Political Training in Al-Jaghbub

In the preceding article we followed the arrival of the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ at the Senussi headquarters of Jaghbub in the autumn of 1876, and we described the spiritual and scholarly training he received there in his first years: Arabic grammar, Maliki fiqh, the science of hadith and Senussi tasawwuf, which together made a trained Senussi student of him. This article follows the second phase of that training in Jaghbub, from approximately 1880 to 1888, in which his formation turned in a political and administrative direction and prepared him for the leadership that awaited him.

The political broadening of the training

From his twenty-third or twenty-fourth year, when he had completed the basic training of a Senussi student and was recognised in the Jaghbub community as an advanced student, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ received instruction of another kind. For its most promising students the Senussi brotherhood maintained a formation in which the condition of the Muslim world, the geopolitical challenges the brotherhood would face in the decades that followed, and the practice of administrative leadership were taught.

For the young Cyrenaican that second phase meant that the nineteenth-century world opened up before him. He studied the European colonial expansion in its various regional forms: the French presence in Algeria and in Tunisia, the British presence in Egypt and in India, and the Italian colonial aspirations towards Libya which in these years were already visible in their preparatory form. He learned to understand the Ottoman Sublime Porte in its weakening, and he acquired an awareness of the broader geopolitical forces that would touch his own work decades later.

The scholarly form of the political training

That political training did not stand beside the ordinary spiritual formation; it was woven into it. It sat in the Friday sermons of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀, in the scholarly conversations in the Jaghbub library, in the correspondence with other Sufi brotherhoods in North Africa and in the Middle East that the students read through, and in the separate audiences that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ obtained in these years in increasing measure with the supreme leader of the brotherhood. It was placed in no formal category of instruction, and it worked unmistakably all the same.

For Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ himself the forming of his most promising students was no side matter, for he understood that in the decades ahead the brotherhood would need a leadership that united spiritual earnestness and political capability in one person. He devoted attention in these years to a new generation of Senussi leaders, and within that generation he placed his particular hope in the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀.

The Italian aspirations in the eighteen-eighties

In the years between 1880 and 1890 the colonial aspirations that would produce the Italo-Turkish war at the beginning of the twentieth century ripened within the Italian state. Italy, which had received the French protectorate over Tunisia in 1881 with considerable irritation, prepared its own claims in these decades along several roads at once: diplomatic negotiations with the European powers, economic penetration into Libya via the Banco di Roma and other enterprises, and a public opinion campaign for the Fourth Shore.

In the Senussi learning circle of Jaghbub these developments were followed via the trans-Saharan trading connections, via the exchange of pilgrims, and via the informants that Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ maintained in the port cities of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The reports on the Italian aspirations came to the table in separate meetings of the Senussi council and compelled a strategic reflection on how the brotherhood ought to answer. For the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, who was admitted to these meetings in increasing measure as an advanced student, they were a practical training in geopolitical decision-making; what he saw there would occupy a central place in his own later work.

The Egyptian understanding

Alongside the Italian and Ottoman connections, the Senussi brotherhood also maintained in these decades spiritual and political understandings with the learned community of Cairo and with the administrative authorities of the Egyptian khedivate. Scholars of al-Azhar corresponded with the Senussi leaders in Jaghbub and in Kufra, and they supported the cause of the brotherhood as a spiritual community in its Saharan position. Egyptian pilgrims who travelled yearly via Cyrenaica to Mecca carried spiritual messages and local news in both directions, and with that they gave the brotherhood its base of information on the condition of the nineteenth-century Muslim world.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, in his position as a trained ikhwan, that Egyptian understanding was an exercise in international Muslim exchange, and in studying it there arose in him a picture of the broader Muslim Ummah that resonates recognisably in his later work. The Egyptian connection was no marginal phenomenon of the Senussi strategy but a core of its international work, and on it the Senussi answer to the Italian colonial threat could be built.

The Egyptian connection

In the years between 1880 and 1911 Egypt fulfilled the role of connecting node between the Senussi brotherhood in Libya and the broader international Muslim world. The al-Azhar university received a number of Senussi students for supplementary scholarly training, the Egyptian press carried reports on the Libyan situation to the broader Arabic-speaking Muslim world, and when the war years arrived, the Egyptian administrative authorities received the streams of refugees from Libya. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, in the position as leader of the Cyrenaican resistance that awaited him, this connection would supply the international support he could fall back on.

