historical region of NW Libya, on the Mediterranean
See Tripolitania in American Heritage Dictionary 4
A historical region of northern Africa bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Originally a Phoenician colony, it was later held by Carthage, Numidia, and Rome (after 46 B.C.). Tripolitania fell to the Vandals in A.D. 435, to the Arabs in the seventh century, and finally to the Ottoman Turks in 1553.