Fezzan - History

History

From the 5th century BCE to the 5th century CE, Fezzan was home to the Garamantian Empire, a state which operated the Trans-Saharan trade routes successively between Carthage and the Roman Empire in North Africa and Sahelian states of west and central Africa.

Roman generals Septimus Flaccus in 19 BCE and Suetonius Paulinus in 50 CE led military expeditions into Sub-Saharan Africa, and Roman explorer Julius Maternus traveled there in early 1st century CE. Paulinus reached Fezzan and went further south. For two–three centuries after this invasion, Fezzan, as part of the Garamantes State, was a client state of the Roman Empire and benefited from Roman civilization.

With the end of the Roman Empire and the following commercial crisis, Fezzan started to lose importance: the population was greatly reduced because of the desertification process of the Sahara during the Middle Ages.

During the 13th and 14th centuries, portions of Fezzan were part of the Kanem Empire, while the Ottoman rulers of North Africa asserted their control over the region in the 17th century. In the period of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) Fizan also used as a place of political exile for Young Turks (Jeune Turcs) because it is the most remote province from Istanbul.

Beginning in 1911, Fezzan was occupied by Italy. However, Italy's control of the region was precarious until at least 1923, with the rise of the Italian Fascist regime. The Italians were resisted in their early attempts at conquest by Berber and Arab adherents to the militant Sanusiya Sufi religious order. The Tuareg clans of the region were only pacified by European expansion before the Second World War and some of them collaborated with the Italian Army in the North African Campaign.

Free French troops occupied Murzuk, a chief town of Fezzan, on 16 January 1943, and proceeded to administer Fezzan with a staff stationed in Sabha. But French administration was largely exercised through Fezzan notables of the family of Sayf an Nasr. Disquieting to the tribes in western Fezzan was the administrative attachment of Ghat, and its surrounding area, to French-ruled Algeria. However, when the French military control ceased in 1951, all of Fezzan became part of the Kingdom of Libya.

Fezzan was a stronghold for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi through much of the Libyan civil war, though starting in July, anti-Gaddafi forces began to gain ground, taking control of the region's largest city of Sabha in mid-to-late September.

The LF country code (.lf) was reserved "on behalf" of Libya Fezzan (for an "indeterminate period of time") by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).