Tripoli in the Ottoman Documents

This documentary publication on the history of Tripoli, Libya, resulted from a joint project of IRCICA and the Department of Ottoman Archives, Directorate General of State Archives, Republic of Türkiye. The book was prepared by a group of experts in the Department of Ottoman Archives, then provided with Arabic translations of the entries and published by IRCICA. It includes the images, Latin-script transcriptions of the Ottoman Turkish texts, and Arabic translations of 174 official documents dating from the period between 1559 and 1916. Until roughly the Tanzimat – Reform (1839) period, the documents mainly consist of the state decrees related to defense and security, local administrators, food aid and emergency assistance, tax justice, frontier disputes, land administration and institutional organization; after the Tanzimat, a larger variety of documents bring other subjects into the picture such as the reform and development programs applied in the region, improvement of Tripoli’s port facilities after the opening of the Suez Canal, incentives to international trade, rewards to state services, and developments in the Ottoman State’s policy on European powers’ outlooks on Tripoli. The book is a useful reference for historians interested in these subjects.