Besides this internal strain in the Ottoman Empire itself...

Besides this internal strain in the Ottoman Empire itself, there was the external threat, both political and economic. By the turn of the thirteenth/ nineteenth century the leading European powers had started coveting the lucrative territories of the Ottoman Empire both in Asia and in Africa.

Accordingly, it was these two motive forces combined; the desire to amelio­rate the condition of the Muslims and the determination to resist foreign danger, which led Muslim thinkers and leaders at that time to rise and call for reforms in the Muslim world, and later to make plans for overcoming the obstacles in the way of an Islamic renaissance. It was against this background that the Sanusiyyah Order was founded and began to grow.

Its rise was indeed a reaction to both the spiritual dis­integration of and the external political threat to the very existence of Islam. Its aim was three fold: first, to work for the restoration of the original purity of Islam and the advancement of Islamic society; secondly, to bring about the solidarity and unity of the Muslim countries and, thus, revive the “com­munity of Islam”; and, thirdly, to combat the growing encroachments of European imperialism upon the Muslim homeland.

The founder of the Sanusiyyah Order, Sayyid Muhammad bin Ali al­ Sanusi (known as the Grand Sanusi), was born in 1202/1787[^1] in the village of al-Wasita, near Mustaghanem, in Algeria. Politically, socially, and econo­mically, this was a time of great instability and discontent in Algeria.

The Ottoman governors, the beys , as they were called, had misruled the country and inflicted so many hardships on the people that resentment had reached a high degree, and the very authority of the Sultan had become exceedingly unpopular in the country.

By the time Sayyid Muhammad bin Ali reached his twentieth year and was able to think rationally and to analyse the state of affairs into which the Algerians had drifted, he became exceedingly bitter about the disintegration of Algerian society as well as about the oppressive rule of the Ottoman gover­nors.

Indeed, in his earlier years, while still receiving instruction at the hands of Muslim Shaikhs in Algeria, he showed a keen interest in the welfare of the Algerian Muslims as well as enthusiasm for the unity of Muslim territories all over the world. From the trade caravans that used to pass frequently through Algeria, he used to hear about the backwardness of Muslims in other Muslim lands.