marabout

plural marabouts

1. IslamA Muslim holy man or mystic, especially in parts of North Africa.First known use 17th c.

   one of their principal targets was the marabouts – or holy men and leaders of mystic orders – whom they accused both of corrupting the faith by their espousal of mysticism and of being the ‘domestic animals of colonialism’.

   1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 38

2. The tomb or shrine of such a person.First known use 19th c.

   Climbing one on his second day lost, Prosperi spotted a disturbance to the view. “I was convinced it was somebody’s home or a holy man’s shrine.” But the shrine, or marabout, was empty. The only holy man was in a sarcophagus.

   2023 July 4, Paula Cocozza, “I was lost in the desert for nine and a half days – and sustained myself with raw bats and urine”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

3. alternativeAlternative form of marabou (“thin fabric made from silk”).

   Wherever she went she had, if not the finest, at any rate the most showy gown in the room; her ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets, marabouts, and other fallals, always the most conspicuous.

   1852, William Makepeace Thackeray, Men's Wives, New York: D. Appleton & Company, page 122