What is Libya?
A: Libya is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa.
It is bordered by what to the north?
A: The Mediterranean Sea.
Libya is made of what three historical regions?
A: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica.
What is the area of Libya?
A: Almost 700,000 square miles (1.8 million km2), it is the fourth-largest
country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world.
Libya has the 10th-largest what?
A: Proven oil reserves in the world.
What is the largest city and capital?
A: Tripoli.
Where is it located?
A: In western Libya and contains over three million of Libya's seven million
people.
Libya has been inhabited by whom since the late Bronze
Age?
A: Berbers.
In ancient times, the Phoenicians established
city-states and trading posts in what?
A: In western Libya, while more recently the Ottoman Empire controlled the
northern coastline of Libya.
Parts of Libya were variously ruled by whom?
A: Carthaginians, Persians, Egyptians, and Macedonians before the entire
region becoming a part of the Roman Empire.
Libya was an early center of what?
A: Christianity.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the area of
Libya was mostly occupied by whom?
A: The Vandals until the 7th century when invasions brought
Islam to the
region.
In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire and the Knights
of St John occupied Tripoli until when?
A: Until Ottoman rule began in 1551.
Libya was involved in what wars of the 18th and 19th
centuries?
A: The Barbary Wars.
Ottoman rule continued until when?
A: Until the Italo-Turkish War, which resulted in the Italian occupation of
Libya.
It also resulted in the establishment of what two
colonies?
A: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica (1911–1934), later unified in
the Italian Libya colony from 1934 to 1943.
During the Second World War, Libya was an area of
warfare in what?
A: The North African Campaign.
In what year did Libya become independent as a kingdom?
A: In 1951.
A bloodless military coup in 1969, initiated by a
coalition led by whom, overthrew King Idris I and created a republic?
A: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Gaddafi was often described by critics as a what?
A: A dictator and was one of the world's longest serving non-royal leaders,
ruling for 42 years.
He ruled until being overthrown and killed in what?
A: The 2011 Libyan Civil War during the wider Arab Spring.
By 2014 two rival authorities claimed to govern Libya,
which led to what?
A: A second civil war, with parts of Libya split between the Tobruk and
Tripoli-based governments as well as various tribal and Islamist militias.
The two main warring sides signed a permanent ceasefire
in 2020, and a unity government took authority to plan for what?
A: Democratic elections, however political rivalries continue to delay this.
The coastal plain of Libya was inhabited by Neolithic
peoples from as early as what?
A: 8000 BC.
The Afroasiatic ancestors of the Berber people are
assumed to have spread into the area by when?
A: The Late Bronze Age.
The Phoenicians were the first to establish “what” in
Libya?
A: Trading posts.
In 630 BC, the ancient Greeks colonized the area around
Barca in Eastern Libya and founded what city?
A: The city of Cyrene.
Within 200 years, four more important Greek cities were
established in the area that became known as what?
A: Cyrenaica.
Alexander the Great was greeted by the Greeks when he
entered Cyrenaica in 331 BC, and Eastern Libya again fell under the control
of whom?
A: The Greeks, this time as part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
