Surt

Sirte lies on the central Libyan coast beside the great gulf between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The medieval city of Surt stood close to the coast, at the site known as Madina Sultan. In the tenth century the traveller Ibn Hawqal described its walls, cisterns, gardens and herds; later writers recorded a mosque, markets and merchants from several regions. Surt declined as its place in the trading routes changed, and the old city was eventually abandoned.