Dervish movement (Somali)
The Dervish Movement (Somali: Dhaqdhaqaaqa Daraawiish) was a popular movement between 1899 and 1920,[1][2][3] 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.[3][4][5] The Dervish movement aimed to remove the British and Italian influence from the region and restore the "Sufi system of governance with Sufi education as its foundation", according to Mohamed-Rahis Hasan and Salada Robleh.[6]
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.[5][4][7]
The Dervish movement attracted between 25,000 and 26,000 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.[8][note 1] 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.[4][5] 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,[10][11] which strengthened his movement,[4] and Hasan subsequently received an Italian subsidy and autonomous protected status.[12] 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. The British retreated to the coastal regions, leaving the chaotic interior regions in the hands of the Dervishes. During 1905-1910, the Dervishes lost much of their support due to their indiscriminate raids against allies and enemies alike, with several followers subsequently leaving the Dervishes after Hasan was supposedly excommunicated by the head of the Salihiyyah tariqa in Mecca in a famous letter.[13]
The First World War shifted the attention of the British elsewhere, although upon its conclusion, in 1920, the British launched a massive combined arms offensive on the Taleh forts, strongholds of the Dervish movement.[5][8] 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.[4][5][14]
The Dervish movement temporarily created a mobile Somali "proto-state" in early 20th-century with fluid boundaries and fluctuating population.[15] 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.[14][16][17] 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.[5]