Benghazi
Benghazi is the second-most-populous city in Libya as well as the largest city in Cyrenaica, with an estimated population of 859,000 in 2023. Located on the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean, Benghazi is also a major seaport.
A Greek colony named Euesperides had existed in the area from around 525 BC. In the 3rd century BC, it was relocated and refounded as the Ptolemaic city of Berenice. Berenice prospered under the Romans, and after the 3rd century AD it superseded Cyrene and Barca as the centre of Cyrenaica. The city went into decline during the Byzantine period and had already been reduced to a small town before its conquest by the Arabs. After around four centuries of peaceful Ottoman rule, in 1911, Italy captured Benghazi and the rest of Tripolitania from the Ottoman Empire. Under Italian rule, Benghazi witnessed a period of extensive development and modernization, particularly in the second half of the 1930s under the Italian Libya colony. The city changed hands several times during World War II and was heavily damaged in the process. After the war Benghazi was rebuilt and became the co-capital of the newly independent Kingdom of Libya. Following the 1969 coup d'état by Muammar Gaddafi, Benghazi lost its capital status and all government offices relocated to Tripoli.
On 15 February 2011, an uprising against the government of Muammar Gaddafi occurred in the city. The revolt spread by 17 February to Bayda, Tobruk, Ajdabya, Al Marj in the East and Zintan, Zawiya in the West, calling for the end of the Gaddafi regime. Benghazi was seized by Gaddafi opponents on 21 February, who founded the National Transitional Council. On 19 March 2011, the city was the site of the turning point of the Libyan Civil War, when the Libyan Army attempted to score a decisive victory against the NTC by attacking Benghazi, but was forced back by local resistance and intervention from the French Air Force authorized by UNSC Resolution 1973 to protect civilians, allowing the rebellion to continue. By 2014, a second civil war broke out in Libya between the House of Representatives and the Government of National Accord, with parts of Libya split between Tobruk- and Tripoli-based governance until a permanent ceasefire led by a unitary government in 2020.
Benghazi remains a centre of Libyan commerce, industry, transport and culture, and one of the three largest cities in Libya with Tripoli and Misrata. It continues to hold institutions and organizations normally associated with a capital city, including several national government buildings as well as the National Library of Libya.
History
Ancient Greek colony
Archaeological evidence shows that ancient Greeks settled on the site of Benghazi in the late seventh century BC. They called the city Euesperides and Hesperis.Euesperides was most likely founded by people from Cyrene or Barce, which was located on the edge of a lagoon which opened from the sea. At the time, this area may have been deep enough to receive small sailing vessels. The name was attributed to the fertility of the neighborhood, which gave rise to the mythological associations of the garden of the Hesperides. The ancient city existed on a raised piece of land opposite of what is now the Sidi-Abayd graveyard in the Northern Benghazi suburb of Sbikhat al-Salmani.
The city is first mentioned by ancient sources in Herodotus' account of the revolt of Barca and the Persian expedition to Cyrenaica in c. 515 BC, where it is stated that the punitive force sent by the satrap of Egypt conquered Cyrenaica as far west as Euesperides. The oldest coins minted in the city date back to 480 BC. One side of those coins has an engraving of Delphi. The other side is an engraving of a silphium plant, once the symbol of trade from Cyrenaica because of its use as a rich seasoning and as a medicine. The coinage suggests that the city must have enjoyed some autonomy from Cyrene in the early 5th century BC, when the issues of Euesperides had their own types with the legend EU, distinct from those of Cyrene.
The city was in hostile territory and was surrounded by inhospitable tribes. The Greek historian Thucydides mentions a siege of the city in 414 BC, by Libyans who were probably the Nasamones: Euesperides was saved by the unexpected arrival of the Spartan general Gylippus and his fleet, who were blown to Libya by contrary winds on their way to Sicily.
One of the Cyrenean kings whose fate is connected with the city is Arcesilaus IV. The king used his chariot victory at the Pythian Games of 462 BC to attract new settlers to Euesperides, where Arcesilaus hoped to create a safe refuge for himself against the resentment of the people of Cyrene. This proved ineffective, since when the king fled to Euesperides during the anticipated revolution, he was assassinated, thus terminating the almost 200-year rule of the Battiad dynasty.
An inscription found there and dated around the middle of the 4th century BC states that the city had a constitution similar to that of Cyrene, with a board of chief magistrates and a council of elders. From 324 to 322 BC, the city supported the Spartan adventurer Thibron, who attempted to establish his own kingdom in Cyrenaica, but was defeated. The city came under the control of Ptolemy I and formed part of the breakaway kingdom of Magas of Cyrene after 276 BC.
