Sabratha

The coastal town of Sabratha, or Sabrata, located about 40 km east of Zuwarah city, is one of the best preserved Roman sites outside Italy, and one of the world’s best archaeological sites to visit. Its strategic location by the sea and the magical groves and trees surrounding its impressive collection of buildings, busts, columns and temples, like those of Isis and Serapis, and the large Corinthian temple dedicated to Liber Pater, makes the city one of the best Roman destinations in Libya. Its colonnaded three-floor theatre by the sea is a place directors dream to see.

Sabratha was originally a Berber settlement known as Zwagha, whose name derives from the ancient Berber tribe Zwagha, who later became known by various names, like Zwawa(h) and Hawwarah.  Both al-Iaqubi (ninth century) and Ibn A’bd al-H’akam state that during the seventh century Nafousa occupied the territory of Sabratha. This was further confirmed by al-Bakari (eleventh century) who informed us that Sabratha was inhabited by the Zwagha tribe, and that the Berber tribes Nafousa, Zwagha and Zwara were among the tribes living in the Tripolitania region. Hence the location of present-day Zwara (or Zuwarah), less than 40 km west of Sabratha.

Temple of Isis

The Greeks called the city by the name of Abrotonon, and its Latin form Habrotonum, according to Pliny, originally meant  "grain market". On neo-Punic coins, the name Sabrata appeared as SABRAT and SABRATHAN. But since al-Bakari mentions Subratha by the name of Sabra, then one can easily see the connection between the two, and easily derive the present form.

When the Phoenicians arrived in the first millennium BC,  Sabratha became a trading post, and then was transformed into a majestic city when the Romans invaded the area. In the second century BC, the distinguished  Berber philosopher and poet Lucius Apuleius, the author of The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses), who is wrongly known as Roman despite himself stating in one of his works that he was half Berber half Greek, was brought to trial in Sabratha before Claudius Maximus, Proconsul of Africa, in the year 157 BC, and charged with seducing a wealthy widow by black magic, only to be acquitted as innocent. According to al-Bakari Sabratha was taken by A’umer Ben al-A’as’ after he secured Tripoli, and none have survived from its inhabitants except a small number of natives who fled to the sea, where now its ruins remain.

The ruins of Sabratha, including the magnificent theatre and the forum, illustrate the splendour the city enjoyed under Roman occupation. Beneath the most ancient buildings archaeologists found layers upon layers of material, separated by thin layers of sand, including the earlier Phoenician pottery and coins. The Phoenicians to begin with were trading in Sabratha only seasonally, by pitching their tents and stores and leave when they sold their goods. But by the 5th century BC, they began to establish permanent settlements, build houses, and a market square for their traders, which was overlaid by a Roman development in the first century BC. The Roman period came to an end after the disastrous invasions of the Vandals during the fifth century AD, and subsequent to the later invasions the city was badly destroyed, where it remained in ruins ever since.