Muqdishu statue pre-1991



Jigjiga (Ethiopia) statue today



Remembering the struggle 115 years later.

Perhaps a little story on the man to go with the pictures?

Sayyīd Muhammad `Abd Allāh al-Hasan (somali: Sayid Moxamed Cabdille Xasan or Sayyid Mohammad Abdille Hasan) April 7, 1856 in Buhodle in north Somalia – December 21,1921 in imi, ogaden region, Ethiopia) was a somali religious and nationalist leader (called The Mad Mullah by the British) who for 20 years led an armed resistance against British, Italianm, and ethiopia forces in Somalia.

Youth
Hassan, who belonged to the ogaden sub-clan of the Darod clan family, was born in 1856 in the valley of Sa'Madeeq. Some say he was born in Kirrit in northern Somalia. At the time, this part of Somalia was a protectorate of the United Kingdom. Between 1884 and 1960, the area was known as British somaliland .

Hassan was the eldest son of sheikh Abdille, an Ogaden somali. His mother, also a Somali, belonged to the dhulbahante clan. His great grandfather, Sheikh Uthmaan of Bardee, was a pious man of great repute who left his homeland slightly north of qalaafo along the shebelle River valley in what is now the Ogaden and migrated southwards to settle with the religious Somali community at Barder along the Jubba river Jubba River. Hassan's grandfather, Hasan Nur, in turn left his home and moved closer to the Dhulbahante stronghold in north-eastern Somalia. There, he founded religious centres and devoted himself to the worship of God. Following the footsteps of Hasan Nur, Hassan's father Abdille also led a the religious life. Abdille married several Dhulbahante women by whom he had about 30 children of which Hassan was the eldest. Hassan's mother, Timiro Saad, came from the Ali Geri sublineage of the Dhulbahante clan, which was allied with the Ogaden.

Hassan grew up among the Dhulbahante pastoralists who were good herdsmen and warriors and who tended and used camels as well as horses. Young Hassan's hero was his maternal grandfather, Saad Mogan, who was a great warrior chief. In addition to being a good horseman, by the age of eleven, Hassan had learned the entire Qur'an by heart (he was a hafiz), and displayed all the qualities of a promising leader. He continued his religious education. In 1875, his grandfather died. Hassan was shocked by this loss. After 1875, he worked as a Qur'anic teacher for two years. His thirst for Islamic learning was so intense that he left his job and devoted about ten years to visiting many famous centres of Islamic learning including Harar and Mogadishu and even some centres in Sudan.

Hassan received education from as many as seventy-two Somali and Arab religious teachers. In 1891, returning to his home, he married an Ogadeni woman. Three years later, along with two of his uncles and eleven other companions some of whom were his maternal kin, he went to Mecca to perform Hajj. The party stayed there for a year and half and came under the charismatic influence of the newly developing Saalihiya order under the leadership of the great mystic Mohammed Salih who was a Sudanese. Hassan received initiation and very rigorous spiritual training under Salih.

Hassan emerged a changed man — a spiritually transformed man 'shaken and over-awed' but determined to spread the teachings of the Saalihiya order in Somalia.

Religion Mission
In 1895, Hassan returned to Berbera which was then considered by the British merely as 'Aden's butcher's shop', since they were interested only in getting regular supplies of meat from Somalia through this port for their British India outpost of Aden.

Taking advantage of British complacency and arrogance, Emperor Menelek II of Ethiopia asked Ras Makonnen, the Governor of his newly conquered Hararghe Province, to send armed bands to plunder and occupy Ogaden politically. The British withdrew from this area of their territory in Somalia.

In Berbera, Hassan could not succeed in spreading the teaching of the Saalihiya order due to the hostility of the local Qadiriyyah inhabitants who did not like him criticising their eating khat and gorging on the fat of sheep's tail and for following their traditional Qadiriyyah order. In 1897, he left Berbera to be with his Dulbahante kinsmen. On the way, at a place called Daymoole, he met some Somalis who were being looked after by a Catholic Mission. When he asked them about their tribe and parents, the Somali orphans replied that they belonged to the "clan of the (Catholic) Fathers." This reply shook his conscience, for he felt that the "Christian Overlordship in his country was tantamount to the destruction of his people's faith."

