Sanusiyya

   Muslim religious brotherhood (tariqa) inspired by the militant Wahaabi teachings of a return to the simple and pure way of life of early Islam. The Sanusiyya was strongly represented among the Arab and Berber peoples in Cyrenaica, Libya. Its founder, Sayyid Mohammed Ibn `Ali al-Sannusi, descended from a Berber family in Algeria, studied at several religious academies in North Africa, then went to Mecca, where he established tenets of his own and gathered his first disciples. He left Mecca in 1834 with a group of adepts and settled in the southern slopes of the Jbal al-Akhdar in Cyrenaica, from where his missionaries carried his words all over the desert into the villages of the oases and among the nomadic population. In the early 1900s, the Sanusiyya order called for a jihad against foreign colonization, against the Italians, the British, and the French. In 1951, after independence from Italy, Libya became a federal monarchy with Sayyid Mohammed Idris al-Sanusi, head of the Sanusiyya brotherhood, as its first king. He was overthrown by Mu`ammar Gadhafi in 1969.

   See also Kaoucen, Ag Mohamed Wau Teguida.