Brief history of Fazzan

Brief history of Fazzan:
Text & Photos by Yousef A. alKhattali -Tripoli. Libya/ 2002

  History of Fazzan goes back to Paleolithic ages attested by the numerous stone and bone made artifacts such as axe heads, flint spear heads and boomerangs.

Neolithic phases can bee traced, engraved and painted on rock slaps and inside caves.

Fazzan, the hinterland, that the Romans had called "Phazania ", begins south of the Hamada Plateau and al Gofra lowlands, immediately after the steppe pre-desert area, which extends from Bu Njame in the east, to Ghadames in the west. In the Classic times, inhabitants of Fazzan were mentioned in the Phoenician and Greek chronicles, as being the Garamantes. Belonged to the white race, and made their settlements in Wadi al Ajal, under various kings they controlled the whole of Fazzan, for thousands of years. They joined the Carthaginian armies in the 3rd and 2nd centuries, exchanged with them commerce, and led their entrepreneurial expeditions into central Africa. Their frequent raids into the Roman territories of Tripolitania, had brought two punitive, successful military missions by the Roman Legions into Fazzan.

Subsequently, the Garamantes, became allies of Rome, and led two Roman expeditions into Central Africa. Later, nothing was ever heard of them, they had vanished as mysteriously, as they had appeared.

Excavations were made of their cemeteries, and some 40,000 graves were uncovered on the fringes of Wadi al Ajal escarpment banks.

In the second half of the 7th century, the armies of Amr ibn al Aas had their conquest over Cyrenaica, and soon reached Fazzan, encroaching Zuila, the ancient Cilleba, and other oases of the desert.

As for the Europeans; Fazzan and the sub-Saharan Africa, had disappeared from their maps, for several centuries to come. Arab writers report that, in 10th century, Abdullah ibn el Khattab, the leader of a Howara Berber tribe, had chosen Zuila as his capital city that ruled Fazzan region printing its own golden Dinar coins. A period through which the desert oases had prospered, engaging in the Trans-Saharan Caravan trade. Hence Zuila emerged as the second desert capital of Fazzan after Garama.

* Zuila was destroyed in 1174, by Qaraqushr, the Armenian general of Salah ad Din al Aiubi, The Berber dynasty of Zuila had seized to exist, and was replaced by the black Kingdom of Kanem (founded by Sutan Donma in the north of Lake Chad), who had incorporated Fazzan in1212 as a province of their Sudanese empire, ruled by governors recruited from Traghen, extending their dominance to the north as far as Gadames and Waddan. So Traghen continued to be the ruling city of Fazzan, on behalf of the Empire of Kanem until 1550 when Mohamed al Fasi, from Morocco, established Murzuk City, which became the capital of Fazzan. The Turks, after the conquest of Tripoli in 1551, eventually occupied Fazzan but failed to maintain their dominance until the Karamanlies of Tripoli invaded Murzuk in1811 and killed the last Sultans of Aulad Moammed.

Henceforth Fazzan was annexed to the Turkish Empire in the 19th century, still having Murzuk the main desert trade post, but extinguishing. Only in the thirties of the last century, that Sabha had become the capital of Fazzan.