Review of Ali Abdullatif Ahmida’s Genocide in Libya, by Fathel – 27 July 2026

From Fathel’s Substack

Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History (London: Routledge, 2021), 234 pp.

In ‘Genocide in Libya’ through decades of oral history and archival research, Ali Abdullatif Ahmida traces the history of the Shar – evil in Arabic, the local name for the genocidal campaign where the Fascist regime rounded up the population of Cyrenaica and interned them in 16 different concentration camps. Ahmida explores the role of the memory of the genocide in Libya, in Italy and the broader West, the ideological foundations of Italian Fascist and Liberal settler colonialism, the myths of benevolent Italian Liberalism and Fascism, the limits of area and genocide studies, and the American view of Italian Fascism.

A short history of Italian colonization and myth-making in Libya

The Italian Fascists inherited their colonies in Libya and Ethiopia from the Liberal government. Ahmida challenges the notion that the Liberals were somehow benevolent or not violent, and that it was solely the Fascists who represented violence and repression. The conquest of Libya started in 1911, back when Libya was known as Tripoli of the West, or Tarabulus al-Gharb in Arabic. It remained the last North African Ottoman province. Internally, the province was divided between the three (though fluid) regions of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Barqa — or as it is known in the West, Cyrenaica, the ancient Greek name for the region. The region of Cyrenaica or Barqa was also an Ottoman Mutasariffiya like the region of Mount Lebanon, which meant it was semi-autonomous, but in Barqa’s case, it was much greater due to the dynamism of the Sanusiyya movement’s governance.

The name Libya was given to Tripoli by the Italians. The name goes back to Pharaonic times; it was used by the Greeks and Romans to describe the tribes inhabiting Cyrenaica millennia ago. The Italians referred to Libya as Quarta Sponda or their “Fourth Shore,” taking the name after what the Roman Empire had called Libya. For the Fascists, the conquest of Libya, or in their imagination and propaganda, the reconquest, was foundational to the Fascist project. By renaming Tripoli Libya and using the Roman name of Quarta Sponda, the Fascists were linking their newly expanding Mediterranean empire with that of Rome.

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