Ramadan al-Suwayhli

? - 1920

Tripolitanian nationalist.

Ramadan al-Suwayhli was a member of a prominent Arab family from the eastern Tripolitanian coastal town of Misurata. They opposed the interests of the other leading family, the Muntasirs.

Suwayhli had been tried and acquitted of murdering Abd al-Qasim Muntasir shortly after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, when Tripolitania was part of the Ottoman Empire. Suwayhli had played a vital role in supporting the Ottomans against Italian and Sanusi incursions. After the Treaty of Ouchy (1912), which ended the war between Italy and the Ottoman Empire, Suwayhli sought an independent Tripolitania. He had been instrumental in founding the short-lived Tripolitanian republic in 1917, which had not been recognized by Italy but was tolerated (even after the laws of 1919, the Legge Fondamentale, when alternative administrative structures were established). Its members, including Ramadan al-Suwayhli, were paid large stipends by the Italian authorities until the structure of the republic collapsed. Italy then connived in Suwayhli's death, at the hands of the Muntasir family (who still held him responsible for Abd al-Qasim's murder) and Abd al-Nabi Bilhayr, leader of the Warfalla (who had fallen out with him concerning the republic).

Bibliography

Anderson, Lisa S. "The Tripoli Republic, 1917 - 1922." In Social and Economic Development of Libya, edited by E. G. H. Joffe and K. S. McLachlan. Wisbech, U.K.: Middle East and North African Studies Press; Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982.

— GEORGE JOFFE