Note 133 — Chapter IX · THE FRENCH IN WEST AND NORTH AFRICA

At the end of the 18th century there was born at Mostaganem in West Algeria from an Arab family in that place, Muhammad-bin-Ali, further named As-Sanusi (Senussi), after a celebrated saint of Tlemsan. He went as a young man to Mekka, and there achieved a reputation for holiness and learning. Here also he made the acquaintance of Muhammad Sharif, a negro prince from Wadai, who afterwards became Sultan of that country. In the middle of the 19th century As-Sanusi returned to N. Africa and settled in the Cyrenaica, but finding the Turks suspicious he changed his head-quarters to Jaghbub in 1860, just inside the Egyptian borders, thirty miles from Siwa. Here he died soon after his arrival, and as a religious leader he was succeeded by his second son, Al-Mahdi. Al-Mahdi Senussi II renewed the relations with Wadai, where his father’s sect numbered many adherents, and in the last quarter of the 19th century removed his head-quarters to Al Jof in the Kufra oasis, midway between Cyrenaica and the Sudan. Senussi refused to countenance the revolt of the Mahdi in the Egyptian Sudan, but between 1899-1902 interfered strenuously in the Central Sudan to prevent the advance of the French, especially towards Kanem and Wadai. But his efforts were fruitless, and he died in or near Wadai in 1902. His nephew and successor, Senussi III, wandered about for some time in the borderland between Wadai and Kordofan, and finally betook himself to the Kufra oasis in the Libyan desert, where he now resides. The Senussiites profess a purified form of the Muhammadan faith, are rigid abstainers from alcohol and tobacco, but are above all an honest, industrious folk, who have done much of late years to improve the conditions of life in the Saharan and Libyan oases.