Self-Made Hassan
Mohammed Abdullah Hassan was born in central Somaliland in 1856. Eldest son of an Ogaden Somali Sheikh, Hassan was groomed for leadership at a young age, and before he reached his teens had become a 'haifz', a term for those who have memorized the Quran in its entirety. After teaching Islamic thought for a number of years, he left the Sa'Madeeq Valley and travelled to religious centres across the Horn of Africa before leaving the continent in 1894 to perform a hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
It was only following an incident shortly after his return to Berbera Province in 1895, that Hassan turned his attention towards the British. Eight years previously in 1888, the British had signed a number of treaties with local sultans designating the region as a protectorate, giving the Crown jurisdiction over what became known as 'British Somaliland'. Hassan was shocked by the pluralism of religion in the region. While he disapproved of the khat-munching members of the Qadiri Sufi order, it was the presence of Christianity, a European import, that shocked him to the core. In 1899, Hassan bought a gun from some British soldiers, who later accused him of stealing it. Being scammed by foreign infidels proved to be the final straw, and was pivotal in his establishment of the Dervish Movement.
The Dervish Movement
The group recruited Sunni fighters from across the Horn of Africa, gathered weapons from Sudan and the Ottomans and even military intelligence from a spy in Yemen. Hassan was fighting a war on two fronts – in 1900, the Ethiopians had launched an offensive against the Dervish army, and following Hassan's reciprocal attacks, Menelik II of Ethiopia joined forces with British Lieutenant Colonel Swanye later that year. Between 1901 and 1904, Hassan's Dervish soldiers fought the Ethiopians, British and even Italians, who had been struggling to maintain control in their Southern Somali colony since its establishment in 1889. On January 9, 1904, British Field Marshal Sir Charles Comyn Egerton's forces killed around seven thousand Dervish fighters at the Jidballi Plain. This battle proved critical, and over the next few years Hassan lost yet more followers to desertion.
In 1913, he moved south and established a capital in Taleh in Somaliland's Sool Region. From his newly constructed fortress, Hassan launched a number of offensives against the British, most famously the Battle of Dul Madoba (August 9, 1913), in which a Dervish force of around 2,750 butchered a British Somali Camel Constabulary unit of 110 members. This angered the British, but with the eruption of the First World War (July 28, 1914), military attention shifted towards Europe and the Dervish army continued to raid strategic positions without facing serious resistance.
Following the end of World War One in 1918, the British returned focus to the region with the aim of finishing Hassan, who had acquired the nickname, 'The Mad Mullah'. The war in Europe had dried out British resources significantly, and a full-scale military invasion of East Africa would have been far too costly. Instead, the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF) undertook a bombing campaign in January 1920. Hassan fled with just four followers to the Ogaden Plateau, and unable to muster sufficient forces to fight back against the RAF, he resigned himself to his writing. Hassan died later that year of influenza at the age of sixty-four.
Memories of the 'Mad Mullah'
Hassan is remembered as a patriot, soldier, religious leader and poet in the Horn of Africa, and as an immense irritation in Europe. His twenty-year campaign against the imperialist invaders proved costly, perturbing and humiliating for both the Italians and the British, European colonial powers unable to quash a North African teacher from a clan of pastoral farmers. Indeed, confusion as to his burial grounds have heightened his status as a legend, with some claiming his tomb to be as far as Imay in Ethiopia. Wherever his remains may be now, his origins are traceable and should not be forgotten. While his statue stands tall in Mogadishu and his poetry is relished across the Arab world, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan should primarily be remembered as an anti-imperialist patriot of his country, Somaliland.
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