Ribat:
The Ribat at Monastir Tunisia.
A ribat (From the Arabic رباط ribāʈ, hospice, hostel.) is an Arabic term for a small fortification 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 the Sufi mystic brotherhoods, and a type of the later zaouia or Sufi lodge, which spread into North Africa and from there across the Sahara to West Africa. Here the homes of marabouts (religious teachers, usually Sufi) are termed ribats. Such places of spiritual reteat were termed Khanqah in Persian.
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