Tripoli

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TRIPOLI

City on the Mediterranean coast of northwest Libya.

Tripoli is the capital, largest city, and chief seaport of Libya. The city was founded by the Phoenicians on a small, rocky promontory. Known by the Romans as Oea, it formed (with Sabrata and Leptis Magna) the tripolis (Greek, three towns) from which its modern name derives. (In Arabic Tripoli is known as Tarablus al-Gharb —Tripoli of the West—to distinguish it from Lebanon's Tripoli.) Tripoli owed its preeminence to a fair harbor on the short sea route to Malta, Sicily, and Italy; to good water supplies and a moderately productive oasis and hinterland; and to domination of the northern ends of the shortest trade routes from the Mediterranean to central Africa via Fezzan.

After a history of foreign and local rule, prosperity declined by the end of the nineteenth century with the demise of Barbary Pirates and Mediterranean corsairing as well as the collapse of the transSaharan trade system. In 1911, the population was estimated at some 20,000, when Tripoli was the prime objective of the Italian invasion. It remained in Italian hands throughout the varying fortunes of Italy's presence in Libya. Under Italian rule, and especially during the post-1922 Fascist era, Tripoli was developed outside the walled Old City and acquired modern municipal services and the appearance of an Italian provincial town. In 1934, it became the capital of the colony of Libya, combining Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. During World War II, Tripoli fell, with little damage, to the invading British Eighth Army in January 1943 and became the seat of the British military administration that ruled Tripolitania until Libya's UN-supervised independence in 1951. On independence, Tripoli became joint capital of the Libyan federal kingdom, with Benghazi.

The oil boom of the 1950s and 1960s brought commercial expansion and increased population, with development into the outlying villages of the oasis. Shantytowns—which housed migrants from the countryside—proliferated on the outskirts. The United States had a large air base at Wheelus (alMallaha) to the east of the city, and the international airport was developed at the Royal Air Force base at Idris, near Gasr ben Gashir to the south. After the 1969 revolution, Tripoli became the sole capital of Libya and, following expulsion of its remaining Italian and Jewish communities, took on a more overtly Arab and Muslim character. Shanty towns were cleared and large public-housing schemes and commercial developments spread in a six-toten mile (10–15 km) radius from the city center. The population doubled between 1973 and 1984.

Attempts by the royalist regime to create a new capital at Baida and move the central administration to the central Libyan oases did little to diminish Tripoli's political, commercial, and social preeminence. It dominates one of Libya's main agricultural and industrial regions, and its port, airport, and roads to Tunisia, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica make it a key communications and transshipment center.

In 1986 the United States bombed Tripoli because of Libya's involvement in international terrorism. Some of the city was destroyed. Its population in 2003 was estimated at 1,775,000.