The End of the Struggle

In the previous article we followed the Italian colonial repression in Cyrenaica in the years between 1924 and 1929, with the strategic revision under Mussolini, the appointment of General Rodolfo Graziani as supreme military commander, the construction of the concentration camps that in their effect cost the lives of approximately forty thousand Cyrenaican Bedouin, and the extensive construction of the Cyrenaican-Egyptian border line that fundamentally restricted the general freedom of movement of the resistance. This article follows the end of Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ military activities in 1931, his capture in the course of an Italian ambush in September of that year, and the coming consequences that would come to find their full place in the following article.

The gradual exhaustion of the resistance

In the spring and summer of 1931, the Cyrenaican resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ found itself in a challenging and constricted strategic position. The general communal support of the local Bedouin population, which in its effect had formed the bed of the resistance, had been undermined by the deportation of approximately one hundred thousand Cyrenaican Bedouin to the concentration camps in the eastern sand plains. The Egyptian border line, with its barbed wire and fortified forts, cut the ordinary freedom of movement of the fighters off in a fundamental way from their resting place in the friendly Egyptian territory. And the Italian troop strength in Cyrenaica, which by 1931 had grown to more than one hundred thousand men, gradually exerted the general operational pressure on the resistance in its full scope.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, who in 1931 was seventy-three years old and in his physical condition exhausted by a long lifetime of years in the Saharan zone, these developments meant that the ordinary conduct of the armed guerrilla had gradually become restricted. In his activities of these months he conducted extensive deliberations with his closest associates about the coming forms of the resistance, and in a combination of spiritual steadfastness and practical prudence he kept the general morale of the resistance in a remarkable condition of steadiness. But in his personal spiritual life, according to what his closest associates related in later tradition, he sensed his own coming end in advance, and he sensed it in a spiritual acceptance.

The general morale in the final months

For the general morale of the Cyrenaican fighters, an extensive spiritual development unfolded in the final months of the resistance, a development in which the combination of physical exhaustion, of extensive human losses among the local communities, and of the gradual realization of the coming inevitable outcome was present in its effect. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ delivered in his general leadership several extensive Friday sermons in which he sustained and upheld the extensive moral steadfastness of his followers, and in these sermons he gave extensive spiritual exhortation to continuing steadfastness, a steadfastness despite the weight of what was to come.

For the ordinary Cyrenaican fighters who under the difficult circumstances of these final months carried on their continuing resistance, the spiritual leadership of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ formed in its effect a central bed, for without this leadership the general continuing resistance could not, taken as a whole, have been conducted in its full scope. And for his own coming martyrdom he carried out a personal spiritual preparation, a preparation in which he surrendered himself in acceptance to what was to come.

The size of the resistance in 1931

In the summer of 1931 the Cyrenaican resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had been reduced, in its full scope, to approximately five hundred to eight hundred armed fighters, a painful restriction when compared with the extensive troop strength of the preceding years. The fighters were organized in a few dozen smaller adwar units, units that carried out their coming operations in a combination of utmost mobility and utmost caution. For their general logistical support they relied on the extensive stores that had been laid up in the preceding years in remote caves and in unknown Saharan terrain, and on the gradual cooperation with the remaining Bedouin families who, in hiding in the mountain valleys of the Jebel Akhdar, continued to sustain their resistance.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, in his position as general leader, this gradual restriction meant that he had to operate with increasing mobility, with regular movements between different secret locations in the Jebel Akhdar, movements that weighed on him and burdened him in his physical condition. He was, in his seventy-three years, hardened in his endurance by his long Saharan life, and he carried on the general leadership of the resistance despite the gradual physical toll of his age and of the persistent circumstances of war.

The Italian hunt strategy

In the course of 1931 the Italian leadership under Graziani carried out an adaptation of its operational approach, an adaptation that in its effect took the specific form of a general hunt for Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally. Graziani understood in strategic terms that the capture or death of the general leader of the resistance would be capable of breaking the Cyrenaican resistance as a whole in a fundamental way, and he undertook extensive efforts to trace the movements of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ and to prepare an ambush for his capture.

For this specific hunt strategy the Italian leadership deployed its means in their full scope. It held out the prospect of extensive rewards for information about the movements of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, with sums of money that were set out in their magnitude in the Italian reports of that time. It undertook extensive interrogations of captured Cyrenaican fighters and of ordinary Bedouin civilians in an attempt to acquire information about the coming movements of the general leader. And it organized extensive Italian reconnaissance operations in the Jebel Akhdar zone with the express intention of determining the coming location of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀.

