Notes

Reynolds IRT, Chapters 9: The Wadi Sofeggin, the northernmost of the three great wadis which flow into the south-west angle of the gulf of Sirte, stretches over 300 km. from the source, a short distance only from the Djebel escarpment, south of Zintan, to the mouth in the coastal marshes. In the first third of its course the Sofeggin runs through desolate, ill-watered country, with little trace of ancient habitation south of the foothills of the Djebel. Along it, however, ran an important caravan-trail, later a military road; and a second military road, also no doubt originally a caravan-route, strikes south from Garian, and ultimately from the coast at Oea, to meet the first at Mizda. Of Roman Mizda itself all trace has been overlaid by later settlement, but there can be little doubt that it was in antiquity, as now, an important centre for desert communications, both civil and military. Chapter 10: The Middle and Lower Sofeggin were intensively settled under the later Empire. It seems clear that there was no organized settlement prior to the Severan reorganization of the military frontier, and that much of it may well be of a considerably later date. It is also clear that he native element in these communities remained predominant. With the decline of central Roman authority in the late fourth and fifth centuries, they achieved complete independence, and many seem to have remained prosperous long after city-life was eclipsed in the coastal zone. Increasingly adverse physical conditions gradually caused the abandonment of outlying settlements. But in the more favoured areas the successive Arab invasions caused no break in continuity, and in the neighbourhood of Beni Ulid a few of the settlements are still inhabited.