It established the United Kingdom of Libya through the unification of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan, appointing Idris to rule it as king.

While in Turkey for medical treatment, Idris was deposed in a 1969 coup d'état by army officers led by Muammar Gaddafi.

[5] The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to Jaghbub in 1886 and to Kufra in 1895 to cultivate positive relations with the Senussi and to counter the West European scramble for Africa.

[6] By the end of the nineteenth century the Senussi Order had established a government in Cyrenaica, unifying its tribes, controlling its pilgrimage and trade routes, and collecting taxes.

[8] After the Regio Esercito (the Italian Royal Army) invaded Cyrenaica in 1913 as part of their wider invasion of Libya, the Senussi Order fought back against them.

[10] Instead he established a tacit alliance with the British Empire, which would last for half a century and accord his Order de facto diplomatic status.

As part of the Accord he was given a monthly stipend by the Italian government, who agreed to take responsibility for policing and administration of areas under Senussi control.

[14] The Accord also stipulated that Idris must fulfill the requirements of the Legge Fondamentale by disbanding the Cyrenaican military units, but he did not comply with this.

Doing so would contravene the al-Rajma Agreement and would damage relations with the Italian government, who opposed the political unification of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania as being against their interests.

[16] Soon, the Italian reconquest of Libya began, and, by the end of 1922, the only effective anti-colonial resistance to the occupation was concentrated in the Cyrenaican hinterlands.

[20] Delegates from both the Cyrenaicans and Tripolitanians agreed that Idris should conclude agreements with the British that they would gain independence in return for support during the war.

[21] A Libyan Arab Force, consisting of five infantry battalions made up of volunteers, was established to aid the British war effort.

[24] The European powers drew up the Bevin-Sforza plan, which proposed that France retain a ten-year trusteeship in Fezzan, the UK in Cyrenaica, and Italy in Tripolitania.

[25] In September 1948, the question of Libya's future was brought to the United Nations General Assembly, which rejected the principles of the Bevin-Sforza plan, instead indicating support for full independence.

[26] In 1949, the British unilaterally declared that they would leave Cyrenaica and grant it independence under the control of Idris; by doing so they believed that it would remain under their own sphere of influence.

They recognised that while they would be able to establish military bases in an independent Libyan state sympathetic to their interests, they would have been unable to do so were Libya to have entered UN-sponsored trusteeship.

[30] The country had a population of approximately one million, the majority of whom were Arabs, but with Berber, Tebu, Sephardi Jewish, Greek, Turkish, and Italian minorities.

[34] The Kingdom was established along federal lines,[35] something that Cyrenaica and Fezzan had insisted upon, fearing that they would otherwise be dominated by Tripolitania, where two-thirds of the Libyan population lived.

[36] Conversely, the Tripolitanians had largely favoured a unitary state, believing that it would allow the government to act more effectively in the national interest and fearing that a federal system would result in further British and French domination of Libya.

[37] The new constitution granted Idris significant personal power,[36] and he remained a crucial player in the country's political system.

[39] In 1954, the Prime Minister Mustafa Ben Halim suggested that Libya be converted from a federal to a unitary system and that Idris be proclaimed President for Life.

[43] Idris recognised that this would deal with the problems caused by federalism and would put a stop to the intrigues among the Senussi family surrounding his succession.

He asked Ben Halim to produce a formal draft for these plans, but the idea was dropped amid opposition from Cyrenaican tribal chiefs.

[48] In July 1967, anti-Western riots broke out in Tripoli and Benghazi to protest the West's support of Israel against the Arab states in the Six-Day War.

[49] In June 1960, Idris issued a public letter in which he condemned this corruption, claiming that bribery and nepotism "will destroy the very existence of the state and its good reputation both at home and abroad".

[60] Doing so allowed him to concentrate economic and administrative planning at a centralised national level,[60] and thenceforth all taxes and oil revenues were directed straight to the central government.

[63] On 1 September 1969, while King Idris was in Turkey for medical treatment, he was deposed in a coup d'état by a group of Libyan Army officers under the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi.

After the 1969 coup, King Idris was put on trial in absentia in the Libyan People's Court and sentenced to death in November 1971.

Muammar Gaddafi's regime portrayed King Idris's administration as having been weak, inept, corrupt, anachronistic, and lacking in nationalist credentials, a presentation of it that would come to be widely adopted.

According to Vandewalle, King Idris's monarchy "started Libya on the road of political exclusion of its citizens, and of a profound de-politicization" that still characterised the country in the first years of the 21st century.