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THE SANUSI'OF CYRENAICA

BY

E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARDPIlOfESSOR OY SOCIAL A1'ITHROPOLOGVANO PELL.OW O, ALL SOULS COLLEGE

~N THE UNIVERSITY OP OX,ORD

OXFORDAT TliE CLARENDON PRESS

,, '

..

0:rjo.4 Univsily Pss, Ely Housc. LOMo" W.:cOLASOOW' 'NEW YORK TORON1'O MELBOURNE WELLlNCTON

CAPE TOWN IDADAN N1ROIU DA.R ES SAU.AM UJIAXA ADDlS ,\8"-8ADELHJ BO"'BAY CALCUTTA "'ADRAS XA.V.CHJ LAHO.RE DACeA

kUALA LUM'UR SINGAPORE HONG KONG TOkVO

ISBN O 198'3107 5\

Fi..l.dilion 1949Rlprinl,d I.om sheels 01 lile fi.sl Idilio..

, 1954. 1963. 1968 I973

hin/Id in GrelJt B.ilai..alll Uni.,sily Pss. O:rfO'lrl

by Vivian Ridle,.P,inl" lo 1101 UnivI,.sily

.1lII.1lII.1lII..&l!ln.III...,.~

PREFACETHIS account o the Sanusi o Cyrenaica would not have beenwritten if a number o accidents had not led me to their countryduring the la\lf waT, but the seed of it was planted long beore.the war. 1had acquired during three years' residence in Egyptand through travels in other Arab lands sorne knowledge ofArab history and culture, a httle experience o Bedouin, andproficiency in "sPoken Arabic. During the war ayear spent asPolitical Officer.in the Alawite Territory of Syria added to bothknowledge an& enthusiasm. 1 had been acquainted with sorneo the Sanusiexiles in Egypt as ar back as 1932 and had visitedDama and Banghazi by sea; and it had long been my hope that1 might sorne' Ilay, when the Italians had ceased to rule thecountry, have a chanc.e to visit the interior. This wish carnetrue when in November 1942 1 was posted as Political Officerto the (third) British Military Administration o Cyrenaica. 1spent over two years in the country. the greater part o themamong the Bedouin, particularly the more nomadic sections.Inhabited Cyr~naica is a small country and as in the course ofrny wanderings, mosUy in its southem steppes and the desertbeyond them, t covered more than two thousand miles by horseand camell carne to know something of its Bedouin tribes. Myduties, it is tru~. prevented me from carrying out any systematicinquiries o a soCiological kind, but the contact with the Bedouinthey entailed enabled me to read the literature which formsthe basis o this study in the light of my own experience. Mylabours have been but a small retum for the hospitality of thetents and the Il)any kindnesses of my Bedouin hosts.

1 have not :i~tempted to write a history o Cyrenaica, butonly o the development of the Sanusiya Order among theBedouin tribes o the country. 1 have, therefore. said nothingo the centuries pf Greek colonization and Roman and Byzantinerule, nor o th~ little known centuries of Arab and Turkish ruleuntil 1843, when the Grand Sanusi founded his first zawiya, orreligious lodge\ on the Cyrenaican plateau. AIso, 1 have notaimed at giving'a cornprehensive account either o the SanusiyaOrder or of the Bedouin tribes, but 1 have described both only inso far as seemed necessary to an understanding of the politica!

tltlt

" PREFACEdevelopment of the Order which sprang from thelr IIIOClatlon.The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. and elsewhere. are 10 ca1lecl becausethey adhere to the Islamic Order of the SanuIly, whlch takesits name from its founder al-Sayyid Muhammaci bin 'AH al-Sanusi and has been directed by his descendant.. 1 have,

. ,. therefore, described briefiy the nature of an I11amlc Order andhow this particular Order became established and spread, ThcSanusiya differS from most other Orders not SO much in itsteachings and rites as in ts political and economic organization.a development arising from its absorption into the Bedouintribal structure,' but owng much also to opposition from theoutside. particuhl.rly to the Italo-Sanusi wars. For this reason1 have described in the latter part of the book Italo-Sanusirelations at sorne length. lf in doing so 1 have sometimesexpressed indignation. 1 do not wish it to be thought that 1have any but fnendly feelings for Italy and her people. or that1 believe the Italian colonial record to be very difierent fromthe records 01 other Colonial Powers.

1 have transliterated Arabic words in the simplest way. TheArabist wiU know, or can easily discover, how they are writtenin Arabic, and ttiose who do not know the language would belitile the wiser had 1 transliterated them differently. For theuninitiated it need only be said that the letter 'q'. which standsfor the Arabic leU.er qaf. has in CyTenaica the value of a hard g'as in the Engli!\h word .goat '. that gh', which stands for theArabic letter gho,in, has the value the Parisian gives to the r'in 'Paris', and .that " which stands for the Arabic letter .ain, isa guttural sOllnd peculiar to Arabic. 1 have not been entirelyconsistent in the spelling of Arabic words in that 1 haveretained the usua~ English spelling of such words as Cairo,Mecca, Kufra, Caramanli, and Koran, and that 1 have treatedsorne Arabic words as though they were English words and have,therefore, not italicized them and have given them the commonEnglish plural form, e.g. Shaikhs, qadis, Sharifs, mudirs, andzawiyas. I have used the Arabic names of places instead ofclassical or Italian names: Shahhat, Marsa Susa, and al-Marjinstead of Cirel1e. Apollonia, and Barce. If 1 need to excusemyself for this on the grounds that Cyrenaica is to-day an Arabcountry, no apology is needed for using the Arab names for thesites of recentlx built Italian colonial setUements, in naming

,

.1

PREFACE vwhich the Italians commemorated persons who for the most partmight well be 'forgotten. To aid the reader 1 have listed at theend of the qook the chief place-names mentioned in the textwith their Italian equivalents, rt will be observed that theItalian way ,?f writing Arabic words is difierent froro our way:where we write Suluq, Tubruq. Banghazi. and ]aghbub. theywrite Solud\, Tobruch, Bengasi. and Giarabub.

1 have cut ,the book to half its original size and have con-sequently been compelled to omit a mass of detai1. 1 have alsorestricted refcrences to quotations and to statements which seemparticularIy to require the citation of an authority. Much of theomittcd detail'and many of the deleted refercnces will be foundin various articles and papers 1 have published on the Sanusielsewhere. In a few instances 1 have not been able to checkre{erences because the books cited are unobtainable in England.

1 acknowledge the generous help of many British and Arabfriends. especiaJly of Major-General D. C. Cumming, MuhammadShafiq Effendi Hamza, and the warm-hearted companion of mytravels Salihbu 'Abd al-Salam.

1 thank l\k E. L. Peters and Miss Sonya G"regory for helpin preparation of the maps.

E. E. K-P.OXFORD'

April 1948

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,

.,

CONTENT5viii

viii

29

62

9

14

134

157

191

INDEX 235

pST F PLATES

(1) The Tomb 01 the Grand Sanusi (Hasanain Pasha) Facing page 16(From a pIIolog,aph by A. M. Hassanein Bey, bypermission'of Ihe Royal Geog,aphical Sociely.)

(2) The Sayyid Ahmad alSharif (Maealuso) 128(3) The Sayyid M'lhl!DImad Idri!! 144(,.) Sidi Umar.al-Mukhtar (Graziani) 1 (,8

. Diatribution olSanu~iya lodges in North Afriea and Arabia 24Rainlall and the plateau area U.om llalian sou.ees) ; Climatic zones

(f,om lIalian SOl/"ces) 3Distibution of lorest (afie, Manzani) ; Pastoral zones 32The ehief tribes 'oC Cyrenaica (afie, De Agoslini) To face p. 35The ehiel Sanusi, Bed?uin tribes of Tripolitallia (after Caneva.i). 52The divisions 01 the Hasa tribe (afie, De Agostini) 57Sanusiya estates of the zawiyas of Shahha.t. Tart. alFayidiya,

and al.Zawiya alBaida (f'OIn Ialian sou,ces) 75The dispositioll oC ltalian and Sanusi positions in October 1916

(afie, Ya/bot) 144Distribution 01 Sanusi Corees in Mareh 1923 (after Piccio/i) '74The ltalian conques~ 01 Cyrenaiea (afler Tomaso Sillani) . 184The ltalian con~uest oC Tripolitania (afler Tomaso Sil/an;) 186The 1talian plan lo! the colonization oC northern Cyrenaica (f,o".

llalian sOllree,;) 234

15

MAPSThe Spread 01 the Slmusiya in North Africa

J".;.er...J..l.IP....

...

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CHAPTER 1

ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THESANUSIYA (1837-1902)

1,

THE Sanusiya, 'S an Order of Sufis or, as they are sometimescalled, Darwishes. Ttiey are Sunm or orthodox Muslims. Thismeans that in faith and morals they accept the teachings of theKoran and th'e Sunlla, a collection 01 traditions about the lifeanahabits of"t~e Prophet, whose example in all matters shouldbe followed by believers. Most orthodox Muslims recognize twofurther doctrinal sources, ijma', general agreement among thoseof the faithfl capable oTnOraing an opinion on such matters,and ~as, determination of what should be believed or done byanaogy with the teachings and lile of tbe Propbet. Tbe lounderof the Sanusiya Order, like other teachers of sorne o the morerigidly orthodox groups, such as the Wahhabi, rejected both,though, in practice. he made use o what amounts to analogy.O the four canonical rites oI orthodox Islam the Sanusi ofCyrenaica, like tbe founder of their Order, follow the Maliki, therite dominant througbout North Africa.

The Sanusiya is, therefore, a bighly orthodox Order. It is not~ sed, but a f,r,!-temity. The enemics of its founde;were neverable to convmceany.aisinterested person that he was guilty of

. heresy. thoug!~ ,they attempted to do so; and it was only in verysmall matters tbat they were able to accuse him of departingfrom tbe Maliki rite. Even its Sufism is conventional andaustere. The Wabbabi, those stern and tuthless critics o thesects and Orders o Islam, found in it no bid'a, innovation,which in th~ ,eyes of these fanatics amounts to heresy, andoalone among' the Sufi Orders, tbey have tolerated its presencein the Hijaz. "

,Sufism is Islamic mysticism. Orthodox Islam tends to be acold and onnalistic religlOn. The gul between God and man,.panned by the bridge of the Imams among the Shi'ites, is toowide lor simple people, and its rules and regulations depriveIt O, ]r!irmth' 'and colour. The need for personal contaet tanc! tenderness finds expression in the eult o saints, in Sufi \

"~ , B

c.

3 ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYAmysticism, and in the ritual o the Darwish Orders. aH o whichtend to be frowned on by the puritans and Pharisees of Islamand sometimes, by its secular rulers.

