Senussi

The Senussi (Sanusiyya) were a Sufi Muslim order that during the First World War was the real master of the interior of Cyrenaica in Libya. From 1911 it fought the Italians, and in 1915–1917, urged on and armed by the Ottomans and Germans, it waged war on the British along Egypt’s western border. British sources call it the Senussi.

An order of the desert

The order was founded in Mecca in 1837 by an Algerian-born scholar, Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, known as the Grand Senussi. He later settled in Cyrenaica, and in 1855 moved his centre to the oasis of Al-Jaghbub, away from the eyes of Turkish officials. The order’s austere, simple teaching appealed to the Bedouin, and its zawiyas, centres of prayer and learning, spread across the oases of the Sahara. When the founder’s son died in 1902 he left 146 of them, and all the tribes of Cyrenaica, feuding among themselves, recognised a single leader. That leader became Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif, who ruled on behalf of his younger cousin, Muhammad Idris. The order’s influence reached across the desert as far as Darfur, whose sultan dealt through it with Britain’s enemies.

When Italy attacked Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in 1911, the order joined the Turks and tribes fighting them. The peace of 1912 changed nothing for it. Backed by Turkish officers who had stayed in the country, it fought on, and in the spring of 1915 the rising spread to Tripolitania too. According to some studies, by the summer the Italians held only a few towns on the coast there. Support for the order was one of the charges with which Italy justified its declaration of war on Turkey in August 1915.

War with the British

Sayyid Ahmad had long lived on good terms with the British in Egypt. In February 1915 Nuri Bey, half-brother of Enver Pasha, and Jafar al-Askari arrived in his camp. They trained the order’s regular troops, the muhafiziya. The sultan gave the sheikh the title of vizier and authorised him to proclaim a holy war, and arms and officers were brought in by ships and by German submarines. According to Jafar, the sheikh was won over only by German money and Enver’s pressure. In November 1915 the order’s men attacked Sollum, and the British withdrew their posts to Mersa Matruh.

The order was meant to start a rising in Egypt and tie down in the west troops needed on the Suez Canal. The rising never came, although some of the Bedouin of the Awlad Ali tribe joined in. After skirmishes in December and January, the issue was decided by the Battle of Agagia on 26 February 1916, in which Jafar was taken prisoner, and in March the British retook Sollum. The war moved to the oases of the Western Desert. British armoured cars and light patrols took Dakhla from the order in October, and in February 1917 broke up its camp near Siwa.

Idris instead of Ahmad

The defeats weakened the sheikh and strengthened his cousin Idris, who had opposed war with Britain from the start. In April 1917 Idris concluded an agreement with the British at Akrama near Tobruk and a modus vivendi with the Italians, and both recognised him as head of the order. In August 1918 Sayyid Ahmad sailed for Constantinople in a submarine. In 1920 the Italians recognised Idris as Emir of Cyrenaica, in the 1920s the order was again at war with them, and in 1951 Idris became king of an independent Libya.