APPENDICES 327 



of Sidi Omran and Sidi Ahmed er Rifi, who afterwards remained 

 his most valued counsellor, the son of Sidi Ben Ali fulfilled all 

 these conditions. 



At this time there were 38 zawias in Cyrenaica and Syrte and 

 18 in Tripolitania. Others were sown broadcast through Algeria, 

 Tunis and Fezzan, but in Morocco there were only five, probably 

 due to the opposition of another great religious order, the Moulai 

 Tayyeb. By way of the Western Sahara and Timbuctoo, where 

 they built a zawia, the Senussi ekhwan had penetrated to Senegal 

 where they must have found fertile soil for their doctrine, as in 

 1879 Senegalise pilgrims travelled 4,500 kilometres across Africa 

 to visit the Mahdi at Jaghabub and returned to their own coun- 

 try without troubling to continue the journey to Mecca. From 

 Air to Gonda, from Lake Chad to Wajanga, as well as among 

 the three millions in Wadai, it may be supposed that the Senussi 

 influence was preponderant. 



The Sultan of Wadai had been wont to entrust his north-bound 

 caravans to the care of his "brother and fellow-ruler," Sidi Ben 

 Ali, and immense gifts of slaves and ivory cemented the friendship 

 between the two potentates. 



In Egypt the influence of the confraternity was never very 

 strong, though, in 1882, there were 17 zawias within its borders, 

 exclusive of the mother house of Jaghabub. At the same date 

 there were zawias at Jedda, Mecca and Taif and at least nine 

 others in the Hejaz and Yemen. Duveyrier estimates the number 

 of brothers of the Order as anything between 1,500,000 and 3,- 

 000,000 at the time when the Mahdi's minority was ended. Each 

 of these ekhwan was a more or less active missionary agent and 

 each was ready, at the bidding of his superiors, to turn himself 

 into a soldier to fight the hated infidel. Thus the power given 

 into the hands of the young Mohammed el Mahdi was great. He 

 might have declared a Holy War and had as amazing and mete- 

 oric a career as the humble carpenter of Abba Island in the Nile, 

 but he preferred to strengthen his position at Jaghabub and to 

 carry on his father's policy of holding aloof from centres of 

 civilisation and avoiding all open rupture with European Powers. 

 Doubtless Sidi Ben Ali was responsible for the stubborn resist- 

 ance of Laghuat in Algeria in 1852 under Mohammed ibn Abed- 

 Allah, who had joined the confraternity on a pilgrimage to Mecca, 

 as well as for much of the oppositon to the French occupation of 

 Nigeria and Senegambia. It is possible that the Mahdi had in 



