Nur Ahmed Aman

Nur Ahmed Aman
Sultan
Sultan Nur seated in the middle 1896
Predecessor	Hersi Aman
Born	Oodweyne Somaliland
Died	1907/1908 Taleh, Somaliland
Religion	Sufi Islam

Sultan Nur Ahmed Aman (1841–1907), was the tribal chief of the Habar Yoonis clan from 1880–1899. In 1899 he became one of the founders of the Somali dervish movement (1899–1920) he was the principle agitator that rallied the dervish behind his anti-French Roman Mission that would become the causes of the dervish uprise. He fought and led the war throughout the years 1899–1904, he along his brother Geele Ahmed (Kila Ahmed) were the main signatories of the Dervish peace treaty with the British and Italian forces in 1905. Sultan Nur is entombed in a white domed shrine in Taleh, the location of the largest dervish forts and the capital of the dervish since 1912, he died around 1907.

The Somali Dervish movement was an armed rebellion that abruptly began in the spring of 1899 and lasted some twenty years till 1920. Initially, the rebellion began as an anti-French Roman Mission revolt. The rebelling mullahs and leaders opposed the church's missionary activities in particular educating young children and in some instances converting them to Christianity. They also protested what they alleged was an interference in their independence and a persecution of their members by the British Somali Coast administration.

The incident that sparked the Dervish rebellion and the 21 years disturbance according to the consul-general James Hayes Sadler was either spread or as he alleged was concocted by sultan Nur. The incident in question was that of a group of Somali children that were converted to Christianity and adopted by the French Catholic Mission at Berbera in 1899. Whether Sultan Nur experienced the incident first hand or whether he was told of it is not clear but what is known is that he propagated the incident in the Tariqa at Kob Fardod in June 1899 precipitating the religious rebellion that later morphed into the Somali Dervish.

The Christian Somali children incident is erroneously attributed to Mohammed Abdullah Hassan the later spiritual head of the movement. Despite their anti-Christian profession, the dervish in Somaliland targeted primarily Somali nomads who were indifferent to their cause or wholly ignorant of it, for twenty odd years the Dervish wreaked havoc on the Somali nomads.

In 1909 the French Catholic Mission in Berbera was closed by the British colonial administrations, when most of the clans demanded that the mission activity should be suspended as it was the pretext of the Dervish raids on the Somali nomads. They also demanded that the Mullah Mohammed Abdullah Hassan and the Dervish be crushed and finally a Risaldar Major Haji Musa Farah the highest native officer of Somaliland an ardent adversary of the Mullah and the Dervish was unanimously agreed by all the clans to be replaced due to abuse of power.Reginald Wingate and Rudolf Carl von Slatin were tasked in 1909 to ascertain the Somali nomad's attitude to both the administration and the dervish and advice the British colonial office as to how to improve the situation in the protectorate.