In his years of training and his later years as ikhwan, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ undertook several journeys to Egypt for scholarly exchanges with the local Senussi representatives in Cairo and in Alexandria. He gained experience there in international Muslim diplomacy, and he built personal connections with Egyptian scholars and administrators that would resonate in his later work. For his own formation too, then, Egypt was no marginal phenomenon but the international framework in which his work would come to stand.

The Senussi strategy towards Italy

The Senussi strategy towards the Italian colonial threat ran in these years along three main lines. First, the strengthening of its own organisation, with an expansion of the zawiya network in the Saharan zone, so that in a direct Italian confrontation the brotherhood could operate from a safer position. Second, the purchase of weapons via Egyptian and Ottoman intermediaries, which would prove to be of great importance in the Italo-Turkish war. Third, the diplomatic exchange with the Ottoman Sublime Porte, with the Egyptian khedive, and in a number of cases also with British representatives in Egypt who could support the broader geopolitical connections of the brotherhood.

This three-part strategy was carried out in the course of the 1880s and 1890s under the leadership of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ and, from 1902, under his successor Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀. The young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ became involved in increasing measure in its practical execution, and in that he learned the Senussi statecraft he could not do without as a leader.

The weapons purchases in these decades

The weapons purchases that the Senussi brotherhood undertook in the years between 1880 and 1910 ran via a network of intermediaries who did their work with caution and secrecy. The principal suppliers were Egyptian traders in Cairo and Alexandria who acquired European firearms along the international trade routes in the ordinary practice of trade and who carried their stocks to Cyrenaica over the customary Saharan caravan routes. In addition, the brotherhood maintained connections with Ottoman military units in Tripolitania that could resell older weapons of the Ottoman army to the local ikhwan.

What came in by that route was a collection of ordinary European muskets, a number of more modern Lee-Enfield rifles acquired in later phases, and a stock of ammunition that was stored in the storehouses of the local zawiyas for possible deployment. By 1911, when the Italian colonial invasion began, the brotherhood had at its disposal a weapons stock that, according to the estimate of European military observers, amounted to between five thousand and ten thousand firearms; without it the resistance that followed could not have been waged.

The expansion of the Senussi zawiya network

In the years between 1880 and 1900 the Senussi brotherhood expanded its zawiya network to a size unheard of in the broader Muslim world. By 1900 the network comprised approximately one hundred and fifty active zawiyas, spread from Morocco in the west to Chad in the south and Egypt in the east, and united in one organisation under the central leadership in Jaghbub and later in Kufra. Each zawiya did the ordinary work of a Senussi community: education, juridical adjudication, economic self-sufficiency and service to the local community.

For the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ this network was a school in the governing of a large-scale spiritual organisation. In his years of training and his later years as ikhwan he travelled along various zawiyas, grew familiar in that way with the manner in which the brotherhood worked across that whole area, and acquired a practical knowledge of Senussi statecraft on which he would later lean.

The relocation to Kufra

In the year 1895 the Senussi brotherhood took a decision whose effect would prove to be of great importance for its later work. Under the leadership of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ the headquarters was relocated from Jaghbub to Kufra, an oasis town in the southern Saharan zone of Libya which by its geographical position lay at a still greater distance from the Ottoman authorities and from the Italian colonial presence that was approaching. What was moved to the new capital in the southern desert was the Senussi library, the central family community and a considerable part of the trained ikhwan.

In these years Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ functioned as an advanced ikhwan in the Senussi organisation, and the relocation was for him a logistical undertaking in which he personally carried administrative responsibility. In 1895 or early 1896 he accompanied one of the caravan sections from Jaghbub to Kufra, and there he came to know the Saharan caravan organisation that he could not do without as a military leader against the Italians.

