The Arab Revolt | Common Purpose, Competing Interests
"Rebels, especially successful rebels, were of necessity bad subjects and worse governors.”
- T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom -
The riders sat on their mounts, horses and camels, and gazed across the desert toward the shimmering sea and a small village on its shore. An old fortress dominated what passed for a skyline, the only building that stood more than two stories above the ground. Clusters of palm trees waved in the hot, dry wind, and the soldiers could see knots of people moving about in the town's plaza. No enemy troops were visible and no defenses prepared. The long journey across the desert toward their target had yielded a strategic surprise. Fifty men on horseback stayed in place, while the larger group of four hundred men riding camels began to move left and right. The soldiers on foot rested, knowing they would soon have to run across rocky ground to keep up with the cavalry. Two men had planned this attack; one would lead the horsemen straight toward the target while the other rode his camel around to hit the flanks. With only a nod from their leader, the men charged toward the town of Aqaba.
Most students of the First World War know of the great campaigns by mighty armies on the Western and Eastern fronts. Some know of smaller battles fought in Italy, Greece, and on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. But few—apart from some movie buffs—know the story of the Great Arab Revolt of 1916-18 that brought down an empire that had lasted for over six centuries and gave us the modern Middle East with all its glories and terrors. The revolt was a minor affair in the minds of generals in London, Paris, Berlin, and Constantinople, and its impact on the overall course of the Great War was small. But it produced some of the greatest heroes of that war, men whose deeds shaped the future course of millions of lives around the world.
The Ottoman Empire
By the 14th century, the region of Anatolia (today the western half of the nation of Turkey) had been the center of the Byzantine Empire for almost seven hundred years. From their citadel at Constantinople, the emperors of the East had governed the region and drawn its wealth northward to defend their lands against Balkan principalities that threatened their frontier on the Danube River. But a growing threat from Muslim tribal groups soon forced the Byzantine rulers to look south. The most powerful of these factions was led by Osman, the Uch Bey or "marcher lord" of the Sultanate of Rum in central Anatolia. Osman was determined to unite all Muslim nations into one caliphate, a single Islamic empire that would stretch from the mountains of Persia to the deserts of Libya, but he focused his attention first on the great Christian power to the north. In 1302, he defeated the Byzantines in battle at Bapheus and then declared himself to be the sultan of a new nation that would one day bear his name: the "Ottoman" Empire.
In the centuries that followed, Ottoman power spread rapidly across Anatolia and then in all directions out from Constantinople, which Sultan Mehmed II captured from the Byzantines in 1453. Mehmed's great-grandson, Suleiman the Magnificent, gained control of the Balkans in southeastern Europe and laid siege to Vienna in 1529 (though he could not capture it). Ot-toman power peaked under Suleiman, and a calamitous naval defeat at Lepanto by Spanish and Italian ships showed that the empire's outward strength might be a bit hollow. Nevertheless, the Ottomans held back the growing economic and military power of Spain, Russia, and the Italian states into the 19th century.
The Industrial Revolution transformed the states of northern Europe and, combined with the decadence and ineffectiveness of Ottoman leadership, ultimately doomed the empire. The British, French, Austrians, and Russians gradually carved off pieces of Ottoman territory, and by the turn of the 20th century, its society was beginning to fracture. Turkish nationalists wondered why they should share the empire with outsiders, while Arab groups in Arabia and Mesopotamia began to demand independence from Constantinople's rule. Sultan Mehmed V, the 35th Ottoman ruler, took the empire into the First World War on the side of Germany's Central Powers in part to aid his friend, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had built a "Berlin-to-Baghdad" railroad and invested large sums of money into the empire (for which he was honored with the naming of a new city in central Turkey as “Kayseri”). Mehmed also hoped that a war with Great Britain to reclaim Egypt and smaller British possessions in the Persian Gulf would unite the feuding tribes in the empire and allow him to keep his throne.
