Sabha and the Hamada al Hamra

In order to travel to the area known as the Fezzan it is best to begin your journey from Sirte. It is a lonely road down to Sabha, so take plenty of water, food and anything else you need to feel comfortable.

Fighting in the Fezzan was not as intense as in other parts of Libya, but visitors should ensure that they have up to date information about conditions before they set out.

For the first two hours you pass through the flat lands of Serir which are covered by stones of all shapes, among which an occasional desert plant grows. Then you begin to see rocky hills and soft sand dunes. These rocks, which have been eroded by harsh winds and burning sun, a variation of temperature and occasional rain, are strange and have curious shapes. They are known as khashem (nose, pointed stone), ras (sharphead), ghelb (heart) and ghara (bastion). The scenery becomes quite dramatic before entering the town of Hun.

Hun

Under the Italian regime Hun became the administrative centre of the so-called Military Territory of the South. One facility was a landing ground for aircraft which was the target of numerous raids by the Allies during the war. In 1929 groups of men, women and children were captured and put inside the Turkish fort at Hun to stop them from fighting. Later they were taken to Buwayrat al Hasun and Misurata.

The old medina in Hun is uninhabited, but it is possible to see one of the houses which is more than 100 years old. Each house

Opposite: Cooking a roadside meal, Fezzan was divided into three units for the extended family – grandfather, father and sons. The houses were built of stone and mud with a roof made from palm trees, and were cool in summer and warm in winter. Each unit had three sets of stairs – stairs from the kitchen to take food up, one for family use, and one for visitors. There was a courtyard where the family could sit outside in the evening. Each unit had a family room, a bedroom and a children’s r eleven in the morning. There was a store room for dates which, when covered over with sand, would keep for a whole year.

No water was to be allowed near the toilet area. Sand was used daily and from time to time the farmers would take the excreta to use on the farms as manure. The shelf in the kitchen would be made from palm wood. There was a cat flap under the door and the main door would be made from a palm tree with an intricate pattern painted in oils.

The Thakirat Al Medina (Memory of the City) Museum is on the main street, close to the post office and near the turning for the old medina. It displays baskets and claypots, a flour grinder and a bird trap, among other exhibits. There is also a collection of dolls depicting the seven days of a wedding, a 600 year old piece of palm tree and a 700 year old flour grinder from the first village at Hun. Close to the old medina is the charming Jama al Attiqu mosque built around 1870 and rebuilt between 1936 and 1939.

Hun is a good place to stay. There is the Alrawasi Hotel (tel. 091 2146206), which is a five-minute drive from downtown Hun. It has airconditioning, room service, buffet restaurant and free wi-fi, as well as shops in the hotel.

Sabha

From Hun, another lonely road takes you to Sabha, the capital of the Fezzan. The town is modern with well-stocked shops, but part of the old town also remains intact.

One interesting site in the town is the ‘Elkilla’ castle, an old Ottoman fort built by the Turks for defensive purposes. It stands on the only hill in Sabha next to the airport. The base is used by the military so you cannot go inside and you should be careful if you want to take photographs. A picture of this castle is printed on the back of every 10 dinar note.

Mu’Ammar Gaddafi spent part of his childhood there. His parents moved from Sirte to Sabha to try to find more fertile land and Gaddafi continued his education at the ‘Point of Light’ school just around the corner from the Al Kaala Hotel.

Until recently, his bedroom was carefully preserved with a few personal belongings in the middle of the Leader’s Roundabout – the Jazeerat al Kaied.

There are an increasing number of hotels in Sabha. There is the Byt Sabha Hotel on the Oubar road on the edge of town near the airport. It is clean and modern. Tel. 0712637300. Another good hotel is the Al Kaala in the centre of town along Jamal Abdul Nasser St. There is another hotel further along the same street called the Al Fatah Hotel, P.O. Box 787 (tel. 071-623106/627670). A few years ago it was a pleasant place to stay, but now it is unfortunately rather run-down. It is perhaps still worth climbing the nine flights of stairs to photograph the attractively laid-out city and the surrounding hills.

