The Birth of the Lion of the Desert

In the preceding article we followed the political training of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in Jaghbub and in Kufra, and we saw how in the years between 1880 and 1900 he was prepared in the Senussi formation for his coming role as a leader in the brotherhood. We described the Senussi strategy towards the coming Italian colonial threat, the weapons purchases in these decades, the marriage bonds that connected him familially to the Senussi organisation, and the relocation of the headquarters from Jaghbub to Kufra in 1895. This article follows his first important leadership assignment in the Senussi organisation, namely the Senussi undertaking in the Chad-Wadai region in the years between 1890 and 1899, an undertaking that would attach the honorary title “Lion of the Desert” to his name, an honorary title that would have a lasting effect in his coming life and in the Cyrenaican tradition.

The Senussi expansion in the south

The motives behind the southern strategy

The Senussi expansion in the southern Saharan zone found its motives in three converging considerations. First, the European colonial expansion in North Africa, in which the French presence in Algeria since 1830 had been extended to Tunisia in 1881 and would extend itself towards the Chad-Niger region, with the necessity for the Senussi brotherhood to prepare itself strategically for this coming expansion. Second, the economic opportunities in the southern Saharan zone, with its vast trans-Saharan trade routes and with its trade in gold, salt and slaves, which could strengthen the financial position of the Senussi brotherhood. Third, the spiritual work among the local Muslim communities, in which the Senussi discipline could place an extension of the general Muslim organisation in the region in a common form.

Under Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ these three motives together formed the foundation on which the southern strategy was built. For the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, his appointment as the general leader of the Wadai undertaking meant that he took part in a strategic undertaking in which the Senussi brotherhood would give shape to its coming expansion.

In the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, the Senussi brotherhood carried out an expansion in the southern part of its network, towards the Chad-Wadai regions and into the neighbouring Sahelian zones. The expansion took place under the leadership of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ according to a strategy that comprised three main aims. First, the expansion of the Senussi zawiya network in an area that in the coming European colonial expansion would be subjected to French and British expansion, in which an early Senussi presence could place the local Muslim communities in a spiritual attitude of resistance. Second, the strengthening of the Senussi economic connections with the vast trans-Saharan trading space that had a central node in the Chad region. Third, the spiritual work of the Senussi brotherhood among the local Tubu, Kanembu and Kanuri communities, which in their specific Muslim traditions could support an extension of the Senussi network.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, who in 1893 or early 1894 was designated by Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ for the leadership of a specific Senussi mission to Wadai, the appointment meant an expression of the confidence that the supreme leader placed in his formation. He departed in 1894, at the age of thirty-six years, from Kufra in a long caravan undertaking to Wadai, with the assignment to establish the Senussi presence in the local communities.

Wadai and its spiritual form

Wadai, in its geographical position an extensive Sahelian sultanate in the central Chad basin at a distance of approximately one thousand kilometres southwest of Kufra, was a Muslim kingdom that since the seventeenth century had developed a spiritual and political tradition of its own. The local rulers, under the leadership of Sultan Yusuf in the eighteen-nineties, maintained extensive spiritual connections with Sufi brotherhoods in North Africa and in Egypt, and they received the Senussi presence with spiritual hospitality.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, this spiritual hospitality upon his arrival in Wadai meant a working base in which, together with the local Wadai ulama, he could found a Senussi zawiya in a central place in the sultanate. He established himself in a settlement near the capital Abeche, and he began immediately with the teaching of Senussi initiations to the local Muslim population, in a combination of spiritual guidance and organisational construction. In the five years that followed he built up in Wadai and in the neighbouring areas a Senussi network that in its extent comprised approximately ten zawiyas, with appointed local ikhwan who carried out their specific work under his general leadership.

The Wadai effect in its broader context

The Wadai undertaking was part of a broader Senussi expansion that in these years also took place in other southern Saharan regions. In Kufra, in connection with the Wadai undertaking, an extensive consolidation of the headquarters was continued, in eastern Niger and in northern Chad additional zawiyas were founded, and the common connections between all these areas were maintained under the central leadership of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ this meant that in his Wadai position he took part in a development that established the Senussi brotherhood as the most influential Muslim organisation in the vast Saharan zone.

In his correspondence with the Senussi headquarters, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ delivered extensive reports on his progress, and he received instructions for the coming phases of his work. The correspondence was carried by trans-Saharan caravans, with secrecy and careful logistical preparation, and it formed a central part of the general Senussi coordination between the far-flung regional activities.

