The Ottoman Barracks of Benghazi

by Adam Benkato

It seems nobody could decide, in the late 1800s, what kind of administrative status was to be assigned to the region of Barqa (Cyrenaica, that is, today’s eastern Libya). It fluctuated between being a sanjaq dependent directly on Istanbul (1863), one dependent on the wilayah of Tripoli (1871), an independent wilayah of its own (1879), and back to independent sanjaq again (1888 until 1911). Needless to say, getting anything official done in those days was probably a nightmare.

A "barracks in Benghazi", Turkish photo, 1908, from the archive of Wasim al-'Ageeb

In about 1891, the wali Rashid Pasha II (r. 1889-1893) of the sanjaq began work on a castle and barracks just outside the city-center of Benghazi, in an area now known as el-Kish (الكيش) after the family who owned most of the surrounding land, but at that time known as al-Berka (البركة), referring to its salty marshes. This same Rashid Pasha was also seemingly responsible for the construction of one of the oldest extant mosques in Benghazi, known as the Osman mosque (جامع العصمان), just across from the Ottoman baladiyya. The initial phase of the barracks was finished by Rashid’s successor, Taher Pasha, in 1895. At the time Benghazi was quite a small town by North African standards, with a population of no more than 10,000, but was certainly the biggest city of the province. The building is known as gaṣr al-berka (قصر البركة) or qishlat al-berka (Arabic قشلة being the Turkish word kışla ‘barracks’).

The military units stationed there, however, seem not to have been under local control, but rather perhaps controlled from Tripoli or Istanbul directly. Thus it was that the barracks of Berka was home to one of the earliest trained physicians in Benghazi, Dr. Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Feytūrī (1882-1941, nicknamed ‘Doctor Bey’), who was a Tripolitanian trained in Istanbul and appointed to the military units stationed at Berka just after the turn of the century.

The Berka Barracks after the Italian bombardment of Benghazi, 1911

The building was damaged during the Italian bombardment of Benghazi in 1911, but then rebuilt and expanded to be used by them as a barracks again. The Italians added two more wings to the building, and increased the number of rooms to 360. Following Italy’s defeat in World War II, the British administration of eastern Libya also stationed troops there, as did the Kingdom. It was used as a barracks and for training purposes into the early 1970s, at which point the regime abandoned it in favor of the new al-Fadhil barracks built just opposite.

The Berka Barracks in Benghazi, post-Italian expansion

The building is a unique example of an Ottoman-Italian building at such a scale in Libya. But most unfortunately, the building has been left to its own devices for more than half a century now. The Ottoman-era mosque within the barracks was destroyed by the Qaddafi regime (as it destroyed a number of mosques and historical buildings), while it simultaneously neglected to restore or renovate the structure, resulting in the collapse of several sections. Increasing damage occurs every year (see here and here), and especially since the Libyan revolution, as there are no real official deterrents against entering or damaging the premises.

In the past ten years or so, the large square next to building has seen use again, for the purposes of informal (and technically illegal) drag racing and drifting where military units were once drilled.

The barracks, mid-1920s, post-restoration and expansion, courtesy of the archives of Wisam al-'Ageeb

Adam Benkato is a Ph.D. student of medieval Central Asia at SOAS. He also researches various historical, literary, and linguistic topics relating to Libya, and collects editions of Libyan poetry and literature.