The Tragic Fitna

In the previous article we saw how in 1858, in a small Bedouin village in the Cyrenaican Saharan zone, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was born into a world that was shaped by the three forces of the Ottoman weakening, the Senussi expansion and the Italian colonial aspiration. This article interrupts the chronology of his life for a while to devote attention to an event in 1861 in West Africa, namely the tragic fitna between the Umarian-Tijani state and the Massina-Qadiri Imamate, which would have a lasting influence on the coming form of the Senussi brotherhood and on its specific strategic choices in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century. The Senussi leaders in Cyrenaica followed the West African developments with considerable attention through travelling merchants and pilgrims, and the outcome of Hamdullahi became a spiritual warning that would resound recognisably in the Senussi strategy of the following decades.

The West African background

The wider Muslim world in 1861

The year 1861, in which the run-up to the Umarian-Massina fitna became visible, was in the wider Muslim world a year in which several great developments unfolded simultaneously that placed the Muslim world at large in a changing framework. In the Ottoman Empire reigned Sultan Abdulaziz, who assumed his office in 1861 after the death of Sultan Abdulmecid I, and in his early years he undertook a modernisation of the Ottoman state apparatus in continuation of the Tanzimat reforms of his predecessor. In Egypt reigned Said Pasha as khedive under Ottoman suzerainty, in a gradual modernisation that prepared the coming British colonial intervention of 1882. In Morocco reigned Sultan Muhammad IV as Alawi sovereign, with France and Spain exerting colonial pressure on his outer borders.

For the Senussi leaders in Jaghbub, who followed the general state of the Muslim world in their strategic reflection, this wider context was of central importance. They understood that the West African fitna did not stand in isolation but that it formed part of a broader pattern in the Muslim world, in which the European colonial expansion, the internal Muslim conflicts over tarīqa claims and the questions of modernisation together grew into a fundamental challenge to the Muslim Ummah at large.

In an earlier article in this cycle, under the hero al-Hajj Umar Tall ﵀, we discussed how the Umarian jihad state reached its greatest territorial extent in its expansion against the Bambara kingdom of Segu in 1859, how in the following years a gradual escalation took place between the Umarian state and the Massina Imamate over the extradition of the Bambara leaders who had fled to Massina, and how in May 1862, in the tragic battle before Hamdullahi, the Massina imam Ahmad III ﵀ met his martyr’s death, whereby the inter-Muslim fitna became visible in its full extent to the West African Muslim world. For the wider Muslim world as a whole this conflict was an event that was observed with considerable embarrassment in all spiritual circles, and the Senussi leaders in Cyrenaica formed no exception to this.

In 1861, the year on which this article has its focus, the run-up to the actual armed confrontation between the Umarian-Tijani state and the Massina-Qadiri Imamate unfolded, with the diplomatic escalations that would find their outcome the following year in the attack on Hamdullahi. The Senussi leaders in Jaghbub, under the leadership of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ who had taken over the chief leadership of the brotherhood in 1859, received in that year extensive reports about the West African developments through the travelling merchants who in these decades maintained the trans-Saharan caravan routes between Cyrenaica and the West African interior.

The trans-Saharan exchange of information

The trans-Saharan caravan routes between Cyrenaica and the West African interior maintained in the second half of the nineteenth century a continuous exchange of trade and information, through which the local events in each region became known on the other side. Between Kufra and Murzuq in the central Saharan section, and then via Bilma in the Chad-Niger border area to Kano and from there further westward to Timbuktu and the Senegambia region, Bedouin merchants in caravans of several hundred pack animals carried on an exchange of textiles, salt, dates, slaves, gold and spiritual manuscripts. Alongside this material exchange they also conveyed political tidings, which were passed on to the local Muslim communities at every stage of the journey.

For the Senussi brotherhood this exchange of information was a central component of its international network, and the leaders in Jaghbub maintained correspondence with the spiritual leaders throughout sub-Saharan Africa via the ordinary merchant routes. The reports received from West Africa were handled in an organised manner at the Senussi headquarters, with appointed ikhwan who ordered the incoming information and who together with Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ discussed the significance of the information for the Senussi strategy.

