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The creation of the Libyan-Tunisian border through the Jafara plain, in the wake of the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881, was to be codified in a formal treaty in 1910, just before the Italian occupation of Libya and the outbreak of the Italo-Libyan wars. However, the border, as then defined, had little to do with any prior social, political or economic reality – Muslim political theory is more concerned with communal sovereignty than with territorial control, while the Jafara plain had always been a region of local political autonomy. In reality, it represented the complex attempts by local military commanders, with the full support of the French administration in Tunis, to maximise French territorial control at the expense of the Turkish administration in Tripoli. The abandoned village of Dahibat, at the foot of the Jabal Nafusa, provided an ideal means of applying such control, particularly as the original population was anxious to return and the French were able to use their anxiety as a means of applying concepts of territorial sovereignty to the Jafara. However, in creating a rigid territorial division, the French authorities also created the grounds for resistance at a local level that eventually expressed itself first through the First World War jihad movement in the Jafara and later formed part of the Tunisian independence movement.

Abstract The Quaternary deposits of the Gefara Plain are comprised of three major facies – alluvial fan facies of sands and gravels which blankets the base of the Jebel Nafusa escarpment; floodplain facies of fluvial sands and silts with aeolian dunes which underlies most of the Gefara Plain and, aeolian coastal dune facies, predominantly calcarenitic, which is confined to a narrow coastal zone. Well exposed sections in the eastern part of the plain allow sub-division of the floodplain deposits into a number of mappable units defined and bounded by surfaces of stratigraphic discontinuity. The lithologies of these units are described and compared from selected type sections. The relationships between the units, their geometry, and the nature of the surfaces of stratigraphic discontinuity are discussed. It is proposed that, the lithostratigraphic sequence displayed by the Quaternary floodplain deposits of the eastern Gefara region provides a firm basis for correlation, not only with floodplain deposits in other parts of the plain but also with the other major facies developed in the area. In addition, the recognition of significant stratigraphic breaks in the sedimentary sequence combined with facies analysis lays a firm foundation for an interpretation of the geological history of the region.

The Libyan varieties of both Arabic and Berber are among the least researched in their respective fields. In order to facilitate the study of these varieties, we present an annotated bibliography of all relevant research that could be identified up until the middle of 2016. With this, we aim to identify both the gaps in current and the possibilities for future research. Studies are grouped into Arabic and Berber sections, and subgrouped according to region. For Arabic, dialects of Tripoli and western regions, Benghazi and eastern regions, Fezzan and southern regions, as well as Jewish dialects, are treated. For Berber, varieties of Zwara, the Nafusa mountains, Sokna and El-Foqaha, and Awjila, and Tuareg are treated. Short introductions highlighting the most important studies precede bibliographic references and brief comments are given when of interest. , ان اللهجات الليبية العربية والامازيغية هي من المواضيع الاقل دراسة وبحثاً في مجالهما. ومن اجل تسهيل دراسة هذه اللهجات، نحن نقدم فهرساً مذيلاً لكل الابحاث المتعلقة بذلك والتي يمكن تحديدها حتى منتصف عام 2016. بهذا، نحن نهفد الى تحديد الفجوات في الدراسة الحالية وبحث امكانية دراسات مستقبلية. جميع الدراسات مصنفة تحت بابي العرب والامازيغ ومن ثم مصنفة حسب المنطقة. بالنسبة للعربية فقد تم تناول لهجات طرابلس والمناطق الغربية، وبنغازي والمناطق الشرقية، وفزان والمناطق الجنوبية، اللهجات اليهودية ايضاً. اما بالنسبة للامازيغية فقد تم دراسة اللهجات من زوارة، وجبل نفوسة، والسوكنة والفقها واوجلة، ولهجة الطوارق . كما ادرجنا مقدمات قصيرة تسلط الضوء على اهم الدراسات تسبق المراجع الببلوغرافية وتعليقات مختصرة كلما دعت الحاجة لذلك .

