al-Bayda (Cyrenaica)

Al-Bayda, in the Cyrenaica (Barqa) region of northeastern Libya, is closely associated with the Sanusi Sufi order: Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi (d. 1859) founded his first major zawiya in this region in the 1840s, and al-Bayda became a centre of the order. [NOTE: the connected 'al-Baydawi' (d. c. 1286, the Qur'an commentator) takes his nisba from Bayda in Fars, Iran, NOT this Libyan al-Bayda.]