Things to see and do Tripolitania

The fortified farms of Ghirza included the defensive military strategy of Rome in Africa, which was based on an instrument: . The limès was a defensive border that protected the shoreline romanisés territories in west, with its large cities such as Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Oea, against attacks by nomadic tribes.

However, no natural relief could be used to delimit this boundary. That is why, under the reign of Emperor Septime Harsh, it was dominated by a series of tracks punctuated by fortified farms (like Ghirza), where farmers were in fact former military personnel who were assigned to value-exempt land lots. Ghirza was the largest fortified farm centre of the tripolitain tripolitain.

This oven producing amphorae where olive oil was conserved magnificently crossed the centuries since it is still completely intact. It is also an astonishing size (6 m in diameter) which shows the magnitude of the commerce and oil trade in the region in the Roman era. Under a first geological layer of limestone, the region's land was ideal for the baked pottery industry. A mosaic of mosaics of a Roman villa of the th century. . was discovered not far (not visible).

With its 15 ha, the forest of Charchara, 3 km north of Tarhouna (turn right at the crossroad in the forest), is the ideal place for a picnic under pine trees. Many Libyans come there and relax in the family on Fridays from the fine days.

More than 500 m later, between the Porte gate (Byzantine era) and the arc of Marc Aurèle (173 Apr. ), head to the amazing roofs of the Domes thermal baths near the shore. These baths belonged to a wealthy owner. Long buried beneath the sands, they seem to be intact, and it is striking to contemplate this concrete edifice that has gone through history perfectly. Stroll through the frigidarium, the tepidarium and the caldarium, admiring their beautiful frescoes painted with nilotics scenes and arena scenes with gladiators and leopards.

You must admire the pavement of the mosaic of the tepidarium (warm room of Roman thermal Baths), on the seafront, where the central medallion of Neptune's head, the marine god, preserved at the Sabratha museum was extracted.

The obelisk is easily distinguished. He was housed in a residential area rejected in the southwest of Byzantine walls. This rich cave of sandstone shaped by the aiguille-Hellenistic era has been recovered by Italian archaeologists. Other mausoleums of this type have been discovered in Libya. It distinguishes a representation of the Phoenician god Bès, hunting the lions, as well as a representation of Hercules killing the lion of Nemea. The god Bès, a dwarf hunter of lions, was loved by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. As protector of the boats, he also became the protector of the dead.

By taking over the rue du Cardo, we will pass in front of the entrance door of Byzantine walls, which were rebuilt under Justinian using materials from older constructions such as the mausoleum of Bès.

In the Plaine plain, far from the city, you can visit it if you go to Yefren from Tripoli or the opposite. We do not know when this gigantic building was built or what its history was. But the site is magnificent and offers fantastic views over the vast plain. Greniers with provisions, of the same kind as the ghorfa of fortified greniers greniers are spread over three or four floors and in the basement, forming a gigantic large quadrilateral as a stadium. In all, more than 1 500 or 2 000 ghorfa were there! It would be a big caravanserai where traders would exchange, negotiate and store their goods. The central space leaves room for a huge market. But in the absence of research, the assumptions are reduced. The Ben Eran is the ben Ben Eran, behind the scenes of ghorfa, which have been restored more or less faithfully.

A small, beautiful and painted limestone, perched on the hillside, was built not far from the tomb of a Jewish woman several hundred years ago. Its architecture is typical of the ancient mosques of the region. People continue to go to pray on Friday. Nice view of the terrace.

