Muammar Gaddafi
Military officer and former Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya (1969-2011)
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (c. 1942 – 20 October 2011) was a Libyan military officer, revolutionary, politician, and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until his overthrow by Libyan rebel forces in 2011 during the First Libyan Civil War. He came to power through a bloodless military coup, first becoming Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977, Secretary General of the General People's Congress from 1977 to 1979, and then the Brotherly Leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1979 to 2011. Initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Gaddafi later ruled according to his own Third International Theory.
Gaddafi became an Arab nationalist while at school in Sabha, later enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. He founded a revolutionary group known as the Free Officers movement which deposed the Western-backed Senussi monarchy of Idris I in a 1969 coup. Gaddafi converted Libya into a republic governed by his Revolutionary Command Council. Ruling by decree, he deported Libya's Italian population and ejected its Western military bases.
He strengthened ties to Arab nationalist governments and unsuccessfully advocated pan-Arab political union. An Islamic modernist, he introduced Sharia law and promoted Islamic socialism. He nationalized the oil industry and used the increasing state revenues to bolster the military, fund foreign revolutionaries, and implement social programs emphasizing housebuilding, healthcare and education projects.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Muammar Gaddafi” as military officer and former Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya (1969-2011). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19878. VIAF identifies the subject as 22147434. The Library of Congress control number is n81068638. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2011, 1969 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Muammar Gaddafi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.