SHOW NOTES

Officially called ‘the State of Libya’, it’s a country in North Africa. If you’re trying to find it on a map, locate the boot of Italy and head south across the Mediterranean Sea and you’re in Libya.

And it’s not hard to find, because it’s the fourth largest country in Africa, covering an enormous 1.76 million square kilometres (around 679,500 square miles) – which is roughly three times the size of France!

Although, 90% of Libya is pretty much entirely desert (the Sahara). Because of that, most of the 7 million people who live there are settled along the 1,100 mile stretch of coastline.

One million of which live in the capital city, which is called Tripoli - not to be confused with the more famous Tripoli in Lebanon. Both named Tripoli because Tripoli is ancient Greek for ‘three cities’, and both regions had three ancient cities, In Libya’s case - Oea, Sabratha, and Leptis Magna.

The official language is Arabic, but you might hear some Italian and English. Most Libyans are Sunni Muslims, the currency is the Libyan dinar and the national animal is the Barbary Lion.

From 1977 to 2011, Libya’s flag was just green – no symbols, no stripes, just green, making it the only monochrome flag – but after 2011, Libya reinstated its original flag which is red, black, and green horizontal stripes, with a crescent and a star.

The national anthem is called ‘Libya, Libya, Libya’ and was composed by an Italian military officer in 1951 it was the original national anthem until 1969 when it was replaced with song called ‘Allauh Akbar”, meaning ‘God is Greatest’, but returned as the anthem in 2011 after a civil war.

In fact, during the lead-up to the war, rebels used to play versions of the national anthem over pirate radio broadcasts to signal secret meeting times, with different musical cues as coded messages.

It nearly didn’t get used at all though, because in the late 1950s, the original sheet music was lost after a fire in the royal palace. For several years, musicians had to rely on old recordings and memory to play it.
But good news, the originals were found again in the late 1960s, in the archives of a small library.


LIBYA FACTS!

Tensions with neighbouring Tunisia nearly reached galactic levels of war! In 1976, a Libyan spy working in Tunisia reported seeing a large armoured vehicle in the desert near the border.

The military were sent to investigate and sure enough, when they arrived at the border, as they looked through their binoculars, to their horror they saw a large armored tank pointing in their direction. Assuming this was some new war machine ready to attack Libya, they prepared their military for an attack.

Fortunately, the armoured tank never did attack though – and that was because it was actually a movie prop called a ‘Sandcrawler’ for a little American film called Star Wars.

Libya is also home to the oldest mummy child!

In 1958, an archaeologist called Fabrizio Mori was exploring a cave, digging around in the sand floor, and he discovered a strange bundle of rags. Made of goat or antelope skin, he pulled it out and discovered that it was covering the body of a small child who had undergone some form of mummification.

The organs had been removed and replaced with herbs to help preserve the body which had then been positioned in a foetal position and an ostrich eggshell necklace placed around its neck.

Analysis of the body showed that the child was around 3 years old when they had died sometime between 5,400 to 5,600 years ago - a 1,000 years before the Egyptians started making their own mummies!

HISTORY

Archaeological evidence indicates people living in the area from 8000 BCE or so and the name Libya goes back a long time as well – during Classical antiquity ie Greeks and Romans, the word Libya referred to modern-day Africa west of the Nile river.

Back to the 13th century BCE we find the oldest known documented references to the Libu or Libyan people – who are a group we have met before under the name the Berbers.

The area was mostly divided into two distinct regions, the the West, Tripolitana, that gives us Tripoli today and to the East, Cyrenaica.

These bits of Libya were variously overtaken by a succession ancient empires, including the Phoenicians, the Persian Achaemenid Empire who we’ve met before, the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, the Ptolemys of Egypt and, as is the fashion, Libya also became part of the Roman Empire.

In fact, Libya provided Rome with one of its emperors, emperor Septimius Severus who rose to power in 193 CE and whose reign, funnily enough, coincided with one of the greatest periods of peace and prosperity Roman Libya ever had.

