كتاب: الفضائع السود الحمر من صفحات الاستعمار الايطالي

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In the 1930s, a “Commission for the Liberation of Libya” (هيئة تحرير ليبيا) headed by Bashir al-Sa‘dawi published a book entitled The Black-Red Atrocities from the Pages of Italian Colonization in Libya, or, Civilization by Iron and Fire (الفضائع السود الحمر من صفحات الاستعمار الايطالي في ليبيا او التمدين بالحديد والنار) documenting atrocities committed by the Italian colonial occupation in Libya and mocking claims that colonization would lead to modernization and progress for the colonized. It appears to be the case that this book is a revised version of al-Sa‘dawi’s Fadhā’i‘ made by a group of Libyan exiles in Syria. The second printing under this title, in 1948 in Cairo, added a section arguing for Libyan unity and independence after WWII. Together with the earlier edition of Sa‘dawi’s work and Shatwan & Sherif’s “Aspirations et idéal national” it is one of the few Libyan anti-colonial writings of the time.

مقال: فظائع الاستعمار الايطالي الفاشستي في طرابلس-برقة

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In the 1930s the Tripolitanian notable and politician Bashir al-Sa‘dawi, later to be viewed as one of the main figures in the movement for Libyan independence, published an essay entitled ‘The atrocities of fascist Italian colonialism in Tripolitania-Barqa’ (مقال: فظائع الاستعمار الايطالي الفاشستي في طرابلس-برقة). Published by the “Association for the defense of Tripolitania-Barqa”, about which I know little, this essay seems to be one of the earliest Libyan anti-fascist and anti-colonial writings.

University of Durham studies on Libya in the 1960s

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In the late 1950s into the 1960s, the area of Durham, England became very involved in the development of the oil industry, including accompanying types of research, in Libya. The University of Durham’s geography department hosted a major geographic research project on Libya, and the county of Durham was involved in the construction of one of the earliest oil pipelines in Libya (the very first shipment of Libyan crude oil in 1961 actually went to a British refinery). This activity, funded by various parties interested in the exploration and mapping of Libya, produced over a dozen MA and PhD dissertations on various aspects of Libyan geography in the 1960s, as well as other publications. In fact, Durham’s Geography department hosted what may have been the very first crop of Libyan PhD students in a Western university.

Y.T. Toni1957A study of the Social Geography of Cyrenaica (PHD)
R.W. Hill1960Some problems of economic geography in northern Tripolitania: a study of agriculture and irrigation on the Jefara plain (PHD)
J.A.N. Brehony1961A geographical study of the Jebel Tarhuna, Tripolitania (PHD)
K.S. McLachlan1961A geographical study of the coastal zone between Homs and Misurata, Tripolitania: A geography of economic growth (PHD)
A.R. Taylor1961The Cultivation of the Olive in Tripolitania: Some aspects of agrarian geography (MLitt)
Hadi M. R. Bulugma1960
1964		The Western coastal zone of Tripolitania: A human geography (MLitt)
The Urban Geography of Benghazi (PHD)
Mukhtar M. Buru1960
1965		A geographical study of the Eastern Jebel Akhdar, Cyreniaca (MLitt)
El-Marj Plain: A Geographical Study (PHD)
Robert G. Hartley1968Recent population changes in Libya: economic relationships and geographical patterns (PHD)
Salem Hajjaji1969The land use patterns and rural settlement in the Benghazi plain (PHD)
Mahmud A. Khuga1960
1969		The Jebel Garian in Tripolitania: A regional study (MLitt)
The growth and functions of Tripoli, Libya (PHD)

The Department of Geography also published a handful of studies on Libya stemming from the same period of research activity, including much fieldwork on-site in Libya. (Click the links below for PDFs)

R.W. Hill, A Bibliography of Libya (Department of Geography, Research Papers Series No. 1, 1959). Durham.

S.G. Willimott & J.I. Clarke (eds.). Field Studies in Libya (Department of Geography, Research Papers Series No. 4, 1960). Durham.

D.W. Gilchrist Shirlaw, S.G. Willimott, J.I Clarke, M.E. Frisby. Soil Survey of Tauorga Tripolitania, Libya (Department of Geography, 1961). Durham

G.H. Blake. Misurata: A Market Town in Tripolitania (Department of Geography, Research Papers Series No. 9, 1968). Durham.

Article: To Follow Bousaadiya

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A new article is the first (to my knowledge) study focused on the Libyan folkloric character Bousaadiya (بو سعدية). See also the author’s recent podcast episode on the same topic.

Tayeb, Leila. 2023. To Follow Bousaadiya: Mobility and Memory in Libyan Cultural Politics. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 16/3. 313–336. [not open access]

This article takes the figure of Bousaadiya, once performed in varying iterations throughout central North Africa, as an entry point to approach the problematics of mobility and memory in Libya. Bousaadiya performance, a multidimensional set of practices that I read critically as dance, produces an embodied social ground upon which Libyans have enacted and contested racialized practices of belonging and a mobile gravesite where it is possible to interrogate regional histories of enslavement and their material and symbolic legacies. While reading Bousaadiya performance enables an excavation of the trans-Saharan slave trade and its ghostly e/affects, performing Bousaadiya enabled the incomplete burial of these through surrogation, easing particular losses. In this article, I explore both of these aspects of the performativity of Bousaadiya’s dance, which is underscored by the forms of remembering it that continue to proliferate. To follow Bousaadiya is to grapple with the ongoing unresolvedness in Libyan cultural politics of the country’s histories of slave economies and the hierarchies left in their wake and to gesture toward the prospect of repair.

