Arabs have always been conscious of themselves as a distinct ethnic and cultural group. The Arabic language played a major role in the Arab consciousness, and Arabs always took great pride in the admirable composition of the miraculous Quran. By virtue of their ethnic feeling, and by virtue of the triumph of Arabic not only as the language of Islam but also as the main vehicle of Islamic civilization in Islam’s golden age, the Arabs maintained their sense of ethnic difference. After the Ottoman Turks took over and consolidated their position of dominance within the world of Islam, the Arab feeling of distinctness persisted, but it was not so deep as to rupture the common bond of Islam. The Arabs felt that they belonged to the larger Muslim Ottoman umma. They believed that the preservation of the empire was the surest way to protect Islam against the threat of the West. 72
During the four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Arab territories, the officials who were sent from Istanbul to administer the provinces recruited local leaders of the communities to assist them in their work. These leaders, known as the notables, acted as intermediaries (brokers) between the imperial authority and the people in their region. The role of a notable was to defend social order and to assist the government in securing stability and control of the local communities. The notables belonged to ranking families in the local religious establishment; they controlled taxes on farms and merchants.
During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the notables gained their greatest degree of strength. Abdul Hamid, who was hostile to liberalism and to his political opposition, adopted a policy of gaining the support of the Arab notables through expensive gifts and high posts in his bureaucracy and in the army. He surrounded himself with an aristocracy of religious dignitaries, and used the popular ideology of a return to the values and traditions of Islam as a weapon to fight his opponents. The ideology of Islamism that he propagated intimidated the Western powers. Syrian Christians were also brought in to serve in high positions of the government. This policy helped Abdul Hamid to secure the loyalty of Arabs and projected an image that his regime did not discriminate against Christian subjects. 73 Thus, during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century, the dominant ideology in the Arab territories was Ottomanism. This ideology held that the unity of the Ottoman Empire was the best way to defend Islam against the steady political, economic, and cultural influence of Europe. 74 Ottomanism maintained this position until 1918 because the dominant notable families in cities like Damascus, Jerusalem, and Nablus consolidated their power by occupying high posts in the Ottoman government.
The CUP coup of 1908 (see page XX) was not welcomed by the leading local politicians in the Arab territories; on the contrary, the notables were opposed to any change that might affect their position and benefits. Furthermore, most of the population of the Arab territories showed no interest in the reestablishment of the constitution. The Palestinian historian Ihsan alNimr describes how the people of Nablus went out to the streets demonstrating against the Young Turks and expressing their support for Sultan Abdul Hamid. 75 Izzat Darwaza, another Palestinian historian from Nablus, confirms al-Nimr’s observations. Similar reactions prevailed in other Arabic cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, and Mecca, where the general population and the traditional local figures did not welcome the CUP coup. The local notables, fearing the erosion of their social status, began to show their opposition to the Young Turks. The ulama religious authorities of Damascus, being apprehensive about the liberal views of the new regime, also began to unite against the revolutionaries. The Syrian population in general, motivated by their conservative religious feelings, were not enthusiastic about the new regime.
Education and the Birth of Arab Nationalism
The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed the first call for the indepen dence of all the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of an Arab Empire. This call was made by Mehmed Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, after his conquest of Syria in 1832. Mehmed Ali and Ibrahim were then in full possession of an important portion of the Arab world, including Mecca and Madina, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Damascus. Ibrahim made no secret of his intention to revive the Arab national consciousness and restore Arab nationhood. It is interesting that the Arab notables of Greater Syria, the leaders of the Arab communities, were the ones who opposed this call and were actively behind local discontent, unrest, and eventually the revolts against Egyptian rule. They were protecting their position as intermediaries between the Turkish rulers and the Arab population; they were preserving their financial benefits as tax collectors.