The "Eastern Question" and Allied Plans
Much of nineteenth-century European foreign policy centered around the so-called "Eastern Question" and the fate of Ottoman lands in the Balkans once the empire finally collapsed. It had been a prime factor in tensions between Russia and Austria-Hungary in the decades preceding the Great War, especially since the Russian czars hoped to gain control of the Dardanelles, the ocean passage between the Black and Aegean seas to give them access to the wider world. Naturally, the Ottomans opposed these Russian designs, as granting them passage would mean letting the czar sail heavily-armed warships right through their capital city, Constantinople.
Once the Ottomans had declared war on the Allied Powers, new visions of imperial glory filled the minds of soldiers and bureaucrats in London and Paris. Their Russian allies would, naturally, gain the Dardanelles when they won the war, but Britain and France began to discuss the possibility of carving up the Ottoman hinterlands in the Middle East for themselves. (Their horrific losses at Gallipoli had convinced them that Turkey could remain an independent country.) To this end, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, began to correspond with Emir Hussein bin Ali of Mecca about whether or not Arab nationalists might help the Allies overthrow the Ottoman government. Hussein had been part of the First Arab Conference a year before the war's outbreak and had demanded greater autonomy for the empire's Arab population—which Mehmed V had rejected. He thus agreed to McMahon's plan and reached out to other nationalist groups to begin planning what he called a "great Ar-ab revolt" backed with Anglo-French weapons and, more important, money.
At the same time, two diplomats began drafting a secret treaty between their two governments: Britain's Mark Sykes and France's François Georges-Picot. They did not inform the Arabs, who were now planning their uprising with Allied help; both governments were content to let their new partners have Arabia but preferred to take the rest of the Ottoman Empire for themselves. Under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain would gain control of Palestine, Jordan, and southern Iraq while France would receive Lebanon, Syria, and Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Russia then got into the mix and was to receive western Armenia (though its defeat by Germany in 1917 abrogated that agreement). With their plans in place, the Western Allies began to send military advisors to the Arabs who could help them organize the revolt.
Lawrence of Arabia
The Arab revolt began in June 1916 when Hussein bin Ali's supporters overthrew the Ottoman garrison in Mecca, the holiest city in the Islamic faith, in a bloody month-long battle. Once victorious, the Arabs then proclaimed their leader King of Hejaz, the Arabic name for what is now northwestern Saudi Arabia. The uprising spread quickly in the next few months with the fall of Ta'if and Jeddah aided by British and French gunboats on the Red Sea. The campaign went well given the difficult terrain, but the Allies wanted it to move more swiftly. Some tribal leaders refused to support Hussein in the revolt's early months, fearing he might seek to become "king of Arabia," which slowed progress toward victory. European advisors did their best to keep their partners united, but the British General Edward Allenby in Egypt who was responsible for that area of operations felt the campaign needed a single figure to unite all Arab nationalists into a single force. He sent a subordinate, Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, to the Hejaz as his personal representative to the Arabs.
T.E. Lawrence is a fascinating character in history. He was first and foremost an archaeologist, having studied history at Jesus College, Oxford, and then worked at the British Museum for several years before the Great War. He volunteered for Army service when war came and was stationed in the Arab Bureau in Egypt. Unlike most Europeans in those days, and especially those in colonial service far from home, Lawrence treated locals—no matter their rank, position, or wealth—as equals and was totally unconcerned with the titles and status of others (or of himself). On arriving in the Hejaz, he soon became friends with Faisal, the third son of King Hussein and a key figure in the Arab Revolt. Faisal's elder brothers had participated in the initial uprising in Mecca and elsewhere in Arabia, but both the king and Lawrence believed that Faisal was the best man to carry the war north into Palestine and Syria. The two men worked together to plan a campaign that would carry the war northward to Damascus, the center of Ottoman power outside Anatolia. General Allenby had intended Lawrence to serve mainly as a strategist and logistical expert, believing him to be too valuable to risk on the battlefield, but Lawrence insisted that he share the Arabs' dangers in war. He spent much of 1916 and early 1917 building relationships with various Bedouin tribes in northern Arabia and convincing them to join Hussein and Faisal in the revolt. Perhaps his greatest friend and ally in the war was Auda Abu Tayi, a leader in the Howeitat tribe of Bedouins, who respected Lawrence's efforts to respect Arab desert culture and their Islamic faith. Lawrence dressed in Arab clothing (he found the British Army uniform "abominable," especially when riding camels) and appreciated his allies' dedication to their god.
