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Libya
Index
Islam as practiced in North Africa is interlaced with
indigenous Berber beliefs. Although the orthodox faith preached the
unique and inimitable majesty and sanctity of God and the equality
of God's believers, an important element of North African Islam for
centuries has been a belief in the coalescence of special spiritual
power in particular living human beings. The power is known as
baraka, a transferable quality of personal blessedness and
spiritual force said to lodge in certain individuals. Those whose
claim to possess baraka can be substantiated--through
performance of apparent miracles, exemplary human insight, or
genealogical connection with a recognized possessor--are viewed as
saints. These persons are known in the West as marabouts, a French
transliteration of al murabitun (those who have made a
religious retreat), and the benefits of their baraka are
believed to accrue to those ordinary people who come in contact
with them.
The cult of saints became widespread in rural areas; in urban
localities, Islam in its orthodox form continued to prevail. Saints
were present in Tripolitania, but they were particularly numerous
in Cyrenaica. Their baraka continued to reside in their
tombs after their deaths. The number of venerated tombs varied from
tribe to tribe, although there tended to be fewer among the camel
herders of the desert than among the sedentary and nomadic tribes
of the plateau area. In one village, a visitor in the late 1960s
counted sixteen still-venerated tombs.
Coteries of disciples frequently clustered around particular
saints, especially those who preached an original tariqa
(devotional "way"). Brotherhoods of the followers of such mystical
teachers appeared in North Africa at least as early as the eleventh
century and in some cases became mass movements. The founder ruled
an order of followers, who were organized under the frequently
absolute authority of a leader, or shaykh. The brotherhood was
centered on a
zawiya
(pl., zawaya--see Glossary).
Because of Islam's austere rational and intellectual qualities,
many people have felt drawn toward the more emotional and personal
ways of knowing God practiced by mystical Islam, or Sufism. Found
in many parts of the Muslim world, Sufism endeavored to produce a
personal experience of the divine through mystic and ascetic
discipline.
Sufi adherents gathered into brotherhoods, and Sufi cults
became extremely popular, particularly in rural areas. Sufi
brotherhoods exercised great influence and ultimately played an
important part in the religious revival that swept through North
Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Libya,
when the Ottoman Empire proved unable to mount effective resistance
to the encroachment of Christian missionaries, the work was taken
over by Sufi-inspired revivalist movements. Among these, the most
forceful and effective was that of the Sanusis, which extended into
numerous parts of North Africa.
Data as of 1987
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