TRIPOLI, a regency of the Ottoman empire, and the most easterly of the Barbary States, a. Africa, is bounded on the w, by Tunis, on the s. by the Libyan desert and Fezzan, on the c.—if we include the plateau of Barca (q.v.)—by Egypt, and on the n. by the Mediterranean. Area roughly estimated at 200,000 sq.in.; pop. uncertain, but believed to he about 1,000,000. Tripoli is less mountainous than the rest of Barbary, the Atlas range terminating here in a couple of chains running parallel to the coast, and never exceeding 4,000 ft. iu height. There ammo rivers in the country, and rain seldom falls during the long hot summers, but the dew is copious, and supports vegetation in favored spots. Thu coast region (about 1100 in. in length) is very fertile about Tripoli mid Mesurata, where all sorts of tropical fruits, grain, wine, cotton, madder, etc., are produced; but further e., along the shores of the gulf of Sidra, sandy desolation reigns. The interior yields senna, dates, and galls; the carob and lotus are indigenous. Sheep and cattle are reared in great numbers, and Tripoli is also noted for its small but excel lent horses, and its strong and beautiful mules. The commerce of the country consists in exporting, principally to Malta, and the Levant, the products of the country and of the interior of Africa (gold-dust, ivory, natron), which arc hither iu caravans across the desert. The imports (which consist chiefly of Europoan manufactures) have been declining gradually of late years, owing mainly to two causes. The first is the new direction which the trade of central Africa is assuming. By the Niger and its great tributary—the Benue—European manufactures are more raphIly and more economically conveyed to the northern intertropical regions than by the tedious overland route of the great 'Sahara. The second cause is the abolition of the slave-trade• which, of course, has stopped toe demand for all the commodities that alimented the traffic.
Tripoli is subdivided into four Ions, or provinces—Tripoli, Benghazi, Mesurata, and Oadames. The gov.gen. has the title. rank, and authority of a pasha of the Ottoman empire. He is appointed by the sultan, and in his turn appoints the subordinate govern ors of the Tripolese provinces, who bear the title of boys. The military force of the
country consists of a body of Turkish soldiers, some 10,000 in number, whose business is to keep down insurrections, but who were formerly wont to vary it by creating them. The natives (who comprise Libyan Berbers, Moors, and a few Arabs) pay to the impe rial government, by way of tribute, a tenth of all the products of the soil; and there is, besides, a special tax imposed on every olive-tree and date-tree, on every camel, on all borne I-cattle, on sheep and goats, and on Jewish residents. Little wisdom and kiss jus tice arc shown either in the imposition or collection of the taxes.
In ancient times Tripoli (when we first read of it),appcars to have formed the most westerly portion of the territory of Cyrenaica (Barca), or at least to have been tributary to the Cyrenmans, from whom, hotvever, it was wrested by the Carthaginians. It next passed to the Romans, who included it within the province of Africa. and gave it the name of Regio Syrtka. About the beginning of the 3d c. A.n it became known as the Rsgio T•ipolitana (on account of its three principal cities, (Ea, Sabrata, and Leptis, which were leagued together; whence its present name Tripoli), and was probably raised to the rank of a separate province by Septimius Severus, who was a native of Leptis. Like the rest of n. Africa, it was conquered by the Arabs (see BARBXRY), and the feeble Chris tianity of the natives was supplanted by a vigorous and fanatical Mohammedanism. In 1552 the Turks got possession of it, and have ever since been the rulers of the country, though the authority of the sultan, up till 1835, had been virtually at zero for more than a century. In that year. however, an expedition was diepatched from Constantinople; the ruling dey—Karamanli—(in whose family the sovereignty had continued uninter rupted since 1714) was -overthrown, and imprisoned; a new Turkish pasha, with vice regal powers, was appointed, and the state made an cyalet of the Ottoman empire. Several rebellions have since taken place (notably in 1842 and 1844), but they have always been suppressed.