NG Maps knows that many of our readers are curious about place-
names on our maps because of the number of letters we receive.
But it’s during times of political upheaval that our maps are
more closely scrutinized, and we brace ourselves for receiving
many more letters. For example, since the start of the Libyan
rebellion, news reports have defined Cyrenaica as Libya’s
“eastern province,” “rebel-held region, “or “eastern area.” We
have received several queries about the definition of this
geographic term promoted not only by media reports but by the
way other cartographic firms portray Cyrenaica. The ancient
Greeks founded the settlement of Cyrene on Libya’s eastern
Mediterranean coast that eventually evolved into the Roman
province of Cyrenaica. From the mid to late 1930s, the term
referred to an administrative division of the colony of Italian
Libya, and prior to 1963, one of Libya’s three provinces:
Cyrenaica (comprising almost the entire eastern half of the
country), Fezzan, and Tripolitania. So, while som