At the crossing is a very ancient, not restored synagogue, Natalia's synagogue, that the custodian, owner of the land, gently opens to visitors (please indicate the place at the Hotel Yefren). She would be over 2 000 years old and would therefore be one of the oldest in the Maghreb, and Yefren, which probably counted three others. She worked until the small Jewish community of Yefren left Libya in 1948. The vaults of the ceilings are in Hebrew. It is organized around a raised quadrilateral in the centre, and its plan is inspired by David's star. After the visit take the crossing and head over 800 m to the southwest: at the fork turn right and follow the path. The old Berber village of Chguerna is, like its colleagues in the Yefren area, the opportunity to discover a beautiful heritage as well as beautiful landscapes: By moving into the village on the right, we are soon overlooking a Wadi tree planted with a few palm trees. At the entrance to the village there are two former olive presses (see box «Olive Oil Presses»). The left is surmounted by a small Arabic inscription that dates back to 1830. The one on the right is even prettier. 200 m above is a second ancient synagogue named Azra Synagogue, which served as a Koranic school. It has been renovated several times with plaster. It includes Hebrew inscriptions as well as hand and foot decorations: symbols in Jebel Nefousa to get a bad eye.

When the road from El-Guelaa goes down to the trough of the Wadi valley (valley) Guelaa el-Houma, the landscape becomes idyllic, with its palm trees and ancient Berber dwellings. In the first half of the twentieth century, El-Guelaa was a large village of 3 000 inhabitants. Like its neighbours, it was gradually abandoned in the 1970 s. The houses run at the bottom of the valley and on the hillside. Some are even built in caves.

Both were built in the fourth century by Christians in the Roman city and rehabilitated in Byzantine times. Between the great Christian Basilica and the theatre wall (south-east of the Decumanus pathway), one crosses a Christian cemetery where a stele recalls the memory of Irène, a girl of «three years and one month».

The site is animated by Tawfiq, who owns a tourist agency and is committed to valuing the site. If Tawfiq, who speaks English a bit, is visiting the stump, don't miss it. You can reach the stump through a staircase through the old, abandoned Berber village. Its agglutinées houses which climb up to the stump give a good overview of the ancient Berber habitat. They were glued to one another to ensure better defence in the event of a qasr attack, whose location at the top of the escarpment was already a guarantee of protection.

You will notice the vaulted floors of some houses, which served as a basket when the stump was no longer active. At random of the village visit, you will even find a cave attic, dug horizontally in the rock and supported by a palm trunk, with, at the entrance, a large jar with perfectly preserved olive oil. This type of attic had the disadvantage of being poorly ventilated. As for homes, when sons get married, one or two extra pieces were added around the yard to shelter new households. Near the road at the entrance to the old village is an old mill perfectly preserved with its two presses (see box).

In circular form, the stump, which was over 800 years old, consisted of approximately 230 small greniers spread over four to six storeys and a basement. Less well preserved than those of Nineveh el-Hajj and Nalout, it remains impressive. It has been serving since the 1930 s. At the center of the court is the small marabout of a pious man. We will notice the well-preserved jars of the basement greniers: the sand film that covers them is due to the oil that impregnated the pottery.

Many columns still adorn the shrine of the sanctuary. In its centre you can see the little temple of the Divine Augustus, that is, the emperors to whom a cult was made after their death. This is also a work of Mayor (antique patron), offered by a family member of Hannibal Tapapius Rufus in the first Century. C.C.

The thermal baths of the sea (th and th centuries). I.C.) are the largest in Sabratha. They still keep magnificent tiles with geometric motifs. Their marble hexagonal latrines are also very well preserved, which claimed the author Philip Yard: " It is likely that 90% of photographers visiting Sabratha take a picture of their families sitting on the seats of the latrines "!

This great th century mausoleum is the most impressive archaeological remnant in the Tarhouna region. This imposing monument testifies to the wealth of the Roman landowner who built it on his land. Only the first two floors are still on the ground, but the building has a third, whose stones and columns are scattered on the ground around the mausoleum. The two funeral houses are located in the basement behind a small entrance in the indentation of the building. The mausoleum is located on one of the slopes of the; (valley); valley, occupied by a few small farms, which has a source that is no longer permanent.

As you will see, the village of Bughilan contains many cave houses between the new houses (they can be seen even surprisingly well on the satellite map of the wikimapia website!), which often serves as pens for poultry when they are not simply abandoned. They were reportedly occupied until the 1980 s!

