Maraboutism
“Beneath the Banner of Praise with our Prophet and
noble master Sidna Mohammed (may the most excellent blessings and purest
greetings be upon him). Allah elevates whomever He wills through His mercy, for
Allah's is the greatest excellence. All praise be to the Planner, the
All-Wise, the Conqueror, the All-Knowing..
[More]
A
particularity of early Moroccan Sufism is a phenomenon called Maraboutism.
Within two generations after the death of al-Imam Mawlana Idriss al-Azhar (d. 213/798), Maliki Sufi jurists
began systematically to introduce Malikism in the Moroccan countryside,
first instituted in Fez by the Maliki ideologist Sidi Darras ibn Ismail (d.
357/942). This activity was part of a concerted effort by the ulama of North
Africa to Islamise areas that were beyond the reach of the state and hence
outside of the practical limits of the Shari'a. Major destinations for these
Maliki activists included Tamesna, homeland of Barghwata tribe of Berber
pastoralists, who retained a unique and syncretistic form of Islam that may
have been related to early kharijism, Ghumara, which despite adhering
officially to orthodox (Sunni) theology, remained susceptible to the
heretical doctrines of the Berber Ha' Mim, the caravan centre of Sijilmasa,
which continued to be influenced by Kharijism, even though it had officially
turned Sunni under its Midrarid ruler, Shakir Billah (d. 374/959); and the
central Sus valley, whose two tribal moieties practised a ritualised form of
feuding that was expressed in sectarian terms: the tribal segment based at
Taroudannt adhered to a crudely anthropomorphic version of Malikism, while its
rival in the neighbouring caravan centre of Tiwiwin venerated the figure of the
Husseinid Sharif, Sidna Musa al-Qadim ibn Sidna Jaafar
Sadiq (d. 183/768),
This mission
to the countryside was carried out through rural mosques and centres of
instruction (ribator rabita) and were created by an ascetic
teacher, murabit (from
which the French derived the world Marabout), to provide Quran-based literacy
and religious education to sedentary and pastoralist people alike. The ribat as
a rural institution of instruction is a verbal noun derived from rabata, yurabitu, meaning "to station and stay in place". The
word ribat is derived from the word rabt and
it comes in the Quran, "Arm
yourselves against them with all the firepower and cavalry (ribat) you can
muster." (Quran 8:60) And the words of Allah, "O you who believe, be steadfast, supreme in
steadfastness, be firm (rabitu) on the battlefield, and have fear Allah, so
that hopefully you will be successful" (Quran 3:200). These ribat
institutions promoted the praxis-oriented Islam of early Malikism, as well as a
more contemporary emphasis on Shafi'i's doctrine of usul al-fiqh ("the sources of jurisprudence")–whose
aim was to unify Islamic practice by making legal reasoning based on
syllogistic analogy (qiyas) in legal
decision-making and binding consensus (ijma'a).
This conformed very closely to what was happening at the same time in the
Andalus, where Maliki hadith specialists and Sufis were hard at work
disseminating on usuli doctrines in the Andalus.
Certainly
marabouts played imperative socio-political roles since the early stages of
maraboutism. Evidence of this can be found in the fifth/eleventh century edict of the sultan of Fez Tamim ibn Ziri
addressed to the sharif Moulay Abu Abdellah Amghar, the founder of the
first Moroccan Sufi order. This edict confirms the marabout's role as both a
tribal arbitrator and an Islamic imam, and it intimates that virtue above all
meant using one's knowledge to establish and maintain justice in a local
context. The Marabouts of Tit al-Fitr (located near current El Jadida)
have long played the responsibility of social brokers. This means that when
Banu Amghar applied Quranic and Islamic legal precepts among the Sanhaja
Azammour, their success depended on their ability to translate the elaborated
code of universal Arabo-Islamic discourse into the more restricted code of
their pastoralist followers. The marabout's ability to practice his vocation
was predicated on his skill in bridging the "privatisation of
meaning" that divided the urban-based world of normative Islam from the
rural world of tribal relations in which he lived. To do so, it was necessary
for him, to keep foot on both environments –the local as well as the universal.
Although his political role kept him tied to a specific locality, his
pedagogical role demanded a relatively thorough knowledge of Islamic of Islamic
theology and jurisprudence.
