Tag Archives: ottoman era

The oldest book printed in Libya?

Leave a reply

Thanks to a social media post by Baddredin Mukhtar I came across a source previously unknown to me: the Swedish diplomat Jacob Gråberg’s eyewitness account of the Austrian siege of French-occupied Genoa in 1800. Apparently published in Tripoli in 1828, it is certainly one of the oldest books printed in Libya. Though it is quite hard to know if it is the oldest, it is, as Mukhtar proposes, so far the oldest we have a clear evidence for.

Gråberg (1776–1847) was a Swedish scholar and diplomat who served as consul in Tripoli from 1823 to 1828, and had previously held positions in Genoa and Tangiers. He observed and wrote copiously throughout his travels, for example, a report on the 1818 plague epidemic in Morocco or notes on the language of Ghadames.

The book in question, Dag-bok öfver blockaden af Genua år 1800 (Diary on the Siege of Genoa in 1800), was published in 1828 at the press of Mohhammed Es-Swid in “Tripoli I Vester”, that is, Trâblus Gârb (طرابلس الغرب) in Ottoman nomenclature.

The contents have nothing to do with “Tripoli I Vester” at all, but rather are Gråberg’s observations of the Austrian siege of French-occupied Genoa in spring and summer 1800, when he was an officer in the Genoa National Guard after having held bureaucratic roles at the Swedish mission in the then-Ligurian Republic. It seems he only got around to publishing them almost three decades later, and published them wherever he was at the time—in this case, Tripoli—as he did with many of his other writings. The diary was later, in the 1890s, translated into Italian by a historian of Liguria (G. Roberti, “Due diari inediti dell’assedio di Genova nel MDCCC”, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1890 No. XXIII).

As for the press itself, so far I know nothing about “Mohhammed Es-Swid”. It bears remarking that during this period European/Christian converts to Islam, whether as hostages, or conscripts, or other, often simply took (or were referred to using) their country of origin as a family name—e.g. the notable and still extant Libyan family الصويد, which may well be connected with the Mohhammed Es-Swid of our early 19th-century press.

But whether his press printed any other books is not known, and so Gråberg’s Genoese diary may or may not have been the first. Still, I know of no Ottoman or Jewish press operating in Tripoli at this time. The Ottoman newspapers published in Libya got started a bit later, around the mid-1800s. A French newspaper (called المنقب الافريقي) was apparently published in Tripoli in 1827, although I can find no real information about it so far. Jewish presses, publishing both religious texts and newspapers, seem to have gotten going around the end of the 19th century (e.g. the houses of Abraham Tesciuba, Clementi Zard, or Solomon Tesciuba that continued into the colonial period); earlier, the Jewish community seems to have printed predominantly in Livorno or other locations outside of what is now Libya.

More information would be appreciated!

Articles: Afro-Asian Reactions to the Italo-Ottoman War, 1911-1912

Leave a reply

A dossier entitled “Responding to Invasion: Afro-Asian Reactions to the Italo- Ottoman War, 1911-1912” edited by Carlotta Marchi and Massimo Zaccaria has appeared in the journal Africa. Rivista semestrale di Studi e Ricerche (VI/2, 2024). The dossier’s abstract states:

This dossier provides a comprehensive examination of the social, cultural, and material consequences of the Italo-Ottoman War (1911–1912) within a global historiographical perspective. It explores how the Italian invasion of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica sparked widespread solidarity across non-European regions. While the historiography of the conflict has hitherto focused on its European ramifications, this dossier investigates the unexplored reactions from non-European societies, particularly in those regions connected to the Ottoman Empire, such as North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian Ocean. The articles examine global opinion and transnational networks of anti-imperialist and pan-Islamist activists, as well as alternative perspectives supporting Italy. By conducting such an analysis, the articles unveil intricate dynamics that supersede the conventional colonial dichotomy, emphasising collaborative endeavours and mediation initiatives.

Articles

Vanda Wilcox, “Towards a Global History of the Italo-Ottoman War”

Though often overshadowed by the events of the First World War, the Italo- Ottoman War deserves closer attention. Its study might be revitalized by drawing on recent historiographical trends within First World War studies, which emphasize both global perspective and a re- evaluation of chronological boundaries. Future studies might also draw on diverse methodological approaches, including military, social, political, and cultural histories, to deepen our understanding of the war’s multifaceted dimensions. The fields of African and colonial history can suggest further possible future avenues of approach, as can the Second Italo- Ethiopian War. The article calls for a nuanced re-evaluation of the Italo-Ottoman War that transcends Eurocentric perspectives and acknowledges its significance as a pivotal moment in global history, and concludes with a short evaluation of the war’s impact in British India.

