A Modern History of the Somali. I. M. Lewis
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founder had died so long ago – was no longer endowed with spiritual life and vigour. At the same time, under the new and very modest British rule of the coast, commerce was flourishing (some 70,000 head of sheep were being exported annually to Aden) and many of the traders and merchants of Berbera consequently were too content with their prosperity and too intent on improving it further to listen to Sheikh Muhammad’s uncompromising message.
In these circumstances in 1898 Sheikh Muhammad ‘Abdille withdrew to his maternal home amongst the Dulbahante who, unlike the Isaq and Dir clans in the west and centre of the Protectorate, had no treaty with the British, and there built a mosque with a Salihiya teaching centre. He also travelled widely amongst the pastoralists preaching his cause and warning his countrymen that the Christian missionaries would destroy their religion. At the same time, he acquired a wide reputation as a peace-maker in inter-clan strife and his remarkable gifts as a poet began to be recognized thus further enhancing his fame. He also began to gather weapons – mainly spears and bows and arrows at this time – and collected donations of livestock and money to support his campaign.
In 1899, a small party of the Administration’s tribal constabulary – known as Illalos (from the Somali, Illaali to watch over) visited the sheikh and one of them surrendered his rifle for, it is said, four camels. On their return to Berbera, the Illalos reported, perhaps mendaciously, that Sheikh Muhammad had stolen a rifle and the Consul sent a curt letter requesting its return. Sheikh Muhammad replied equally curtly, with what amounted to a declaration of defiance. Shortly after this equivocal incident, the Sheikh held a large assembly amongst the Dulbahante calling upon men from every section of the clan to join him in his crusade against the infidels. With little vested interest in Berbera’s trade, and hardly any direct experience of the British coast administration, the Dulbahante had less qualms than the rich Isaq merchants of the coast and many flocked to join Sheikh Muhammad. These recruits to what was rapidly assuming the character of a military crusade were issued with white turbans and a Muslim rosary.
Rumours were now circulating that Sheikh Muhammad was collecting arms and men and preparing to lead an expedition into Ethiopia. A decade previously, English explorers and travellers traversing the Ogaden had noted how the increasingly far-flung and gratuitously savage raids of Ethiopian military parties from Harar were provoking strong resentment arid creating a situation in which a number of leading Somali sheikhs in the area were exhorting their congregations to mount a holy war against the encroaching ‘infidels’.5 That Sheikh Muhammad should now seek to marshal these currents of patriotic fervour and give this aim effective leadership seemed likely. In April 1899, he was officially reported to have at his command a force of some 3,000 men. In August, the news was that he was soliciting the Isaq Habar Tol Ja’lo and Habar Yunis clans for support. To forward this aim, Sheikh Muhammad succeeded in making peace between these two clans and his maternal kinsmen, the Dulbahante. And with this achieved, a great assembly was held at Burao amongst the Habar Yunis and Habar Tol Ja’lo. Here with a force estimated to number 5,000 at his command, Sheikh Muhammad formally declared a holy war against the Christian colonizers – particularly against the British and Ethiopians. Most of the Burao assembly supported the Sheikh’s call to arms, but the Sultan of the Habar Yunis was not enthusiastic. Sheikh Muhammad, however, such was the popular support for his movement at this time, managed to persuade the Habar Yunis to depose their clan-head appointing in his stead one more favourable to the cause. Some dramatic act was now called for and this was supplied by a raid on two religious settlements of a small branch of the Ahmadiya Order which displayed little enthusiasm for Sheikh Muhammad’s jihad. This caused some consternation, and an onslaught upon Berbera itself was reported to be imminent.
Administrative reports claimed that Sheikh Muhammad had now assumed the title of ‘Mahdi’. But although widespread public awareness of earlier events in the Sudan, and sympathy for their co-religionists there, was certainly a contributory factor in the rise of Sheikh Muhammad’s campaign, there is no independent evidence that he ever in fact claimed this title. Indeed, according to all reliable Somali sources, and the evidence of his letters and poems, he called himself ‘Sayyid’ by which title, or more simply as Ina ‘Abdille Hassan (the Somali equivalent of the Arabic ibn ‘Abdille) he is universally remembered throughout Somaliland today. His followers, in turn, soon became known everywhere in the country simply as ‘The Dervishes’, the term ‘dervish’ being applied in Somaliland generally to the adherents of the Salihiya Order.