In every religion there will be found people who, like theSufis, eel that while formal acceptance of the tenets of the faithand conscientious performance o its duties a;.re sufficient forrighteousnes~ .~d salvation. they do not satisfy the deeper -tf' r..)longings of the soul_which seeks always by entire love of God .~ a perfect communion with Rim. Human sols are rays 01 the

- divine sun imprisoried in the material world o the senses. Theaim o Sulism has been to transcend the senses and to attainthrou h love identiiicatlOn wlth God so complete that there isno longer a duality o o an ,ut t ere 15 only 'God.This is brought, a!>out by asceticisn. livmg apait trom theworld. contemplation. charity; and the performance of super-numerary religious exercises producing a state o ecstasy inwhich the soul.no longer conscious of its individuality, o itsbodily prison. dI- o' the externa! world, is for a while unitedto God.

In the first ~enturies of Islam the Sufis were quietists,individuals, often "'(ith a speculative bent, pursuing their lonelyquest o God, ~nd tending to become herrnits. In the~th

~Darwish.Ord~rsirn~~_~~_a~~idealsbe an to corrie. mto rornmence and In course o tlffie they

eC~~ldespreadandjrnrnensely~opu ar with the common f>#fv S~ the" poor, tlie hurnble. and t eunlettered. especially inthe towns. Indeed. there is a good deal oftruth in Pere Lammens'sclaim that theDarwish Orders 'have realIy fiourished onlyamong the intellectuaJly backward .... and in regions whereanarchy reigns '.1 The popularity o these Orders, which havemany social unctions, is doubtless to sorne extent to be ac-counted or by the almost ,*ornplete absence o camorate lIte roin Islam. In becorrrng social institutions, and sornetimes politi-'iiI movements. in the Arab lands they have shed most o theiroriginal cantent o mysticisrn. -

The very wide ollowing which these Orders attracted and thegreat infiuence thereby gaincd by their leaders excited thesuspicion. and oftenthe open hostility, o the official exponentsal Islamic doctrines,and traditions, the 'Ulama, or c1ergy, who

I Le R. P.' H. Lammens. L'Islam nd ed., 1941, p. 18 ..

ORIG~N AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYA 3furthermore sC,ented heresy in them. To protect himself againstacclIsations o, doctrinal irregularities, it was customary for thefounder of a new Order or sub-Order to demonstrate in hisinitial tr~atis~, as the Grand Sanusi did, his orthodoxy by show-ing how his t~,!-chings fo11owed those of sorne famous theoIogianwhose orthodoxy was acknowIedged by al1. The Orders alsoaroused the en'mity of the religious aristocracy of the Sharifs,descendants, or supposed descendants, of the Prophet Muham-mad, who saw the common peopIe looking to the Shaikhs andBrothers of the Orders for the blessing they had considered thei:exclusive priyilege; and of the secular rulers, often themselvesSharifs, whose duty it was to support the clergy in the preserva-tron of orthodoxy and who, on their own account, m15trustedpopular movements of any kind, especially when, as was oftenthe case with the Darwish Orders, they were associated withparticularist aspirations. Opposition from these sources has -not lessened~ithas probably increased-the popularity of theOrders among, thc masses, who, rather dumbly but quiterightly, are irritatcd by governments and meddlers of a11 kinds.The humble h,ave always sympathized with the Orders and havesupported thcm as they support u11 those who. standing 011common ground, can yet point the way to Heaven, and abrighter waythan that offered by the cold learning of theofficial clergY.

tFor an Islainic Order is a way al life'Jand so it is ca11ed in.A'rabic a tariqa, a road. a path. a way. The various Orderscounsel thir followers to take difierent paths, stressing therole ofreason or intuition, and difiering from one another inthe mcans they advocate of reaching the gual, but the paths leadto the same end. ~entification of the_soul with

...4. ..

t ''\-f,,,~L .. ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYAI t",' which the soul experleIlfes God. It is suffused with knowledge:( 'G,'{\(J/Ir"s not with 'ilm. intellectual and traditional knowledge, but with.. .) i i .,IvIM((')C, _'rifa, gf!oJi,is. wisdom. The Grand Sanusi and his luc~e!!Q.fs.. ~~!!:Sglydis~pprovedof external aids to this end, such as

processions, music,movements of the body inducing convul-... sions, piercing the fiesh with sharp implements, and such other4 means as are used by som; Orders, and steered a middle course--. between the illuminative, or intuitive, school of Sufi writers and

..... the rational, or 'intenectual, school. Thus Sayyid Ahmad al-

.. Sharif, his grandson, ltls in his writings, as Moreno points out,'.. exhorted followers of the Order not to deE.art fmm the rational,~"'" . the chiel ai~f the Sanusiya bemg to make a man a good rrc..,Pt.

(/

6 ORIGIN ANDXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYAinto the Order ordinary members. This is done simply by thetwo persans conc~rned shaking hands and reciting the fatiha,the opening verse oi the Roran, together. These categories canhardly be regarded as grades and 1 can cite the authority oiSayyid Muhammad'Idns to support the opinion that they havenever meant more, than that sorne persans were recognized asmore learned than otners and therefore better qualified to recite

~he longer and more advanced religious exercises.

1IThe Grand Sanusi's desire to create around him a society

living the IHe o primitive Islam and his missionary zeal gave animpression, enhanced by the asterity of rus Bedouin followersand the remoteness DI the Sahara, of excessive puritanism andianaticism; and sorne writers have compared the Sanusi move-ment to the Wahhabi movement on acconnt of these suppasedtrats. Duveyrier's accaunt, used very uncriticaJly by otherwriters, is large1y'to be blamed for the exaggerated stories oithe secrecy, puritanism, ianaticism, power, and numbers oithe Order that were current at the end oi the last century andin the first decade oi the present century and which muchprejudiced it in the eyes o European Powers with interests inNorlh Airica. With Duveyrier it was an axiom that any fool-

'. hardy Europ~an who,got himself kiUed in North and Central. Alrica had been assassinated by Sanusi a.gents and that any. setback to French interests was due to their propaganda.~ It is true thatthe .-Wahhabi movemel).t, ,aimed at restoring what he conceived tobe the oTlgmal soclefy 01 the Prophet. Nether was peculiar indoing so, lor every Muslim preacher must have the same aim.The Grand Sanusi forbad the drinking oi alcohol and the takingpJ snuff and at .first, though not absolutely, smoking. But aHMuslims are forbidden alcohol and many who are neitherSanusi nor Wahhabi trunk that smoking is best avoided. It isuntrue, as has been MSerted, that the Sanusi are forbiddencoffee. The Bedouin of Libya do not drink coffee, only tea, in

"

H. Du"eyrler, LIJ (JJlj,me M..sul_,., de Sidi MolJ""' ....d be.. 'Ali esS...Ol1st el so.. DO/Mi;.. KiogrlJp/ique e" I'A ...... I300 t l'Hiti,e = s883 de"''''. '884 '

ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYA 7praise oI which many poems have been written by Brothers ofthe Order. Th.Grand Sanusi forbad music, dancing, and si.ng-ing in the recitations of the On!er, but in this he was at one with

1111 the official spokesmen osam.' Msf refonnist movementsin Islam tend towards asceticism.

Far lrom 1'leing extreme ascetics, however, the~.:3rofuers eat and dress well, eVJOn using scen:L. and are amiable

'MldJnJ.'.rl'~al1~ The Tunisian scholar and travenerMuharnmad '{)thman al-Hashaishi, who travelled in r896 viaMalta, Tripoli, and Banghazi to Kufra to visit al-Sayyid 011-Mahdi and met the leading Brothers of the time, remarks that'they are fond of diversions, honest jesting. 1 have visitedmany of their 'zawiyas and 1 have mOlde the acquaintance oImany 01 their notables: 1 have seen only cheerful and srnilingfaces, welcorning me with benevolente and kindness. May Godreward them!' j

The Grand S:tnusi discouraged the trappings of poverty byhis example, his exhortations, and his insistence on the Brothersbeing self-supporting. Although the Heads of the SanusiyaOrder, like the Wahhabi leaders, encouraged settlement on theland, they can hardly have hoped to have greatIy infiuencedthe Bedouin to this end; but they insisted on the lodges ofthe Order supporting themselves by agriculture supplementedby stock-raising, and thereby took a stand against t'ttjkal, thedependence for livelihood on alms and not on labour whichsorne mendicant Orders have advocated. .

The Order has always been, in fact, conventional as well as.9rthodox .. In it::. early penod was essentially a missionaryOrder with the ,lirnited aim oI bringing by peaceful persuasionthe Bedouin A~abs and the peoples of the Sahara and the Sudanto a fuller understanding uf the beliefs and morals of Islam,while giving them at the same time the blessings of civilization:justice, peace,,' frade, and educaton. Its principIes were, asShaikh Muhammad 'Uthman says, simply 'to do good andavoid evil '.>

The accusation of fanaticism is not borne out by either thecharacter 01 th~ Bedouin adherents of the Orderor by its actions.

I Mohammed ben Otsmane el-Hachaichi, Voyage au Pays des SenoussiA ..IrA""s La Trpolilaint el les Pays TouAreg. 1911, p. 128 (1St cd., 19"3)

lbid. p. 8.

I....

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8 ORIGIN AND. EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYIt

\

T e desire toestabIish in North Africa condltlonl In whlch );Muslims might Iive b their own aws an un.r n liS. wlr::${government, as t~ey dd In ra la un er t e p s,~#1/"1-""//,.1':lea the andSanusi and his successors to o 01. th. Turkish ~~ anli the in uen es n mnovationl O estero.Christendom, but their intransigenee in these matters did notimply intoleranee, far less aggressiveness, Though sornewriters have rllarle assertions to the eontrary, the 8anusi havenever shown themselves more hostile than other Muslims toChristians and Jews, and the Grand Sanusi and Sayyid al-Mahdi scrupulously avoided al1 poJitical entallglements whichmight bring them into unfriendly relations with neighbouringStates and the European Powers. The Brothers ol the Orderwere discouraged from discussing poJitical questions. Nor werethe Sanusi intolerant towards fellow Muslims who differed fromthem. Shaikh Muhammed 'Uthman records of Sayyid al-Mahdithat the persons he dislikes the most are those who speak iIIof Muslims '.1 The leaders of the Sanusiya have always toleratedother und rival Orders, ev~when theyhave disapproveaof

the~. TheGrand Sanus[haaIilmslf beenamemberuf-a~cession of Orde~s before he started his own and he allowed,as his successors have done, members of other Orders to belongto the Sanusiya at the Same time.

The leadersof the Order have a1so been tolerant towards thecult of saints, uhlike the iconoclastic Wahhabi, who have.destroyed even tpe tombs of those nearest to theProphet him-self. The view held by th doctors ol orthodox Islam is that,though intereession through a saint is unlawful.and tlie only

'. mention of him duri~g prayers at his tomb should be to ask themerey of God 01\ his soul, it is permissible to show respeet to histomb and his memory. The heads of the Sanusiya have, how-ever, always tolerated among their Bedouin fol1owers a regard{or holy men and their tombs which goes be ond mere respectot is unlikely that t ey feIt any repugnance to the eu , eeause

they eounted among their forbears severaI saints and werethemselves brought up in North Alriea where the cult 01 saintsis widesprcad and very near to the hearts of the common peopIe ;and they could not have remonstrated witb the Bedouin for1believing that holy men and their tombs are sourees 01 baraka,

I Op. cit., p. 121.

