Senussi

Although named el Mandi by his father there is no evidence to show that the younger Senussi ever claimed to be the Mandi, though so regarded by some of his followers. When, however, Mohammed Ahmed, the Dongalese, rose against the Egyptians in the eastern Sudan and proclaimed himself the Mandi, Senussi was disquieted. He sent an emissary via Wadai to Mohammed Ahmed, this delegate reaching the Mandi's camp in 1883 soon after the sack of el Obeid. "The moral and industrial training of the Senussi" [delegate], writes Sir Reginald Wingate, "revolted from the slaughter and rapine he saw around him. The sincere conviction of the regeneration of the world by a mandi whose earnest piety should influence others to lead wholesome and tem perate lives, the dignity of honest labour and self-restraint, these were the sentiments which filled the mind of the emissary from Wadai" (Mandiism and the Egyptian Sudan, 1891).

The sheikh Senussi, there is reason to believe, shared the lofty views which Wingate attributes to his agent. He decided to have nothing to do with the Sudanese Mandi, though Mohammed Ahmed wrote twice asking him to become one of his four great khalifs. To neither letter did Senussi reply : he warned the people of Wadai, Bornu and neighbouring States to abstain from Sudan affairs. The Darfurian revolt of 1888-89 against the khalifa Ab dullah was nevertheless carried out in the name of the Senussi.

Contact with the French.

The growing fame of the Sen ussi sheikh once more aroused anxiety among the Turks, the sultan, Abdul Hamid II., seeing with alarm that in many parts of Tripo litania and in Benghazi the power of the sheikh was greater than that of the Ottoman governors. In 1889 the sheikh Senussi was visited at Jaghbub by the pasha of Benghazi at the head of some troops. This event led the sheikh (1894) to leave Jaghbub and fix his headquarters at Jof in the oases of Kufara, a place suffi ciently remote to secure him from any chance of sudden attack. By this time a new danger to Senussia had arisen; the French were advancing from the Congo towards the western and southern borders of Wadai. In 1898 Senussi, wishing to range together all the States menaced by the French advance, sought to reconcile Rabah Zobeir (q.v.) and the sultan of Bagirmi; neither of those chieftains belonged to the Senussi order and the sheikh's appeal was unavailing. In Wadai, Sultan Yusef's successor, Ibrahim, who ascended the throne in 1898, showed signs of resenting the advice of the sheikh, stirred, perhaps, by the overthrow of the khalifa Abdullab at Omdurman. Senussi retaliated, says Capt. Julien in his history of Wadai, by prohibiting the people of Wadai from smoking tobacco or drinking merissa, the native beer, "which is to the Wadaiin what the skin is to the body." Sultan Ibrahim rejoined that his people would fight and die for merissa ; rather than give it up they would renounce Senussiism. The sheikh had the wisdom to give way, declaring that in response to his prayers Allah had deigned to make an exception in favour of the faithful Wadaiins. Ibrahim died in 1900 and his successors fell again under the influence of the sheikh.

In 1900 Senussi el Mandi left Kufara for Dar Gorane, on the western confines of Wadai. There, at Geru, on the top of a rocky

hill, he built and strongly fortified a zawia. Senussi's object was to try to stem the advance of the French, who in this same year had slain Rabah in battle and occupied Bagirmi. The sheikh sought to prevent the French from occupying Kanem, a country north east of Lake Chad and bordering the Sahara, that is, impinging on what was considered Senussi land. Thus, for the first time, the Senussites came into conflict with a European Power. There had been for some time a belief among certain French and British travellers in north Africa that the Senussites would proclaim a jihad or holy war, and that they would have the support of all the Muslims of north and west Africa. This belief was founded partly on the supposed tenets of the order and partly on an exag gerated conception of the strength of the Senussites. The Senussi warriors proper, those who owned direct allegiance to the head of the order, numbered a few thousands at most. For the rest the Senussi sheikh depended upon his spiritual influence and its effect in inducing the peoples who had embraced his doctrines to act as he wished. Moreover, the record of the first and second Senussi chiefs shows them to have acted on the defensive. Senussi el Mandi, in opposing the French, undertook no war of aggression, nor was there any great rally of the tribes to his banner. In Kanem he was left to fight with his Bedouin followers and such help as the people of Kanem were able to give. A zawai was built at Bir Allali (an entrepot for the trade of Tripoli with the Chad coun tries) and strongly garrisoned. War ensued and continued for over a year, but after a severe engagement Bir Allah was cap tured by a French column in Jan. 1902. Senussi el Mandi was much discouraged by the loss of Kanem and died shortly after wards, on May 3o, 1902, at Geru. There he was buried, in the zawai-el-Taj. But for years the Bedouin believed him to be alive and to have gone on "a secret journey." At the time of the death of Senussi el Mandi his sons were minors and the chieftainship went to his nephew, Ahmed esh Sherif, an ambitious man, not without ability, but lacking the wisdom of his predecessors. Ahmed continued his uncle's policy of resisting the French, but despite his efforts, after a long and bitter struggle lasting from 1904–I1, Wadai was conquered by them. (See WADAI.) In the central Sudan the prestige of the Senussites waned and the advances made by the sheikh Ahmed to Ali Dinar, the sultan of Darfur, were not at that time recipro cated. With Egypt, and with the British authorities in Egypt, the Senussi maintained friendly relations. Ahmed, in view of the activity of the French, had again fixed his headquarters at Jof in the Kufara oases; and in these and the other oases of the Libyan desert he was master. That the desert had been recognized by France as within the British sphere gave him no concern. In Egypt the number of adherents to the order was increasing, and at Alexandria Mohammed el Idris, the eldest son of Senussi el Mandi, lived in some state, receiving Senussi notables from many lands.