Carlotta Marchi, “‘Arab Voices’: Press, Public Opinion and the Intellectual Response in Egypt on the Italo-Ottoman War”

During the Italo-Ottoman conflict of 1911-1912, Egypt played an important moral and material role. It was the scene of a series of manifestations and reactions of solidarity that took place in the press, in public opinion, and in literary and intellectual production. This response reflected the circulation of shared sentiments and ideals, of which Egypt became one of the centres of reference, based on a tangible trans-colonial perspective. In this sense, this paper aims to analyse the construction of awareness of the Italo-Ottoman war in Egypt, focusing on the role of “Arab voices” in promting a common sense of Ottoman, Arab and Islamic identity and solidarity, and a shared critique of Western “civilisation”. The study of newspapers, poems, discourses, reactions, and their impact and circulation favour a broader analysis of the expansion of anti-colonial solidarity, both geographically and temporally.

Massimo Zaccaria, “Courting African Public Opinion: Echoes of the Italo-Ottoman War along the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean”

The Italo-Ottoman war played an important role in mobilising public opinion. In the Americas as well as in Asia, the war aroused a great deal of participation, generated polemics and protests and, to a much lesser extent, gathered support. The study of the reactions to the Italian aggression in Africa has mainly concerned the northern part of the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the great absentee, implicitly conveying the message that this region’s involvement in the conflict was minimal. Indeed, the area was not short of reactions, but one has to use the right sources and look beyond the newspapers. This is the only way to understand the profound impact that the war between Italy and the Ottoman Empire had on the Horn of Africa. Reactions were not clear-cut: the article explains why Pan-Islamism was not the only option available and why in some areas the Ottoman appeal was deliberately ignored.

Çiğdem Oğuz, “Beyond the Nationalist Propaganda: Rethinking Ottoman Literary Production on the Italo-Ottoman War of 1911”

As the last African territory of the Ottoman Empire, Tripolitania was of great importance to the Ottoman government in maintaining its prestige in the Muslim-Arab world. This paper examines the short stories mostly published in the new genre of “national literature” at the time of the Italo-Ottoman War of 1911. The stories provide insights into Ottoman-Turkish perspectives on Turkish-Arab solidarity, especially around the figure of the Caliph, as an Ottomanist strategy. While most of the stories aimed to illustrate the economic and social struggles of the empire and to evoke a sense of voluntarism to save the crumbling empire, they also served the practical purpose of responding to Italian claims of a “civilizing mission” that reduced the Ottoman Empire to colonial status, despite its recent attempt at political reform in 1908 with the Young Turk Revolution.

Silvia Pin, “The Reaction to the Italo-Ottoman War in the Hebrew Press of Jerusalem: A Reading of the Newspapers Ha-’Or and Ha-Ḥerut, October-November 1911″

The Italo-Ottoman war of 1911-1912 sparked bitter reactions in the contemporary press across the Ottoman Empire, as well as indignation and mobilisation against Italy. Amongst the Ottoman press, the Hebrew language newspapers of Jerusalem broadly covered the war, providing local Jewish perspectives on this much-debated event. This article aims to analyse the initial press coverage of the Italo-Ottoman war in two Zionist Hebrew-language newspapers of Jerusalem, the Ashkenazi Ha-’Or and the Sephardi Ha-Ḥerut. In the first months of war, the two Hebrew journals strongly though with some contradictions condemned the Italian invasion of Tripolitania, professed – and promoted – Jewish loyalty to the Empire and in so doing defended the harmless ends of Zionism. They denied that Jews in Tripoli supported the Italians and, in covering pro-Ottoman demonstrations in and out of Palestine, notably in Egypt, Ha-Ḥerut also took note of a burgeoning pan-Islamic sentiment triggered as a reaction to the Italian assault.

Book: La politica berbera nella Libia coloniale

Leave a reply

Chiara Pagano, La politica berbera nella Libia coloniale. Identità, reti e conflitti (1835-1924) (Carocci, 2025).

