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During the twelfth century, the Mediterranean Sea contained a complex array of economic, political, military, religious, and social networks. My dissertation explores the relationship of two dynasties that were at the center of these networks: the Norman lords of Sicily and the Zirid emirs of Ifriqiya (roughly modern-day Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and western Libya) in the years leading up to the Norman conquest of Zirid lands and the formation of the Norman Kingdom of Africa (1148-1160). Previous scholarship, particularly work written by French colonial historians, has emphasized the triumph of the Christian Normans over their Muslim foes and disregarded the agency of the Zirids. I show that the medieval sources tell a different story. Latin and Arabic texts attest to the importance of the Zirid emirs of Ifriqiya to larger networks in the Mediterranean. In 1123, for example, the Zirid emir al-Hasan ibn ‘Ali united a group of Arab and Berber (indigenous North African) tribes to defeat the navy of the Norman lord Roger II. Several years later, al-Hasan ibn ‘Ali formed an alliance with the Almoravids of Morocco to raid cities along the coast of Sicily. Zirid power in Ifriqiya only waned in the wake of a decade-long drought, which allowed the opportunistic Normans to seize Zirid lands. The Normans under Roger II and his son William I ruled the coastline of Ifriqiya for twelve years, during which time they made small changes to its society that favored Christians over Muslims while occasionally proclaiming themselves “King of Africa.” Arabic chroniclers writing about the Norman conquest of Ifriqiya did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the Normans’ kingship in Ifriqiya and instead presented the Normans as one prong of a Mediterranean-wide “Frankish” assault upon the lands of Islam, one that warranted jihad on all fronts.

Located approximately in the middle of the central Mediterranean channel, the Maltese Archipelago was touched by the historical events that effected the political, economic and cultural environment of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The islands were close to the major maritime routes throughout history and they were often on the border between clashing military, political, religious, and cultural entities. For these reasons, the islands were presumed to have been strategically and economically important, and, thus, frequented by ships. An underwater archaeological survey around the archipelago revealed the scarcity of submerged cultural remains, especially pertaining to shipping and navigation. Preliminary findings elucidate a story that contrasts with the picture presented by modern history and historiography. In this sense, a comparison of the underwater archaeological data with the information gathered through a detailed study of Maltese maritime history clearly shows that the islands were attributed an exaggerated importance in historical texts, due to political and religious trends that are rooted in the period during which the islands were under the control of the Order of Saint John. An objective investigation of the historical and archaeological material provides a more balanced picture, and places the islands in a Mediterranean-wide historical framework from the first colonization of the archipelago eight thousands years ago to the twentieth century.

En partant des travaux de Woepke (1854) qui découvre les symboles algébriques maghrébins à travers un manuscrit d'al-Qalasâdi (m. 1486), des publications de Mohamed Souissi qui, dès 1986, publie plusieurs traités arabes d'algèbre, dans lesquels ces symboles sont couramment utilisés et des recherches d'Ahmed Djebbar, qui dès 1990, repousse de deux siècles la pratique de ces symboles en les découvrant chez ibn al-Yâsamîn et al-Hassâr, nous proposons une synthèse des connaissances actuelles sur les symboles algébriques maghrébins. La description détaillée de ces symboles et la typologie que nous proposons se basent sur un manuscript tardif du XVIIIe siècle, découvert récemment à Djerba (Tunisie), dans la marge duquel une utilisation abondante et systématique de la notation algébrique maghrébine attire l'attention, avec plus de 300 occurences dans des situations différentes.

The spatial distribution of the commercial activities in cities is very important in contemporary urban research and studies. Such inquiry seeks to detect the efficiency and sufficiency in meeting the needs of clients and customers. In this study, the evaluation styles and methods of these activities, distribution patterns, were multiplied and varied between a simple descriptive visual analyses and extending to geographic statistical analysis. This is related to the nature of the data used in the measurement of these phenomena and in the clarification of their role in urbanscape organization. The prime aim of this research focuses on the city of Ghardaia (an Algerian desert city) after it became markedly characterized by the phenomenon of commercial polarization and the multiplicity of population frequency to involving size and varied directions. The study endeavors to recognize the distribution pattern of commercial activities across the urban texture using a variety of statistical indicators, among them: a commercial density indicator, a commercial attraction and concentration indicator, and in addition to employ Kernel analysis to determine the spatial concentration of commercial activities in the Ghardaia cityscape, through multiple types of commercial activities.

This paper explores the usages of four concepts – sunna, sīra, āthār, and nasab – mainly in early Ibāḍī epistles, but also in other types of Ibāḍī literature, to examine how early Ibāḍīs understood the legacy of the Prophet Muḥammad, and their relation to that legacy. It argues that before the sixth/twelfth century a notion of communal pedigree occupied pride of place in early Ibāḍī conceptualizations of legality and legitimacy. Thus, Ibāḍī sunna was “communal sunna”. The accumulated weight of Ibāḍī tradition – what is known as āthār in Ibāḍī literature – operated authoritatively as a counterpart to sunna; and the Ibāḍī siyar tradition did not focus on the Prophet exclusively, but rather described the scholarly community as an imagined whole. Moreover, Ibāḍīs explicitly articulated their communal pedigree in “teacher lines” (called nasab al-dīn or nasab al-islām) in Omani literature, and through the structure of their ṭabaqāt/siyar works in North Africa. Appreciating the importance of this communal pedigree, and the nexus of concepts through which it was articulated, helps us to understand the relative lack of emphasis placed on collecting and documenting ḥadīth (Ibāḍīs employ ḥadīth, but they did not use isnāds, nor did they appear to have a ḥadīth collection until the sixth/twelfth century), as well as the general absence of Prophetic biography among them (which also does not appear until the sixth/twelfth century).

