Italian Cyrenaica Italian Cyrenaica Italian Cyrenaica was an Italian colony, located in present-day eastern Libya, that existed from 1912 to 1934. It was part of the Italian North African territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire in 1911. The administrative capital was Benghazi. Italian Cyrenaica was formed in 1927, after it and Italian Tripolitania became independent colonial entities within Italian North Africa. In 1934, Italian Cyrenaica became part of Italian Libya. In the 1920s, Cyrenaica was the scene of fighting between Italian colonial forces and Libyan rebels who were fighting for independence from colonial rule. In 1931, the rebel independence leader Omar Mukhtar
Byzantine Greeks Greeks (Yunani) in matters of culture." The Muslim Ottomans also referred to their Byzantine Greek rivals as Rûm, "Romans", and that term is still in official use in Turkey for the Greek-speaking natives (Rumlar) of Istanbul "cf." Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (, "Roman Orthodox Patriarchate"). Many place-names in Anatolia derive from this Turkish word (Rûm, "Romans") for the Byzantines: Erzurum ("Arzan of the Romans"), Rumelia ("Land of the Romans"), and Rumiye-i Suğra ("Little Rome", the region of Amasya and Sivas). Byzantine Greeks, forming the majority of the Byzantine Empire proper at the height of its power, gradually came under the