Sayid Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan (; 1856–1920) was a Somali religious and military leader of the Dervish movement, which led a two-decade long confrontation with various colonial empires including the British, Italians, and Ethiopians. Background Due to his successful completion of the hajj to Mecca, his complete memorization of the Quran and his purported descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad, his name is sometimes preluded with honorifics such as Hajji, Hafiz or Sayyid. Muhammad `Abd Allāh al-Hasan (, ); Sayyid Muḥammad ibn 'Abdallāh was born to a Bah Cali Gheri mother and Ogaden father. Due to his influence in the precipitation of Somali nationalism, the Central Powers, contemporary fanciers sometimes refer to him as the Father of Somali nationalism. In 1917, the Ottoman Empire referred to Hassan as the "Emir of the Somali". According to Douglas Jardine, the name 'Mad Mullah' did not originate with the British or the Italians as is often thought, but is a translation of the Somali expression wadaad waal (the Mullah that is a lunatic) used by Somalis in Berbera. One Somali poet at the time, Ali Jama Habil composed a poem titled 'Maxamed Waal''' (Mohamed the Lunatic). According to apologist Said Sheikh Samatar the Somali word waalan covers a spectrum that ranges from sheer lunacy through 'lunatic' valour to an other worldly inner serenity. In Berbera the established Qadiriyya tariqa would soon be challenged by a new tariqa. The most prominent Sheikh of the Salihiyya order were Isma'il ibn Ishaq al-Urwayni and the Dervish emir Hassan (called Mullah by British) who arrived in Berbera in 1895 and constructed his own mosque and began propagating. He was strongly against khat and chewing tobacco, both of which the Qadiriyya had permitted. Amongst other disputes, he would come to debate the leading Qadiriyya sheikhs of Berbera including Aw Gaas and Xaaji Ibrahim Xirsi. Sheikh Madar, the leader of Somali Qadiriyya was invited to participate in 1897 and after rigorous discussion, the Qadiriyya tariqa had proved victorious and Mohamed Abdullah Hassan had been refuted. British authorities took note of the disturbance and turmoil and he was thus expelled from the city. The divisions were deep and both sides had accused the other of heresy, Hassan would go on to form the Dervish movement based on Salihiyya just two years after the debates partly in rebuke of the Qadiriyya status quo. In March 1899, one Duwaleh Hirsi a former member