It was because
he acted as a social broker, and because of some idealised etymology of the
word murabit, that the marabout
was "bound" (marbut) to a
particular locality or tribe. For the Banu Amghar, these ties were affirmed in
the form of a social contract that was modelled after the covenant struck
between the Prophet Sidna Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him) and the
people of Medina following the Hijra. According to the terms of this contract,
the marabout of Tit al-Fitr undertook to Sanhaja Azammour and to
mediate their disputes in return for a formalised "gift" (hiba) that was paid to him in specie or
in kind. Eventually, the "actional formalism" of this transaction was
recognised by the state and institutionalised in series of written edicts.
During the
course of Moroccan history, effective murabitun provided
the continuity and the stable framework that the political system of the lay
tribes so clearly lacks. For instance: the lay chiefs (qaids) are elective. But elections are procedures that require some
kind of institutional background, and this society, needless to say, has no
civil services or secretariat or anything of the kind that look after these
matters. So the elections take place at the settlement and near the shrine of
the hereditary holy men, which is, of course, also a sanctuary within which one
must not dispute. Thus the marabouts provide
the physical locale and the moral guarantee that make it possible for rival
clans to assemble and carry out their elections. They also provide the means of
moral persuasion and the meditation that help ensure that the elections, in the
end, arrive at a unanimous conclusion.
Again,
the murabitun provide the
cornerstone for the legal system (or perhaps one should say, arbitration
system) of the lay tribes. The legal decision procedures are trail by
collective oath, with the number of conjurers dependent on the gravity of the
offence. A theft might require two conjurers; a rape, four; a murderer of a
woman, twenty; a murderer of a man, forty. The rule is that issues requiring
less than ten conjurers are settled on the spot, among the lay tribes but the
issues requiring ten or more conjurers are taken up to the shrine of the
founding saint of the holy lineage, and settled with the moral assistance of
the murabitun who are the
progeny of the enriched founder.
The murabitun and their settlements are
thus arbitrators between tribes, and between their clans, and they are
physically located on important boundaries. This indicates a further important
function performed by them: their physical location at important boundaries
indicates and guarantees these boundaries. Their moral authority also helps to
guarantee the complex seasonal arrangements connected with the transhumance
between the high mountain pastures and the desert edge. Their location on the
frontiers also greatly assists trade. Tribesmen visiting markets in
neighbouring markets can pass through the settlements of the murabitun, deposit their arms there, and
be accompanied on their way to the market by a marabout from the settlement or a representative of an
importantmurabit. This holy fellow
traveller then provides simultaneously a guarantee of their safety from their
hosts and a guarantee of their good conduct toward their hosts.
The political
life of the murabitun is
quite different from that of the lay tribes. There is a neat contrast in almost
every aspect. Lay chiefs are chosen by the people: murabitun are chosen only by God. Lay chiefs are, in
principle, annual: murabitun are
permanent, and in principle permanent over generations. Lay tribesmen ate
addicted to feuding and litigation: saints are obligatory pacific and must not
litigate. The basic contradiction of in the life of the murabitun arises from the fact that
there must not be too many of them: their role and influence hinges on the
one-may relationship between them and the tribes, for onemurabitun must arbitrate among many tribes or tribal segments.
The murabit would leave behind a legacy
of saintliness and grace (baraka)
attaching not only to the place but also to his descendents (awlad sayyid). Fusion with Sufism turned
some of these places intozawiyas,
presided over by the descendents of the original ribat. When the families were
also descendents of the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him), or the sharifs of Morocco, who were mostly
of Idrissid linage, there was an union of
Sufism, Maraboutism, and Sharifism revolving around the key term of baraka, the grace that emanates from a
person, who can be a holy man or a sharif,
or both together at one and the same time. It is at times an inextricable
association of Sufism probably speaking, the cult of Awliya, and the honour due
to the sharifs as
descendents of the Prophet, for all three categories have something to do
with baraka in one way or
another, not only in Morocco, but elsewhere in the Islamic world. But what
makes for Maraboutism, especially as it manifested itself in late medieval
Morocco, was the combination of all these elements.