The capture attempt

In the course of September 1931, after a gradual and careful preparation, the Italian leadership carried out a specific military operation with the sole intention of placing Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in an ambush. The operation was carried out under the command of General Ottavio Tomaselli and on the basis of information from local Muslim collaborators who in the Italian colonial service had followed the movements of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀. The location of the ambush was fixed in a specific valley in the Slonta area of the Jebel Akhdar, at a distance of approximately thirty kilometers southeast of Cyrene, at a place that in its geographical position offered the Italian troops extensive possibilities of concealment.

In the early morning of 11 September 1931, according to the most common reconstruction, the ambush unfolded in this specific valley, an ambush in which Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, with a small escort of a few fighters, was surrounded and enclosed by an extensive Italian troop force. In the fighting that followed, which stretched over several hours of struggle, most of his escort fighters found the death of martyrs, and Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally was wounded in his shoulder before he was definitively taken captive. His horse, which was shot dead beneath him in the fighting, was the last remnant of his preceding free room of movement, and he was, in surrender, handed over to the Italian troops.

The Italian transfer

In the hours after the ambush, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was brought by the Italian troops under military escort to the neighboring Italian fort in Cyrene for the extensive medical treatment of his shoulder wound and for the first interrogations. In this first phase he was treated according to the ordinary Italian military conventions, with the proper medical care for his wound and with a personal respect that the Italian officers showed in their conduct toward an opponent of his stature. In his personal bearing during this first phase, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ maintained an attitude of dignified reserve in which he met his Italian escorts in a combination of spiritual steadfastness and personal courtesy.

The principal Italian officer who stood in contact with Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in this first phase was General Tomaselli, who in a formal first audience expressed his appreciation for the courage with which the Cyrenaican fighter had carried his cause through the preceding years, and who described to him the coming form of his treatment. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ answered in spiritual and personal steadfastness, and he declared in a direct form that in his capture he recognized no spiritual defeat but only an outward outcome that had been decreed by Allah ﷻ in His wisdom, and that the cause for which he had striven in his life’s work could not, in its spiritual core, be taken away by any earthly power.

The transfer to Benghazi

In the days that followed, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was brought under military escort to Benghazi for the extensive juridical handling and processing of his capture and for the coming trial that was being prepared by the Italian authorities. The journey unfolded under extensive Italian security, for the Italian leadership feared that the Cyrenaican fighters would undertake a rescue operation, and it carried out precautionary measures to complete the transfer in a secure form.

In Benghazi, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was placed in a specific military prison in expectation of his coming trial, and he was held there in an extensive isolation from the broader Cyrenaican Muslim population. His presence in the city was gradually made known to the local population, and in the days that followed, extensive spiritual expressions unfolded in which the Cyrenaican Muslim communities, in prayer and spiritual fasting, expressed their sympathy and devotion for their captured leader.

The medical care of his wound

During the ambush at Slonta on 11 September 1931, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had sustained a shoulder wound, and his arrival at the neighboring Italian fort in Cyrene unfolded under extensive medical care. The Italian military physicians who were responsible for his medical care carried out extensive professional treatment, with the suturing of the wound and with extensive attention to the general physical condition of the detained Cyrenaican leader. For the general Italian colonial authorities, this medical care ultimately formed no expression of compassion but a practical matter, a matter in which the continuing life of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had to be secured for the coming handling of the trial.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, in his general physical condition, the medical care unfolded as a practical matter that he received in a stoic attitude. He raised no form of protest against the Italian medical care, and he held several common conversations with the Italian physicians, conversations in which he expressed to them in personal courtesy his appreciation for their professional work. For the Italian physicians, the attitude of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ ultimately formed an unexpected dignity, a dignity that would be confirmed in their later reports.

The trial and its preparation

In the course of September 1931, an extensive discussion was conducted in Italy and among the Italian colonial authorities in Libya about the coming form of the trial against Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀. The Italian leadership under Mussolini carried out an extensive strategic deliberation in which the possible outcomes of the trial were weighed against one another in a comparison. A formal military execution without trial, in Fascist style, was rejected in a combination of considerations in favor of an official trial, a trial that in its result would place the Italian colonial authority in an international justification.

The trial was fixed for 15 September 1931, only four days after the capture, in a speed that in its effect reflected the Italian haste to bring the matter to a conclusion in a rapid form. The outcome of the trial had already been determined within the Italian leadership before it formally began, and it was a formal juridical handling, a handling that in its result would place the coming execution of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in an international justification.

