Ottoman Tripolitania

The coastal region of what is today Libya was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1864, as the Eyalet of Tripolitania (Ottoman Turkish: ایالت طرابلس غرب‎ Eyālet-i Trâblus Gârb) or Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary from 1864 to 1912 and as the Vilayet of Tripolitania (Ottoman Turkish: ولايت طرابلس غرب‎ Vilâyet-i Trâblus Gârb) from 1864 to 1912. It was also known as the Kingdom of Tripoli, even though it was not technically a kingdom, but an Ottoman province ruled by pashas (governors). The Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as de facto hereditary monarchs from 1711 to 1835, despite remaining under nominal Ottoman rule and suzerainty from Constantinople.

Ottoman Tripolitania ایالت طرابلس غرب‎ Eyālet-i Trâblus Gârb (1551–1864) ولايت طرابلس غرب‎ Vilâyet-i Trâblus Gârb (1864–1912)
Eyalet and Vilayet of Ottoman Empire
1551–1912
Flag Lesser coat of arms (1856)
The Tripolitania Eyalet in 1795
Capital	Tripoli
History
• Siege of Tripoli	15 August 1551
• Italo-Turkish War	18 October 1912
Preceded by Succeeded by Order of Saint John of Jerusalem Hafsid dynasty Mamluk Sultanate Italian Tripolitania Italian Cyrenaica
Today part of	Libya

Besides the core territory of Tripolitania, Barca was also considered part of the kingdom of Tripoli, because it was de facto ruled by the Pasha of Tripoli, also the nominal Ottoman governor-general.[1]

Ottoman name of "Trablus Garb" literally means "Tripoli in the West" since the state already had another Tripoli in the east also called Trablus conquered by Selim I after the battle at Marj Dabiq. After Tripolitania was annexed names of the eyalets are changed to "Tripoli in the East" (Trablus Şam) and "Tripoli in the West" which is Roman Tripolitania (Trablus Garb).

A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, and those of partial Turkish origin - the Kouloughlis.

History

The Tripolitania Vilayet in 1900

Ottoman conquest

By the beginning of the 16th century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. The Kingdom of Spain occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port than with the inconveniences of administering a colony. In 1530 the city, along with Malta and Gozo, were ceded by Charles I of Spain to the Knights of St John as compensation for their recent expulsion from the island of Rhodes at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Christian rule lasted then until 1551, when Tripoli was besieged and conquered by famed Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis. Declared as Bey and later Pasha of Tripoli, Turgut Reis submitted the tribes of the interior and several cities like Misrata, Zuwara, Gharyan, and Gafsa in the next decade. These efforts contributed to cement the foundations of a statal structure in what is today Libya, but control from Constantinople remained loose at best, much like in the rest of the Barbary Coast of North Africa.

Under the Ottomans, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan provided the pasha with a corps of janissaries, which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or bey. The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a divan (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role.

Karamanli dynasty and the Barbary Wars

The "Kingdom of Tripoli" (Royaume de Tripoly) is shown as including much of modern-day Libya, with the exception of Berdoa, on a map by Guillaume Delisle (1707).

In 1711, Ahmed Karamanli, an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. The 1793–95 Tripolitanian civil war occurred in those years.

In May 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which it had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce from piracy when the Treaty of Tripoli was signed. The demand was refused by third American President Thomas Jefferson, an American naval force was sent and blockaded Tripoli, and the desultory First Barbary War dragged on from 1801 until 3 June 1805. The Regency of Tripoli was defeated by the newly revived United States Navy.

The Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was the second of the two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Empire's North African regencies of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, known collectively as the Barbary States.

On 5 September 1817, Yusuf Karamanli invited the leaders of Libyan tribe of Al-Jawazi to his castle in Benghazi, following a dispute regrading tribute and uprising against his rule. Consequently, the Pasha ordered the execution of all attendees and chasing down the other tribe members which resulted in massacring at least 10,000 people, who eventually sought refuge in the neighboring countries, especially in Egypt.[2][3]

Reassertion of Ottoman authority

In 1835 the government of Sultan Mahmud II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority and held it until the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senussi Movement, led by Islamic cleric Sayyid Mohammed Ali as-Senussi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Jaghbub while his ikhwan (brothers) set up zawiyas (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion.

It was one of the first Ottoman provinces to become a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Tripolitania Vilayet.[4]

The highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi, who was a skilled administrator and a charismatic orator. With 146 lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra. Harsh Ottoman rule only fuelled the appeal of the Senussi Movement's call to repel foreign occupation. Remarkably, Mohammed al-Mahdi succeeded where so many had failed before him, securing the enduring loyalty of the Amazigh tribes of Cyrenaica. Over a 75‑year period, the Ottoman Turks provided 33 governors and Libya remained part of the empire—although at times virtually autonomous—until Italy invaded for the second time in 1911, as the Ottoman Empire was collapsing.

Italo-Turkish War

Main article: Italo-Turkish War

The Italo-Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911 to October 18, 1912.

As a result of this conflict, the Ottoman Turks ceded the provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica to Italy. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya.

Administrative divisions

Sanjaks of the Eyalet in the mid‑19th-century:[5]

1. Sanjak of Benghazi; became an independent sanjak in 1863, then became a province for a brief period, but was made an independent sanjak once again in 1888.[6]
2. Sanjak of Tarablusi Garb
3. Sanjak of Khoms
4. Sanjak of Jebel
5. Sanjak of Gharbi
6. Sanjak of Fezzan

Sanjaks of the Vilayet:[7]

1. Sanjak of Trablus Garb
2. Sanjak of Khoms
3. Sanjak of Celebi-i-Garbi
4. Sanjak of Fizan
5. Sanjak of Benghazi

See also

• Pasha of Tripoli
• Treaty of Tripoli
• Turgut Reis

References

1. Thomas Salmon, Modern history or the present state of all nations, vol. 3, 1746, p. 84. Archibald Bower et al., An universal history: from the earliest accounts to the present time, 1760, vol. 18, p. 479.
2. "Libyan tribe demands to prosecute Turkey for the massacres committed against its people, similar to that of the Armenians". horizonweekly.ca. 5 October 2016.
3. مذبحة الجوازي.. دماء 10 آلاف ليبي تطارد إردوغان. 3thmanly.com/ (in Arabic). 18 October 2018.
4. Almanach de Gotha: annuaire généalogique, diplomatique et statistique. J. Perthes. 1867. pp. 827–829. Retrieved 2013-06-01.
5. The three eras of Ottoman history, a political essay on the late reforms of ..., p. 75, at Google Books By James Henry Skene
6. Emine Ö. Evered (2012). Empire and Education Under the Ottomans: Politics, Reform and Resistance from the Tanzimat to the Young Turks. I.B.Tauris. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-78076-109-1. Retrieved 2013-05-17.
7. Trablus-Garb Vilayeti | Tarih ve Medeniyet

External links

• Hogarth, David George (1911). "Tripoli" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 27 (11th ed.). pp. 288–292.