Cyrenaica Cyrenaica Cyrenaica ( ; , , after the city of Cyrene; ) is the eastern coastal region of Libya. Also known as "Pentapolis" ("Five Cities") in antiquity, it formed part of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica, later divided into "Libya Pentapolis" and "Libya Sicca". During the Islamic period, the area came to be known as "Barqa", after the city of Barca. Cyrenaica was the name of an administrative division of Italian Libya from 1927 until 1943, then under British military and civil administration from 1943 until 1951, and finally in the Kingdom of Libya from 1951 until 1963.
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