The Battle of Bir Bilal

In the previous article we followed the gradual development of the Cyrenaican resistance in the years between 1913 and 1923, with the gradual transfer of the supreme leadership of the Senussi brotherhood to Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀, with the temporary peace accords that were concluded in 1920 and 1921, and with the Italian colonial pressure that was renewed under the Fascist movement from 1922 onward. We saw how in 1923 Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was appointed general military leader of the Cyrenaican resistance and how, in the months that followed, he brought the specific guerrilla strategy of the adwar to its full development. This article follows the course of the Battle of Bir Bilal in the Cyrenaican Saharan zone in the late spring of 1923, a confrontation between Cyrenaican Bedouin fighters and an Italian expeditionary column, a confrontation whose outcome would come to confirm the spiritual strength of the resistance.

The background of the battle

The preceding months of skirmishes

In the months preceding the specific battle of Bir Bilal, an extended and wide-ranging series of skirmishes unfolded between the Cyrenaican fighters and the Italian expeditionary columns that were sent to the southern Saharan zone in these months. These skirmishes unfolded according to the elaborate guerrilla tactics that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had developed in the preceding months: smaller attacks were carried out by isolated adwar units against the Italian caravans, ambushes were laid at those Italian mountain posts that were difficult to defend, and a sustained war of information was waged in which the general Italian strategic plans were repeatedly disrupted.

For the general development of the resistance, these months of skirmishing ultimately formed the bed on which the coming larger confrontation at Bir Bilal would, in its entirety, come to be built. The ordinary Cyrenaican fighters, who stood under the general leadership of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, acquired in the course of these months an extensive practical experience with the specific guerrilla tactics, and at the same time, in a gradual course, they completed the psychological preparation for the coming larger confrontation that would ultimately demonstrate the full strength of the Cyrenaican resistance to the Italian colonial authorities.

The Italian expansion campaign of 1923

In the first months of 1923, after the Italian colonial pressure that had been renewed under Mussolini, the Italian army in Cyrenaica, under the command of General Luigi Bongiovanni, conducted an extensive and sustained campaign of expansion of the occupied zone, a campaign that was aimed at establishing Italian rule in the southern Cyrenaican Saharan zone. The campaign unfolded in a combination of direct military operations, directed against the local Bedouin population, and the gradual construction of Italian forts in the strategically favorably situated oasis towns of the Saharan zone, with the express and declared intention of breaking the Senussi presence in the southern desert at its very roots.

For the Cyrenaican resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, this Italian expansion presented a challenging and demanding strategic situation, for the southern Saharan zone was the vast hinterland in which the armed fighters could find refuge in the event of Italian retaliation, and its gradual Italian subjugation would ultimately restrict the general freedom of movement of the Senussi movement in a lasting way. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ therefore decided in the spring of 1923 to undertake a counter-operation, an operation in which the Italian expansion columns would be brought to a halt with the means of guerrilla tactics.

The geographical character of Bir Bilal

Bir Bilal, in its geographical position an extensive well oasis lying in the vast Saharan zone southeast of Benghazi, at a distance of about two hundred kilometers, was one of the most strategically important places in the whole of the southern Cyrenaican desert. The oasis provided the ordinary caravans that passed through the region with both water and rest, and it served the local Bedouin population as a fixed geographical reference point in its seasonal migration routes. For the Italian expansion campaign, Bir Bilal constituted a target in its strategic significance, for the occupation of the oasis would ultimately establish Italian control over a vast area of the southern Saharan zone.

In the late spring of 1923, according to the most common reconstruction in April or May of that year, an Italian expeditionary column under the command of Colonel Diamilio Mezzetti carried out an advance in the direction of Bir Bilal, with a force of about three hundred men, among whom were Italian marines, colonial tirailleurs from Eritrea and local Muslim collaborators who had accepted Italian colonial service. The expedition was furthermore equipped with several artillery pieces, with extensive supplies of ammunition, and with the ordinary Italian equipment customary for a Saharan military undertaking.

