Omar al-Mukhtar
ʿUmar al-Mukhtār Muḥammad bin Farḥāt al-Manifī (Arabic: عُمَر الْمُخْتَار مُحَمَّد بِن فَرْحَات الْمَنِفِي; 20 August 1858 – 16 September 1931), called The Lion of the Desert, known among the colonial Italians as Matari of the Mnifa, was a Libyan revolutionary and Imam who led the native resistance in Cyrenaica (currently Eastern Libya) under the Senussids, against the Italian colonization of Libya. A teacher-turned-general, Omar was a prominent figure of the Senussi movement and is considered the national hero of Libya and a symbol of resistance in the Arab and Islamic worlds.