In 1898, an unfortunate event took place. Some soldiers of the British armed forces met Hassan and sold him an official gun. When questioned about the loss of the gun, they told their superiors that Hassan had stolen the gun from them. On 29 March 1898, the British Vice Consul wrote a very insulting and stern letter to him asking him to return the gun immediately, which someone in Hassan's camp had reported stolen. This enraged Hassan and he sent a very brief and curt reply refuting the allegation.

While Hassan had really been against the Ethiopian imperialist plunderers of Somalia, this small incident made him clash with the British. The British and Ethiopian Emperor Menelek II joined together to crush the Dervish movement of Hassan and some antagonistic Somalis also cooperated with Menelek II against him.

Armed struggle
In several of his poems and speeches, Hassan emphasized that the British infidels "have destroyed our religion and made our children their children" and that the Christian Ethiopians in league with the British were bent upon plundering the political and religious freedom of the Somali nation. He soon emerged as "a champion of his country's political and religious freedom, defending it against all Christian invaders." He issued a religious ordinance that any Somali national who did not accept the goal of unity of Somalia and would not fight under his leadership would be considered as kafir or gaal. He acquired weapons from Turkey, Sudan, and other Islamic and/or Arabian countries. He appointed his ministers and advisers in charges of different areas or sectors of Somalia. He gave a clarion call for Somali unity and independence.

Hassan organized his follower-warriors. His 'Dervish' movement had essentially a military character and the Dervish state was fashioned on the model of a Saalihiya brotherhood. It had rigid hierarchy and rigid centralization.

Though Hassan threatened to drive the European Christians into the sea, he committed the first attack by launching his first major military offensive with his 1500 Dervish equipped with 20 modem rifles on the British soldiers stationed in the region.

Hassan sent one of his men to Yemen in disguise for reconnaissance activities to report the new aeroplanes preparedness for attack. He sent his emissaries all over the country appealing for Somali people to join his movement and many responded to him enthusiastically.

Against Ethiopia, Britain and Italy
In 1900, an Ethiopian expedition which had been sent to arrest or kill Hassan, looted a large number of camels of the Mohammed Zubair tribe of Ogaden. In answer to his appeal, Hassan attacked the Ethiopian garrison at Jijiga on 4 March of that year and successfully recovered all the looted animals. This success emboldened Hassan and also enhanced his reputation.

In June, three months later, Hassan raided the British protected northern Somali clans of 'Eidagala and Ishak and looted about 2,000 camels. He gained great prestige in recovering the looted stock from the Ethiopians and he used it along with his charisma and powers of oratory to improve his undisputed authority on the Ogaden. To harness Ogaden enthusiasm into final commitment, Hassan married the daughter of a prominent Ogaden chieftain and in return gave his own sister, Toohyar Sheikh Adbile, to Abdi Mohammed Waale, a notable Mohammed Zubair elder.

However, soon angered by his autocratic rule, Hussen Hirsi Dala Iljech' - a Mohammed Zubair chieftain plotted to kill him. The news of the plot leaked to Hassan. He escaped but his prime minister and friend, Aw 'Abbas, was killed in the plot. Some weeks later, Mohammed Zubair sent a peace delegation of 32 men to Hassan, but he had all the members of the delegation arrested and killed. Shocked by this heinous crime, Mohammed Zubair sought the help of the Ethiopians and the Dervish withdrew to Nugaal.

Hassan (by now better known by his honorific title of 'Sayyid') patched up with the Dulbahante temporarily by paying huge blood monies. This frightened the British protected North Somali pastorals. Towards the end of 1900, Ethiopian Emperor Menelik proposed a joint action with the British against the Dervish. Accordingly, British Lt. Col. E.J. Swayne assembled a force of 1,500 Somali soldiers led by 21 European officers and started from Burco on 22 May 1901, while an Ethiopian army of 15,000 soldiers started from Harar to join the British forces, to crush the Dervish movement of about 20,000 Dervish (of whom 40 percent were cavalry).

