order in the urban cities and the interior where he found major success. The dervish entity created in 1895 consisted of a haroun (i.e. Darawiish government), the Darawiish king Diiriye Guure and its emir Sayid Mohamed, carved out a powerful state which was subdivided into 13 administrative divisions of which the four largest, Shiikhyaale, Dooxato, Golaweyne, Miinanle were near exclusively Dhulbahante. The other administrative divisions, Taargooye, Dharbash, Indhabadan, Burcadde-Godwein, Garbo (Darawiish), Ragxun, Gaarhaye, Bah-udgoon and Shacni-cali were collectively also overwhelmingly Dhulbahante. The Dervish forces successfully repulsed the British Empire in four military expeditions, and forced it to retreat to the coastal region. The Dervish State was recognized as an ally by the Ottoman Empire and the German Empire. It also succeeded at outliving the Scramble for Africa, and remained throughout World War I the only independent Muslim power on the continent. After a quarter of a century of holding the British at bay, the Dervishes were finally defeated in 1920, when Britain for the first time in Africa used airplanes to bomb the Dhulbahante garesas at the Dervish capital of Taleh. Italo - Somali War: Campaign of the Sultanates In 1920, the Dervish state collapsed after intensive British aerial bombardments, and Dervish territories were subsequently turned into a protectorate. The dawn of fascism in the early 1920s heralded a change of strategy for Italy, as the north-eastern sultanates were soon to be forced within the boundaries of La Grande Somalia according to the plan of Fascist Italy. Prominent Somali royal houses at the time were the Majeerteen Sultanate ruled by King Osman Mahamuud, which controlled much of northeast and central Somalia; the Warsangali Sultanate ruled by Sultan Mahmoud Ali Shire; and the Sultanate of Hobyo ruled by Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid. With the arrival of Governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi on 15 December 1923, things began to change for that part of the Somali territories. Italy had access to these areas under the successive protection treaties, but not direct rule. The Fascist government had direct rule only over the Benadir territory. Given the defeat of the Dervish movement in the early 1920s and the rise of fascism in Europe, on 10 July 1925 Mussolini gave the green light to De Vecchi to start the takeover of the north-eastern sultanates. Everything was to be changed and the treaties abrogated. Governor De Vecchi's first plan was to disarm the sultanates. But before