Ribat

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Ribāt ( Arabic رباط, DMG ribāṭ  , binding, stationing, posting ') was the Arabic name for border fortifications on the border of the Islamic area ( Dār al-Islām ) for the implementation of the warlike jihad in the first centuries of Islamic expansion . The term could have different meanings depending on the context, starting with denoting tribal wars in 7th century Arabic texts. It was later Ribat for the name of a Sufi - Convention .

Ribat of Monastir

Ribāt as a border fortress

The Sousse Ribat

The ribat is the place where the Muslims gathered their mounts and tied them (rabaṭa) ; its emergence thus went back to the religious duty of jihad, to the military expansion of the Islamic area and its defense. These military fortresses also offered the residents of the endangered areas extensive protection. Building a fortress or expanding an existing ribat was considered a pious work. They emerged along the demarcation line to the non-Islamic (mostly Christian) areas ( Dār al-Harb ): In the Islamic East they were called thagr ( Pl.thugūr ), in the Islamic West and in al-Andalus they were called fortress (hisn) or fort ( qasr ) . The inhabitants of the fortresses were not only soldiers ready to fight, but also scholars devoted to the moral support of the fighters.

The first ribat in North Africa was built towards the end of the 8th century in Monastir on the Mediterranean coast. According to local traditions, the stay in Monastir was particularly meritorious: "Monastir is one of the gates of the kingdom of heaven" says a saying that goes back to the Prophet Mohammed . The Ribat of Monastir was founded by the emir of Ifrīqiyā Harṯama ibn Aʿyan († 796) on the remains of a Byzantine monastery. Mosaic remnants that were found next to the foundations of the tower during renovation work have been filled in. The cisterns were donated by the Aghlabid ruler Abu Ibrahim Ahmad († 863). But since the money came from the ruler's possession - thus from a dubious source - some ascetics who stayed there as murābiṭūn refused to drink the water from these cisterns.

The military and religious character of the Ribat is also expressed in its architecture. The best preserved in its original form, the Ribat from Sousse from the Aghlabid period had a mosque with residential units and a defensive tower on the upper floor , while storage rooms were arranged around the broad inner courtyard on the ground floor.

The Islamic system of fortifications by ribats reached geographically as far as the borders of the province of Guadalajara (Wādī ʾl-Ḥiǧāra) in central Spain. At the end of the 9th century, Muslim troops from this region took part in the jihad against Alfonso III . The Moroccan capital Rabat was founded as Ribat and named accordingly.

For Ribats in Transoxania and Khorasan in the Samanid period (9th to the beginning of the 11th century), the ruler's foundation was typical, while the majority of the fighters carried out campaigns for a limited period and as private individuals from the Ribats. They had to take care of their own subsistence, with the slave trade being a major source of income.

The word ribat is also a nomen actionis and thus describes an activity in the sense of "being stationed at the border". The North African local historians and biographers who describe the Ribats in detail use the term in this sense only. The one who resides in this post is a murābiṭ .

Ribāt as a Sufi convent

After the first centuries of Islamic expansion, the function of the ribats changed. By the 11th century they became centers of Sufi life. It was around this time that Sufi preachers began to spread their teachings in northwest Africa. With the cult of saints that arose around these Islamic scholars, the former border fortresses turned into zāwiyas , centers of Sufi religious communities.

The Bagad sheikh ʿUmar as-Suhrawardī (d. 1234) explains in his Sufi manual ʿAwārif al-maʿārif in a rhymed passage that the inhabitant of the Ribāt ( sākin ar-ribāṭ ) has to observe the following rules:

  • Breaking off the relationship with creatures ( al-ḫalq ) and taking up the relationship with truth ( al-ḥaqq = God),
  • Renunciation of gainful employment and content with the protection of the lender of the means ( musabbib al-asbāb = God),
  • Reluctance of the Nafs to socialize and avoid the consequences,
  • Continuous worship day and night, which takes the place of every habit ( ʿāda ),
  • Preoccupation with preserving the times ( ḥifẓ al-auqāt ), remaining in the litanies ( mulāzamat al-aurād ), waiting for ritual prayers and avoiding negligence ( iǧtināb al-ġaflāt ).

If the believer obeys these rules, he will become a murābit and mujāhid.

See also

literature

  • Jacqueline Chabbi: Ribāṭ. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. VIII, pp. 493-506.
  • Heinz Halm : News on buildings of the Alabids and Fatimids in Libya and Tunisia. In: Die Welt des Orients (WdO) No. 23 (1992), pp. 129-157, ISSN  0043-2547 .
  • Alexandre Lézine: Le ribat de Sousse, suivi de notes sur le ribat de Monastir . Tunis 1956.
  • Alexandre Lézine: Deux villes d'Ifriqiya . Paris 1971.
  • Hadi Roger Idris: Contribution à l'histoire de 'l-Ifriqiya . In: Revue des Etudes Islamiques 9 (1935) 104–178; 273-305; 10 (1936) 45-104.
  • L'Art Islamique en Méditerranée Tunisie Ifriqiya . Treize Siècles d'Art et d'Architecture en Tunisie. Démetér, Tunis / Edisud, Aix-en-Provence 2000, ISBN 2-7449-0166-0 .
  • Albrecht Noth: The Ribāṭ of the Almoravids. In: Wilhelm Hoenerbach (Hrsg.): The Orient in Research. Festschrift for Otto Spies on April 4, 1966. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1967, pp. 509–511
  • Thomas Schuetz: Castra - ribat - fort castle. Was there an exchange of ancient knowledge about the Islamic cultural area? In: Olaf Wagener (Hrsg.): The contested place - from antiquity to the Middle Ages , supplements to Mediaevistik, Volume 10, Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern et al. 2008, pp. 61–75, ISBN 978-3-631- 57557-4 .
  • Étienne de la Vaissière: "Le Ribāṭ d'Asie centrale" in É. de la Vaissière (éd.): Islamization de l'Asie centrale. Processus locaux d'acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 39. Peeters, Louvain, 2008. pp. 71-94.

Web links

Commons : Ribat  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Heinz Halm (1992), pp. 130f
  2. Jürgen Paul: rulers community mediator. Eastern Iran and Transoxania in pre-Mongol times. (Beirut texts and studies, volume 59) Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1996, pp. 110–112
  3. ^ Jamil M. Abun-Nasr: A history of the Maghrib in the Islamic period. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, p. 22
  4. ʿUmar as-Suhrawardī: ʿAwārif al-maʿārif . Dār al-Maʿrifa, Bairūt, 1404h. P. 82.