Asian Art

Dervish State (Horn of Africa)

The Dervish State (Somali: Dawladda Daraawiish) also known as the Dervish Movement, was an armed resistance movement and polity headquartered in Taleh, a city situated in the modern federated state of Waqooyi Bari , between 1895 and 1920. It 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. The Dervish movement aimed to remove the British and Italian influence from the region and restore an "Islamic system of governance with a Sufi doctrine as its foundation", according to Mohamed-Rahis Hasan and Salada Robleh. 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. The Dervish movement attracted approximately 25,000 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. 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. 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, which strengthened his movement, and Hasan subsequently received an Italian subsidy and autonomous protected status. 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.

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See also

• ▸Hong Yi
• ▸Preservation (library and archive)
• ▸Drug prohibition

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.