Tripoli

Every jeweler's tripoli buffing bar carries the name of a North African port.

The abrasive earth reached European workshops as an import from Tripoli, and the trade name stuck to the material rather than to any one quarry. Some dictionaries hedge between Tripoli in Libya and Tripoli in Lebanon, but the North African trade is the usual attribution. It is now mostly quarried in Missouri, Tennessee and Georgia and still sold under the old name alongside rottenstone.