TRIPOLI CASTLE
I would wait for transport to RAF Idris in the vicinity of the Arch of Marcus Aralias, sometime Emperor of Rome. The arch was the last remaining artefact of Oea, one of the three Roman cities which had replaced the Phoenician trading ports on the Mediterranean coast of present-day Tripolitania. The others were Sabratha and Leptis Magna. Behind the Arch was an entrance to the great Souk or market where jewellers, carpet sellers, brass and leather workers and the like plied their trade.
The Castle loomed over the souk and over the great square we called Castle Square. One entrance to the castle led to the harbour where, in my day, liners occasionally docked. In the old days of the Ottoman Empire the Pasha’s lethal ships lay there between forays around the Mediterranean attacking merchant ships and capturing white slaves. We call them Corsairs. They were pirates in all but name but they were furnished with Letters of Marque and thus ‘legally’ empowered to attack the enemies of Ottoman Empire.
The Castle dungeons had been largely untouched in the 1950s. There was still graffiti on the walls left by some of the 300 or so United States sailors imprisoned there as a result of a war between the Tripoli Pasha, Yusef Karamanli, and the USA. The USA, of which there were then still only 13 states, went on to attempt a regime change in Tripoli in 1805 which failed in an heroic battle in Derna and gave birth to the US Marine Corp’s song ‘From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli’.
Tripoli was one of three Barbary ports on the African shore of the Mediterranean. The others, larger than Tripoli I believe, were Tunis and Algiers. There was a fourth called Sale which raided from the Atlantic shore of Morocco. The main purpose of the Corsair ships was to capture white slaves. In Tripoli they were sold in an elaborate auction in the castle in the presence of the Pasha and the European consuls who would step in if one of their citizens was up for auction and set them free.
There was a second slave auction in Tripoli. This one was for black slaves brought there after a long and dangerous journey on foot on the trans Saharan camel tracks. One of these tracks led from the ancient city of Kano about which more later.
THREE LETTERS I FAILED TO KEEP
I am still mystified about this event. In the middle of the last century two junior members of the British Embassy in Libya visited our apartment in Tripoli. They were weeding the embassy archive and carried three letters with them. They were handwritten by careful clerks in London and dated sometime during the reign of ‘Mad King George III’. One of them warned the British Consul General of the King’s indisposition. Another complained that the ‘Bey’ of Tripoli proposed to send an ‘Embassy’ to the Court of King James and thus cause the King some pain as he would be required to pay the expenses of the Bey and his retinue whilst he remained in London. The letter suggested the Consul General ‘stopped’ the embassy. It mentioned that there was probably a British Colonel in Tripoli who might be employed to do so, presumably by some skulduggery. There was to be a retired British Army Colonel who became Consul General to the Ottoman Regency of Tripoli. He was called Hamner Warrington and was both colourful and remarkably effective in representing British interests in Libya.
The third letter instructed the Consul General to report on the number of slaves sold in the Tripoli slave market and to make a special note of those who had been castrated. Eunuchs were highly valued in the Ottoman Empire. That letter must have been written when the British were trying to stop the slave trade.
DON'T KILL ME NOW 