The lost oases

by Ahmad Muhammad Hasanayn

SIWA

One of the most historic oases of northern Africa. It was noted for its temple of Amon even before the time of Herodotus, and Alexander the Great came here to consult the oracle. In the middle distance, slightly to the right, is the covered market-place. Lofty structures indicate that Siwa was at one time a point of defense from desert tribes.

Jaghbub was a strategic point for his purpose. It stood midway between tribes on the east and on the west who had been in constantly recurring conflict. With his headquarters there the Grand Senussi could bring his influence to bear on the warring rivals and carry out the command of the Prophet to “make peace among those about you.” From a practical standpoint Jaghbub was an unpromising place in which to set up such a center of educational and religious activity as the Grand Senussi had in contemplation. It is not much of an oasis, if indeed it can be called an oasis at all. Date-trees are scarce there, the water is brackish, and the soil very difficult to cultivate. Its strategic importance, however, was clear, and without hesitation he selected it as the site of his headquarters. The raids made upon each other by the tribes to the east and the west were brought to an end through his influence. He settled many old feuds not only between those tribes but among the other tribes in Cyrenaica.

Sayed Ibn Ali lived for six years after establishing himself at Jaghbub and extended his influence far and wide. The Zwaya tribe, who had been known as the brigands of Cyrenaica, “fearing neither God nor man,” invited him to come to Kufra, the chief community of their people, and establish a zawia there. They agreed to give up raiding and thieving and attacking other tribes and offered him one third of all their property in Kufra if he would come to them. He could not go in person but sent a famous ikhwan, Sidi Omar Bu Hawa, who established the first Senussi zawia at Jof in Kufra, and began the dissemination of the teachings of the Grand Senussi among the Zwayas. Sayed Ibn Ali also commissioned ikhwan to go into many other parts of the Libyan Desert, and before his death all the Bedouins on the western frontier of Egypt and all over Cyrenaica had become his disciples.

He died in the year 1859, and was buried in the tomb over which rises the kubba of Jaghbub.

The Grand Senussi was succeeded by his son Sidi Mohammed El Mahdi, who was sixteen years old when his father died. In spite of his youth his succession as head of the order was strengthened by two circumstances. It was remembered that on one occasion, at the end of an interview with his father, El Mahdi was about to leave the room, when the Grand Senussi rose and performed for him the menial service of arranging his slippers, which had been taken off on entering. The founder of the order then addressed those present in these words: “Witness, O ye men here present, how Ibn Ali El Senussi arranges the slippers of his son, El Mahdi.” It was realized that he meant to indicate that the son not only would succeed the father but would surpass him in holiness and sanctity.

Then too there was an ancient prophecy that the Mahdi who would reconquer the world for Islam would attain his majority on the first day of Moharram in the year 1300 after the Hegira, having been born of parents named Mohammed and Fatma and having spent several years in seclusion. Each part of this prophecy was fulfilled in the person of El Mahdi. The choice as successor to the Grand Senussi fell upon him.

When Sayed El Mahdi reached his majority there were thirty-eight zawias in Cyrenaica and eighteen in Tripolitania. Others were scattered over other parts of North Africa; and there were nearly a score in Egypt. It has been estimated that between a million and a half and three million people owed spiritual allegiance to the head of the brotherhood when El Mahdi became its active head. He was the most illustrious of the Senussi family.

He saw from the first that there was more scope for the influence of the brotherhood in the direction of Kufra and the regions to the southward than in the north. In the year 1894 he removed his headquarters from Jaghbub to Kufra. Before his departure he freed all his slaves, and some of them and their children are still to be found living at Jaghbub.

His going to Kufra marked the beginning of an important era in the history of the Senussis and also in the development of trade between the Sudan and the Mediterranean coast by way of Kufra. The difficult and waterless trek between Buttafal Well near Jalo and Zieghen Well just north of Kufra became in El Mahdi’s time a beaten route continually frequented by trade caravans and by travelers going to visit the center of the Senussi brotherhood. “A man could walk for half a day from one end of the caravan to the other,” a Bedouin told me.