Bedouin, Ali Awlad

The Awlad Ali ('Children of Ali') are an Arab Bedouin tribal confederation of the Western Desert, the coastal steppe that runs from Alexandria to the Libyan border. They descend from the Banu Sulaym, Arabian tribes that reached North Africa in the 11th century, and belong to the Sa'adi, the noble tribes of Cyrenaica, through the line of Harb. Their sections are the Awlad Ali al-Abyad (the White, with the Kharuf and Sanaqra), the Awlad Ali al-Ahmar (the Red, with the Qanashat and Ushaybat), the Sinina, the Jumi'at and, in Libya, the Qat'an, together about 64 clans; dependent client tribes (murabitin) live among them. They controlled much of eastern Cyrenaica until a long war with the Obeidat from about 1860 drove most of them east into Egypt by the 1890s; the Qat'an stayed around Tobruk. Most of the confederation now lives in Egypt, where it is the people of Matrouh governorate and of settlements reaching Alexandria's western edge, Beheira, Giza and Fayoum. They speak an eastern Libyan Bedouin Arabic, call themselves 'Arab, distinct from the 'Egyptians' of the Nile Valley, and keep close kinship with the Bedouin of eastern Libya across the border. Lila Abu-Lughod's 'Veiled Sentiments' (1986), written from a year among them, made their poetry and honour code known worldwide.

Tribe and lineage are the frame of life: elders settle disputes by customary law ('urf), and a family's honour rests on generosity, courage, self-control and modesty. Families arrange marriages, preferring a father's brother's daughter, and weddings are large gatherings with processions, poetry and rifle fire. The ghinnawa, short sung poems of two lines, let women and young men voice love, longing and hurt that the honour code forbids them to say outright. Women keep the household, the dairy and, in the past, wove the black goat-hair tent; veiling begins at marriage, and men and women keep separate spaces. Most families now live in concrete houses in towns and villages, many keeping a tent and sheep and goats for the season. Bread, rice, dairy and tea are daily food, lamb is for guests and feasts, and hospitality to any guest is a duty.

The Awlad Ali are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school. Prayer, Ramadan, Quran schooling and the pilgrimage order religious life, and the Sanusi order, which ran lodges and schools across Cyrenaica and the Western Desert in the 19th and early 20th centuries, shaped their faith. Saints' tombs (marabouts) along the coast are visited for blessing (baraka), and belief in jinn, the evil eye and protective amulets and Quranic verses persists beside orthodox practice. Salafi preaching has spread among young men in Egypt and eastern Libya since the 2000s.

Scripture portions in Libyan Arabic have been published since 2020, with audio and video on Bible.is, Gospel films of Mark and Luke in eastern and western Libyan Arabic, the JESUS Film and Global Recordings Network audio. The full Bible exists in Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic, which the Awlad Ali read and understand. No known congregation of Awlad Ali believers exists in Egypt or Libya; a 2024 missiological paper discusses discipling believers among the Egyptian Awlad Ali. Tribal honour and close family control make conversion very costly.