I W.;J ~ ~ 'cr,'.{)0~ '.r ~ ~ ~ J

,,'o

ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYA 9divine blessin,g, since it was because the Bedouin believed the 1ISanusi (ami1iY had the same virtue that they acccpted theirleadership. -

The rcsemblance often alleged bctween the ~anusi and thcWahha'bi rnVcmcnts, on the g':"ounds of likc puritan-i~,-Titeralism, and fanaticism, cannot be substantiatrd. It isobvious that ihere must be rsemblances between new religiousmovemcnts: "they usually c1aim to be a return ~ve'faith and moIs and the are eneral!y missionar and enthusi-astlc. here S no great significance In such common character-

"istics of the tWo movements. Nor is there any reason to supposethat the Grand Sanusi was directly infiuenced by WahhalJipropaganda. A more significant comparison bctween the twomight be made by tracil}g their developments~into political movements. Both started as religious revivals

'among backward peoples, chiefly Bedouin, the Wahhabi move-ment in the Najd in the eighteenth century and the Sanusimovemcnt firs't in the Hijaz and then in Cyrenaica in the middle Ve S'):, l"o tbe nineteenth century; the Ik/wan organizati6ris o the twomovements 'have much in common; and both ended in the.formation of Aroirates, or small IslamiStates. ~ "0,- B

- J~ N'v.o.-...~VL-.'~c10 ORIGINAND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYA

__~ (( of a o le to Uve accoTdin to ir-- r llims. T- ay thiS desire is expressed in the politicallanguage

~ . o~ natonalsm. IJi the past it was expressed in relgious rnove-';0..0.~ me"irt$~ 1fra15 nationalism is not a new phenornenon, Oniy itsu .,.....,....d.;.. .~ ress lS new.-evv... As will be seen' in the ehapters which follow. conditions in

fu) U RJ Cyrenaica were 'pacticularly avourable to the growth of aD politico.religious rnovement such as the Sanusiya bccarne. It

was cut off by d.eserts from neighbouring countries, it had a I.~. ~ ... eous o ulation, it had a tribal system which em-~J;.'

--------1I

ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYA 11ment to which his tcachings led, it may be said that the greatdifference betwecn the Grand Sanusi and the earli~whose tombs are,ho~~IyJ.~df!laE..~~renaicawas that.w~heLwere,al! of them, in the eyes o the Bedouin,~bouts, the Grand Sanusi was also the liead oI a"1JriICr whichgave to hiro and .I1~_,~ccessors an...2rgmization. Moreover,unlike the Heads o most Islamic Orders, which have rapidlydisintcgratcd nto autonomous segments without contact andcommon dircction, they have been able to mainfain thisorganiza-Hon intact and kecp control o it. This they were able to do byco-ordinating the lodges o the Order to the tribal structure.

IIIThe more relrent Islamic Orders are to be found principally

in North and \Vest Africa. The Sanusiya is one of the mostrecent of them.. lts founder was an Algeri~scholar, al-SayyidMuhammad bill' ",AH al-Sanusi al-Khattabi al-Idrisi al-Hasani,a very remarkable man, mystic, missionary, and Marabout.The Sayyoid Muhammad bin 'AH al-Sanusi is usually spoken ofin Cyrenaica as a[-Saltusi qiRa.bir, {he Grand 'Sanusi, and 1gen.,.ally refer to him thus in this bool

I1I

l\J\~~iltv(w)"l f{ IU1lt~d'.

F,.L,:,d.~ l..

[~ 1.

12 ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYApeople of Fez, hut, l,'f the story is true, the suspicion o those in Iauthority would have been his fi[st experience~d o

sitian he was later to ericounter in (airo an Mecca. ~He went roro Fez to sou em Algeria and thence to Qabis,

Tripoli, Misurafa, and Banghazi, preaching everywhere on hisway. He had already gathered around him his first disciples(Ikhwan). mostly Algerians, and in their company he made hisway to Egypt by the eoastal route rom Banghazi and stayedthere a ew weeks., He had intended to study at al-Azhar'/buthe seerns to hayearoused the jealousy o the Shaikhs of theUniversity and to ha,ve irritated them by his reforrning zeal and ]bis speculations, and so departed for Mecca. Short though hisstay in Cairo had been it is probable that the independenee othe Khedive Muhammad 'AH and the cultural and intel!ectualrevival going 00 there left their mark on his mind. '

He remained H the Hijaz for about six years, studying undera number o Shaikhs at Meeca and al-Mamna. He is said to

~e [eturn~to Mustaghanim in about 1829 and-;:;;;t to have.'. visited the Hijaz again till 1813. On this second visit, whichr lasted far eight ,.years, he-was accompanied by a considerable

number of discples'from the west. He continued his reorrnist~tatio? and his stpdies under learned Shaikhs at Mecca. ffieman who infiuenced him most, and whose favourite pupil hebeeame, was Sayyid Ahmad bin Idris al-Fasi, the fourth Headof the Morocca~Order o the Khadiriya or Khidriya Darwishes,a branch o the Sh,adhil'iya Order, and later the founder o anew sub-Order of his own, the Idrisiya or Khadiriya-Idrisiya.Sayyid Ahmad Idrs had aroused the hostility of the doetorsof the Maliki rite at Mecca, by whom he was regarded as un-orthodox, and went into exile into the Yaman, where he wasaccompanied for two yers by' the Grand Sanusi. On SayyidAhmad Idris's death in t.he Yaman, his two chief disciplesorganized his followers into..two new sub-Orders, the Mirghaniyaand the Sanusiya, the latter being organized and led by theGrand 5"nusi, who established its headquarters at ]!1.t. Abutbais, near Mecc~, in 1837. Thi; year is regarded as the fficial

te 'orUieIOundation of the Order.It will have been noted that the Grand Sanusi was infiuenced

by a ~ide range,of Sufi tradition and had affiliated himself to a I S..lim bin"Amlr, Majal/al 'U_r aJM..It1Ilar. No. 1, p. n

(

(

ORIGIN', AND EXPAr\SION F THE SANUSIYA 13numher of Orders before he founded his own. It has beenrecorded that he was infiuenced by the Moroccan TijaniyaOrder and that at Mecca he became the favourite pupil o thefounder ol the Idrisiya Order, which derived its tenets fromthe basic Shad~iliya Order. In his student days he became amember al othqr Orders: Shadhiliya, Nasiriya, Qadariya, andperhaps others: t His catholicism was not peculiar among theSulis, and in his case"he seems to have joined a large variety oOrdcrs wilh the deliberate intention ol learning their rites anddoctrines at tirst hand so that he could combine a11 that wasbest in each ot them in a new Order which would be the crownof Sufi thoughi ;nd practice. It 'must not be supposed that onthis account his teaching was a mere amalgam o the tenets oearlier Orders. Original it was not, but it was a consistent andcarefuJly thought out way al life.z

The new Sanusiya Order made such rapid progress, especiallyamong the Bedouinb the Hijaz,J that it excited the jealousyand fear o the various authorities in Mecca, the 'Ulama, theSharifs, and me Turkish Administration. There can be little \

doub~t the real objections to the Order were that it threatenedthe presti~esolthese authorities, but they wereframed in less revealmg language. It seems to have been heldagainst the Order that it lowered Sufi"standards to accommodateitself to Bedoun laxity in religious matters, and that t vergedon heresy. ,

Faced with serious opposition the Grand Sanus did what histeacher Sayyi;l Ahmad ldris had done in similar circumstances:he tt the H"az in laceo' i

~ciples to return to his native land. After spending somemonths in Calro, he continued his journey westwards to Siwaoasis, where he \Vas taken sick and spent severa! weeks recuperat-ing and instru,cting the people o the oasis in the aith. In theollowing ycaihe reached Tripoli by the desert route. On hisway to Qabis rom that town he heard o the new Frenchadvances in his homeland and decided in view o them to returnto Tripoli an~ thence to Banghazi. It would appear thereore

1 Ibid.. p. 6; Adams. op. cit.. p. u. Cario Gglio, La Confraiernitt! Senussila dalle l/U Oricill tUl 0cei, ]932.

p. 17 A. Le Chateliet, LIS Confr;,;" M .."d...an d.. H.djal, 1887, p....i ....

CrDc e.6.~c.r i e .... e( t

14 ORIGIN ANP EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYAthat he did not'choose Cyrenaica as bis field of labour but was

com~lled to settle in Libra for a time because the Toad to thewest was c10sed by the Freneh and the Toad to the casi by theauthorities ID Cairo and Mecca. The Grand Sanusi was acosmopolitan, a townsman. and more at home in the schoolsand libraries o Fez Cairo, and Mecca than amid the lentisk andjuniper of the Cyrenaican plateau or the thyme and wormwoodo its roIling plains. Even after founding in 1843 what hasbecome the Motner Lodge of the Order, al-Zawiya al-Baida. onthe central Cyrenaican plateau, not far from the ancient cityo Cyrene. and while the Sanusi movement was stilI young in '1the country. he retumed in 1846 to Mecca aild stayed there till

11853 Altogethet he spent only about ten years of his teachinglie in Cyrenaica. whereas he spent sorne twenty years in theHijaz. ' On his retum to:Cyrenaica he seems to have feU the need for

greater solitude. He was then nearing seventy years of age anddOUhtIess fernhat ,what was left to him of me should be given~ontemplailim....~yer, and(;tl!Q.y. It may be true also, as iscommonly stat~d in books written by Europeans. that he desiredto place a wide stretch 01 desert between himself and the Turkishauthorities who"as the Sanusiya movement grew, began to takegreater interest init. He therefore first went to live for a shortwhile at al-'Azziyyatonthe southem edge o the plateau, wherehe built a zawiya, and afterwards at ]aghbub, about 160 km.from the sea.

j.aghbub, now to become the centre o the Order and the seatof an Islamic_~t:~ity second only in Arica to al-Azhar, wastill 1856, when, the Grand Sanusi made it his seat, ~inhabited oasis; in which the water was brackish. highlysUlphurous. and insufficient to irrigate more than a small area01 gardens. It was not a place or luxurious living, though itseems to ha~ been healthy ando unlike Siwa, free from malaria;~ but it had certain' ~litical advantages. It was out 01 reach of

~kiJ>h, F,rencli; or Egyptian govermnents. it was on tIlemain p1gi1iiage routclroTIorth-west Alrica through Egyptto Mecca, and tbis pilgrimage route bisected at the oasis oneo the trade routes from the coast to the Sahara and the Sudan..Moreover, since, C:rrenaica is a peninsula. it was the mostcentral point he,CO\id have chosen at that time to be inequal

ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYA 15touch with th~ lodges 01 his Order in Cyrenaca, Tripolitania, i::'the Western Desert o Egypt, and the Sudan.