The Egyptian al-Azhar response

In Cairo, in the years after the Hamdullahi fitna, a reflection was undertaken in the learned circle of al-Azhar on the spiritual significance of inter-Muslim conflicts and on the legal grounds on which such a confrontation between different Sufi brotherhoods might be prevented. Egyptian scholars of exceptional stature, among them Sheikh Muhammad Ayyad al-Tantawi ﵀ and Sheikh Ibrahim al-Bayjuri ﵀, conducted learned correspondence with the Senussi leaders in Jaghbub in which the general Muslim brotherhood was elaborated above the specific tarīqa differences.

The Egyptian reflection yielded a number of learned fatwas that developed a comparable line in the wider Muslim world, in which inter-Muslim unity was placed above the tarīqa-specific claims. For the Senussi brotherhood this Egyptian support was a spiritual confirmation of its own position of spiritual neutrality in inter-Muslim conflicts, and it gave the Senussi tradition an international spiritual dimension that would resound recognisably in its subsequent expansion.

The general Muslim awareness

The spiritual impact of the West African fitna on the wider Muslim population of Cyrenaica unfolded gradually, for the local Bedouin communities underwent in the course of the 1860s and thereafter a reflection on the consequences of the inter-Muslim conflicts for the Muslim Ummah at large. In the local mosques and in the zawiya gatherings on Friday evening the events in West Africa were repeatedly spoken of, and the local ikhwan gave thereby the spiritual explanation in which the West African fitna was set forth as a warning.

For the ordinary Cyrenaican Bedouin population this meant that in its daily spiritual life it received an instruction in the general Muslim brotherhood that transcended the specific tarīqa differences. For the young Bedouin boys who received their first education in the local zawiyas, and among whom the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ would belong in his coming sixth or seventh year of life, this instruction formed a central element of their spiritual formation. The general Muslim brotherhood, with its mutual solidarity above the specific tarīqa differences, became in their adolescent years something so natural that it would remain recognisable in the work that awaited them.

The Senussi response to the West African developments

In the years 1860 and 1861, as the coming Umarian-Massina confrontation became visible, the Senussi leaders conducted an internal discussion about the spiritual and strategic consequences for their own work. The discussions unfolded in a combination of Friday sermons in the central mosque of Jaghbub in which the general West African situation was explained in its spiritual significance, of separate meetings of the Senussi council in which the specific strategic consequences for the Senussi presence were discussed in more practical terms, and of private deliberations of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ personally in deep spiritual reflection.

The general outcome of these discussions, insofar as it has been preserved in the Senussi archives in later copies, comprised three main points that would remain recognisable in the Senussi strategy of the following decades. Firstly the commitment to a pronounced avoidance of inter-Muslim conflicts such as the inter-Tijani-Qadiri confrontation that was becoming visible in West Africa. Secondly the gradual development of a distinct Senussi form that acquired a place of its own in its spiritual distinctness without contesting the other Sufi brotherhoods in its specific area in a rival claim. Thirdly the gradual preparation for the coming European colonial expansion as the common challenge that in the coming decades would affect all Muslim communities.

The later treatment in Senussi historiography

In the later Senussi historiography, and in particular in the works that were produced by Senussi scholars in Cyrenaica in the first decades of the twentieth century, the Hamdullahi fitna received attention as a central point of warning and spiritual learning for the Senussi tradition. Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀, the nephew of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ who took over the chief leadership of the brotherhood in 1902, spoke repeatedly in his Friday sermons about the West African fitna, whereby its outcome was presented as a warning for the coming Senussi confrontations with external powers. He emphasised that unity within the Muslim Ummah, even in times of differences in tarīqa affiliation, had to remain an absolute priority if the Muslim community at large wished to preserve its spiritual and political position in the face of the European colonial expansion.

This spiritual interpretation, continued from the end of the nineteenth into the first decades of the twentieth century, formed the immediate spiritual background in which Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ received his own formation in his years of education in Jaghbub. He heard, in the local Friday sermons and in the scholarly conversations that continued in the Jaghbub zawiya in his adolescent years, the interpretation of the Hamdullahi fitna as a spiritual warning, and he acquired a deep awareness of the consequences of inter-Muslim conflicts that he would recognisably carry forward in his later work.

