The "Great" Arab Revolt

The Great Arab Revolt was a costly public relations stunt. The most important outcome was making T.E. Lawrence famous. It cost millions of pounds, thousands of rifles, millions of bullets and tons of food and had very little military importance. More Palestinians fought in the Ottoman Army than Arabs fought in the Husseini "revolt." Even Hajj Amin al-Husatni fought in the Ottoman Army in WW1 and was on 3 month sick leave in Jerusalem when the British took the city. Sherif Hussein's family received the deal of the century but were unable to keep all the spoils after the war. A distinction should be made between Arabs from Arabia and the Arabic-speaking Muslim populations of the Levant, Egypt and North Africa who were not ethnically Arab nor were their societies identical. This misidentity is at the root of the failure of Pan-Arabism.

Hussein's first overture to Britain dates back to the summer of 1908, when he sought the support of the British Ambassador to Constantinople, Sir Gerard Augustus Lowther, in his bid for the Emirate of Mecca; he was then in luxurious exile in the Ottoman capital, where he had been brought some fifteen years earlier by the paranoid Sultan Abdul Hamid, together with other contenders for the Emirate. This privileged post of custody over Islam's two Holy Cities and de facto rule over the Hijaz, the westernmost part of the Arabian Peninsula, had been traditionally manned by a sharif, or a member of the Hashemite clan of the tribe of Quraish, to which Hussein, like Prophet Muhammad himself, belonged. It is not clear whether Hussein's courtship of Lowther helped him win the sharifate, though the ambassador was duly impressed.5 - Karsh

In 1910 Lowther sent a report to the head of the Foreign Office, Sir Charles Hardinge, that 'Jews had taken over a Freemason network ("The Oriental Jew is an adept at manipulating occult forces …") and through it had taken control of the Ottoman Empire.' Fromkin p.41

In February 1914 the Sherif of Mecca's second son and right-hand man, Abdullah, called on Lord Herbert Horatio Kitchener the British Agent and Consul General. Kitchener became a certified British Hero in 1898 by slaughtering tens of thousands of Sudanese tribesmen with artillery and Maxim guns at the battle of Omdurman. Abdullah requested British arms and help if the Ottomans moved against Hussein. He was emphatically rejected though once the war began they contacted Hussein in a more friendly fashion.

In January 1915 Emir Hussein discovered that the Ottoman government was planning to depose him at the end of the war. Six months later Hussein, who had previously had some discussions with various British officials, sent a letter to the British Residency in Cairo demanding that almost all of Arab Asia should become an independent kingdom under His rule.

Wyndham Deedes was the Cairo Intelligence expert on the Ottoman Empire. His anaylsis was that Hussein's aim was to head an Arab kingdom; but Deedes said that most Arabs and all Turks would be opposed to this. He wrote that "I think it is the view of most of us, and is the view of many of the Arabs and all of the Turks themselves" that "this idea is not a practical one." Other Arabs, wrote Deedes, were unwilling to accept Hussein as their leader. - Fromkin p.184

Lieutenant Muhammed Sharif al-Faruqi, a 24-year-old Arab was a secret society officer ordered out of Damascus and sent by Djemal Pasha to the Gallipoli front, where casualties were high. Sending suspected Arab plotters to the front lines to be killed looked to be a deliberate policy of Djemal's. al-Faruqi knew that Hussein had been encouraged to lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire if Britain would first agree to support their Damascus Protocol: the program for Arab independence.

In September 1915 al-Faruqi, deserted to the Allied lines in Gallipoli. The allies had lost the campaign and were about to withdraw so this desertion is particularly suspect. He claimed to have important information for British Intelligence in Cairo, and was promptly sent to Egypt for interrogation. He was a fabulist on the level of the Sherif. He claimed 90 per cent of the Arab officers in the Turkish army were members of two secret societies who had pledged their allegiance to sharif Hussein and wished to join with the British to defeat the Ottomans and create an Arab empire. The Cairo Bureau boys club who accepted the doctrine long held by British officials that the Ottoman Young Turk party were controlled by Jewish Freemasons had no trouble believing al-Faruqi who pretended to be a spokesman for al-'Ahd and was accepted as such by Gilbert Clayton, the head of British Intelligence in Cairo. al-Faruqi's claim to represent al-'Ahd was somewhat plausible as he knew the details of the British correspondence with Sherif Hussein and knew about the demands that Hussein from his colleagues in Damascus. If the secret societies were backing Hussein and if they were as powerful as al-Faruqi represented them to be then Hussein would be speaking for hundreds of thousands of Ottoman troops and millions of Ottoman subjects. The logic was impeccable.

