Sawknah

The Sawknah are the people of Sokna (Arabic Sawknah or Suknah, Berber Isuknan), the westernmost of the three Jufra oases of central Libya. Sokna had its own language, an Eastern Berber tongue related to the speech of Awjila in Libya and Siwa in Egypt; by 1911 only four or five old speakers remained, Sarnelli's word list of 1924 recorded the last of it, and it is extinct, surviving in place names. Riyah Arabs of the Banu Hilal settled at Sokna in the thirteenth century and married into the town, and its people today speak Libyan Arabic and call themselves after their town rather than as Amazigh. They are close kin of the people of Hun and Waddan, listed as the Jofra Berbers.

Sokna is a town of palm gardens and springs on the old caravan road from Tripoli and Sirte to the Fezzan. Its old walled town, about 15 hectares of dense mud-brick houses and lanes radiating from a central keep, was bulldozed between 1998 and 2003, and families now live in the modern town around it. Dates are grown in many local varieties, with barley, figs and vegetables in irrigated plots; families are patrilineal, and lineage elders and the town's notables settle disputes and speak for the town.

The people of Sokna are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school, with Friday mosques, Quran schools and the visiting of local saints' tombs that is common in Libya's oases. No church, believer or other faith is known in the town.

The Sawknah speak Libyan Arabic, which has Scripture portions, the Jesus Film and audio recordings; Standard Arabic Bibles are also read. No outreach, church or believer is known in Sokna, and no resources exist in its extinct Berber language.