 Gerisa ruins | |
  Shown within Libya | |
| Location | Libya |
|---|---|
| Region | Misrata District |
| Coordinates | 30°56′48″N14°33′04″E / 30.946737°N 14.551069°E Coordinates: 30°56′48″N14°33′04″E / 30.946737°N 14.551069°E |
Gerisa, also called Ghirza, was an ancient city of Roman Libya near the Limes Tripolitanus. It was a small village of 300 inhabitants on the pre-desert zone of Tripolitania. [1]
Even if there was a small local settlement, it was only when Roman legionnaires arrived in Tripolitania that the city of Gerisa was created and developed. [2] Initially its population was mainly local berbers, but some Roman merchants settled there during late Augustus times. [3]
The Limes Tripolitanus was expanded under emperors Hadrian and Septimius Severus, in particular under the legatus Quintus Anicius Faustus in 197-201 AD.
Anicius Faustus was appointed legatus of the Legio III Augusta and built several defensive forts of the Limes Tripolitanus in Tripolitania, among which Garbia [4] and Golaia (Bu Ngem) [5] in order to protect the province from the raids of nomadic tribes. He fulfilled his task quickly and successfully.
As a consequence the Roman city of Gaerisa, situated away from the coast and south of Leptis Magna, developed quickly in a rich agricultural area. [6] Gerisa became a "boom town" after 200 AD, when the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (born in Leptis Magna) had organized in a better way the Limes Tripolitanus.
Former soldiers -mostly local Berbers, but even some legionaries from the Italian peninsula- were settled in this area, and the arid land was developed. [7] Dams and cisterns were built in the Wadi Ghirza (then not dry like today) to regulate the flash floods. These structures are still visible: [8] there it is among the ruins of Gaerisa a temple, which may have been dedicated to the Berber semi-god "Gurzil", and the name of the town itself may even be related to his name. [9]
The farmers produced cereals, figs, vines, olives, pulses, almonds, dates, and perhaps melons. Gaerisa consisted of some forty buildings, including six fortified farms (Centenaria). Two of them were really large. It was abandoned in the Middle Ages.
With Diocletian the limes was partially abandoned and the defense of the area was performed by the Limitanei, local berber soldier-farmers. The Limes survived as an effective protection until Byzantine times (Emperor Justinian restructured the Limes in 533 AD. After then Gaerisa fell in importance and slowly disappeared after the Arab invasions of the late seventh century. [10]
By the tenth century Gerisa was totally forgotten and covered by sand. Only a few centuries later the area was repopulated and now -near the excavated ruins of Gaerisa- there it is a small town named "Ghirza".
Lucius Septimius Severus was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the customary succession of offices under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus seized power after the death of the emperor Pertinax in 193 during the Year of the Five Emperors.
Leptis or Lepcis Magna, also known by other names in antiquity, was a prominent city of the Carthaginian Empire and Roman Libya at the mouth of the Wadi Lebda in the Mediterranean.
Oea was an ancient city in present-day Tripoli, Libya. It was founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century BC and later became a Roman–Berber colony. As part of the Roman Africa Nova province, Oea and surrounding Tripolitania were prosperous. It reached its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, when the city experienced a golden age under the Severan dynasty in nearby Leptis Magna. The city was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate with the spread of Islam in the 7th century and came to be known as Tripoli during the 9th century.
Tripolitania, historically known as the Tripoli region, is a historic region and former province of Libya.
Germa, known in ancient times as Garama, is an archaeological site in Libya. It was the capital of the Garamantian Kingdom.
The borders of the Roman Empire, which fluctuated throughout the empire's history, were realised as a combination of military roads and linked forts, natural frontiers and man-made fortifications which separated the lands of the empire from the countries beyond.
The Limes Tripolitanus was a frontier zone of defence of the Roman Empire, built in the south of what is now Tunisia and the northwest of Libya. It was primarily intended as a protection for the tripolitanian cities of Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Oea in Roman Libya.
The military history of Libya covers the period from the ancient era to the modern age.
Publius Septimius Geta was the father of the emperor Lucius Septimius Severus, father-in-law of the Roman empress Julia Domna and the paternal grandfather of the Roman emperors Caracalla and Geta. Besides mentions in the Historia Augusta, Geta is known from several inscriptions, two of which were found in Leptis Magna, Africa.
Publius Septimius Geta was the second son to the elder Publius Septimius Geta and brother of the emperor Septimius Severus. His mother was Fulvia Pia. He was born and raised in Leptis Magna. He had Italian Roman ancestry on his mother's side, and was descended from Punic forebears on his father's side.
Quintus Anicius Faustus was a Roman military officer and senator who was appointed suffect consul in AD 198.
Al-Khums or Khoms is a city, port and the de jure capital of the Murqub District on the Mediterranean coast of Libya with an estimated population of around 202,000. The population at the 1984 census was 38,174. Between 1983 and 1995 it was the administrative center of al-Khums District.
The gens Septimia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. The gens first appears in history towards the close of the Republic, and they did not achieve much importance until the latter half of the second century, when Lucius Septimius Severus obtained the imperial dignity.
The area of North Africa which has been known as Libya since 1911 was under Roman domination between 146 BC and 672 AD. The Latin name Libya at the time referred to the continent of Africa in general. What is now coastal Libya was known as Tripolitania and Pentapolis, divided between the Africa province in the west, and Crete and Cyrenaica in the east. In 296 AD, the Emperor Diocletian separated the administration of Crete from Cyrenaica and in the latter formed the new provinces of "Upper Libya" and "Lower Libya", using the term Libya as a political state for the first time in history.
Gurzil was an important ancient Berber deity. He is known from two sources, the Latin poem Iohannis by the 6th-century Christian Roman poet Corippus and a Neo-Punic inscription from Lepcis Magna.
A centenarium is a type of Ancient Roman fortified farmhouse in the Limes Tripolitanus. It is called even in the plural centenaria, because in the Limes Tripolitanus there were more than 2000 of these "fortifications", connected to create a defensive system against desert tribe raids.
The Arch of Septimius Severus is a triumphal arch in Leptis Magna, located in present-day Libya. It was commissioned by the Libya-born Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. The arch was in ruins but was pieced back together by archeologists after its discovery in 1928.
Roman colonies in Berber Africa are the cities—populated by Roman citizens—created in Berber North Africa by the Roman Empire, mainly in the period between the reigns of Augustus and Trajan. These colonies were created in the area—now called Tamazgha by the Berbers—located between Morocco and Libyan Tripolitania.
Lady Olwen Phillis Frances Brogan was a British archaeologist and expert on Roman Libya. She attended University College London and later taught there. She was the author of two monographs, over thirty articles and was a regular reviewer for Antiquaries Journal, Antiquity and Journal of Roman Studies.
The Roman Africans or African Romans were the ancient populations of Roman North Africa that had a Romanized culture, some of whom spoke their own variety of Latin as a result. They existed from the Roman conquest until their language gradually faded out after the Arab conquest of North Africa in the Early Middle Ages.
