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Libya
Index
The Ottoman Maghrib was formally divided into three regencies--
at Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565 authority as regent in
Tripoli was vested in a
pasha (see Glossary)
appointed by the
sultan. The regency was provided a corps of
janissaries (see Glossary),
recruited from Turkish peasants who were committed to a
lifetime of military service. The corps was organized into
companies, each commanded by a junior officer with the rank of dey
(literally, "maternal uncle"). It formed a self-governing military
guild, subject to its own laws, whose interests were protected by
the Divan, a council of senior officers that also advised the
pasha. In time the pasha's role was reduced to that of ceremonial
head of state and figurehead representative of Ottoman suzerainty,
as real power came to rest with the army.
Mutinies and coups were frequent, and generally the janissaries
were loyal to whoever paid and fed them most regularly. In 1611 the
deys staged a successful coup, forcing the pasha to appoint their
leader, Suleiman Safar, as head of government--in which capacity he
and his successors continued to bear the title dey. At various
times the dey was also pasha-regent. His succession to office
occurred generally amid intrigue and violence. The regency that he
governed was autonomous in internal affairs and, although dependent
on the sultan for fresh recruits to the corps of janissaries, his
government was left to pursue a virtually independent foreign
policy as well.
Tripoli, which had 30,000 inhabitants at the end of the
seventeenth century, was the only city of any size in the regency.
The bulk of its residents were Moors, as city-dwelling Arabs were
known. Several hundred Turks and renegades formed a governing elite
apart from the rest of the population. A larger component was the
khouloughlis (literally, "sons of servants"), offspring of
Turkish soldiers and Arab women who traditionally held high
administrative posts and provided officers for the spahis,
the provincial cavalry units that augmented the corps of
janissaries. They identified themselves with local interests and
were, in contrast to the Turks, respected by the Arabs. Regarded as
a distinct caste, the khouloughlis lived in their
menshia, a lush oasis located just outside the walls of the
city. Jews and moriscos, descendants of Muslims expelled
from Spain in the sixteenth century, were active as merchants and
craftsmen, some of the moriscos also achieving notoriety as
pirates. A small community of European traders clustered around the
compounds of the foreign consuls, whose principal task was to sue
for the release of captives brought to Tripoli by the corsairs.
European slaves and larger numbers of enslaved blacks transported
from the Sudan were a ubiquitous feature of the life of the city.
Data as of 1987
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