Not that
Sufism in Morocco was uniquely in alliance with Sharifism; on the contrary, as
in other parts of the Muslim world, it had its own independent existence as a
contemplative path and was in no need of maraboutism. Nevertheless, side by
side with that completive version of Sufism is the socio-religious phenomenon
of Maraboutism that has left its imprint on the Moroccan scene. Even dynasties
of a political nature, notably the Almoravides (al-Murabitun) and Almohads (al-Muwahhidun) came to power with the help
of the famous marabouts of Sidi
Abdellah ibn Yassin Jazouli (d.
451/1036) and Sidi Mohammed al-Mahdi ibn
Tumart (d.
524/1130) respectively. Yet, the Saadian dynasty of the
tenth/sixteen century came to power backed by the Jazulite leaders of Sharifian
status. Sooner or later, the entire religio-political structure of the country
was tinged by Sharifism. Only the Sharfa,
descendents of the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) could be entrusted
by ruling powers, and this covered into other domains, affecting even Sufism.
Morocco's Most Famous
Ribats and
Marabouts
Most of the
Moroccan ribats of the fourth/tenth through the seventh/thirteenth century were
privately built and locally maintained. Contrary to the case of al-Andalus and
Ifriqiya (Tunisia), where ribats were built for military purposes, the ribats
of Morocco were primarily centres of instruction in Islamic dogma (i'tiqadat) and practice (mu'amalat). Ribats also served an
important secondary role as communication hubs, facilitating interaction
between economic and political networks in rural areas. For these reasons they
were often located where their founders could most effectively exploit the
physical and human resources of the surrounding region. Not surprisingly, many
of these sites had been meeting places in pre-Islamic times, such as tribal
markets and former religious sites.
Certainly, the
first constricted ribat in Morocco is that of Tit al-Fitr, established by
the sharif Sidi Abu Jaafar Ishaq Amghar (d. 475/1060); followed by the ribat
of Sidi Yaala ibn Mussalin Ragragi of ribat Sidi Shiker in the bank of the
Wadi Nfis in the vicinity of Marrakech; the ribat Dar al-Murabitun of Sidi Waggag ibn Zallu al-Lamti (d. 445/1030) at the coastal
hamlet of Aglu, near modern-day Tiznit; the ribat of Sidi Abu Madyan al-Ghawt s
(d. 594/1179) successor, Sidi Abu Mohammed Salih al-Majiri (d. 631/1216) in Safi, the ribat of
Tin Mal in the Great Atlas which was the house of Sidi Mohammed ibn Tumart (“Almohad’s Madhi ”d. 524/1130), the ribat of Sidi Abdelljalil ibn Wayhan (d. 541/1126), founder of the Nuriya
tradition at Aghmat, northeaster Marrakech, and the ribat of Sidi Bannour (d.
550/1135) whose tomb is still visited at
Ribat Iliskawen, in the present-day town of Sidi Bannour, southern of El
Jadida.
From the other
widely known ribats that were established in the dawn of ninth/fifteenth
century is the ribat of Afughal, in the AÃ?t Dawud tribal region east of the
present small town of Tamanar, by the Qutb Sidi Mohammed ibn Slimane Jazouli (d. 869/1454),
founder of the great Shadhilite Jazouli Sufi order. Christian incursions on the
Mediterranean and Atlantic shores have led many Jazoulis to establish new
ribats to defend the country. Among these the ribat of Sidi Abderrahman ben Raysoun (d. 950/1535) in
Tazrut, Tetouan; the ribat of Sidi al-Haj Ali al-Baqqal Aghsawi (d. 980/1565)
in Tangier, and the ribat of Sidi Abu Salim Abdellah Ayyashi (d. 1091/1676) in
SalÃ?.
Other ribats of great importantce is
those of Sidi Abdellah
ibn Hussein Amghari (d. 977/1562) in Tamaslouht, outside of Marrakech; of Sidi Mohammed Bou'abid Sharqi (d.
1010/1495) in Abil Jaad, in Khuribgha; of Sidi Mohammed Ibn Abi Bakr Dilai (d. 1046/1631) in
Dila’, in the middle of the Atlas mountains, of Sidi Mhammed ben Nasir Dar'i
(d. 1085/1674); and, the ribat of Sidi Mohammed Maa' al-Aynayn (d. 1325/1910)
in Tan-Tan. Until today, the tombs of the leaders of these ribats remain the
focus for annual musims fairs,
and are places of pilgrimage where the intercession of the murabit, or hisbaraka, may be obtained to gain benefit.