“A seguito del crollo del regime di Gheddafi l’etnicità berbera/amazigh ha fornito un efficace dispositivo di affermazione politica ad alcuni gruppi libici che si sono mobilitati in aperta polemica con il paradigma panarabo dominante. L’attivismo amazigh ha ricercato nel passato gli argomenti per legittimarsi nel presente, riaffermando un legame originario con il territorio per rivendicare il riconoscimento come popolo indigeno, più che come minoranza. Eppure, come l’identità nazionale, anche l’identità etnica è un prodotto storico contingente, plasmato da specifici processi politici. Il volume ricostruisce in chiave critica la (ri)produzione dell’etnicità amazigh nella storia della Libia contemporanea, focalizzandosi sul periodo tra la metà dell’Ottocento e l’avvento del fascismo. Vengono così analizzate le rivendicazioni avanzate da attori locali definiti come “berberi” nei confronti delle autorità ottomane prima e coloniali poi. Da queste emerge come la politica berbera promossa dalle autorità italiane, e fatta propria da alcuni notabili tripolitani, individuò nell’etnicità uno strumento privilegiato per l’organizzazione gerarchica della società coloniale. Fu allora che vennero poste le basi delle dinamiche identitarie che, ancora oggi, naturalizzano l’opposizione tra gruppi arabi e berberi proiettandone le origini in un passato indefinito.”

Article: Ottoman abolitionist policy in Trablusgarp and Benghazi

Leave a reply

Hargal, Salma. 2024. Ending slavery in imperial peripheries: Ottoman abolitionist policy in Trablusgarp and Benghazi provinces (1857–1911). Middle Eastern Studies.

When Istanbul prohibited the trade of enslaved Africans in 1857, the Ottoman local authorities expanded efforts to curb human trafficking throughout the imperial realm. These endeavours also included Libya, which lies at the frontiers of the Greater Sahara, a major slave-raiding zone in the nineteenth century. The historiography devoted to modern Libya maintains that the Porte took action to curb slavery only in response to British pressure. In this article, I seek to situate the prohibition of human trade in Libya within the larger scope of the end of slavery in the imperial realm. I argue that the Ottomans conducted an abolitionist policy in Libya that was embedded in the reforms undertaken in these peripheral provinces, namely, to foster the Porte’s sovereignty at its imperial frontier. I further argue that the enslaved population gained agency in the manumission process and in their integration into Ottoman society after their liberation. This bottom-up approach to the end of human bondage reveals the entanglement of old and new patterns of manumission in the era of abolition as well as the social integration of these emancipated slaves into Ottoman society during the Reform period.

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

Leave a reply

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.

Thesis: Insurgent Geographies: The Production of Territorial Libya, 1835–1935

Leave a reply

Lohnes, Jonathan M. 2022. Insurgent Geographies: The Production of Territorial Libya, 1835–1935. PhD Dissertation, Cornell University. (open access)

Abstract: This dissertation offers a panoramic reinterpretation of Libyan state-formation in light of Ottoman archival evidence and recent advances in critical geography, particularly revisionist approaches to the history of territory. Echoing Henri Lefebvre’s description of space as the “ultimate locus and medium of struggle,” I argue that the dynamic, frequently violent interaction of a diverse cast of networked social forces—local, transregional, Ottoman imperial, and European colonial— across a vast Saharan-Mediterranean theater produced the entity we now recognize as territorial Libya from approximately 1835 to 1935. Territorial spatialization along the rural frontiers of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan is not reducible in theory to the enclosure of land or conquest of terrain— though both featured prominently within it—but also encompassed legal, diplomatic, technical-scientific, and ideological dimensions. The process unfolded in two phases: Ottoman provincialization, which transformed these areas into a “pilot province” for Istanbul’s ambitious development agenda, and Italian fascist colonization, which unified the country in the form of a colonial state after a twenty-year “pacification” campaign. Both phases unfolded at the expense of rural indigenous communities, who were targeted for disarmament, dispossession, displacement, and culminating in the ethnic cleansing of Cyrenaica in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Indigenous efforts to preserve local understandings of sovereign autonomy—up to and including “nomadic strategies” of guerrilla war—were the most historically and geographically significant factor in the production of Libyan territorial space. Modern Libya’s unique experience of territorial spatialization dislocated the country from the conceptual maps that guide us through transnational, regional, and local pathways of Global South history. Its ambivalent and fragmentary “geo-historical identity”—exemplified by the fact that Fezzan remains synonymous with “the middle of nowhere” in modern Turkish—is among the most enduring legacies of this process. Yet this inherited sense of Libya’s rural interior as the Periphery of Peripheries belies the fact that upland Tripolitania, Fezzan, and inner Cyrenaica often took center stage in the high drama of late and post-Ottoman politics. More than a microcosm of transformations underway across the Empire in its final century, this region was a critical frontline of global struggles over resources, sovereign legitimacy, geographic knowledge, and the fate of mobile and nomadic populations. All of which is to say, the middle of nowhere is the heart of the world.

