Libya

From Greek Cyrene and Roman Leptis Magna to the first state born of the United Nations.

Libya unites three historic regions—Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east and the Saharan Fezzan in the south—whose pasts long ran apart. Phoenician traders founded Tripoli, Sabratha and Leptis Magna on the western coast, while Greek settlers raised Cyrene in the east; both fell to Rome, and the desert Garamantes built a kingdom in the Fezzan. The Arab-Islamic conquest of the seventh century made the country Muslim and Arabic-speaking. Ottoman rule from 1551, including the semi-independent Karamanli dynasty of Tripoli, gave way in 1911 to a brutal Italian colonisation resisted by Omar al-Mukhtar. On 24 December 1951 Libya became independent as the United Kingdom of Libya under King Idris—the first state created through the United Nations. Oil wealth, Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule from 1969, his fall in the 2011 uprising and the subsequent division have shaped the country since.