Cyrenaica In a wider sense, still in use, Cyrenaica includes all of the eastern part of Libya, including the Kufra District. Cyrenaica borders on Tripolitania in the northwest and on Fezzan in the southwest. The region that used to be Cyrenaica officially until 1963 has formed several shabiyat, the administrative divisions of Libya, since 1995. The 2011 Libyan Civil War started in Cyrenaica, which came largely under the control of the National Transitional Council (headquartered in Benghazi) for most of the war. In 2012, the National Transitional Council declared Cyrenaica to be an autonomous region of Libya. Geologically, Cyrenaica rests on
Tripoli passed into the hands of the rulers of Cyrenaica (a Greek colony on the North African shore, east of Tripoli, halfway to Egypt), although the Carthaginians later wrested it from the Greeks. By the latter half of the 2nd century BC it belonged to the Romans, who included it in their province of Africa, and gave it the name of "Regio Syrtica". Around the beginning of the 3rd century AD, it became known as the Regio Tripolitana, meaning "region of the three cities", namely Oea ("i.e.", modern Tripoli), Sabratha and Leptis Magna. It was probably raised to the rank of