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Tripoli is the western capital of Libya and, is the largest urban centre in the whole country. The old city has evolved since Phoenician times, but grew gradually during the Roman and the Arab rules. It reached its ultimate stage of urban development at the end of the Ottoman rule, when the walled town of Tripoli was a fully built-up area. The urban development, of new Tripoli was initiated during the Italian rule when the central business district and part of the middle zone were developed for commercial and residential uses After the Independence of the country (1951) and recent oil development. The city began to experience a vast and rapid growth owing to various economic and social forces. Between 1954 and 1964 it nearly doubled in population partly through in-migration and partly through natural increase. Tripoli has important political and economic functions. The first is derived from the fact that the city is the western capital and the administrative centre of the Mugataa of Tripoli. The economic function is stronger than the political one, the growth of the shopping centre and central business district, together with the emergence of various industries within the city, are its most striking features. As a result of its growth, the city has begun to experience serious problems of transportation and traffic flow, shortage of housing, rise of rents, the emergence of the Shanty Town and other serious urban problems. Thus city planning and municipal programmes are of crucial importance to the city, in order to cope with the rapid growth of the population and expansion of housing development as well as to create better urban facilities and amenities "Mugataa" to indicate the province. Elsewhere he has avoided many Libyan expressions in certain places in order to make the thesis clearer in English. In conclusion, I wish to record my grateful acknowledgment to Professor W B Fisher who accepted me in his Department as a post-graduate research student. I am greatly indebted to Professor J I Clarke for his generous supervision, encouragement and useful criticism. I wish also to thank all high officials and civil servants in Libya who supplied me with reports, statistics and valuable information during ray field work in Tripoli. I would like to record my gratitude to the Libyan University and the Ministry of Education for offering me the scholarship. My thanks are also extended to other research students who gave me every kind of help.

This is a study of the material which is stated or claimed to be of South Arabian origin or directly associated with South Arabia as attested in the lexica of classical Arabic and in other sources of classical Arabic which treat of usages attested in pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry, traditions or texts. The purpose is to examine this material by comparison with the linguistic and, lexicographical information now available from Epigraphic South Arabian (ESA) material. The material attested in the Arabia sources for this purpose hasbbeen divided into four Categories: Abyssinian, Himyari, and Yamani, according to the language or dialect of original claimed for them, and, then usages occuring in South Arabian contexts. The material under the first three categories has been investigated thoroughly, while the material under the last category, that of the south Arabian context, has been left out from the detailed examination, accept for a brief discussion and for few usages selected as specimen and because they are related to usages discussed elsewhere in this study. Much of this material proved to be incomparable with ESA material, either because the usages in the Arabic sources derive from roots not attested in ESA, which is the majority of the canes or because the usage from comparable roots, ESA are completely different But in over eighty, cases, discuss and here in articles by roots, the material in the Arabic sources shows varying degree resemblance In a considerable number of cases the corresponding usages in both materials proved to be exact equivalents.