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Libya
Arabs
The successive waves of Arabs who arrived beginning in the seventh
century imposed Islam and the Arabic language along with their
political domination. Conversion to Islam was largely complete
by 1300, but Arabic replaced the indigenous Berber dialects more
slowly. Initially, many Berbers fled into the desert, resisting
Islam and viewing it as a urban religion. In the eleventh century,
however, tribes of the beduin Bani (see Glossary) Hilal and Bani
Salim invaded first Cyrenaica and later Tripolitania and were
generally effective in imposing their Islamic faith and nomadic
way of life. This beduin influx disrupted existing settlements
and living patterns; in many areas tribal life and organization
were introduced or strengthened. A further influx of Arabic-speaking
peoples occurred in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
as a result of the upheavals accompanying the fall to the Christians
of the last Muslim kingdom in Spain.
It is estimated that the total number of Arabs who arrived in
North Africa during the first two migrations did not exceed 700,000
and that in the twelfth-century population of 6 or 7 million they
did not constitute more than 10 percent of the total. Arab blood
later received some reinforcement from Spain, but throughout North
Africa Berber background heavily outweighed Arab origin. Arabization
of the Berbers advanced more rapidly and completely in Libya than
elsewhere in the Maghrib and by the mid-twentieth century relatively
few Berber speakers remained. By contrast, in Morocco and Algeria,
and to a lesser extent in Tunisia, Berbers who had yet to become
Arabized continued to form substantial ethnic minorities.
In the countryside traditional Arab life, including customary
dress, was still predominant at the time of Libyan independence
in 1951. The subsequent discovery of petroleum and the new wealth
that resulted, the continuing urban migration, and the sometimes
extreme social changes of the revolutionary era, however, have
made progressive inroads in traditional ways. For example, in
the cities, already to some extent Europeanized at the time of
the revolution in 1969, men and some younger women frequently
wore Western clothing, but older women still dressed in the customary
manner.
Among the beduin tribes of the desert, seasonal shifts to new
grazing lands in pursuit of rainfall and grass growth remained
widespread. Some tribes were seminomadic, following their herds
in summer but living in settled communities during the winter.
Most of the rural population was sedentary, living in nuclear
farm villages. But often the nomadic and the sedentary were mixed,
some members of a clan or family residing in a village while younger
members of the same group followed their flocks on a seasonal
basis.
The distinction between individual tribes was at least as significant
as the distinction between Arab and non-Arab. Tracing their descent
to ascribed common ancestors, various tribal groups have formed
kinship and quasi-political units bound by loyalties that override
all others. Although tribal ties remained important in some areas,
the revolutionary government had taken various measures to discourage
the nomadic way of life that was basic to tribal existence, and
by the 1980s it appeared that tribal life was fast becoming a
thing of the past.
Arab influence permeates the culture, among both the common people
and the social, political, economic, and intellectual elite. The
cultural impact of the Italian colonial regime was superficial,
and Libya--unlike other North African countries, with their legacy
of French cultural domination--suffered no conflict of cultural
identity. As a rule, those few Libyans achieving higher education
obtained it not in Europe but in neighboring Arab countries.
Data as of 1987
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