The lost oases

by Ahmad Muhammad Hasanayn

I was impatient to start again. But one month and four days were to pass before I took the road, for there were no camels waiting for me. Before leaving Sollum I had sent a man, Sayed Ali El Seati, by the direct route to Jaghbub to hire camels and have them waiting when I should arrive over the longer route by way of Siwa. But Ali had apparently vanished into thin air. He had gone as far as Jedabia, I learned, without success, for none of the Bedouins on the way from Sollum would let him have the beasts I wanted. At Jedabia, too, he had found no camels available. I waited two weeks with no sign of Ali. Then I discovered that the reason he could get no camels was because the road from Jaghbub to Jalo was used exclusively by Bedouins of the Zwaya and Majabra tribes, and no other Bedouins dared to venture upon it.

Though I was eager to get going again, I could not resist the charm and peace of the place in which I found myself immured. Jaghbub is a center of education and religion. There is no trade there and no cultivation of the soil, except for some small bits of oases where former slaves, who had been freed by Sayed El Mahdi when he moved to Kufra, grew vegetables and a few dates. The life of the town centers about the mosque, which is large enough to hold five or six hundred persons, and the school, which is the center of religious education for the Senussis. Near the mosque are a few houses belonging to the Senussi family and the ikhwan; and scattered about both within and without the walls are a number of private houses. Buildings with rooms for some two or three hundred students are also grouped near the mosque.

Jaghbub had reached the height of its importance when Sayed Ibn Ali, the Grand Senussi, made it the center of the brotherhood. When his son, Sayed El Mahdi, succeeded him, the importance of the town continued for about a dozen years until he transferred the center of the brotherhood’s activities to Kufra. Then when Sayed Ahmed El Sherif, as guardian of young Sayed Idris, was in control, Jaghbub again flourished as the capital. Its importance has fluctuated through the years with the presence or absence of the heads of the family within its walls. If Sayed Idris were to make it again the seat of the Senussi rule, in two months the school and the town would be overflowing with members of the brotherhood, with students, and with pious visitors to the shrine of the Grand Senussi.

But at the time of my visit there were only eighty young Bedouins—from eight to fifteen years of age—studying under the ikhwan. If there had been more teachers there would have been more students. But at the time of our visit the head of the Senussi family, whom we had met on his way to Egypt, had his headquarters in Jedabia, far to the westward.

In an inner room of the mosque a beautifully wrought cage of brass incloses the tomb where lies the body of that great man, who sought for his people a pure, austere, and rigidly simple form of Islam, untainted by contact with the outside world. To this shrine every adherent of the brotherhood who can accomplish the journey comes to pay homage and to renew his vows. The students of the school come to Jaghbub with one of two purposes, either to fit themselves to become ikhwan, the brothers of the fraternity, or simply to go back to their homes in the oases educated men with a right to spiritual leadership in their communities.

Except for the annoying problem of getting camels to take my expedition to Jalo, about 350 kilometers away to the westward, my life in Jaghbub was one of peaceful reflection and preparation for the undertaking before me.

THE COURTYARD OF THE MOSQUE AT JAGHBUB

The mosque was founded eighty years ago by Sayed Ibn Ali El Senussi, the founder of the Senussi sect, which is followed by all the Bedouins of Cyrenaica.

The desert demands and induces a quite different attitude of mind and of spirit from the bustling life of the city. As I wandered about the little town and out into the oasis around it, or stood in the cool, shadowed spaces of the mosque, or sat at times in the tower above it in conversation with learned Bedouins, watching the night fall over the milk-white kubba and the brown mass of buildings it dominates, there dropped away from me all the worries and perplexities and problems that the sophisticated life of crowded places brings in its train. Day after day passed, with a morning’s walk, midday prayers in the mosque, a quiet meal, a little work with my instruments or cameras, afternoon prayers, another walk, a meal, followed by the distribution to my men of friendly glasses of tea according to the Bedouin custom, again prayers, and, after quiet contemplation of the evening sky with its peaceful stars, retirement to sleep such as the harassed city dweller does not know.