This large cave house has been beautifully decorated for sightseeing (there are even toilets outside). There is a large olive wood door, while the interior doors are in palm trees. In the vast entrance you can buy a few souvenirs (t-shirt souvenir, assiettes plates of Colonel Gaddafi). It was reduced to 10 m deep and would be more than 300 years old according to its owners. As usual, the pieces are divided around the square courtyard which was dug by a tank. Every room was decorated to understand how we lived there. Jars and other hanging pots come to decorate them. It housed eight families, each occupying a room, the beds being, in a typical way, a little raised in the bottom of the room. The families shared the kitchens. Notice a small sliding door in the courtyard: it was a basket where food was stored. Here, the cave houses hoch el-hafa and not damous as in Nalout, Yfren or Jadou are known.

After the visit, you should not miss sight of the panorama on the plain. It seems that in clear time we even see the large towers Sawari al-Imad in Tripoli!

It is possible to spend the night in the cave house, for 50 DL per person, evening meals and breakfast included. You can also take a meal if you order in advance (couscous, pasta or even bazin dishes, 20 DL per person)

It was built under the reign of Augustus and decorated with marble under the République reign (th century). There are Jupiter, Junon and Minerve.

Very dilapidated, but the little mosque, at the end of the road, all white is still beautiful. It housed a well at the entrance and a small Koranic school; four arches with pillars support the prayer room. The hand of Fatma gravée and inscriptions in Hebrew and Arabic (date of construction of the mosque and name of the Sheikh Suleyman Amar) will be noted. From the mosque, beautiful view of the countryside. Between the old village and the main road, close to the new houses, there are a few abandoned cave houses.

This Roman mausoleum was built near the fortified farm of Soffit. The first stone ranks of a building of this Roman fortified farmhouse are located nearby on the other side of the road. These vestiges bear witness to a sedentary life in Jebel Nefousa during the Roman period, a life organized around Roman farms or indigenous romanisés.

This church was offered to the city by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the th century. It is built from materials from older buildings. However, it has magnificent mosaics of mosaics, including that of the majesté peacock, now exposed to the Sabratha museum.

These few cave engravings were the subject of an initial archaeological report in 1968. In total, there are to hide there, among the herbs and the wild thyme. The largest is that of a bovidé 2 m in length and about 1 m high. The majority of the engravings also represent cattle, but there is also a beautiful burning of front-disc rhino (symbolic sign, under his ears) and two cats engravings to be determined. Testifying to the fauna that was then found in the region, they are Neolithic times: their style and the archeological evidence found nearby would coincide with the beginning of the pastoral stadium (ancient Neolithic). Most of the bovidae have the horns moving forward. Four have the horns at the vertical, and two have the horns towards the back. The over-representation of bovidae bovidae seems to confirm Herodotus's testimony when he writes well later than Libyan steers have large forward-looking horns that forced them to graze backwards so that they don't get to the ground! Although its situation close to the coastline makes it one of the most northerly rock sites in the north of the Maghreb, this is not the only small cave site in northern Libya. There is one between Misratha and Zliten.

Also called "new forum", to distinguish it from the "old forum" which structurait the public life of the Roman city before the reign of Septime Severe. Because the new forum is also part of the city's expansion under the latter's reign. By choosing its architecture and the luxury of its marble ornamentation, Septime Sévère wanted it to compete with the Rome Forum. The square of 100 m in 60 was dallée of marble and bordered by a portico with columns of cipolin supporting arches adorned with large medallions and heads of gorgonia and néréides. We must take the time to contemplate the different expressions of their fascinating marble faces. At the bottom of the forum, the collapsed temple was dedicated to the family of Septime Severe.

At the other end of the forum, against the wall adjoining the Sévérienne basilica, small pieces were used as shops and bars; they also served, at the architectural level, to hide the imperfect alignment (not really parallel) of the basilica terraced together with the forum.

It is one of the oldest in the city (th century. ). He was dedicated to the Egyptian deity who was awarded the gift of healing the sick. The cult of Sérapis dates from Hellenistic times. It is the first king Lagide, Ptolemy I, who would have set the cult and characteristics of the god Sérapis, the syncretic deity embodying the characteristics of the Egyptian god Osiris and of Greek gods like Asclépios, God of Medicine. Subsequently, his cult developed in the Roman world.

