GKBook — general knowledge, a pleasure to learn

Libya

By Prof. Raju Vatsavayi

Name

Official nameState of Libya — Dawlat Lībiyā (دولة ليبيا); since 2013
Former namesItalian Libya (1934–1943); the United Kingdom of Libya (1951–1963) and the Kingdom of Libya (1963–1969); the Libyan Arab Republic (1969–1977); the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1977–2011); the provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan before
DemonymLibyan
Meaning of the nameFrom the Libu, the Berbers of the Egyptian records, and the Greek Libya for the whole of Africa; the "Jamahiriya" of Gaddafi a word coined for "the state of the masses"
MottoNone official — "Freedom, Justice, Democracy" the revolution's

Quick facts

CapitalTripoli — Ṭarābulus — the capital of the kingdom and the republic, the seat of the western government; about 1.2 million in the city, 3 million in the region; Benghazi the seat of the eastern one
Largest citiesTripoli; Benghazi, about 800,000; Misrata; Bayda; Zawiya; Zliten; Ajdabiya; Tobruk, the seat of the House of Representatives; Sabha of the Fezzan; Derna; Sirte
Official languageArabic — the Libyan dialect; Tamazight, the Berber of the Nafusa mountains and Zuwara, and the Tuareg and Tebu tongues of the south recognized since 2011; Italian of the old, English of the young
CurrencyLibyan dinar — ISO code LYD, LD; 1,000 dirhams; about 5.5 to the U.S. dollar official since April 2025, above 7 on the street
Time zoneEastern European Time, UTC+2, all year — since 2013, after the years of changing
Calling code+218
Internet domain.ly — sold abroad for the "-ly" names, bit.ly among them
ISO 3166 codesLY · LBY · 434
Vehicle registration codeLAR
Driving sideRight
Electricity230 V, 50 Hz; plug types C, D, F and L — the power cut for hours a day in the summers
Independence24 December 1951 — the kingdom created by the United Nations from the Italian colony under British and French administration; King Idris I
National days24 December, Independence Day, restored 2011; 17 February, Revolution Day, for 2011; 16 September, Martyrs' Day, for Omar Mukhtar's hanging in 1931; 1 May; the Islamic feasts; 1 September, Gaddafi's Revolution Day, abolished
ConstitutionNone in force — the Constitutional Declaration of 3 August 2011 of the National Transitional Council, amended thirteen times; the draft constitution of 2017 never put to the referendum; the constitution of 1951 of the kingdom, suspended by Gaddafi in 1969, the one some would restore
Population5,670,688 at the census of 2006 — the last; about 7.4 million (UN, 2025 est.) — with some 800,000 migrants by the IOM
Area1,759,540 km² (679,362 sq mi) — all land; the fourth-largest in Africa

Flag & national symbols

National flagThree horizontal bands of red, black and green — the black twice the others, the banner of the Senussi order of Cyrenaica with the white crescent and star of Islam at its center — the flag of the kingdom of 1951 raised again by the rebels of Benghazi in February 2011 and adopted by the National Transitional Council on 3 August 2011, replacing the plain green of Gaddafi's Jamahiriya, the only one-color national flag there ever was.Flag of Libya
National emblemNone adopted since 2011 — the crescent and star of the flag on the passports and the state's papers; the Hawk of Quraysh of the Jamahiriya and the crowned shield of the kingdom before
National anthem"Libya, Libya, Libya" — "Ya Beladi," O my country — words by Al Bashir Al Arebi, music by Mohammed Abdel Wahab; the anthem of the kingdom from 1955, restored 2011 with the verse on King Idris dropped
National colorsRed, black and green
National animalNone designated — the fennec fox of the desert, the emblem of the football team; the Barbary lion of Cyrenaica gone; the Barbary sheep of the Tibesti; widely cited
National treeThe date palm of the oases; the olive of the Jebel Akhdar; widely cited
National dishBazin, the barley dough of the desert served with a lamb and tomato stew; the couscous of Tripoli; the shorba; the asida; the Italian pasta the colony left; widely cited
Symbol statusThe flag and anthem by the Declaration of 2011; no emblem adopted; the animal, tree and dishes widely cited

