The Libyan population resides in the country of Libya, a territory located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, to the west of and adjacent to Egypt.

The story of the Awlad Sulayman, an Arab group from present-day Libya dominated northern Lake Chad in the 19th century.

Since the Middle Ages, the populations of this region have shared close political, economic, and social ties maintained by the mobility specific to the nomadic way of life.

These relationships, fluid due to the difficulties of surviving in this difficult environment, have always been structured in turn, through conflict and cooperation, both of which produced rapidly changing alliances.

In the middle of the 18th century, the Awlad Sulayman carved out a vast area of influence for themselves in Sirte and Fezzan by force of arms and by their alliances with neighboring peoples and the Libian administration.

Defeated by the Ottoman administration in Tripoli at the end of the 1830s, the survivors of the Awlad Sulayman took refuge in the Lake Chad basin where they reconstituted the conditions for their success in Libya; they controlled trans-Saharan trade and maintained their links with Libian society.

[13] Gaddafi used money from the sale of oil to improve the living conditions of the population and to assist Palestinian guerrillas in their fight against the Israelis.

Libya had occupied the Aozou Strip; however, in 1990 the International Court of Justice submitted the case and allowed the full recuperation of territory to Chad.

[14] Since 2011, the country is swept by Libyan Civil War, which broke out between the Anti-Gaddafi rebels and the Pro-Gaddafi government in 2011, culminating in the death and overthrow of Gaddafi.

Nevertheless, even today Libya still continues to generate problems within the area and beyond, greatly affecting its population and the migrant route to Europe.

[citation needed] Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (1.VII.2015) (Data refer to Libyan nationals only.

The Zaghawa are another smaller minority ethnic group that is found along the southeastern border of Libya with Chad and Sudan.

There are also a significant number of Kouloughli families, who are descended of various ethnic groups like Turks, Circassians and some Bosniaks and Albanians.

[30] The major tribal groups of Libya in 2011 were listed:[30] Some of the ancient Berber tribes include: Adyrmachidae, Auschisae, Es'bet, Temeh'u, Teh'nu, Rebu, Kehek, KeyKesh, Imukehek, Meshwesh, Macetae, Macatutae, Nasamones, Nitriotae, and Tautamaei.

[13] As of 2012[update] the major tribal groups of Libya, by region, were as follows:[31] As of 2020 the foreign population is estimated at 12%,[32] most of whom are migrant workers in the oil industry from Tunisia and Egypt, but also including small numbers of Greeks, Maltese, Italians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Turks, Indians, and people from former Yugoslavia.

Due to the Libyan Civil War, most of these migrant workers have returned to their homelands or simply left the country for a different one, however a good minority still work in Libya.

These varieties include Egyptian, Tunisian, Sudanese, Moroccan, Yemeni, Hassaniya and South Levantine Arabic.