Mohammed Abdullah Hassan - Youth

Youth

Hassan, who belonged to the Ogaden sub-clan of the Darod clan family, was born in 1856 in the valley of Sa'Madeeq. Some say he was born in Kirrit in northern Somalia. At the time, this part of Somalia was a protectorate of the United Kingdom. Between 1884 and 1960, the area was known as British Somaliland.

Hassan was the eldest son of Sheikh Abdille, an Ogaden Somali. His mother, Timiro Sade, also a Somali, belonged to the Dhulbahante clan. His great grandfather, Sheikh Ismaan of Bardee, was a pious man of great repute who left his homeland slightly north of Qalaafo along the Shebelle River valley in what is now the Ogaden and migrated southwards to settle with the religious Somali community at Bardera along the Jubba River. Hassan's grandfather, Hasan Nur, in turn, left his home and moved closer to the Dhulbahante stronghold in north-eastern Somalia. There, he founded several religious centres and devoted himself to the worship of God. Following in the footsteps of Hasan Nur, Hassan's father Abdille also led a religious life. Abdille married several Dhulbahante women by whom he had about 30 children, of which Hassan was the eldest. Hassan's mother, Timiro Sade, came from the Ali Geri sublineage of the Dhulbahante clan, which was allied with the Ogaden.

Hassan thus grew up among the Dhulbahante pastoralists, who were good herdsmen and warriors and who tended and used camels as well as horses. Young Hassan's hero was his maternal grandfather, Sade Mogan, who was a great warrior chief. In addition to being a good horseman, by the age of eleven, Hassan had learned the entire Qur'an by heart (he was a hafiz), and displayed all the qualities of a promising leader. He continued his religious education. In 1875, Hassan's grandfather died, which came as a shock. That same year, he worked as a Qur'anic teacher for two years. His thirst for Islamic learning was so intense that he left his job and devoted about ten years to visiting many famous centres of Islamic learning including Harar and Mogadishu and even some centres in Sudan.

Hassan received education from as many as seventy-two Somali and Arab religious teachers. In 1891, upon returning home, he married an Ogadeni woman. Three years later, along with two uncles and eleven other companions some of whom were his maternal kin, Hassan went to Mecca to perform the Hajj. The party stayed there for a year and a half and came under the charismatic influence of the newly-developing Saalihiya order under the leadership of the great Sudanese mystic, Mohammed Salih. Hassan received initiation and very rigorous spiritual training under Salih. From this experience, Hassan emerged a changed man — spiritually transformed, 'shaken and over-awed', but determined to spread the teachings of the Saalihiya order in Somalia.