In 246 BC, during the power struggle following Magas' death, his daughter Berenice married Ptolemy III, bringing the region back under Ptolemaic control. Euesperides was relocated to a new site underneath Benghazi's modern city centre and renamed Berenice. The move may have been due to the silting up of the lagoons, but there is no archaeological evidence for economic decline in the preceding period, and it is more likely that the refoundation was punishment for having opposed Berenice and Ptolemy's assumption of power.
Roman and Byzantine periods
Berenice later became a Roman city and greatly prospered for 600 years. The city superseded Cyrene and Barca as the chief center of Cyrenaica after the 3rd century AD and during the Persian campaigns; by 642–643, when it was conquered by the Muslim Arabs and partially destroyed, it had dwindled to an insignificant village among magnificent historic ruins.In its more prosperous period, Berenice became a Christian bishopric. The first of its bishops whose name is recorded in extant documents is Ammon, to whom Dionysius of Alexandria wrote in about 260. Dathes was at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and Probatius at a synod held in Constantinople in 394. No longer a residential bishopric, Berenice is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.
Ottoman province
In the 13th century, the small settlement became an important player in the trade growing up between Genoese merchants and the tribes of the hinterland. In 16th century maps, the name of Marsa ibn Ghazi appears.Benghazi had a strategic port location, one that was too useful to be ignored by the Ottomans.
In 1578, the Turks conquered Benghazi and it was ruled from Tripoli by the Karamanlis from 1711 to 1835; it then passed under direct Ottoman rule until 1911. Greek and Italian sponge fishermen worked its coastal waters. In 1858, and again in 1874, Benghazi was devastated by bubonic plague.
Italian colonial rule
In 1911, Benghazi was invaded and conquered by the Italians. Nearly half the local population of Cyrenaica under the leadership of Omar Mukhtar resisted the Italian occupation.In the early 1930s, the revolt was over and the Italians—under governor Italo Balbo—started attempts to assimilate the local population with pacifying policies: a number of new villages for Cyrenaicans were created with health services and schools.
Additionally Cyrenaica was populated by more than 20,000 Italian colonists in the late 1930s, mainly around the coast of Benghazi. Benghazi population was made up of more than 35 per cent of Italians in 1939.
As a consequence, there was in Cyrenaica and mostly in Benghazi a huge economic development in the second half of the 1930s. Benghazi grew to be a modern city with a new airport, new railway station, new seaplane station, an enlarged port and many facilities. Benghazi was going to be connected in 1940 by a new railway to Tripoli, but in summer of that year war started between Italians and British and infrastructure development came to a standstill.
World War II
In World War II Benghazi changed hands several times. During Operation Compass the city was captured from the Italians by Combe Force on 6 February 1941.Benghazi was recaptured by Axis powers, led by general Erwin Rommel of the German Africa Corps, on 4 April.
It was taken again during Operation Crusader by the British on 24 December only to change hands again on 29 January 1942 in the Rommel Afrika Corps' push to Egypt.
During the fateful Battle of El Alamein– from Alexandria, Egypt–British troops led by general Bernard Montgomery again defeated the Afrika Corps which then made a long steady retreat westward passing through Benghazi for the final time. On 20 November, Benghazi was captured by the British Eighth Army and thereafter held by the British.
In August 1943 from Benina airport of Benghazi started the US attack on the Ploiești oil refineries with 178 B-24 bombers. An Italian "Arditi" paratroopers attack that destroyed some Allied aircraft in June 1943.
Contemporary Benghazi
Heavily bombed in World War II, Benghazi was later rebuilt with the country's newly found oil wealth as a gleaming showpiece of modern Libya. It became the capital city of Emirate of Cyrenaica under Idris Senussi I. In 1951, Cyrenaica was merged with Tripolitania and Fezzan to form the independent Kingdom of Libya, of which both Benghazi and Tripoli were capital cities.Benghazi lost its capital status when the Free Officers under the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi staged a coup d'état in 1969, whereafter all government institutions were concentrated in Tripoli, Even though King Idris was forced into exile and the monarchy abolished, support for the Senussi dynasty remained strong in Cyrenaica. This was emphasized by real or perceived injustices from the government towards the people of Benghazi, including the demolition in the year 2000 of the arena of football club Alahly Benghazi S.C., following anti-government protests.
On 15 April 1986, U.S. Air Force and Navy planes bombed Benghazi and Tripoli. President Ronald Reagan justified the attacks by claiming Libya was responsible for terrorism directed at the United States, including the bombing of La Belle discothèque in West Berlin ten days before.