Geography

LocationNorth Africa on the Mediterranean — the Maghreb's east, between Tunisia and Algeria to the west, Egypt to the east, Sudan, Chad and Niger to the south
Land borders4,339 km (2,696 mi) with six countries — Egypt 1,115, Chad 1,050, Algeria 989, Tunisia 461, Sudan 382, Niger 342; the Aouzou Strip lost to Chad by the ICJ ruling of 1994
Coastline1,770 km (1,100 mi) — the longest of any country on the Mediterranean
Highest pointBikku Bitti, 2,267 m (7,438 ft), in the Tibesti on the Chadian border — first climbed in 2005
Lowest pointThe Sabkhat Ghuzayyil, 47 m (154 ft) below sea level, south of Ajdabiya
Mean elevation423 m (1,388 ft)
Rivers and waterNo permanent river — the wadis of the winter rains, Wadi Derna of the flood; the Great Man-Made River, begun in 1984 and carrying fossil water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer of the Kufra and Sarir basins to the coast through 2,800 km of pipes four meters wide, "the eighth wonder of the world" in Gaddafi's phrase, the largest irrigation project on earth; the aquifer finite
TerrainThe Sahara over 90% of the land — the Libyan Desert of the east with the Great Sand Sea, the Fezzan of the south with the Ubari sand sea and its lakes, the Hamada al-Hamra; the coastal plain of Tripolitania and the Jefara; the Jebel Akhdar, the Green Mountain of Cyrenaica, the one wet upland; the Nafusa mountains of the Berbers; the Tibesti and the Acacus in the south; the Gulf of Sirte between the two halves
ClimateMediterranean on the coast with 400 mm at Tripoli and more on the Jebel Akhdar; desert over the rest, under 100 mm; the ghibli, the hot sand wind from the south; the summers of 45°C
Natural hazardsThe Derna flood of 10–11 September 2023 — Storm Daniel bursting the two dams above the city and sweeping a quarter of it into the sea, about 5,900 dead by the count of the ministry and up to 11,300 by the UN's first figures, the deadliest flood of the century in the region; the sandstorms; the ghibli; the Aziziya reading of 58°C of 1922, the world record for ninety years, struck off in 2012
Natural resourcesOil — the largest proven reserves in Africa and the ninth in the world, about 48 billion barrels, in the Sirte, Murzuq and Ghadames basins; natural gas, about 1.5 trillion cubic meters; gypsum; the fossil water; the sun
Land useAgricultural land about 9%, nearly all pasture; forest about 0.1%
National parksKouf on the Jebel Akhdar, the largest, of the cedars and the coast; Abughilan; the Nafusa; the Tadrart Acacus of the rock art; the Ubari lakes; the Zallaf
UNESCO World Heritage5 — the archaeological sites of Cyrene, the Greek city; of Leptis Magna, the Roman city of Septimius Severus; and of Sabratha (all 1982); the rock-art sites of Tadrart Acacus (1985); the old town of Ghadames, the "pearl of the desert" (1986) — all five placed on the danger list in 2016 for the war
Administrative divisions22 districts — shabiyat — of the reform of 2007, from Tripoli and Benghazi to Kufra, the largest, and Murzuq; the three historic regions of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan; the municipalities elected in part since 2024