The spiritual interpretation of the fitna

In the Friday sermons that Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ delivered in Jaghbub in 1861 and 1862, and that were spread through the local zawiyas of Cyrenaica via his appointed ikhwan, a spiritual interpretation of the West African fitna unfolded that placed the general Muslim unity above the tarīqa-specific differences. He spoke in this interpretation of the common Muslim brotherhood that transcended the tarīqa differences, of the consequences of inter-Muslim conflicts through which the ordinary aspirations of the Muslim community were rendered vain, and of the duty of every spiritual leader to preserve the common unity recognisably in his own work.

For the ordinary Bedouin population of Cyrenaica this interpretation was a spiritual guidance that placed them in a combination of solidarity with the West African Muslim brothers and of local caution of their own. They performed communal prayers in the local zawiya gatherings for the West African victims of the fitna, and they received the spiritual exhortation to maintain the local communal unity in their own Cyrenaican surroundings.

The reports from the West

In the Senussi archives of Jaghbub, insofar as these have been studied in later copies by E.E. Evans-Pritchard and by modern historians, a number of the West African reports have been preserved that were received by the Senussi leaders in the years 1860 to 1864. They comprise short accounts from trans-Saharan merchants who had come in caravans from the West, learned correspondence from Mauritanian and Moroccan Sufi leaders who stood on friendly terms with the Senussi brotherhood, and in a few cases also letters originating directly from the Umarian state or from representatives of the Massina Imamate, in which the own position of each side was laid before the Senussi leaders in the hope of spiritual support or mediation.

The Senussi response to these reports was one of spiritual distance and general exhortation to Muslim unity, and the brotherhood refused to place itself in a direct alignment with either of the two parties. But it supported in a general sense the pleas for a peaceful outcome, and in a number of cases it conducted learned correspondence with both sides in which the common Muslim brotherhood was placed above the specific tarīqa differences. The attempts at mediation, as we saw in an earlier article, did not succeed, but the Senussi stance of spiritual neutrality in inter-Muslim conflicts was lastingly established through this learning process.

The spiritual differences between the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya

Behind the Umarian-Massina fitna lay a spiritual history of the differences between the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya in West Africa, which deserves additional attention in this article in order to understand the outcome of the fitna in its full extent. The Tijaniyya, founded by Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tijani ﵀ in the late eighteenth century, was a distinct tarīqa that placed its pupils in a direct spiritual connection with the Prophet ﷺ through an unambiguous ijaza line that within the tarīqa was regarded as superior to other chains of transmission. The Qadiriyya, founded by Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani ﵀ in the twelfth century, was an older tarīqa with its own distinct spiritual discipline and its own line of transmission.

The spiritual differences between the two tarīqas were not in themselves irreconcilable, and in many Muslim communities Tijani and Qadiri adherents lived peacefully side by side without the tarīqa differences acquiring a political charge. But in the specific context of nineteenth-century West Africa, with the Tijaniyya in its Umarian form and with the Qadiriyya in its Sokoto and Massina forms, some tensions gradually arose in which the specific claims of each tarīqa acquired a political significance. The Hamdullahi fitna was the tragic outcome of these tensions, and it formed a warning to the wider Muslim world about the possible consequences of inter-tarīqa rivalries when these were worked out in a political form.

The Sudanese-Cyrenaican connection

Alongside the Mauritanian connection the Senussi brotherhood also maintained in these decades an extensive understanding with the Sudanese Muslim communities, in a combination of direct trade connections via the trans-Saharan caravans and of spiritual exchanges via the pilgrim routes to Mecca. The Sudanese pilgrims who travelled annually in caravans of several thousand persons via Wadai and via Kufra to the Hejaz conveyed spiritual tidings and exchanges of local news in both directions, and together they fulfilled an important function as a connecting node between the Saharan and the West African Muslim communities.

For the Senussi brotherhood these Sudanese connections were of great importance for the general understanding of the West African situation, for the Sudanese pilgrims had been able to form their own observation of the events in their journeys through West Africa. Their reports about the Umarian-Massina fitna, which were often more detailed than the ordinary merchant reports, gave the Senussi leaders an additional source of information that placed their strategic reflection in a more extensive framework.

The Mauritanian connection

In the years after the fitna an exchange unfolded between the Senussi brotherhood and the Mauritanian Sufi communities in which the consequences of the West African events for the wider Saharan Muslim world were discussed. Mauritanian scholars of the established Qadiri traditions, and in particular the scholars of the Kunta clan under the leadership of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Saghir al-Kunti ﵀, conducted learned correspondence with the Senussi leaders in Jaghbub. The Mauritanian scholars, who in their own position were confronted both with the Umarian-Tijani expansion and with the Massina-Qadiri connections, found in the Senussi brotherhood a spiritual interlocutor with whom they could discuss the common challenges of their position.

