Cyrenaica. Information.
CYRENAICA is the eastern coastal region of Libya. Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it was part of the Creta et Cyrenaica province during the Roman period, later divided in Libia Pentapolis and Libia Sicca. During the Islamic period, the area came to be known as Barqa, after the city of Barca. Cyrenaica was the name of an administrative division of Italian Libya from 1927 through 1943, then under British military and civil administration from 1943 through 1951, and finally in the Kingdom of Libya from 1951 through 1963. In a wider sense, which is still used, Cyrenaica is composed of all of the eastern part of Libya, including the Kufra District. Cyrenaica is adjacent to Tripolitania in the northwest and Fezzan in the southwest. The region that used to be Cyrenaica officially through 1963 is now divided up into several shabiyat, the administrative divisions of Libya). Italian Cyrenaica (Italian: Cirenaica Italiana) was an Italian colony, located in present-day eastern Libya, that existed from 1911 to 1934. It was part of the territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911, alongside Italian Tripolitania. The territory of the two colonies was sometimes referred to as "Italian Libya" or Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI). Both names were also used after their unification, with Italian Libya becoming the official name of the newly combined colony. In 1923, indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order organized the Libyan resistance movement against Italian settlement in Libya. The rebellion was put down by Italian forces in 1932, after the so-called "pacification campaign", which resulted in the deaths of a quarter of Cyrenaica's local population. In 1934, it became part of Italian Libya.