People

Population5,670,688 (census of 2006); about 7.4 million (2025 est.)
Population densityAbout 4 per km² (10 per sq mi) — among the lowest in the world, nine in ten on the coast
Population growthAbout 1.1% a year
Median ageAbout 26 years
Life expectancyAbout 73 years
Fertility rateAbout 2.2 births per woman
Urban populationAbout 82%
Adult literacyAbout 91%
Ethnic groupsArab and Arabized Berber about 97% — the tribes of the Warfalla, Magarha, Zintan, Misrata, Obeidat and the rest, the units of politics; Berber-speaking Amazigh about 5%, of the Nafusa and Zuwara; Tuareg of the southwest; Tebu of the southeast; the migrants of Egypt, Sudan, Niger, Chad, Bangladesh and the rest
LanguagesArabic by nearly all; Tamazight by the Amazigh, unrecognized under Gaddafi and taught since 2011; Tamasheq of the Tuareg; Tedaga of the Tebu; Italian by the old, English by the young
ReligionSunni Muslim about 97%, the Maliki school; the Senussi order of Cyrenaica of the kingdom; Ibadi among the Amazigh; the Christians of the migrants; the Salafists of the Madkhali school in the armies of both sides
Human Development Index0.721 (2023 data, 2025 report) — high; about 115th of 193 — from 0.79 and 53rd in 2010, the fall of the war
The migrantsSome 800,000 migrants and refugees in the country by the IOM's count — the road from the Sahel to the Mediterranean, the crossings to Italy from Zuwara, Zawiya and the east to Crete; the detention centers of the militias, the slave auctions filmed in 2017, the abuses the UN's reports list; the EU's money for the coast guard that turns the boats back; the mass graves of the desert found in 2025
SportFootball — the Mediterranean Knights, hosts and runners-up of the Africa Cup of Nations in 1982, champions of the African Nations Championship in 2014; Al-Ahli and Al-Ittihad of Tripoli, Al-Ahli and Al-Nasr of Benghazi; the league played through the war
DiasporaAbout a million Libyans abroad — in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Britain, Italy, Canada and the United States, the exiles of Gaddafi and of the war