Before the First World War, Kitchener had decided to partition the Middle East after a war with the Ottoamns between Britain, France, and Russia and appointed Sir Mark Sykes to work out the details. On 24 October 1915 McMahon replied in a quite different spirit to Hussein. Instructed by Lord Kitchener to make the necessary pledges, he reluctantly agreed to enter into a discussion of specific territories and frontiers. On the one hand, he agreed that after the war the Arabs should have their independence; but, on the other, he indicated that European advisers and officials would be needed to establish the administration of Arab countries, and insisted that these advisers and officials should be exclusively British. In other words, any "independent" Arab kingdom in the postwar Middle East would have to be a British protectorate. What territories should be included in the British-protected independent Arab kingdom? McMahon replied by dividing the lands claimed by Hussein into four areas and explaining that Britain could not bind herself to support Hussein's claims in any one of them in which she can act without detriment to the interests of her ally France." McMahon was unwilling to assume personal responsibility for making definite commitments, he used language evasively. Advocates of an Arab Palestine have argued for decades that the geographical terms employed by McMahon, if properly interpreted, indicate that McMahon was pledging that Palestine would be Arab; and advocates of a Jewish Palestine have argued the reverse.

In November 1915 Sykes had stopped in Cairo on his way back from India to London. Clayton and his colleagues told Sykes the al-Faruqi story and convinced him that the Arab half of the Ottoman Empire might come over to the Allied side of the war. This was the amazing news that necessarily altered Sykes calculations. The principal message that Sykes brought back to the Cabinet was that the Arabs were now of prime importance to the Allies; and that it was vitally and urgently important to reach agreement with Hussein.

Hussein's personal, and on the surface, ridiculous bid for an empire was now beginning to appear possible due to duplicity by Hussein and al-Faruqi and credulity by Clayton, Sykes, McMahon et al. His bombastically claimed "He no longer spoke just for himself and his family, or even for the whole of the Hijaz; styling himself as champion of 'the whole of the Arab nation without any exception.'" He was patently insincere "'Had it not been for the determination which I see in the Arabs for the attainment of their objects, I would have preferred to seclude myself on one of the heights of a mountain. But they, the Arabs, have insisted that I should guide the movement to this end'" - Karsh.

It was the view of Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India, that no promises should be made to the Arabs because they were "a people who are at this moment fighting against us as hard as they can."16 - Fromkin. In London the Foreign Office took the view that the promises would never become due for payment: that Britain had pledged herself to support Arab independence only if the Arab half of the Ottoman Empire rose against the Sultan-which (the Foreign Office believed) it would never do. Since the Arabs would not keep their side of the bargain (so ran the argument), the British would be under no obligation to keep theirs. The Foreign Office, which did not rely on Clayton, but had its own sources of information, did not believe that the Arabic-speaking world was about to change sides in the war, but the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, saw no harm in letting Kitchener and his lieutenants promise anything they wanted as an inducement to the Arabs to defect. Grey told Austen Chamberlain not to worry about the offers being made by Cairo as "the whole thing was a castle in the air which would never materialize." - Fromkin

What makes the sharif's achievement all the more extraordinary is that his gains were only matched by his puny resources. His pretence to speak on behalf of the 'whole of the Arab Nation without exception'4 was patently false, as were his pretensions of military and political prowess. Had he not been fully armed and fed by Britain, and to a lesser extent France, as well as provided with troops, military guidance and lavish shipments of gold - which performed miracles in buying bedouin loyalty - Hussein would never have been able to launch his revolt, let alone sustain it. - Karsh

The bedouins managed to rip up considerable stretches of the Hijaz railroad (which were quickly repaired in most instances) and to derail a number of Turkish locomotives; but this meant little beyond 'the melodramatic advertisement of Faisal's cause', to use the words of General Sir Edmund Allenby, Commander-in Chief of the Egyptian Expedition force.