The circus (112 apr. J Magna is one of the largest in the Roman world. It is 450 m long, 100 m wide and could accommodate up to 25 000 people. During the races, the tanks were élançaient for 7 laps. They were around a long (spina) wall with fountains in the centre of the track. The winning tank came out of a triumphal door. A mosaic of Villa Silin thus represents the exit of the circus of the winners of a race. The amphitheatre (56 apr. Pouvait could accommodate 15 000 people. We will note the small openings by which the Fauves were left in the arena.

It is the still sympathetic guard that opens and closes the stump. It has réaménagé one of the ancient houses in the village where it exhibits a little crafts and small decorative objects that it carries out itself. An effort to renovate the stump and its village has taken place in recent years. Small signs in English were attached to the main buildings, including a large explanatory sign on the wall of the stump, which recalls the efforts of its inhabitants who have preserved it and recently restored it. Toilets have been built in a building in the middle of the old village.

The presence of several nearby natural sources has made the site suitable for the human installation, and the surroundings of Nalout have other old villages. The stump, pierced small windows of aeration, is surrounded by a path taken by the camels raised by the baskets of food (dried figs…). At the entrance to the stump, notice the small indentations on the stone slabs, where the date of the date were disrupted, the nourriture food was fed. There is a beautiful panoramic view, despite an improvised discharge on the other side of the jebel. Like most of the tornadoes of Jebel Nefousa, the stump of Nalout dominates the heights, isolated by two ravines. An Arabic inscription on the entrance ceiling indicates that it was rebuilt in 1240.

The way to achieve this from the plain was at peak, which obviously represented an asset for the defensive building, but made it painful to move olive and grain crops. The location and small size of the entrance to the fortified attic had been specially planned to complicate the task of the possible invaders: you could enter only an Indian on foot, not on horseback. An underground passage was dug there (at the corner of the entrance), which allowed villagers to support a siege against the Ottomans. This stump is the largest of the fortified greniers preserved in Jebel Nefousa; in some places, it was up to 12 m. The majority of the greniers were greniers on 10 floors, and there were more than 500 floors (7 now) and more than 350 (there are still about). The stump has been in operation since the 1960 s. A small inner lane runs inside the rectangular building, surrounded by greniers on each side. Some of them are the beautiful decorations typical of the region (hands, for example, a common ground in the region, which éloigne the bad eye), the old wooden locks and, on the ground floor, the jars that kept the olive oil, half buried.

Around the stump, houses have long been abandoned: at the beginning of the th century, the inhabitants had preferred the cave houses and had no more than the central mosque, the Al-Aala Mosque, which is still active but closed to visits. You can, however, see the Koranic school nearby. Another small mosque accompanied also by a Koranic school with vaulted ceilings supported by pillar ranks lies behind the stump. A tank had been integrated into the mosque building. In both cases, the form of lime-painted aiguille is typical of the region. The site has three old wineries: the first one near the main street leading to the stump. It is indicated in English a little before the Al-Aala mosque. The second is further on the left and the last, the best preserved, even more left (towards the end of the old village, take left). Abandoned homes fall into ruins. Some are surmounted by a vault that served as a private attic for food, others have a vaulted shape because they were in the extension of one of these greniers.

This stump has the specificity of never having suffered destruction, even from the Ottomans who destroyed or damaged many of them in the heights of Jebel Nefousa. It is therefore one of the few whose activity lasted very long, after the old village that surrounds it was deserted, and its guardian was paid for a long time by weight of barley. Still in service in the 1980 s, its activity has steadily decreased since, as the generation of the village's elders turned off.

The villagers included, in particular, wheat and barley from fields that they were labouraient during the rainy periods and harvested in the beautiful days in the Plaine plain where they were paître their herds.