It couldn’t last forever though, and in 642 CE Moslem Arabs started to conquer Libya, gathering pace from 661CE, with Tripoli itself falling in 666, all during the Muslim expansion of the Umayyad dynasty.

The Islamic period lasts until 1510, although that does make it sound like a lovely peaceful continuous era, whereas of course there were various rebellions, dynasties and upheavals within the various Islamic rules most notably when the Umayyads gaveway to the Abbasids.

In 1551 we see the arrival of those cheeky Ottomans, who divided North Africa into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, and now you’re starting to see the nations we are familiar with today.

Curiously in the early 19th century Libya managed to find itself at war with the United States - a series of battles took place in what are now known as the first and second Barbary Wars.

Then jump to 1912 and between then and 1927 and the Italians invade and take over - the territory becomes known as Italian North Africa, split into Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania – those same ancient distinctions, as well as another called Fezzan in the South.

In 1934, Italy officially adopted the name Libya for the colony.

There was resistance to Italian rule and tens and thousands of Libyans were killed, but there was also a lot of development, with hundreds of kilometers of new roads and railways being built.

Hop to World War II, Italians out, Allies in. From 1943 to 1951, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were under British military administration, while the French controlled Fezzan.

But in 1949, the United Nations passed a resolution stating that Libya should become independent before 1 January 1952. And so it became under King Idris al-Sanusi.

But it didn’t last long, 17 years later on 1 September 1969 a small group of military officers set off the bloodless Libyan revolution, and they were led by a young army officer, just 27 years old, going by the name of Muammar Gaddafi.
Gaddafi established the Libyan Arab Republic, with the motto "freedom, socialism and unity" ultimately going on to provide none of those things.

He did try at the start. Public education became free as did medical care, but soon Gaddafi’s rule becomes dictatorial and autocratic, later modestly assigning himself the title "King of Kings of Africa".

The country then follows a leftist, pan-Arab agenda, supporting various rebels globally, and developing a reputation as a sponsor of terrorism, culminating, from the point of view of the British anyway, in the Lockerbie bombing, in which Libyan agents blew up a passenger flight over Scotland, killing more than 250 people.

Gradually Libya returns to global respectability though and in 2006 the US restores full diplomatic relations. But In early 2011 whilst the whole region was in varying states of upheaval known as the Arab Spring, Libya was no exception.

Gaddafi clamps down hard on the protests and once again becomes an international pariah. Eventually protest becomes civil war and it does not go well for Gaddafi. Helped by the intervention of NATO to protect civilians and establish a no fly zone.

Gaddafi eventually goes into hiding but is later captured and killed and in 2012 a new government comes to power.

This lasts for just two years until 2014 when it was time for a new civil war, a complex, multi sided affair that goes on until a ceasefire is agreed in 2020.

On 10 March 2021, an interim unity government was formed, which was supposed to stay in place until the elections six months later. Three years later, it is still there.

So what next? Who knows, but it still has oil, although production has been impacted by the disruption over recent years, but if it can manage to settle itself down, maybe it can have a more prosperous future. I certainly hope so.

THE SPANISH EMPIRE

1469 - Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon tie the knot in an arranged marriage that unites their kingdoms. Eager to enhance Spain's wealth and break Portugal's monopoly over African trade routes, they plan on seeking out an alternative route to lucrative markets in Asia.

1492 - Funded by the royals, Christopher Columbus sets out to find a new trade route to Asia but accidentally discovers the Americas.

1519 - Hernan Cortes lands in Mexico and conquers the Aztec Empire, sending all of their gold back to Spain.

1533 - Francisco Pizarro conquers the Peruvian Incan Empire, and sends more treasure back to Spain, and the empire's wealth skyrockets.

1588 – Feeling cocky, King Philip II, not on best terms with England's Queen Elizabeth I, sends his Spanish Armada on a mission to invade the British isles - but storms and the English admiralty have other plans, and the Armada is sunk.

1600s - Too much of a good thing causes problems at home as too much gold leads to soaring prices in Spain, while The Dutch fight for independence and win, after an 80-year war.

