Maʾlūf (in Libya)

Abstract

Maʾlūf, which literally means ‘ familiar ’ or ‘ customary ’ in Arabic, is part of the North African musical tradition broadly known as al-mūsīqa al-andalusiyya (‘Andalusian music’). Reputedly, the maʾlūf was brought to North Africa by Andalusian refugees of Muslim and Jewish descent who fled the Christian reconquista of Spain between the tenth and seventeenth centuries. In Morocco, this genre is known as āla (‘instrumental music’), in western Algeria it is known as gharnatī (‘from Granada’), in Algiers sanʿa (‘work of art’), while in Libya and Tunisia it is called maʾlūf.