Dervish movement (Somali)
The Dervish Movement also known as the Dervish State was an armed resistance movement and polity in the Horn of Africa between 1899 and 1920, which was led by the Salihiyya Sufi Muslim poet and militant leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, also known as Sayyid Mohamed, who called for independence from the British and Italian colonisers and for the defeat of Ethiopian forces. The Dervish movement aimed to remove the British and Italian influence from the region and restore an "Islamic system of governance with a Sufi doctrine as its foundation", according to Mohamed-Rahis Hasan and Salada Robleh.
Hassan established a ruling council called the Khususi consisting of Sufi tribal elders and spokesmen, added an adviser from the Ottoman Empire named Muhammad Ali, and thus created a multi-clan Islamic movement in what led to the eventual creation of the state of Somalia.
The Dervish movement attracted approximately 25,000 youth from different clans over 1899 and 1905, acquired firearms and then attacked the Ethiopian garrison at Jigjiga. The Dervishes were able to take the cattle seized from the local Somalis, giving them their first military victory. The Dervish movement then declared the colonial administration in British Somaliland as their enemy. To end the movement, the British sought out the competing Somali clans as coalition partners against the Dervish movement. The British provided these clans with firearms and supplies to fight against the Dervishes. Punitive attacks were launched against Dervish strongholds in 1904. The Dervish movement suffered losses in the field, regrouped into smaller units and resorted to guerrilla warfare. Hasan and his loyalist Dervishes moved into the Italian-controlled Somaliland in 1905 after Hasan signed the Illig treaty, under which the Dervishes were ceded the Nugaal Valley, which strengthened his movement, and Hasan subsequently received an Italian subsidy and autonomous protected status.
In 1908, the Dervishes again entered British Somaliland and began inflicting major losses to the British in the interior regions of the Horn of Africa. From 1908 onwards until the end of the World War I the British retreated to the few remaining coastal regions after suffering heavy losses in the enterior to which the dervish continued to operate independently and leaving the interior regions in the hands of the Dervishes. During 1905-1910, the Dervishes continued raids against the remaining British who were defeated in the battle of Dul Madooba.
The Dervish movement led by Sayid Muhammed Abdullah Hassan, continued independently from about years between 1896/1900–1921. The Dervish movement had successfully repulsed the British Empire four times and forced it to retreat to the coastal region. Because of these successful expeditions, the Dervish movement was recognized as an ally by the Ottoman and German empires during the First World War. The Turks named Hassan Emir of the Somali nation, and the Germans promised to officially recognise any territories the Dervishes were to acquire. After a quarter of a century of holding the British at bay and with the end of the First World War leading to the defeat of the Dervish allies the Ottoman and German empires following the end of World War I, the British turned their attention to the Dervishes. In 1920, the British launched a massive combined arms offensive on the Taleh forts, strongholds of the Dervish movement. The offensive caused significant casualties among the Dervishes, although the Dervish leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan managed to escape. His death in 1921 due to either malaria or influenza ended the Dervish movement.
The Dervish movement temporarily created a mobile Somali "proto-state" in early 20th-century with fluid boundaries and fluctuating population. It was one of the bloodiest and longest militant movements in sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial era, one that overlapped with World War I. The battles between various sides over two decades killed nearly a third of Somaliland's population and ravaged the local economy. Scholars variously interpret the emergence and demise of the militant Dervish movement in Somalia. Some consider the "Sufi Islamic" ideology as the driver, others consider economic crisis to the nomadic lifestyle triggered by the occupation and "colonial predation" ideology as the trigger for the Dervish movement, while post-modernists state that both religion and nationalism created the Dervish movement.
History
Origins
According to Abdullah A. Mohamoud, traditional Somali society followed a decentralized structure and a nomadic lifestyle dependent on livestock and pastureland. It was also predominantly Muslim. By the close of the 19th century, the European colonial powers expanded their reach in the Horn of Africa, the region of Somalia came under the influence of the British, Ethiopians and the Italians. The withdrawal of the Egyptian troops from Harar enabled Ras Makonnen and Menelik II to expand the burgeoning Ethiopian realm eastward into the Ogaden territory. In 1884, Britain established a protective authority over Somaliland, aiming to safeguard Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait's strategic interests in the Red Sea. By 1893, following arduous negotiations, an Italian chartered company assumed control over the Benadir coastline in southern Somalia, with the remainder of the region placed under an Italian protectorate in 1889. With foreign rule came the centralization of the economy, which greatly upset the traditional livestock and pastureland based livelihood of the Somalis. The foreign powers were also all Christians, which created additional suspicions amongst the Somali religious elite. The Ethiopian troops had already proved to be a bane for the Somalis as they were the traditional raiders and plunderers of their grazing herds. The arrival of the colonial powers and the consequent partitioning of Africa greatly affected the Somalis, with Sufi poets such as Faarax Nuur writing poems expressing his opposition to foreign rule. The Dervish movement can thus be seen as a reaction against the establishment of foreign control in Somalia.The Dervish movement was led by a Sufi poet and religious nationalist leader named Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, also known as Sayid Maxamad Cabdulle Xasan. He was born in the Sacmadeeqo Lake, a location seven miles north of the town of Buuhoodle, sometime between 1856 and 1864 to a father who was a religious teacher. He studied in Somali Islamic seminaries and later went on Hajj to Mecca where he met Shaykh Muhammad Salah of the Salihiya Islamic Tariqah, which states The Encyclopedia Britannica was a "militant, reformist, and puritanical Sufi order". The preachings of Salah to Hasan had roots in Saudi Wahhabism, and it considered it a religious duty "to wage a holy war against all other forms of Islam, the Western and Christian presence in the Muslim world, and a religious revival", state Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew. When Hasan returned to the Horn of Africa, the Somali tradition states that he saw Somali children being converted to Christianity by missionaries in the British colony. Hasan began preaching against this religious conversion and the British presence. He earned the ire of the British colonial administration, who pejoratively referred to him as "the mad mullah";his Sufi teachings were also opposed by the rival Qadiriya Tariqah – another traditional Sufi group of the region, states Said M. Mohamed. Another version of the early events link the illegal sale of a gun to Hasan by a corrupt Somali officer in 1899, who reported his gun as stolen rather than purchased by Hasan. The British authorities demanded the gun's return, while Hasan replied that the British should leave the country, a sentiment he had previously claimed in 1897 when he declared himself "the leader of a sovereign nation". Hasan continued to preach against the British introduction of Christianity to Somalia, stating that the "British infidels have destroyed our religion and made our children their children".
