viii - THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA 
to himself a body of the South-Eastern tribesmen, and made the 
neighbourhood of Mudug a base for his campaign (mainly directed 
against Abyssinia), and to have come into conflict with our pro- 
tected tribes. Although called mad, he seems to me to have 
been part of the propaganda in which Sufi and other mullahs 
like him were engaged. Such mullahs have at intervals arisen 
in South-Eastern Ogddén in the past, and their recrudescence 
may always be expected. In 1893, in my two journeys to the 
Webbe, I found this Jihad-preaching going on briskly, and also 
the Abyssinian expeditions going into Ogddén. In 1897, when 
at Harar, I saw several mule-loads of rusty rifles being brought 
in prior to being returned to store, said to have been the 
property of Abyssinian soldiers killed in fights with the Gallas 
and Somalis, and I also passed several Somali prisoners of war 
being marched up. 
At the end of 1900 my brother, passing through Aden, was 
given a commission to raise, with the help of twenty British 
officers and some Indian drill-instructors, a Somali levy of some 
one thousand five hundred men—infantry, mounted infantry, and 
camel corps—against Mahommed Abdulla. 
We are indebted to Captain M‘Neill, in his book In Pursuit 
of the Mad Mullah, for a compact account of contemporary 
Somali history during 1901, and I shall quote freely from that 
work, 
On Ist January 1901 the force did not exist, but on the 
22nd of May it started from Burao to cross the Waterless Haud 
plateau and attack the Mullah. My brother had raised it in 
little over four months, out of Somalis who, previous to this, 
had not the slightest idea of military life or work, or anything 
connected with it, who were, a few months before, rejoicing in 
the acquisition of a spear or bargaining for the possession of an 
oryx-hide shield. I use Captain M‘Neill’s words. 
By 31st May 1901 the little force was halted at Sanala, and 
having captured three thousand five hundred camels and a quantity 
of other stock, a zeriba was formed to shelter these under the 
command of Captain M‘Neill, with three officers and three 
hundred and seventy Somali riflemen and a few spearmen. At 
the same time, Colonel Swayne went south-east with the rest of 
his troops formed into a flying column, to look for the Mullah, 
or at any rate get across his line of retreat, should he try to 
recover all this stock by an attack on Sanala. 
No sooner had this flying column left Sanala than on the 