During 1901 and 1904, the Dervish army inflicted heavy losses to their enemies - the Ethiopians and the British as well as the Italian forces. "His successes attracted to his banner even Somalis who did not follow his religious beliefs." On 9 January 1904 at the Jidaale (Jidballi) plain the British Commander, General Charles Egerton killed 7,000 Dervish. This defeat forced Sayyid and his remaining men to flee to Majayrtaine country.

Around 1910, about 600 Dervish followers decided to stop follow Sayyid due to his high-handedness, in a secret meeting under a big tree later nicknamed "Anjeel-tale-waa" (The tree-of-Bad-Counsel). Their departure weakened, demoralized and angered Sayyid, and at this juncture he composed his most famous poem entitled. "The Tree of Bad Counsel".

Sayyid Mohamed's Push To The South
Marehan Darod forces from the Hinterland in Northern Somalia to the length of the entire Jubba inside Somalia, from Serinley, near Bardera, to the coast, Sayyed Mohamed received enormous support from Marehan population for his push to gather fighting men in the south of Somalia.

Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan's own Ogaden clansmen weren't entirely on his side when the Marehan saw the importance of siding with nationalist leader on the mission of getting rid the colonial power. From Serinley onwards to Dolow, the second arm of the Marehan wasn't happy with new dynamics of giving the British a second front for confrontation. The peaceful communities between Bardera and Dolow to the Tana River in East Africa were long established before the late 19th century uprising of Sayyed Mohamed Abdulle Hassan.

The Marehan Rer Guri were content and basically wanted to herd their livestock from the grasslands of Jubba to Tana River peacefully, where they had settled at the time. The Marehan Galti from the north and central Somalia was in the struggle mood. Northern Gedo Sheikh of Ali Dheere, who was at the time in concert with the rer Guri, was content with the status quo in terms of not wanting to be part of armed struggle against the British and their proxy fighters, the East Africa Riflery.

Consolidation
Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's fort Taleh.

During 1910-1914, Sayyid's capital moved from Illig to Taleex in the heart of Nugaal where he built three garrison forts of massive stone work and a number of houses. He built a luxurious palace for himself and kept new guards for his palace drawn from outcast clans. By 1913, he had dominated the entire hinterland of the Somali peninsula by building forts at Jildali and Mirashi in Warsangali country, at Werder and Qorahy in the Ogaden and Belet-Weyn in southern Somalia. On 9 August 1913, at the Battle of Dul Madoba, a Dervish force raided the Habar Yoonis tribe near Burco and killed or wounded 57 members of the 110-man "Somaliland Camel Constabulary." The dead included the British officer who commanded the constabulary, Colonel Richard Corfield. Hassan memorialized this action in his poem simply entitled "The Death of Richard Corfield." In the same year, the Dervish attacked Berbera and looted and destroyed it. In 1914, the "Somaliland Camel Corps" was founded as an expanded and improved version of the constabulary.

By 1919, despite the British having built large stone forts to guard the passes to the hills, Hassan and his armed bands were at large, robbing and killing.

The Sayyed and his followers in Jubba vision was similar to that of people in Sudan and Egypt when Ottoman Sultanate was retreating from North and East Africa territories.

Defeat

In the beginning of 1920, the British struck the Dervish settlements with a well-coordinated air and land attack and inflicted a stunning defeat. The forts of Hassan were damaged and his army suffered great losses. They hastily fled to Ogaden. Here, again with the help of his patriotic poetry and charisma, he tried to rebuild his army and accomplish the coalition of Ogadeen clans which made him a power in the land once again. The British sent a peace delegation to him offering to give a government subsidy and a land grant in the west of the British Somaliland where he could settle with his followers, but he spurned the proposal. He even raided the returning delegation. Then smallpox and rinderpest broke out in Ogaden and about half of the Dervish died therefrom. Soon thereafter, a tribal raid under the leadership of Haaji Waraabe ('Haji the Hyena') armed and organized by the British killed the remaining Dervish and took away about 60,000 animals in loot but failed to catch Hassan. Along with some of his followers, he escaped to the Arsi Oromo in Ethiopia where he tried to contract marriages to stabilize his position.

Death
On 21 December 1921, Hassan died of influenza at the age of 64.

Old Taleh fort



Jidali and Medeshi forts as they were getting bombed

Sayyid Muhammad's poem after defeated Richard Corfield.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj5pK7B1jfo