Abstract This essay outlines the capacity-building work of the American Archaeological Mission to Libya between the years 2005 and 2016. This work was made possible by grants from the US Embassy to Libya, the US State Department Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP) and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in Washington, DC. The principles and objectives underlying our capacity-building programme were inspired by the 2003 UNESCO World Heritage Centre Mission Report by Giovanni Boccardi, in particular his recommendation that the Libyan Department of Antiquities obtain training in the best modern cultural heritage management practices via sustained partnerships with external professionals and organisations. يضع هذا التقرير خطوطاً عريضة لبناء القدرات الذي تقوم به بعثة الآثار الأمريكية إلى ليبيا بين الأعوام 2005–2016. إن المنح التي قدمتها السفارة الأمريكية في ليبيا وصندوق السفراء لحماية التراث (AFCP) ومكتب شؤؤون الشرق الأدنى في واشنطن جعل هذا العمل ممكناً. إن المبادئ والأهداف الأساسية لبرنامج بناء القدرات قد استوحيناها من تقرير جيوفاني بوكاردي لبعثة اليونسكو للتراث العالمي، وبالأخص توصيته بأن تقوم دائرة الآثار الليبية بالحصول على أفضل تدريب في إدارة الموروث الثقافي الحديث وذلك عن طريق شراكات مستدامة مع مهنيين ومؤسسات من الخارج .

Three years ago, a reader of this Journal sent a photograph of an elaborate drawing from Garian, a town in the Jabal Nafusa region to the south of Tripoli and asked what information could be found about it. Noticing a similarity to another photographed drawing published by Paula Hardy (2002, 120-21) we asked Richard Simpson, an expert on World War II nose art, to give an opinion. Both images date to the Second World War and are examples of military artwork of that time.

Initially, as groups of migrant workers crossed into Tunisia en route to the airport on the Tunisian island of Djerba, Tunisian villagers organised cooking crews, with men cooking together in community centres and women cooking separately in their homes. The shared language and similar customs facilitated Libyan integration into Tunisian villages and small towns. Since pre-schoolaged Libyan children in the Nafusa Mountains usually only speak Tamazight, Libyan women felt reassured living among Tamazight speakers.

Zwara Berber is a variety of Nafusi (ISO 639-3; Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016) which belongs to the eastern Zenati group within northern Berber (where Berber is the scientific term for Tamazight), a branch of Afro-Asiatic. Zwara (Zuwārah, Zuwara, Zuāra, Zuara, Zouara) is a coastal city located at 32.9° N, 12.1° E in Libya. The speakers refer to themselves as / a t ˈ w i l . l u l / (also / a j t ˈ w i l . l u l /) ‘those of Willul’ and to their specific variety of the language as / t .ˈ w i l . l u l t / ‘the language of Willul’. Having no official status during the Italian colonization of Libya and the first period after the country's independence in 1951, repression of the language became severe after the Cultural Revolution of 1973. Its propagation through teaching and the media fell under a constitutional ban on the denial of the Arab identity of the state, and qualified as such as treason, a capital offense. Until the revolution of 2011 (‘17 February’), the language was therefore not spoken in cultural, educational or governmental domains and could not be taught, printed or broadcast. The number of Tamazight speakers in Libya is estimated at 184,000 in Lewis et al. (2016) and at 560,000 by Chakel & Ferkal (2012). In the absence of a municipal register, the number of inhabitants in Zwara is uncertain. A conservative estimate is between 50,000 and 100,000, which is also the number of speakers of the Zwara variety. Other than through exposure by radio and television, children learn Arabic only from age six, when attending school. Speakers have variable L2 Arabic competence depending on exposure to the language.

A second petition originated in the commune mixte of La Meskiana in July 1917 (see Fig. 3). Official figures from the turn of the century recorded an estimated population of 57,802 seminomadic "natives" and 1,919 Europeans spread over 448,480 hectares. It took administrative orders at least two days to reach the administrator of La Meskiana from the prefecture of Constantine, which was situated 220 kilometers away. The duwwar sixty or seventy kilometers distance from the infirmary in La Meskiana were barely accessible by mule tracks. Whereas the previous petition united the European, Muslim, and Jewish inhabitants of Châteaudun-du-Rhumel, the Muslim landowners, tradesmen, and their servants who signed the shikaya from La Meskiana did so independently of Europeans and Jews. Seventy-three individuals signed the shikaya, which was written in a mixture of classical Arabic and Arabic dialect. It was probably drawn up by Salah bin [illegible] bin Gharbal al-Jarbi, whose signature resembles the handwriting of the text closely. The petition drew a considerable portion of its support--nine of its total seventy-three signatures--from men belonging to families from the Tunisian island of Djerba (Jarba).