Kufra as the new capital

Kufra was an oasis conglomeration in the vast sand plains of the southern Sahara, at a distance of approximately seven hundred kilometres south of the Mediterranean coast, and in its origin a centre of indigenous Tubu population who lived from trade and local agriculture. The Senussi presence there had grown since the 1880s, and in 1895 it was consolidated into a new capital under Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀.

The relocation set the Senussi brotherhood in a still more independent position towards the political currents of the Mediterranean, and it gave it the geographical room to organise itself and to prepare strategically. For the young Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ Kufra became a central place in his work as an ikhwan leader, and in the years that followed he stayed by turns in Cyrenaica and in Kufra, in practical activity for the brotherhood.

The Mahdiyya and the Senussi response

One event from the eighteen-eighties and eighteen-nineties of the nineteenth century worked deeply through the broader Muslim world and was followed with considerable attention in the Senussi learning circle: the Mahdiyya movement in Sudan under the leadership of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi ﵀ and in the years that followed under his successor ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ﵀, the so-called Khalifa. The Mahdiyya was proclaimed in 1881 and won its greatest victory in 1885 with the capture of Khartoum by Muhammad Ahmad ﵀; it was an anti-colonial undertaking against the joint British-Egyptian rule over Sudan.

For the Senussi brotherhood the Mahdiyya had a spiritual and political significance that it handled with considerable caution. Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ kept his distance in his statements from the Mahdi claims of Muhammad Ahmad ﵀, for he regarded the Mahdi category in its ordinary Sunni understanding as juridically limited and refused to accept the Sudanese claims fully. In practice the brotherhood nevertheless supported the cause of the Sudanese anti-colonial resistance, and it conducted spiritual exchanges with the Mahdiyya representatives in which the unity of the Muslims stood foremost.

What Khartoum and Omdurman taught

The fall of Khartoum in January 1885, and the martyr’s death of the British General Charles Gordon at the capture of the city by the Mahdiyya troops, was an international event that was celebrated in the Muslim world as a great anti-colonial victory. In the Senussi learning circle of Jaghbub it was discussed thoroughly and compelled a reflection on what it meant for the position of the brotherhood. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was twenty-seven years old in 1885 and advanced in his training; for him Khartoum was a practical lesson in what anti-colonial resistance can achieve, and in studying it lay a spiritual preparation for the work that awaited him.

The fall of the Mahdiyya in 1898 under the British-Egyptian troops of General Herbert Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman was a second lesson, in the opposite direction: it showed where an anti-colonial resistance ends up when it is not prepared politically and militarily. For the Senussi strategists that was a warning about the necessity of careful strategic preparation, and it confirmed the strategy of organisational strengthening and expansion of the weapons stock that was carried out in these decades.

The marriage bonds

In his years in Jaghbub, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ also entered in his personal life into bonds that would become of practical importance for his position as ikhwan in the Senussi organisation. In 1885 or early 1886 he married his first wife, Fatima bint Ahmad al-Manifi, a relative from his parental clan in Cyrenaica who had been proposed to him by his father in the ordinary course of Bedouin marriage negotiations. The marriage was celebrated in Jaghbub, with a number of his closest fellow students present and with the broader Senussi family in spiritual brotherhood.

From this first marriage several children were born in the years between 1887 and 1900, sons and daughters who would stand at their father’s side in familial and spiritual bond. The household of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ joined the Cyrenaican Bedouin tradition to the Senussi discipline, and it was thereby a preparation for the leadership that awaited him, in which the familial element would function centrally.

The role of women in the Senussi organisation

The Senussi brotherhood also devoted attention to the spiritual formation of women in the local communities, with appointed female muqaddamas in the ordinary zawiyas and with separate female dhikr gatherings in which the Senussi discipline was carried out in an adapted form. For Fatima bint Ahmad al-Manifi, the young wife of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, this meant that she was attached to the Senussi tarīqa in her own spiritual capacity and was not placed in a position subordinate to her husband. In the ordinary Cyrenaican Bedouin tradition of her time such a relationship was uncommon, and it gave the household of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ a character of its own, in which his wife held a spiritual authority that was hers.

