The Al Jaghbub Oasis is a protected area in northeastern

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Su ...

lying close to the border with Egypt. It adjoins the desert village of

Jaghbub Jaghbub ( ar, الجغبوب) is a remote desert village in the Al Jaghbub Oasis in the eastern Libyan Desert. It is actually closer to the Egyptian town of Siwa than to any Libyan town of note. The oasis is located in Butnan District and was ...

which is inhabited by Berbers with a population of about 400.

Geography

The Al Jaghbub Oasis is located on the northern edge of the

Libyan Desert The Libyan Desert (not to be confused with the Libyan Sahara) is a geographical region filling the north-eastern Sahara Desert, from eastern Libya to the Western Desert of Egypt and far northwestern Sudan. On medieval maps, its use predates t ...

in a deep depression that is sunk about below sea level. To the north of the oasis are escarpments where the Al Jaghbub Formation dating to the Middle Miocene is exposed. This forms a layer largely composed of dolomite, running to the west where it is equivalent to the Marmarica Foundation and about thick, and to the east as far as the Moghra Oasis where it is only thick and has a high sand content. At Al Jaghbub it is about thick and consists of white to yellow limestone, clay, marl and sandstone. Fossils of

echinoderm An echinoderm () is any member of the phylum Echinodermata (). The adults are recognisable by their (usually five-point) radial symmetry, and include starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the s ...

s, bivalve molluscs,

gastropods The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. ...

and

bryozoa Bryozoa (also known as the Polyzoa, Ectoprocta or commonly as moss animals) are a phylum of simple, aquatic invertebrate animals, nearly all living in sedentary colonies. Typically about long, they have a special feeding structure called a ...

ns are found in this formation. The

Siwa Oasis The Siwa Oasis ( ar, واحة سيوة, ''Wāḥat Sīwah,'' ) is an urban oasis in Egypt; between the Qattara Depression and the Great Sand Sea in the Western Desert, 50 km (30 mi) east of the Libyan border, and 560 km (348&n ...

in western Egypt lies about to the southeast in a similar depression.

History

The Al Jaghbub Oasis was an important staging post for trans-Saharan traders and for pilgrims going to Siwa,

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...

and on to

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow val ...

. In 1856, Muhammad ibn Ali as-Senussi moved the headquarters of the

Senussi The Senusiyya, Senussi or Sanusi ( ar, السنوسية ''as-Sanūssiyya'') are a Muslim political-religious tariqa ( Sufi order) and clan in colonial Libya and the Sudan region founded in Mecca in 1837 by the Grand Senussi ( ar, السنوس ...

movement from Bayda to here. Al Jaghbub became a fortress town with an important Islamic university, second only in prestige to the

Al-Azhar University , image = جامعة_الأزهر_بالقاهرة.jpg , image_size = 250 , caption = Al-Azhar University portal , motto = , established = *970/972 first foundat ...

in Cairo.

The oasis

The protected area was set up to provide a habitat in which the native wild animals and plants of the area could flourish. The governmental body overseeing the protected area is the Technical Committee of Wildlife and National Parks which was created in 1990. The oasis is visited by birds, especially waterfowl, during their annual migrations. It is of particular interest because of the presence here of a subspecies of cockle ''Cardium edule rectidens'', a marine bivalve mollusc.

References

Protected areas of Libya Oases of Libya {{coord missing, Libya