In moving the seat o his Order to Jaghbub, the GrandSanusi was probably most infiuenced by his decision to directhis missionary propaganda southwards. It is understandablethat he should have made this decision. I1:is wa~ a missionary

111M err(JWJ ,Indi'ilt.e ,s,nusiy, Uf'8~;q"7M .rrows indicaN l11(Nementr uf [&'o/',a/7 Jl>wers

Thc" Spread 01 the Sanusiya in North Africa.

mind and the Order he had founded a missionary Order, andthe pagan and semi-pagan countries of the Sahara and theSudan, and of Equatorial Africa beyond them, offered endlessscope for conversion to the faith. Moreover, his Order wasalready reaching the limits of its expansion in North Africa.It had won'over the nomad and semi-nomad Bedouin tribes ofCyrcnaica, Tripolitania, and Egypt. and the oases 101k undertheir influence, bu was not makin , and was n01 even in itsheyday to ma e, muc~reSSlOn on t ants 'In towns-J!!.en up aa:iSfWliom 1t now found itself in Northern Trip~tania and the Nile Valley. Dammed to west and east the Order~_._~..

l,

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16 ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SANUSIYApoured its vitality southwards along the trade mutes to theinterior oi Africa, i.p.to Fazzan a~d the various regions that areto-day ealled the Ft:eneh Sahara and Freneh EquatOTial Ariea.Until Franee opened up the Atlantie seaboard, mueh o theCentral Arican. trade found its way along the oases-routes tothe 'ports o Cyrenaica and Tripolitania and there were, there-fore, well-established social connexions running .Jrm:!:L.Jh.eBedouin tribes o C renaica and s~themTri olitani

,"

may beensidered not to have the full status of a noble Arab tribe, ther~Jationshipbetweenthem and the owners of the eountry is olte"none 01 mutual dependenee. lhus fhe leading section 01 {hepowertul Bara'asa tnbe is the 'Ailat Hadduth which in DeAgostini's lists numbers 2,520 ersons, of whom nI 6 O aretrue Bara'a~a, the remi.n er being. ,liUents; and the leadingIsection of the 'K"waqir, the 'Ailat Suhman.70unts 1,200 c1ientsout of a tot;.1 o 1,940.. Where the relationship is one of mutualdependence I the two tribes are e:\'pected to help eaeh other inthe payment o blood-money.

The dient tribes are of difierent categories to which corre.=::

I G. W. Murray, So... 01 Jsllmael, 1935, pp. '11 and z9. Op. cit., p. 5.

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~a J:HE BEDOUIN OF CYRENAICAspond difierent Social statuses. Some are classed as M arabtitlbU baraka, elie~t tribes with the blessing' or M arabtin al-Fatha,'client tribes ofthe prayer', and they often claim to be Sharifs.lbese 'saered' tribes, such as the Aulad al-Shaikh and most of

AL-HARABA'" Namn of Trl/),S SulaAI-Haraba ...Sanusip Zawly4s'-.-_.-,&uiKI.Jrfl Lin" Q 50 10() J5Q lOO

The ehief Sanusi Bedouin Trilles of Tripolitania., ,

the Masamir ard Farjan, live among the Sa'adi as equals invirtue o the prestige they derive rom their deseent, or sup-posed deseent, from saints, though the free tribes do not regardtbem as quite' like themselves. Their ancestors are almostinvariably believed to have come from the west, Moroeeo,AJgeria. Tunisia, or Tripolitania. This move o pious men to

THE BEDOUIN OF CYRENAICA 53the east began in the middle of the thirteenth century and haslasted to the present day. It is intimately bound up with thepilgrimage to the sacred towns of Islam. Round these piousmen and round their tombs gathered for sanctuary the simpleand oppressed, and from these and irom the children of theholy men have sprung the M arabtin bit baraka tribesJIne otherdient tribes have no sacred associations and are known asMarabtin al'sadqan because they pay sadaqa, a iee, to a free

tribe for protection and for the privilege of using the earth andwater. Sorne small broken-up fragments of this category on theplateau, such 'as the 'Awwama, Alauna, Hasanna, and sorne ofthe Qat'an and Sa'it, even to-day have a very inferior socialposition and: are forced to make payrnents to, and to perforroservices for, the free tribes among whom they live. Othertribes of this second category live, as already mentioned, onterritory whiqh is to all intents and purposes their own and havelong since ceased to paya fee. This is especiaIly the case to theeast, in 'Abaidat tribal territory, where such diellt tribes as theMinifa, Qat'an, Taraki, and Huta live with independent status.In the west also the Fawakhir and Zuwaya are tod powerful andwarlike to accept overlordship. Also, the more nomadic groupsin Cyrenaica are mostIy dient tribes and, like all nomads, resentany control or authority. Whatever the free tribes may sayabout them, :they regard themselves as independent.

The provenance of the Sa'adi tribes and of sorne of theMarabtin tribes is shown together with the distribution of theSanusiya lodges on the map facing page 35, and the approximatenumbers of these tribes, and of a few others not shown on themap, are list,ed below.

Sa'adi al-Zuwaya 3,700al'Abaidat

,al-Shwa'ir . 3,4003,45

al-'Awaqir 27,500 alFawakhir 3,300al-Bara'asa 21,000 alSa'it 2,900alDarsa 18.850 alMajabra. 2;500alMagharba 13.000 alMinila 2,500aV Arafa 9,300 aJMasamir 2,400al-'Abid 6,850 aJAwajila . 2.300al-Hasa 6.500 Aulad alShaikh 1,650'Ailal Fayid IOO al-'Aqail 1,400

alShahaibat 1,35Marabli" aJSarahna 1.25

alQat'an 5,850 al-Qabail 1,1,50al-'Awwama 3.800 alHuta 1,15

, ,

:U('+w ~kl 5k)~y.~-

54 THE BEDOUlN OF CYRENAICAThe figures for the free tribes inelude attached elient groups,for the principal of which estimates are also given separately.The figures are, tak,en from Col. De Agostini's monograph. Theprovenanee of the chief Bedouin tribes of Tripolitania and ofthe fringes of Fazzan who are Sanusi, or sympathetie to theSanusiya, is shown, likewise in relation to the distribution oSanusiya lodges, on the map on page 52.

VIAlthough' tbere were ~he Eas!intertrt.llal w~~~n_d fe~s

which have lasted into the present time, and in spite o thedifferenee in status between free and cllent tri6es, there were.wS of the tenis which gave every Bedoum the freedom of thewhole country, and there was much commg and going between(he tribes and ~xehangeof hospitality, especially in the grazinggrounds where ~ections witlldlstlnet territories on the plateaushared eommon pasturage to the south of it, and where theneeessities of Blfdouin lite, watering at wells in transit, the cross-ing of another tribe's territory on the way to markets, the

\"..1 pursuit of straying,eamels, and the need to sow where rain ell,imposed recognition of individual rights wthout regard to-tribal affiliations ar social status. Had it not been so, the GrandSanusi could nothave bullt on the tribal system his inclusive

. organization, fortherewould have beeo no foundatjons in> ~lture, sociaLTfrJcture, arid sentiment, on wbich to build. ..'My inelinatiOJ:'s,as an nthropologist are to diseuss at sorne

length t,!!e trib~ and kinshie systems and the Jie o the tents,but I refrain {fom giving more than abare outline of the tribalsystem, and I neglect altogether kinship and the lie of the~oecause, however interesting detail about these matters mightbe to the ethnQlogist. a knowledge of them is, I think, un-necessary for an' understanding of the development of theSanusiya Order inCyrenaica. I discuss the structure o theCyrenaican tribe therefore only in so far as it is relevant to thisgeneral theme.\

Use of the term 'tribe' in Cyrenaica, even if it be restrictedto the big free tribes, is always to sorne extent arbitrary OI; thepolitical structure, is highly segmentary. Nevertheless, though

I For a more general nocount .ee Savarese, op. cit.. Pt. 11, passi,".

THE BEDOUIN OF CYRENAICA 55sections of ~ tribe may be opposed to one another they regard rthemselves as an undivided group in opposition to neighbouringtribes, and are so regarded by their neighbours. Thus a Qa!batiis only a Qalbati in Hasa country. In 'Abaidat or Bara'asa country he is, a Hasi. Likewise a Darsi or an 'Abidi in contrasttomembers \1lf other tribes regards the whole of the Darsa or the'Abid as his people, his tribal brothers.

Each tribin this commonly accepted sense has its watan, itshomeland, lts soil, its arable, its pastures, and its wells; andeach has its ~amel-brand which is also carved on the tomb-stones of its dead. The triballands are vested in the tribe, whichhas residual rights in thero. They cannot, therefore, be alienatedto other tribes without the consent of the whole tribe. A tribe 'Jis conceived of as a huge family descended from a cornmonancestor, from whom the tribe generalIy takes its name. Henceits segment~ can be figured either as a series of poltica! sectionsor as genealogical branches of a clan.

A tribe iS divided into several, generally two or three,primary div~ions, or sub-tribes, which own welI-defined portionsof the tribal territory, in most cases running in strips unbrokenby intrusive elements. These primary divisions are of the samepattern as the tribe of which they forro parto Each division ha~

-? its watan, which its merilbers own and defend cclkctlVely. They. ben~ve that they are descended from a common ancestor, who

is generally ~ son of the ancestor of the tribe. Primary tribaldivisions splitinto secondary divisions, and secondary divisionsinto tertiary divisions. and so on. Each of the smaller divisions isa replica of the largei ones andas the same pr~ferential andexclusive rights in its lands, an encroachment on which byanother divlsion will lead to flghting. Each has within thetribal brand~ts speciallineage markings. The members of each f.\division also consider that they are descended from a common iancestor who, in his turn, is descended rom the ancestor o the .larger division of which they forro a section. The further the .sub-division the more the resultant groups take on the com-plexion oC kinship aggregates, rather thanof political aggregates.

These tnshlp aggregates or extended family groups are thebasic units o triballife. They are called biyut (sing. bait). Thetribe may be the residual owner o land and water but thebiYI.t are the owners in use. Their members live in the same

(((

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56 THE' BEDOUIN OF CYRENAICAstretch of tribU territory, move during the rains to the samegrazing grounds, \lse the same wells during the dry season, andcu1tivate adjacentstrips of arable. The members of a bait havea lively sense of solidarity, and this is most evident in fighting IaIf"d feuds. It is their common duty to avenge a slain kinsman 'and they share the diya, indemnity, should they accept it in "the place of alife. Theyare jointIy responsible for a wrong anyone of them may commit. The smaller biyut are often identicalwith camps, usually from five to ten tents, in grazing grounds,and severa! closely related biyut camp near together in thevicinity of springs and wells in the summer, their combinedcamps then amounting sometimes to over a hundred tents.