Ibrahim Pasha established a wide program of primary schools throughout the country, and placed secondary colleges in certain cities. Large colleges were founded in Damascus, Aleppo, and Antioch; the pupils, who were all Muslims, were boarded, clothed, and taught at the government’s expense. The Damascus college had some six hundred pupils, and the one in Aleppo had over four hundred. Because this education included military training, Muslim parents looked with apprehension on Ibrahim’s program, and it prompted them to open schools of their own to compete with the Egyptian schools. 76
Foreign Influence on Education in Syria
During Ibrahim’s rule over Syria, foreign missionaries increased their activities. Foreign missionaries had settled in Syria as far back as the beginning of the seventeenth century, but most of them had shut down their missions during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In 1820, American missionaries arrived in Syria and began to convert members of the Catholic communities to Protestantism. The changes brought about by Ibrahim’s policy of tolerance gave Jesuits the chance to return to Syria in 1834 and to revive their activities, and the American mission swelled with new arrivals.
The American missionaries gave great attention to the Arabic language, and resolved to make it the teaching language in their schools. They brought a printing press from Malta and began printing enough Arabic books to supply the schools they had founded, and other schools besides their own. They secured the services of two scholars, Nasif Yazeji and Butrus Bustani, to compose manuals on a variety of subjects for the use of the schools. 77 Meanwhile, they were rapidly opening schools in various parts of Syria. By 1860 they had established thirty-three schools attended by approximately one thousand students. They crowned their work in 1866 when they founded the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut (known as the American University of Beirut, or AUB, after 1919). The college grew steadily and over time attained university status, and became a great institution destined to play a leading part in the country’s future. George Antonius believed that the American missionaries were pioneers in their commitment to the revival of the Arabic literature, which marked the first stirring of the Arab revival. During this period the missionaries’ chosen scholars, Nasif Yazeji and Butrus Bustani, dominated intellectual life in Syria.
The Seeds of the Arab Awakening
Nasif Yazeji was a Christian born in Lebanon in 1800. He started his education with lessons from the village priest, but his natural curiosity drove him to seek knowledge everywhere. Books were not available in print, so he went after the manuscripts stored in monastic libraries. He had a great capacity for learning, and whenever he encountered a text that seemed to him worthy of close study, he would learn it by heart or copy it out patiently. His exploration of libraries took him into the heart of the lost world of classical Arabic literature. From that moment on, the problem of how to revive the past became his dominant interest. The beauty of the buried literature awakened the Arab in him, and he became the apostle of its resurrection. Nasif’s outstanding work was the production of books dealing with the science of Arabic language. The books he wrote that were intended for use in the schools of the American mission were adopted by a far larger circle of teachers and students. Nasif was a proponent of the revival of the old literature; he entreated Christians and Muslims to unite behind the inheritance they had in common and build up strong foundations for their future. He brought up his twelve children to advocate for Arab national emancipation. 78
Butrus Bustani, a Syrian Christian Arab, was born in 1819. At the age of ten he entered the monastic college of AinWaraqa, where he was taught Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic that preceded Arabic as the dominant language of the Middle East) and Latin, as well as science; later on, he learned English. In the 1840s Bustani accepted employment as teacher of Arabic in the training college of Abay and wrote books to be used in schools. He then spent more than ten years working on a translation of the Bible. When he completed this project, he started another major one, the compilation of a dictionary of the Arabic language. The 1860 massacres of Christians in Damascus and Lebanon motivated him to establish a weekly journal, the Clarion of Syria, devoted to preaching concord between the different creeds as a means to putting an end to fanatical ideology, and to bring forth new ideals. Three years later he founded the National School, which attracted pupils from all parts of Syria. Nasif Yazeji took a position as the principal teacher of Arabic at this school. In 1870, Butrus founded al-Jenan, a bimonthly political and literary review, aimed at fighting fanatics and preaching national unity. 79