Government

Form of governmentA provisional state under the Constitutional Declaration of 2011 with no constitution, no elected government and two rival administrations since 2022 — the Presidential Council as head of state, the Government of National Unity at Tripoli, the House of Representatives at Tobruk and Benghazi with its own government, the High State Council as the senate of the west; the UN Support Mission the referee
Presidential CouncilMohamed al-Menfi, its chairman since 15 March 2021 — the head of state in name, the ambassador to Greece expelled in 2019, born 1976 at Tobruk; the council of three under the Geneva roadmap of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum of February 2021, with Musa al-Koni and Abdullah al-Lafi; the supreme commander of the armed forces on paper
Prime Minister — TripoliAbdul Hamid Dbeibah (independent), Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity since 15 March 2021 — a construction magnate of Misrata, the head of the Gaddafi-era ODAC, born 1959; chosen by the 75 delegates of the UN forum on 5 February 2021 with 39 votes to hold elections by 24 December 2021; the elections never held and the mandate he refuses to give up, "only to an elected government"; the Turkish alliance, the central bank, the National Oil Corporation and the militias of the capital his levers; the clashes of Tripoli of May 2025 after the killing of the militia chief al-Kikli on 12 May, his campaign to disband the armed groups
Prime Minister — BenghaziOsama Hammad (independent), Prime Minister of the Government of National Stability since May 2023 — the finance minister and acting prime minister after Fathi Bashagha, whom the House of Representatives had named on 10 February 2022, the rival government established at Sirte on 3 March 2022, and suspended in 2023; the government of the east under Haftar's protection, unrecognized abroad and paid from the state's oil through the east's banks; Aguila Saleh the Speaker of the House since 2014 at Tobruk
The Field MarshalKhalifa Haftar, the commander of the self-styled Libyan National Army since 2014 — Gaddafi's general, captured in Chad in 1987, the CIA's exile in Virginia, the returned commander of the war on the Islamists of Benghazi of 2014–17 and of the offensive on Tripoli of 4 April 2019 to June 2020, stopped by Turkey's drones; the ruler of the east and the south with his sons Saddam and Belgassem, the Russian Africa Corps at his bases, the Emirati and Egyptian backing; born 1943 at Ajdabiya
The elections never heldThe presidential and parliamentary elections set for 24 December 2021 under the UN roadmap — postponed two days before over the candidacies of Haftar, Dbeibah and Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and the laws, and never rescheduled; the "6+6" committee's electoral laws of 2023; the UN roadmap of Hanna Tetteh, the Special Representative, presented to the Security Council in August 2025 with a timeline of 12 to 18 months; the deadlock over a unified interim government to run the vote, wanted by the east and refused by Dbeibah; "the political process has stalled," Tetteh said on 22 April 2026, "allowing status quo actors to evade their responsibilities"; the rival institutions' backing of an election plan reported on 18 June 2026, with no date; the last national vote of 2014
ParliamentThe House of Representatives — 200 seats elected 25 June 2014 on a turnout of 18%, sitting at Tobruk and Benghazi under Aguila Saleh since August 2014, its mandate expired and extended by itself; the High State Council of the west, the successor of the General National Congress of 2012, under Mohamed Takala and then the disputed chairs; the two chambers the "6+6" of the electoral laws
The next electionNone scheduled — the roadmap's 12 to 18 months from August 2025 the only horizon
The revolution and the warsThe uprising of 17 February 2011 in Benghazi, the NATO intervention from 19 March under the Security Council's resolution 1973, the fall of Tripoli on 21 August and the capture and killing of Muammar Gaddafi at Sirte on 20 October 2011 after 42 years; the first civil war's tens of thousands of dead; the election of July 2012; the killing of the U.S. ambassador at Benghazi on 11 September 2012; the split of 2014 and the second civil war, the Islamic State at Sirte in 2015–16, Haftar's Tripoli offensive of 2019–20 with the Turkish, Russian, Emirati and Egyptian hands in it, the Wagner mercenaries and the Syrian recruits; the ceasefire of 23 October 2020 at Geneva; the mass graves of Tarhuna
Legal systemCivil law on the Italian and French models with Islamic law; the Supreme Court at Tripoli, its constitutional chamber suspended in 2016; the courts of the east under the other government; the International Criminal Court's warrants for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and the militia commanders, the arrest of one in Germany in 2025
Districts22 under the two governments' ministries; the municipal councils elected in the west in 2024–25, the first local votes in years
The foreign handsTurkey with Tripoli — the troops, the drones and the maritime deal of 2019; Russia with Haftar — the Wagner and Africa Corps of the bases of Jufra, Brak and the east, the flights to the Sahel; the Emirates and Egypt with the east; Italy and the EU for the migrants and the gas; the Americans between; the Gaddafi sanctions of 2011 still on the frozen US$70 billion
United NationsMember since 14 December 1955; UNSMIL, the Support Mission since 2011; the sanctions and the arms embargo of 2011, violated by all; the Libyan seat held by the Tripoli government
MembershipsThe Arab League since 1953; the African Union, whose founding Gaddafi pushed at Sirte in 1999; OPEC since 1962; the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation; the Arab Maghreb Union; the Non-Aligned Movement; the WTO as an observer

Economy

GDP (nominal)About US$50 billion (2025, IMF) — the oil the whole of it
GDP per capitaAbout US$6,800 (2025)
GDP per capita (PPP)About US$20,000 (2025)
GDP growthSwinging with the oil and the shutdowns — about 10% in 2024 and a recovery in 2025 after the blockade of the central bank crisis of August 2024; inflation about 3%; the dinar devalued 13% in April 2025
Economy by sectorOil and gas about 60% of GDP, about 95% of exports and government revenue; services about 35%; the rest
CurrencyLibyan dinar (LYD)
OilThe largest reserves in Africa, about 48 billion barrels — about 1.4 million barrels a day in 2025 from the Sirte basin's Waha, Sarir and Nafoora, the Murzuq's El Sharara and Elephant, the Ghadames' Wafa; the National Oil Corporation of Tripoli; the terminals of Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Zueitina and Brega; the shutdowns of the east's tribes and the Haftar blockades of 2020, 2022 and 2024; Eni, TotalEnergies, Repsol, OMV, ConocoPhillips and the Chinese back in the fields
GasThe Greenstream pipeline of 2004 to Sicily and the Mellitah complex of Eni; the offshore of the west; the fields for the power plants that still fail
The state's moneyThe central bank, split from 2014 between Tripoli and Bayda and reunited in 2023; the crisis of August 2024 when the Presidential Council ousted the governor al-Kabir and the east shut the oil, settled by September with a new governor, Naji Issa; the oil revenue about US$25 billion a year shared between two governments and their militias; the salaries of two million public employees; the frozen Libyan Investment Authority of US$70 billion under the UN sanctions
The restAlmost nothing else — the dates and olives, the small factories, the import trade of Misrata, the black market of fuel smuggled to Tunisia and Malta; the reconstruction of Benghazi and Derna by the east's Development Fund under Belgassem Haftar; the subsidies of fuel at a few cents a liter
Public financesThe two budgets — Tripoli's of about US$30 billion, the east's spent from the same oil; public debt about 70% of GDP in the domestic bonds of the two banks; the audit of the Bureau of the wasted decade
Income classificationUpper-middle income (World Bank)

