After a series of alarming audiences in which they were treated with contempt and submitted to many degradations, they returned to report to the Administration that Sayyid Muhammad had rejected the offer of surrender with haughty disdain. Almost immediately afterwards, a Dervish force attacked Isaq clansmen grazing their livestock near the Ethiopian border. Despite their very heavy losses, the Dervishes were evidently not yet reduced to defeat. However, this attack aroused fierce Isaq resentment, and the outraged clans sought and gained the sanction of the Administration for a massive tribal onslaught on the new Dervish headquarters in the Ogaden. The Dervishes suffered a very heavy defeat, but as on so many previous occasions, the Sayyid himself and a few companions eluded capture and made good their escape to Imi on the upper reaches of the Shebelle River in Ethiopia. Arriving here in October 1920, the Sayyid and his followers built thirteen new forts and unsuccessfully sought official Ethiopian protection. This was their last gesture, however, for a few weeks later Sayyid Muhammad succumbed to an attack of influenza (or malaria) and died on 21 December, 1920, at the age of fifty-six. Thus, in the words of one Somali chronicle of Sayyid Muhammad's campaign, 'ended the life of the man who had fought great odds'. Of his many children from his numerous marriages only nine boys and one daughter survived him.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 236