Al Khalij is the area along the coast stretching from Wadi Zam Zam to Zuetina, with the town of Agidabia as the centre of the province. There are many small villages and towns dotted along the way so that you can stop for petrol, groceries, or refresh- archæological sites to be visited.

Sultan

Sultan was referred to by Arab geographers, and travellers such as the eleventh-century Ibn Hawqal, as being a city with strong walls supported by castles and forts. There were many goats, and ships frequently visited the port. The Arab geographer Al Badri also referred to the town as having a mosque, baths and markets.

Since 1962 the Libyan Department of Antiquities has partially excavated the important Fatimid site revealing the market, gates, mosque and forts. As you reach the small modern village from Sirte, you will see a pair of green iron gates on the northern side of the road. There is a small admission fee to the site which includes a museum with a collection of early Islamic pottery. You can also see the huge bronze statues of the Philæni brothers, taken from the Italian marble arch, which was built in the 1930s and demolished in 1973.

It is said that when the rival cities of Carthage and Cyrene wanted to establish an agreed frontier, it was decided to solve the problem by giving the responsibility to athletes rather than to diplomats. Two pairs of runners, one Carthaginian and one small village of Agaylah. There are the remains of an Italian fort

Cyrenean, set out simultaneously, one from Carthage and one from Cyrene. It was agreed that wherever they met, the boundary would be established. However, when the pairs of athletes met it was close to the foot of the Gulf of Sirte, which suggested that the Carthaginians had started sooner and had therefore cheated. The Cyreneans said that they would only be prepared to accept the boundary if the two Carthaginian athletes, the Philæni brothers, were willing to be buried alive at the place they h a d r e a c h e d . T h e h e r o i c y o u n g m e n r e s i g n e d t h e m s e l v e s t o internment on behalf of their country. They were buried alive beneath the sand and the ‘Altars of the Philæni’ were erected to commemorate their sacrifice.

The marble arch was erected after the junction of the road leading to the village of Nofilia and close to the Wadi Matratin. The construction was built to mark the completion of the coastal road and was visited by Mussolini and the King of Italy. The Arch was at one time a well-known landmark and thousands of men passed through it when travelling east or west.

Travelling along the coast you come to the small town of Bin Jawwad followed by the oil town of Ras Lanuf. The next village you come to is Al Agaylah, and about 9 km west of there is the small promontory of Bu Sceefa which is close to the island or reef of Bu Sceefa two kilometres offshore. There are the remains of a small Roman fort on the promontory itself, probably that of Automalax.

Communications were more easily maintained by sea than by land, so the garrison was employed as a small coastguard detachm e n t . T h e f o r t i t s e l f w a s n o t m o r e t h a n 1 6 m s q u a r e w i t h surrounding walls on the landward side. The buildings within the perimeter wall consisted of small rectangular rooms but a larger building, possibly a castle, stood close to the sea at the northern end of the site, surrounded by a shallow ditch.

Today, there is little left of the settlement, and although you can still see the outline of some of the buildings, a high dune obscures most of the inner parts of the castle. Fragments of pottery are still scattered over the site, some local handmade ware, some ‘ribbed pottery’ from the later Roman period, and small pieces of green-glazed Byzantine pieces.

To get to Bu Sceefa you have to take a four-wheel-drive vehicle or walk several kilometres from the main road to the sea. There is a small community of fishermen living next to the site who will make you welcome.

Climb onto the roof and you will get a good view of the old town and the surrounding area. Close by is the little Al Suru castle. It has a rectangular shape with an arch at the entrance. It is 40 square metr es with a n u mb er of s mall r oo ms inclu ding th e g u ar d s ’ rooms.

Unfortunately, the whole area has problems with sand movement,