1700s – Things don’t improve when King Charles II dies without an heir leaving a bunch of European royals squabbling over who should inherit the throne.

Spain loses some territories, and the Bourbon family takes over.

1808 – Sensing blood in the water, Napoleon Bonaparte decides to invade Spain. Inspired by a series of revolutions around the world, Spanish colonies in the Americas see their opportunity and fight for independence and within 20 years, most of them succeed and the Spanish grip on the New World slips away.

1898 - Spain loses its last major colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam – and the once-mighty empire is gone.

But not forgotten.. Because today, the results of Spain’s Empire is still felt around the world. Spanish is the second most spoken native language worldwide, and tomatoes, potatoes, chocolate, and chili peppers enliven our food every day.

Parenthood in Libya – the Karamanlis

For parenthood in Libya I’m going to look at one family, and how “success” in one generation can spell disaster for the next.

As we open our story, Libya was originally part of the Ottoman empire and known as Tripoli. It was supposed to be ruled by appointed Pasha’s, rotating around territories to prevent them gaining too much local power.

But from 1711 a guy called Ahmed Karamanli takes power and he decides to make the job of rule a hereditary position – as a good parent, he’s trying to set up his kids.

He is succeeded by Mehmed Karamanli and then Ali Karamanli and it’s with Ali I want to start.

Ali Karamanli and his wife Lilla Hallouma have three children
o Hassan Karamanli, the oldest, described by one contemporary commentator as “Of gracious address, with high personal qualities, and the gift of command.”
o Then there was Ahmed Karamanli, the middle child, apparently quite nice, if a bit easily led
o And finally the youngest, Yusuf Karamanli, clever and cunning, and with a hankering to become the ruler of Tripoli
Pretty much from the off, the attempt to be a good parent and put your family in power leads to the three sons bitterly manoeuvring against each other.

It was so bad that, in the book A nest of Corsairs: the fighting Karamanlis of Tripoli by Seton Dearden and from where I mostly took this story writes, “suspicious and careful, all three brothers moved closely surrounded by their friends, personal retainers and armed slaves, so that any attempt at murder must be made at close quarters, and alone. Only the sanctuary of the one harim, where slaves and retainers could not follow would allow this. This was the harim of their mother, Lilla Hallouma, to which all three brothers had unrestricted access.”

Yusuf in particular got very busy stirring things up between the heir, Hassan, and the middle brother Ahmed. He hired women to move from harim to harim, spreading gossip and rumours to keep everyone in a constant state of suspicion and doubt. And he kept whispering in Ahmed’ ears that when his older brother came to rule, he would doubtless murder his younger brothers in order to secure his position.

Imagine how this might distress of a parent – especially their mother, Lilla of whom a commentator of the time wrote that she, “suffered from grief and heavy fasts imposed by herself, owing to … the present unhappy disputes constantly arising between her three sons, fed by the demon of jealousy.”

Eventually, things develop. In the year 1786 Yusuf goes to visit his mother in the harim. He tells her he wishes to make his peace with his oldest brother and could she arrange a meeting where he would swear an oath of reconciliation.

His brother comes along, at the suggestion of his wife bringing along, against all convention, a sabre.

Then Hasan turns to his brother and agrees to swear an oath of reconciliation on the Quran.

Good news, right? At this, Yusuf says to his slaves “hey, can you fetch me a Quran to swear on please,”

But far from being a reconciliation, this was treachery. ‘bring me a koran’ was his signal to his people to fetch not a book, but a pair of pistols.

He shoots at his brother.

His mother runs forward in an attempt to stop him, and the shot passes through her hand, and strikes Hassan in the side.
He staggers over to grab his sabre and slashes at his brother, who replied by firing the second pistol, killing Hassan instantly.

Now I don’t know how the book I read knew this, but it ends with this incredibly tragic detail, “As he fell, he turned his eyes to his mother, who with horror thought she saw in them an accusation of treachery.”

So not only did poor Lilla see her oldest son killed, and by her youngest son to make it worse, she also believed Hassan’s last thought as he died was that she had been somehow complicit.

Well, nobody said parenthood would be easy.

