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35 2 The Bilād al-Maghrib Rebels, Saints, and Heretics Historical Themes and Patterns Between the late seventh and thirteenth centuries, the bilād al-maghrib saw a bewildering variety of religious and political developments, including a series of efforts toward religio-political hegemony. In the thirteenth century, the last efforts to unite the bilād al-maghrib came to an end and particularistic forces prevailed. The bilād almaghrib remained politically divided into the four major regions that we know today, namely Morocco in the west, Algeria in the center, and Tunisia as well as Tripolitania (Libya) in the east. Not only the political divisions have remained the same since the thirteenth century, but major religious features which today still characterize Muslim society in the bilād al-maghrib were also defined conclusively at that time. These features include adherence within the bilād al-maghrib as a whole to Sunni Islam and the Mālikī school of law. Shīʿī efforts to gain a foothold in the bilād almaghrib eventually failed, despite the successful beginnings of the Fāt ˙ imid caliphate in the tenth century. Since the thirteenth century, a few Ibād ˙ ī minorities have been the only non-Sunni communities in the region. As such, the bilād al-maghrib are characterized today by a far greater religious homogeneity than many other regions of the Islamic world. The solid foundation of Islam in its Sunni-Mālikī orientation has, at the same time, contributed decisively to the establishment of this religious orientation in the Sahara as well as in the bilād al-sūdān to the south. By the thirteenth century, Sufi thought had gained a foothold in the bilād almaghrib , in particular in the regions beyond the immediate influence of the rulers. Sufi scholars, the so-called marabouts (from the Arabic term murābit ˙ ūn, “those who live in a ribāt ˙ ,” a fortification built to defend Islam), came to represent a major social, religious, and political force as religious scholars, legal experts, mediators, sages, saints, and medical experts in local communities. The symbiosis of a number of disciplines of Islamic learning, in particular, fiqh (jurisprudence), t ˙ ibb (medicine), tawh ˙ īd (dogmatic theology) and tas ˙ awwuf (Sufism), came to form a second major trait of Islam in the bilād al-maghrib which again spread into the Sahara and the bilād al-sūdān to the south. From the thirteenth century onward, all these territories came to form a vast Sunni-Mālikī realm that was strongly influenced by the legacy of Sufi saints and scholars, the marabouts and their schools and traditions of learning. And although Sufi orders (Arab. t ˙ uruq, sg. t ˙ arīqa) as organized religio-political bodies only played a 36 | Muslim Societies in Africa central role in society from the eighteenth century onward, they again spread from the bilād al-maghrib through the Sahara to the bilād al-sūdān in the south. Between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries, the political history of the bilād al-maghrib was characterized by three major tropes: (a) rebellion in the name of Islam and the religious legitimization of rebellion and resistance against unjust rule; (b) the role of outsiders as both religious and political leaders; and (c) fluctuating center-periphery relations, with constantly changing relationships between the “lands of the treasury,” the bilād al-makhzan, and the lands of those who “roamed freely,” the bilād al-sība. These themes can also be identified as themes in the history of other parts of Muslim Africa. Thus, rebellion in the name of Islam has been a leitmotif of the jihād movements in the bilād al-sūdān since the eighteenth century, as well as the Mahdiyya in the Sudan in the nineteenth century. Outsiders and legitimate references to outsiders and/ or cultural heroes have equally been important in the history of other African societies, as seen, for instance, in the role of Wangarawa traders in Kano history, the Solomonic origins of the Ethiopian emperors, or the Shirazi founders of dynasties on the East African coast. References to outsiders and/or cultural heroes have also been important in the history of African Muslim societies in the context of dynastic changes or have provided legitimate background for the foundation of a new dynasty. Finally, the dynamics of center-periphery relations have marked the history of all trading empires of the bil...

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