“The Mad Mullah” of Somalia

 

In the scorched sands of 19th-century Somaliland, where nomadic clans roamed under the  relentless sun, Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan was born in 1856.  He was to become a staunch enemy of foreign influence in Somalia.

Hassan pursued religious studies, and after a transformative Hajj to Mecca in the 1890s,  embraced the strict fundamentalist message of the Salihiyya order.

Returning to Somalia in 1895, he preached against foreign encroachments and missionary influences, uniting disparate Somali tribes under a banner of Islamic purity and independence.

In 1899, he declared jihad, founding the Dervish movement—a guerrilla force that waged relentless campaigns against British, Italian, and Ethiopian forces.

His fighters effectively employed hit-and-run tactics.  The British mounted four major expeditions against the Dervishes between 1900 and 1904 but failed to subdue the movement.  Dubbed the "Mad Mullah" by the British, Hassan was suspected of conspiring with Germany in World War one to raise a widespread Muslim uprising in British controlled areas.

No such uprising arose, but the British continued to pursue Hassan’s forces after World War one, finally smashing the Dervish strongholds by the use of aerial bombardment in 1920.

A fugitive, Hassan died of influenza in Ethiopia on December 21, 1920.

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