Resisting the empires: Abd al-Qadir, Imam Shamil and Omar al-Mukhtar (1830s-1931)

Part oneAbd al-Qadir in Algeria

In 1830 France landed at Algiers and took the city from its Ottoman governor. The conquest of the rest of the country took decades. In the early 1830s the tribes of western Algeria chose a young scholar and Sufi of the Qadiri order, Abd al-Qadir, as their emir. He was in his mid-twenties, the son of a respected shaykh, and had already made the Hajj.

Abd al-Qadir built a state in the interior with its own army, taxes, courts and workshops, and for fifteen years he fought the French, making and breaking truces as the war moved across the plains and mountains. The French answered with ever larger armies and with the burning of crops and villages. In 1847, with his support worn away, he surrendered on the promise that he could go to the Muslim east. France broke the promise and held him prisoner for five years.

Released in 1852, he settled at last in Damascus, where he taught and wrote. In 1860, when a riot broke out against the Christians of the city, he and his men sheltered thousands of them in his own house and escorted others to safety. Governments in Europe that had fought him sent him honours. He died in Damascus in 1883.

Part twoImam Shamil in the Caucasus

After Russia took the Caucasus from Iran in the 1810s and 1820s, the mountain peoples of Dagestan and Chechnya rose against it. Their leaders came from the Naqshbandi Sufi order, and the war became known as the Murid War, after the Sufi word for a disciple. The first imam, Ghazi Muhammad, was killed in 1832 and the second in 1834. The third, Shamil, an Avar from the village of Gimry, led the struggle for twenty-five years.

Shamil set up an imamate in the mountains, ruled by the Sharia, with its own treasury and courts. He used the forests and gorges as his weapons. At Akhulgo in 1839 the Russians besieged him on a mountain fort for nearly three months, and he escaped down the cliffs at night with his family. In 1845 a great Russian army marched on his stronghold at Dargo. Shamil burned the town before they arrived and cut them off in the forest, and the Russians lost thousands of men. He was said to be strict with himself as well as others. When his own mother took a bribe from the Russians, he ordered the legal punishment and then took most of the lashes on himself.

In the end the Russians cut down the forests that hid his fighters and surrounded the mountains with forts. In August 1859, with only a few dozen men left at the village of Gunib, Shamil surrendered. He lived in Russia as an honoured prisoner, and in 1869 he was allowed to make the Hajj. In Makkah he met Abd al-Qadir, the other great fighter of his age. Shamil died in Madinah in 1871 and is buried in al-Baqi.

Part threeOmar al-Mukhtar in Libya

In 1911 Italy invaded Ottoman Libya. The Ottomans made peace in 1912 and withdrew, but the Sanusi order, a Sufi movement that had built centres of learning among the desert tribes, fought on. Its leader, Ahmed Sharif al-Sanusi, declared that they would not give up their land, "not even the width of a horse's back". One of his finest pupils was Omar al-Mukhtar, a teacher of the Quran in the Sanusi lodges.

From the 1920s, after Ahmed Sharif had left for exile, Omar al-Mukhtar led the resistance in the Green Mountain of eastern Libya. He was already in his sixties. His fighters, a few thousand men on horseback with rifles, fought hundreds of clashes a year against an army with tanks and aircraft. Italy answered by driving the people of the region into camps and fencing off the Egyptian border.

In September 1931 he was wounded and captured. Offered terms if he would end the struggle, he refused. He said he would go on until he reached one of two things, freedom or victory, and that if his hands were not tied he would fight them with his bare hands, old as he was. He was put to death a few days later, at about seventy-three. He is remembered across the Muslim world as the Lion of the Desert.

From the Quran

فَلَمَّا فَصَلَ طَالُوتُ بِٱلْجُنُودِ قَالَ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ مُبْتَلِيكُم بِنَهَرٍ فَمَن شَرِبَ مِنْهُ فَلَيْسَ مِنِّى وَمَن لَّمْ يَطْعَمْهُ فَإِنَّهُۥ مِنِّىٓ إِلَّا مَنِ ٱغْتَرَفَ غُرْفَةًۢ بِيَدِهِۦ ۚ فَشَرِبُوا۟ مِنْهُ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا مِّنْهُمْ ۚ فَلَمَّا جَاوَزَهُۥ هُوَ وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ مَعَهُۥ قَالُوا۟ لَا طَاقَةَ لَنَا ٱلْيَوْمَ بِجَالُوتَ وَجُنُودِهِۦ ۚ قَالَ ٱلَّذِينَ يَظُنُّونَ أَنَّهُم مُّلَـٰقُوا۟ ٱللَّهِ كَم مِّن فِئَةٍ قَلِيلَةٍ غَلَبَتْ فِئَةً كَثِيرَةًۢ بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ مَعَ ٱلصَّـٰبِرِينَ ۝٢٤٩ وَلَمَّا بَرَزُوا۟ لِجَالُوتَ وَجُنُودِهِۦ قَالُوا۟ رَبَّنَآ أَفْرِغْ عَلَيْنَا صَبْرًا وَثَبِّتْ أَقْدَامَنَا وَٱنصُرْنَا عَلَى ٱلْقَوْمِ ٱلْكَـٰفِرِينَ ۝٢٥٠

²⁴⁹When Saul marched forth with his army, he cautioned: “Allah will test you with a river. So whoever drinks ˹his fill˺ from it is not with me, and whoever does not taste it—except a sip from the hollow of his hands—is definitely with me.” They all drank ˹their fill˺ except for a few! When he and the ˹remaining˺ faithful with him crossed the river, they said, “Now we are no match for Goliath and his warriors.” But those ˹believers˺ who were certain they would meet Allah reasoned, “How many times has a small force vanquished a mighty army by the Will of Allah! And Allah is ˹always˺ with the steadfast.” ²⁵⁰When they advanced to face Goliath and his warriors, they prayed, “Our Lord! Shower us with perseverance, make our steps firm, and give us victory over the disbelieving people.”

"We will not give up our land, not even the width of a horse's back."

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Hikma HistoryHow Imam Shamil (Almost) Defeated Russia (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Algiers
• Mascara
• Damascus
• Gimry
• Akhulgo
• Dargo
• Gunib
• Benghazi
• the Green Mountain
• Kufra

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter