or simply Ṭarābulus, with the local variants of Itrābulus, Iṭrābulus al-G̲h̲arb and Ṭrablus, the name for the city of Tripoli, of Africa or of Barbary, in Libya, a designation which is also extended to Tripolitania, a region of North Africa bordering the Mediterranean which, with Cyrenaica and the Fezzan, constitutes the State of Libya [see lībiyā ; barḳa ; fazzān ].

1. General.

The name derives from an Arabisation of the Greek term Tripolis which dates back to ancient times. The qualificative al-G̲h̲arb (= “of the West”) was added after the Turkish conquest in 958/1…