1.
Ribat Nakur
Although the
term murabit, as presently
understood in Morocco, is of comparatively recent vintage, the ribat is
much older. Textual evidence suggests that the ribat was conceived as a formal
institution in Morocco as early as the middle of the ninth century. An account
of one of the earliest ribats in Morocco can be found in Kitab al-masalik wal mamalik by
the Andalusian geographic al-Bakri (d. 487/1072). This work details the
history of the ribat and city of Nakur, which lasted for two centuries at
al-Mazimma (near modern El Hoceima) in the Rif mountains. The origins of Nakur
may date back as far back as the first century of Islam, when, during the
reign of the Umayyad caliph al-Walid ibn Abdelmalik, a South Arabian holy
warrior known as Sidi al-Abd Salih ibn Mansur al-Himyari began to call the
Sanhaja and Ghumara peoples of Northern Morocco to the Islamic faith.
In the year
240/825, al-'Abd Salih's grandson, Sidi Said ibn Idriss, founded both Ribat
Nakur and the town that shared it name. Al-Bakri informs us that this ribat was
built as a rural mosque, and that its design and supporting endowments were
modelled after the initial mosque of Alexandria in Egypt. By the time Said ibn
Idriss was succeeded by his son Sidi Abderrahman ash-Shahid (d. before
305/890), Nakur had grown into a modest city-state. To counteract the growing
influence of their political rivals, the Idrissid sharifs of Fez and the nearly
region of Ghumara, the Banu Salih intermarried with the sharifs of Banu
Sulayman clan of Tlemcen. This matrimonial policy helped the Banu Salih
maintain a religiously legitimated principality, allied with the Umayyads of
Spain, that was similar in administrative organisation to the mini-states
founded by the Idrissids themselves.
Unlike the
Idrissids, however, whose well-established Mohammedian origins enabled them to
enjoy the fruits of an ascribed nobility, the Banu Salih had to depend on a
more unstable form of acquired status that demanded continual reaffirmation.
Throughout his turbulent career, Abderrahman ash-Shahid, despite his training
as a jurist and the completion of no fewer than four pilgrimages to Mecca, had
to deal with numerous Berber uprisings and reassert his claims to legitimacy by
conducting jihads against a variety of enemies. Unfortunately, as his
nickname, ash-Shahid (the
Martyr) implies, the only uncontested nobility he was ever able to attain was
that of a heroic death, for he was killed in al-Andalus while aiding his
Umayyad patrons in their suppression of the revolt of Omar Ibn Hafsun.
2.
Ribat Dar al-Murabitun
One of the
most important disciples of the Fasite Maliki scholar Sidi Abu Imran al-Fasi (d. 430/1015)
was Sidi Waggag ibn Zallu al-Lamti (d. 445/1030). A member of the
Lamta (Oryx) tribe of Sanhaja Berbers from the Wadi Nun region of central
Morocco, Waggag presided over a network of mosques and educational centres on
the mountainous fringes of the pre-Saharan desert. The most famous of these
educational centres was his headquarters, Dar al-Murabitun, which he established at the coastal hamlet of
Aglu, near modern-day Tiznit. Sidi Waggag achieved supremacy in relation
matters in the regions south of the Atlas mountains and remained in close
contact with Abu Imran al-Fasi until his teacher's death.