Article: The Politics of Boredom in Post-Revolutionary Libya

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Cherstich, Igor. 2023. Smoking, Praying, Killing: The Politics of Boredom in Post-Revolutionary Libya. In Revolution Beyond the Event: The Afterlives of Radical Politics, ed. by Charlotte Al-Khalili, Narges Ansari, Myriam Lamrani, and Kaya Uzel (London: UCL Press). [open access]




Modern Libyan history has been marked by two revolutionary occurrences. In 1969 Colonel Muʿammar al Gaddafi led a coup against the king of Libya, abolishing the monarchy and establishing one of the most perdurable socialist governments of the twentieth century. Forty years later, a revolution broke out against Gaddafi, determining the sudden collapse of the socialist state. In this chapter I will examine the aftermaths of these two uprisings. In so doing, I will show that in spite of their antithetical character – one revolution brought Gaddafi to power, the other put his rule to an end – both events were characterised by a similar, fundamental discrepancy. More specifically, I will demonstrate that in both cases the revolutionaries claimed to have brought about a completely new phase in Libyan history: a novel era marked by an unprecedented sense of vitality and dynamicity. Equally, I will show that the insurgents attained exactly the opposite of what they aimed to achieve: rather than precipitating an age of effervescence and movement, they generated an age of stasis. A stagnant state of affairs where Libyans could not help but feeling stuck, lethargic, and bored.

Article: What drives public trust in the military in non-democracies

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Abouzzohour, Yasmina & Tarik M. Yousef. 2023. What drives public trust in the military in non-democracies: Evidence from Libya (2014-2019). The Journal of North African Studies. [open access]

This article investigates the conditions that lead to heightened trust in the military in non-democracies through an empirical study of post-2011 Libya. Drawing on the political science and sociology literatures on institutional trust in non-democratic contexts, we develop hypotheses linking public trust in the military to personal safety, political interest, Islamist orientation, trust in institutions, regionalism, and support for democracy. Using survey data collected by the Arab Barometer between 2014 and 2019, we empirically test these hypotheses. Our findings reveal a confluence of factors driving trust in the military in Libya, including regional, generational, educational, and class divides. Being older, male, and from the East contribute positively to trust in the military as well as perceived personal safety, trust in government, interest in politics, and support for democracy. On the other hand, an Islamist orientation, education and income are negatively correlated. These results allow us to speculate about the drivers of trust in the military. In particular, the positive impact of personal safety and support for democracy could reflect the public's perception of the army as responsible for ensuring safety and protecting a nation in turmoil. The role of interest in politics could be attributed to the charged context of politics and security after the 2014 elections. Notably, regional exceptionalism in the East could be related to the role and behaviour of the eastern-based, self-proclaimed Libyan National Army. Our paper contributes to the limited empirical research on trust in the military in non-democracies, backsliding in conflict countries, and political attitudes in Libya.

Podcast: Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya

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The Maghrib in Past & Present podcast most recent episode in its “Libyan Studies” series is “Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya”.

In this podcast, Dr. Leila Tayeb, Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication and Liberal Arts Programs at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), explores the cultural politics of mobility and memory in Libya. Looking at Bousaadiya, a figure who has been performed in many iterations throughout North Africa, she offers a reading of these performance practices as a space in which Libyans enact and contest practices of belonging. Tayeb describes how performance, and specifically dance, creates a frame through which to observe political, historical, and cultural phenomena. Highlighting repetition as an important element of performance, she argues that mimesis of certain practices over time can serve to reinstantiate – or disrupt – power structures. Bousaadiya performance practices, Tayeb argues, serve as a space in which Libyans grapple with the unresolved history of the trans-Saharan slave trade which took place in Libya for centuries and persisted even after it was formally abolished. Reading Bousaadiya through these lenses allows for an excavation of this history, its legacies, and opportunities for repair.

Article: Reluctant Militants: Colonialism, Territory, and Sanusi Resistance on the Ottoman‐Saharan Frontier

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Jonathan Lohnes. 2021. Reluctant Militants: Colonialism, Territory, and Sanusi Resistance on the Ottoman‐Saharan Frontier. Journal of Historical Sociology 34(3), 466-478. [paywall]

Abstract: Libya's enigmatic Sanusi brotherhood has been the subject of perennial debate since its emergence in Ottoman Cyrenaica in the mid nineteenth century, becoming a screen upon which apologists and detractors could project their own political anxieties and desires. For European critics, the brotherhood embodied the irrationality and fanaticism of the Islamic East. Its networks in North and Central Africa constituted an obstacle to their expansionist designs, while Sanusi prestige throughout the Muslim world rendered the brotherhood a threat to the entire colonial order of things. Nationalist historiography has generally endorsed this view, albeit with a positive valence, characterizing the Sanusiyya as an anticolonial social movement. Meanwhile, modern critical scholarship has tried to impose order on the chaos of the turn-of-the-century Sahara by assigning to the fraternity the role of a “proto-state.” This article proposes a new framework for understanding the history and sociology of the Sanusi. Drawing on theorists of subaltern resistance such as James Scott and Michael Adas—alongside Ottoman, British, French, and Italian primary sources—I demonstrate that the brotherhood began its life as an inward-looking Islamic social justice movement with little evident interest in state building or the geopolitical controversies of the moment. I coin the term “reluctant militants” to describe its mercurial trajectory from frontier evangelism to armed struggle in response to French and Italian colonial encirclement. This process culminated in the Long War of 1911–1931, during which the Sanusiyya played a critical part in the struggles over post-Ottoman reconstruction, from the Maghreb to Anatolia.