| Mohammed Bin Abdullah |
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Mullah bin Abdullah acquired great influence in the Dolbahanta country. His followers credited him with supernatural powers. At first peaceful, he began attacking neighbouring tribes friendly to the British, and declared himself a Mahdi . After heavy fighting in 1900 and 1901 , British forces drove Mullah bin Abdullah and his followers into Italian Somaliland . By 1903 , however, he was a problem again. With the cooperation of the Italians and Ethiopians , and after much fighting, including one battle on 19 January 1904 in the Nogal country where the dervishes suffered over 1,000 men killed, he was once again driven out of the colony. The Italians seemed to solve the problem through agreement with him. In 1909 Mullah bin Abdullah was once again raiding tribes friendly to the British. The British withdrew from the interior of the colony in 1910 , confining their control to coastal towns. After a while the British decided to retake the interior, and launched an offensive in the summer of 1914 . Unfortunately, World War I broke out just as it was getting underway. Hastings Ismay , later Lord Ismay and Winston Churchill 's military advisor during World War II , was a staff officer during the campaign. Adrian Carton De Wiart lost an eye storming a rebel fort. The dervishes were severely handled during the campaign, but the need for troops in other theatres of the war caused a withdrawal, and Mullah bin Abdullah's forces regained control of most of the colony. After the war the British decided to put an end to this problem. Using ground troops and aircraft, they routed dervish forces and drove Mullah bin Abdullah into Ethiopia in 1920 . He died there in January 1921 . After this time the colony remained quiet, except for a brief Italian Occupation in World War II. Mullah bin Abdulla should be seen as one in a long line of Moslem zealots who revolted against either a foreign "infidel" presence, or a perceived corruption in contemporary Islam. |
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