In recent years basic regional geological mapping of northern Libya by the Industrial Research Centre, Tripoli, together with the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey of eastern Tripolitania and the work of the author and Dr S. M. Ghellali in the Jifarah Plain and Jabal Nafusah, have greatly added to our knowledge of Quaternary deposits in the region. This work is described and evaluated against the background of earlier studies. The succession of major depositional, soil forming and erosional events which characterise the fluvio-aeolian deposits of the Jifarah Formation can be recognised in, and thus used to subdivide, laterally equivalent aeolianite, fangravel and wadi gravel deposits in the Jifarah Plain. Comparisons of this succession with others from throughout the region indicate that the events are of regional significance and that the Jifarah sequence provides a sound framework for lithostratigraphic correlation and a basis for facies analysis and chronostratigraphic studies. This review is largely limited to the northern margins of Libya north of the 30th parallel (Fig. 1). It is convenient to subdivide the zone into several regions. These are: (a) The Jifarah Plain and foothills of the Jabal Nafusah. (b) The Hammada Al Hamra Plateau and major valleys of eastern Tripolitania. (c) The coastal region from Misratah to Ajdabiyah. (d) Cyrenaica from Soluq to Al Bardia.

Study of borehole data in the foothill region of the Jabal Nafusah shows that the Suq al Jum'ah palaeowadi, which cuts the jabal east of Gharyan, comprised a major drainage channel which extended in the subsurface far out from the jabal into the southern part of the Jifarah Plain. The channel is filled with sands and gravels. Basalt lava flows, channelled along the valley in outcrop for 36 km, extend for a further 48 km in the subsurface. The palaeowadi was possibly initiated in the Pliocene and appears to have been completely filled and abandoned by the end of the Pleistocene. During Holocene rejuvenation of the drainage system, the Wadi al Majanin developed as the major wadi in the region. It did not, however, excavate the palaeowadi but instead followed a different but roughly parallel northward trend.

Activists claim that the authorities on December 25th launched a security campaign against the Berber town of Yafran,170km south-west of Tripoli, the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported. Fathi Bin-Khalifah, coordinatorof the Libyan Action Group and the Lib-yan Amazighs’ Grouping, said in a tele-phone contact from his base in Moroccothat the Libyan authorities were besiegingthe town, electronically jamming telephonecontacts between it and the outside world,and also banning anyone coming fromother areas from entering. He claimed thatthere was intensive security deploymentafter units from the anti-riot Central Sup-port Forces were brought in and that hehad received information that military air-craft had flown over the town which has apopulation of around 50,000.According to assertions by Bin-Khalifahand various Amazigh (Berber) internetwebsites, groups from the ‘‘Youth Lea-gues’’ ofSayf-al-Islam, the second son ofLibyan Leader ColonelMouammar Gad-dafy, and elements from the Revolution-ary Committees attacked the capital ofJabal Nafusah and encircled and raidedthe houses of some known Amazigh fig-ures. Local residents said they did notknow the specific reason for the securitycampaign, while some sources said theLibyan authorities were punishing all theAmazighs because some of their leadershad taken part in an expanded recentconference held to discuss their condi-tions in the Maghreb.But Bin-Khalifah said ‘‘there is no direct orimmediate cause for these events’’ andnoted that the ‘‘International AmazighCongress’’, which adopts the Amazighs’causes from its base in France, had a meet-ing recently with Colonel Gaddafy andadded: ‘‘There are no signs or indications.What happened was sudden and there wereabsolutely no moves beforehand other thanthe regime’s attempt to get rid of thenatives and create a new pit of tension.’’Amazigh activists claim that their influenceand presence in Libyan social, profes-sional, economic, scientific, administrative,and military circles could have aroused thefears of the authorities towards thembecause of their opposition to any attemptto bequeath leadership of the nation toCol. Gaddafy’s son.Yafran with its Amazigh majority is thesecond Libyan town to witness suddentroubles following the violence thatoccurred a few weeks earlier in Al-Kufrahtown in the south of Libya between theLibyan authorities and the local citizens.They were demonstrating against their dete-riorating living conditions and the central authorities’ neglect of their rights to have official identity cards in addition to depriving their sons of the right to government education and other basic services.(Al-Sharq al-Awsat website 27⁄12: BBC Mon.)

Fossil vertebrates from the Cabao Formation discovered in the area of Nalut in northwestern Libya include the hybodont shark Priohybodus, the crocodilian Sarcosuchus, an abelisaurid, a baryonichine spinosaurid and a large sauropod with spatulate teeth. The Cabao Formation may be Hauterivian to Barremian in age, although an earlier Berriasian to Valanginian age cannot be excluded. Its dinosaur assemblage is reminiscent of that of the El Rhaz and Tiouraren formations of Niger and strongly differs from both the Cenomanian assemblages of Morocco and Egypt and the Late Aptian to Albian fauna of Tunisia. Fossil vertebrates may be an important tool to establish the stratigraphical framework of the poorly dated Early Cretaceous continental deposits of Africa.