The Lion of the Desert

The honorary title “Lion of the Desert”, which in the decades that followed would be lastingly attached to Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ name, derived its origin from these Wadai years. In the local tradition it is related that a Senussi ikhwan, in a Friday sermon in one of the Wadai zawiyas, compared the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ to a lion who served his community in the vast Saharan desert, a comparison that was meant to express the combination of courage and personal earnestness. The comparison was accepted by the local community, and in the course of a few years the honorary title became attached to his name in the ordinary Senussi tradition.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, this honorary title was an ordinary expression of Senussi admiration that in his personal humility he did not consider applicable, but which in its local effect he had to accept. He indicated repeatedly, in his Friday sermons in Wadai and in his separate conversations with the local ikhwan, that spiritual leadership belonged to Allah ﷻ and not to the spiritual leader himself, and he refused to devote any excessive attention to the honorary title. But in the Senussi tradition, and in its later resonance throughout Cyrenaica and in the broader Muslim world, the honorary title “Lion of the Desert” would become inseparably attached to his name.

The French colonial expansion

Simultaneously with the Senussi expansion in Wadai, a French colonial expansion took place in these decades in the Chad basin that would determine the coming development of the region. The French colonial authorities, who since 1870 had been pursuing their colonial expansion in West and Central Africa, continued their expansion towards Chad in the eighteen-nineties, with a series of military expeditions that culminated in 1898 in the decisive Battle of Kousseri, in which the French troops broke the local power of Rabih az-Zubayr ﵀ and formally established French colonial rule over Chad.

For the Senussi undertaking in Wadai, the French expansion meant a complication of the circumstances in which it had begun, for the authorities of the Wadai sultanate would in the coming decades be subjected to an increasing French political pressure that would find its outcome in 1909 in the capture of Abeche by French troops. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, the French presence formed in his Wadai work a strategic challenge in which he had to preserve the Senussi presence in a combination of spiritual discipline and political caution.

The return to Cyrenaica

In 1899 or early 1900, after approximately five years of Senussi work in Wadai, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ received an invitation from Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ to return to Cyrenaica for a new specific assignment. The return took place with the transfer of his Wadai leadership to an appointed successor and with a long caravan journey back to Cyrenaica via Kufra. In the local Wadai community his departure was received with considerable sorrow, for in his five years of work there he had become a central spiritual figure, and the local ikhwan rode out together with him for the first stage of his return journey.

In Kufra he was received by Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ in an audience in which the supreme leader expressed his appreciation for the work that the young Cyrenaican had completed in Wadai. In this meeting he received the new assignment to take up the leadership in Cyrenaica of an important zawiya in the Jebel Akhdar region, in an appointment that would usher in his gradual growth towards the position of general Senussi leader in Cyrenaica. He carried out this new assignment in a combination of spiritual discipline and practical activity, and in the following years he would grow into one of the most respected Senussi leaders of the whole of Cyrenaica.

The domestic life after the return

After his return to Cyrenaica in 1899 or 1900, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ resumed the domestic life with his wife Fatima and with the children who in his absence had grown up in her care. The return was an emotional reunion, with the rediscovery of their common life and with the building up of the coming domestic life in a combination of his former Bedouin habits and his Senussi discipline. Fatima had in his absence maintained the domestic organisation in her own way, and she received her husband with dignity and with shared spiritual connection.

The children, who had grown up in his absence, knew their father principally through the accounts of their mother and of the neighbouring family members, and they met him upon his return in a mutual renewal. In the years that followed Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ built up a close familial bond with his children, and he devoted extensive attention to their spiritual formation in a combination of Bedouin tradition and Senussi discipline.

The form of the Cyrenaican work

In his new Cyrenaican position, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ remained in practical activity in the local zawiya and in personal and familial connection with the Cyrenaican Bedouin communities. He received in his zawiya students from various Bedouin tribes, and he carried out Senussi initiations for the local Muslim population, in a work that strengthened the Senussi presence in his area. He also conducted extensive juridical adjudication in local disputes according to Maliki fiqh, and in his Friday sermons he gave a spiritual guidance to the local community that confirmed his spiritual authority.

