Libya

Almost all of Libya is Sahara, and not one permanent river crosses it. Life gathers along the Mediterranean, on the plains of Tripolitania and on the Jebel Akhdar, the ‘Green Mountain’ of Cyrenaica, which catches enough winter rain for farms. Inland lie the sand seas of Fezzan, the mud-walled old town of Ghadames, and the Akakus mountains, whose rock paintings show giraffes and cattle grazing a green Sahara.

Phoenicians founded Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Oea, the city that became Tripoli, and Greeks from Thera settled Cyrene around 631 BC. Septimius Severus, born at Leptis Magna, made it one of Rome’s grandest African cities. Arab armies arrived in the 640s, and Ottoman rule began in 1551. Italy invaded in 1911, and Omar Mukhtar led resistance in Cyrenaica until he was hanged in 1931. Libya became independent under King Idris in 1951, oil was found in 1959, and Muammar Gaddafi ruled from 1969 until his overthrow in 2011.

Most Libyans are Sunni Arabs; Amazigh communities keep their own speech in the Nafusa Mountains, and Tuareg and Tebu peoples live in the deep south, where Ibrahim al-Koni sets his novels. Bazeen, a dome of barley dough in a spicy lamb stew, is shared from a common bowl, and sweet tea is poured from a height to raise a froth. Oil from the Sirte Basin leaves through terminals at Es Sider, Ras Lanuf and Brega, and gas flows under the sea to Sicily.