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Libya
Index
The successive waves of Arabs who arrived beginning in the
seventh century imposed Islam and the Arabic language along with
their political domination. Conversion to Islam was largely
complete by 1300, but Arabic replaced the indigenous Berber
dialects more slowly. Initially, many Berbers fled into the desert,
resisting Islam and viewing it as a urban religion. In the eleventh
century, however, tribes of the beduin
Bani (see Glossary) Hilal
and Bani Salim invaded first Cyrenaica and later Tripolitania and
were generally effective in imposing their Islamic faith and
nomadic way of life. This beduin influx disrupted existing
settlements and living patterns; in many areas tribal life and
organization were introduced or strengthened. A further influx of
Arabic-speaking peoples occurred in the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries as a result of the upheavals accompanying the
fall to the Christians of the last Muslim kingdom in Spain.
It is estimated that the total number of Arabs who arrived in
North Africa during the first two migrations did not exceed 700,000
and that in the twelfth-century population of 6 or 7 million they
did not constitute more than 10 percent of the total. Arab blood
later received some reinforcement from Spain, but throughout North
Africa Berber background heavily outweighed Arab origin.
Arabization of the Berbers advanced more rapidly and completely in
Libya than elsewhere in the Maghrib and by the mid-twentieth
century relatively few Berber speakers remained. By contrast, in
Morocco and Algeria, and to a lesser extent in Tunisia, Berbers who
had yet to become Arabized continued to form substantial ethnic
minorities.
In the countryside traditional Arab life, including customary
dress, was still predominant at the time of Libyan independence in
1951. The subsequent discovery of petroleum and the new wealth that
resulted, the continuing urban migration, and the sometimes extreme
social changes of the revolutionary era, however, have made
progressive inroads in traditional ways. For example, in the
cities, already to some extent Europeanized at the time of the
revolution in 1969, men and some younger women frequently wore
Western clothing, but older women still dressed in the customary
manner.
Among the beduin tribes of the desert, seasonal shifts to new
grazing lands in pursuit of rainfall and grass growth remained
widespread. Some tribes were seminomadic, following their herds in
summer but living in settled communities during the winter. Most of
the rural population was sedentary, living in nuclear farm
villages. But often the nomadic and the sedentary were mixed, some
members of a clan or family residing in a village while younger
members of the same group followed their flocks on a seasonal
basis.
The distinction between individual tribes was at least as
significant as the distinction between Arab and non-Arab. Tracing
their descent to ascribed common ancestors, various tribal groups
have formed kinship and quasi-political units bound by loyalties
that override all others. Although tribal ties remained important
in some areas, the revolutionary government had taken various
measures to discourage the nomadic way of life that was basic to
tribal existence, and by the 1980s it appeared that tribal life was
fast becoming a thing of the past.
Arab influence permeates the culture, among both the common
people and the social, political, economic, and intellectual elite.
The cultural impact of the Italian colonial regime was superficial,
and Libya--unlike other North African countries, with their legacy
of French cultural domination--suffered no conflict of cultural
identity. As a rule, those few Libyans achieving higher education
obtained it not in Europe but in neighboring Arab countries.
Data as of 1987
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