in the coastal town of Lamu. In northern and southern Somalia, the Gerad Dynasty conducted trade with Yemen and Persia and competed with the merchants of the Bari Dynasty. The Gerads and the Bari Sultans built impressive palaces, castles and fortresses and had close relations with many different empires in the Near East. In the late 19th century, after the Berlin Conference, European powers began the Scramble for Africa, which inspired the Dervish leaders in the north like Mohammed Abdullah Hassan and Sultan Nur Ahmed Aman to rally support from across the Horn of Africa, but also Sheikh Abikar Gafle to start a resistance around Merca called the Banadir Resistance. Both the Banadir Resistance and Dervish Movement sparked the beginning one of the longest anti-colonial struggles on the continent. Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's Dervish movement spread into Somalia and successfully repulsed the British Empire four times, forcing them to retreat to the coastal region, but the Dervishes were finally defeated in 1920 by British airpower. Banadir Resistance In the 1890s, the Italian occupation of Marka sparked the beginning and outrage among the Bimal clan, many of them joined the Bimal resistance against Italy. An Italian resident of the city, Giacomo Trevis, was assassinated in 1904. In response Italy occupied the port town of Jazira about 30 miles south of Mogadishu. In response Bimal leaders called for a grand conference mobilizing the Banadiri clans, thus it came to eventually be known as the Banadir Resistance. The resistance was spearheaded by Sheikh Abdi Gafle and Ma’alin Mursal Abdi Yusuf; two prominent local Islamic teachers in Marka from the Bimal clan. The resistance, albeit clan-based initially transformed into one with a religious fervour, mainly Bimal, (but also later on some of the Wa’dan, Hintire and other clans of the Geledi confederation joined). Dervish Movement News of the incident that sparked the Dervish rebellion and the 21 years disturbance according to the consul-general James Hayes Sadler was spread by Sultan Nur of the Habr Yunis. The incident in question was that of a group of Somali children that were converted to Christianity and adopted by the French Catholic Mission at Berbera in 1899. Whether Sultan Nur experienced the incident first hand or whether he was told of it is not clear but what is known is that he propagated the incident in the Tariqa at Kob Fardod in June 1899, precipitating the religious rebellion that