Sayid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan (Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan)

Who was he?

Sayid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan was a scholar of Islam, a poet and the leader of the Dervish movement. From 1899 to 1920 he led resistance against three empires at once: Britain, Italy and Ethiopia. Calankii counts its 131 years from 1895, the year he began teaching in Berbera.

Most of what was written about him in his lifetime came from his opponents. This page sets their records beside the Somali record: his own letters, and the history and poems collected from his companions by Sheekh Jaamac Cumar Ciise (Jaamac Cumar Ciise, Diiwaanka Gabayadii Sayid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan, Muqdisho, 1974).

His life, place by place

• Sacmadeeqo, Nugaal, 1856. Jaamac Cumar Ciise records that he was born in 1856, in a spring of good rains called "Gobaysane", at the pool of Sacmadeeqo, about seven miles north of Buuhoodle (Jaamac Cumar Ciise 1974, p. viii).
• Home and the Nugaal schools. He learned the Quran at home, then studied with a community of scholars in the Nugaal, centred on the valleys of Casuura and Yaaheel (same source).
• Mecca and Medina, about 1892 to 1895. He travelled with thirteen fellow scholars and stayed more than two years (same source). The British War Office records that he joined the Salihiyya Sufi order there (War Office, Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, 1907, p. 48).
• Berbera, 1895. He landed at Berbera and began teaching. The British record says he preached there before moving inland (War Office 1907, p. 49).
• Qoryaweyn and the interior, 1895 to 1899. He set up the first Dervish centre at the well of Qoryaweyn, about 60 miles from Burao, and drew people from across the country (Jaamac Cumar Ciise 1974, p. vii).
• Burao, 1899. In August 1899 the Dervishes entered Burao, about 5,000 strong by the British estimate (War Office 1907, p. 49).
• Illig, 1905. On the coast of today's Mudug he signed a written peace treaty with Italy's envoy (Jardine, The Mad Mullah of Somaliland, 1923, pp. 156–159).
• Taleh, 1913 to 1920. He made Taleh, in today's Sool region, his capital. Masons from Yemen built it in stone, with thirteen forts inside one wall (Jardine 1923, pp. 212–213).
• Imi, 1920. After Taleh fell in February 1920 he moved south-west to Guano Imi, near the head of the Shabelle River, where he died (Jardine 1923, p. 307).

Where the name "Mad Mullah" came from

British writers called him "the Mad Mullah". Jaamac Cumar Ciise records the Somali account of where the name began (Jaamac Cumar Ciise 1974, p. viii).

When he landed at Berbera in 1895, a British port officer asked him to pay a landing tax. He answered: "Who took the tax from you when you landed here?" The interpreter told the officer, "He is a mad wadaad, leave him." The British name grew from that answer. Calankii uses his own name and title.

In his own words

He wrote letters in Arabic to the British. Two survive in English translation in the book of a British official, Douglas Jardine.

On 1 September 1899 he wrote (Jardine 1923, p. 43):

"You have oppressed our ancient religion without cause… If you want war, we accept it; but if you want peace, pay the fine."

In 1903, during the third British campaign, he wrote to "the English people" (Jardine 1923, p. 122):

"We have fought for a year. I wish to rule my own country and protect my own religion… I have moved my camp, but I have not run away."

His poems

The Sayid composed poems throughout the struggle. Jaamac Cumar Ciise's collection holds 120 of his poems from 1904 to 1920, and 16 related poems by others (Jaamac Cumar Ciise 1974, foreword). The poems cover every purpose of Somali verse: rousing, praise, insult, lament, boasting, warning and wisdom.

The historian Said S. Samatar showed that these poems were how the Sayid built and held his movement, in a society that did not yet write its language (Samatar, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism, Cambridge University Press, 1982).

A poem of mercy

The collection tells the story behind a short poem, a jiifto (Jaamac Cumar Ciise 1974, pp. 213–214). In a dry season at the Dervish camp at Qudhmis, a poor man's wife gave birth. He tied up a young camel that was about to calve, to slaughter it for her.

The Sayid heard the camel's cries and came out with a Quran in his hand. He cut the rope and freed the camel. Then he gave the man enough livestock to live on and to care for his wife. The poem opens:

Guulle Eebbahayow, geel nimaan dhaqin, faciis gacanta haw gelin.

In English, as a working translation: "O Lord who grants victory, into the hand of a man who does not tend camels, do not put their young." The poem goes on to praise the camel as the noblest of livestock.

How the poems were saved

Jaamac Cumar Ciise writes that after the Dervishes were defeated, the colonial government tried to wipe out their memory, and burned the books, letters and poems it found (Jaamac Cumar Ciise 1974, p. xii).

In 1955 Jaamac set out to collect what survived. He sold five camels to pay for the search, and studied the Salihiyya order so that the old Dervishes would trust him (same source, p. xiii). Between 1954 and 1974 he recorded the poems from about 25 named former Dervishes, most of them born and raised at the Dervish centre. He met them in Buuhoodle, Laascaanood, Taleex, Qardho, Iskushuban, Hargeysa and Muqdisho (same source, p. xiv).

From 4 January 1972 he dictated the poems, some of them first written in Arabic script, to Axmed Faarax Cali "Idaajaa", who wrote them down in the new Somali script. The work took two years and four months. The Ministry of Culture and Higher Education published the collection in Muqdisho in 1974 (same source, p. xiv).

Sources differ

• His birth. Jaamac Cumar Ciise gives 1856 (1974, p. viii). The British War Office described him only as "in the prime of life" in 1900 (War Office 1907, p. 48).
• His death. Jardine gives 23 November 1920, "probably" of influenza (Jardine 1923, p. 307). Jaamac Cumar Ciise gives 1921, at Imey on the upper Shabelle (1974, p. xii). The Library of Congress also gives 1921 (Library of Congress).
• His years in Mecca. Jaamac Cumar Ciise gives one journey of more than two years from about 1892. The War Office says he made "several pilgrimages" (War Office 1907, p. 48).

How he is remembered

Even his opponents saw what he meant to Somalis. Jardine, a British official who served against him, wrote that "in the hearts of his fellow countrymen… he will live for ever as a national hero" (Jardine 1923, p. 308). The historian Robert Hess called him "a forerunner of modern Somali nationalism" (Hess, Journal of African History, 1964).

Somalis also hold different memories of him. Hess records that many opposed him on religious grounds while sympathising with resistance, and the British records show Somalis fighting on both sides (Hess 1964; War Office 1907). Jaamac Cumar Ciise writes that the Somalis "split in two" in those years.

What he moved forward

He showed that Somalis from many places could stand together against foreign rule, under one command, for over twenty years. His poems became part of the Somali language itself. The movement he began in 1895 is the first link in the line that every generation since has carried.

Read the primary sources yourself

• Jaamac Cumar Ciise, Diiwaanka Gabayadii Sayid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan, Muqdisho, 1974, in Somali: full text.
• Douglas Jardine, The Mad Mullah of Somaliland, 1923, with his letters and the 1905 treaty: full text.
• War Office, Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, 1907: volume 1, volume 2.