ABSTRACT
The ancient Egyptians applied the name Libya to a desert people living beyond their western frontier, and the early Greeks applied it to all non-Punic Africans living west of the Egyptian border. The names Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan were first used during the Ottoman period to define the three geographical areas making up Libya. The Hilalian migration initiated a prolonged Arab occupation of Libya that endured to the present. In Tripolitania, the Phoenicians built three large coastal cities, Oea (Tripoli), Labdah (Leptis Magna), and Sabratha, known collectively as Tripolis. The Barbary corsairs provided the treasury of the Regency of Tripoli with a steady income from corsairing or privateering, a practice widely but wrongly described as piracy. Carthage and Tripolis drew support from Berber tribes in both the first Punic War and the second Punic War. After the Romans sacked Carthage at the end of the third Punic War, Punic influence on the region remained significant.