On I September, 1899, the British Consul-General for the coast received a letter from the Sayyid accusing the British of oppressing Islam and denouncing those who obeyed or co-operated with the Administration as liars and slanderers. The letter also contained the challenge: ‘Now choose for yourselves. If you want war, we accept it; but if you want peace, pay the fine.’6 The Consul-General replied by proclaiming Sayyid Muhammad a rebel, and urged his government in London to prepare an expedition against the Dervishes. Thus the opening moves in the long-drawn out conflict were completed with the official denunciation as a ‘rebel’ of one who, belonging to the Ogaden clan over which Ethiopia claimed but did not exercise sovereignty, and whose maternal kinsmen (the Dulbahante) amongst whom he lived had no treaty with England, was surely most doubtfully classed as a British subject.
The Holy War: the first campaigns
The scene was now set for the twenty-years Dervish struggle against the British, Ethiopian, and Italian colonizers who had so recently established themselves in Somali territory. After the Consul-General’s proclamation, the Sayyid and his followers moved from Burao to collect – according to British reports by threats and violence – more supporters from the Habar Yunis clan. Towards the end of September, 1899, the Dervishes returned to the watering-place of Bohotle where some of the Dulbahante deserted them. About this time Garad ‘Ali Farah, hereditary leader of one of the two main sections of the Dulbahante sent a letter of loyalty to the Consul-General at Berbera asking for help against the Dervishes. A similar message was also dispatched to Boqor ‘Isman, the formidable hereditary leader of the powerful Majerteyn clan at Bender Qasim. This action, presumably, was taken in an effort by the Dulbahante leader to preserve his traditional authority. Whatever the reasons, the Sayyid’s response when the news leaked out was characteristically prompt. A party of Dervishes was dispatched to assassinate the Garad, an action which turned out to be a miscalculation for it immediately provoked a further substantial withdrawal of Dulbahante support. Indeed, the reaction was so considerable that the Sayyid prudently withdrew to his own paternal kinsmen the Ogaden, where he married a daughter of one of the most prominent elders of the clan. This device of contracting political alliances by marriages was one which he was to employ frequently in the course of his campaign.
Although he was of Ogaden descent, however, his home had not previously been amongst them, and some members of the clan decided that they wished to have nothing to do with the Sayyid and plotted to kill him. But, as in subsequent attempts on his life, the news leaked out and Sayyid Muhammad confronted the ringleaders and succeeded in rousing such public indignation against them that he was able to have them summarily executed. On this occasion these stern measures, in the current situation of Ethiopian menace, served not to alienate the Ogaden but to win him further support. Rifles and ammunition imported through the French port of Jibuti and the ports of the Majerteyn coast, were now reaching the Dervishes in quantity and this greatly increased their morale and prestige. With these resources, trading caravans traversing the Ogaden country were systematically looted by the Dervishes, and a hurriedly assembled Ethiopian expedition sent out to deal with the situation failed to locate the Dervishes and dissipated its energies in looting camels and other livestock indiscriminately. This, of course, only further inflamed Ogaden feelings against the Ethiopians, and Sayyid Muhammad found little difficulty in organizing a force some 6,000 strong which in March 1900 stormed the Ethiopian post at Jigjiga and recovered all the looted stock. This engagement the Ethiopians claimed as a victory; but in reality, although the Dervishes suffered heavy casualties and withdrew, they had achieved their object and established beyond doubt that they were a force to be reckoned with.
In contrast with the traditional position of men of religion in internal Somali affairs, Sayyid Muhammad had now become a political leader, a position which he was enabled to fulfil while still retaining his religious rôle in the circumstances of the wider conflict