Tawurga

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Tawurga ( Central Atlas Tamazight ⵜⴰⵡⵕⵖⴰ Tawṛɣa ; in the Berber language : The green island ; also Tawergha , Tawarg (h) a or Taworgha ) has been a Libyan ghost town since 2011 . It is administered by the city of Misrata , 38 km to the north .

history

After the conquest of Tripoli by Muslim Arabs in the mid-seventh century, the political-religious from the early opposition movement summed up here Kharijites emerged Ibadites -Strömung foot. At Tawargha there was a battle of the Ibadites, who were mainly fought by Berbers, against Arab Muslims. The Ibadites under their Imam Abū l-Chattāb al-Maʿāfirī , who perished in the battle, were defeated by the Arab troops of the Abbasids under Ibn al-As'at in 761. In the battle, in which the Berber Hawwara also took part, their eastern border against The Mazâta was at Tawargha, 14,000 of his followers are said to have fallen. The Abbasids raised Oea to the new center of Tripolitania, which soon took the name of the Tripoli landscape . It was now the westernmost area still belonging to the great empire.

After the piracy of the corsairs of Tripoli had increased sharply in the 14th century , attacks by the Christian sea powers Genoa and Aragon took place . In 1509, Tripoli was finally conquered by the Spaniards . Emperor Charles V left the city as a fiefdom to the Order of St. John in 1530 , but in 1551 it was conquered by the Ottomans under Turgut Reis (Dragut), who was then appointed by Sultan Suleyman I to be the Bey of Tripoli. Now the Ottoman province of Tarabalus al-Gharb or the Eyâlet Trablus-ı Garb arose. Ahmad Qaramanli (1711–1745) gained power in Tripoli and founded the Qaramanli dynasty (until 1835). When Egypt made itself largely independent, the Ottomans tried to enforce their power in Tripolitania more clearly. From June 27, 1835, the country was again placed under Ottoman rule with direct administration (Wilayat) by Mustafa Negib Pascha, from September 1835 by Mehmed Reis Pascha. In 1864 Constantinople set up the Vilayet Tripolitania, which replaced the Eyalet Tripolitania. The Ottomans maintained a garrison in Tawurga that consisted of 60 men in the 1830s.

A significant amount of dates was produced in the city . Tawurga was also known for raising cattle and chickens . In the 18th and 19th centuries, numerous black slaves were brought to the place, known as Tawergha . In 1857 the slave trade was abolished, which was one of the most important sources of income in the country on the caravan routes and which was still operated undercover until 1890. On September 29, 1911, Italian troops invaded Ottoman Libya. On October 5th, the capital Tripoli and the coastal strip of Cyrenaica were occupied, a year later the war ended and Libya became an Italian colony. About 100,000 Italians settled in northern Libya with the support of the fascist government in Rome. They drove out the local Libyan farmers. At the time, the place was famous for its reed mats, which were made exclusively by blacks. According to the opinion of the Italian colonial rulers, these are more resistant to malaria .

On January 23, 1943, the Allies occupied Tripoli and the neighboring cities; Cyrenaica and Tripolitania came under British administration. In contrast to the 60,000 Italian settlers of Cyrenaica, the 40,000 Italians were initially able to stay in Tripolitania. Around 38,000 Jews lived in Libya in 1947, around 20,000 of them in the vicinity of the capital Tripoli, against whom a pogrom broke out in 1948 . The Jews were forced to leave the country until 2003. Libya became independent on December 24, 1951, until as a kingdom. Libya with its 1,474,000 inhabitants, including 40,000 Italians and only 3,000 Jews, became a unitary state; ten new administrative districts were created. Tripoli with 200,000 inhabitants was initially the capital.

On September 1, 1969, the king was overthrown. Under Muammar al-Gaddafi , a large-scale agricultural project began in the early 1970s, in which 3000 hectares of land around Tawurga were given to 300 farmers. This reduced the opportunities for movement for the nomadic groups. In 1976 the first grassroots people's congress took place there under Gaddafi's leadership .

During the civil war in Libya, Tawurga was a center of combat operations against Misrata , who rebelled against Muammar al-Gaddafi in February 2011 . On August 12, 2011, Libyan rebels announced that they had captured Tawurga after a day of fighting. The city was hated because bullets had been fired from there at Misrata. The occupation of Tawurga was the first major success of the Misrata insurgents. According to the insurgents, 60 Gaddafi supporters were captured.

In September 2011 the approximately 10,000 residents were evicted from the city. The British journalist Andrew Gilligan visited Tawurga in September 2011 and found the city deserted by all residents. The Misrata Brigade, a semi-autonomous unit of the Libyan National Liberation Army , he said, carried out ethnic cleansing in response to Gaddafi's support from the city during the siege of Misrata. He reported many slogans on walls in Tawurga referring to the black skin of most of the residents, with one sign referring to the Misrata Brigade as "the brigade for the elimination of slaves [and] black-skinned." The city with its 25,000 inhabitants was completely depopulated.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Schwartz: The beginnings of the Ibadites in North Africa , Harrassowitz, 1983, p. 285.
  2. ^ Archives polonaises d'etudes orientales 23 (1957) 323.
  3. ^ Jean-Claude Zeltner: Les pays du Tchad et la montée des périls. 1795-1850 , Editions L'Harmattan, Paris 1997, p. 130.
  4. ^ Bolletino della Società geografica italiana 56 (1919), p. 612.
  5. ↑ Afrika heute 11-12 (1973), p. 63.
  6. ↑ Mohamed A. El-Khawas: Qaddafi: His Ideology in Theory and Practice , Amana-Books, Brattleboro, Vermont 1986, p. 51.
  7. ↑ Stephen, Chris: Libyan Rebels Lay Claim to Most of Tawarga After Penetrating Qaddafi Lines . From: bloomberg.com , August 12, 2011. Retrieved October 31, 2011.
  8. ^ Andrew Gilligan: Gaddafi's ghost town after the loyalists retreat . In: The Daily Telegraph , September 11, 2011. Retrieved October 31, 2011.
  9. ↑ Johannes M. Becker: The Libya War: The Oil and the “Responsibility to Protect” , LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 180.
  10. ↑ Johannes M. Becker: The Libya War: The Oil and the “Responsibility to Protect” , LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 219.

Coordinates: 31 ° 58 '  N , 15 ° 3'  E