Senussi

Senussi (Senüssiya), a Moslem confraternity of austere and fanatical doctrines, which has done much to unite the Mohammedan population of North Africa in hostility and resistance to foreign and infidel influences. Mohammed es-Senussi ('of the Senus mountains'), from Mostaganem in Algeria, became famous about 1830 in Fez for his sanctity. After performing the Haj to Mecca he founded a convent at Alexandria, but was excommunicated by the Sheikh ul-Islam and settled in the Libyan Desert, first near Bengazi in Barca, and then at Jerabub or Jaghub near the oasis of Siwa. Here he established a prosperous college, and here in 1860 he died, being succeeded by his son, who claimed to be the promised Mahdi (q.v.), though his manifestation was to be postponed till 1892. The confraternity has ramifications all over North Africa, especially in Tripoli, Fezzan, and Gadames. The French have come into contact with them; their agents have repeatedly stopped European travellers; and after the death in 1885 of the Egyptian Mahdi, from whom they had carefully held aloof, they acquired additional influence in the Soudan. See Wingate, Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan (1891); A. Silva White, From Sphinx to Oracle (1898).