The Fezzan

The Fezzan was green long before it was desert, and its rock paintings and engravings record elephants, giraffes and cattle herders from the wetter Sahara of thousands of years ago. Settled here by about 1000 BC, the Garamantes built a kingdom, with its capital at Garama, modern Germa, drawing water from underground channels called foggaras, farming the oases and trading across the desert. They clashed often with Rome, and in 203 Septimius Severus captured Garama before abandoning it.

The Fezzan became a staging post on trans-Saharan routes carrying slaves and other goods between the Mediterranean and Lake Chad. From the 16th century the Awlad Muhammad dynasty ruled from Murzuq, which became a caravan centre, until 1812, at times under Ottoman overlordship. European travellers such as James Richardson, who described Ghat in 1845–1846, crossed it in the 19th century.

Italy took the Fezzan from the Ottomans in 1912, but its hold long remained precarious. In the Second World War Free French forces advanced from Chad, and France administered the region until Libyan independence in 1951. Under Gaddafi, who went to school in Sabha, the Fezzan remained a stronghold of his support through much of the 2011 war. Since then local tribes have complained that they see little of the oil money, and the region has seen local clashes, protests that shut the Sharara oilfield, and rival national forces competing for influence.

The Fezzan is Libya's most mixed region. Arab tribes live in Sabha and the oasis valleys, the Tuareg in Ghat and around Ubari, and the Tebu in Murzuq, Qatrun and the far south. Each keeps its own language — Tamasheq for the Tuareg, Tedaga for the Tebu — along with its own dress and customs, and loyalty to tribe and community runs deep.

The Tuareg men's indigo or white veil, the tagelmust, silver jewellery and leatherwork belong to a culture shared with Algeria, Niger and Mali. Murzuq held Libya's first Toubou national festival in 2013. The Tebu have ties to Chad and Niger, and the region's trade and kinship networks cross the borders.

Hospitality is the desert's first rule. Guests are welcomed with tea poured in three rounds and offered dates, and in the oases gardens and palm groves are tended with care passed down between generations.

Sabha, the Fezzan's largest city, is the region's hub, with its university, markets and airport. Ubari, Ghat, Murzuq, Brak and Germa are small towns strung along the oasis valleys of Wadi al-Hayaa, Wadi al-Shatii and the Murzuq basin, with much of the land in between uninhabited.

The Sharara oilfield in the Murzuq Desert is Libya's largest, and the Great Man-Made River draws water from beneath the desert for the coast. Most local people live from public salaries, farming date palms and irrigated grain, trade and, for some, smuggling fuel, goods and people across the southern borders.

Fuel and cash shortages, long power cuts, poor services and insecurity weigh on daily life, and many residents feel forgotten by governments in the north. The Fezzan is also a main route for migrants travelling north from countries further south.

Desert food is plain and filling. Bazin, a stiff barley dough with a meat or vegetable sauce, and couscous are staples, and camel and goat meat are eaten alongside lamb. The Tuareg bake taguella, a flat bread cooked in the hot sand under embers, which is broken up and eaten with a meat sauce.

Dates are the region's great harvest, eaten fresh, dried or pressed into date syrup, and the oasis gardens grow tomatoes, onions, peppers and grain under the palms. Dried meat and milk from camels and goats carry herders through the desert.

Tea is the centre of every gathering: among the Tuareg, as across the Maghreb, at least three glasses are usually served.

The Ubari sand sea holds a string of lakes in the dunes between Ubari and Germa, including Gaberoun and Um el-Ma, surrounded by palms and reeds and fed by groundwater. Near Germa are the ruins of Garama and the tombs of the Garamantes, and to the south the Messak plateau is known for its large rock engravings of animals.

In the far southwest, the Tadrart Acacus mountains near Ghat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, have dunes, arches, gorges and deep wadis with paintings and carvings of giraffes, elephants, ostriches and camels, and of people and horses. Ghat itself lies below the fortress the Italians built on Koukemen hill.

The Murzuq sand sea spreads south of the Messak, a vast field of high dunes, with the old caravan town of Murzuq on its edge. Sabha, at the region's centre, has Fort Elena, the Italian-built fort shown on the ten-dinar note, and the markets where desert traders met.