Hasan left the urban settlement and moved to preach in the countryside. His influence spread in the rural parts and many elders, as well as youth, became his followers. Hasan converted the influenced youth from different clans into a Muslim brotherhood, rallying to protect Islam from the influence of the Christian missionaries. These formed Hasan's armed resistance group set to confront the colonial powers, and came to be known as Dervishes or Daraawiish, states Said M. Mohamed.
Movement
The Dervish movement temporarily created a Somali "proto-state", according to Markus Hoehne. It was a mobile state with fluid boundaries and fluctuating population given the guerrilla style militant approach of Dervishes and their practice of retreating to sparsely inhabited hinterland whenever the colonial forces with superior firearms overwhelmed them. At the head of this state was the Sufi leader Hasan with the power of final decision. Hasan surrounded himself with a group of commanders for the militant operations supported by the khusuusi or the Dervish council. Islamic judges settled disputes and enforced the Islamic law in this Dervish state. According to Robert Hess, two of Hasan's chief advisors were Sultan Nur – previously Habr Yunis chief, and Haji Sudi Shabeel also known as Ahmad Warsama from Adan Madoba Habr Je'lo who was fluent in English.The constituent clans of the Dervish during the formative years belonged to sections of the Ogaden and Dhulbahante. Habr Je'lo and Habr Yunis clans:
He acquired some notoriety by seditious preaching in Berbera in 1895, after which he returned to his tariga in Kob Faradod, in the Dolbahanta. Here he gradually acquired influence by stopping inter-tribal warfare, and eventually started a religious movement in which the Rer Ibrahim, Ba Hawadle and the Ali Gheri were the first to join. His emissaries also soon succeeded in winning over the Adan Madoba, notable among whom was Haji Sudi, his trusted lieutenant, and the Ahmed Farih and Rer Yusuf, all Habr Toljaala, and the Musa Ismail of the Eastern Habr Yunis, Habr Gerhajis, with Sultan Nur.Between 1900 and 1913, they operated from temporary local centers such as Aynabo in Somaliland and Illig in Puntland. Neville Lyttelton's War Office, and General Egerton described the Nugaal as the "base of operations" against Dervishes.
File:XaajiSuudicropped2.png|thumb|Dervish Khususi, Haji Sudi on the left with his brother in-law Duale Idres. Aden, 1892.
The Dervishes wore white turban and its army utilized horses for movement. They assassinated opposing clan leaders. Dervish soldiers used the dhaanto and geeraar traditional dance-song to raise their esprit de corps and sometimes sang it on horseback. Hasan commanded the Dervish movement soldiers in a martial manner, ensuring that they were religiously committed, powered up for warfare and men of character sworn with an oath of allegiance. To ensure unity among his troops, instead of letting them identify themselves by their different tribes, he made them identify themselves uniformly as Dervish. The movement obtained firearms from Sultan Boqor Osman Mahmud of Majerteen Sultanate, as well as the Ottoman Empire and Sudan. In addition, the Dervishes also obtained significant armaments' from the Adan Madoba section of the Habr Je'lo clan where, according to the contemporary source Official History of the Operations in Somaliland: "Of the former the Adan Madoba were not only responsible for supplying him Abdullah Hassan with arms, but also assisted him on all his raids."
The Dervish fought many battles starting in 1899 against the Ethiopian troops. In 1904, the Dervishes were almost annihilated in Jidbaley. Hasan retreated into the Italian Somaliland and entered into a treaty with them, who accepted the control of Eyl port by the Dervishes. This port served as the Dervish headquarters between 1905 and 1909. During this period, Hasan rebuilt the Dervish movement army, the Dervishes raided and plundered their neighboring clans, and in 1909 assassinated their archrival Sufi leader Uways al-Barawi and burnt his settlement, according to Mohamed Mukhtar.
In 1913, after the British withdrawal to the coast, the Dervishes created a walled town with fourteen fortresses in Taleh by importing masons from Yemen. This served as their headquarters. The main fortress, Silsilat, included conical tower granaries that opened only at the top, wells with sulfurous water, cattle watering stations, a guard tower, walled garden, and tombs. It became the residence of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, his wives and family. The Taleh structures also included the Hed Kaldig, where those whom Hasan disliked were executed with or without torture and their bodies left to the hyenas. According to Muktar, Hasan's execution orders also targeted dozens of his former friends and allies. The town of Taleh was mostly destroyed after a RAF aerial bombardment in early February 1920, though Hasan had already left his compound by then. In an April 1920 letter transcribed from the original Arabic script into Italian by the incumbent Governatori della Somalia, the British are described taking twenty-seven garesas or 27 houses from the Dhulbahante clan.