Travels in the footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis

by Sir R. Lambert Playfair

There is nothing worth seeing without the walls of Tripoli. In the town itself immediately above the port, stands a four-faced triumphal arch of white marble, covered with a profusion of ornaments, both within and without, even to a fault, if there could be fault in so much excellence.

Yet notwithstanding its convenient situation and the commodiousness it presents for measuring and delineations, and that there are seven consuls of different nations residing at Tripoli, and a number of private merchants, no information, much less any drawing of these beautiful remains has been ever given, till that which I then made.

Tripoli from its ditch and rampart has the appearance of a place of strength, but it is not so. The entrance of the port is naturally so bad, and the sands from the desert falling into it have made it so shallow, as to disqualify it from being a place either of trade or of war. The country about it is very barren, and necessaries consequently very dear. Bad government has checked population or caused emigration elsewhere. The sands of the desert, no longer imprisoned by the grass or roots that necessarily attend frequented places, are now become loose and cover most of the ground fit for cultivation, to the very walls of the town, upon which they are heaped up, except as I have said, upon the side of the harbour, where upon any blast of wind, shower after shower sinks to the bottom and remains never to return.

Here I insert an extract from a paper found amongst Bruce’s manuscripts, but certainly not in his handwriting, headed, ‘Memo. on Tripoli in Africa.’

The three cities of Leptis, Sabrata and Oea constituted anciently a federal union, and the district governed by their Concilium Annum was styled Lybia Tripolitana.[281] This council was composed of the representatives of all orders of the people, and through its president received the commands of the Emperor, and transmitted to him the representations or complaints of the province. Under the reign of Valentinian,[282] we read of the oppression under which they groaned from the tyranny of the Count Romanus, military governor of Africa, whose protection they had sought against the attacks of the Austuriani, barbarians of Getulia, who had laid waste their territory, and killed or carried into captivity many of their principal citizens. The impunity of his misgovernment, the venality of the Imperial notary sent to inquire into the complaints of the Tripolitains, and the public execution of their president, Ruricius,[283] at Sititi, because he had presumed to pity the distress of the province, presents a frightful picture of the evils to which the distant and tributary possessions of the Romans were exposed under the emperors. As the overgrown rule of these princes obliged them to depute the investigation of the wrongs complained of by their subjects to officers exposed to every influence of corruption, we can scarcely wonder that those wrongs, often unredressed, occasioned frequent revolts, which were one great source of the ruin of Africa. The crimes of Romanus drove the Africans under Firmus the Moor into rebellion, and for a time the whole province was lost to the empire. It was restored by the restorer of Britain, Theodosius. The impunity of the first, and the ignominious death of the second of these generals, who was publicly beheaded at Carthage, on a vague suspicion that his name and services were superior to the rank of a subject, show how dangerous to its possessor was, under those princes, the union of ability and virtue.

Leptis and Sabrata were ruined by the frequent recurrence of such commotions, and by the policy of Genseric, King of the Vandals, which led him to destroy the fortifications of almost all the African cities, thus leaving them a prey to the Moors. Procopius[284] tells us that Justinian repeopled the first by inducing the inhabitants of the neighbouring country to renounce their idolatry, become Christians and settle in it, and that he rebuilt the walls, both of it and of Sabrata.

Before the reign of Constans the Second,[285] they had again yielded to the joint attacks of the barbarians and the moving sands of the deserts, for we find that the wealth, the inhabitants, and the name of the province had then gradually centred in the maritime City of Tripolis, built on the site of Oea, the native country of Apuleius.[286]

The Prefect Gregory, who had perhaps assumed the purple, since Theophanes brands him with the appellation of tyrant, at this time ruled the provinces. He was called on to check the progress of the victorious Saracens, who under Abdallah, the most renowned and dextrous horseman of Arabia, had crossed the desert from Egypt and pitched their tents before the walls of Tripoli. The army of the Caliph Othman did not exceed 40,000 men, and the fortifications of Tripoli were strong enough to resist its first assaults. That of Gregory amounted to 120,000 men and compelled the Saracens to relinquish, for a time, the labours of the siege.

The utter defeat of the Christian army and the triumph of the Mohammedan invaders has been already narrated.

Marmol, on the authority of Ibn al Ragny, an African historian, tells us that Tripoli was completely ruined shortly after this time, and its inhabitants either killed or carried into slavery. Long after, he adds, the town was rebuilt by the Africans in a sandy plain, producing palm trees but no corn, as the ever-encroaching sands of the desert have covered plains of considerable extent to the north of the town, which were anciently cultivated.