Sayyid Muhammad ibn Ali as-Senussi was the founder of the Senussi order.
Background
First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Senussi was born in al-Wasita near Mostaganem, Algeria, and was named al-Senussi after a venerated Muslim teacher. He was a member of the Walad Sidi Abdalla tribe, and was a sharif tracing his descent from Fatimah, the daughter of Mohammed.
Education
He studied at a madrassa in Fez, then traveled in the Sahara preaching a purifying reform of the faith in Tunisia and Tripoli, gaining many adherents, and thence moved to Cairo to study at First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Azhar University.
Career
The order was founded in 1837. Unable to cross Algeria because of the French occupation, the beginning, the centre of Imam Mohammed Ali El Senussi’s call was Jebel Akhdar and he built a mosque in Bayda of Cyrenaica and named it after himself, then he moved to Jaghbub in Cyrenaica from where the mosques spread to the remaining cities of Barqa and Tripoli. He built a great mosque and a university which came to rival First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Azhar, but which was shut down on the orders of Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1984.
At the same time, the graves and remains of the Senussi family were desecrated.