The role of the pilgrim traders

The pilgrim traders who travelled yearly via Jaghbub to the Hejaz formed a central channel of international exchange, and Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ devoted attention to it in his years of training. They came from Morocco, from Tunisia and from West Africa via the trans-Saharan caravan routes, and in Jaghbub they met an ample Senussi hospitality. For the young Cyrenaican these encounters were the road along which the broader Muslim world in its nineteenth-century condition became real to him.

In the evening hours, after the communal prayers, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ spoke with the visiting pilgrim traders about the condition of their own communities, about the European colonial expansion in their own regions, and about the circumstances they would face on their return. From Moroccan pilgrims he received reports of the French penetration into the Maghreb, from Tunisian pilgrims reports on the French protectorate since 1881, and from West African pilgrims accounts of the colonial expansion in Senegambia, in Nigeria and in the Chad-Niger zone.

The spiritual exchange with the Tijaniyya

Among the visiting pilgrim traders were also scholars from the Tijani tradition of the West African Umarian heritage, who carried on the Umarian work after the death of al-Hajj Umar Tall ﵀ in 1864 and who in their connection with the Senussi brotherhood lived out a common Muslim brotherhood. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ these encounters were a spiritual exchange in which he came to know the Tijani tradition in its West African form, and he acquired a deep appreciation for the common Muslim undertaking that transcended the differences between the tarīqas.

His training in Jaghbub was thus not merely an ordinary Senussi formation but an international Muslim formation, in which the broader Muslim Ummah was daily present. On that broad international formation he would be able to fall back as leader of the Cyrenaican resistance, and it placed him in a framework in which he could keep the unity of the Muslims central to his own work.

The Ottoman-Senussi understanding

The understanding between the Ottoman Sublime Porte and the Senussi brotherhood changed in the years between 1880 and 1900 from tension into cooperation. The Ottoman authorities had regarded the brotherhood with distrust in the first decades of its presence in Libya, as a possible rival claim to local sovereignty; in the course of the 1880s and 1890s they revised that position, so that the Senussi brotherhood came to be seen as a partner in the resistance to the European colonial expansion that was approaching.

That new understanding developed under Sultan Abdulhamid II, who held the Ottoman supreme leadership from 1876 to 1909, within a pan-Islamic strategy in which the Sublime Porte presented itself as spiritual leader of the Muslim world and in which the connections with the Sufi brotherhoods were given a central place. For the Senussi brotherhood that Ottoman strategy meant spiritual and political support, and it furnished the Senussi undertaking with an ample international legitimacy.

The visit of Ottoman envoys

In the years between 1885 and 1900 several official Ottoman envoy missions came to Jaghbub and later to Kufra, in which the cooperation was laid down step by step. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ the presence of these envoys in his years of training and his later years as ikhwan meant that he could observe and study diplomatic dealings at close hand, and in that he acquired a schooling in negotiation that he could not do without as leader of the resistance.

The two parties discussed a possible common resistance to the Italian colonial expansion, and they took a number of practical steps, among them the Ottoman delivery of weapons to the Senussi brotherhood through the ordinary course of Ottoman military exchange. When the Italo-Turkish war broke out in 1911, the common Senussi-Ottoman defence could lean on that preparatory work.

Towards his first leadership position

In the years around 1900, when Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was forty-two years old, his responsibility in the Senussi organisation steadily increased. In 1900 or early 1901 Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi ﵀ appointed him ikhwan leader for a particular zawiya in Cyrenaica, and with that appointment the supreme leader expressed his confidence in what had become of his former student. It meant that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ would return to Cyrenaica for his first independent leadership position in the Senussi brotherhood, and it was the first step on the road that in the decades that followed would make him leader of the Cyrenaican resistance.

In this article we have seen how the young Umar received in Jaghbub, and at a later stage in Kufra, a political and administrative formation in the years between 1880 and 1900 that prepared him for his leadership. The Senussi strategy towards the Italian colonial threat, three-part in design with organisational strengthening, expansion of the weapons stock and diplomatic exchange, was laid in these years, and the relocation of the headquarters from Jaghbub to Kufra in 1895 gave the brotherhood the geographical room to carry it out. To his first leadership position as ikhwan in Cyrenaica, and to the manner in which it prepared him for his role as leader of the Cyrenaican resistance, the next article will devote its attention.

Sources

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