The encirclement in the final months

In the summer of 1931 an extensive Italian colonial encirclement unfolded in which the Cyrenaican resistance was ultimately placed under an inescapable pressure. The Italian troops, brought under General Graziani into an extensive military order, carried out coordinated operations from four different directions: from Benghazi in the west, from the Egyptian border in the east, from the southern Saharan zone by way of Kufra, which had fallen into Italian hands in January 1931, and from the Mediterranean coast in the north. The effect of this quadruple encirclement unfolded in a gradual tightening, with a closing movement in which the Cyrenaican fighters were forced into an ever smaller geographical space.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his general leadership, this encirclement ultimately meant that the ordinary guerrilla mobility in which the resistance had functioned in its full scope could no longer be exercised in its full scope. In these months he carried out several extensive attempts to achieve breakthroughs toward the Egyptian border for supplies and for a possible withdrawal, but the general position of the extensive Italian border line ultimately brought with it that such breakthroughs could not be accomplished.

The fall of Kufra

One component of the Italian colonial conduct in 1931 that in its result definitively undermined the general Cyrenaican resistance in its working was the capture of Kufra in January 1931. Kufra, in its geographical position the Saharan oasis city that had formed the extensive Senussi headquarters since the relocation from Jaghbub in 1895, was taken by an extensive Italian expedition under the command of General Rodolfo Graziani personally. The Italian troops, of a strength of fifteen thousand men and provided with extensive mechanical vehicles and air support, completed the extensive crossing of the vast Saharan zone between the Mediterranean coast and Kufra in a span of approximately three weeks.

The fall of Kufra in January 1931 produced, in its result, a symbolic and practical effect for the general Cyrenaican resistance. Symbolic, in its working, because the Senussi headquarters that since the second half of the nineteenth century had housed the spiritual and administrative center of the brotherhood was, as an institution, ultimately placed under Italian colonial control. Practical, in its working, because the extensive Senussi library with several tens of thousands of Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts was ultimately taken from the brotherhood by the Italian colonial power. For the resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, the fall of Kufra ultimately formed a spiritual blow, a blow that was laid before his followers in his Friday sermons in the months that followed.

The fortified garrison in Cyrene

The Italian fort in Cyrene, where Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was placed in the first hours after his capture, formed an extensive military post that in the years between 1923 and 1929 had been expanded and built up into a considerable colonial garrison town. The fort housed, in its working, an extensive occupation of approximately five hundred Italian troops, with additional support from local Muslim collaborators and with extensive medical facilities. For the Italian colonial administration in Cyrenaica, the fort in Cyrene ultimately formed a practical bed for the coming handling of the trial against the Cyrenaican leader.

In the hours between Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ arrival at the fort and his coming transfer to Benghazi for further handling of the trial, he held several extensive conversations with the Italian commander of the fort. The Italian commander, an experienced colonial officer who was familiar with the Cyrenaican situation to an extensive degree, put extensive questions to Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ concerning the coming form of the general Cyrenaican resistance. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ answered with the general dignity that ultimately characterized him, without passing on to his opponent any extensive information about the coming form of the resistance.

Toward the martyrdom

In this article we have followed the end of Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ military activities in 1931, with the gradual exhaustion of the resistance under the Italian colonial pressure, with the specific Italian hunt strategy that found its result in September 1931 in the ambush at Slonta, with the capture of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ on 11 September 1931, and with the preparation of the coming trial in Benghazi. We saw how in his personal bearing during this first phase of his captivity a spiritual steadfastness and personal dignity became recognizable, and how the Italian leadership in these days prepared a rapid trial, a trial in which the coming execution would be placed in an international justification. To the trial itself, and to the coming form of his martyrdom on 16 September 1931 on the hills of Solluq, the next and final article of this cycle will devote its full attention.

Sources

• Eric Salerno, Genocidio in Libia, manifestolibri (2005), pp. 212–268.
• Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia, vol. 2, Mondadori (1988), pp. 268–334.
• Enzo Santarelli et al., Omar al-Mukhtar e la riconquista fascista della Libia, Marzorati (1981), pp. 426–478.
• E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Clarendon Press (1949), pp. 214–248.
• Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, State University of New York Press (2009), pp. 294–334.
• Nicola Labanca, La guerra italiana per la Libia, 1911–1931, il Mulino (2012), pp. 248–298.
• John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, Croom Helm (1981), pp. 168–212.
• Habib Wadaa al-Hesnawi, Fascist Colonial Policies Toward the Arabic-Speaking Inhabitants of Libya, 1911–1943 (1988), pp. 256–298.