Awjila (Arabic: أوجلة, Italian: Augila) is an oasis town in the Al Wahat District in the Cyrenaica region of northeastern Libya.

[1] An 1872 account describes the cluster of three oases: the Aujilah oasis, Jalloo (Jalu) to the east and Leshkerreh (Jikharra) to the northeast.

Each oasis had a small hill covered in date palm trees, surrounded by a plain of red sand impregnated with salts of soda.

He describes the nomadic Nasamones who migrated between the coasts of Syrtis Major and the Augila oasis, where they may have exacted tribute from the local people.

[2] Procopius, writing around 562, says that even in his day sacrifices continued to be made to Ammon and to Alexander the Great of Macedon in two Libyan cities that were both called Augila.

[citation needed] According to Procopius the temples of the oasis were converted into Christian churches by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (c. 482 – 565).

[2] The Arabs launched a campaign against the Byzantine Empire soon after Muhammad died in 632, quickly conquering Syria, Persia and Egypt.

[10] Some of the saints in the surviving tombs lived during the early years of Islam, and the details of their life and even their family lineage have been forgotten.

[12] In the early Mamluk era (13th century), trade from Egypt was along a route that led via Awjila to the Fezzan, and then on to Kanem, Bornu and to cities such as Timbuktu on the Niger bend.

[17] Describing the trade between Egypt and Hausaland, Hornemann lists: ... slaves of both sexes, ostrich feathers, zibette (musk from civet cats), tiger skins (sic), and gold, partly in dust, partly in native grains, to be manufactured into rings and other ornaments for the people of interior Africa.

Cairo sends silks, melayes (striped blue and white calicoes - i.e. milayat, wrappers, sheeting) woolen cloths, glass... beads for bracelets, and an... assortment of East India goods...

The merchants of Bengasi usually join the caravan from Cairo at Augila, import tobacco manufactured for chewing, or snuff, and sundry wares fabricated in Turkey...[18]Around 1810 a Majabra trader from Jalu named Schehaymah became lost while travelling to Wadai via Murzuk in the Fezzan.

[19] The trade was disrupted for a while in the 1820s due to political instability in Wadai, but starting in the 1830s every two or three years a caravan would travel the route.

The main stations between Benghazi and the southern terminal at Abéché were the assembly point at Awjila / Jalu where the caravans were made up, and the center at Kufra where food and water could be obtained.

[24] Today the main activities of the people in Awjila are agriculture and working for the oil sector companies, as this area is the cradle of Libyan wealth.