Libya's enigmatic Sanusi brotherhood has been the subject of perennial debate since its emergence in Ottoman Cyrenaica in the mid nineteenth century, becoming a screen upon which apologists and detractors could project their own political anxieties and desires. For European critics, the brotherhood embodied the irrationality and fanaticism of the Islamic East. Its networks in North and Central Africa constituted an obstacle to their expansionist designs, while Sanusi prestige throughout the Muslim world rendered the brotherhood a threat to the entire colonial order of things. Nationalist historiography has generally endorsed this view, albeit with a positive valence, characterizing the Sanusiyya as an anticolonial social movement. Meanwhile, modern critical scholarship has tried to impose order on the chaos of the turn-of-the-century Sahara by assigning to the fraternity the role of a “proto-state.” This article proposes a new framework for understanding the history and sociology of the Sanusi. Drawing on theorists of subaltern resistance such as James Scott and Michael Adas—alongside Ottoman, British, French, and Italian primary sources—I demonstrate that the brotherhood began its life as an inward-looking Islamic social justice movement with little evident interest in state building or the geopolitical controversies of the moment. I coin the term “reluctant militants” to describe its mercurial trajectory from frontier evangelism to armed struggle in response to French and Italian colonial encirclement. This process culminated in the Long War of 1911–1931, during which the Sanusiyya played a critical part in the struggles over post-Ottoman reconstruction, from the Maghreb to Anatolia.

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不情愿的武装分子：奥斯曼-撒哈拉边境的殖民主义、领土和萨努西抵抗

利比亚神秘的萨努西兄弟情谊自 19 世纪中叶在奥斯曼帝国的昔兰尼加出现以来一直是争论不休的话题，成为辩护者和批评者可以投射他们自己的政治焦虑和愿望的屏幕。对于欧洲评论家来说，兄弟情谊体现了伊斯兰东方的非理性和狂热。它在北非和中非的网络构成了他们扩张主义计划的障碍，而萨努西在整个穆斯林世界的声望使兄弟会成为对整个殖民秩序的威胁。民族主义史学普遍支持这种观点，尽管具有积极的价值，将 Sanusiyya 描述为反殖民社会运动。同时，现代批判性学术试图通过将“原始国家”的角色分配给兄弟会来为世纪之交的撒哈拉混乱强加秩序。本文提出了一个新的框架来理解萨努西人的历史和社会学。借鉴詹姆斯·斯科特和迈克尔·阿达斯等底层抵抗理论家——以及奥斯曼帝国、英国、法国和意大利的主要资料——我证明了兄弟会的生命起源于一个内向的伊斯兰社会正义运动，对国家建设几乎没有明显的兴趣或当前的地缘政治争议。我创造了“不情愿的武装分子”这个词来描述它从边境传福音到武装斗争以应对法国和意大利殖民包围的变化无常的轨迹。这一过程在 1911 年至 1931 年的长期战争中达到高潮，