Sabha

The oasis basin around Sabha lay on the trans-Saharan routes that crossed the Fezzan for two thousand years, carrying gold, salt, ivory, slaves and ostrich feathers between Lake Chad and the Mediterranean, and water from wells and underground channels supported gardens in three separate settlements, Jadid, Hajara and Qurda, that later grew together. The Garamantes had farmed and traded from Garama, west along the Wadi al-Hayaa, long before; from the 16th century the Awlad Muhammad ruled the Fezzan from Murzuq, further south, at times under Ottoman overlordship.

Italy took the Fezzan from the Ottomans after 1912, but its hold remained precarious for years. The Italian army built a fort on the rise above Sabha, known as Fort Elena or the Fortezza Margherita, and made the town a garrison and administrative centre. Free French forces advanced from Chad during the Second World War and took Murzuq in January 1943, and France then administered the Fezzan from Sabha until Libyan independence in 1951.

Under the monarchy and then under Muammar Gaddafi, who grew up in Sabha, was educated there and first became involved in political activism in the town, it was enlarged with a university, a hospital, an airport and military installations, and became the Fezzan's capital in fact as well as name. It remained a stronghold of Gaddafi's support through much of the 2011 war. Since then the city has seen repeated fighting between armed groups drawn from its different communities, and the collapse of state authority has left services, salaries and security uncertain.

Sabha is the meeting point of the Fezzan's peoples. Arab tribes, among them the Awlad Suleiman and Magarha, live in the city and the oasis valleys; the Tuareg are strongest around Ubari and Ghat to the west; and the Tebu, whose lands run south towards Chad and Niger, have long had quarters in the city. Each keeps its own language — Tamasheq among the Tuareg, Tedaga among the Tebu — alongside Libyan Arabic, and loyalty to tribe and community runs deep, shaping marriage, work and local security.

Those same divisions have been the source of the city's conflicts since 2011, when disputes over land, citizenship, smuggling routes and control of the streets turned into armed clashes. Reconciliation agreements between communities have been brokered repeatedly, and mediation by elders remains an important institution.

Hospitality follows desert custom everywhere in the Fezzan: tea poured in three rounds, dates set out for a guest, and a meal of meat and rice pressed on visitors. Weddings run over several days and draw families back from the coast. Tuareg silver jewellery, leatherwork and the men's indigo or white veil, the tagelmust, are part of the region's visual identity, and the trade and kinship networks that shape social life cross the southern borders as readily as they follow the roads north.

Sabha had about 116,000 residents at a 2012 count, and it is the city everyone in the south comes to for hospitals, banks, government papers and higher education. Most households live from public salaries — the university, the administration, the army and the police — along with trade, transport, and farming in the date gardens and irrigated fields around the oasis.

The regional economy leans on oil produced elsewhere in the desert, including the El Sharara field to the west, Libya's largest, where protests from nearby towns have at times forced production to stop. Smuggling of subsidised fuel, goods and people across the southern borders is a significant informal economy, and Sabha sits on the main route taken by migrants travelling north from countries further south.

Daily life is difficult. Power cuts are long, cash and fuel run short, salaries arrive late, water and rubbish services are strained, and the security situation can close streets without warning. In summer the city empties into the shade around midday and comes back to life after sunset, when the markets and cafés fill and the heat finally drops.

Food in the Fezzan is plain, filling and built on what the oasis produces. Bazin, a stiff dough of barley flour turned out in a dome and eaten from a shared dish with a lamb or vegetable sauce, is the staple most associated with Libya, and couscous steamed with meat and vegetables belongs to festive and family meals. Camel and goat are eaten alongside lamb, and dried meat keeps for journeys.

Dates are the great harvest: eaten fresh or dried, pressed into date syrup, and made into sweets, with the gardens around Sabha and along the wadis producing several varieties. Under the palms grow tomatoes, onions, peppers, alfalfa and grain. Bread is flat and baked daily, and in Ramadan the evening table starts with sharba, a lamb and vegetable soup, and bourek, fried pastry parcels.

Tuareg and Tebu cooking is present in the city's households: taguella, a thick flat bread cooked in hot sand under embers, broken up and eaten with a meat sauce, belongs to the Tuareg. Asida, steamed wheat dough with date syrup and butter, is made for Eid and the Prophet's birthday. Tea is the centre of every gathering — poured from a height into small glasses, in at least three rounds, the last sometimes with peanuts. Alcohol is illegal.