Al-Athrun (), also known as Lathrun or Lathron () is a small coastal town in north eastern

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...

, in the

Derna district Derna ( ar, درنة ''Darnah'') is one of the districts of Libya. It is in the northeast of the country, in the historical region of Cyrenaica. Its capital is Derna. In 2007 the district was enlarged to include what had been the Al Qubah Dis ...

. It hosts recently excavated

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

churches adorned with white-blue marble from Proconnesus.

Location

Al-Athrun is a small Libyan town located at 32°52′N 22°16′ about 9 km east of Ras al-Hilal and about 50 km east of al-Baidah in

al-Jabal al-Akhdar Jibāl ( ar, جبال), also al-Jabal ( ar, الجبل), was the name given by the Arabs to a region and province located in western Iran, under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. Its name means "the Mountains", being the plural of ''jabal'' ( ...

in northeastern

and near Derna. Erythron is close to the sea, about 20 kilometers east of Apollonia.

Name

Its name comes from

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

"Ἐρυθρόν" (''Erythron''), neuter of "ἐρυθρός" (''erythros'') "red", due to the color of the local soil.

History

It is uncertain when the city was founded, but there are no clear finds from pre-Roman times. There are also no pre-Roman records of the place. However, it has some of the remains of the Greek period, including a group of tombs carved in rock dating back to the 5th century BC. During the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...

and into

late Antiquity Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English ha ...

the town was known as Erythron and was mentioned by various ancient authors including

Claudius Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importa ...

. Especially in

times, the city flourished, and it was at this time only that it could be described as a city. Several bishops are known and two richly equipped churches can be excavated. The two

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * C ...

es were built during the reign of Emperor

Justinian I Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renova ...

(527–565). These are called the Western and Eastern Churches. The remains of the two churches were discovered in 1960 by the American scholar " Waltroding" to be included in the Libyan Antiquities list in 1964 by the Libyan Antiquities Authority. The Eastern Church is located on the Mediterranean coast, where there are parts of marble columns decorated with Christian religious signs, the remains of the marble floor and the remains of mosaics that surrounded it, while the Western Church left only ruins of the original plan. Cyrenaica was conquered by Muslim

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

s during the second

caliph A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...

, Omer Bin Khattab, in 643/44. Early Medieval and Byzantine Civilization: Constantine to Crusades (Tulane.edu,2011). After the breakdown of the Umayyad caliphate it was essentially annexed to Egypt, although still under the same name, first under the Fatimid caliphs and later under the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates. Ultimately, it was annexed by the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1517 when it was part of the Tripolitania Vilayet.

References

Populated places in Derna District Cyrenaica Populated places of the Byzantine Empire Roman towns and cities Catholic titular sees in Africa {{Byzantine-geo-stub