Africa Here arises a question about Ibn al-Sanusi's stance on the French occupation of Algeria.

His stance on the French occupation of Algeria We have already mentioned that historians differed in determining his location at the time of the occupation. Some said he was in southern Algeria and was about to stay in the country, and I do not think it was better to go east. We said that he left about ten years before the occupation and that he was in the Hijaz at the time of the French invasion. When he left the Hijaz for the Maghreb, he intended to visit Algeria as an Algerian, but he was met with the intransigent stance of the French and their attempts to capture him. We do not find in the historians' accounts anything that clarifies his position on the French occupation of his homeland except for reports mentioned by Al-Ashhab. Among them is his saying, "Then he continued his journey to Gafsa, and his news had reached France, so they deployed their armies and ears along the border, and the news reached him about this, and it was decided that no one should continue his journey." So, the scholar Sayyid Muhammad ibn Sadiq, one of his students, was delegated and given some money and weapons to deliver secretly to Algeria, and Sayyid al-Imam returned to Tripoli. In another place, he says that Ibn al-Sanusi, while busy in Cyrenaica with reforming the condition of Muslims, did not overlook the French occupation of Algeria. He was working as much as possible to strengthen the revolution there and support it with money and men as much as he could. He sent at different times a number of his loyal students, such as the scholar Muhammad ibn Sadiq al-Ta'ifi, the scholar Ahmad ibn al-Shafi', Sayyid Omar al-Fadili, known as Abu Hawa, and Sheikh al-Fadl Abu Khurais al-Kuzai. Al-Ashhab does not mention the source from which he obtained this news, but he quotes Dufris, which refers to Al-Ashhab. Al-Sanusi al-Kabir. Al-Ashhab. Al-Sanusi al-Kabir.