Senussi attack Sollum

The British official chronology of the war recorded under 14 November 1915 that the Senussi order had opened hostilities against the British by attacking the Egyptian post at Sollum. The sources do not agree on the day. The British official history of naval operations states that Sollum was attacked on 15 November and that the garrison held its position. The official history of operations in Egypt describes as the first concrete incident the night of 17–18 November, when a small party fired on the camp of the Egyptian garrison, while another group killed two Bedouin friendly to the British and cut the telegraph line running along the coast. All versions agree on one thing: in mid-November peace on Egypt’s western border came to an end.

The sheikh and his advisers

Sollum was a small port on the border with Cyrenaica, which Italy had taken from Turkey in the war of 1911–1912. The garrison numbered just over a hundred soldiers of the Egyptian Army under Lieutenant-Colonel C. L. Snow of the Egyptian Coastguard, who knew the local Bedouin and had for months been in talks with his neighbour. On the hills above the port camped forces of the order, a Sufi brotherhood that for half a century had held enormous influence in the Sahara and since 1911 had been at war with the Italians. Its head, Sayyid Ahmed al-Sharif, nephew of the previous leader, had taken office in 1902 as temporary deputy for the under-age Muhammad Idris, later King Idris I of Libya. Idris was now grown up and many members of the order regarded him as the rightful leader, and he himself opposed a conflict with the British.

Sayyid Ahmed was under pressure from the Turks. In February 1915 Nuri Bey, half-brother of the war minister Enver, arrived at his camp, and with him Ja’far al-Askari, an Arab officer from Baghdad, a graduate of the military school in Constantinople who had also served in the German army. Nuri, well supplied with money, quickly gained influence over the sheikh. According to the British official history it was he who in June prepared a night raid on Sollum, which Sayyid Ahmed stopped at the last moment, having the ringleaders flogged. In time Nuri took command of the order’s forces, and Ja’far became his deputy. Both trained regular units, the so-called muhafiziya, and levies from the Awlad Ali tribe. In June the French intercepted a Turkish sailing vessel carrying a mission to the sheikh, gold and a letter from the Sultan granting him the title of vizier and authorising him to proclaim a holy war against Britain, France and Russia. Arms and officers were brought in by ships and, in the autumn, also by German submarines.

British patience

For a long time the British pretended not to see the provocations. In August men on the coast near Sollum fired on a British submarine that had approached the shore on seeing a white flag. The sheikh explained that it had been taken for an Italian vessel. Then his men held “night manoeuvres” around the fort at Sollum, aiming guns and machine guns at the post from close range. Letters from Sayyid Ahmed to Muslim rulers and journalists in Arabia and India, calling for jihad, fell into the hands of General John Maxwell, commanding the forces in Egypt. Even so, London ordered that the friendly policy be maintained. Talks with the Sharif of Mecca were under way, and no one wanted to alienate the Arab world. Snow believed to the end that the sheikh himself did not want war, and as late as 30 September had a friendly conversation with him. After the war Ja’far al-Askari confirmed that Sayyid Ahmed, entangled in fighting with the Italians in the west and the French in the south, was not eager for war with England, but was drawn into it by German money and pressure from Enver.

The turning point came in the first days of November. The German submarine U-35 brought Turkish and German officers to Bardia, and then sank the British steamer Tara and attacked Egyptian vessels in the Gulf of Sollum. The survivors of Tara and of the transport Moorina were handed over to the Senussi. The sheikh insisted that he knew nothing about it, and the last British proposal, money in exchange for sending away the Turkish advisers, was rejected. The submarines’ successes convinced the coast that British power at sea was waning.

First shots

The firing on Sollum was the start of a series of raids. In the following days the order’s forces appeared further east, and the posts of the Egyptian Coastguard along the coast came under fire. Soon Cairo concluded that war could no longer be avoided. The small garrison at Sollum, more than four hundred kilometres from Alexandria and supplied mainly by sea, which there was nothing to protect against submarines, had no chance of holding out for long against forces several thousand strong with artillery and machine guns. The British command therefore decided to withdraw the posts and concentrate its forces closer to Alexandria. In the rear of the troops defending the Suez Canal a new front was opening, which was exactly what the Turks had wanted to achieve.