The exchange formed an extensive intellectual debate about the proper relationship between the different Sufi brotherhoods in the Saharan Muslim world, and it led gradually to a number of common initiatives that in the following decades would grow into a greater Saharan Sufi cooperation. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, who in his coming years as a Senussi pupil in Jaghbub would receive this intellectual tradition personally, this background formed a central element of his formation.

The Senussi position between the two tarīqas

For the Senussi brotherhood the position between the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya had a specific character that would colour the general Senussi strategy. Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi ﵀, the founder of the brotherhood, had been trained in his early years in Mecca under the Idrisi tarīqa of Sayyid Ahmad ibn Idris al-Fasi ﵀ in a formation that combined the general Idrisi heritage with specific elements that would stand central in his later brotherhood. The Senussi brotherhood thus stood in its origin within the broader Idrisi tradition, and it was neither a Tijani nor a Qadiri tarīqa but a distinct brotherhood with its own ijaza line.

This distinctness gave the Senussi brotherhood, in its relation to the Umarian-Massina fitna, a spiritual distance that enabled it to place the fitna within a general interpretation without aligning itself with either of the two camps. For Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ personally this distance was a useful position in which he could place the West African events within his own spiritual interpretation without having to place himself in an immediate political alignment, and it formed the learned framework within which the Senussi brotherhood could carry out its own specific work in a combination of spiritual independence and general Muslim brotherhood.

The Idrisi heritage and its effect

The Idrisi heritage in which the Senussi brotherhood was rooted in its origin formed a specific spiritual position between the established great tarīqas of the Muslim world. Sayyid Ahmad ibn Idris al-Fasi ﵀, born in 1760 in Maysur in Morocco and deceased in 1837 in the mountains of Sabya in Asir, was a scholar of exceptional eloquence who in his work had advocated a reform of the Sufi tradition. In his work he rejected the established tarīqa hierarchies and pleaded for a direct return to the prophetic tradition, with a direct spiritual connection with the Prophet ﷺ through dreams and visions that had repeatedly occurred in his own life.

For his pupils, among whom Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi ﵀ belonged in Mecca, this Idrisi teaching placed them in a distinct position toward the older tarīqas without bringing them into a hostile relation with them. The Senussi brotherhood maintained, in its continuation of this heritage, a spiritual distinctness in which its own specific discipline was preserved without it acting polemically against the older tarīqas. For the position toward the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya in West Africa this attitude gave the Senussi leaders a spiritual space in which they could operate in a combination of their own independence and general Muslim brotherhood.

The significance for the young Mukhtar

In the year 1861, when the coming fitna in West Africa was preparing itself, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was a boy of three years old in his parental household in Janzur. He could, at his young age, have no direct observation of the West African events, and his parents and relatives kept him in the ordinary Bedouin child’s life that would be led in the immediate vicinity of the local Senussi zawiya. But the influence of the fitna on the wider Senussi strategy, and in particular the gradual formation of a Senussi attitude that placed inter-Muslim unity high and that carried out its own specific work in a combination of spiritual discipline and general brotherhood, would return recognisably in the education that awaited him and in his later work.

In the life’s work that lay before him, in his confrontation with the Italian colonial expansion after 1911, he would lastingly continue in his own work the Senussi line of inter-Muslim unity and common brotherhood, and in his daily leadership of the Cyrenaican resistance he would combine the spiritual discipline of the Senussi tradition with the practice of a military defence in an inimitable way. The fitna in West Africa in 1861 and 1862, although it did not touch his own life immediately, formed within the wider Senussi tradition a spiritual background that would resound recognisably in the work that awaited him.

The Cyrenaican Bedouin response

For the ordinary Cyrenaican Bedouin population, which in its great majority was not directly spiritually involved in the West African tarīqa debates, the tidings of the Hamdullahi fitna formed a matter of curiosity that was discussed at length in the local evening gatherings of the tribal shaykhs. The Bedouin traditions of oral transmission, developed over centuries, carried the West African events via travelling merchants and pilgrims to the local communities, and they led to a spiritual processing in which the general Muslim unity was placed high.