The success of
Waggag ibn Zallu's religious activism depended on the social and economic ties
maintained by Sanhaja pastoralists in the desert regions of the western
Maghrib. Like any successful pairing of dissimilar entities, this marriage of
convenience between Maliki reformism and tribal social mores involved
compromise on both sides. Sources document the frustration felt by Shaykh
Waggag and his disciples at the reluctance of their pastoralists followers to
give up long-held practices and beliefs. In the following passage from Abu
Yaqub Yusuf ibn az-Zayyat's (d. 628/1213), Kitab at-Tashawwuf ila
rijal at-tasawwuf (Book of insight into the tradition bearers of
Sufism), the Berber's of the Nafis valley ignore Waggag's attempt to
portray himself as a little more than a teacher of the Shari'a and Prophetic
Sunna. Instead, maintaining a stubborn (and ultimately well-justified) belief
in his ability to work miracles (karamat),
they treat him as a broker or a middle man who is well positioned to plead
their case before God:
I heard Abu Moussa Aissa ibn Abdellaziz
al-Jazouli say: a drought occurred among the people living along the river
Nafis. So they went to Waggag ibn Zulu al-Lamti in the Sus. When they reached
him he asked, "What had happened to you?" They replied, "We have
suffered drought and have come so that you might ask God to provide rain for
us." "Verily" he exclaimed "you are like a group of people
who see a honeycomb and assume that it contains honey! However, stay with me,
for you are my guests." So he was their host for three days [the term mandated
by the Sunna]. When they have resolved to leave and came to him to ask
permission to return to their lands he said to them, "Be careful not to
take the road that you came on, but take another instead, so you can take
refuge from the rain in hollows and caves." When they left him God sent
them clouds full of rain, which fell so copiously upon them that they did not
arrive at their homes for six months."
Waggag ibn
Zallu was himself the teacher of Sidi Abdellah ibn Yassin al-Jazouli (d.
451/1036). He instructed this latter to teach Islamic dogma and Maliki doctrine
to the Veiled Sanhaja warriors becoming the spiritual leader of Almoravid
movement. The ties that bound Almoravids to Sidi Waggag appear to have been as
close as those between the disciples of Abu Imran al-Fasi and their master in
al-Qayrawan. The brothers Sidi Sulayman and Sidi Abul Qacem ibn Addu, the
eventual successors to Ibn Yassin as Almoravid imams, were also students of
Shaykh Waggag and continued to maintain close contact with Dar al-Murabitun
even after their teachers death.
3. Ribat Aghmat Urika
Another renown
disciple of Sidi Abu Imran al-Fasi (d. 430/1039) from the Masmuda members of
the High Atlas mountains, was named Abul Mawahib Sidi
Abdellaziz Tunsi (d. 468/1053). Unlike Sidi
Waggag al-Lamti (d. 445/1030), who founded mosques and ribats of learning in
sparsely populated rural areas, Abul Mahawib Tunsi established a ribat at
Aghmat Urika, then the premier urban centre of the Nafis valley, just south of
the new Almoravid capital of Marrakech. In the sixth/twelfth century the
geographer al-Idrissi depicted Aghmat as a town hidden in the shadow of the new
empirical city but still prospering from the profits earned by its merchants.
He tells us during Aghmat heyday in the early eleventh century the merchants of
the town traded copper, brass, glass buttons and beads, turban cloth, woven
textiles, spices, and iron tools for the gold, skins, and slaves of the middle
Niger region. He also reports that their caravans could comprise as many as 187
camels, and that the wealthy of Aghmat advertised their riches on carved
columns erected by the doors of their houses.
Of Tunisian
origin, Sidi Abul Mahawib Tunsi was so vexed by the mercantile ethics of highland
Masmuda culture that he once exclaimed: "By giving them knowledge we have
become like one who sells weapons to a thief!" A particularly irritating
characteristics of these Berber merchants was their desire to turn any
advantage, including their knowledge of the religion, into a profit –a detail
which is remarked upon by at-Tadili in at-Tashawwuf:
It is said about Abdellaziz that the
Masmuda learned jurisprudence (fiqh)
from him and then returned to their homelands, [where they] went about among
their people with what they had learned, becoming judges, notaries, preachers,
and other occupations. [Once] Abdellaziz went on one of his journeys to the
farthest Morocco, and whenever he passed by a group of people they came out and
meet him. He found that his students had used what they had learned from him to
gain authority and high positions. So he discontinued his teaching of
jurisprudence and ordered his students to read the Ri'aya of al-Muhasibi and other of its type among the books of
Sufism, until he found that, out of ignorance of jurisprudence, some of his
students had began to practice usury. "Glory to God!" he said.
"I disapproved of teaching jurisprudence out of fear that you would attain
the material word with it, but you have [instead] lost the knowledge of right
and wrong (al-halal wal haram)!"