All in all, contemporary British intelligence reports of Arab combat performance remained scathing up to the final days of the revolt:

The Bedouin forces have been proved incapable of either attacking, or withstanding an attack from disciplined troops, and the successes they have so far achieved [by mid-June 1917], if we except the capture of Taif, which was completely isolated and starved into submission, have been those of a guerrilla nature

The Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) commanded by General Edmund Allenby reached a total strength of approximately 200,000 men by late 1917. It included British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and South African troops, along with a significant Egyptian labour corps. There were at least 60,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry and it utilized 46,000 horses and 20,000 camels. The campaign began with an attack on Beersheba on 31st October 1917. At dusk a daring mounted bayonet charge by the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade took the town and broke the Turks. Jerusalem was captured on 9 December 1917. Allenby, deeply religious, entered the city on foot. In September 1918 the Turkish line was broken at Megiddo and the Ottoman Empire surrendered on 30th October.

Between 300,000 to 400,000 Arabic-speaking soldiers served in the Ottoman army in WW1 many in Gallipoli and Palestine. When troops landed at Anzac Cove two-thirds of the defenders were Arabic-speaking. No-one has ever faulted their committment and bravery fightng for the Ottomsn Empire. No more than 5,000 Arabs fought in the Arab Revolt. They captured Aqaba, they looted Damascus. They were the worst

Arab forces led by Emir Faisal, supported by T.E. Lawrence, were allowed to enter Damascus on October 1, 1918, after the Australian Light Horse had moved through the city going north towards the Turks at Homs and Aleppo beforehand. This publicity stunt turned bad and the city experienced chaos, looting, and breakdowns in law and order. The desert tribesmen began looting Ottoman stores, buildings, and looting anf killing the sick and wounded Turkish soldiers in hospital. The situation was so chaotic that Allenby moved quickly, sent in the Light Horse and installed a military government to restore public services and impose order. The soldiers quickly stabilized the city. Faisal was setting up a government with local notables in Damascus, who quickly shifted their allegiance. By October 4, T.E. Lawrence had left Damascus, ending his military involvement and carrying an undeserved reputation as the superhero Lawrence of Arabia. When British forces withdrew from Syria in November 1919 the the French moved in and put an end to Faisal's 3 month reign as King of Syria. The British then installed him as King of Iraq where the family ruled, if only just, until 1958 when Faisal II was assassinated in the 14 July Revolution.

The Hashemites were rulers of Hijaz until 1925 when they were ousted by Ibn Saud. They are Kings of Jordan to this day. The British rewarded them 100 fold for their efforts in WW1.

Lloyd George, who became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1916 (until 1922) gave evidence (secretly) at the Peel Commission in April 1937:

'What about the Arabs? The Arabs have done well out of the allied victory. No race has done better out of the fidelity with which the Allies redeemed their promises to the oppressed races,' he proclaimed. Owing chiefly to British and Allied sacrifices, the Arabs now had four independent states - Iraq, Syria, Transjordan and Saudi Arabia - 'although most of the Arab races fought throughout the War for their Turkish oppressors.'

'The Palestinian Arabs fought for Turkish rule,' he emphasised, disregarding the 2,000 who had joined the British-sponsored anti-Ottoman revolt led by Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, and his son Feisal. Through Mark Sykes (of Sykes-Picot fame) and T.E. Lawrence ('of Arabia'), he said, Britain informed Hussein and Feisal of the planned Declaration.[11]

'We could not get in touch with the Palestinian Arabs as they were fighting against us. The Arab leaders did not offer any objections, so long as the rights of the Arabs were respected,' Lloyd George explained. 'There was a twofold undertaking given to them, that the establishment of a Jewish National Home would not in any way, firstly, affect the civil or religious rights of the general population of Palestine; secondly, would not diminish the general prosperity of that population. Those were the only pledges we gave to the Arabs.'

The ex-premier challenged any critic of Britain's Palestine policy to point to an instance in which non-Jewish civil or religious rights had been compromised, and he marshalled statistics on revenue, exports, wages, land prices, public health and a half-dozen other indicators of the land's newfound prosperity. 'There can be no doubt that the Arab population of Palestine has profited enormously by the Zionist enterprise.'

Notes: