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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 Limes Tripolitanus was built after Augustus. It was related mainly to the Garamantes menace. Septimius Flaccus in 50 AD launched a military expedition that reached the actual Fezzan [2] and further south.
The Romans did not conquer the Garamantes so much as they seduced them with the benefits of trade and discouraged them with the threat of war. The last Garamantian foray to the coast was in AD 69, when they joined with the people of Oea (modern Tripoli) in battle against Leptis Magna.
The Romans, in order to defend the main Roman cities of Tripolitania (Oea, Sabratha and Leptis Magna), intervened and marched south. According to Edward Bovill, author of the book The Golden Trade of the Moors, this campaign marked the Romans’ first use of camels in the Sahara, which convinced the Garamantes that their advantage in desert warfare no longer held.
After that the Garamantes started to become a client state of the Roman Empire, but nomads always endangered the fertile area of coastal Tripolitania. Because of this Romans created the Limes Tripolitanus [3]
The first fort on the limes was built at Thiges, to protect from nomad attacks in 75 AD. The limes was expanded under emperors Hadrian and Septimius Severus, in particular under the legatus Quintus Anicius Faustus in 197-201 AD.
Indeed, 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 (actual 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 (actual Ghirza), situated away from the coast and south of Leptis Magna, developed quickly in a rich agricultural area [6] Ghirza became a "boom town" after 200 AD, when the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (born in Leptis Magna) had organized the Limes Tripolitanus.
Former soldiers 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 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. Ghirza consisted of some forty buildings, including six fortified farms (Centenaria), two of which were quite large. It was abandoned in the Middle Ages.
With Diocletian the limes was partially abandoned and the defence of the area was delegated to the Limitanei. The Limes survived as an effective protection until Byzantine times (Emperor Justinian restructured the Limes in 533 AD). [10]
Nomad warriors of the Banu Hillal tribe captured the centenaria/castra of the Limes in the 11th century and the agricultural production fell to nearly nothing within a few decades: even Leptis Magna and Sabratha were abandoned and only Oea survived, which was from now on known as Tripoli.
In Libya today, very substantial remains survive, e.g., the limes castles at Abu Nujaym (ancient Golaia) and Al Qaryah al Gharbīyah, the frontier village Gaerisa, and about 2,000 fortified farms ( Centenaria ) like Qaryat. [11]
Tunisia has several sites attached to the limes. In 2012, some of these sites were presented to UNESCO in order to register them as World Heritage. [12]
The Tebaga Wall is a 17 kilometers-long fortification line built along the Tebaga Gap or Clausura between the range of Jebel Tebaga and the hills of the Matma Mountains. [13]
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 was the final contender to seize 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.
Sabratha, in the Zawiya District of Libya, was the westernmost of the ancient "three cities" of Roman Tripolis, alongside Oea and Leptis Magna. From 2001 to 2007 it was the capital of the former Sabratha wa Sorman District. It lies on the Mediterranean coast about 70 km (43 mi) west of modern Tripoli. The extant archaeological site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.
Germa, known in ancient times as Garama, is an archaeological site in Libya. It was the capital of the Garamantian Kingdom.
Tarhuna wa Msalata was a district of Libya until 2007. Between 1988 and 1995 there existed the Tarhuna District, which became Tarhuna wa Msalata between 2001 and 2007. It consisted of twenty-six Basic People's Congresses, similar to townships, and its capital was Tarhuna. In the 2007 administrative reorganization, the territory formerly in Tarhuna wa Msalata was transferred to Murqub District.
The military history of Libya covers the period from the ancient era to the modern age.
This page list topics related to Libya.
Almost all Roman roads in Africa were built in the first two centuries AD. In 14 AD, Legio III Augusta completed a road from Tacape to Ammaedara: the first Roman road in Africa. In 42 AD, the kingdom of Mauretania was annexed by Rome. Emperor Claudius then restored and widened a Carthaginian trail and extended it west and east. This way the Romans created a continuous coastal highway stretching for 2,100 miles from the Atlantic to the Nile. In 137, Hadrian built the Via Hadriana in the eastern desert of Egypt. It ran from Antinoopolis to Berenice.
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.
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.
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.
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 the ruined Roman city of Leptis Magna, in present-day Libya. It was commissioned by the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, who was born in the city. The arch was in ruins but was pieced back together by archaeologists after its discovery in 1928.
Roman colonies in North Africa are the cities—populated by Roman citizens—created in North Africa by the Roman Empire, mainly in the period between the reigns of Augustus and Trajan.
Between the first century BC and the fourth century AD, several expeditions and explorations to Lake Chad and western Africa were conducted by groups of military and commercial units of Romans who moved across the Sahara and into the interior of Africa and its coast. However, there was a more significant Roman and Greek presence in modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia. The primary motivation for the expeditions was to secure sources of gold and spices from Axumite piracies.
Tripolitania was a province of the Roman Empire. Between the 2nd century BC and the 3rd century AD it had been known as Syrtica; in the 3rd century it was renamed Tripolitania meaning "region of the three cities", referring to Oea, Sabratha and Leptis Magna.
The Tripolitania Punic inscriptions are a number of Punic language inscriptions found in the region of Tripolitania – specifically its three classical cities of Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Oea, with the vast majority being found in Leptis Magna. The inscriptions have been found in various periods over the last two centuries, and were catalogued by Giorgio Levi Della Vida. A subset of the inscriptions feature in all the major corpuses of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, notably as KAI 119-132.
