CHAPTER VI
THE SENUSSIS
ANY story of the Libyan Desert would not be complete without some consideration of the Senussis, the most important influence in that region. The subject is a complicated one. Justice might be done to it if an entire volume were available, but within the limits of a chapter only the important points of Senussi history can be touched.
The Senussis are not a race nor a country nor a political entity nor a religion. They have, however, some of the characteristics of all four. In fact they are almost exclusively Bedouins; they inhabit, for the most part, the Libyan Desert; they exert a controlling influence over considerable areas of that region and are recognized by the governments of surrounding territory as a real power in the affairs of northeastern Africa; and they are Moslems. Perhaps the best short description of the Senussis would be as a religious order whose leadership is hereditary and which exerts a predominating influence in the lives of the people of the Libyan Desert.
The history of the brotherhood may be roughly divided into four periods. In each it took its color from the personality of the leader. These were respectively Sayed Ibn Ali El Senussi, the founder; Sayed El Mahdi, his son; Sayed Ahmed, the nephew of the latter; and Sayed Idris, the son of El Mahdi, the present head of the brotherhood.
Sayed Mohammed Ibn Ali El Senussi, known as the Grand Senussi, was born in Algeria in the year 1202 after the Hegira, which corresponds to 1787 in the Christian calendar. He was a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed and had received an unusually scholarly education in the Kairwan University, in Fez, and at Mecca, where he became the pupil of the famous theologian Sidi Ahmed Ibn Idris El Fazi. He developed an inclination to asceticism and a conviction that what his religion needed was a return to a pure form of Islam as exemplified in the teachings of the Prophet.
At the age of fifty-one he was compelled to leave Mecca by the opposition of the older sheikhs, who challenged his orthodoxy. He returned through Egypt to Cyrenaica and began to establish centers for teaching his doctrines among the Bedouins.
At this point an explanation of the meaning of three Arabic words will elucidate the text. They are zawia, ikhwan, and wakil.
A zawia is a building of three rooms, its size depending on the importance of the place in which it is situated. One room is a school-room in which the Bedouin children are taught by the ikhwan; the second serves as the guest-house in which travelers receive the usual three days’ hospitality of Bedouin custom; in the third the ikhwan lives. The zawia is generally built near a well where travelers naturally stop. Attached to the zawia is often a bit of land which is cultivated by the ikhwan. The ikhwan are the active members of the brotherhood, who teach its principles and precepts. Ikhwan in Arabic is really a plural form, which means “brothers.” But the singular of the word is never used, ikhwan having come to be used for one or more. A wakil is the personal representative or deputy of the head of the Senussis.