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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).

The period of the so-called Patriarchal Caliphs continues to be rich with questions which can be investigated only with material which often seems less than adequate. Among the more intriguing questions are those connected with the rôle of Kûfa and the emergence there of the political alignments with which representatives both of the early Umayyad caliphs and of the anti-caliph Ibn al-Zubary had later to deal, viz. the Khawârij, the Shi'a and the tribal ashrâf. The remarks in this article are intended to present a broad picture of conclusions reached in a more detailed study of the formation of these political alignments – conclusions which are based on evidence contained in the earliest Islamic historical sources available to us, notably those of al-Balâdhurî, al-Tabarî, Ibn Sa'd, Ibn A'tham al-Kûfî, Khalîfa b. Khayyât and Nasr b. Muzâhim al-Minqarî.

The murder of ‘Uthmân was an important turning-point in Islamic history, and the story of how opposition in the provinces, particularly Egypt, combined with opposition at Medina itself and brought about the Caliph's death has been repeated many times. Accounts in sources such as al-Tabarî's History and al-Balâdhurîs Ansâb al-ashrâf bring together much transmitted detail concerning this dénouement. Caetani's monumental Annali dell'Islam serves as an extensive compilation of such detail, and Wellhausen, Levi Delia Vida, Gibb, Veccia Vaglieri and Petersen are only some of the other modern scholars who have commented on the event. Perhaps Professor Gibb best expresses the current view of the background to it in his thought-provoking article entitled ‘An interpretation of Islamic history’, where he sees in the caliphate of 'Uthmân a conflict between two main parties, the Meccans and the ‘tribesmen’. He points out that the Meccan merchants had been swift to seize the opportunities of wealth which arose in the immediate post-conquest phase, and goes on to say that in the course of 'Uthman's caliphate there arose at Medina ‘growing resentment at the rapid affirmation of Meccan political control… and the economic exploitation of the empire. Open discontent was first expressed by several religious personalities, whose conscience was shocked by the worldliness and grasping materialism displayed in the name of Islam. But these only provided a rallying-cry and a cloak for the material grievances of the tribesmen and Medinians, who swung into line behind them.’ Gibb therefore sees a total of four alignments, of which the Meccans and the tribesmen were the main parties, while the Medinans and the so-called religious party were secondary in importance.