page_title: Mohammed Abdullah Hassan
section_title: Consolidation
hierarchical_section_title: Mohammed Abdullah Hassan / Consolidation
caption_attribution_description: English: Ruins of Castle, Taleh Khatumo state, Somalia
context_page_description: Sayid Mohamed Abdullah Hassan was a Somali religious and patriotic leader. He established the Dervish movement in Somalia that fought a 20-year war against the British, Italian, and Ethiopian empires.
context_section_description: During 1910–1914, the dervish capital moved from Illig to Taleh in the heart of Nugal where the dervish built three garrison forts of massive stone work and a number of houses. He built a luxurious palace for himself and kept new guards drawn from outcast clans. By 1913, the dervish dominated the entire hinterland of the Somali peninsula building forts at Jildali and Mirashi, and at Werder in the Ogaden and Beledweyne in southern Somalia. On 9 August 1913, at the Battle of Dul Madoba, a Dervish force raided the Dolbahanta clan and killed or wounded 57 members of the 110-man Somaliland Camel Constabulary. The dead included the British officer who commanded the constabulary, Colonel Richard Corfield.  Hassan memorialized this action in his poem simply entitled "The Death of Richard Corfield". In the same year, fourteen Dervishs infiltrated Berbera and fired few shots on its citizens fleeing, nonetheless causing panic. In 1914, the Somaliland Camel Corps was founded as an expanded and improved version of the constabulary.
  A British force was gathering against the Dervishes when they were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Among the British officers deployed was Adrian Carton de Wiart (later Lieutenant General), who lost an eye during the campaign, and Hastings Ismay, a staff officer who was later Winston Churchill's chief military adviser.
  By 1919, despite the British having built large stone forts to guard the passes to the hills, Hassan and his armed bands were at large, robbing and killing. The vision of Sayyid and his followers in Jubba was similar to that of people in Sudan and Egypt when the Ottoman Sultanate was retreating from those other Northeast African territories.
caption: Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's fort in Taleex.
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