A Box of Sand

by Charles Stephenson

  The Senussi (also transliterated into English as Sanusiya, Sanusiyyah, Sanusi and Sanussi) was founded by Muhammad bin Ali al-Senusi (1787-1859) in 1837 as a missionary effort among the Bedouin people of Cyrenaica. Initially its rationale was to restore the original purity of Islam and to guide adherents towards a better understanding of it, and to combating alien beliefs and practices. Grounded in the Maliki school of religious law (one of the four schools of religious law within Sunni Islam) it soon advanced towards being a political movement, though it would be a misrepresentation to consider it fanatical or reactionary. According to Muhammad Khalil the movement did not advocate violence or aggression unless provoked and ‘professedly and openly declared that its foremost weapons were ‘guidance and persuasion.’21 This began to change at the turn of the century when Senussi influence reached the southern edge of the Sahara and began to clash with French colonial expansionism. A new leader also arose in 1902 when the grandson of Muhammad bin Ali al-Senusi inherited the title. Under Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi the Senussi became more politically engaged and started to organise military resistance, principally amongst the Bedouin peoples, against French encroachment from the south.

  The ideas and practices of the Senussi, who founded centres of both educational and economic importance, gained traction with the inhabitants of the Ottoman vilayet to such an extent that by the time of the Italian invasion the territories they effectively administered, spiritually and materially, were almost independent of Ottoman governance. The leaders of the Senussi were regarded not just as religious teachers but as leaders who were able to exert both political and religious influence over the various tribes and, crucially, command their respect and allegiance. Knut S Vikør argues that the movement could be considered a brotherhood, which welded the ethnic identity of the Saharan Bedouin and neighbouring peoples into something resembling a proto-nationalist movement.22

  One of the few Europeans to come into contact with them was Hanns Vischer, the Swiss-born British colonial administrator and explorer. He became famous for crossing the Sahara from north to south, from Tripoli to Lake Chad, on horseback in 1906. Vischer published an account of his journey in 1910 and made several references to the hospitality he had received from the Senussi, and how they had protected his caravan from brigands. His experiences led him to entertain respect for them and their ways:

  I have seen the hungry fed and the stranger entertained, and have myself enjoyed the hospitality and assistance enjoined by the laws of the Koran. My own experiences among the Senussi lead me to respect them as men, and to like them as true friends, whose good faith helped me more than anything else to accomplish my journey in spite of all difficulties.23

  Rather presciently he did note: ‘Should, however, the Senussi decide to fight the Christians whose advance into the countries once ruled wholly by Islam they naturally deplore, their number, organisation, and armament would make them a formidable enemy.’24

  They remained willing to acknowledge the Ottoman Sultan as their ruler, and Caliph, provided that his government did not in any way encroach upon their autonomy. This nominal allegiance was acknowledged by the Ottoman authorities, who accorded recognition to the Senussi and maintained cordial relations with them. Indeed, as has been pointed out, Ottoman representation in the vilayet was weak and enfeebled and, in reality, largely ineffectual, or, as Rosita Forbes put it: ‘When the Italians landed in Libya in 1911, there existed a kingdom within a kingdom and the Turks were only masters in name.’25

  The population that the Senussi sought, and were able, to unite at least to some degree, was around 1.5 million strong and composed mainly of Arab tribes, with a smaller proportion of Arab-Berber and non-Arab tribes.26 Among the non-Arab grouping were the Berber tribes, many of whom had migrated from Algeria and Morocco, and the nomadic Tuareg, the latter being of Berber origin and living mainly in the south-west of Fezzan. There were also sub-Saharan Africans who had in many cases intermarried with both Arabs and Berbers. Those Arab tribes that lived mainly in the desert, and were usually nomadic or semi-nomadic, were collectively categorised as Bedouin.27 There were also a number of Ottoman citizens of different backgrounds numbering around 50,000 mainly from Anatolia, Armenia and Albania. These were for the most part concentrated in urban, or semi-urban, areas and some at least were Christians. Also in the towns were other Christians from Spain and Malta totalling about 17,000, as well as around 20,000 Jews. These latter groups were, in the main, in areas occupied by Italy and in any event would have been immune to calls for resistance based on religious solidarity.

