Senusiyya in the context of "Eighth Army (United Kingdom)"

The Scramble for Africa was the invasion, conquest, and colonisation of most of Africa by seven Western European powers driven by the Second Industrial Revolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century in the era of "New Imperialism". Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom were the contending powers.

In 1870, 10% of the continent was formally under European control. By 1914, this figure had risen to almost 90%; the only states retaining sovereignty were Liberia, Ethiopia, Egba, Aussa, Senusiyya, Mbunda, Ogaden/Haud, the Dervish State, the Darfur Sultanate, and the Ovambo kingdoms, most of which were later conquered.

Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (c. 1942 – 20 October 2011) was a Libyan military officer, revolutionary, politician, and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until his overthrow by Libyan rebel forces in 2011 during the first Libyan civil war. He came to power through a military coup, first becoming Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977, Secretary General of the General People's Congress from 1977 to 1979, and then the Brotherly Leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1979 to 2011. Initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Gaddafi later ruled according to his own Third International Theory.

Born near Sirte, Italian Libya, to a poor Bedouin Arab family, Gaddafi became an Arab nationalist while at school in Sabha, later enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. He founded a revolutionary group known as the Free Officers movement which deposed the Western-backed Senussi monarchy of Idris in a 1969 coup. Gaddafi converted Libya into a republic governed by his Revolutionary Command Council. Ruling by decree, he deported Libya's Italian population and ejected its Western military bases. He strengthened ties to Arab nationalist governments and unsuccessfully advocated pan-Arab political union. An Islamic modernist, he introduced sharia as the basis for the legal system and promoted Islamic socialism. He nationalized the oil industry and used the increasing state revenues to bolster the military, fund foreign revolutionaries, and implement social programs emphasizing housebuilding, healthcare and education projects. In 1973, he initiated a "Popular Revolution" with the formation of Basic People's Congresses, presented as a system of direct democracy, but retained personal control over major decisions. He outlined his Third International Theory that year in The Green Book.

Sidi Barrani (Arabic: سيدي براني  pronounced [ˈsiːdi bɑɾˈɾɑːni]) is a town in Egypt, near the Mediterranean Sea, about 95 km (59 mi) east of the Egypt–Libya border, and around 240 km (150 mi) from Tobruk, Libya.

Named after Sidi es-Saadi el Barrani, a Senussi sheikh who was a head of its Zawiya, the village is mainly a Bedouin community. It has food, gasoline outlets and one small hotel, but virtually no tourist activity or visited historical curiosities. It is the site of an Egyptian Air Force base.

The earliest presence of Islam in Chad can be traced back to Uqba ibn Nafi, whose descendants can be found settled in the Lake Chad region to this day. By the time Arab migrants began arriving from the east in the fourteenth century in sizeable numbers, the creed was already well established. Islamization in Chad was gradual, the effect of the slow spread of Islamic civilization beyond its political frontiers. Among Chadian Muslims, 48% professed to be Sunni, 21% Shia, 23% just Muslim and 4% Other.

Islam in Chad was not influenced much by the great mystical movements of the Islamic Middle Ages, nor the fundamentalist upheavals that affected other countries. Consistent contact with West African Muslim traders and pilgrims may be the reason Chadian Muslims identify with the Tijaniyya order. Similarly, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Senusiyya brotherhood was founded in Libya, which benefited from economic and political influence in the Lake Chad Basin around 1900. An Islamic revival movement, feared by some French, led by Sanusi fanatics, Chadian adherents, limited to the Awlad Sulayman Arabs and the Toubou of eastern Tibesti, have never been numerous.

The Libyan genocide, also known in Libya as Shar (Arabic: شر, lit. 'Evil'), was the genocide of Libyan Arabs and the systematic destruction of Libyan culture during and after the Second Italo-Senussi War between 1929 and 1934. During this period, between 20,000 and 100,000 Libyans were killed by Italian colonial authorities under Benito Mussolini. Near 50% of the population of Cyrenaica was deported and interned in concentration camps, resulting in a population decline down to 142,000 from an initial 225,000.

This period was marked by a brutal campaign characterized by widespread major Italian war crimes, including ethnic cleansing, mass killings, forced displacement, forced death marches, settler colonialism, the use of chemical weapons, the use of concentration camps, mass executions of civilians and refusing to take prisoners of war and instead executing surrendering combatants. The indigenous population, particularly the nomadic Bedouin tribes, faced extreme violence and suppression in an attempt to quell Senussi resistance to colonial rule, whose population was reduced by half.

The modus vivendi of Acroma was a pair of agreements signed by the Sanūsī Order with Britain and Italy on 16 April 1917 at Acroma (ʿAkrama).

The negotiations that led to the modus vivendi were begun by Idrīs al-Sanūsī soon after he succeeded his uncle at the head of the order in 1917. His cousin, Aḥmad al-Sharīf al-Sanūsī, had instigated an unsuccessful war with Britain with Ottoman and German assistance at the height of the First World War. Idrīs wished to enter into negotiations with Britain, but the British refused to negotiate unless their wartime ally, Italy, was included in the talks. Peace with Italy was more than al-Sharīf could bear and he left Libya for the Ottoman Empire when negotiations were opened.