By R. Scott Peoples - Bits of News - U.S.A.Saturday, September 22, 2007
[From Libya Through the Ages, a secular historical article about Libya -Part III: Libya in the World Wars - click on the title above to read the full article and for the links to Part I and Part II]
When the leaders don't lead, the people start following those who will. To make things worse, North Africa has a peculiar tradition – probably with pagan origins, since Herodotus mentions them – of personal mystics known as marabouts.
Limited pretty much to the Maghrib and West Africa (ie, wherever there's Berbers), some marabouts nonetheless gathered fervent (if localized) followings, established towns and cities, arbitrated political disputes, and, occasionally, were venerated as saints.
Such was the case with named Muhammad ibn Ali as Sanusi, an Algerian with Sufi roots who had gained such a prominent reputation as a marabout that by 1830, as he made his way toward Mecca, he was honored as as Sanusi al Kabir (the "Grand Sanusi") by the towns and tribes of Tripolitania and the Fezzan.
Like other Muslim movements of the time, he preached a conservative message of austerity and a return to an earlier sense of morality, but this didn't mean voluntary poverty or Sufi-type spiritual aids: adherents were expected to earn their keep through work, weren't allowed to use stimulants, and were forbade traditionally Sufi practices like ecstatic dance.
To quote LoC [Library of Congress] yet again, "The Grand Sanusi accepted neither the wholly intuitive ways described by the Sufis mystics nor the rationality of the orthodox ulama; rather, he attempted to adapt from both."
He tried to move the message to Mecca through the founding of a lodge there in 1837, but was run out of town a few years later due to disagreements with the Turkish rulers. He then discovered that, in the meantime, France had begun using its brand-spanking new Foreign Legion to conquer Algeria, and so the Grand Sanusi was forced to hang out his new shingle in Libya – specifically in al-Bayda, Cyrenaica, in 1843.
From there, he presided over a movement that rapidly gained followers among the Bedouin tribes, where the tradition of marabouts saw Sanusi al Kabir venerated as something akin to a saint even within his lifetime, and saw the expansion of his movement to a new base at al Jaghbub, astride the caravan route to the Sudan.
The Grand Sanusi sprung the mortal coil in 1859, passing the reins on to his grandson, Muhammad. He quickly moved the Sanusi capitol further south, so as to confront French ambitions in the Sudan, and through his outstanding leadership and organizational skills became so admired that he was termed "Mahdi" ("guided one;" a prophesied redeemer of Islam).
He is not to be confused with the Mahdi who later gave the British the Baghdad treatment in Khartoum – Islam in the 1800s saw several claimants to the title – but he did proclaim jihad to stymie French ambitions to Libya's south, and so became the first Sanusi leader to come into direct conflict with a European power.
By the time of his death in 1902, the Mahdi had united the tribes of Cyrenaica in a way that no other leader could have; a string of 146 lodges stretched across North Africa and into Arabia and the roots of a nationalist movement had been laid before the Mahdi's cousin, Muhammad Idris as Sanusi (later King Idris of Libya), came to power – though a regency run by Ahmad as Sharif on behalf of the still-too-young leader picked a disastrous fight with the French that resulted in many lodges being destroyed.
[US Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/index.html
Country Studies: Overview of life, history, and culture of various countries by the LoC http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/].
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