  When Italy invaded Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi (Sidi Ahmed) was at Kufra (Kufara) in Cyrenaica. Kufra is a group of large oases located some 1500 kilometres south of Benghazi and spread over a roughly 200 kilometre long, vaguely crescent shaped, area. Situated in an extremely remote area it had only been described by one European, the German explorer Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs who had visited it in 1878-9.28 It was however a waypoint on an important trade and travelling route and, since the late nineteenth century, had been the main centre of the Senussi movement, hence the presence of the leader. Lisa Anderson points out that it may have been Enver Bey who personally convinced Ahmad al-Sharif to declare a jihad against the Italians.29 However he was not a dictator and was obliged to call a meeting of the tribal chiefs and adherents and attempt to convince them to join in such a struggle. Given the remoteness of Kufra and the vastness of the area concerned, this council of war, as it may perhaps be called, did not convene until January 1912. According to Abdul-mola al-Horeir, when al-Sharif addressed it he encountered some reluctance as regards fighting, with many at the meeting arguing that the Italians were too powerful an enemy.30 However, he rallied them by sheer force of personality it seems, and reinforcing his argument with apposite Quaranic quotations reiterated that jihad was a duty that had to be carried out against the invaders despite their superior power. He concluded his argument by stating that he would, if necessary, fight the Italians alone, armed only with his staff. This swung the attendees behind him, and on 23 January 1912 jihad was declared and al-Sharif effectively became the leader of the resistance movement. The call was swiftly answered:

  In Cyrenaica […] a large number of tribal chiefs and tribesmen, roused by the call, hastened to rally around the Sanusi flag. In the Fezzan, the call to jihad […] met a similarly favourable response. And in Tripolitania, steps were taken for the co-ordination of Arab resistance […]31

  Even before any potential manpower deficiency was solved by the religious mobilisation of the population against the invaders, the Ottoman officers were putting into practice what Uyar and Erickson call their ‘de facto strategic plan; they sought to wage a campaign of attritional unconventional warfare.’32 To this end the vilayet was divided into operational areas, with Tripoli and Benghazi being the main ones. In these areas mission oriented units under the command and control of regular officers were formed from the tribesmen, de facto if not yet de jure mujahedin, leavened with regular soldiers and members of the gendarmerie.

  Ottoman strategy was then dictated by a mix of Italian predominance at sea, the neutrality of the Great Powers, and Italian conventional military strength in the enclaves it held. On the other hand Italian strategy was, militarily, constrained by its inability to come to grips with the main body of the enemy, and, politically, by the need to maintain the neutrality of the Great Powers. Not offending one or other of these whilst bringing Italian strength to bear at some vital point, and thus forcing the Ottoman government to come to terms, was a conundrum that Giolitti and San Giuliano pondered. Their military and naval advisers had applied their minds to it even before the Battle of Tripoli. Pollio had raised the issue in a letter to his naval opposite number, Admiral Carlo Rocca Rey, on 19 October 1911.

  […] I think it might be useful for us in the current war to occupy some part of the Ottoman Empire that will compel them to accept peace. Unfortunately we do not have a free hand and so we cannot act, for ex
ample, on the west-coast of the Balkan peninsula, or, by forcing the Dardanelles, go to Constantinople […] But we can […] take some island, as a bargaining counter at least. Strategically the island of Rhodes would be most valuable, and by taking it we would avoid the pitfalls of acting in the Cyclades Islands or Sporades.33

  There would certainly have been pitfalls in acting in the Cyclades; they had been part of the Kingdom of Greece since 1832. Similar considerations applied to the Sporades, or at least the Northern Sporades as they were often called at that time. The Southern Sporades, or Dodecanese as they are now known, included Rhodes and had been Ottoman territory since 1522. Attention was though to turn to them again in 1912.

