318 chapter eight
people the basic rituals of their own religion. This, to him, was a
failure on the part of the Ulama". Different from Muœammad Abdel-
Wahhàb before him, Ahmad ibn Idrìs had no political ambitions.
The Sanusiyyah Movement
The Sanusiayyah movement rose in Eastern Libya under Muœammad
ibn Ali al-Sanusi (1787–1859) whose aim was to re-shape the Muslim
society and mold it in the form of the early Muslim society of the
Prophet’s time. As a flùfì, al-Sanusi rejected extravagance and called
for a return to the simplistic, almost desert life style, of the early Muslim
community. Politically, al-Sanusi and his followers achieved remark-
able success in integrating the surrounding tribes into his religious
movement and establishing a network of a brother’s society and trad-
ing posts stretching from north Libya to the Sudan (Cleveland, 1994).
The Sanusiayyah movement resisted the Italian invasion of Tripoli
in 1911 and the French expansion in north and central Africa. At
the end of the Second World War the victorious Allied powers found
in a grand son of al-Sanusi a suitable king for Libya in 1950. That
remained the case until 1st September 1969 when a military revo-
lution led by Colonel Mu"ammar al-Qaûafìousted the Sanusi fam-
ily from power and, later, declared that the Libyan kingdom was to
be a Republic.
The Mahdiyyah Movement
Another movement emerged in the North of Sudan headed by
Muœammad Ahmed al-Mahdì(1844–1885) who proclaimed himself
the awaited Mahdì. His aim was to revive the religion and bring Islam
back to the puritan practice of the Prophet. It had the same purpose
and message of the previous movements. But al-Mahdi had a strong
political agenda of resisting the British-Egyptian occupation of the Sudan
and to free the country from foreign occupation (ibid.). By declar-
ing a jihàd, al-Mahdì embedded a religious call into his religious
teachings that proved useful in achieving military success. Soon, the
Mahdis conquered most of north Sudan, capturing the capital
Khartoum itself in 1885. The Mahdists remained in power until
1898 when Khartoum was re-captured by the Anglo-Egyptian army
under the command of Kitchener. Although the Mahdiyyah move-
ment was short lived, only twenty years, the Mahdì’s remarkable