MARABOUT is a corruption of the Arabic Morabit, a Moslem name for a hermit or a devotee. Primarily the word is derived from τibdt, a fortified frontier station. To such stations pious men betook them to win religious merit in war against the infidel; their leisure was spent in devotion, and the habits of the convent superseded those of the camp (see De Slane in Jour. Äs., 1842, i. 168; Dozy, Suppl., i. 502). Thus ribat came to mean a religious house or hospice (zawiya). The great sphere of the marabouts is North Africa. There it was that the community formed by King Yahya and the doctor Abdalla developed into the conquering empire of the Mordbits, or, as Christian writers call them, the Almoeavides (7.v.), and there still, among the Berbers, the marabouts enjoy extraordinary influence, being esteemed as living saints and mediators. They are liberally supported by alms, direct all popular assemblies, and have a decisive voice in intertribal quarrels and all matters of consequence. On their death their sanctity is transferred to their tombs, where chapels are erected and gifts and prayers offered. The prominent part which the marabouts took in the resistance offered to the French by the Algerian Moslems is well known; and they have been similarly active in recent politico-religious movements in Tunis and Tripoli.