Most of the land consists of a large chunk of the Sahara(3) Desert, the world's largest expanse of dry waste. One exception--other than oases--is the Jabal Nafisah highlands and nearby coast of northwest Libya.
Some interesting features of the desert include: I. the Sirte Desert which reaches the Mediterranean Sea and divides habitable Libya in two--part of it is in this area; II. the Tibesti mountains--mostly in Chad(4) but extending into southern Libya; and III. the Fezzan, an area of many oasis. Most of the desert is duller--a windy, dusty plateau of rock (hamada) and gravel (areg).
This is within the part of north Africa in which speakers of Maghrebi(5) Arabic(6) and Sunni Moslems are the majority.
There is one city with over a million residents: Tripoli.
.Thousands of years ago, according to Christopher Ehret, speakers of the Boreafrasian dialects of Afroasiatic moved here when the climate was wetter, giving rise to the Berber languages.
The Punic people's colonized cities along the seashore as did the Greeks in Libya. Later the Roman conquerors introduced Latin and their conquerors introduced a Germanic language. All ethnic traces of these peoples has vanished. These people introduced new religions: the Punic people worshipped gods under generic names like Baal, El or Meloch; the Greeks worshipped gods like Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite and Poseidon; the Romans initially worshipped gods like Jupiter, Juno and Apollo, and later became Christians. North African Christian had great diversity in belief and so the Roman and Byzantine Empire treated them viciously as heretics, setting the stage for a big switch.
The Arabs conquered the region in the eighth century and changed the majority language and religion.
Turks ruled the coasts loosely in the early 19th century but have left no traces.
Italy conquered the area by the early 20th century, but largely departed in the second half, leaving only handfuls of native Italian speakers, but the language persists in administration and international relations.
Jews settled here during the Roman Empire, then left for the most part when Israel(7) was founded.
north
east
south, from the east
south, from the west
west
northwest
(1) Transliterated from the Arabic as Libiya.
(2) Transliterated from the Arabic as Tarabulus.
(3) Translates from Arabic as wilderness.
(4) Tchad in French.
(5) Maghrebi means western in Arabic.
(6) Some would consider this several languages, others would subsume it under Arabic.
(7) Yisrael in transliterated Hebrew.