Research Roundup June 2022

3 Replies

A variety of recent research on Libyan topics.

Paul Love, Libraries of the Nafusa. A pilot project to document and digitize material heritage in the Jebel Nafusa, Libya, part of the excellent LibMed project focusing on medieval Libya

The Libraries of Nafusa is a pilot project to document and to digitize written material culture in the Jebel Nafusa region of Libya. It is led by the Ibadica Centre for Research and Studies on Ibadism in France and the Fassato Foundation in Libya, with financial support from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung’s “Patrimonies” funding program in Germany. The administrative team reflects the international nature of the project, with members in Morocco, Algeria, France, and the United States.

Igor Cherstich, Martin Holbraad, Nico Tassi, Anthropologies of Revolution: Forging Time, People, and Worlds (University of California Press, 2020). *Open Access*

What can anthropological thinking contribute to the study of revolutions? The first book-length attempt to develop an anthropological approach to revolutions, Anthropologies of Revolution proposes that revolutions should be seen as concerted attempts to radically reconstitute the worlds people inhabit. Viewing revolutions as all-embracing, world-creating projects, the authors ask readers to move beyond the idea of revolutions as acts of violent political rupture, and instead view them as processes of societal transformation that penetrate deeply into the fabric of people’s lives, unfolding and refolding the coordinates of human existence.

Nir Arielli, “Colonial Soldiers in Italian Counter-Insurgency Operations in Libya, 1922-32”, British Journal for Military History 1/2 (2015), 47–66. *Open Access*

The vast majority of the force employed by the Italians to crush local resistance in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica was composed of Libyans, Eritreans and Ethiopians. The article examines why the Italians came to rely so heavily on colonial soldiers. It highlights two key predicaments the Italians faced: how to contend with the social, economic and political repercussions that military recruitment for the counter-insurgency created in East Africa; and the extent to which they could depend on forces raised in Libya itself. Finally, the article offers an initial assessment of how the counter-insurgency exacerbated tensions between Libyans and East Africans.

Klaus Braun & Jacqueline Passon (editors), Across the Desert: Tracks, Trade and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Libya (Springer, 2020). *Open Access*

This open access book provides a multi-perspective approach to the caravan trade in the Sahara during the 19th century. Based on travelogues from European travelers, recently found Arab sources, historical maps and results from several expeditions, the book gives an overview of the historical periods of the caravan trade as well as detailed information about the infrastructure which was necessary to establish those trade networks.
Included are a variety of unique historical and recent maps as well as remote sensing images of the important trade routes and the corresponding historic oases. To give a deeper understanding of how those trading networks work, aspects such as culturally influenced concepts of spatial orientation are discussed.
The book aims to be a useful reference for the caravan trade in the Sahara, that can be recommended both to students and to specialists and researchers in the field of Geography, History and African Studies.

Jérôme Lentin, selections of early modern written Libyan Arabic, in A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic, edited by Esther-Miriam Wagner (Open Book Publishers, 2021). *Open Access*

Libya 1: Ḥasan al-Faqīh Ḥasan’s Chronicle Al-Yawmiyyāt al-Lībiyya (early 19th century)

Libya 2: Letter from Ġūma al-Maḥmūdī (1795–1858) to ʿAzmī Bēk, Daftardār of the ʾIyāla (Province) of Tripoli (undated)

Another Poem from Old Tripolitania

Leave a reply

The French colonial scholar and administrator Constantin Louis Sonneck (1849-1904) isn’t that well known. Having spent his entire youth in colonial Algeria, Sonneck became an asset to the French administration and was employed in numerous roles in the colonial administration before eventually going on to teach at the École coloniale in Paris. Although his career consisted mostly of translation, teaching, and administering, Sonneck found time later in life to publish a few text editions like a proper Orientalist.

