42 Facts About Libya

1.

Libya is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica.

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2.

Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves in the world.

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3.

The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over three million of Libya's seven million people.

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4.

Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze Age as descendants from Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures.

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5.

Parts of Libya were variously ruled by Carthaginians, Persians, Egyptians and Macedonians before the entire region becoming a part of the Roman Empire.

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6.

Libya was involved in the Barbary Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries.

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7.

Libya is a member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Union, the Arab League, the OIC and OPEC.

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8.

Origin of the name "Libya" first appeared in an inscription of Ramesses II, written as rbw in hieroglyphic.

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9.

Libya has brought his wife and his children — leaders of the camp, and he has reached the western boundary in the fields of Perire.

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10.

The name "Libya" was brought back into use in 1903 by Italian geographer Federico Minutilli.

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11.

Coastal plain of Libya was inhabited by Neolithic peoples from as early as 8000 BC.

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12.

Alexander the Great was greeted by the Greeks when he entered Cyrenaica in 331 BC, and Eastern Libya again fell under the control of the Greeks, this time as part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom.

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13.

Libya was early to convert to Nicene Christianity and was the home of Pope Victor I; however, Libya was home to many non-Nicene varieties of early Christianity, such as Arianism and Donatism.

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14.

When Caliph Harun al-Rashid appointed Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab as his governor of Ifriqiya in 800, Libya enjoyed considerable local autonomy under the Aghlabid dynasty.

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15.

Libya became the setting for the hard-fought North African Campaign that ultimately ended in defeat for Italy and its German ally in 1943.

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16.

In February 1977, Libya started delivering military supplies to Goukouni Oueddei and the People's Armed Forces in Chad.

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17.

Libya adopted its plain green national flag on 19 November 1977.

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18.

Libya was finally put under sanctions by the United Nations after the bombing of a commercial flight at Lockerbie in 1988 killed 270 people.

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19.

Libya first experienced protests against Gaddafi's regime on 15 February 2011, with a full-scale revolt beginning on 17 February.

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20.

Pro-Gaddafi forces were able to respond militarily to rebel pushes in Western Libya and launched a counterattack along the coast toward Benghazi, the de facto centre of the uprising.

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21.

Chaos-ridden Libya emerged as a major transit point for people trying to reach Europe.

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22.

Libya extends over 1, 759, 540 square kilometres, making it the 16th largest nation in the world by size.

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23.

Libya is bound to the north by the Mediterranean Sea, the west by Tunisia and Algeria, the southwest by Niger, the south by Chad, the southeast by Sudan, and the east by Egypt.

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24.

At 1, 770 kilometres, Libya's coastline is the longest of any African country bordering the Mediterranean.

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25.

Libya is one of the sunniest and driest countries in the world due to prevailing presence of desert environment.

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26.

Libya was a pioneer state in North Africa in species protection, with the creation in 1975 of the El Kouf protected area.

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27.

Gaddafi's decision to abandon the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction after the Iraq War saw Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein overthrown and put on trial led to Libya being hailed as a success for Western soft power initiatives in the War on Terror.

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28.

Libya is included in the European Union's European Neighbourhood Policy which aims at bringing the EU and its neighbours closer.

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29.

In 2017, Libya signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

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30.

The organization added that Libya ranked very low in the 2015 Press Freedom Index, 154th out of 180 countries.

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31.

Libya holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa and is an important contributor to the global supply of light, sweet crude.

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32.

Libya has traditionally relied on unsustainably high levels of public sector hiring to create employment.

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33.

Libya has high levels of social inequality, high rates of youth unemployment and regional economic disparities.

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34.

Libya is not a WTO member, but negotiations for its accession started in 2004.

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35.

UN sanctions were lifted in September 2003, and Libya announced in December 2003 that it would abandon programs to build weapons of mass destruction.

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36.

Libya had long been a notoriously difficult country for Western tourists to visit due to stringent visa requirements.

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37.

Libya is a large country with a relatively small population, and the population is concentrated very narrowly along the coast.

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38.

Basic education in Libya is free for all citizens, and is compulsory up to the secondary level.

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39.

Today, the great majority of Libya's inhabitants are Arabic-speaking Muslims of mixed descent, with many claiming ancestry tracing to Bedouin Arab tribes like Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal, beside Turkish and Berber ethnicities.

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40.

Libya is number four on Open Doors' 2022 World Watch List, an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution.

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41.

Libya was once the home of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, dating back to at least 300 BC.

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42.

In 2014, Libya won the African Nations Championship after beating Ghana in the finals.

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