The Senusiyya, Senussi or Sanusi are a Muslim political-religious Sufi order and clan in Libya and surrounding regions founded in Mecca in 1837 by the Grand Sanussi, the Algerian Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi.
Muhammad Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi was a Libyan political and religious leader who was King of Libya from 24 December 1951 until his ouster in the 1 September 1969 coup d'état. He ruled over the United Kingdom of Libya from 1951 to 1963, after which the country became known as simply the Kingdom of Libya. Idris had served as Emir of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania from the 1920s until 1951. He was the chief of the Senussi Muslim order.
Omar al-Mukhṭār Muḥammad bin Farḥāṭ al-Manifī, called The Lion of the Desert, known among the colonial Italians as Matari of the Mnifa, was an Imam and leader of native resistance in Cyrenaica under the Senussids, against the Italian colonization of Libya. A teacher-turned-general, Omar was a prominent figure of the Senussi movement and is considered the national hero of Libya and a symbol of resistance in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Beginning in 1911, he organised and led the Libyan resistance movement against the Italian colonial empire during the First and Second Italo-Senussi Wars. Externally, he also fought against the French colonization of Chad and the British occupation of Egypt. After many attempts, the Italian Armed Forces managed to capture Al-Mukhtar near Slonta when he was wounded in battle by Libyan colonial troops, and hanged him in 1931 after he refused to surrender.
The Italian colonizationof Libya began in 1911 and it lasted until 1943. The country, which was previously an Ottoman possession, was occupied by Italy in 1911 after the Italo-Turkish War, which resulted in the establishment of two colonies: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica. In 1934, the two colonies were merged into one colony which was named the colony of Italian Libya. In 1937, this colony was divided into four provinces, and in 1939, the coastal provinces became a part of metropolitan Italy as the Fourth Shore. The colonization lasted until Libya's occupation by Allied forces in 1943, but it was not until the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty that Italy officially renounced all of its claims to Libya's territory.
Hisham Matar is an American born British-Libyan writer. His memoir of the search for his father, The Return, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. His debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Matar's essays have appeared in the Asharq al-Awsat, The Independent, The Guardian, The Times and The New York Times. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published to wide acclaim on 3 March 2011. He lives and writes in London.
Hussein Yousef Maziq a Libyan politician was Prime Minister of Libya from 20 March 1965 to 2 July 1967. He was one of the most important men in the Kingdom era of Libya.
Mustafa Ahmed Ben Halim was a Libyan politician and businessman who served in a number of leadership positions in the Kingdom of Libya from 1953 to 1960. Ben Halim was the Prime Minister of Libya from 12 April 1954 to 25 May 1957. Through his political and private sector work, he supported the development of the modern Libyan state.
Ali Omar Ermes was a Libyan artist and author. His paintings make use of Arabic calligraphy, often superimposed on a rich-textured ground, and may incorporate fragments of Arabic or other poetry or prose. He had lived in the United Kingdom since 1981, and was the chairman of the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in Kensington in west London; he was also active in other intellectual and cultural institutions in that city.
Italian Cyrenaica was an Italian colony, located in present-day eastern Libya, that existed from 1911 to 1934. It was part of the territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911, alongside Italian Tripolitania.
The Libyan resistance movement was the rebel force opposing the Italian Empire during its Pacification of Libya between 1923 and 1943.
Yemenis in the United Kingdom or Yemeni Britons include citizens and non-citizen immigrants in the United Kingdom of Yemeni ancestry, as well as their descendants. Yemenis have been present in the UK since at least the 1860s, with the first Yemenis arriving as sailors and dock workers in the port cities of Northern England and Wales, and despite a smaller population than other British Muslim groups, are likely the longest-established Muslim group in the United Kingdom, with many of these cities retaining a Yemeni population going back several generations.
Jean Babette Stein was an American author and editor.
Abu Salim prison is a maximum security prison in Tripoli, Libya. The prison was notorious during the rule of Muammar Gaddafi for alleged mistreatment and human rights abuses, including a massacre in 1996 in which Human Rights Watch estimated that 1,270 prisoners were killed.
Tarek Ben Halim was a Libyan investment banker who left banking in 2000 to pursue charitable work and promote justice and democracy in the Arab World. In 2004, he founded Alfanar, the first Arab venture philanthropy organisation aiming to introduce a more effective and sustainable approach to development in the Arab region.
Libyan nationalism refers to the nationalism of Libyans and Libyan culture. Libyan nationalism began to arise with the creation of the Senussi religious orders in the 1830s that blended North African Sufism with orthodox Islam. After colonization of Libya by Italy, opponents of Italian colonial rule from Tripolitania and Cyrenaica combined forces in 1922, with Senussi leader Omar Mukhtar leading the revolt against Italian forces in Libya. Libya became an independent state after World War II.
Mohamed Ben Ghalbon is the founder and chairman of the Libyan Constitutional Union, and one of Colonel Gaddafi’s staunchest political opponents in exile. He is the leading advocate for the call for adherence to constitutional legitimacy in confronting the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
Syrians in the United Kingdom or Syrian Britons are people whose heritage is originated from Syria who were born in or who reside in the United Kingdom.
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between is a memoir by Hisham Matar that was first published in June 2016. The memoir centers on Matar's return to his native Libya in 2012 to search for the truth behind the 1990 disappearance of his father, a prominent political dissident of the Gaddafi regime. It won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, the inaugural 2017 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the 2017 Folio Prize, becoming the first nonfiction book to do so.
Sidi Omar is an ancient Senussi tomb located in the Egyptian desert in the Matrouh Governorate. It serves as the demarcation of the border between Libya and Egypt since the Italo-Egyptian treaty called the Treaty of Jaghbub (1925).
