The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1911. THE PEOPLE OF TRIPOLI.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 9, 21 December 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1911. THE PEOPLE OF TRIPOLI.

The papulation of Tripoli is a very mixed one. The indigenous people are the Berbers, a Hamitic race who once covered North Africa from the Red Sea to the Canaries. They were driven back in the eleventh century hy. a swarm of Arab nomads, and are found pure only in the highest and remotest region of the Djebel. They have the reputation for loving liberty and resisting alien innovations; they had a large share in the economic, and military achievements usually attributed to the Arabs. Tarik, the conqueror of the Westgotlis at •Jerez do la Front-era in 711, was a Tripolitan Berber; and good authorities think the Berbers the hops of North Africa’s future. There arc some 2000 Jews in Tripoli. Jews first entered Tripoli during the Babylonian captivity; they came with the Roman colonists; about the year 1000 others emigrated there from Egypt; and Tripoli had its quota of the groat exodus from Spain. They are found in all the settled districts of the coast and the Djebel. The first Arab conquerors, the missionaries of Islam, were few in numbers; the large hordes did not come till the eleventh century. On ; tin* coast and in the oases Arab and Berber blood has mixed, and there are, indeed, very few pure Arabs in , Tripoli. The Tripolitan nomad and robber elans of to-day are chiefly Ber- < her, and what the Italians are “up i against” is indicated by the history ! ol a single one of them. At the be- 1 ginning of the nineteenth century the r Aulad Slimau lived on the Great Syr- i tis desert in fend with the Pasha of <■ Egypt, Driven into Egypt, they returned to wage war on Murz.uk, the [ capital of the Fozzan. They were al- ! most annihilated, hut already in ISOO t they were once more strong enough .' to conquer the Fozzan and to hold it j against Die Turk? for twelve rear?. 7

Tjioy then retired to Lake Chad, nearly 1000 miles away from their original haunts, amt in 1850 were again almost w iped out. Hut in the seventies Naehtigall found them carrying on operations fiom Lake Chad to the borders of Tripoli.