Tripoli.

Title

Tripoli.

Beautiful panoramic view of Tripoli in Lebanon with the Kadisha River (Nahr Abu Ali) that formed the Kadisha Valley and a Christian monastery (centre). Three locals and four sheep in the foreground on the left.

c. 1836

Artist

Bartlett (1809-1854)

William Henry Bartlett (1809 – 1854) was a British artist, best known for his numerous steel engravings. The finely detailed steel engravings Bartlett produced were published uncolored with a text by Nathaniel Parker Willis as American Scenery. Bartlett made sepia wash drawings the exact size to be engraved. His engraved views were widely copied by artists, but no signed oil painting by his hand is known. Engravings based on Bartlett's views were later used in his posthumous History of the United States of North America, continued by Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward and published around 1856.

Historical Description

Tripoli (Arabic Ṭarābulus) is the capital of Libya and lies on the Mediterranean coast in the northwest of the country. The city was founded in the 7th century BC by the Phoenicians under the name Oea and was part of the famous federation of cities known as “Tripolis” (Greek for “three cities”), together with Sabratha and Leptis Magna. Under Roman rule, Tripoli developed into an important commercial and administrative center of the province of Africa. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city was successively ruled by the Vandals, Byzantines, and in the 7th century AD by the Arabs, who introduced Islam and made it a key hub of Mediterranean trade. In the 16th century, Tripoli came under Ottoman rule and remained—apart from short interruptions—part of the Ottoman Empire until the Italian colonization in 1911. After the Second World War, Libya became an independent state in 1951, with Tripoli as its capital. Today, Tripoli is the political, economic, and cultural center of Libya.