, Fezzan's borders with Algeria, Niger, and
Chad are seldom crossed because of the almost total emptiness
of the desert countryside.
Other factors, too, such as the traditional forms of land tenure,
have varied in the different regions. In the 1980s their degrees
of separateness was still sufficiently pronounced to represent
a significant obstacle to efforts toward achieving a fully unified
Libya.
Data as of 1987
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