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Outside the towns, the ulama might often be replaced as the
spiritual guides of the people by wandering holy men known as
marabouts (see Glossary),
mystics and seers whose tradition
antedated Islam. Called "men of the soil," the marabouts of popular
Islam were incorporated into intensely local cults of saints. They
had traditionally acted as arbiters in tribal disputes and,
whenever the authority of government waned in a particular locale,
the people turned to the marabouts for political leadership as well
as for spiritual guidance. Islam had thus taken shape as a
coexisting blend of the scrupulous intellectualism of the ulama and
the sometimes frenzied emotionalism of the masses.
The founder of the Sanusi religious order, Muhammad bin Ali as
Sanusi (1787-1859), possessed both the popular appeal of a marabout
and the prestige of a religious scholar. Early in his spiritual
formation, he had come under the influence of the Sufi, a school of
mystics who had inspired an Islamic revival in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, and incorporated their asceticism into his
own religious practices. Born near Oran in Algeria, he had traveled
widely, studying and teaching at some of the outstanding Islamic
centers of learning of his day, and his reputation as a scholar and
holy man had spread throughout North Africa. In 1830 he was honored
as the Grand Sanusi (as Sanusi al Kabir) by the tribes and towns of
Tripolitania and Fezzan while passing through on his way to Mecca.
Disturbed by division and dissension within Islam, he believed
that only a return to the purity of early Islam and its insistence
on austerity in faith and morals could restore the religion to its
rightful glory. On the basis of his perception of the state and
needs of Islam, the Grand Sanusi organized a religious order,
founding its first lodge
(
zawiya; pl., zawaayaa--see Glossary)
near Mecca in 1837. Disagreement with the Turkish
authorities, however, forced his return to North Africa. He had
originally intended to return to Algeria, but the expansion of the
French occupation there determined that he settle in Cyrenaica,
where the loose hold exercised by Turkish authorities permitted an
atmosphere more congenial to his teaching. The tribesmen of the
interior were particularly receptive to his ideas, and in 1843 he
founded the first Cyrenaican lodge at Al Bayda.
The Grand Sanusi did not tolerate fanaticism. He forbade the
use of stimulants as well as the practice of voluntary poverty.
Lodge members were to eat and dress within the limits of religious
law and, instead of depending on alms, were required to earn their
living through work. No aids to contemplation, such as the
processions, gyrations, and mutilations employed by Sufi dervishes,
were permitted. The Grand Sanusi accepted neither the wholly
intuitive ways described by the Sufis mystics nor the rationality
of the orthodox ulama; rather, he attempted to adapt from both. The
beduins had shown no interest in the ecstatic practices of the Sufi
that were gaining adherents in the towns, but they were attracted
in great numbers to the Sanusis. The relative austerity of the
Sanusi message was especially suited to the character of the
Cyrenaican beduins, whose way of life had not changed markedly in
the centuries since the Arabs had first accepted the Prophet's
teachings.
The leaders of the Sanusi movement encouraged the beduins to
render to the Grand Sanusi a reverence that verged on veneration of
him as a saint, an act forbidden in orthodox Islam. In fact, the
tribesmen regarded him as a marabout and, indeed, this was the
indispensable basis of their attachment to him. In no other way
could an outsider like Muhammad bin Ali have won their allegiance.
The Sanusi order ultimately permitted its leaders to transform
their baraka (see Glossary)
as holy men into a potent
political force capable of holding together a national movement.
To the single lodge founded at Al Bayda in 1843 was eventually
added a network of lodges throughout Cyrenaica that bound together
the tribal system of the region. The lodge filled an important
place in the lives of the tribesmen. Besides its obvious function
as a religious center and conduit of baraka to the tribe, it
was also a school, caravansary, social and commercial center, court
of law, and haven for the poor. It provided a place of high culture
and safety in the desert wilderness.
Before his death in 1859, the Grand Sanusi established the
order's center at Al Jaghbub, which lay at the intersection of the
pilgrimage route to Mecca and the main trade route between the
Sudan and the coast. There he founded a respected Islamic school,
as well as a training center for lodge shaykhs. He hoped by this
move to facilitate expanded Sanusi missionary activities in the
Sahel and in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Grand Sanusi's son, Muhammad, succeeded him as the order's
leader. Because of his forceful personality and his outstanding
organizational talents, Muhammad brought the order to the peak of
its influence and was recognized as the Mahdi. In 1895 the Mahdi
moved the order's headquarters 650 kilometers south from Al Jaghbub
to the oasis of Al Kufrah. There he could better supervise
missionary activities that were threatened by the advance of French
colonialism in the Sudan, which he viewed in religious terms as
Christian intervention into Muslim territory. Although the order
had never used force in its missionary activities, the Mahdi
proclaimed a holy war
(jihad--see Glossary)
to resist French
inroads and brought the Sanusis into confrontation for the first
time with a European power. When the Mahdi died in 1902, he left
146 lodges in Africa and Arabia and had brought virtually all the
beduins of Cyrenaica under the order's influence. Under the aegis
of the order, the tribes of Cyrenaica owed loyalty to a single
leader, despite their otherwise extremely divisive rivalries and
feuds. Thus a loose umbrella organization forged these otherwise
disparate elements into a common unit bound by sentiment and
loyalty.
Upon the Mahdi's death he was succeeded by Ahmad ash Sharif,
who governed the order as regent for his young cousin, Muhammad
Idris as Sanusi (later King Idris of Libya). Ahmad's campaign
against French forces was a failure and brought on the destruction
of many Sanusi missions in West Africa.
Data as of 1987
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