Libya 🇱🇾

Libya lies in Northern Africa, part of Africa. In formal use it is State of Libya. The capital is Tripoli.

Its territory runs to 1,759,540 km², which ranks it 18th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Sudan and just ahead of Iran. For scale, it is a little larger than Iran.

Some 7.4 million people call it home, placing it 105th of 249 by population — between Turkmenistan above it and Kyrgyzstan below. Within Northern Africa alone it is the 3rd largest of 7 and the 6th most populous.

Its reference point sits at 25.0° north and 17.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,783 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

It is one of the countries that the Tropic of Cancer crosses. Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Mexico, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

It borders 6 neighbours: Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Niger, Sudan and Tunisia. The largest of them by area is Algeria, while the most populous is Egypt. Together those neighbours hold about 273.4 million people.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 4.2 people per square kilometre, which makes it very thinly populated. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Libyan, so residents are Libyans.

The one official language is Arabic. Arabic is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 24 other entries including Algeria, Bahrain, Chad and the Comoros.

Inside Africa it places 35th of 59 by population, and it accounts for 2.7% of everyone living in Northern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Northern Africa and Libya sits 6th of 7 by population and 3rd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Tunisia just above and Western Sahara just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Egypt is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Northern Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇹🇳 Tunisia
• 🇪🇭 Western Sahara
• 🇪🇬 Egypt

The Libyan dinar (LYD) is used only in Libya among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Arabic is listed for 25 entries here, Libya among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Libya ranks 18th of 249 by area and 105th by population. That works out at 1.2% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.091% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Libya in the size ordering are Sudan at 1,886,068 km² and Iran at 1,648,195 km², against Libya's 1,759,540 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Libya averages 4 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it among the emptiest places on the list — 231st of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

The currency is the Libyan dinar (ل.د, LYD). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

Tripoli is the city to remember for this country.

Its internet country code is .ly. To phone it from abroad you dial +218. In ISO terms it is ly in two letters and LBY in three.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.