Mohammed Abdullah Hassan

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Statue of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan in Mogadishu

Mohammed Abdullah Hassan , or Sayyid Muhammad ibn `Abd Allāh Hassān ( somali Sayid Maxamed Cabdule Xasan , Arabic السيد محمد بن عبد الله حسان, DMG as-Sayyid Muḥammad b.ʿAbd Allāh Ḥassān , * 1856 in Buuhoodle , Northeast Somalia ; † December 1920 in Imi , Ogaden in what is now Ethiopia ), was a Sufi - Sheikh and the most important Somali poet of his time. He led a decades-long uprising against the division of the Somali territories between the colonial powers Italy and Great Britain and against the annexation of the Ogaden region to Ethiopia.

With the help of his dervish movement, as a unifying factor of order among the hopelessly divided Somali clans and through diplomatic exploitation of the political competition between the colonial powers, he was able to establish an independent state structure in the Somali hinterland for a few years. After the end of the First World War , however, in 1920 the British Air Force succeeded in crushing the resistance of the dervishes in a relatively short time.

Mohammed Abdullah Hassan is often compared to Muhammad Ahmad , the Sudanese Mahdi , which is why he is sometimes referred to as Mahdi , although he himself never claimed this title. The British mostly called him the Mad Mullah .

Political career

Travel and study of Islam

He began studying the Koran at the age of seven and received the title of Sheikh at 19 for his extraordinary erudition and piety. He then traveled to Harar in Ethiopia, Mogadishu, Nairobi and Sudan to study. There he met Osman Digna , a former general of the Mahdi uprising . Samatar doubts that Mohammed got the inspiration for his dervish rebellion there. On his travels he has had a reputation for lacking restraint and self-control. It was said that he would not accept a teacher who had not taught him. He consistently implemented the resulting claim: He studied with a total of 72 sheikhs. After nine years of study he returned to the Dulbahante- Darod , his mother's clan , and married a woman from his clan, the Ogadeni-Darod.

Pilgrimage and return

In 1894 he and some Dhulbahante did the Hajj to Mecca , where he stayed for a year and a half. There he studied with Sayyid Mohammed Salih , the founder of the Puritan Salihiyya - Tariqa , and finally traveled back, appointed leader of the Salihiyya for Somaliland.

He stopped in Berbera, where he married his second wife and preached against intoxicants, luxury and the worship of saints that was widespread in Africa. Among other things, because of his temper, he came into conflict with the British consular administration and especially with the Qadiriyya -Tariqa; Berbera had developed into a more secular city in the shadow of closer cooperation with the British, in which the prevailing Qadiriyya also liberalized.

Contact with Europeans

An event in Berbera that was possibly exaggerated in the foreground is an important point in his development: Before a French Catholic mission , he met some Somali missionary students who, when asked, did not give their Somali names and the names of their fathers and clans, but rather Christian ones Names. From this he concluded that the Europeans were a threat to Islam; from then on he also preached openly against the British administration.

Development of the resistance: the dervish movement

He returned to the area of ​​the Dulbahante (which had no contracts with the British like the clans in the north) and built up a military following there. This was followed with growing concern by the British. In 1899 there was an incident, which was ultimately followed by the declaration of jihad : Somali allies with the British gave Mohammed a rifle in exchange for four camels, but reported to the consular administration in Berbera that he had stolen the rifle. The British then sent a complaint demanding the return of the weapon, which Mohammed perceived as an insult. He now began openly to solicit military allegiance. After disputes between the Isaaq clans and the Dhulbahante, Mohammed's following numbered 5000 men and is known as "Dervishes" (Darawiish) . On September 1, 1899, he wrote a complaint to the British calling himself Sayyid and the British infidels , demanding that the British withdraw if they did not agree to pay the jizya . The administration found this response to be an insult and disrespect. She officially referred to him and his followers as rebels and planned the first campaigns against the dervishes to ensure peace in the hinterland, which is important in terms of supply (see British colonial presence in Aden ).