In our passage, only five ghorfa were in use. It is now mainly a tourist site that was redesigned for visitors four years ago: a small fountain and toilets were even installed on the esplanade before the stump. Its facade as well as some houses in the old village have benefited from renovations, and about ten paid guards, inhabitants of the village, are coded to accommodate visitors: The courtyard at the entrance to the site is the place of choice of the village elders for discussions around tea. There is sometimes a t-shirt "Qasr el-Hajj" sold for 5 DL. Notice to amateurs!

In the lobby, or skifa, vaulted at the entrance to the stump, two niches shelter a small collection of objects from the daily life of the former villagers and the stump, including barley grains preserved in the stump since 1968. When the stump worked full, it was where the inhabitants deposited their property titles, business accounts sheets, and other important documents or items, like a common safe, when they left the Basin plain. At the time of foundations, this is where you read the Koran or rest.

Particularities of Nineveh el-Hajj. The Qasr el-Hajj is built in the plain and not in the mountains which constituted as many defensive positions against the robbers on the lookout for food kept in those buildings. He was very exposed, however, and was defended by the watchtower that had been arranged in his surroundings. The back of the stump was protected by the Wadi Jeyf (water valley in the season).

This stump also has the characteristics of regular height (some tornadoes present raised niches relative to others) and circular (others are rectangular). It is constructed of cemented limestone stone with a mixture of sand and lime. Finally, it is the only one where you can find a row of stairs on the north side, from which we have a very beautiful view over the mountains.

According to the oral tradition, the founder of the trialogue, as well as his population, would not have been of Berber origin but Arabic (although probably coming from a predominantly Berber region) contrary to the other reconstructions of Jebel Nefousa. In any case, it was found that the village was inhabited by a Muslim population of Sunni Sunni rituals and Arabic language and writing, and not by ibadite rite and Berber language and writings, such as the Berbers of the mountains. This faith belongs to the origin of the foundation of the trialogue. It was probably built in the th century on the initiative of Sheir Abdallah Abu Jatla from Saguiet el-Hamra (South Moroccan) and who had carried out the pilgrimage of Mecca (Qasr el-Hajj means «castle of the one who made the pilgrimage of Mecca»).

Oral history reports that the attic consists of 114 ghorfa, these small niches with palm wood doors (some still in place) where families kept food from their agricultural work: oil, wheat, barley, dates, figs and flour (see box). The founder's founder, therefore, would have built as many ghorfa as verses in the Koran. It would therefore be in more recent times than new ghorfa were added, as the first level of ghorfa in basement or split, for a total of 150 ghorfa. The Haj Abu Jatla built a mosque and a Koranic school in front of the stump. The activities of Koranic schools allowed for the maintenance of the mosque and those of the prefects storing food, covering the expenses of Koranic school. According to tradition, at the death of the founder, his descendants and their families répartirent the different ghorfa.

By leaving the stump, we will notice the small gaps in the facade used to renew the air to preserve the grain conservation. On the right, we will visit the small traditional houses that have been renovated. Note the vaulted ceilings, which also served as a basket for food. The stump is surrounded by the ruins of the houses of the old village. Each neighborhood corresponded to a different tribe. Although the oral tradition reports that the inhabitants of Nineveh el-Hajj were of Arab and non-Berber origin, the arrangement is typical of the Berber villages in Jebel Nefousa, which were present at the foot of the stump in order to benefit from attacks, notice, in particular, the arcades that still rely directly on the eastern side of the stump. The decorations found in the old houses (feet or hands for example) are also common with those of the ancient Berber villages in jebel. In the th century, it was also found in this ancient village of cave houses.

It will be noted that the houses surround the stump except on the side facing its doorway. Thus, space was left empty between the stump and the Koranic school (zawiya) of the origins, now the marabout of Haj Abdullah Abu Jatla, whose little green dome on the other side of the site was seen. The founding Hajj was buried there and his wife.

You can't visit the marabout, but you can see on the east side of the old village two tombs side by side in a courtyard, which are those of a pious man and his wife. At the end of the eastern part of the village, there is a small palm grove on the other side of the village. Previously, many more and maintained palm dates around the village were part of the crops stored in the stump.