Awlad Sidi Shaykh

Awlad Sidi Shaykh

Notable of the Awlad Sidi Shaykh in Paris in 1885 (photograph by Eugène Pirou)
Regions with significant populations
Western Algeria
Languages
Arabic
Religion
Islam

The Awlad Sidi Shaykh (or Ouled Sidi Cheikh) was a confederation of Arab tribes in the west and south of Algeria led by the descendants of the Sufi saint Sidi Shaykh. The Awlad had religious authority, and also owned agricultural settlements and engaged in trade. During the French occupation of Algeria they alternately cooperated with and opposed the colonialists.

The Awlad Sidi Shaykh trace their ancestry to the saint Sidi Shaykh, a descendent of Muhammad's father-in-law Abu Bakr, the first caliph. In the 16th century the growing population in the south-western Algerian Sahara created a need for more intense farming and for collaboration between farmers and nomads. Saint Sidi Shaykh founded a community of date farmers and nomads engaged in the caravan trade. A. G. P. Martin dates this to 1651, when the walis of the Tuat and Gurara brought the Sharifian ideology to the villages of the Zenata Berbers. The headquarters was a prayer-meditation center that taught the ethics of hard work and sharing among and between the farmers and nomads.

Arab tribes in the Gurara and the Sahara such as the Khenafsa became faithful to the Awlad Sidi Shaykh, the mrabtin of the Saharan Atlas. As the population pressure slackened in the following centuries the Awlad Sidi Shaykh gradually took control of the prayer-meditation center and grew into a mid-sized tribe. The religious ideals of cooperation were replaced by a system where the Awlad Sidi Shaykh used alms to maintain their dominance. They became the dominant tribal and religious federation in the Aïn Madhi region of the central northern Algerian desert. They owned houses and storage places in the Gourara and Tuat region, and controlled zawaya religious strongholds throughout the greater Tuat. The zawaya owned large gardens worked by slaves and served as markets and travel lodges. They sent their earnings to the mother zawiya in El Abiodh Sidi Cheikh in the northwest of Algeria.

Descendents of the Awlad Sidi Shaykh lived in the zawaya, where they were known as Zuwa or Ahl 'Azzi. They also owned land in the Hoggar Mountains, where they were religious scholars, teachers and traders. In the Hoggar Mountains they established agricultural settlements using slave labour, and these sometimes became staging posts on trade routes. There were trading communities of the Awlad Sidi Shaykh far to the south in Timbuktu, Kidal and Agadez, and to the east in Ghadames and Ghat. The confederation often came under the influence of the Sultan of Morocco.