For the life’s work that awaited Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ this Bedouin response formed an important background, for it showed that even in a remote Bedouin community such as Cyrenaica in the second half of the nineteenth century a reflection on the general state of the Muslim world took place. The Cyrenaican Bedouin were no spiritually isolated community, but they stood in connection with the wider Muslim Ummah, and they conducted in their own circle a reflection on the general state of the Muslim Ummah that would resound recognisably in his work to come.

The Senussi learning process

In the years between 1862 and 1900 the Senussi brotherhood carried out in its internal organisation an extensive learning process in which the outcome of the West African fitna and the European colonial expansion in its consequences for the Muslim world were worked out communally. The learning process unfolded in a combination of spiritual instruction in the local zawiyas, of learned correspondence with other Sufi brotherhoods in North Africa and in the Middle East, and of practical strategic preparation for the coming challenges before which the brotherhood would stand in the coming decades.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, who in these decades grew up in the Senussi tradition from his early childhood to his adolescent years, this learning process formed the immediate spiritual framework of his upbringing. He received his first education in the local zawiya in al-Bayda as an ordinary Senussi pupil, and in his adolescent years he gradually acquired the pronounced Senussi discipline in which the combination of spiritual earnestness and practical application was the general hallmark. To this education, and to the specific way in which it prepared him for his later work, the next article will devote its attention.

The parallels with the Senussi future

A remarkable aspect of the Umarian-Massina fitna as it came before the Senussi brotherhood was the consideration of possible parallels with their own coming situation in Cyrenaica. What would happen, the Senussi leaders asked themselves, if in the future a comparable conflict between different Sufi brotherhoods were to arise in their own region, and how could they prevent this possibility in their strategic preparation. The discussions, insofar as they have been preserved in later Senussi transmission, led to an extensive learning process in which the Senussi leaders combined their specific spiritual distinctness with a general Muslim brotherhood that could avoid internal conflicts.

For the coming Cyrenaican resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in the years 1911 to 1931 this Senussi learning process from the years of the Hamdullahi fitna would have a lasting influence. Mukhtar would in his general leadership of the resistance devote attention to the preservation of inter-tribal and inter-brotherhood unity within the Cyrenaican resistance, and he would repeatedly cite the outcome of Hamdullahi as a warning in his Friday sermons and in his personal instructions to his closest associates, in which the tragic outcome of internal Muslim conflicts was shown.

Toward the Senussi education

In this article we have considered the West African fitna of 1861 and 1862 from the Senussi-Cyrenaican background, and we have seen how this fitna acquired a spiritual influence on the Senussi brotherhood that in its subsequent strategy gave an elevated place to inter-Muslim unity and general brotherhood. The Senussi response to the West African events, as it developed between 1861 and 1900, formed the bedding upon which the coming life’s work of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ would be built in the Senussi discipline, and it gave his later struggle against the Italian colonial expansion a spiritual foundation in which the wider Muslim unity and the common brotherhood would remain recognisable.

For the modern Muslim who wishes to understand the life’s work of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in its full extent, the West African fitna remains a spiritual background that places the Senussi tradition in which he was educated in a specific light, and it forms an indispensable element of the framework within which his work to come can be placed in its spiritual significance.

Sources

• David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Clarendon Press (1985), pp. 334–376 [voor de Umarian-zijde van de fitna].
• William A. Brown, The Caliphate of Hamdullahi, ca. 1818–1864, University of Wisconsin Press (1969), pp. 198–248 [voor de Massina-zijde van de fitna].
• Knut S. Vikør, Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge: Muhammad b. Ali al-Sanusi and his Brotherhood, Hurst (1995), pp. 156–214 [voor de Senussi-respons].
• E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Clarendon Press (1949), pp. 62–124.
• B.G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa, Cambridge University Press (1976), pp. 136–178.
• Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World, Oxford University Press (1965), pp. 124–168.
• Sean Hanretta, Islam and Social Change in French West Africa, Cambridge University Press (2009), pp. 204–248 [voor de uitwerking van de fitna in de Tijani-traditie].
• Madina Ly-Tall, Un Islam militant en Afrique de l’Ouest au XIXe siècle, L’Harmattan (1991), pp. 376–426.