El Tag
Senussi
El-Tag was founded in 1895 by Muhammad El-Mahdi es-Senussi (1844–1902), after the Ottomans forced him and the Senussi Order from Jaghbub in the Cyrenaican desert to Kufra. He was the son of the founder and the supreme leader (1859-1902) of the Order. El-Mahdi founded a Zaouia (madrassa—school) with a mosque with a low octagonal minaret tower here. He also built several tombs of the Senussi family here, which later included his own, therefore making El-Tag a Senussi holy place.
Italians and World War II
During the colonial Italian Libya period, the Italians built a World War I–style fort in El Tag in the mid-1930s. Although some guns were stationed at the fort, its battlements were out of date and of little use in the mobile warfare tactics of World War II. The fort, airfield, and town of Kufra were taken by Free French forces and the British-New Zealand Long Range Desert Group in the 1941 Capture of Kufra, in the Allies World War II Western Desert Campaign.
References
Sources
- Bertarelli, L.V. (1929). Guida d'Italia, Vol. XVII (in Italian). Milano: Consociazione Turistica Italiana.