The local Bedouin informants

For the Cyrenaican resistance organization, the network of local Bedouin informants formed an extensive and central foundation, for without this network the coming operations could not have been conducted at all. The local Bedouin population in the Cyrenaican Saharan zone and in the Jebel Akhdar maintained an extensive and continuous exchange of information with the armed fighters, with an immediate reporting of the Italian troop movements, with extensive indications about the coming Italian expedition routes, and with intelligence about the arrangement of the general Italian logistics.

For the Italian colonial authorities, this extensive informant network ultimately constituted a persistent strategic challenge, against which they repeatedly undertook extensive attempts to interrupt the local exchange of information. The Italian methods of punishment against suspected informants took the form of public executions, and they produced collective punishment of local villages whenever suspicions of informant activity had arisen. For the local Bedouin population as a whole, this Italian repression meant an extensive human cost, a cost that would ultimately echo on through all the years of the resistance.

The Senussi response

Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, who through a network of local informants had followed the Italian expedition in its preparation, then carried out the counter-operation that was directed against the coming Italian advance. For the coming confrontation he assembled a common fighting force of about five hundred Cyrenaican Bedouin fighters drawn from various tribal affiliations, including the Awaqir, the Bara’asa and several neighboring tribes bound to the Senussi cause in a common brotherhood. The fighters were equipped with the ordinary Mauser rifles that had been acquired through the Senussi networks in the preceding years, and, with the mobility of their horses, they were organized in adwar units that could come to full effect in the coming confrontation.

The strategy that would be applied in the coming confrontation followed in its entirety the general guerrilla approach that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had laid down in his preceding deliberations. The Bedouin fighters would not confront the Italian column in a direct frontal attack, but in a combination of flanking attacks and sudden full assaults they would bring the column to exhaustion before the final battle would determine its definitive outcome. The choice of the specific battle location, in the sand hills lying in the vicinity of Bir Bilal, thereby provided the natural setting in which the Cyrenaican fighters could play out to the full their advantage in local knowledge and in rapid mobility.

The battle itself

The confrontation itself took place on a day in April or May 1923, on a date that is still remembered in precise detail in the Bedouin oral tradition, in a combination of sudden guerrilla attacks and cavalry charges. The first phase of the battle unfolded in the early morning, when the Italian column, on its march toward Bir Bilal, found itself confronted in a specific valley with a first sudden attack by the Cyrenaican fighters descending upon it from the neighboring sand hills. The Italian troops, surprised by the attack despite their armament, immediately suffered losses, and they were forced to regroup their position in a defensive movement.

In the hours that followed, several additional attacks took place in which the Bedouin fighters harried the Italian column from various sides without exposing themselves to the Italian firepower in a direct confrontation. By midday the Italian losses had grown to an extensive scale, with several dozen men killed and wounded besides, and Colonel Mezzetti thereupon took the decision to undertake a retreat toward the Italian fortifications in the north. The retreat unfolded with the Bedouin fighters in a pursuit that was sustained over the following days, and it ended in Italian exhaustion before the main force managed to reach the northern fortifications safely.

The medical care for the wounded

For the Cyrenaican fighters who were wounded in the battle at Bir Bilal and in additional engagements, an extensive course of medical care unfolded under the general care of the local Senussi community. The local ulama members contributed their extensive knowledge of the classical Islamic tibb al-nabawi medicine, while in addition to them several local herbal healers were present who applied the ordinary Cyrenaican Bedouin herbal tradition in its full scope for the extensive treatment of the wounded. For the more seriously wounded among them, the Senussi brotherhood carried out extensive transports to remote safe locations in the Jebel Akhdar, where an extensive and more prolonged course of medical treatment could be carried out.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, the care for the wounded formed a spiritual responsibility that he repeatedly laid before the fighters as a whole in the course of his Friday sermons. He paid extensive personal visits to the wounded who were being nursed at the extensive medical care stations, he led communal prayers together with them for their recovery, and he gave extensive spiritual guidance and comfort to the terminally wounded who would succumb to their coming martyrdom.

The spiritual character of the victory

For the Cyrenaican resistance, the outcome of the Battle of Bir Bilal formed, as a whole, a spiritual confirmation of the entire Senussi strategy that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had worked out in its full scope in the preceding months. The Bedouin fighters had brought a gradual Italian advance to a halt, they had inflicted real losses on an Italian column, and they had visibly slowed the general Italian expansion in the southern Saharan zone in its progress. For the coming phases of the resistance, Bir Bilal thus formed the bed on which the common morale could be built further.

