Al-Khums or Khoms (Arabic: الخمس) is a city, port and the de jure capital of the Murqub District on the Mediterranean coast of Libya  with an estimated population of around 202,000.  The population at the 1984 census was 38,174  Between 1983 and 1995 it was the administrative center of al-Khums District

Etymology

The name al-Khums or Khoms (Arabic: الخُمس)  translated literally to "the quintile" in Arabic.  The origin of the name is not clear. Several hypotheses include:

• In Tripolitania the quinary numeral system was used in contrary to most other Arabic cultures, which used the decimal system. Khums and neighbouring villages were famous in producing olives and olive oil. Since the olives had to be counted, residents of other cities started to call the inhabitants 'Khumsi' (Quinary), from which the name Khums derived.

• Khums could be an Arabic translation to the Greek word Pentapolis which means five cities, but this hypothesis is dubious, because Pentapolis and its cities are in Cyrenaica.

• Another hypothesis is that during the 16th century, al-Khums produced a quintile (20%) of the Ottoman Tripolitania province's olive oil.

During the Italian occupation of Libya, the city was called Homs in official Italian sources.