The latter, though he seems to have been a capable fellow, was a theatrical mountebank, who preferred to surround himself with an atmosphere of mystery; as it was this mysterious element that complicated the situation, some explanation of it is necessary.
Sidi Mohammed Ben Ali Senussi, the founder of the Senussi dervishes, while travelling, in 1830, from Morocco to Mecca, divorced his wife, Menna, who had proved unfruitful, with the result that, being wifeless, some natives of Biskra took compassion upon him and presented him with an Arab slave girl. This woman is supposed to have borne him a son—Sidi Ahmed el Biskri—who played a somewhat prominent part later on in the history of the Senussia. By another wife he had a son, Mohammed, whom he declared on his deathbed to be the long-expected Mahdi.
These two half-brothers, Mohammed and Ahmed, are said to have borne a striking resemblance to each other.
An old Senussi that I met in Dakhla, who professed to have seen them both, said that not only were they of the same height and figure, but that even their voices and manner were so much alike that no one could distinguish between them.
There seems to be little doubt that when the Senussi Mahdi did not wish to interview a visitor himself, he sent his double, Sidi Ahmed, to do so instead. This deception was made easy by the fact that the Senussi Mahdi, during the latter part of his life, was a veiled prophet who concealed his face whenever he appeared in public by covering his head with a shawl; it is reported that he never even showed his face to his most intimate followers.
The interviews that he accorded to his visitors were few and difficult to obtain. They were invariably short—the Mahdi himself timing the interview with his watch—and the conversation, so far as he was concerned, consisting of a few questions, followed, if necessary, by a decision; his remarks being made in the low dreamy voice of one who received his inspirations from on high—a method of procedure that could hardly fail to impress, as it was evidently intended to do, the credulous followers who came to see him with his extreme sanctity and importance.
This Mahdi was reported to have died some years prior to my visit to Dakhla, and although news of the happenings in the inaccessible parts of North Africa is apt to be unreliable, there was little doubt that he had.
The native version was that he had gone off into the desert and disappeared; but probably he only followed the example of Sheykh Shadhly, the founder of the great Shadhlia sect, and of several other noted Moslem saints, and went off into the desert to die, when he felt his end approaching.
There was, however, a pretty general feeling in the desert that the last of him had not been seen—an impression that the Senussi endeavoured to keep alive by the vague statement that he was “staying with Allah,” and hints that he might at any moment reappear.
There was never much love lost between the Senussia and the Turks. About a year before my visit to the desert, a Turkish official had been sent down to Kufara Oasis, with orders to formally assert the Sultan’s authority over the district, and to hoist the Turkish flag. The fanatical inhabitants, however, had hauled down the flag, torn it to ribbons, trampled it under foot, severely beaten the Turkish officer and expelled him from the oasis, so the annexation of any part of the Turkish Empire would have been a scheme well calculated to appeal to the Senussi.