Sayyid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan  Sayyid Maxamed Cabdulle
Xasan, also spelled Mohammed Abdullah Hassan   (born April 7,
1864, Dulbahante area, British Somaliland [now Doli Bahanta,
Somalia]—died Dec. 21, 1920, Imi, Ethiopia), Somali religious
and nationalist leader (called the “Mad Mullah” by the British)
who for 20 years led armed resistance to the British, Italian,
and Ethiopian colonial forces in Somaliland. Because of his
active resistance to the British and his vision of a Somalia
united in a Muslim brotherhood transcending clan divisions,
Sayyid Maxamed is seen as a forerunner of modern Somali
nationalism. He also is revered for his skill as an oral poet.
Maxamed’s father belonged to a clan from the Ogaden region of
Ethiopia, but he was raised among his mother’s Dulbahante clan.
At a young age he showed great learning in the Qurʾān, and,
during a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1894, he joined the Ṣaliḥīyah, a
militant, reformist, and puritanical Ṣūfī order. ... (150 of 313
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