The mosques
and educational ribats established by the students of Sidi Abu Imran al-Fasi
were widely distributed throughout Morocco. Through the efforts of teachers
such as Shaykh Waggag and Abul Mawahib Tunsi, the disciples of Abu Imran were
able to assert doctrinal authority over the rural inhabitants of Morocco south
of the Atlas mountains. This was particularly the case with regard to the
Veiled Sanhaja Almoravids, who had recently come to dominate the caravan trade
across the Sahara desert. The righteous men who taught Maliki doctrine to these
aloof and aristocratic imashaghen ("free"
camel nomads) retained the loyalty and venerations to their disciples until the
fall of Almoravid dynasty in 562/1147. Sidi Abdessalam Tunsi, a nephew of the
above-mentioned Shaykh of Aghmat, was a favour advisor to the Almoravid ruling
elite, despite his ascetic behaviour and disregard for social pretensions.
Famous for both his exactness and his violent temper in defence of moral
principles, the younger Tunsi once refused an inheritance of 1,ooo dirhams
brought to him by his sister, saying: "[Why] have you come to me with
these devils? I have no need of them!" When she insisted that he at least
take the share allotted to him in the Quran he replied, "It is yours
because it is in your hands" As for me, I have no idea what it is and will
not take it from you!"
Sidi
Abdessalam's association with the politically powerful did not mean that he
considered himself subservient to them. It is related that while the Shaykh was
tending his garden, the emir Mazdali ibn Tiliggan, a noted companions of the
Almoravid ruler Yusuf ibn Tashfin, rode up to him. After only the most
perfunctory of greetings, the emir dismounted from his horse, put his burnous on the ground, and sat on
it, expecting words of wisdom. Noting his student's lack of respect, Tunsi
rebuked him, saying: "What are these actions, oh Mazdali? And where will
you find a mantle to sit on tomorrow?" A similar story is told about
Abu Zakariyya ibn Yughar (d. 537/1122), another "emir of Sanhaja" and
disciple of Sidi Abul Mawahib Tunsi. When he first met this Shaykh, the Sanhaja
notable was told that to provide his sincerity he would have to go to the
countryside beyond the walls of the city, gather a load of wood, and carry it
on his back into the middle of the government house, the Dar al-Imara, where he
could be observed by all the members of his matrilineal clan. After Abu
Zakariyya complied with these demeaning requirements, Abdessalam was so pleased
with his new disciple and he honoured him by calling him malik az-zuhd (King of
Asceticism).
4.
Ribat Tin Mal
Eighty years
after the rise of the Almoravids, in 1130, a second, and even more powerful
wave of Bedouin Berbers, burst into North and West Africa and al-Andalus. This
time the movement came in the form of the semi-nomadic tribes of the High
Atlas, the Masmuda; they called themselves al-Muwahhidun, 'the testifiers of (Divine) Unity', which via
Spanish has become 'Almohads'. The mission of the Almohads had deeper content
and wider applications than that of the Almoravides. In contrast to their
literal and outward interpretation of the Quran, which had encouraged an all
too human conception of God and a merely quantitative of Divine Oneness, Sidi Mohammed al-Mahdi ibn
Tumart(d. 524/1130),
the great saint and spiritual founder of the Almohads proclaimed a metaphysical
interpretation of Tawhid, the
Quranic doctrine of Oneness, according to which God is one, not merely in terms
of number, like one thing amongst many, but is His very Essence; He is unique,
because there is nothing that can be compared with Him.
This
adamantine teaching, free from all representation, was both the message and the
battle-cry of the Almohads; for, according to their conviction, all those who
called themselves believers but thought of God as an anthropomorphic being
endowed with various faculties, were no better than heathens: their literal
unitarianism, which placed God on the same level as differentiated things, was
unwitting polytheism, and therefore the very error that the Quran seeks to
oppose. Shaykh Sidi Mohammed Ibn Tumart travelled for
knowledge between the years 500 and 501/1085-1086, seeking to educate
himself on various scholars in different part of the Mashriq and went as far
east as Damascus. There he met with his first mentor Sidi Abu Hamid
al-Ghazali (d. 526/1111) studying with him the sciences of Asharite theology and
Sufism. In Baghdad, he attended the circles of the theologian al-Mubarak
Abdelljabbar and the Sufi Sidi Abu Bakr Shashi. Finally he met in Alexandria
the famous Maliki jurist Sidi Abu Bakr Yusuf Turtushi (d. 525/1110).