  That the politicians were highly sensitive to the dangers of, even inadvertently, causing an international incident whilst conducting operations outside the main theatre had been exemplified in the Red Sea. The light cruiser Puglia, under Capitano di Fregata Pio Lobetti Bodoni, had been deployed there on 2 August 1911, and on the 5 November (some sources say 3 November) she discovered the Ottoman gunboat Alish hiding at the (now Jordanian) port of Aqaba (Akaba) and sank her by gunfire. This was hardly a major engagement; the Ottoman vessel was a wooden steamer armed with two 37 mm guns. The Puglia returned on 19 November and, in company with the older Calabria, bombarded the port and ancient castle. Despite the paucity and weakness of any potential targets, the navy was ordered to suspend all operations in the Red Sea from 20 November. This was because on 11 November the British vessel RMS Medina had left Portsmouth for Calcutta. Though the vessel had initially been escorted from the harbour by eleven Dreadnought battleships, the majority of the journey was completed under the protection of four armoured cruisers; Argyll, Natal, Cochrane and Defence. The route of these five ships was via Port Said, Suez, and Aden, which took them through the war zone. Aboard Medina were King George V and Queen Mary, whilst the whole was under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Colin Keppel. The King Emperor and his consort were en-route to the 1911 Delhi Durbar, held in December to commemorate their coronation as Emperor and Empress of India. Not until the division had cleared any potential scenes of action, it arrived at Aden on 27 November, did Italian activity resume. On 30 November the Yemeni port of Shaykh Sa’id (Sheikh Said, Cheikh Saïd) the defensive guns of which controlled the southern exit of the Red Sea, was bombarded as was Mocha. On 1 December Khawkah was destroyed and twenty people killed, whilst Mocha, Dhubab, and Yakhtul were again bombarded on 3 December.

  In any event, whilst grand strategy was the province of the politicians and military and naval leadership, the men on the ground in the main theatre, Tripoli, had designs of their own to accomplish. These included the recovery of the ground lost after the Battle of Tripoli, and expansion beyond. Frugoni lost no time in utilising the I Special Army Corps attempting the former, and on 6 November an assault, directed by Lieutenant General Conte Felice De Chaurand de Saint Eustache, was made by the 5th Brigade from the eastern trenches with the aim of retaking Fort Hamidije. According to Italian sources, both official and unofficial, this was accomplished without effort and resulted in great losses. As Irace related it: ‘The resistance of the Turks and Arabs stationed there in considerable force was completely futile; and equally futile were their desperate attempts to make a counter-attack with both infantry and artillery, in the endeavour to drive back the Italian brigade. They were repulsed and routed with heavy loss.’34

  However, those who were with the Ottoman forces told a slightly different tale. According to the journalist Sir Ernest Nathaniel Bennett, a ‘disaster’ overtook the 93rd Infantry Regiment, elements of which attempted a flanking movement from the sea.35 This amphibious approach, covered by the guns of the ships, saw the troops landed on a beach in the vicinity of Shara Shatt. This move had been foreseen and a large number of Arab fighters deployed to counter it. Some 200 Italians managed to disembark, but they were immediately attacked and very few escaped alive. Five were, however, taken prisoner, and it was from these and Ottoman reports that Bennett got the story. Nevertheless, no matter how many setbacks the Ottoman forces were able to inflict upon the Italian army, they could not resist their attacks backed as they were by superior artillery and naval gunfire.

  Fort Hamidije was accordingly retaken by 7 November, and the next day more ground was recovered around the Tombs of the Qaramanli. This high ground, which included a large Arab graveyard, an ancient tomb containing the remains of a holy man, and two domed buildings accommodating the Sarcophagi of the Qaramanli, lies on the flank of any advance towards Fort Hamidije. Heavy rain, ‘which converted the trenches and rifle-pits into pools, and made the movement of guns or ammunition-carts almost impossible,’ then forced a suspension of offensive operations for over a fortnight. According to one eyewitness, The Times correspondent, William McClure:

  Lakes formed in the desert and remained all through the winter, while the main torrents burst through the trenches at Bumeliana, drowning one soldier, seriously damaging the waterworks, and pouring down the Bumeliana road till the streets of Tripoli were a foot deep in swift-running water.36

