During the Second World War Evans-Pritchard served in Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, and Syria. In Sudan he raised irregular troops among the Anuak to harass the Italians and engaged in guerrilla warfare. In 1942 he was posted to the British Military Administration of Cyrenaica in North Africa, and it was on the basis of his experience there that he produced "The Sanusi of Cyrenaica". In documenting local resistance to Italian conquest, he became one of a few English-language authors to write about the "tariqa".