INTRODUCTION xv 



or more the relations between the Senusi sect and the 

 central Sudan. But after the departure of the Wadai 

 prince the relations between JNIuhammad bin Ali bin as- 

 Sanusi and the authorities of Mecca became more and 

 more difficult; and though the Senusi leader founded 

 monasteries in western Arabia he thought it better to 

 leave that land of orthodoxy and return to Africa. 



He settled first — about 1844 — near Derna in Cyre- 

 naica.* This region, once in far-back, pre-historic times 

 a huge island, had, together with ^lorocco, become the 

 only portions of North Africa where Islamic develop- 

 ments were unfettered. Yet even here, in the next 

 decade Turkish enquiries (after the anxiety of the 

 Crimean War was over) irked the first Senusi; so that in 

 1855 he moved from the vicinity of Derna to Jaghabub, 

 an oasis on the undefined borderland between Egypt and 

 the Tripolitan Pashalik. Hither he brought his two sons, 

 bom in 1843 and 1845. They were named Muhammad 

 ash-Sharif and Muhammad al Mahdi, and according to 

 most authorities jMuhammad ash- Sharif was the elder. 

 Mrs. Forbes, no doubt on good authority, reverses this 

 order and puts forward the Second Senusi — liluhammad 

 al Mahdi — as the elder and all along the rightful heir. 



The story related to me and preserved in several books 

 is that one day at Jaghabub, not long before his death in 

 1859, the First Senusi put his young sons to the following 

 test of faith. He pointed out a tall palm tree near the 

 mosque and ordered them to chmb up it and then, putting 

 their faith in God, to leap off it to the ground. ^luhammad 

 ash- Sharif shrank from the test; his younger brother had 

 faith, climbed up the tree to near the fronds, and then 

 dropped to the ground and was not hurt. Him, there- 

 fore, his father designated as his eventual successor. 



Whether or not this was a true story and whether or 



* He is said to have paid another visit to Mecca in 1852. 



