Barca (ancient city)

Barca, also written Barke, Barqa or Barce, was an ancient, medieval and early modern city standing on the site of the modern town of Marj in northeastern Libya, about 100 kilometres northeast of Benghazi. Greek settlers from Cyrene colonised what may first have been a settlement of the Libyan Barraci tribe, and Herodotus places its foundation around 560 BC. The Achaemenid governor of Egypt besieged and sacked it in 515 BC, the Ptolemies absorbed it with the rest of Cyrenaica, and it was soon overshadowed by its old port, renamed Ptolemais. Arabs took it in 643 to 644, and its name became the Arabic Barqah, the root of the later name for the whole region of Cyrenaica. Attacks by the Banu Hilal in the eleventh century led to a sharp decline, and it later ceased to be inhabited. It survives as a Catholic and Orthodox titular see.