Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Mahdi al-Senussi was the hereditary head of the Senussi Sufi order and, from 1920, Emir of Cyrenaica, where he led resistance to Italian colonisation before spending much of the 1920s and 1930s in exile in Egypt. Britain's wartime alliance with the Senussi against Italy positioned Idris as the natural figurehead when the United Nations, unable to agree on Libya's post-war disposition among the Allied powers, passed General Assembly Resolution 289 in 1949 mandating Libyan independence. Libya's Constituent Assembly, drawing on Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan, selected Idris as king of the new federal state, and on 24 December 1951 he proclaimed the United Kingdom of Libya's independence from the balcony of Al-Manar Palace in Benghazi — the first state created through UN oversight. His reign was defined by the kingdom's poverty and dependence on British and American base rents until the discovery of oil in 1959 transformed state finances, and by a cautious, pro-Western foreign policy that left him increasingly out of step with the pan-Arab nationalism sweeping the region. On 1 September 1969, while Idris was in Turkey for medical treatment, a group of young army officers led by Captain Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a bloodless coup, ending the monarchy; Idris lived out his remaining years in exile in Egypt, where he died in 1983.
- Lived: 1889 CE – 1983 CE
- Nationality: libyan
- Roles: King of Libya (1951-1969), Emir of Cyrenaica (1920-1951)