What has been said aboye about tribal structure applies onlyto the free tribes and the larger client tribes living on their ownland. The client tribes which are split up and scattered through-out Cyienaica arll not tribes in a political. 1mt only in an ethnic,sense. It will be found that in any of the main tribes stranger 1groups, sometilnes' of client origin, have aUached themselvesto the clan dom,inant in the tribal area and through sorne fiction,myth, or fraUlt have grafted their branch of descent on to thegenealogical tr~e of this clan. The Bedouin use the word la! todescribe this pl-ocess and they say that kinship established in this jway may becQme .as strong as kinship of blood. _,

The structure'of a tribe is expressed in tenns of the lineagesystem of the clan dominant in its territory, the tribal segmentsbeing associated with branches of descent from the ancestor oftbis clan. The primary tribalsections are identified with lineagesdescended fro~ sorne of this ancestor's descendants in the maleline; the secondary tribal sections are identified with lineagesdescended froIn more of his descendants farther down the lineof descent ; and so on till the smallest territorial segments andthe smallest lileages are reached. Thus a lineage considered asa branch of a clan consists of al! those persons who trace theirdescent through the male line to a coromon ancestor, but it canalso be, and in speech often is, conceived of politically as anagnatic group of tbis kind together with stranger and Marabtinaccretions which oCcupy its territory~make common causewith it in disputes with other tribes or segments 01 the sametribe.

A simple eXa,Tnple is given in illustration of tribal segmentation

, THE BEDOUIN OF CYRENAICA 57and of the consistency between lineages of a clan and segmentsof a tribe. Iri explanation of it a few words must first be saidabout the terrns qabila, 'aila, and bait. Qabila is the wordgenerally used to denote a tribe or primary tribal divisiono

58 THE BEDOUIN OF CYRENAlCA

, N...... uf tribal ""'u- ... prillteclla capltal ..t....." '(j - 'dNo/.

81-B....

If reference ,be m'ade to the accompanying map and genea-logical chart it ~ill be seen that the Hasa tribe is made up ofthree primary sections. the Qalabta. the Shabarqa, and theBakhayit. distributed in strips running froro north to south.which are very typical and give to each section equal condi-

II

~

AL-BAKHAYITI

Bakhit

IQ.......I

Ji~ !llu'~l''AbcI.JSaIam 'AbcI LRuaqI f'-1--'---'1

Sa1ih llahmud MuslaJaI

Ramadan

'.tj AL-SLA1LlKHI

M.murI

IMubarnmad

'AbcI .J.A1im

AL-HASAHawaP

I,AL-MAHAMDA AL-SHABARQA

I 1Mubammad Sblbriq

'd' BR~H1M I '(, AL-MZATAL 'd' AL-SHAUQII--~l- IBrahim Muta! M... afio

I

AL-QALABTAIQalbatJ

I-Aqi\a

I

I ,zaidan

'(, aALRAb1-:AQTA'I ,1

Muballlwad Tahir

AL-MUASAI

MUla

1Ji Bu SHNAINIFA II i---

Bu Sbnainlf. SultaD Jibrin

~'BU HAU~HAN~I -. r- I5ult&D: Salad 'UmarI B'WA'il~Balal W.'alra:

a. NUHAMNAP m QASHA1SH m'ALl I1 -=-------"--T '--'-'--~~-r--IMuhaDllnad Qubailb 'AU 8u Halaiqa SaHb1- II

I/l BU HALAIQA l BI GHAlZAN BI BRAHlM I BI"~5TAFA BI AL-HABAL,----~l I--~ JBu Hal3iqa Chahao Brabim M.Ulufa Husain

I

THE BEDUIN F CYRENAICA 59tions of soil/water, and grazing. We trace the segmentation ofthe Qalabta alone and see that it has two divisions, the Muasaand the Mahamda. We iollow the line oi Muhammad alone andnote that it splits into three lineages, 'Ailat Brahim, 'Ailat al-Mzatal, and 'A ilat al-Shauqi (there is dispute, arising iromquarrels OVC land, about the legitimacy oi this branch). FromMzatal desccnd the three minor 'ailat, al-Slailikh, al-Aqta', andBalraba'i. Fpllowing only the first Hne we note that 'Ailatal-Shlailikh then divides into the various biyut shown on thechart, al-Habal, Mustaia, Brahim, &c., the male membership oionly ofle of which, bajt al-Haba!, is presented in the genealogy.Where the name oi an 'ajla or bajt is different from that of itsfounder, it, 'almost invariably means that the founder's nick-name has bcen uscd, the Cyrenaican Bedouin having a partialityfor nicknames.

Each section oi a tribe, from the smallest to the largest, hasits Shaikh or Shaikhs. The tribal system, typical o segmentarystrli'ctiires cverywhere, is a ~ystem o balanced oppositionbetween tribes and tribal sections from the largest to thesmalIcst divisions, and there cannot therefore be any singleauthority in ~ tribe. Authorityis distributed at every point oi ~l /1the tribal structure and politicalleadership is limited to situa- /y'",ktions in which a trille or a segment oi it acts cor oratel . With ~'a tribe this only happens in war or m ealings with an outside 'authority which for its o~n purposes ~cognizes.the tribe as ana9.ministrative unit. There cannot, ObvlOusly, be any absolute'l'iuthority ~ested in a single Shaikh of a tribe when the funda- :mental principIe oI tribal structure is opposition betweenits 'segments, and in such segmentary systems there is no state andn government as we understand these institutions; andJ

((

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. '1 ,,'bC

2J~ '"-6 THE BEDOUIN OF CYRENAICA 6rJ:.e also has mt.)fe wiyes than other Bedouin and is usually morecultured and intelligent.'.. The most important o the Shaikhly families of the country,those which represented large tribal divisions vis-a-vis theTurkish Government, the Sanusiya, others sections of theirtribe, adjacent tribes, and attached c1ient groups, 10st much otheir influence!with the loss of their stock and the exle of sorneof their more prominent members during the second !talo-Sanusi war. The authority of these traditional Shaikhly line-ages was also I)ndermined by Halian policies, first of recognizingand paying salaries to so many Shaikhs, sorne of whom werepersons of little importance, that the office of Shaikh lost muchofits virtue in the eyes of the people, and afterwards o ignoringthe Shaikhs ;l.1together. The better known of these Shaikhlyfamilies are the house of Bu Bakr bu Hadduth among theBara'asa, the house of Lataiwish among the Magharba, thehouse o 'Abdalla among the 'Abaidat, tbe houses of Kizzih and'Abbar among the 'Awaqir, the house of Asbali among the'Arafa, the houses of Suwaikir and 'Ilwani among the 'Abid,the house of Bu Khatara bu Halaiqa among theHasa, and, inthe Sirtica, the most famous bouse of all. that of Saf al-Nasiramong the hghly nomadic Aulad Suliman.

I Op. cit. Pt. n, pp. 39-40.

" '

CHAPTER III

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES

IWHEN the Grand,Sanusi carne to preach in Cyrenaica he foundthe kind o soC1ety I have outlined: a congeries of tribes with-out law ar efiective government, for the Turks had little controlover the interior, but with like values and habits and a com-munity of life which crbssed tribal boundaries. The Bedouin toWhom he preached were sunple people living the austere andmonotonous Iife o the tents, witb that savage character whichhas been so often portrayed, but also with those noble qualitieswhich haveseldom faiJed to evoke admiration from those whohave lived amongthem. They were profoundly ignorant aboutthe outside world nd also-which is what touched the heart ofthe Grand Sanusi-about the faith of their fathers, and to thismatter I must now retum, since the Sanusiya was a missionaryOrder and can only be understood as such.

T.!!gugh the Bedouin professed Islam before the Grand Sanusiinfluenced themoy his teaching, they were almost totaTIy19Dorant of its doctrinal content, rites, or ritual and moralduties, and iUs safe to assume that they did not obey its pre-cepts. It is .sa(e to assume this because even to-day. after acentury of Sanusiya insfruction, the Bedouin perforro theirreligious duties. in a very perfunctory way, if at all, and whenMuslim law is at variance with tribal custom they follow tribalcustom. In sayingtbat tbey are lax, I do not suggest that theyare not very sircere,. Muslims. They are proud o being Muslimsand consider themselves reatfy superior to Christians, whiethey are contemptuous of Jews. ever e ess, though theywould not belittle, the Cyrenaican Bedouin feel no embarrass-ment at neglecting the duties obligatory on every Muslim.The Confession of Faith is known to all and implicitly acceptedby aH. lt imposes no irksome restrictions or tiresome duties.But they almost completely neglect-I speak of the morenomadic sections whom 1 know hest, but it is probably true omost Cyrenaic~Bedouin-t~irdaily prayers, ad~s

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 63absolutely pbligatory and sinful to omito 1 very much doubt

~'anermay'o t-h~-Bedojfii know how to pray in the pre-scribed manner. As I have mentioned earlier, the Bedouin used~P give alm~ to their zawiyas and in doing sd they carried out v/'oone of the fi,-;e major duties of a Muslim, but they regarded these cl..(, .,) I ~alms as charity rather than legal dues. 1 have never rnet an ~ordinary Bcdouin who had been to Mecca. or who even con-templated going there. Nevertheless, however lax they maybe in other. things, aH Cyrenaican Bedouin keep the fast oRamadan, and in this annual fast is surnmed up for them, morethan in anything else, the obligations and privileges of Islamand its unity and strcngth. Moreover, although they arenegligent Muslims themselves {hey respect piet in others',

rothers o the Sanusiya Drder and rehgious men in generalought to pray regularly. That is their business and it is veryneeessary for 'the well-being of the community and worthy ofliberal support, but the B;dOllin is an unlettered man, a \

shep.h.~r

{((

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6.4 THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBESwhich often contrasts so strikingly with their poverty and ragsand what Paolo Della Cella describes as their excessive andhabitual ftlth. 1

It is important that it should be understood that the Bedouinof Cyren;rica were Muslim, at any rate by allegiance if not by1St'ruction, before the Grand Sanusi propagated the faith among

~

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 65of Cyrenaica; 1 The Bedouin remember with gratitude, as 1 haveoften heard th.em declare, the moral and cultural benefitsbrought to t~em by the Order. If they have fallen from the lowreligious andliterary standards to which the Sanusiya raised afraction of them it is due to the virtual extinction of its tea:ch-ing office during their long struggle with the Italians.

IIThe Bedouin the Grand Sanusi found in Cyrenaica were not

only Muslms but also inveterate devotees of saints, theMarabtin (silig. Marabat) or Marabouts, as they are called inEuropean accounts of North Africa, and the Grand Sanusi wasin' the long tradition of these holy meno Therefore, aIthough 1have touched on the matter in Chapter 1, 1 need not excuse my-self for treati'1g it again in its Cyrenaican context, for Bedouinattachment t the Sanusiya springs f!2l!!J~eir P~~.s'?!la1.4evJi

..

