The Battle for Benghazi

In the previous article we followed Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ from 1902 onward in his appointment as imam of the Zawiyat al-Qusour, in the daily work of that position, and in the preparations he made for the Italian colonial invasion that everyone knew was on its way. This article follows what came after it: the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish war in September 1911, the Italian capture of the Libyan port cities in October of that year, the Battle for Benghazi in which the Cyrenaican Senussi-Bedouin troops, with Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ participation, offered resistance to the Italian advance, and the first phase of a resistance that would make him, in the decades that followed, the leader of the Cyrenaican anti-colonial resistance.

The Italian declaration of war

On 29 September 1911 Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The casus belli put forward was colonial expansion in Libya, presented as a condition for Italy’s own national development. In Rome the declaration of war was openly celebrated, with considerable street demonstrations and with speeches in which political leaders painted the conquest of the Fourth Shore in advance. On 3 October 1911 an expeditionary fleet of several dozens of ships sailed for Tripoli under Vice-Admiral Luigi Faravelli, and on 5 October the Italians set foot on shore in the Libyan capital for the first time; the capture of the remaining port cities would follow.

Off Tripoli the Italian fleet first shelled the Ottoman defensive positions in the port city, after which an expeditionary army of approximately thirty thousand men under General Carlo Caneva went ashore. Facing them stood approximately four thousand Ottoman regular troops, supplemented by some thousands of local Muslim volunteers; against the overwhelming Italian firepower they could not hold out, and by 10 October Tripoli was occupied.

The landing in Benghazi

On 19 October 1911 the fleet repeated the operation off Benghazi: a bombardment of the port facilities, followed by the landing of a second expeditionary army of approximately ten thousand men under General Ottavio Briccola. The Ottoman defence there ran as it had at Tripoli, regular troops supplemented by local Muslim volunteers, and in the direct confrontation it was no match for the Italian firepower.

But unlike Tripoli, where the Italians could hold the city in relative calm after the first occupation, a Cyrenaican Bedouin response set in at Benghazi at once: the local Senussi brotherhood passed over to active resistance. Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ proclaimed the Senussi jihad against the Italian invasion in a formal Friday sermon at Kufra, and he instructed his closest associates, with Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in a central role, to organise the local Bedouin tribes for the armed defence.

The Senussi mobilisation

In the days after the landing a Senussi mobilisation set in across the whole of Cyrenaica which brought the local Bedouin tribes together for the armed defence. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, who lay geographically central with his Zawiyat al-Qusour, gave the local defence its communal form in those days: he sent messengers to the neighbouring tribal shaykhs for consultation meetings, arranged the supply of weapons from the Senussi storehouses to the defensive positions, and made the strategic preparations for the joint Cyrenaican defence.

The defence that came together in the weeks that followed rested on a combination of Ottoman regular troops and local Bedouin militias which, under Senussi leadership, were to hold back the Italian expansion upstream of Benghazi. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally it was a practical schooling in the conduct of a communal war, and with that the preparation for the leadership that would later fall to him.

The terrain

Cyrenaica offered the resistance a landscape it knew as its own ground: a Mediterranean coastal zone, the mountainous Jebel Akhdar, and the vast Saharan zone behind it. On the coastline the Italians, with their armament and their organisation, had the advantage wholly on their side, but toward the interior they could scarcely make headway without exposing themselves to Bedouin ambushes. The Cyrenaican Bedouin knew the local terrain and, with their horses, were on the spot sooner; they waged a merciless guerrilla tactic that wore the Italian troops down piece by piece.

Between October 1911 and the spring of 1912 the resistance consisted of an unbroken chain of skirmishes in which the Cyrenaican Bedouin troops brought the Italian advance upstream of Benghazi to a halt time and again. In the direct field battles on the coast the Italians, with their armament and their artillery, repeatedly kept the upper hand, but toward the interior they made no lasting progress, and by the spring of 1912 they were exhausted without having achieved a breakthrough.

The Italian-Turkish peace treaty

In the summer of 1912 the Italo-Turkish war took a turn that would carry the Cyrenaican resistance into a new phase. The Ottoman Empire was in internal difficulties in those months because of the First Balkan war that would break out in October 1912, and it conducted peace negotiations with Italy that issued in the Treaty of Ouchy of 18 October 1912. In it the Ottoman Empire formally recognised Italian sovereignty over Libya, and the Ottoman authorities began to withdraw their regular troops from Libyan territory.

For the Cyrenaican resistance that was a strategic crisis. In the preceding months the Ottoman regular troops had functioned in communal defence with the Senussi-Bedouin militias; without them the resistance had to reorient itself in another form. Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ received the news of the Ottoman peace treaty with considerable spiritual embarrassment, and he discussed with his closest associates, with Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in a central role, what turn the resistance should now take.