On returning
to Morocco Ibn Tumart begun to criticise the ways of the Almoravids and to
attack the scholars whom they approved, until he was persecuted and had to flee
with his followers into the High Atlas, to the tribe of Masmuda, who were
hostile to the Lamtuna, and over whom, by his preaching, by politics, and later
also by confrontation, he acquired an enormous influence. He led an acetic
life. In support of his role as a leader, he had recourse to the mystical
tradition, according to which, in all ages, a spiritual heir of the Prophet, peace
and blessing be upon him, would preserve the doctrine in all its purity. The
Masmuda saw him as the Mahdi,
the 'rightly-guided one', of whom the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him)
had said that he would renew Islam towards the end of time. Based in his ribat,
which he founded in the unassailable high valley of Tin Mal on the Wadi Nafis,
and supported by the Berber chiefs and noted mystics such as Sidi Ali ibn
Harzihim (d. 559/1144), the power of Ibn Tumart and his disciples grew as if in
a reservoir, and finally burst forth with irresistible force and overflowed
into the whole of the Maghrib. Ibn Tumart did not himself live to see the
overthrow of the Almoravid empire. His gifted disciple Sidi Abdelmumin ibn Ali
(d. 551/1136) who later took the title of caliph, carried out the task.
9.
Ribat Iliskawen
Perhaps the most prominent successor
of Sidi
Abdelljalil ibn Wayhan (d. 541/1126) who renewed the Nuriya tradition after the
death of the Shaykh was Sidi Abu Innur ibn Wakris al-Mashanzai (d.
550/1135). Known today as Sidi Bannour (Berber. the Illuminated One), he is still revered as one of the most important saints of
Dukkala. His tomb at Ribat Iliskawen, in the present-day town of Sidi Bannour,
southern of El Jadida City, continues to draw pilgrims from throughout Morocco.
The tales recounted about this murabit are redolent with them of power and
authority. His main function was to protect the Masmuda farmers and merchants
of northern Dukkala, who, after being caught between Barghwata raids from the
north and Sanhaja migrations from the south, found their livelihood threatened.
Hagiographical anthologies such as at-Tadili's at-Tashawwuf reveal that the
Masmuda saints of Dukkala played an important role in their sedentarist client's
strategy for survival, since their supernatural powers could be used to
compensate for the military and political weakness of the sedentarist
themselves. The protection afforded by men of wilaya from their own ethnic group gave the Masmuda an
enhanced status in the eyes of their Sanhaja rivals and allowed them to find
alternative niches in the changing socioeconomic structure of the origin.
The themes of patronage, protection,
and "broker-client intersubjectivity", all of which are well-known
concepts to transaction theorists in the field of Social Anthropology are
clearly discernible in the hagiographical accounts of Sidi Bannour's
activities. Ibn Qunfudh, for example reports that Sidi Bannour survived
the Almoravid conquest of Morocco and continued to protect his people well into
the reign of the second Almoravid sultan, Ali ibn Yusuf. During this period the
Almoravids, who displayed a clear ethnic bias in the pattern of their conquests
and subsequent rule, sent a force of Veiled Sanhaja to punish Iliskawen for
nonpayment of the kharaj tax
that had levied on the Mashanzaya as a conquered people. Sidi Bannour went
before the inhabitants of Iliskawen as the raiding party approached and
announced, "God had expelled them from you!" At a distance of only
half a Roman mile from the town the commander of the expedition suddenly fell
ill and died, and the raid was called off.
At-Tadili also recounts a story about
one of Sidi Bannour's successors, Sidi
Abu Hafs Omar ibn Tsuli al-Mashanzai (d. 595/1144), who played a
similar role by protecting Ribat Iliskawen from the predations of Banu Hilal
Arabs:
A group of Arabs entered the land of Dukkala. One of them went to
the garden of Abu Hafs and took some grapes from it. When he put them into his
mouth, he was stricken by cramps that nearly killed him. He went to Abu Hafs to
tell him about it. Abu Hafs rubbed the [Arab's] throat and that which had
stricken him left him. Then he asked, "What made you enter my
garden?" "I used to enter to eat [at will] from the gardens of the
people of Tamasna," [the Arab] replied, "and nothing happened to me,
so I thought that your garden was like those others."