Title Page of Sonneck’s Chants arabe du Maghreb

The more well-known of these is his collection of songs and poems entitled Chants arabes du Maghreb: Étude sur le dialecte et la poésie populaire de l’Afrique du nord / الديوان المُغرب في أقوال عرب إفريقية والمغرب (Arabic Songs of the Maghrib: A Study of the Dialect and Popular Poetry of North Africa) published in 3 volumes totalling almost 700 pages between 1902 and 1906. This work has proven valuable to later scholars for its documentation of songs in the classical Andalusi repertoire as passed down in cities of northern Africa. Sonneck’s only other published academic work was a (shorter) collection in three parts entitled “Six chansons arabes en dialecte maghrébin” (Six Arabic Songs in Maghribi Dialect) and published in that venerable organ of French Orientalism, the Journal Asiatique, in 1899. It provides the text of six poems from differents parts of northern Africa in Arabic script with French translation and a few notes. Though Sonneck doesn’t say exactly where he obtained each poem, and who recited them for him, he does record some basic information for each:

  1. An ode from the Maḥāmīd of Tripolitania, poet unnamed.
  2. A poem composed in praise of Lalla Aisha al-Manoubiya, a saint in Manouba, Tunisia, who died in 1267 and is buried in Tunis. The unnamed author apparently lived in the mid-1700s in Manouba.
  3. The famous qasida by Muhammad bin Gitoun about the love story of Sa‘id and Ḥiziya in Sidi Khaled near Biskra, Algeria, composed in 1878 and later set to music.
  4. A poem composed by Qaddur bin Omar bin Benina, a scholar from Algiers who died around 1898 and was known as Qaddur al-Hadby, on the occasion of a trip to the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris of a musical troupe led by Francisco Salvador-Daniel, a Spanish music teacher in Algiers.
  5. An ode by Muhammad bin Sahla, a famous sheikh in Tlemcen, Algeria, who lived in the 1800s.
  6. A poem from a nobleman of Tafilalt, Morocco named Sidi Muhammad bin Ali U Rezin (1742-1822).

Continue reading →

A Poem about being photographed in 1890s Tripoli

2 Replies

The earliest work on a Libyan Arabic variety was written by Hans Stumme (1864-1936), a diligent German linguist who studied a number of language varieties in northern Africa. In his Märchen und Gedichte aus der Stadt Tripolis in Nordafrika (Folktales and Poems from the city of Tripoli in North Africa, 1898), he describes the speakers he interviewed for his research and relates an interesting detail.

Arriving in Tripoli in 1897, Stumme was put in touch with a certain Sidi Brahim bin Ali al-Tikbāli, who he describes as a 45-year old inhabitant of the old city and a skilled poet. Sidi Brahim became Stumme’s main interlocutor for his study of the Tripoli dialect and provided the majority of the texts Stumme transcribed in his book (10 khurrafas and 7 poems). A second speaker, whom Stumme praises as a “walking dictionary”, was a 15-year old black Libyan named Mhemmed bin Jum’a Breñgāli. Besides being Stumme’s guide around the city and general explainer-of-things, Mhemmed provided 3 additional poems which Stumme transcribed. A third person, a Tunisian named Hmed al-Susi who apparently lived in Tripoli, helped translate when Stumme’s knowledge of Tunisian Arabic didn’t suffice to be clearly understood by his Tripolitanian interlocutors.

Stumme’s transcription of Sidi Brahim’s poem

Continue reading →

Journal issue: Tripoli, port de mer, port de désert

Leave a reply

Available freely online is a special journal issue from 2013, based on a workshop which took place in 2011, on the theme “Tripoli, port to the sea, port to the desert” in Paris. The special issue contains 7 articles, all in French, about different aspects of pre-modern to early-modern Tripoli. All articles can be read online as well as downloaded.

Tripoli, port de mer, port de désert: Table ronde du 25-26 novembre 2011 Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne coordonnée par Rémi Dewière et Güneş Işıksel, special issue of Hypothèses (1/16), 2013:

Rémi Dewière, Güneş Işıksel, Introduction, pp. 343–352

Dominique Valérian, Tripoli dans les réseaux d’échanges intercontinentaux à la fin du Moyen Âge, pp. 353–363

Nicola Melis, Tripoli vu par les Ottomans, pp. 365–373

Güneş Işıksel, Le statut de la Tripolitaine dans l’espace politique ottoman au xvie siècle, pp. 375–382

Rémi Dewière, «Regards croisés entre deux ports de désert»: L’enjeu des sources pour l’étude des relations entre Tripoli et le sultanat de Borno, pp. 383–393

Nora Lafi, Violence factieuse, enjeux internationaux et régulation ottomane de la conflictualité urbaine à Tripoli d’Occident entre xviiie et xixe siècles, pp. 395–403

Salvatore Bono, Tripoli 1510-1911: Historiographie et sources occidentales, pp. 405–412