Course and end of the armed uprising

In 1899, Mohammed Abdullah declared jihad against the Christian Ethiopians , British and Italians , which began with an attack by his dervishes on the British garrison Jijiga . The dervishes fought with guerrilla tactics, on the one hand because they were technically inferior to the British and Ethiopians and on the other hand because the few major battles that Mohammed planned ended disastrously due to his strategic ineptitude. After the dervishes were defeated, the uprising from 1904 to 1908 was interrupted by a peace agreement with Italy. However, the jihad continued with increasing intensity during the First World War . During World War I the uprising of the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Ethiopian ruler was Jesus V. supported. It was not until 1920 that the dervish uprising could be ended by a concerted action by British sea, land and air forces. Mohammed fled with a few followers in the Ogaden, where he died shortly afterwards, in December 1920, presumably of flu or malaria.

Aftermath

Mohammed Abdullah achieved none of his goals: the unification of the Somali people failed both because of the bitter resistance of the Qadiriyya and the inability to build lasting cross-clan structures (even within his own tribe, support for him was divided). The cross-clan potential of Islam could initially not be used due to the contradictions of the brotherhoods. Not only that both the Salihiyya and the Qadiriyya could be roughly assigned to certain clans (the Salihiyya members generally came from Darod clans, while the Qadiriyya were mainly represented among the Isaaq and Dir clans of the north), they related also opposing positions especially towards the British.

In addition, the colonial powers were in a much more solid position after the jihad than before, as they had moved closer together in the fight against the dervishes.

Nevertheless, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan is now a symbol of Somali nationalism . This is u. a. can be attributed to three reasons: First, he was the first, albeit unsuccessful, Somali resistance fighter. Through the leadership of the Salihiyya he was also an Islamic antipole to the Christian powers Ethiopia, Great Britain and Italy. Since Islam is by far the most widespread religion in Somalia today, it forms an attractive demarcation point in the retrospective in the sense of nation-building . Last but not least, his poetry also contributed to the fact that he is now an integral part of Somali national consciousness.

"The Mad Mullah of Somaliland"?

Especially in contemporary literature, Muhammad is referred to as the Mad Mullah . On the one hand, this name is related to an incident in Berbera in 1895, where Muhammad, who was impulsive throughout his life, was enraged by a small dispute with a British official. In some cases, however, reference is also made to reactions of differently minded Somalis who met Muhammad during a sermon in Berbera. They called him “the lunatic mullah”, which is probably an imprecise translation, since the Somali probably didn't want to call him a lunatic in the insane sense, but referred to his fanaticism. A corruption or contraction of the name Muhammad ibn Abdallah is also possible .

See also

literature

  • RL Hess: “The Poor Man of God - Muhammad Abdullah Hassan”, in: Bennett, NR (Ed.), Leadership in Eastern Africa - Six Political Biographies , Boston 1968
  • RS O'Fahey: "Sāliḥiyya", in: Encyclopaedia of Islam , 2nd ed., Vol. VIII, Leiden, 2003, p. 990, ISBN 90-04-11040-2 .
  • Douglas Jardine: The Mad Mullah of Somaliland , London 1923, ISBN 0-8371-1762-3
  • Ioan M. Lewis: "Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh Ḥassān", in: Encyclopaedia of Islam , 2nd ed., Vol. VIII, Leiden 2003, 389-390, ISBN 90-04-11040-2 .
  • Ioan M. Lewis: A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, 3rd ed., Boulder 1988, ISBN 0-8133-7402-2 .
  • Said S. Samatar: Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad ʿAbdille Hasan , Cambridge 1982, ISBN 0-521-23833-1 .
  • ʿAbdi Sheik-ʿAbdi: Divine Madness - Mohammed ʿAbdulle Hassan (1856-1920) , London & New Jersey 1993, ISBN 0-86232-444-0

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Douglas Jardine: The Mad Mullah of Somaliland
  2. Said S. Samatar: Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad ʿAbdille Hasan, page 104, or 212

Web links

Commons : Mohammed Abdullah Hassan  - Collection of images, videos and audio files