The Tubu people and their role

In his Wadai work Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ also encountered the Tubu population, an extensive Saharan people who, in their geographical distribution from the northern Chad basin into the southern Libyan desert, conducted their own distinct form of Saharan existence. The Tubu, in their manner of living a combination of animal husbandry and trade, with a pronounced skill in Saharan orientation and in Saharan warfare, formed an extensive community that would function in a pronounced role in the coming Senussi work.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, the Tubu connection in his Wadai years meant an extension of his spiritual work that extended itself out beyond the ordinary Wadai community. He carried out Senussi initiations among Tubu clans, and in his work there he acquired a knowledge of the Tubu tradition that would prove indispensable to him in his coming role as a military leader in the Saharan zone. The coming Italian colonial expansion in Libya would place the Tubu population in a direct confrontation, and the Senussi-Tubu connection would bring forth a central element of the anti-colonial resistance.

The gradual shift in Senussi leadership

Simultaneously with his Wadai activities, a gradual shift in the supreme leadership took place in the broader Senussi brotherhood, in which Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ involved his successors in the responsibility. His nephew Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀, in these years in his early thirties, was brought into an active role in the Senussi leadership, and he carried out practical administrative responsibilities in increasing measure. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, this gradual shift meant that upon his coming return to Cyrenaica he would be positioned in a new position within the Senussi leadership, in a development that would prove indispensable in his coming role as general leader of the Cyrenaican resistance.

Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀

Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀, in 1894 approximately thirty-two years old, was a nephew of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ and, in his education, a fully formed scholar who in his younger years had studied in Mecca and in Cairo before he would take over the supreme leadership of the Senussi brotherhood. He was in his personal bearing a man of eloquence and of deep spiritual earnestness, and he gradually earned the confidence of his uncle for the coming transition of the supreme leadership.

The understanding between Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif ﵀ and the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, which was developed in these years, formed a central bond for the coming anti-colonial resistance. In the years between 1902 and 1918, when Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif ﵀ held the supreme leadership, he would call upon the spiritual and practical capabilities of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, and the cooperation between the two men would form the foundation on which the resistance would be built.

The work in the Wadai zawiyas

In the years between 1894 and 1899 Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ carried out a gradual building up of Senussi zawiyas in the Wadai region and in the neighbouring zones. The first zawiya was founded in 1894 or early 1895 at a place near Abeche, with the consent of Sultan Yusuf of Wadai and with the extensive participation of local Muslim scholars who were attached to the Senussi cause. In the years that followed four or five additional zawiyas were established in the neighbouring Wadai villages, and they carried out the ordinary Senussi activities of Quran teaching, juridical adjudication, and the extension of the local Muslim discipline.

For the local Wadai population, the Senussi presence meant that its existing Muslim tradition was continued in a more strict and disciplined form. The Senussi wird was performed communally in the local mosques, the Senussi conventions of self-sufficiency and communal construction were introduced in the local villages, and the Senussi juridical practice in the local adjudication of disputes formed an extension of the ordinary application of Maliki fiqh.

The internal organisation

In the internal organisation of the Senussi zawiyas in Wadai, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ functioned in a general leading position. Each local zawiya was led by an appointed local ikhwan, and these ikhwan came together in regular meetings in the central Abeche zawiya for discussions with Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ about the general progress of the work and about the coming matters the community would face. The discussions united common spiritual and administrative considerations, and they gave Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ a practical training in general administrative leadership that would resonate in his coming role as general leader.

The return journey through the Sahara

The return journey from Wadai to Cyrenaica took place over the course of several months, with a caravan undertaking that crossed the vast Saharan zone between Chad and Libya. The journey led Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ through several Senussi zawiyas along the way, where he spoke with the local ikhwan in scholarly conversations about the effect of his Wadai work and about the coming development of the Senussi brotherhood in the broader Saharan zone.

For his personal spiritual life, these months of travelling formed a reflection on the outcome of his Wadai years and on the coming form of his Cyrenaican work. In the evening hours of the journey, after the communal prayers in the caravan camp, he undertook long hours of personal dhikr in the Senussi discipline, and he conducted a strategic reflection on the coming Italian colonial threat whose effect in his parental Cyrenaica was becoming ever more visible.