66 THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBESmen in North Africa whose families still retain much wealth andinfiuence. It w.as tbis Marabout status o the Grand Sanusi in

.'. tbe eyes of the Bedouin which won him tbeir respect: it was theorganization of the Sanusiya Order, an organization the earlierMarabouts did'not have, which enabled him to tum this respect

\ into a theocracy.There is more than one explanation of the origin of the word

M arabat'. That generally accepted is that it derives from theroot RBT, to bind. and hence from 'ribat', a fortified convent,inbabited by warrior-monks, found"&Efe marches o Islam inits early days of expansion by arms. The word later becameattached to the tribes which settled in Andalousia under theleadership of the Saharan tribe of the Sanhaja and was corruptedinto the European ',Almoravides '. After the fall oC the Sanhajadynasty in the twe1fth century part of the Marabtin tribes Cellback into central and southem Morocco, whence many m-dividuars moved eastwards. Sorne settled in Cyrenaica,generaIly on their retum from the plgrimage to Mecca, andtheir fanaticism, asceticism, ability to read and write, and thau-maturgic powers, impressed the simple Bedouin, who acceptedtbero as holy meo and rnagicians and used tbem to write charrns,to perform religious_rites, and to act as mediators in inter-tribal dispqks. Sometirnes, as we have seen, these menfounded lineages which, dwelling under tbe shadow oi their.saintly forbears, became nuclei of social agglomerations whichhave developed h. course of tinie into tribal groups, thus taking,the shape of the tribal society in which they lived. l,:he WQTdMarabtin' thus carne to mean I)9Jy meo (and their tombs) andten, in addition, tribes tracing their deseent, or supposeddeseent, froio these holy men and also, finally, in Cyrenaica,tribes who are clientS01 me great Sa'adi trllies which own theearth and~water; , -

SOrne o the'better koown of tbe C'yrenaican saints, but byno means al!, have gleaming white cupolas, supported by fourwalls, erected over their tombs, and inside the walls is a tub, awooden box, over the grave, and tbis is covered with eolouredcloth on whichi are inscribed passages from the Koran. Insidealso are often a few pages from sacred books, occasional1y a fewsmall coins given by the local Bedouin, and any property, suchas tents or ploughs, the Bedouin have wished to deposit in a

I THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 67safe pl.ce when on seasonal moves. Often a shrine, sometimesthe shrine o a very famous saint, is no more than a wall ofstones, witJ1' perhaps a slick, with pieces of cloth tied to it,erected over the grave, and this is the usual orm in the steppegrazing-grounds. There are general1y cemeteries around thetombs.

All these shrines are visited by the Bedouin from time to time,when they are passing by or when they havWiome reguest tomake o the holy mano Many o them are.fult pe\}~s, an~lcsremony, one o the chief events 01 tli Bedouin year, beingheld at them,;,and when they are near the border between tribes,or between tribal sections, this is an occasion or intertribal, orintersectional, gatherings. There is no saint whose tomb is muchvisited by the Bedouin who has not perfonned miracles, sorneoi them very remarkable miracles, and there is probably nonewho has not ~t sorne time or other cured thel'ick or given an heir.

The tombs o these holy men, Sidi this, Sidi that, and Sidi--..,.....----'--.,..,.--,.........--"-or-..-

the other, areiound in profusion over the whole of inhabitedCyrenaica. The historical1y best known are those o Sidi Rafa',one o the Companions oi the Prophet, near al-Zawiya al-Baidaon the plateau, oi Sidi 'Abdalla, one oi the Prophet's standard-bearers. in the oasis oi Aujlla, and oi the founder oi the SanusiyaOrder, Sidi Muhammad bin 'AH al-Sanusi, at Jaghbub oasis.The shrines 'belong to the tribes and tribal sections in whose'earth the M'a,rabouts are buried and the Marabouts are lookedupon as tribal and sub-tribal patrons. Like the Sanusiya Order,tbey have become part oi tribal lite.

1 have eadier reproduced Col. De Agostini's map of the Hasatribe to serve as an example oi the territorial distribution olineages. The same map serves to illustrate the distribution oishrines in a ~ribal territory. lt can be seen rom tbis map, whichshows only the bestknown Marabout tombs, that aH the differentsections oi 'the tribe have their shrines, and 1 would drawattention to an interesting feature oi the distribution which 1have also noted in other tribal areas: how often these sacredspots are neal: a tribal boundary, or "eathe boundary betweenOe tribal sectioD and anothllr. 'This may nol be pure chance,Tor the Marabouts in their lifetimes were regarded as standingo!!!.side the tribal system..to which indeed. being foreigners fromthe w_:st, they' did not belong, and their chief politi~al role was

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68 THE &ANUSIYA AND THE TRIBESto ad as mediators between triOOs and OOtween one tribalsection andanother. Even to-day their tombs are regarded asneutral p?ints, as it were, and are oiten the place:hosen fOra

"'meeting between the Shaikhs of one triOO, or tribal section, andthose of an adjacent triOO, or section, when sorne matter has tobe settled OOtween them. It has sometimes happened also thatwhen two triOOs have disputed the ownership of territory, theyhave settled- the dispute by allotting it to a Marabout, whichmeans to his' descendants, so that one then finds a M arabtin

~irip .lietween two 'Sa'adi tribesor tribal sections. One of thebest examples of tbis is the strip of country owned by the AuIadal-Shaikh tribebetween the 'Awaqir and the 'Abid and 'Arafatribal domains., Il the same way trihes made gifts of disputedwells to deadsaints. Where a Marabtin tribe has grown out of aMarabout family they will be found living in the area aroundtheir tombs. Tbus the Aulad al-Shaikh territory spreads outfrom Sidi Mahi'yus, part of the Masamir live near Sidi Nuh, theMshaitat live around Sidi al-Mshaiti, and the Qat'an live nearSidi Hashim,andSidi Suliman al-Tair.

So, long centunes before the Grand Sanusi bcgan his missionin Cyrenaica, the Bedouin were used to the sight of an':'alim. aleamed man-foi anyone who ,can read and write is a leamedman ~i!'!!L.J3edouin-comingfroithe west to heal theircIiildren and ~asts, break droughts, write talismans, and teachtbem the be1iefs and law of Islam. Sucb aman was also amuhakkam, one wbo arbitrated in their disputes and said the

rfatiha at their s~ttl~mntsand undertakings to make them bind-" ing. He couId arbitrate among them because he was not of

tbem. He was not like them a tented son of the steppe, thoughbis deScendants may have leamed to live as sucb, but a Maralull,aman who follows religion and not the rains. The Bedouin ofCyrenaica owe, much to these holy men, for, ignorant andsuperstitioU!., ,though they may have been, they taught thetribesmen to respect leaming and religion and kept those twinlights buming, even if dimly, througb centuries. The Bedouindo not forget,them, or to saya prayer for them, when they passtheir tombs; and they have given the freedom of their earthand water to their descendants. Without these forerunners the

l Grand SinuSi coUId no! have planted bis Order in the country.\ It is planted ID their bones.

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 69Marabouts of the kind 1 have described were still coming to

Cyrenaica from the west up to the time when the Grand Sanusibegan hispreaching in the country. Two of them whom hefound ther~, already living among the Be.douin, the one on thewestern and the other on the eastern part of the plateau, teach-ing them and settling their disputes, became his foIlowers: SidiAhmad bin 'Abdalla al-Sakkuri, a late arrival from the westwhose descendants became Shaikhs of the zawiya of al-Marj,and Sidi al~Martadi Farkash, of an old Marabtin farnily ofCyrenaica, whose descendants becarne Shaikhs of the lodges atUmm al-Razam, Bishara, and Martuba. But the -reat majorityof the Grand Sanusi's helpers were men who had come with himTrom the west. chiefiy from Algeria. bther Ikhwan famileS,nostly of the Khattabi lineage, ofwhich the Sanusi family area branch, carne later, also from Algeria, in {he time of Sayyidal-Mahdi..To the Bedouin they were all Marabouts and whenthey had i their lifetimes a reputation for piety or learningtheir tombs fu the Sanusiya lodges in which they residedbecamepraces of.cult like those of their forerunnersHallver Gyremiica.But unJike fheearerMaraboutsthese Sanusiya Brothers were F;d.Y.not onlyholy men. They were also members oi a fratetnty, oI '-ean organizati,on. The Sanusiya Order was thus not only ~eir r ~ S,Ito the accumulated capital of the Marabouts, but was able to i ~

e~oit it as a corporation. It incorporated a number of isolated )icults into a single wider cult, IractlOmzed, it is true, by tbal .particularisms, but, all the same.. brought under a cornmon! l. e.c..orgamzahon:' E~ lodge o the Order was a cult centre,. butlt i .i \was somethmg more: lt was parf ol a general cult dlrected l'through tlJ,e lodges towards the Head of the Order. The tribesol Cyrenaica became through the Order linked from above in acommon, if loose, organization under a single, sacred, Head.This was ossible onl because a tribal s stem already existeduniting the difierent tribes, in spite of their feuds and enml les, .into a socety which, tbough1acking politicaI umty, rested oncommon senumen~~, a common way aTme, and a cornman

'Iincage struchire. -What gave stability to this new relationship between the

Bedouin trib~s and the Sanusiya Order, tuming the sacred Head \into a secular leader and the religious organization into agovernment, and changed a loose ederation o tribes into a J

70 THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBESnation, was common hostility to outside interference, an ingre-dient supplied in~easured quantities by the Turks and copiouslyby the Italians.

