The Grand Sanusi's son, Muhammad, had succeeded…

The Grand Sanusi's son, Muhammad, had succeeded him as the order's leader.

Because of his forceful personality and his outstanding organizational talents, Muhammad has brought the order to the peak of its influence and is recognized as the Mahdi.

In 1895 the Mahdi moves the order's headquarters six hundred and fifty kilometers south from Al Jaghbub to the oasis of Al Kufrah.

Here he can better supervise missionary activities that were threatened by the advance of French colonialism in the Sudan, which he views in religious terms as Christian intervention into Muslim territory.

Although the order has never used force in its missionary activities, the Mahdi proclaims a holy war (jihad) to resist French inroads and brings the Sanusis into confrontation for the first time with a European power.

When the Mahdi dies in 1902, he will leave one hundred and forty-six lodges in Africa and Arabia and will have brought virtually all the Bedouin of Cyrenaica under the order's influence.

Under the aegis of the order, the tribes of Cyrenaica owe loyalty to a single leader, despite their otherwise extremely divisive rivalries and feuds.

Thus a loose umbrella organization forges these otherwise disparate elements into a common unit bound by sentiment and loyalty.