By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 17 November 2014:
Even as Libya’s political chaos continues and armed clashes take place in Benghazi and the . . .[restrict]Jebel Nafusa mountains, for most of Libya’s smaller towns life goes on much as normal. For the residents of the small oasis town of Hun that means celebrating their annual crafts festival, the Autumn International Tourism Festival of Arts and Heritage.
The three-day festival, which ended over the weekend, featured exhibits of local handicrafts, poetry and local customs, such as wedding traditions. The Hun Heritage Museum showed off its collection of traditional dishes and other household items, clothing, ancient tools and artifacts, wood carvings and manuscripts. A special wing of the museum housed an exhibit on the late Libyan writer Habib Al-Sanussi.
At the same time in Hun, the Autumn Cultural Forum was held. Writers, poets, filmmakers and photographers from all over Libya participated.
The festival has traditionally drawn crowds of tourists, but in recent years the crowds have been small. This year, according to organisers, there were a good number of visitors from all over Libya.
This was the 18th year the festival in the desert town some 600 kilometres south-east of Tripoli. Hun, capital of Jufra district, owes its existence to the presence of a number of natural springs which feed the date palms. It is known locally as the City of Dates.
The town itself had shifted location at least three times over the past thousand years due to encroaching desert sands. During the Italian colonial period it, rather than Sebha, was the administrative capital of the Fezzan region, then known as the Military Territory of the South. [/restrict]