Transport & infrastructure

Main airportsMitiga International at Tripoli, the military airfield made the capital's airport since Tripoli International was destroyed in the fighting of 2014, its rebuilding promised; Benina at Benghazi; Misrata; Sabha; Tobruk; the flights to Europe resumed in 2025
AirlinesLibyan Airlines, the state carrier of 1964, and Afriqiyah Airways of 2001 — both on the EU's blacklist since 2014; Berniq Airways of Benghazi; Turkish, Egyptair, Tunisair and ITA the links
Main portsTripoli; Misrata, the busiest, the merchants' port; Benghazi; Khoms; Tobruk; the oil terminals of Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Zueitina, Brega and Hariga
RailwaysNone — the Italian lines of 400 km gone by 1965; the Sirte–Benghazi and the coastal lines contracted to the Russians and the Chinese in 2008 and abandoned in 2011, the tracks half laid
RoadsAbout 37,000 km (23,000 mi), most paved — the coastal highway of 1,800 km from the Tunisian to the Egyptian border, the country's spine, the Italian Via Balbia of 1937 beneath it; the road south to Sabha and the Fezzan; the checkpoints of the militias
The desertThe Ubari lakes and the dunes; the Acacus; the Kufra oasis 1,000 km from the coast; the ruins of Leptis and Cyrene on the shore

History in dates

c. 8000 BCThe rock art of the Acacus
c. 1100 BCThe Phoenicians found Oea, Leptis and Sabratha
631 BCThe Greeks found Cyrene
74 BCRome's Cyrenaica; Septimius Severus of Leptis emperor, 193
642The Arab conquest
1551The Ottomans take Tripoli
1711The Karamanli dynasty of Tripoli
1801–1805The First Barbary War — the U.S. Marines at Derna, 1805
1843The Senussi order founded at Bayda
1911Italy invades, 3 October
1931Omar Mukhtar hanged, 16 September
1934Italian Libya
1943The British and French take the colony
1951Independence, 24 December — King Idris
1959Oil struck at Zelten
1969Gaddafi's coup, 1 September
1977The Jamahiriya, 2 March
1986The U.S. bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, 15 April
1988Lockerbie, 21 December — 270 dead
2003Gaddafi gives up the weapons programs, 19 December
2011The revolution, 17 February; NATO, 19 March; Tripoli falls, 21 August; Gaddafi killed, 20 October
2012The ambassador killed at Benghazi, 11 September
2014The election of 25 June; the split; Haftar's Dignity
2015The Skhirat agreement, 17 December
2016Sirte retaken from the Islamic State, December
2019Haftar's march on Tripoli, 4 April
2020The Turkish turn; the ceasefire, 23 October
2021The Government of National Unity, 15 March; the election postponed, 22 December
2022Bashagha's rival government, 3 March
2023The Derna flood, 10–11 September
2024The central bank crisis, August
2025The Tripoli clashes, 12 May; the UN roadmap, August
2026"Stalled," 22 April; the election plan backed, 18 June

