 The indigenous population was arab, with some berbers in the Nafusa Mountains south of Tripoli and some thousands Jews and a few Maltese  on the coast.The Italians colonized the coastal cities and were mainly in the capital Tripoli, where they were nearly half the inhabitants in 1940.According to the 1936 census, which allowed citizens to declare their ethnicity, Tripoli's native population was made up of 79.1% Arabs, 9.8% Berbers, 3.4% Blacks, 1.7% Turks and 6% Others.