- Ribat
A ribat (From the Arabic رباط ribāʈ, hospice, hostel.) is an
Arabic term for a smallfortification as built along a frontier during the first years of the Muslim conquest of North Africa to house military volunteers, called the "murabitun". These fortifications later served to protect commercial routes, and as centers for isolated Muslim communities.In time, ribats became hostels for voyagers on major trade routes (
Caravanserai ) and refuges for mystics. In this last sense, the ribat tradition was perhaps one of the early sources of theSufi mystic brotherhoods, and a type of the laterzaouia or Sufi lodge, which spread into North Africa and from there across theSahara toWest Africa . Here the homes ofmarabout s (religious teachers, usually Sufi) are termed ribats. Such places of spiritual reteat were termedKhanqah in Persian.References
* [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:cCU0D6xfks0J:danishmuslim.wordpress.com/2007/06/23/the-ribat/+ribat&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=31&gl=us&client=firefox-a Cache of The Ribat by Hajj Ahmad Thomson, 23 06 2007] .
* [http://bewley.virtualave.net/ribat.html "The Ribats in Morocco and their influence in the spread of knowledge and tasawwuf"] from: "al-Imra'a al-Maghribiyya wa't-Tasawwuf" (The Moroccan Woman and Tasawwuf in the Eleventh Century) by Mustafa 'Abdu's-Salam al-Mahmah)
* [http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=336 Ribat of Soussa, Muslim invention of rib vaulting?] on muslimheritage.com, dated 23 February 2003.
* Majid Khadduri. War And Peace in the Law of Islam. Johns Hopkins Press, (1955) ISBN 1584776951. p.81.
* Hassan S. Khalilieh. The Ribat System and Its Role in Coastal Navigation. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 42, No. 2 (1999), pp. 212-225 (Focusing on a coastal ribat system on the eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean which provided refuge for traders from pirates and hostile fleets).
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