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Derna Darnah درنة |
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Derna
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| Coordinates: 32°46′N 22°38′E / 32.767°N 22.633°E | |
| Country |  Libya |
| District | Darnah |
| Time zone | UTC+2 |
The city of Darnah (Arabic: درنة) or Derna (population 50,000) is a port city in Eastern Libya. Darnah was historically the capital of coastal Cyrenaica, one of the wealthiest provinces in the Barbary States, and remains the capital of Darnah District, with a much small area.
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Darnis and Darne were the Greek forms of the name for the city,[1] while sometimes the form Dardanis is found, it was due to an error.[2] Under Rome it was referred to as Darnis and Derna. Under Islam, it was known as Derneh (Dernah) or Terneh (Ternah).
In Hellanistic times the ancient city was part of the Libyan Pentapolis.[1][3] Under Rome, it became a civil and later the religious metropolis of Libya Secunda, or Libya Inferior, that is the Marmarica region.[4]
It was a metropolitan titular archbishopric in the former Roman province of Libya, in the diocese of Egypt. However, only three, perhaps four, bishops are known, from the fourth or sixth century to about 600.[2]
The city was resettled by the Islamic refugees from Spain (Al-Andalus) in 1493 on the site of the ancient settlement.
Under Ottoman rule Darnah was initially under the governor at Tripoli, but shortly after 1711 it fell under the Karamanli sultanate, until in 1835 when it became a dependency of the autonomous sanjak of Benghazi, essentially Cyrenaica, which was governed directly from Constantinople.[5] which in turn, in 1875, became the vidayet of Cyrenaica.[6] In the 1850s it had an estimated 4,500 inhabitants,[7] who lived by agriculture, fishing and the coastal trade.[2]
The oldest mosque in Darnah is Al-masjeed al-ateeq, or the "Old Mosque", restored by wali Mahmoud Karamanli in 1772, vaulted with 42 small cupolas. This kind of vault was in use due to lack of some materials, like timber or stone in the region of Cyrenaica. There is another mosque, named Masjeed az-zawiyah, built in 1846, more strictly curved in side of a hill.
The French admiral Gantheaume landed at Darnah in June 1800 in an attempt to reinforce Napoleon in Egypt by bringing troops overland, but was rebuffed by the local garrison.[8][9]
Darnah was the location of the 1805 Battle of Derna, in which U.S. General William Eaton marched 500 miles across the Libyan Desert and captured the city during the First Barbary War.
In 2007, American troops in Iraq uncovered a list of foreign fighters for the Iraqi insurgency. Of 112 Libyans in the list, 52 had come from Darnah.[10]
Darnah is located at the eastern end of the Jabal Akhdar, the heavily forested, fertile upland area of eastern Libya, which is the wettest region of Libya.
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