Government ReformAcross the pillars

Ribaṭ-State Tradition

ribat_state_tradition_reform

The ribaṭ — the fortified-monastery from which the Almoravid movement organized its sweep across the Sahara and up through the Maghreb — is more than a building: it is a model of governance, where the religious-military brotherhood occupies a network of fortresses and mosques from which it administers the surrounding territory through the piety of its garrison rather than the payroll of a civilian bureaucracy. We have inherited this tradition: our polity is governed from fortress nodes rather than from a single palace, our administrators are at the same time warriors and men of religion, and our legitimacy rests on the sustained discipline of the frontier rather than the genealogy of a dynasty. This austerity of governance gives us hard-defended positions, a clergy that fights, and a fighting force that prays.