Records & firsts

The largest oil reserves in AfricaAbout 48 billion barrels
The largest irrigation project on earthThe Great Man-Made River
The longest Mediterranean coast1,770 km
The first country independent through the UN24 December 1951
The only one-color flagGaddafi's green, 1977–2011
The world's hottest reading, for ninety yearsAziziya, 58°C, 1922 — struck off
Two governments since 2014Tripoli and Benghazi
An election postponed indefinitely24 December 2021
The Derna floodThe region's deadliest of the century, 2023
Leptis MagnaAmong the best-preserved Roman cities
The shores of TripoliThe Marines' hymn, 1805
The Sahara over nine-tenthsAnd four people to the square kilometer
The bit.ly domain.ly, sold to the world

Frequently asked questions

What is the official name of Libya?

The State of Libya — Dawlat Lībiyā — the name adopted in January 2013 by the parliament of the revolution in place of Gaddafi's Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the "state of the masses" of 1977; the United Kingdom of Libya under King Idris was the state the United Nations created on 24 December 1951, the first country to gain independence through the UN. The name is the ancient one: Libu, the Egyptians' word for the Berber tribes west of the Nile, and Libya, the Greeks' name for all of Africa; the Italians revived it for their colony in 1934 from the three provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan.

What is the capital of Libya?

Tripoli — Ṭarābulus — on the Mediterranean in the northwest, the Phoenician Oea of the 7th century BC, the "three cities" of the Greeks with Leptis and Sabratha, the Ottoman and Karamanli port of the corsairs and the "shores of Tripoli" of the American Marines; about 1.2 million people in the city and 3 million in the region, the seat of the Government of National Unity and the west. Benghazi, the city of Cyrenaica in the east, the cradle of the revolution of 2011 and the seat of the rival government and of Haftar, is the second with about 800,000; Misrata, the merchant city and the militias' arsenal, the third; Sabha the town of the Fezzan in the desert.

How big is Libya, and how many people live there?

About 1,759,540 km² (679,362 sq mi) — the fourth-largest country in Africa and the sixteenth in the world, two and a half times the size of Texas — nine-tenths of it the Sahara, with the people on the 1,770 km of coast, the longest of any Mediterranean country. No census has been taken since 2006, when 5,670,688 were counted; the UN estimates about 7.4 million for 2025, with some 800,000 migrants and refugees among them by the IOM's count, on the road to Europe or stranded on it.

What are the highest and lowest points of Libya?

Bikku Bitti, 2,267 m (7,438 ft), in the Tibesti mountains on the Chadian border in the far south, so remote that it was first climbed in 2005; and the Sabkhat Ghuzayyil, a salt marsh south of Ajdabiya, 47 m (154 ft) below sea level. The country has no permanent river; its water comes from the fossil aquifers of the Nubian sandstone under the desert, pumped north since 1984 by the Great Man-Made River, the largest irrigation project on earth, through 2,800 km of pipe.

What currency does Libya use?

The Libyan dinar (ISO code LYD, LD), of 1,000 dirhams, issued by the Central Bank of Libya, itself split for a decade between Tripoli and the east and reunited in 2023 — at about 5.5 to the U.S. dollar at the official rate after the devaluation of April 2025, and above 7 on the parallel market, the currency of a state whose oil dollars are fought over. Clocks keep Eastern European Time, UTC+2, all year; Libya drives on the right.

Who governs Libya?

Two governments, neither of them elected. In Tripoli, the Government of National Unity of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, installed on 15 March 2021 by the UN-led dialogue to hold elections that December and still in place five years after they were postponed, recognized by the United Nations and holding the central bank and the oil company; in Benghazi, the Government of National Stability of Prime Minister Osama Hammad, appointed by the House of Representatives in 2023 and backed by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army, which holds the east and the south. The two are deadlocked over an interim government to run the vote; the UN's envoy called the process stalled in April 2026, and the rival institutions backed an election plan in June 2026 without a date. Mohamed al-Menfi chairs the Presidential Council, the nominal head of state.

Explore the Encyclopedia

World knowledge, A to Z — the flags of every country, the sciences, places, people and more.

We Value Your Opinion Comments

GKBook