  It was only on 26 November that conditions had moderated enough for operations to be resumed. The main direction of this attack was to be easterly within the oasis. The assault was to be made by de Chaurand’s 3rd Division and the objectives were Fort Sidi Messri in the south, al-Hani in the centre, and Shara Shatt next to the coast. Fort Sidi Messri was to be assaulted by the 6th Brigade (23rd and 52nd Regiments) under Major General Conte Saverio Nasalli Rocca, reinforced with the 50th Regiment from the 4th Division, which had been held back from Cyrenaica. Supported by four batteries of artillery this force was to advance along the southern limits of the oasis, with its right flank protected by cavalry. The thrust on Shara Shatt was to be made by the 5th Brigade (18th and 93rd Regiments), whilst the centre was to be assaulted by an ad hoc force consisting of the Fenestrelle battalion of Alpini, the 11th Bersaglieri Regiment, and two Grenadier battalions. The whole operation was supported by artillery and the naval guns of the ‘Training Division.’

  In order to shield the attack the 1st Division kept a defensive watch on the southern side of the oasis in case any substantial attempt at reinforcement was made by the Ottomans. As an extra precaution a demonstration was made to the south, with a force estimated to be in the region of 5,000 strong. Moving in two columns the Italians advanced only about a kilometre and their behaviour puzzled observers. George Frederick Abbott later reported what had transpired: ‘[…] the Italians crept on, digging trenches at every one hundred metres - admirable tactics for defence, but for an advance purely imbecile. Finally, as the sun was setting, they began to beat a retreat.’37 Their tactics, however apparently imbecilic, had succeeded inasmuch as they had fully engaged the attention of the Ottoman forces in the desert and at Ain Zara. This prevented any reinforcement of the forces in the oasis where, despite their overwhelming superiority, it was slow going for the Italians. The difficulties of the terrain made the combat akin to fighting in a built up area, and many of the Ottoman strongpoints had to be demolished with explosives. However by about 16:00 hours most of the ground that had been vacated following the Battle of Tripoli had been retaken and the troops were consolidating their positions. Their casualties had been comparatively light, somewhere around 120-160 officers and men killed and wounded dependent upon source, but the operation gave rise to another controversy.

  Whilst searching the ground that they had retreated from on 23 October the Italian troops made a grisly find. The journalist William Kidston McClure, who was on the Italian side of the lines, related what he heard and what he saw.

  Three bodies were discovered first, in a garden a little to the north-west of El Hani, three crucified and mutilated bodies. […] On the evening of [27 November], about fifty more bodies were discovered, indescribably mutilated, and some of them bearing obvious traces of torture. Early on the morning of 28 November, I visited an Arab house and garden, which had been used as a posto di medicazione (adva
nce field hospital) by the 2nd battalion of the 11th Bersagheri, up to and during the fight of October 23. In the house there were five bodies, in the garden nine, and in a hollow at the back of the house, beside a well, there was a ghastly heap of twenty-seven bodies. […] No object would be served by detailing the record of human savagery displayed by those dreadful remains, the crucifixion, torture, and mutilation that had been practised upon living and dead. One case will suffice as an illustration, the case of a body which was identified by means of a pouch as that of a stretcher-bearer attached to the 6th Company of the Bersaglieri. His feet were crossed and his arms extended: he had clearly been crucified. There were holes in his feet, but his hands had been chopped off. His eyeballs appeared to have been threaded laterally by thick, rough palm-twine, and his eyelids were stitched in such a way as to keep his eyes open. In addition he had been shamefully mutilated.38

  There were other foreign correspondents that were brought to witness these terrible scenes and who subsequently reported them to the wider world. One of these was Gaston Chérau (Leroux), author of Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (translated into English as The Phantom of the Opera in 1911), correspondent for Le Matin. His report appeared in the 30 November edition of the paper under the sub-heading Horribles tortures infligées par les Arabes aux bersagliers prisonniers ou blesses (Horrible tortures inflicted by the Arabs on the Bersaglieri prisoners and wounded), and was extremely graphic:

  I was present at the interment of the mortal remains of many Italian soldiers who had fallen prisoners into the hands of the Turks and Arabs, and been by them barbarously massacred. These Bersaglieri who fell on October 23 died not merely as heroes, but also as martyrs. I cannot find words to express the horror which I felt to-day, when we discovered these luckless remains in an abandoned graveyard […]