In 1848, in the early days of their association with the American mission, Yazeji and Bustani founded a literary society called the Society of Arts and Sciences. Itsaim was to foster knowledge among adults by exposing them to Western ideas and culture. Within two years of its foundation, the society had fifty members, of whom the majority were Christian Syrians. In the fifth and last year of the society’s existence, Bustani edited and published the papers that had been read at its meetings. This was the first society of its kind ever established in Syria or in any other part of the Arab world with the goal of promoting knowledge. George Antonius consid ers this society one of the seeds of the flowering of the Arab National Movement. Ten years later, in 1857, Bustani and Yazeji founded another society, the Syrian Scientific Society, which included members from all Arab creeds—Muslims, Druze, and Christians. Its 150 members were the leading Arab personalities of the country. Emir Muhammad Arslan was its president for several years. The massacres of 1860, which happened in Lebanon between the Druze and Christian Mennonites, caused a setback to its activities, but in 1868 it expanded to include members living in Constantinople and Cairo. According to Antonius, the society was the first in the 350 year history of the Ottoman domination in which an Arab group of different creeds joined together with their incentive being the progress of their country as a national unit; they were united by their pride in their Arab inheritance. “The foundation of this society,” says Antonius, “was the first outward manifestation of a collective national consciousness, and its importance in history is that it was the cradle of a new political movement.” 80
The question of the origins of Arab nationalism has been the subject of wide debate among historians and scholars. In the view of some, contact with the West through Western missionaries, and the exposure of the Arab intellectuals to Western culture and Western sciences during the time they spent in Europe searching for knowledge, had a significant effect on Arab awakening. This view holds that the nineteenth-century renaissance (nahda) played a major role in the revival of latent Arab nationality, and that the European concept of patriotism appealed to Arab intellectuals and inspired them to bring their country up to the level of the West.
The most widely accepted view is that the Islamic modernism and revivalism movement of Jamal alDin alAfghani and Muhammad Abduh in the 1880s was the force that the Arabs needed to recover from the state of stagnation and de cline. The correct path was to eliminate the corruptions in their heritage and to return to true, pristine Islam. The Muslim Arab reaction to Muhammad Abduh’s Islamic modernism was shared by many Christian Arabs. Butrus alBustani, like many Eastern Christians, resented the perceived patronizing arrogance of Anglo Saxon Protestant missionaries, and warned against borrowing immoral conduct and practices from the West, as did Ahmad Faris alShidiaq and Adib Ishaq. They did call themselves Arab and took pride in their heritage; they all talked about fatherland and patriotism, watan and wataniyya. As early as 1868, Ibrahim Yazeji (Nasif’s son) was calling for the Arabs to recover their lost ancient vitality and to throw off the yoke of the Turks. He was one of the members of the secret society that worked for this goal in the late 1870s and posted signs calling for rebellion around Beirut (see below). 81
The Growth of the Movement
Sultan Abdul Hamid used harsh measures to suppress opposing voices, including censoring publications, imprisoning opposing writers or driving them into voluntary exile, and even arranging for assassination. Among those exiled who played important roles in the national movement were Abd alRahman alKawakibi, Yosif Diya Pasha alKhalidi, Muhammad Rashid Rida, Najib Azuri, and Butrus alBustani. Although Abdul Hamid failed to eliminate the national movement or arrest its growth, he was able to partially and temporarily succeed in reducing its activities significantly during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
During the reign of Abdul Hamid, the Arab National Movement was largely inactive except for two short intervals: the first during the early years of his reign, which witnessed the campaign of the Beirut secret society; and the second in the final years, with the activities of Abdul Rahman al-Kawakibi and other Arab intellectuals.
Around 1875, two years before Abdul Hamid’s accession, five young men who had been educated at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut formed a secret society. They were all Christians, but they managed after some time to recruit twenty-two more members of different creeds representing the enlightened elites. The center of their organization was Beirut, with branches in Damascus, Tripoli and Sidon. After three or four years of secret meetings they began posting placards strongly denouncing the oppressive Turkish rule. The placards called all people to drop their differences and unite against their tyrants under the inspiration of their Arab pride: “By the sword may distant aims be attained; seek with it if you mean to succeed.” In one of their placards they presented their objectives: (1) the grant of independence to Syria in union with Lebanon; (2) the recognition of Arabic as an official language in the country; (3) the removal of censorship and other restrictions on the freedom of expression; and (4) the employment of locally recruited military units in local military service only. 82
Abdul Rahman alKawakibi was a Muslim Arab born in 1849 in Aleppo, Syria, to a well-known Syrian family. His career began in journalism and law. He believed in the destiny of Islam and of the Arab race. He was known to be the defender of the weak and the poor. He was influenced by the Islamic revival movement of Jamaludin al-Afghani. However, he had different views from those of al-Afghani; whereas al-Afghani called for the unity of the Muslims under the leadership of a powerful leader regardless of his origin, al-Kawakibi emphasized the role of Arabs in the rise of Islam and the special place to which Arabs were entitled in the fortune of Islam by their language and descent. In his campaign, alKawakibi differentiated between the Arab movement and the general panIslamic revival preached by Jamaludin al Afghani, which then was adapted by Abdul Hamid for his own ends. The doctrines preached by al-Kawakibi contributed to the gradual transference of the leadership in the Arab National Movement to the Muslim side. His campaign was a plea against sectarian dissension. Muhammad Abduh called him “the first true intellectual pre cursor of modern secular PanArabism.” He was imprisoned for his public writings and speeches attacking Turkish tyranny. On his release in 1898, he left Syria and moved to Egypt.
Another prominent figure who became active in the final years of Abdul Hamid’s reign was a Christian Arab, Najib Azuri. In 1904, during his exile in Paris, he founded an Arab party, the declared object of which was to free Syria and Iraq from Turkish domination. Two years later, in cooperation with French writers, he published a monthly review entitled l’Independence Arabe (Arab independence), aimed at disseminating knowledge about the Arab world. 83
The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw significant expansion of the missionary schools in Syria. The Russian, Italian, and German missions joined the Americans and the French in establishing schools and colleges over the whole country. Most of the missions did not limit their activities to education, but were instruments for political penetration and the acquisition of political power for their countries. Thus the progress of Western education had mixed effects. Although it made Syria the most advanced part of the Arab world, it also caused great harm by emphasizing sectarian divisions, thus eroding the great work of the Arab reformers of Bustani’s generation. The rapid introduction of the modern sciences, with their unfamiliar terminology, hindered the translation of textbooks to Arabic, so the foreign educators decided to teach in a European language. Even the Americans, who had pioneered the revival of the Arabic language, elected in 1880 to make English the medium of instruction in their Syrian Protestant College. This phenomenon had a decisive effect on the future of the national movement. Muslims, fearing proselytization, preferred to send their children to the state schools or to schools in their community, even though the foreign schools were known to maintain higher academic standards. This in direct attack on the position of the Arabic language contributed to the transfer of the leadership of the national movement from Christian to Muslim hands. 84
The reign of the CUP was a turning point in the history of the Arab National Movement. By suppressing the alIkha’ alArabi society (see page XX), the CUP forced the Arab leaders to use underground methods. Recent research suggests that, contrary to the common view, the feeling of ethnic separateness on the part of the inner circle of the CUP antedates the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. In their private correspondence in the early years of the twentieth century, some key members of the CUP used derogatory remarks to describe the Arabs. They referred to them as “the dogs of the Turkish nation” and considered them to be an inferior ethnic group. 85 Once in power, the CUP dismissed many of the Arab notables who had been part of Abdul Hamid’s bureaucracy—not because they were close to the old regime and could not be trusted, but because the CUP’s Turkish nationalist ideology dictated the replacement of Arab officials with Turks.