Ottoman forces in the Hejaz depended on a single rail line that ran from Damascus, through Palestine, and into Arabia for their supplies. The Arabs had assaulted several points along the line, but Ottoman reinforcements always drove them back and repaired the tracks. Prince Faisal believed that victory depended on linking his forces by land with the British in Egypt. The fortress of Aqaba, a small town at the head of the right-hand "finger" of the Red Sea, bordered Egypt and could serve as a port of supply. General Allenby opposed a move on Aqaba for two reasons. First, the Ottomans had hardened its defenses after an ineffective British gunboat attack in 1916; second, six hundred miles of barren desert separated the town from the Hejaz population centers. But Faisal insisted, and Lawrence disobeyed his superior's orders and helped him plan the attack.
In June 1917, Lawrence and Auda Abu Tayi led a small force of Howeitat and other Arab Bedouins across the desert toward Aqaba in what most military observers believed was a futile attack. They reached the town's outer defenses without incident on July 2nd, and the Ottomans were caught entirely off guard. Auda led fifty horsemen down from the hills that overlooked the small village of Aba el Lissan, while Lawrence and another Bedouin leader divided the four hundred camel riders between them and assaulted the defenders' flanks. The results were stunning—three hundred Ottoman soldiers killed and almost two hundred captured for only two Arab deaths. The Arabs continued on to Aqaba and took it without incident on July 6th.
At this point in the war, the Ottoman Empire was reeling on several fronts. Their war against the Russians had stalled in Armenia (though Germany's role in the coming Russian Revolution would soon close down that front), and British Indian forces operating out of Ku-wait had conquered much of Mesopotamia and were approaching Baghdad and Kut, the keys to Iraq and the empire's breadbasket. With visions of desert victory brightening an otherwise dark mood in London, General Allenby formed the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and began moving toward Jerusalem. Lawrence, now given a free hand to negotiate with Arab tribesmen and bring them into the revolt, moved north as well through Jordan with Auda and Faisal, following the Ottoman railway and seizing one town after another. His job was to defend Allen-by's eastern flank and protect the main drive through Palestine—if the Ottomans could send reinforcements down the railroad into Jordan, they might recapture Aqaba, invade the Sinai Peninsula, and cut the British off.
Prince Faisal left Lawrence and Auda in Jordan and returned south to lay siege to Medina and was not present for many of the battles along the road to Damascus. At Dera'a in November 1917, Lawrence was captured and abused by an Ottoman bey, a local chieftain. The nature and severity of his injuries are the subjects of debate even today, but history records that Auda's Howeitat soldiers rescued him, and he resumed his military and diplomatic work. The advance toward Damascus resumed, though slowed by the diversion of Allied supplies away from the Arab campaign when Germany launched its final offensive in March 1918. By the fall of 1918, with the United States in the war and grinding Germany's armies into dust on the Western Front, the Arabs and Allenby's British troops had joined up outside Damascus. The Allies encircled the city with cavalry forces, bombed its Ottoman and German defenders with aircraft, and shelled its outer fortresses with artillery. After a five-day siege, Damascus surrendered. Faisal, who had arrived from the ongoing siege of Medina to take part in the attack, proclaimed himself King of Syria and raised the Hejaz flag over the citadel.