Yusuf then basically runs off, to an out of town to camp where, rather inconsiderately, throws a party, “The sounds of music, firing and women hired to sing and dance, were louder than at a feast or a wedding.”

Now you might think that this would lead to Yusuf becoming the heir. But no.

In fact, Yusuf agrees to allow the middle brother to become the new heir, quite amazingly given what he’d done so far.

The two brothers went to the mosque where in the Bedouin fashion, they swore blood oaths to be faithful to each other.

You can probably guess what happens next.

In 1791, a year after swearing, Yusuf gathers a force and attacks his father and brother in Tripoli. Cannon fire is exchanged and the Pasha puts a price of 2000 sequins on his own son’s head – I’m not sure where that ranks in the parenting handbooks.

But, then the situation takes a turn for the weird.

One day, suddenly, all the guns on both sides fall silent as a number of ships pulled into the harbour. It was a force sent by the Ottomans, who had got fed up of all the nonsense and had been convinced to instal their own ruler, named Ali Burghol.

So both sides of the previous battle Yusuf, his brother Ahmed and their father were all forced to fleet Tripoli – together.

So now the Karamanli family reunites, fleeing to Tunisia.

They hide out there for a while trying to get the Tunisians to support a reinvasion. Eventually they succeed, party because Ali foolishly attacks them in Tunisia. So the Karamanli’s, boosted by a bunch of new Tunisian friends, they return to Tripoli where Burghol panics, murders a bunch of people, destroys a load of stuff and runs away.
The Tunisians get paid off by the Karamanli’s to avoid them starting looting, and the Karamanli’s are back in charge.

And back to the business of plotting against each other.

Four years later, in 1795 the old Pasha abdicates, putting his son Ahmed in charge… for the incredibly short amount of time until Yusuf leads an uprising, proclaims himself Pasha and exiles his brother to Derna.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing for Tripoli. A British diplomat reports, “Ahmed having at best but a very weak understanding, gave himself entirely up to his pleasures, was almost in a constant state of inebriation and consequently neglected his government. Sidi Yusuf, who is quite the opposite character of his brother’s neither drinks nor smokes and, having studied for some years in the school of adversity, acquired a thorough knowledge of the constitution of the government and disposition of his subjects, who love him, almost to adoration.”

Under Yusuf Libya does ok, and in its search for funds it turns to a classic industry for Tripoli – piracy.

And they turn on a new young nation that’s just setting out in life – The United States of America. American ships are taken and American sailors made hostage.

And America does not like this, they try bombing Tripoli, but it’s not as effective as they hope. Then the American consul in Tunis, a fellow named William Eaton, has an idea to overthrow Yusuf using, guess who – his brother Ahmed.

Ahmed had by this time, probably quite sensibly, made his way over to Egypt to try and not be killed, so the Americans headed in that direction with a plan to pick him up, head to Libya, and land in Derna with the brother and a bunch of troops where the locals would rise up and everyone would march on Tripoli, overthrow the regime and free the Americans - Hurrah!

And indeed they go to Egypt and find Ahmed – but Ahmed didn’t want to go by sea, he wanted to walk the 500 miles across the desert to Derna. In some way this made sense, if he was the popular ruler in waiting he thought he was, he would pick up additional forces on the way.

So that’s what they do – and it does not go well.

At the start the entire team gets arrested and have to bribe their way out of prison.

The Arabs and Americans eventually end up on the brink of a pitched battle when the supplies run out.

And Ahmed also casually reveals that he’s only paid his Arab allies for a part of the journey so could the Americans please pay the rest of the bill.
Finally, starving and thirsty, they are on the brink of giving up when they meet a supply ship and they make it to Derna… where the local people absolutely do not rise and and welcome their new leader with open arms.

Instead there’s heavy fighting but eventually the Americans and Ahmed take the town and when more forces arrive, they actually do rather well against them too.

Could this actually work? Could Ahmed win?

It doesn’t matter. Because Eaton receives a letter from America, which says, thanks for all that, we’re going to negotiate with Yusuf now, so feel free to cut Ahmed loose with our best wishes.