Between 1908 and 1914, a series of societies formed, some public and others secret. One of the two main public societies was alMuntada alArabi, founded in Constantinople in the summer of 1909 by a group of officials, deputies, writers, and students to serve as a meeting venue for Arab visitors and residents in the capital. This society had an enormous membership running into thousands, of whom the majority were students, and established branches in various towns in Syria and Iraq. The CUP tolerated this society since its objectives were not political. The other important public society was the “Ottoman Decentralization Party” founded in Cairo toward the end of 1912. Its founders were men of experience and good standing who held prominent positions in public life. A central committee made up of twenty members and a smaller executive committee of six members, stationed in Cairo, controlled the activities of the society. Branches were established in every town in Syria and Iraq. Within a year, the committee of the Decentralization Party had become the best organized and most authoritative voice of Arab aspirations. 86
Of the underground societies, the most important was alQahtaniya, established in 1909. Its objective was to turn the Ottoman Empire into a dual monarchy. The Arab provinces would form a single kingdom with its own parliament and local government, and with Arabic as the language of its institutions. The kingdom was to be part of a TurkoArab empire modeled after the Austro-Hungarian empire. The members of this society, who were chosen with care to ensure trustworthiness, included several Arab officers of high rank in the Turkish army. The leader of this group was Aziz Ali alMasri. It lasted for about a year, then its leaders suspended their activities after they found out that one of the members had betrayed the party.
The other secret society was alFatat, which was founded in Paris in 1911. The founders were seven young Arabs, all Muslims, who were pursuing higher studies in the French capital. The objects of the society were to work for the independence of the Arab countries and to liberate them from Turkish or any other foreign domination. Membership was made subject to a long period of probation. For the first two years, its center was Paris; its membership remained small. As its founders returned home, its base shifted to Beirut in 1913 and in the following year to Damascus. Its membership rose to over two hundred, most of them Muslims, with a few Christians. Al-Fatat continued to be a secret society until the Arab countries gained their liberation from Turkish rule. 87
In the last days of 1912, opposition to Turkish rule emerged in Beirut, organized by a prominent group who formed themselves into a Committee of Reform consisting of eighty-six members of all creeds. They drew up a document for the establishment of autonomous rule in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. It called for the recognition of Arabic as the official language and for its adoption in parliament on an equal footing to Turkish. It called for an end to the practice of conscription of soldiers for peacetime service outside their provinces. About the middle of February 1913, the Committee of Reform announced their demands publicly, giving rise to demonstrations in the provinces of Syria and Iraq. Public meetings were held in Damascus, Aleppo, Acre, Nablus, Baghdad, and Basra. The CUP took harsh measures to suppress the protests, arresting the principal leaders of the committee. The protests and agitation increased and extended to other parts of Syria. The government compromised by releasing the arrested leaders and announced that the reforms would be introduced. In May of 1913, a new Wilayat Law was issued which increased the power of representative bodies in the provinces, but fell short of the committee’s demands. The following year the center of agitation shifted to Paris, when the young founders of alFatat arranged for an Arab congress to convene in Paris. They invited the Decentralization Party of Cairo and its affiliated societies, as well as the Committee of Reform. The congress held its inaugural meeting on June 18, 1913; twenty-four delegates attended out of total twenty-five invited. The congress lasted for six days, during which four sittings were held, attended by some two hundred Arab listeners. Throughout the proceedings, the speakers emphasized their desire to maintain the integrity of the empire so long as the rights of the Arabs, as partners, were recognized. 88
When the CUP failed to pressure the French government to prohibit the congress from convening on its soil, they sent their secretary to Paris to negotiate with the heads of the congress. An agreement on the principles was reached with the Arab leaders as the basis for further negotiations. Three Arab leaders came to Constantinople to conclude the final settlement; however, the CUP leaders never intended to implement what they accepted in Paris. On August 18, 1913, they issued an ambiguous imperial decree that contained several contradictions and reservations. Emissaries of the CUP approached certain Arab personalities with offers of official appointments, to buy their compliance. On January 4, 1914, five of them— four of whom were strangers to the national movement—accepted nomination as senators. Thus, the Beirut uprising and the Paris congress both failed to convince the CUP to work with the Arab leaders as equal partners.
