In the first few years of after the occupation of the Libyan coast in 1911, the liberal politicians of the Italian colonial administration were committed to the idea of establishing a system of indirect rule in the eastern region of Cyrenaica under the leadership of Muslim elites in the Sufi order of the Sanusiyya. The idea stemmed from representations of the Sanusiyya in colonial ethnographic literature as a highly centralized and conservative organization that wielded a type of religio-political power that could be used to control the Libyan interior, and their plan spoke to a liberal ideal of humanistic nationalism among Italian political and intellectual elites. This presentation examines the colonial imagination surrounding the Sanusiyya and the process by which colonial officials circumvented the refusal of the recognized leader of the Sanusiyya to enter into negotiations by creating a power-sharing relationship with his more willing cousin, Idris al-Sanusi. The process of negotiating a system of indirect rule under Sanusi leadership place the Italian colonial administration in an international field of competition as British, French, and Ottoman authorities all vied for the right to call themselves protectors of Islam in North Africa through a strategic relationship with the Sufi order. The story of Idris al-Sanusi's involvement with the Italian colonial administration as a semi-autonomous intermediary is well known, but it has received little attention in recent years as historians have turned to focus on sources of anti-colonial resistance among other regional notables, particularly in the western region of Tripolitania. Given the revolution against the Qaddafi regime, I argue that we face an ideal moment to return to a discussion of the Sanusiyya during the Italian colonial period to examine the ways in which an international coalition of colonial powers shaped the connection between religious and political power in Cyrenaica.