Libya: Some Aspects of the Mediaeval Period, First–Ninth Century H/Seventh–Fifteenth Century AD

Abstract

The difficulty with the study of Libyan history, certainly before the sixteenth century, is twofold: firstly the definition of Libya as a subject, secondly the lack of information. The definition of the subject starts from the modern political boundaries, which do not predate the Ottomans; the lack of information must be related to the fact that most of the territory is desert, and peripheral to the concerns of wealthier and more powerful neighbours — Egypt, Tunis, Kanem/Borno, and the maritime empires of western Europe. Instead of a positive entity of which the modern political limits are only the most recent expression, it is all too easy to see a hollow space between neighbours north, south, east and west. How to fill that space conceptually and evidentially is the problem explicit or implicit in all the literature over the years since the foundation of the Society for Libyan Studies. This essay does not aim to be exhaustive, simply to indicate the lines of thought and investigation, and offer some conclusions.