The political and cultural role of Banu Ammar in the Emirate of Tripoli

Abstract

Tripoli is a city of Phoenician construction, founded by the Phoenicians along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean (1). The Phoenician cities in the Persian era 400 - 330 BC enjoyed great freedom, especially in the commercial field, with a kind of partial independence (2), but they did not take the same role in the Roman era 62 BC - 306 AD and did not win the high status that a number of coastal cities won Al-Shami is like Beirut, in which the Greeks minted money (3). However, this ignorance on the part of the Roman authorities does not prevent Tripoli from taking a prominent cultural center, like the rest of the coastal cities in the Levant region (4). In addition, the Romans later took great care of Tripoli through their interest in beautifying it through its buildings and building many temples there (5). In the Islamic era, Tripoli became a naval base and a house for the manufacture of ships, especially in the Umayyad period (6). As a result of the great need that was imposed on it because of its foreign wars, it must have a strong naval fleet that contributes to completing the naval power, in addition to the presence of Lebanese cedar wood, since Tripoli has remained, since the Muslims took it back, an important naval and commercial base (7). .