The map of modern Libya was not fully drawn until the mid-20th century. The land was fought over by the Ottomans, Italians and the British.
It had comprised three ancient provinces – Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in thewest and Fezzan in the south. The desert Ottoman province of Cyrenaica was where the Algerian Muhammad ibn Ali Senussi founded his Sufi Muslim religious order in the late 18thcentury. He established the Senussi movement as a response to what he saw as the decline of Islamic thought and spirituality at the time.
According to Idris Al-Harir, the historian and former political activist, Senussi established the order in Cyrenaica “first as a religious ‘good deed’ but later to make it the centre of his political power”. He built 330 zawiya, religious study centres, and Jaghbub, on the border with Egypt, became the focus of this new order in eastern Libya.
Cyrenaica was also where Senussi’s grandson, Idris, would one day become the ruler of the United Libyan Kingdom.
This two-part film tells the fascinating story of Idris, the country’s first and, so far, only monarch – Libya’s now forgotten king.
King Idris ruled from 1951 until Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a coup in 1969. Given events in Libya in the past five decades, his life and reign seem now to have faded from public consciousness. The history of modern Libya is often thought of as synonymous with Gaddafi, but the man who preceded him was a nationalist and an astute politician at a time when his homeland was fought over by colonial powers.
We look at the rise of Idris, who succeeded his father as leader of the Senussi people, and explore his early years. His journey to Mecca to perform Hajj at the time of World War I helped shaped his understanding of the political world around him. On his pilgrimage, he met the Khedive of Egypt, the Ottoman Wali in the Levant; and Sharif Hussein in the Hijaz. On his way home to Cyrenaica, he also met British military leaders in Egypt.