After the War
The British and French imperial attitudes toward non-Europeans spelled trouble in the post-war world. As delegates from all the Allied and associated powers gathered at the Palace of Versailles (including King Faisal of Syria), French military officials arrived in Damascus to implement the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Faisal received advice at Versailles from the noted British journalist Gertrude Bell, who had been the first to report on the Ottoman genocide of its Armenian population, and she urged him to stand firm against France's effort to deny him his throne. He also met with Chaim Weizmann and agreed to support Britain's Balfour Declaration that Palestine would eventually become a Jewish homeland. Faisal declared in a letter to the American Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter that, "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement...We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home." However, the king insisted that Britain and France would first have to recognize Arab sovereignty in their new kingdoms, which never happened and so his embrace of Zionism faded. When the peace treaties were drafted and the conference ended, Faisal returned to Syria to secure his position. The Syrian National Congress proclaimed him king in March 1920, but French forces arrived only weeks later to secure their new mandate in the country and expelled him after a brief war. At the 1921 Cairo Conference, the British offered him the throne of their new mandate in Iraq; he accepted and took up his seat in Bagh-dad later that year (with Gertrude Bell as his chief advisor). He remained on the throne until his death in 1933 and was a powerful voice for Arab nationalism in opposition to the Europeans' mandates in the Middle East.
King Hussein of the Hejaz was furious when he learned of the Sykes-Picot Agreement during the 1919 peace conference and refused his signature to any of the treaties it produced. Unlike his son Faisal, he opposed the Balfour Declaration and would not see Palestine given to what he called "Zionist invaders." British financial support for his government then dried up and he was left to govern Arabia alone. Hussein soon found himself facing a revolt by the powerful House of Saud, which controlled much of eastern Arabia. Britain offered assistance against Abdulaziz Ibn Saud if Hussein would agree to the Balfour Declaration, but the stub-born King of Hejaz refused. He fled Mecca as Saudi forces approached the city in 1925 and set-tled in the British Mandate of Jordan, where his son Abdullah I was king, and then to the British-controlled island of Cyprus until he was paralyzed by a stroke in 1930. Abdullah asked the British to allow his father to return to Amman for care; they agreed, and Hussein remained with his son until his death in 1931. He is buried in the Haram esh-Sharif on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Hussein's deposing by the nominally pro-British House of Saud laid the foundation for the oil-based monarchy that still rules Saudi Arabia today, while his son's dynasty still rules the now-independent Kingdom of Jordan under King Abdullah II.
Auda abu Tayi left his countrymen's service after the French seizure of Syria in 1920 and retired to a palace outside Amman, Jordan. He built the immense home with silver captured from the Ottomans but died before its completion in 1924. Historians today recognize his skill in battle but also disagree as to his motives during the Arab Revolt. He seemed to be driven to action both by a desire for wealth and a genuine belief in Arab nationalism, but Western historians (and movie-makers) typically emphasized only the former. His portrayal in the 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia as a man driven by money so incensed his descendants that they sued the filmmakers for defamation—though the case was later dropped.
T.E. Lawrence returned to Great Britain after the war. His actions in Arabia had won him tremendous fame in his country, and both authors and playwrights offered him fortunes for his story. But Lawrence was totally uninterested in either—or in any kinds of civilian com-forts. He soon found himself dissatisfied with the bureaucratic nature of peacetime government service. He advised Winston Churchill for a year at the Colonial Office but then joined the fledgling Royal Air Force as a pilot in 1922 under a false name. When his identity became public, he was expelled briefly but returned in 1925 and continued to serve until his death. Lawrence published several books, most famously his account of the Arab Revolt in Seven Pillars of Wisdom and a new translation of Homer's The Odyssey. His personal life was a bit of a shambles—he had many relationships with women but did not seem interested in physical intimacy with anyone, though scandalous reports of extramarital affairs appeared in newspapers across Great Britain. His only real joy in these years seemed to be in fast and dangerous vehicles—cars, planes, boats, and motorcycles. He served as an RAF test pilot, bought several racing boats and seaplanes, and rode bikes over Dorset where he settled down. On May 13, 1935, he lost control of his motorcycle while veering to avoid two cyclists in the road and was thrown over the handlebars. He died in hospital six days later at the age of 46. T.E. Lawrence remained a famous and controversial figure in British history for his personal foibles, his bravery in battle, and his fair and equal treatment of those of a different race in a time when white imperialism was the norm in the world. His acquaintance Winston Churchill described him in death in characteristically-heroic terms: "We shall not see his like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war...It will live in the legends of Arabia."
