General Sir Alexander Stanhope Cobbe was a senior British Indian Army officer and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Muḥammad ibn 'Abdallāh Hassan was a Somali religious, political, and military leader who founded and headed the Dervish movement, which led a Holy war against British, Italian, and Ethiopian intrusions in the Horn of Africa. Due to his successful completion of the Hajj to Mecca, his complete memorization of the Quran and his purported descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad, his name is sometimes preluded with honorifics such as Hajji, Hafiz, Emir or Sayyid. He was famously known by the British Empire as the Mad Mullah. In 1917, the Ottoman Empire referred to Hassan as the "Emir of the Somali". His influence led him to being regarded as the “Father of Somali nationalism”.