page_title: Al-Khums
section_title: Leptis Magna
hierarchical_section_title: Al-Khums / History / Leptis Magna
caption_attribution_description: English: The ancient Roman theater at Leptis Magna, photographed in 2006 Deutsch: Das Theater in Leptis Magna (Libyen)
context_page_description: Al-Khums or Khoms is a city, port and the de jure capital of the Murqub District on the Mediterranean coast of Libya with an estimated population of around 202,000. The population at the 1984 census was 38,174. Between 1983 and 1995 it was the administrative center of al-Khums District.
context_section_description: The city was founded by the Phoenicians around 1000 BCE, who gave it the name Lpqy. Written LPQ (Punic: 𐤋𐤐𐤒) or LPQY (𐤋𐤐𐤒𐤉). This has been tentatively connected to the Semitic root (present in Arabic) LFG, meaning "to build" or "to piece together", presumably in reference to the construction of the city. 
  The town did not become prominent until Carthage became a major power in the Mediterranean Sea in the 4th century BCE. It nominally remained part of Carthage's dominions until the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BCE and then became part of the Roman Republic.
  Soon Roman merchants settled in the city and started a profitable commerce with the Libyan interior. The republic of Rome sent some colonists together with a small garrison in order to control the city. Since then the city started to grow and was even allowed to mint its own coins.
  Leptis Magna remained as such until the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when the city and the surrounding area were formally incorporated into the empire as part of the province of Africa. It soon became one of the leading cities of Roman Africa and a major trading post.
  Leptis achieved its greatest prominence beginning in 193 CE, when the ethnically Punic Lucius Septimius Severus became emperor. He favored his hometown above all other provincial cities, and the buildings and wealth he lavished on it made Leptis Magna the third-most important city in Africa, rivaling Carthage and Alexandria. In 205 CE, he and the imperial family visited the city and received great honors.
  Among the changes that Severus introduced were to create a magnificent new forum and to rebuild the docks.  The natural harbour had a tendency to silt up, but the Severan changes made this worse, and the eastern wharves are extremely well preserved, since they were scarcely used.
  Leptis over-extended itself at this period.  During the Crisis of the 3rd Century, when trade declined precipitously, Leptis Magna's importance also fell into a decline, and by the middle of the 4th century, even before it was completely devastated by the 365 tsunami, large parts of the city had been abandoned. Ammianus Marcellinus recounts that the crisis was worsened by a corrupt Roman governor named Romanus during a major tribal raid who demanded bribes to protect the city.  The ruined city could not pay these and complained to the emperor Valentinian. Romanus then bribed people at court and arranged for the Leptan envoys to be punished "for bringing false accusations". It enjoyed a minor renaissance beginning in the reign of the emperor Theodosius I.
  In 439 CE, Leptis Magna and the rest of the cities of Tripolitania fell under the control of the Vandals when their king, Gaiseric, captured Carthage from the Romans and made it his capital. Unfortunately for the future of Leptis Magna, Gaiseric ordered the city's walls demolished so as to dissuade its people from rebelling against Vandal rule. The people of Leptis and the Vandals both paid a heavy price for this in 523 CE when a group of Berber raiders sacked the city.
  Belisarius recaptured Leptis Magna in the name of Rome ten years later, and in 534 CE, he destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals. Leptis became a provincial capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (see Byzantine Empire) but never recovered from the destruction wreaked upon it by the Berbers. It was the site of a massacre of Berber chiefs of the Leuathae tribal confederation by the Roman authorities in 543 CE. Historian Theodore Mommsen wrote that under Byzantine rule the city was fully Christian. During the decade 565-578 CE Christian missionaries from Leptis Magna even began to move once more among the Amazigh tribes as far south as the Fezzan in the Libyan desert and converted the Garamantes. But the city's decline - linked even to the Sahara's desertification - continued, even though new churches were built, and by the time of the Arab conquest of Tripolitania in the 650s, the city was nearly abandoned except for a Byzantine garrison force.
  The progressive growth of arid land around Leptis reduced its importance and the port
caption: Leptis Magna in the east of Khums
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