Libya
Libya (/ˈlɪbiə/ (About this soundlisten); Arabic: ليبيا,
romanized: Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya (Arabic:
دولة ليبيا, romanized: Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the
Maghreb region in North Africa, bordered by the
Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to
the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest,
Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. The
sovereign state is made of three historical regions:
Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost
1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the
fourth largest country in Africa, and is the 16th largest
country in the world.[11] Libya has the 10th-largest proven
oil reserves of any country in the world. The largest city
and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and
contains over one million of Libya's six million people.[13]
The second-largest city is Benghazi, which is located in
eastern Libya. The Latin name Libya is based on the name of
the region west of the Nile[citation needed] (Λιβύη) used by
the Ancient Greeks and Romans for all of North
Africa[citation needed], and was again adopted during the
period of Italian colonization beginning in 1911.[citation
needed]
Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze
Age as descendants from Iberomaurusian and Capsian
cultures.[14] The Phoenicians established trading posts in
western Libya, and ancient Greek colonists established
city-states in eastern Libya. Libya was variously ruled by
Carthaginians, Persians, Egyptians and Greeks before
becoming a part of the Roman Empire. Libya was an early
centre of Christianity. After the fall of the Western Roman
Empire, the area of Libya was mostly occupied by the Vandals
until the 7th century, when invasions brought Islam to the
region. In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire and the
Knights of St John occupied Tripoli, until Ottoman rule
began in 1551. Libya was involved in the Barbary Wars of the
18th and 19th centuries. Ottoman rule continued until the
Italo-Turkish War, which resulted in the Italian occupation
of Libya and the establishment of two colonies, Italian
Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica (1911–1934), later
unified in the Italian Libya colony from 1934 to 1947.
During the Second World War, Libya was an important area of
warfare in the North African Campaign. The Italian
population then went into decline.
Libya became independent as a kingdom in 1951. A military
coup in 1969 overthrew King Idris I. The "bloodless"[15]
coup leader Muammar Gaddafi ruled the country from 1969 and
the Libyan Cultural Revolution in 1973 until he was
overthrown and killed in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Two
authorities initially claimed to govern Libya: the House of
Representatives in Tobruk and the 2014 General National
Congress (GNC) in Tripoli, which considered itself the
continuation of the General National Congress, elected in
2012.[16][17] After UN-led peace talks between the Tobruk
and Tripoli governments,[18] a unified interim UN-backed
Government of National Accord was established in 2015,[19]
and the GNC disbanded to support it.[20] Since then, a
second civil war has broken out, with parts of Libya split
between the Tobruk and Tripoli-based governments, as well as
various tribal and Islamist militias.[21] As of July 2017,
talks are still ongoing between the GNA and the Tobruk-based
authorities to end the strife and unify the divided
establishments of the state, including the Libyan National
Army and the Central Bank of Libya.
Libya is a member of the United Nations (since 1955), the
Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the OIC and OPEC. The
country's official religion is Islam, with 96.6% of the
Libyan population being Sunni Muslims.
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