IIIThe rudiments of Islam which the Grand Sanusi found in

ti Cyrenaica made his teachings acceptable, delivered as they werewithout embellishments, to the Bedouin of the country, and

/

' tbe Marabout 'tradition which he also found there made himpersonally accept~ble to them. His chief difficulty must havebeen the rivalries' between tribe and tribe and between tribalsection and tribal',section down to the smallest sections. This

I difficulty was overeOme by transferring the centre of the Order\ todesert oases, where it could not become identified with any

particular tribe,

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 71only founded' about 1870. The Sanusiya lodge in Tripoli townwas not built till 1882. It must, however, be remembered that inTurkish times Banghazi and Dama were little more tban Villagesand al-~arjonIya miJitary post and that, as already explained,

t~eir inhabhants were foreigners, either Jews or immigrantsfmm Tripolitanian towns who were generaIly affiliated already toother Orders. Moreover, the Turkish administration functionedfrom these centres, and that alone wouId bave prevented theGrand Sanusi from making them the headquarters of bismission. There could not be two governments in one largevillage, especiaIly as the Grand Sanusi disapproved of theTurks and they were suspicious of mm. Also the presence of theTurkish Gvernment in the towns ensured order and some, evenif very small, opportunities for education and religious instruc-tion and services, and Sayyid Mubammad bin 'Ali aI-Sanusi hadsettled in Cyrenaica with the express purpose of revlVmg tfietaith and raisiug the culture o the totauy ill1terate and almosthathen Bedouin, whose contact wlth the towns was neglig!bl~.TIle social funchons carnooootoY-UeSanuslya IOdges InCyrenaica were more consistent with sett1ement among wildtribesmen t'han among peacefuI citizens. Propaganda of thefaith, educational work, cuItivation of gardens, sett1ement ofdisputes, provision of shelter, hospitality, and security totravellers. and of refuge for the pursued, the weak, and theoppressed ate a11 fundions especially.appropriate t

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72 THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBEShave reflected tribal segmentation, mirroring lines o cleavagebetween tribes, and between tribal seetiotls. The Sanusiyaorganization w.s fractionized along these ftSliures. The distri-bution of lodges among the 9 Sa'adi tribes was Hasa, 1;'Ailat Fayid, ; Bara'asa, 1 (a second lodge, al-Nayyan, waslittle more than a grain store attached to al-Zawiya al-Baida);'Abid, 1; 'Arafa, 1; Magharba, 2; 'Awaqir, 6; Darsa, ,9; and'Abaidat, 14. There were 17lodges among the Aulad 'Ali tribein Egypt and for the Aulad Suliman with ther attached tribesin the Sirtiea only one, Sirt, if we exclude ,the lodges in theSirtican oases. This uneven distribution may be related in partto the locatioD o trade routes, harbours, springs. concentrationof summer wells, and so forth, but it was undoubtedly dueehleflVtO'vwations in tribal cohesion. The more cohesivetribes had a single lodge, or, m the case of ,the Magharba, 2lodges. The ve!)' cantonied Darsa tribe. whose lack o soli-darity was largely due to their very broken countoecolo,caI self=sUftiEiency o their sections"~flch of which '~asmore or less stable' in its own territory, had no les, than 9loges. The ethnicalIy heterogeneous. widely dispersed, aridstructuralIy confused 'Awaqir tribe had 6 lodges, and the'Abaidat tribe, which showed even less unity of sentiment andaction. had I419dges. The most broken up tribe of a11, tlJe tribein which the sections were most interrnixed, and the tribe whichdisplayed the minimum o political cohesion. was the Aulad'Ali of Egypt. which had 17 lodges. .

Arnong the Hasa. who possessed only the Shahhat lodge, inthe territory of the Shabarqa section, though en the edge of theterritory o the Qalabta section. rivalry between these twosections led to the foundation of a lodge at Marsa Susa, wherethe Order still cIairns the endowrnents, but a sense of tribalunity in the end prevailed and the project was abandoned.Likewise in the'leading Tarnia section of the Bara'asa tribe therivalry between its two principal sub-sectiol1s., the Hadduth.in whose territory was the al-Baida lodge, and the ]ilghaf, ledto the Jilghaf rnarking out with a low wall the site of, a newzawiya in the silk al-Harnarna in the southern steppe country ;but, here again. the lodge was never built. ,The lo~ation of al-Qatafiya andal-Naufiliya corresponded to a traditional jealousybetween the Shamakh and the Ra'idat sections of the 'Magharba

, ' ,

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 73tribe. In the oasis of Jalu. where there. was not the same tribalsolidarity as in the neighbouring oases of Aujila and al-Jikharra,the two lodges were almost next door to 'each other..~asbecause the oasis was split mto two opposed villages. eachoccupying about han 01 f wlth a strip o Waste ground inbetween. Asimilar lack of unity in the Egyptian oasis ol SiWaCcOUDts for the building of several S!JIusiya lodges there.

IVStarting from the foundation of al-Zawiya al-Baida in 1843

the Order spread itself throughout Cyrenaica until it embracedin its network of lodges the ent~!ibaJ~sknl-DLthecountry. -It s'eded itself, as ii were, in thel:n:yassesJ>etweeu_tribes,-andbetwri":ibarsecfllS, anlfTi;Iloints of growil1"w~!~_llill~lilso(tle points p

74 THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBESis not to be built till the zawiya is completed.. Therewill bebuilders and :carpenters among the Broth~rs andall that isrequired of the tribat Shaikhs}s selection o the site and super-vision o the work. He points out to them~hat the work is fortheir beneftt. in that they and their sons.will receive in thezawiya an education. especially in the Roran and in the laws oIslam, and will he able to worship there. The Grand Sanusi thencites passages from the Koran and the Hadith commendingreligious benefactions. Finally he prays Cod to assist thoseengaged in th~ 'building and those who have made themselvesresponsible for the upkeep of the zawiya. God helps those whohelp others. Aman reaps what he sows.

Sorne of the Cyrenaican lodges were larger. than others butthey all had the sarne features, a straggling warren of stonebuildings comprising amosque, schoolroorns, guest-rooms,apartments for the Shaikh of the zawiya ~d his family, roomslor teachers and pupils, and houses for theBrothers, clients,and servants, :md their families. Many had.small gardens near-by and the local cemetery was usually adjacent to a lodge.Jaghbub, where several hundred persons Iivea, }Vas the largestof such cornmunities. The ruins of Dariyana and al-'Azziyyatare also extensive and must have housed several, hundredpersons, but the average lodge probably housedonly sorne fiftyto a hundred persons, including wives and children, thoughthere were. often M arabnn families attached to the zawiyaliving nearby, sometimes in caves dating from c1assical times.

J,The importante 01 a lodge was not to be estimated so much by

the number of its occupants as by its tribal positioh and thenumber o its Bedouin adherents. '

The Shaikh o a new zawiya would point out to the localtribesmen that he and his companions had no means o support-ing themselves or of maintaining the zawiya. The varioussections nearby then gave to the lodge the',lands adjoining it,this estate surrounding a lodge being known as its haram. Onthe plateau the lodges were generously endowed with arable,in the steppe with wells, and in the oases with date-palms andsprings. Later, further gifts o arable, wells, springs,and date-palms. or part use o these, would sometimes be made, espe-cially when there 'was a dispute between two sections aboutownership of property and neither would give way to the other,

..

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBE5 75for they might then settle the matter by surrendering theirclaims to the zawiya. J Another way in which a lodge obtainedrights in land was by asking permission of its owners to sow it.Constan~ reI,Jetition of tbis favour eventually gave the zawiyarights of use in it in perpetuity. .

The tribesmen also assisted the Shaikh of the lodge in thecultivation of the lands, though most of t~e work was done by

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the zawiya community itself. At sowing' t!ime the Shaikh wouldpitch his tent near the area. to be cultivated and prepare a com-munal meal, taking with him sorne sacks df rice for the purpose,The local Bedouin then carne with their draught animals andsowed and ploughed for a couple of days on behalf of thezawiya. The same procedure took. place at harvest time.Besides gifts of Iand and voIuntary service in cultivating, theBedouin were expected to paya tithe to the Iodge at harvesttime and after lambing. No doubt many of them paid annualdues but it is unlikely that any strict record was kept or thatpayment couId have been enforced had they been averse tomaking it.

That it was expected that the Bedouin might promise servicesmore readily than perform them is sug~ested by an interestingdocument, dated 1307 A.l! . found by the Italians at the

I Savarcsc. op. cit., p. 193.

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76 THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBESTaukra zawiya and given in an Halian translation by ]udgeColucci. 1 In it the tribal sections oi the Baraghtha, Tursh,Dinal, and Shiln'lani place themselves under obligation, throughthe signatories to the deed, to pay the zawiya oi Taukta almson fiocks and crops, to supply camels to 'carry supplies toJaghbuQJnd tq belp tbe zawiya in sowing, building. excaya-tions, and other wQrks. Subject to the penalty oi paying doubleJ!:!ms they wil.!J.tot, without the pennission of the Shaikh o thezawiya, render like services to other zawiY-fls. They promisealso to dfend the zawiya and to respect those who liveTrlf, orwho are its guests, and agree t11at those who fai! to do so maybe pU.J1ished in body or in"estate. Each wiIl be for the zawiyaand the zawiya for each. God is greater t~!!l.illh Thosewho are obedient will be recompensed by HiIfu, Peace betOthose who follow tbe righ1..pa.th.

~ The estates o the Sanusiya Order were waqf (called inCyrenaica habus) , inalienable endowments fiade in love o God", by tribal sections and sometimes by individuals. They belonged, to the various lodges to which they were donated, with theOrder as a whole as residuary, and not to the amily o theGrand Sanusi or to the Shaikhs o the lodges.z It was under-stood that whfin Bedouin donated tracts o country round alodge they could continue to pasture and sow on any land notbeing used by the resident Brothers and to use the wells whenthere was sufficient water in them. The Shaikh o a zawiya wasthe legal administrator o its properties:-The Head 01 the OrderliaanoIirect saYtheadrii.iistrillibn o th estates, and in a11probability only knew roughly o their extent. The revenues oone lodge could not be used or the upkeep o another, but anysurplus over the expenses o a lodge were paid into a centralpool. The members o the Sanusi amily and the teachers andadrninistrative officials o the Order lived in the distant oasesof Jaghbub and Kufra, which produced littie but dates, and hadto be supplied from the lodges o the coastal region. Supplieswere sent by caravan partly in local produce, such as skins,wool, grain, butter, honey, and meat, and p.rtly in money orimported goods: rice, tea, sugar, and c1oth.. Thse gifts were

I op. cit., pp. ~3~-5. Fernando Valenz, 'La Senussia in Cirenaica ed ,il suo Patrimonio',

Rivisla dcllc C%"i. Italia"., 1932. pp. 43z-3.

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THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 77sadaqa, freewill gifts, though if a lodge did not send them itsShaikh was reminded of his obligations, Tlle lodges dealt withcertain tradi~g houses at Banghazi, giving them import ordersagainst future sales o local produce. ,

This practice worked well enough during the lifetime o the1ounder and his sons but, as so often happens in Islamic Orders,later descendants began t.o dema~d individual shar.es in t~e Iwealth o the Order. Wlule SaYYld Ahmad al-Shanf was ltsthird Head it began to be the custom, a few years before theItalian invasion, to earmark the surplus reven~es o particular (1lodges for particular members of the Sanusi family, and thesemembers became regarded as patrons o the lodges which '\supplied them and responsible for thei~ supervision. ]he.Jterritories in which the Order was d'Ominant began to faH intosphcre2-of.i!1fluenc.~t;ITedE1d1v(ftlllrmem1;iers01 thef~mily, th~ aUocation of sp'her.l.'.~.JendiIlILkLl!edel~rrTJjned.J:yfhe maternal k.lIl~h!p o various members with Ikhwan families6ccupymg lodges them.-saYYld i'ifha-rnmad 7 ADa -and hisorthef SayYid 'Alial-Khattab had a len on the barqa al-baidaand Fazzan, where their maternal relatives the Ashhab familywere intluential Shaikhs of lodges; Sayyid Safi. al-Din on thebarqa al-hamra, where his maternal kinsmen the Mahajib amilywere predominant ; Sayyid MUhammad Hilal on the Marmaricawhere his maternal kinsmen o the Sharifian Tursh lineageh:ad considerable intluence; and Sayyid Idris and his brotherSayyid al-Rida on the Cyrenaican plateau, where they hadmaternal Hes with the importantBu Saif and Ghumarifamilies. Sayyid Ahmad alSharif had a lien on Tripolitania,where lived his maternal kinsmen the powerful Fawatir tribeof Zlitin terr'tory. .