The Tubu cavalry tradition

A specific aspect of the Tubu population that would be of great importance for the coming Cyrenaican resistance was the Tubu cavalry tradition, in which they had developed their specific military skill in Saharan warfare. The Tubu warriors, mounted on swift camels and equipped with their local knowledge, conducted a form of Saharan guerrilla warfare that far surpassed the ordinary European military conventions of its time. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, the understanding with the Tubu in his Wadai years meant an extensive practical training in this specific Saharan warfare, and he acquired a knowledge of the Tubu military skill that would support him in his coming role as a military leader.

In the decades that followed, the Tubu population would fulfil a role in the Cyrenaican Senussi resistance, with its extensive participation in the armed exchanges against the Italian colonial troops and with its strategic support in the southern Cyrenaican Saharan zone. For the general success of the resistance in its long course, the Tubu understanding, which had been established in its foundation in Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ Wadai years, would prove to be decisive.

The French colonial expansion in its effect

The French colonial expansion in the Chad-Niger region took place in the years between 1890 and 1910 in a gradual military and administrative subjugation, to which the local Muslim communities were subjected and against which they conducted resistance. The French troops, under the leadership of generals such as Émile Gentil and later Henri Gouraud, carried out extensive expeditions in these years that damaged the local political organisations in their ordinary form. The Battle of Kousseri in 1898, in which Rabih az-Zubayr ﵀ met his death as a martyr, formed in its outcome the beginning of the definitive French colonial rule over Chad.

For the Senussi brotherhood in its work in Wadai and in the neighbouring zones, this French expansion meant a strategic challenge. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ undertook in his Wadai years observations of the French military methods, he obtained intelligence concerning the coming French movements via the local Tubu and Wadai informants, and he passed on reports to the central Senussi leadership in Kufra about the general development of the coming French colonial expansion in the region.

The visit to the Mahdi survivors

During his Wadai years Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ also met a number of the survivors of the Mahdiyya movement in Sudan, which in 1898 had fallen to the British-Egyptian troops of General Kitchener and whose surviving members formed a refugee community in the Saharan zone between Chad and Sudan. The meetings with these Mahdi survivors formed a practical training in the consequences of a failed anti-colonial undertaking, and they gave Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ a learned insight into the effects of colonial military methods against a Muslim community that had conducted resistance on the basis of its spiritual conviction.

In his conversations with the Mahdi survivors, insofar as they have been preserved in later tradition, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ conducted a reflection on the general form of anti-colonial resistance in its nineteenth-century manifestation. He acquired in these conversations a learned insight that would distinguish him as the coming leader of the Cyrenaican resistance in the coming Italian confrontation in which he would have to stand.

Towards the Imam position of Zawiyat al-Qusour

In the years around 1902, when Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was forty-four years old, a further step of responsibility in the Senussi organisation took place in his personal career. Under the transition of the Senussi supreme leadership from Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ to his nephew Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ in that year, he was appointed as imam of the Zawiyat al-Qusour, a specific zawiya in the Cyrenaican Jebel Akhdar region that occupied a central place in the regional Senussi network. To this appointment, and to the manner in which it prepared him for his coming general leadership of the Cyrenaican resistance, the next article will devote its attention.

In this article we have followed how the young Umar, in the years between 1894 and 1899, developed in a Senussi undertaking in Wadai an extensive practical form of leadership, how in his work there he received the honorary title “Lion of the Desert” that would have a lasting effect in his coming life and in the Cyrenaican tradition, how the French colonial expansion in Chad began to touch the general progress of the Senussi work in its southern zone, and how in 1899 or 1900 the return to Cyrenaica placed his gradual growth towards the position of general Senussi leader in his own native region in a new phase.

Sources

• E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Clarendon Press (1949), pp. 186–214.
• Knut S. Vikør, Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge, Hurst (1995), pp. 334–376.
• Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, State University of New York Press (2009), pp. 158–198.
• Jean-Claude Zeltner, Pages d’histoire du Kanem: Pays tchadien, L’Harmattan (1980), pp. 156–214 [voor de Wadai-Senussi-context].
• Dennis D. Cordell, Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, University of Wisconsin Press (1985), pp. 124–168.
• Pierre-Alban Thomas, Les rezzous Sénoussistes au Tchad, Karthala (1979), pp. 56–124.
• Nicola A. Ziadeh, Sanusiyah: A Study of a Revivalist Movement in Islam, Brill (1958), pp. 186–214.
• Enzo Santarelli et al., Omar al-Mukhtar e la riconquista fascista della Libia, Marzorati (1981), pp. 134–168.