Tripoli, which has thirty thousand inhabitants at the end of the seventeenth century, is the only city of any size in the regency.

The bulk of its residents are Moors, as city-dwelling Arabs are known.

Several hundred Turks and renegades form a governing elite apart from the rest of the population.

A larger component is the khouloughlis (literally, "sons of servants"), offspring of Turkish soldiers and Arab women who traditionally hold high administrative posts and provide officers for the spahis, the provincial cavalry units that augment the corps of janissaries.

They identify themselves with local interests and are, in contrast to the Turks, respected by the Arabs.

Regarded as a distinct caste, the khouloughlis live in their menshia, a lush oasis located just outside the walls of the city.

Jews and Moriscos, descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain in the sixteenth century, are active as merchants and craftsmen, some of the Moriscos also achieving notoriety as pirates.

A small community of European traders clusters around the compounds of the foreign consuls, whose principal task is to sue for the release of captives brought to Tripoli by the corsairs.

European slaves and larger numbers of enslaved blacks transported from the Sudan are a ubiquitous feature of the life of the city.