The endowments of the Order in Cyrenaica ran into thousandsof hectares. 1 Severallodges had eaChnlOrl'lthan 1,000 hed1 An Eltaro is 10,000 sq. metres or ~""71 acres.

78 THE SANUSIYA AND THE T~IBESsprings and gardens there were properties oft~e Order, .lor suchsites were partic)llarly suitable .lor settlements o.l ts Brotherssince, unlike the Bedouin, they were sedentary and house-dwellers. In the sem-desert the Order owned, or part-owned,many of the best wells. In the oases of the 29th parallel and inthe Archipelago of Kufra it owned extensive gardens and sharesin springs and many thousands of date-palrns. As it was acountry and Bedouin Order ts urban propertes were n-considerable: a few houses. mostly used as shops, in Banghazi,Dama. and al-Marj.

Anyone who studies the distribution of t~e Sanusiya lodgesin Cyrenaica will observe that they were placed where he mightexpect thero to have been placed on a l?,Olitico-economi'--E!an.A very large number were, as 1 have mentioned, built on Graeco-Roman foundations, and they were constructed .on mportantcaravan routes, on small inlets in the coast to command schooerlrade-;-and in strong deensive postons. They were distributedto cover all the m~j!!!E-0rtan.tJriL~gg!!g~tes. and theprincipal lOdges were built 1-JbJ;LCen!:res.-of..J!:ibal lfe, as isespeci31ly eVldentarnong the southem ndmads,'Who con-centrate in sumrner time at such points as al-'Azziyat, al-Makhili, al-Nayyan, al-Qatafiya, and al-NaufiliYa. In otherwords, where the Greeks and Romans an

THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 79

Istates that the total annual revenue of the lodges of the Order,excluding those at ]aghbub and Kufra, was .calculated at morethan 200,000 Lire.'

The !tallan figures appear to includeall sources of revenue,agricultural produce, increase in stock, and the gifts receivedin beasts, cereals, honey, skins, mats, carpets, and butter. Atthe time there could have been no adequate assessmertt and anestimate of revenue in money is an inappropriate measure inwhat was for the most part a subsistence economy. The zawiyacommunityJ!ve

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80 THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBES

r~ opportunity to worship in amosque, and th,l; by charity to theirlodges they might earo recompense hereafter.~\, Each lodge had ,its Shaikh, who represenfed the Head of theOrder. He arbitrated between the Bedouin, led thetribesmento holy war, aeted as intermediary between the tribe or sectionand the Turkish administration, dispensed hospitality totravellers. supervised the collection of tithe. directed cultiva-

\tion of grain and care of stock, dispatched surplus revenues to

\

o the Headquarters of the Order, acted as, prayer-leader onFridays. and assisted in preaching and teaching. There were

\ besides a number of other functionarie~ among the Brothers:'" 'O the Shaikh's deputy, the imam to lead the daily prayers and to

,? \p~ teach the Koran and canon law, the mu'allim tO.teach reading,(r,,~ IJ writing, and arithmetic in the zawiya school, and perhaps ar;v- special muadhdhin to call the faithful to prayer, thougll any"ofL the Brothers could do that.

VIn principie, as we have noted, the lands' attached to lodges

belonged, like the lodges themselves, to the Order, and moreparticularly to,the lodge to which they were donated, and nottoo any particular individual or family. In practice certainShaikh1y fammes tended to gain an hereditary interest in them.What happened lO the early days of the Ord~rwas that a Shaikhwas sent by its Head to found a lodge and when it was estab-lished he was translated to a fresh missionary field. Shaikhsof lodges were in this way moved fair1y freq~ent1y atfirst, butit later became the practice to leave a Shaikh in, charge till hisdeath and then to nominate his successor from among his kins-

( men, with the approval of the tribe and on the advice of Shaikhsof neighbouring lodges. What rnostly seerns to ha\T{lh,;tp~nedwas that thetribal sections oncernedasIreirJor asan orbrother

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tHE SANUSIYA AND THE TRIBE5 81Order concuqed. Thus we find charge o a zawiya continuingin the hands:of a single ami1y to the point a~ which MuhammadYahiya bin al-Sanusi bin 'Umar al-Ashhab was appointed bySayyid Ahmad al-Sharii to succeed bis ~ather as Shaikh oi Msusat the age oi sixteen. Some oi the~e fJlJIlilkL~nt tleir roots !lOdeep that not only did they obtain what amounted to heredi-tary rights to a particular lodg~but controiled sev~allodg-,Such were the infiuential families of Ghumari, Kalili, Farkash,and Ashhab, and the Khattabi families.

Hence we find to-day that many o the lodges are in heredi-tary charge of a fami1y o Shaikhs who consider that they havea pre-emptive claim to its directorship and to enjoyrnent oi itsrevenues, a claim backed by tribal opinion and by the acqui-escence o the present Head o the Order. Thus the Dardafifamily may be said to own the Shahhat lodge, the Isma'iliamily to own the Fayidiya lodge, the ~Ammur family to ownthe Qafanta 'lodge, and so on. So much is this the case thatdisputes now sometimes arise, as in 1942 at Qaanta and MiradMas'ud, between members oi a amily about which of its mem-bers should succeed to the directorsbip o a lodge and controlo its revenues.

This devel0J!mel1.Lis1!tgIP-ri~ing. Poor co_mm~tiQnsandlhe troubledtimes slnceIgIlave erlcorag~([localauto-nomy in the Sanusiya organization. The Shaikh Of a lodgeorought up his family in it and1lls sons had no other home thanthe lodge and no other friends than t1)e .Bedouin around it andthe families o Shaikhs in nearby lodges. Tribesmen dislikechange and prefer to have or the .5haikhs o their lodgesmembers of families ~1

8:z THE SANUSIYA AND THE TRlBES,

find hereditary transmission of Shaikhship of lodges mostaccentuated, such as the Bara'asa-Tamia section (al,Zawiyaal-Raida). the 'Awaqir-Sdaidi section (Msus zawiya), and the'Abaidat-Ghaith section (Tart zawiya). !n the same waY,l!!eearlieL.fwLarahouts.~cameL ashas.been. noted.Jounders of.ITneage.Lwhic.h..~i~_ o,IUhe .p:i.ttem atthe..branches;!L the-

_~in clans amorig whom they lived, and attached to them,AIso it must be remembered that thelodges were tribal

institutions built by t~~!Eca.1.~_~douin s0111at they mightparticiI>.;g~J!t tM barakaQL~llyyid..M_l}1J.mm-.pin:l\JL,~Sanusi. They ,parttcipated in it through the' Shaikhs of their'zawiyas who received their baraka direct from the hands of theGrand Sanusi him~lf. or from the hands of Vis son Sayyid al-

;, Mahdi, and passed it on to their sonso This baraka belonged tothe tribe, or tribal section, which built a lodge just as theshaukha, the s;tuIar Shaikhship of the tribe, or tribal section.belonged to it and 'had to be kept in it. In both the continuityof family successidn had to be maintainedi unless there weregood reasons for acting otherwise. Thus each tribal sectionemphasized its autonomy in its hereditary line of religiousShaikhs. through whom the baraka of the founder of the Orderwas ,transmitted to them, whilst proclaiming' its membership ofa tribal federation with common allegianceto the Head of theOrder.~'t_ ' As 1 have pointed out when speaking of the sacred Marabtin1:1, .... 1."- . ( tribes of Cyrenaica. it was customary for the descendants of a'" ;jJ""'()\ (V\ 'Marabout to reside near his tomb. 1 have {urther mentionedR ,,~ ..o flIthat the Shaikh o a Sanusiya lodge, who is aho caBed a M ara-

bal by the Bedouin, might, if he had duringlife areputation for .piety, rather easily gained in Islam, be venerated as a saint r'-t.... (;when he was dead and his tomb become a shrine..' This is S~08.another reason why Shaikhly families.llaVIj'tende

THE S\NUSIYA AND THE TRIBES 83and of reading and writing, and.of their strict performance ofreligious duties. This reputation was doubtless enhanced by r- .their foreign origino ior the Bedouirt oi Cyrenaica were ac- !customed to look to the west for ~!y.---- o_.'.

At one time many. perhaps all, the Shaikhs oi lodges werefairly well educated in such subjects as theology, canon law,and commentaries on sacred texts. To-day most of these alumnioi Jaghb~b'University are dead and their successors. broughtup in the bitter years since 19II. are for the most part veryignorant, sorne being almost as illiteiate as the Bedouin them-selves. Th~ Bedouin regal'd them with a curious mixture Of]respect and condescension. They look up to them as leamedand pious men who possess baraka, they kiss their hands. theycall them ' Sidi', and they listen respectfully to theil' admonish-ments and 'arbitraments. At the sarr.e 'time they look down onthem fol' not being tribesmen and Bedpuin. childl'en of the .tents. The Bedouin. harmonize these. confiic.ting attoitudes byl~' ~,saying that a Marabat is a different kin.~~~ from a o',. ~ L,Bedouin and dlfinot be expected to behave in the samc way al' c::Z.. ~ ,to have the same outlook. He has been brought up to l'eadbooks, pray, wash, and to do other things the Bedouin findsunnecessary in his own life. He has not been reared in thel'oving life of the tents nor learned tha shepherd's arto Since-lthey regard the Ikhwan as a different kind of people. the ,Bedouin do not intermarry with them nor with the Sanusifamily, .who belong to the same categorY. The 1khwan familicsmal'l'Y among themselves. The Sansi family marry thedau;hters Of Ikhwan, but do not givc their dauglJtcrs to pel'sonsoutsiue theil' own kin. . . -;z-..~

Thc impol'tance of the 1khwan families in the history of the '11..va..-development oI the Sanusiya is evidently vcry great. Fl'om thefoundation of al-Zawiya al-Baida in 1843 to th~ appearance ofSayyid Ahmad al-Sharif in Cyrenaica in 1912 the Heads of thcOrder were.bsent from the country. either in Arabia or indistant oases, and its direct infiuence on tl;1e tribes was exercisedby the Shaikhs oi its lodges in their midst. Their ritual positionwithin the tribal system combined with their structural positionoutside it enabled them to settle disputes and to unite and leadthe various sections which had sponsored their lodges