Ajdabiya (/ˌɑːdʒdəˈbiːə/ AHJ-də-BEE-ə; Arabic: أجدابيا, romanized: Aǧdābiyā) is a town in and capital of the Al Wahat District in northeastern Libya.

The city is the site of an important crossroads between the coastal road from Tripoli to Benghazi and inland routes south to the oasis at Jalu and east to Tobruk and the border with Egypt.

[10] Around 1051–52 it was sacked again, this time by the Beni Hilal and Banu Sulaym, Arab tribes that migrated to North Africa at the instigation of the Fatimids.

He wrote in his treatise Nuzhat al-Mushtaq (published in Europe as De geographia universali): The town was later revived by the Ottomans to serve as a minor administrative centre for western Cyrenaica.

It became an important centre for the Senussi movement in the early 20th century and became the capital of an autonomous Senussi-ruled region between 1920 and 1923 under the terms of an accord with Italy, which had occupied Libya from 1911.

The town acquired a new area of public housing, police stations, educational facilities and a general hospital run by Libya's ally Bulgaria.

In other respects, however, it remained comparatively undeveloped – many of the roads were left as dirt tracks without drainage, resulting in them being muddy and flooded in the winter and dirty and dusty in the summer.

Libya's predominately tribal society also resulted in an unusual style of urbanisation; nomadic members of the Zuwaya tribe settled on the outskirts of the town and established tent camps, which they gradually replaced with houses.

[18] After two days of heavy fighting, pro-Gaddafi forces seized the strategic crossroads, gained control of most of the city and pressed on to the rebel-held stronghold of Benghazi.