The Battle of Sciara Sciat

One episode from this first phase acquired a fixed place in the Italian colonial memory: the Battle of Sciara Sciat, on 23 October 1911 in a suburb of Tripoli. Only a few days after the Italian landing, Tripolitanian Bedouin fighters fell upon the Italian positions in the Sciara Sciat quarter there and inflicted considerable losses on the Italian troops. The Italian reprisal measures consisted of executions of local Bedouin civilians; the Italian colonial historiography recorded the event, but in the Tripolitanian Muslim transmission it acquired a spiritual meaning.

For the Cyrenaican resistance organisation under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, Sciara Sciat was a practical lesson in what the Italians were prepared to do by way of reprisal against civilians. He discussed with his associates how the Bedouin population was to be protected against it, and he gave the strategic preparation a careful caution.

The continuation of the resistance

In the winter of 1912 into 1913 the Senussi leaders came together at Kufra and in the neighbouring Senussi centres, and they decided that the Senussi undertaking would be continued as an independent anti-colonial resistance despite the Ottoman capitulation. The brotherhood refused to accept Italian colonial sovereignty over Libya and carried the resistance on, with the local Bedouin tribes continuing to wage their defence against the Italian expansion communally.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally that continuation meant a rising responsibility within the Senussi organisation, for the leadership of the Cyrenaican resistance came to rest with him in increasing measure. In the years between 1913 and 1918, while Italy worked at colonial stabilisation and in 1915 was placed in a new geopolitical situation by the outbreak of the First World War, he built the Cyrenaican resistance up step by step from his position in the Jebel Akhdar, a building up that would find its tragic sequel in the Fascist expansion after 1922.

The Italian landing

The landings at Tripoli on 5 October 1911 and at Benghazi on 19 October 1911 showed what Italy was capable of militarily and logistically. The expeditionary fleet numbered approximately forty ships: four modern battleships, a number of cruisers and torpedo boats, and the troop ships that set the Italian army down on the Libyan coast. The artillery bombardments of the Ottoman coastal fortifications that preceded them lasted for hours and put the Ottoman defence largely out of action before the landing even began.

For the local Cyrenaican Muslim population that landing was a shock, and the answer to it was immediate and communal in character. In the mosques of Benghazi prayers were held in which the Muslim community spoke out its resistance against the Italian colonial expansion. For the Senussi brotherhood the landing meant that the preparatory phase had definitively closed and that the armed defence now had to be waged on its full scale.

The role of the local Muslim collaborators

In the first days after the Italian landing, negotiations began at Benghazi between the Italian authorities and some local Muslim notables who were approached for colonial collaboration. These were chiefly members of some Cyrenaican aristocratic families who in the preceding years had stood in an understanding with the Ottoman authorities in Benghazi; they were offered colonial administrative positions in exchange for their public support of Italian sovereignty.

For the Senussi brotherhood that was a spiritual challenge, and it laid the matter before its community in a series of Friday sermons. Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ declared in a formal pronouncement that the acceptance of an Italian colonial position by a Muslim notable was a pronounced form of apostasy from the Muslim community, and he exhorted the local communities in spiritual terms to reject the Italian colonial offers.

Toward the strategy of the Green Mountains

In this article we followed the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish war in September and October 1911, the Italian capture of the Libyan port cities, and the first phase of the Cyrenaican Senussi-Bedouin resistance with Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ participation. We saw how the Italian expeditionary army with its armament managed to control the coastline but was held up in the interior by the Bedouin guerrilla campaign, and how the Ottoman peace treaty of October 1912 placed the Senussi brotherhood before a strategic reorientation in which it would carry the anti-colonial resistance on without Ottoman regular support. To the phase that followed, under the Italian colonial stabilisation, and to the guerrilla strategy that in the nineteen-twenties would be brought to its full development under Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ leadership, the next article devotes its attention.

Sources

• Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia, vol. 1: Tripoli bel suol d’amore (1860–1922), Mondadori (1986), pp. 86–168.
• Sergio Romano, La quarta sponda: La guerra di Libia 1911–1912, Bompiani (1977), pp. 68–212.
• Nicola Labanca, Oltremare: Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana, il Mulino (2002), pp. 168–214.
• E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Clarendon Press (1949), pp. 148–186.
• Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, State University of New York Press (2009), pp. 168–198.
• Anna Baldinetti, The Origins of the Libyan Nation, Routledge (2010), pp. 168–214.
• Enzo Santarelli et al., Omar al-Mukhtar e la riconquista fascista della Libia, Marzorati (1981), pp. 214–268.
• William C. Askew, Europe and Italy’s Acquisition of Libya, 1911–1912, Duke University Press (1942), pp. 156–212.