The books says, “Ahmed was taken by the Americans to Syracuse, where he lived in some penury on an allowance from the US government. In 1809 he was once more appointed Bey of Derna but two years later, again in danger of his life, fled to Egypt where in 1811 he died.”

As for Yusuf, things didn’t turn out well for him either.

By 1819, the various treaties of the Napoleonic Wars made piracy almost impossible and the alternative industry of the area, slavery, was also dying as abolitionist sentiment rose. So Tripoli's economy began to collapse .

Yusuf weakened, and factions sprung up around his three sons. Who’d be a parent eh?

Karamanli abdicated in 1832 in favor of his son but in 1835, the Ottomans sent in troops to put an end to the Karamanli dynasty.

And Yusuf lived to see it, having murdered his brother with his own hands and plotted and deceived and monoevered, he ended up witnessing the end of his family dynasty and a visitor who saw him in 1935 reported, “He took me by the hand and cried like a child.”

He died three years later, in 1838.

So it just goes to show, as a parent however hard you try to set your kids up to be successful, it doesn’t always go the way you want it to – that’s parenthood, in Libya, between 1492 to 1898.



 
White fathers

Let’s get a bit religious..

Many Christians, Jews, and Muslims consider God to have something of a parental role with us mere mortals. After all, the good book says that God is the creator of us all – a symbolic father figure, who provides wisdom, guidance and protection throughout our lives.

The Bible tells us that Jesus called God “Father” regularly, and preached that we are all part of God’s family.

And so, while not a natural parent, in the sense that he conceived us by getting jiggy with Mrs. God, many faiths consider that God’s guidance, nurturing, and care is the perfect metaphor for parenthood.

And it’s this idea of ‘divine parenthood’ which is central to my story — where the metaphor of parenthood, protection, and spiritual care takes on a very real, human form.

Okay.. so, let’s start in France in 1825.. it’s 31st October, and we’re in a small town called Bayonne, and a baby boy is born, called Charles Lavigerie.

Loved by his parents, he was given a decent education and emerged into adulthood as something of an intellectual, destined for academia. And sure enough, he was soon hired as a professor to teach religious history at Sorbonne University in Paris –one of the most renowned and historic universities in the world.

But while he loved his job educating students, he didn’t consider books and lectures to be his true calling.

Instead, he gave it all up and instead entered the Catholic church, becoming a dedicated man of the cloth.

It was during his time as a priest that he started to hear about the chaos that was raging across the Middle East and North Africa.

In particular he was caught by the horrors happening in Lebanon, where a small religious group called the Druze were dominating the region and causing all sorts of problems.

Now, if like me, you’ve never heard of ‘the Druze’, well, they were a pretty unique and influential group of muslims who practiced a unique version of Shia Islam that incorporated elements from various other religions, like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Greek philosophy.

And over a couple of centuries had established themselves as something of a well-organised and fiercely independent group of people - occasionally working for the Ottomans to maintain that independence. Which was all fine and dandy, until the early 19th century, when a group of Christians, calling themselves ‘the Maronites’ moved into Druze home territory and started to call the place home.

Mostly farmers and peasants, the Maronites were not a warring people, but regardless, the Druze did not want them around, feeling increasingly threatened by their growing numbers.

And so, inevitably, tensions rose between them with sporadic fighting breaking out as each group struggled to maintain their hold on the area.

Now, seeing a group of Catholics struggling, a bunch of pro-Catholic European superpowers stepped in to give the Maronites support and resources in the fighting.

This did not have the effect of calming things down, in fact, quite the opposite, escalating matters to the point that, in 1860, one particular dispute between the Druze and Maronites escalated into a full-blown war.

A war that raged for two months, culminating with Druze fighters rampaging through Maronite villages, burning them to the ground and killing everyone living there – around 10,000 people.

And it was this news that caught Lavigerie’s attention. Struck by the suffering and lack of help, he spoke to his superiors and requested that he be sent to the Middle East to help.

The church approved his request and Lavigerie packed his clerical cassocks and caught the first boat out to Lebanon.