In the Friday sermons that he delivered in the local zawiyas in the weeks after the battle, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ gave a spiritual explanation in which the victory was attributed not to the military skill of the Cyrenaican fighters but to the protection of Allah ﷻ who sustained and supported the Senussi cause. He called his community to a renewed spiritual discipline in preparation for that which it would come to face in the coming years, and he thereby gave an exhortation to the common Muslim unity that would ultimately keep the general strength of the resistance elevated.

The Italian reaction

For the Italian authorities in Benghazi and in Rome, the outcome of Bir Bilal formed, taken as a whole, a military and political embarrassment of considerable proportions. The losses that had been suffered were more considerable than those of the preceding Cyrenaican operations, and the image of a pronounced Cyrenaican resistance was reported in the Italian reports that were sent to Rome, in a manner that would prepare the way for the coming harder colonial strategy. In the autumn of 1923 the Italian high command undertook a strategic revision in which the hitherto existing approach of gradual expansion was replaced by a more aggressive deployment of extensive military operations against the Cyrenaican resistance as a whole.

This strategic revision unfolded gradually in the years between 1924 and 1926, and it led to the gradual expansion of the Italian military apparatus in Cyrenaica to more than thirty thousand men by 1926, to the construction of extensive forts and logistical posts in the Jebel Akhdar zone, and to the gradual preparation of the specific strategy of starvation that would be worked out in its full, tragic form under General Pietro Badoglio and afterwards under General Rodolfo Graziani in the years 1927 to 1931.

The detailed testimonies of survivors

The course of the Battle of Bir Bilal was preserved in its entirety by way of the oral traditions of the Cyrenaican Bedouin survivors, who in the decades that followed passed on their extensive testimonies to modern historians. The principal collector of these testimonies was E.E. Evans-Pritchard, who set down and recorded the extensive testimonies in his anthropological work The Sanusi of Cyrenaica of 1949. In addition, Libyan historians in the post-colonial period carried out several extensive supplementary collections of testimonies in a common joint undertaking.

From these testimonies, taken as a whole, it appears that the outcome of the Battle of Bir Bilal was received within the extensive Cyrenaican communal memory as a spiritual confirmation of the cause. The local Bedouin fighters remembered in their testimonies the courage of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, and they gave extensive testimonies in which his personal leadership was confirmed in its full scope. For the coming sustained continuation of the resistance, this tradition of testimony ultimately formed the bed on which the figure of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ as the Lion of the Desert would live on in the common Cyrenaican memory.

The character of the Cyrenaican cavalry

The Cyrenaican cavalry, which functioned as the extensive military backbone of the resistance, followed a common method of working that ultimately combined the Bedouin culture of horsemanship in its full scope with the guerrilla tactics of the resistance. The Cyrenaican Bedouin carried with them a tradition of horsemanship that had gradually come to development over centuries, with breeds of Cyrenaican horses that had been bred for the specific Saharan and mountainous conditions.

The armament of an ordinary Cyrenaican rider comprised, in its entirety, a Mauser rifle acquired through the Senussi networks, a Cyrenaican saber produced in the local craft tradition, an extensive supply of ammunition carried in a bandolier, and additional pieces of equipment that were intended for the Saharan conditions. Taken as a whole, the Cyrenaican rider ultimately formed an extensive military unit that in its mobility and in its firepower posed a genuine challenge to the Italian colonial troops.

The training of the young fighters

Within the general organization of the resistance, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ carried out an extensive programme of training of the coming young Cyrenaican fighters, in a communal form that would ultimately place the coming generation of fighters in an extensive bed. The training comprised, in its full scope, the practice of horsemanship skills, extensive instruction in the specific form of the Cyrenaican guerrilla tactics, spiritual formation in the extensive Senussi discipline, and the building of the common brotherhood in which the coming adwar units would function.

For the coming resistance, this training ultimately formed the bed on which sustained resistance could be continued over an extended series of years. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, the training moreover formed an extensive spiritual joy, for he felt in it the coming continuity of the extensive Senussi tradition to be assured within the coming generation.

