Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan
1856 – 1920 Somali religious leader, anti-colonial resistance leader
Somali religious and nationalist leader who led the Dervish resistance against British, Italian, and Ethiopian forces for two decades.
- Religion
- Sunni Muslim, Salihiyya Sufi order
- Affiliations
- Dervish movement
Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan led a religious and nationalist movement that fought colonial partition of the Somali lands for some twenty years, building the fortified Dervish state. British colonial writers derided him as the Mad Mullah, but Somalis remember him as a founding figure of national resistance and a poet. His forces held out against repeated expeditions until the British used aerial bombardment in 1920 to break the Dervish strongholds. He died shortly after the movement's collapse.
In the timeline
- 1899 Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan launches the Dervish revolt leader of the revolt
- 1913 The Dervishes build the fortresses at Taleh the Dervish leader
- 1920 British aerial bombardment ends the Dervish State the defeated leader