When he arrived, he was stunned to discover the true horror of the suffering.

He immediately set to work, but despite giving last rites and offering prayers to God he found that the people still suffered – it turns out that while his prayers were appreciated, what the survivors really needed was food, shelter, and medical aid.

This moment of realization was something of a turning point for Lavigerie, reflecting later on the experience, by writing, "It was there that I learned my true calling". From this point on, he resolved himself to a new mission: To serve, protect, and rebuild faith where it had been shattered.

From this point he changed tactics, and over the next seven years he dedicated himself to ensuring that there was food, shelter, and medical care for those who needed it. He established schools and orphanages to educate and protect the huge number of children that had lost their families during the massacres.
He used his position to pressure the Ottomans to protect the remaining Christians in the region and he got in involved in politics too, acting as a diplomat and mediator between the leaders of the Druze and the Maronites.

Work that was recognised by the Church who quickly appointed him as the new Archbishop of Algiers.

But as tensions eased and life in Lebanon became more peaceful for the Maronites, he realised that there were other regions where his work was needed. Places like North Africa, where in the late 1860s, disaster was everywhere.

Algeria, Libya and Egypt had each suffered at the hands of droughts. Crops were destroyed, locusts were ravaging the land, and cholera was wiping out entire villages.

People were starving, children were orphaned, and in Libya in particular, there was a vacuum of instability as the Ottomans struggled to maintain power and withdrew, abandoning the people to their fate.

Seeing the desperation of the people, Lavigerie decided to act. That year, he founded the Société des Missionnaires d'Afrique, a missionary organisation that wasn’t about proselytizing or spreading Christianity, it was about acting as the spiritual parents to the people of North Africa, regardless of their background or religion – basically, anyone who needed his help.

And so, he organised some of his clerical brothers, and together they set about building orphanages, feeding the people, and offering medical aid.

They established villages specifically for orphans, giving them food, shelter, and education – seeing the children as the basis by which they could rebuild lost communities from the ground up.

They would walk through villages, handing out bread and water to the starving.

On one occasion, when a Muslim woman collapsed at his feet, he sat down next to her, and refused to leave until she was fed and watered and able to walk again.

It is said that after this experience, Lavigeie insisted that his team go days without food to better understand the suffering of those they were helping.

He even insisted that they stop wearing their traditional clothing, and instead wear the clothes of the local people, to become one of them.

And so, they all put on the traditional white gowns and red fezzes, which gave them the nickname the ‘Peres Blanc’, or the ‘White Fathers’.

To the people of North Africa, Lavigeie was more than a priest — he was a parent figure, someone who cared unconditionally about their wellbeing.
This wasn’t appreciated by everyone though, with many colonialists seeing the White Father’s work as disruptive to their control of the region and insisting that their primary duty should be to administer aid to the European colonists and not the native population.

Their influence on high-ranking members of the Catholic church put Lavigerie under pressure, but he refused to back down, insisting that he had come to serve everyone - and not just the colonists.

Trying to reassure them that his work - feeding the hungry and sheltering the orphans — would eventually lead the people of North Africa to embrace Christianity, he even offered to resign as Archbishop so that he could devote himself to the mission.

This caused such a stir that the Pope (Pius IX) got involved, and refused to let him go, and instead placed him in charge of the entire region of equatorial Africa.

In the later years of his life, Lavigerie turned his attention to slavery.

Having seen the devastating effects firsthand, he quickly became one of its most vocal opponents. He traveled across Europe, speaking in London, Paris, Brussels, and beyond, talking to large audiences from all walks of life—politicians, intellectuals, and religious leaders— all of whom rallied behind his cause.

In 1892, Lavigerie’s health began to fail, and he passed away on the 26th November, leaving behind a legacy of care, faith, and parental devotion.

The White Fathers continued their work long after his death, spreading across Africa, founding missions, building schools, and bringing not just religion, but hope to the communities they served.

And through it all, they carried with them the spirit of Charles Lavigerie, a man who saw himself not just as a priest or a missionary, but as a parent to the people of North Africa.