On February 9, 1914, Major Aziz Ali alMasri was arrested, and rumors began to spread that he was to be tried for treason. Aziz Ali was a well-respected military officer who had entered the military academy in Constantinople and then the staff college, passing out with distinction. In 1904 he was posted to the staff of the Third Army in Macedonia, where he rejoined the CUP and was one of the officers who led the military revolution in 1908; in April 1909, he had taken part in the march on Constantinople. In 1910, he was sent to Yemen on active service, and during the war in Libya he led the Arab resistance against Italian aggression. When he returned to Constantinople in the summer of 1913, he realized that the CUP had no intention of honoring the agreement with the Committee of Reform that had been signed in Paris. At the ministry of war, he found disorder and corruption. He was enraged by the orders by the CUP to transfer the Arab officers, including himself, to outlying provincial garrisons. After witnessing these actions, he resigned his commission in disgust.
Early in 1914 Aziz Ali founded a new secret society made mainly of army officers. Called alAhd (the covenant), its objects were the same as those of alQahtaniya. Since the suspension of al-Qahtaniya, Aziz Ali had been entertaining the idea of reviving it into an association for army officers only. The new society, al-Ahd, had only two civilians (one was Emir Adel Arslan). The Iraqi element was strong in its council. It became to soldiers what al-Fatat was for civilians, and although neither society was aware of the existence of the other, each in its field became complementary to each other until 1915, when they established contact in Damascus and pooled their resources together to provoke the Arab revolt. 89
The arrest of Aziz Ali caused widespread protests in Syria and Egypt as well as in Europe. On April 15, 1914, it was announced that Aziz Ali had been condemned to death, but the sultan had commuted the sentence to fifteen years with hard labor. The protests and agitation continued until April 21, when Aziz Ali was pardoned and released from prison. On the following day he sailed for Egypt, where he received a most enthusiastic welcome. His imprisonment and trial had shaken the Arab world more than any other act of Turkish tyranny.
The catalyst for the emergence of Arab nationalism as a movement seeking political and cultural independence for the Arabs was the rise of Turkish nation alism and the CUP policy of imposing the Turkish language and culture on the Arabs, as well as the centralization measures that the CUP implemented. The events that followed the Arab Congress in Paris in June 1913, and the measures the CUP implemented contrary to the agreement they had signed with the leaders of the Congress, led the Arab nationalists to conclude that their bid for autonomy had failed, and they must now seek independence.
It is important at this point to acknowledge the fact that the Arab National Movement during this period was a minority movement composed of a relatively small number of intellectuals drawn from upperclass families who could not transmit their ideas to the Arab masses and create a powerful national movement. However, they were able to plant the seeds of a political movement that later fought for complete Arab independence.
The Hashemites’ Role in the Arab Revolt
Since the middle of the tenth century, the Hijaz had been autonomous under the rule of the emir of Mecca, who was one of the sharifs (descendants of the prophet Muhammad). This role had been continuously occupied by the Hashemites (members of the Bani Hashem). During the Ottoman rule, Mecca and Madina were of great value to the sultan in Istanbul, who claimed the title of the caliphate of Muslims, to bolster his position in the Islamic world. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca and Madina was given a special official organization and the religious and educational foundations of Mecca and Madina were greatly increased by the sultan who proudly bore the title “Protector of the Two Holy Places.” Because of the power inherent to the office of emir and Husayn’s “dangerous capacity for independent thought,” however, Sultan Abdul Hamid deemed it prudent to invite Sharif Husayn ibn Ali for an “extended visit” in Istanbul. Husayn was captive there for fifteen years. 90
When the emir of Mecca was deposed by the Young Turk revolution in the summer of 1908, Abdul Hamid appointed Husayn to fill the position. Husayn, along with his four sons Ali, Abdullah, Faisal, and Zayd, would become major figures in the Arab world in the twentieth century. Upon his appointment he stressed his loyalty to the Ottoman sultan and the religious sentiment that bound the Hijaz to the empire. He also emphasized the authority of his position and the traditional autonomy of the Hijaz. However, the local CUP party was planning to limit such authority. The CUP delegation greeted him upon his arrival in Jidda with the words: “We have come to welcome the constitutional emir whose rule we hope will leave off the ancient administrative principles . . . and we greet in him the emir who knows the spirit of age and the desired reforms, under the constitution which is the lamp of security.”
