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Abstract
After the end of Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhāfi's regime, the destruction of Muslim/ Sūfi places of worship widely spread in Libya. This phenomenon, and the definitive disappearance of a part of the country's historical and architectural heritage of the Islamic age, must be included in a longer-lasting political-religious conflict that already manifested itself in the first decades of the Jamahiriyya. It was the case, in 1984, of al-Jaghbūb. Only the documentary traces of the archives and historical writings remain today of the ancient walled village, which arose as a zawiya by the will of Muhammad b. 'Alī al-Sanūsī, gaining the role of 'Holy city' after the construction of a mausoleum enclosing his remains. Particularly important is the photographic documentation of the colonial period brought to light by a recent research on the photographic collections of the Biblioteca nazionale centrale in Rome: this documentation allows a visual reconstruction of al-Jaghbūb, a rare example of 'new town' in Libyan history before the Italian conquest.
KEYWORDS: libya; al-jaghbUb; tarîqa al-sanusiyya; sufism; zawiya
Destruction
We were getting ready for Friday prayers on December 11, 1984. Just as the muezzin made the first call for Friday prayer, we heard an awful explosion. Immediately after the prayer, we dashed into the direction of the sound. We saw bulldozers demolishing Zawiya, surrounded by a number of heavily armed soldiers, policemen and revolutionary committee members, led by Abdulsalam Zadma and Hassan Ashkal - Gaddafi's relatives and two of his most powerful army officers [...]. By virtue of a Gaddafi's order, his soldiers demolished Mohammed Ibn Ali as-Senussi's mosque and college. They tampered with the library and looted all its contents1.
According to this report narrating the destruction of the religious buildings of al-Jaghbūb, 1,070 manuscripts were lost, some hundreds years old and even by the hand of the ţarîqa's founder, copies of the Koran "and a copy of the Bible printed in Paris in 1837". The demolition affected the nineteen tombs that were located near the mausoleum: the remains of the corpses of Muhammad b. 'Alī al Sanūsī and his son Muhammad al-Shanf were unearthed and stolen.
They blew up the main dome by dynamite after failing to demolish it by bulldozers, in an attempt to literally carry out Gaddafi's order to wipe...