Ancient city of Derna in Libya

The town was founded in the 15th century on the site of Darnis, an ancient Greek colony (rock tombs remain). The city was one of an important Mediterranean port in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans.

The history of the region commences with the Greek colonization of Cyrene ca. 631 B.C. Herodotos says that Delphi directed Thera to send a small band of settlers under the leadership of Battos to found a city in Libya. After six years of living by the sea not far from Darnis, Battos moved his people to Cyrene where they were assured of a constant supply of water and the protection of the high ground.

Derna, also spelled Darnah, town, northeastern Libya, situated on the Mediterranean coast east of Benghazi. It lies on the eastern ridges of the Akhḍar Mountains in the delta of the small Wadi Derna.

In 1801 the French troops on their way to Egypt were refused a landing by the plucky inhabitants. Derna once played an important role in U.S. military history. In 1805, Consul William Eaton led seven U.S. marines and several hundred Greek, Arab and Turkish mercenaries on a 500-mile march from Alexandria to Derna, where his odd little army took the city from a larger Karamanli force in little more than an hour.

Derna experienced a plague in 1816 and a cholera outbreak and an earthquake in 1834. It was a slave port until the 1850s.
Ancient city of Derna in Libya

Tripoli, Libya

The city also known as Tripoli-of-the-West. At the heart of Tripolitania (the northwestern part of the country) was its metropolis, Tripoli, for centuries a terminal for caravans plying the Saharan trade routes and a port sheltering pirates and slave traders. Tripolitania's cultural ties were with the Maghrib (Maghreb), of which it was a part geographically and culturally and with which it shared a common history.

Libya’s earliest inhabitants were the semi-nomadic Berbers, whose descendants still live throughout North Africa’s Atlas Mountains. Phoenician merchants from the Levant began to settle in what is today Libya from around 1000 BC

The Phoenicians founded Tripoli in the 8th century BC. It originally comprised three neighborhoods situated in the current location of Al Mina. It was the center of a Phoenician confederation with Sidon and Tyre and Arados Island, hence the name "Tripolis", meaning "triple city". This city enjoyed the highest repute amongst the cities of Phoenicia for there, as it happens, the Phoenicians held their common council and deliberated on matters of supreme importance.

Roman settlements appeared in Libya in the third century BC. Later Rome triumphed over Carthage and destroyed the city in 149 B.C. The Phoenician Tripolis: Oya, Sparta, and Leptis-Magna, close to the modern Tripoli, became a Roman city.

The Arabs arrived in Libya much before Islam, from Yemen and settled around the water recourses of the mountains. In 10th Century AD the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Muiz, conquered the city. It became an independent province encompassing Lattakia (Syria), experiencing a commercial and cultural boom that rendered it a significant center of Shiia.

In 1109 Tripoli was conquered by Raymond de Saint Gilles, Count of Toulouse. It became the capital of Tripoli County, one of the main Crusader states, and remained under domination by the Franks for almost two centuries under the name “Triple”.

In 1289 the Mamluks conquered the Crusader city that was situated on the peninsula, razed it to the ground but keeping the St. Gilles Citadel and the Cathedral, today known as “Taynal Mosque”, and rebuilt a new city two kilometers to the east at the foot of the citadel and straddling the Abu Ali river. During this period, Tripoli witnessed a substantial growth in its economic and political power.
Tripoli, Libya

Cairo – the largest city in Africa

People have lived in the area around Cairo for thousands of years. The history of Cairo begins with a garrison town named Fustat that was built on the east bank of the Nile by the Muslim army of about 10, 000 soldiers that invaded Egypt in 641.

Fustat served as the frost capital of Egypt during the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750), based in Damascus and the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), based in Baghdad.

In AD 969 Egypt’s ruler at the time established a new city. It was later named Cairo. Fustat is part of Old Cairo.

On the 1200s Cairo became the capital of a large Muslim empire. The city thrived as a center of trade and Islamic learning and culture.

By about 1340, not only had Cairo’s population swelled to half a million inhabitants (making it the largest city on three continents), but as the home of al-Azhar University, it had also become the main seat of learning in the Islamic world. After other rulers rook over in the 1500s, the city went into a period of decline.

The city remained relatively unimportant for several centuries; by the time Napoleon’s army invaded Egypt in 1798, Cairo’s population had declined to fewer than 300, 000. In 1922 Egypt became an independent country with Cairo as its capital. Since then the city has grown and grown.
Cairo – the largest city in Africa

Ancient history of Carthage (Tunisia)

According to the Roman historian Appian the city was built by Dido, a Tyrian princess, 50 years before taking of Troy or about 1234 BC and 481 years before the foundation of Rome. While Philistos of Syracuse dates its foundation to 1215 BC.

It was founded by settlers from Phoenician Tyre. However based on modern science and archeology, the year of city’s foundation has been set at 814 BC on the basis of the writings of ancient authors starting from Timaeus of Taormina who lived in the 3rd century.

The foundation of Carthage was part of Phoenician expansion to the west and the associated colonization that aimed not only at establishing trading posts and securing sea route, but also at founding self-sufficient and autonomous city.

Carthage were very weak at first, grew larger by insensible degrees, in the country where it was founded. 

The leadership of Carthage arose as a reaction to the Greek threat to the Phoenician position in the western Mediterranean.

Its dominion was not long confined to Africa. This city extended her conquests into Europe, invaded Sardinia, made herself mistress of a great part of Sicily and reduced to her subjection of almost the whole of Spain.

Carthage’s maritime economy was based upon system of treaty trade, which set commercial parameters and offered trade protection for its respective participants.

Rome final war with Carthage in 149 – 146 BC destroyed Carthage city. The city was razed, the survivors sold into slavery and the land turned into province.
Ancient history of Carthage (Tunisia)

History of Alexandria in Egypt

Alexander the Great came to Egypt in the second half of the fourth century (332 BC). He stopped at a fishing village on the Egyptian Mediterranean coast called the village of Rakoda.

He noted that ‘the site was the very best in which to found a city, and that the city would prosper’. The Roman architect Vitruvius notes that Alexander choose the site ‘observing a harbor rendered safe by nature, an excellent center for trade, cornfields throughout all Egypt and the great usefulness of the mighty river Nile’.

He then pondered on a small island in the sea opposite to this village, called the island of Pharos.

The island had a port to which ships used to resort, which has turned into today’s Alexandria commercial port. 

The location was known to Greeks and already in use when Alexander decided to found a city there.

For the thousand years after its foundation, Alexandria served as the cultural, political, and religious center of Egypt. In addition to its reputation for learning, its architecture was famous.

By the early part of the first century BC, the city had grown so rapidly that travelers and historians overwhelmingly agreed she was the greatest city of the civilized world and surpassed all other in size, elegance and luxury.

Alexandria was built on a soil of limestone above the level of the Delta, on the January 20th 331 BC. The construction of the city was under the supervision of Kleumenes, Finance Minister of Alexander the Great in Egypt.

It was recorded that Alexander laid out the site an traced the streets skillfully and order that the city should be called after him Alexandria.

Alexandria was completed over eight years till the reign of Ptolemy II. Ptolemy made Alexandria the capital. He founded the university of Alexandria, the great Library and built laboratories, museums, a zoological garden and promenades.
History of Alexandria in Egypt