The Italian methods of punishment in preparation

The Italian methods of punishment that would be developed under General Graziani comprised, in their full effect, several distinct practices that taken together would define the coming Italian colonial conduct. The principal of these methods comprised the extensive construction of concentration camps, the collective punishment of the villages that stood under suspicion of supporting the resistance, the extensive executions of local notables, and the construction of extensive border lines.

For the general Cyrenaican Muslim population, these Italian methods of punishment ultimately meant a human catastrophe that would strike the general communal Cyrenaican Bedouin society at its foundations. The general demographic outcome of the Italian methods of punishment between 1923 and 1931, with, according to modern estimates, about one third to one half of the Cyrenaican Bedouin population perishing in these years, formed a tragedy that in modern historiography is ultimately, to an increasing degree, designated as a form of colonial genocide.

The Italian air force

An additional element of the Italian colonial strategy, one that ultimately eroded the general Cyrenaican resistance gradually, was the deployment of the Italian air force, which was deployed for bombardments of the local Bedouin villages and of the extensive resistance locations in the Jebel Akhdar zone. The Italian air force, which was provided with bombers of a type that had come to development in the first decades of the twentieth century, carried out extensive bombardments whose effect upon the ordinary Bedouin population could not possibly be held back or stopped.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his general leadership, the Italian air force ultimately formed a strategic challenge for which new and far-reaching adaptations of the general Cyrenaican tactics had to be formulated. To this end he gave several extensive instructions in which it was laid down how the coming resistance activities were to be carried out under the threat of the Italian air force.

The effect on the general Italian position

The consequences that the Battle of Bir Bilal brought for the general Italian colonial position took the form of an extensive and far-reaching strategic reorientation. The Italian authorities in Benghazi and in Tripoli received extensive reports about the outcome of the expedition that had been sent to Bir Bilal, and they conducted extensive internal discussions about the coming form of the general Italian colonial strategy in Cyrenaica. The outcome of the discussions took shape in an extensive strategic shift in which the ordinary method of gradual expansion through the deployment of expeditionary columns was replaced by an approach of extensive military concentration and systematic execution.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his general leadership, this Italian strategic reorientation ultimately meant that the coming years of the resistance would be continued under a harder Italian colonial conduct. He conducted extensive discussions with his naib leaders about the form that the general Cyrenaican strategy would take in the coming period, and he gradually developed several extensive adaptations to the coming Italian conduct, adaptations by means of which the general resistance could be continued and sustained for a series of years.

Toward the gradual escalation

In this article we have considered the Battle of Bir Bilal in the spring of 1923 in its full scope as a confirmation of the guerrilla strategy that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had worked out in his appointment as general military leader of the Cyrenaican resistance. We saw how the Cyrenaican Bedouin fighters halted an Italian expeditionary column, how the outcome of the battle produced a spiritual confirmation of the morale of the resistance, and how the Italian reaction took the form of a gradual strategic revision that would place the general resistance before a formidable challenge in the coming period. To the gradual escalation of the conflict in the years between 1924 and 1927, and to the manner in which the Italian strategy would be worked out into persecution and starvation, the following article will devote its full attention.

Sources

• Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia, vol. 2, Mondadori (1988), pp. 86–168.
• E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Clarendon Press (1949), pp. 186–214.
• Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, State University of New York Press (2009), pp. 248–294.
• Nicola Labanca, La guerra italiana per la Libia, 1911–1931, il Mulino (2012), pp. 198–248.
• Enzo Santarelli et al., Omar al-Mukhtar e la riconquista fascista della Libia, Marzorati (1981), pp. 334–376.
• Anna Baldinetti, The Origins of the Libyan Nation, Routledge (2010), pp. 268–298.
• Eric Salerno, Genocidio in Libia: Le atrocità nascoste dell’avventura coloniale italiana, 1911–1931, manifestolibri (2005), pp. 14–86.
• Habib Wadaa al-Hesnawi, Fascist Colonial Policies Toward the Arabic-Speaking Inhabitants of Libya, 1911–1943 (1988), pp. 124–168.