Husayn took the opportunity to state his policy in his reply: “I have stepped into the place of my predecessors and my fathers on conditions with which Sultan Selim I conferred it upon AbuNumayy, and verily these are the lands of God in which nothing will ever stand except the Shari’ah of God . . . The constitution of the lands of God is the Shari’ah of God and the Sunnah of His Prophet.” 91
Husayn’s authority and the power of his position was dependent upon guaranteeing the security of the pilgrimage. It was important for the emir to control the tribes, who tried to raid the pilgrimages; they were also a source of revenue, as they paid tithes to the emir. During the pilgrimage season of December 1908, the tribesmen around Madina made several attacks on the railroad, but were driven off by the Ottoman troops. Two tribes located along the eastern frontier of the Hijaz had been attacking the pilgrims and the lands of other tribes. In the summer of 1909 Husayn forced them to submit, and was then able to take credit for the security of the pilgrimage.
In January 1909, Husayn’s son Abdullah accompanied the Syrian pilgrimage party on their return to Damascus and was a guest of the Damascene notable Ata Pasha alRikabi. At that time he learned of the feelings of Arabism that were then beginning to manifest among the young men of Damascus. As a deputy in the Ottoman parliament, he often came in contact with the chiefs of the Arab nationalists, some of whom asked him to persuade his father to lead the movement. In 1911 the Arab deputies in the Ottoman parliament sent a letter to Husayn through Abdullah dated February 1912, requesting him to lead the Arabs in throwing off the Turkish yoke. Husayn did not respond to the letter.
Although CUP officials in Hijaz continually challenged Husayn’s power between 1908 and 1911, he continued to be a loyal subject of the sultan; when the Turkish government requested his aid in suppressing the revolt of Sayyid alIdrisi in Asir, he led from the Hijaz a force of Turkish troops and Arab irregulars to relieve the Turks besieged in Abha. In Asir, however, he witnessed the killing of Arabs and other oppressive acts committed by the Ottoman army. When the Turkish commander refused to accept his advice, Husayn returned to the Hijaz with the Hashemite forces. After his participation in the war against al-Idrisi, the leadership of the national movement turned away from Husayn, even becoming hostile to him. In the spring of 1912, the leaders of the most important Arab nationalist societies began secret negotiations with some of the independent emirs of Arabia for the purpose of instigating an Arab uprising. They approached the sheikh of Kuwait, the emirs of Muscat and Muhammarah, Ibn Suud, and Sayyed alIdrisi at the outset, but not Husayn. The nationalists seem to have put Husayn in the same category as the Turks, because as late as April 24, 1913, one of the Arab revolutionaries was of the opinion that al-Idrisi should be induced to march on Mecca in conjunction with a general Arab rebellion in Iraq and Syria. From 1912 until the beginning of 1914, Husayn was generally regarded by Arabs and Turks as a supporter of the Ottoman State, and not as an Arab nationalist.92 In October 1912, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece formed the Balkan League and declared war on the Ottoman Empire, defeating the Turks and strip ping the empire of nearly all its European provinces. In the wake of this defeat, the Turks intensified the policy of centralization. Toward the end of 1913 a new supervisor (vali) for the Hijaz, Wahib Bey, was appointed to replace Munir Pasha, whose relations with Husayn had been cordial. The new vali arrived in Hijaz in February of 1914, accompanied by seven battalions of infantry and one of artillery, with instructions to apply the Law of the Vilayets and to extend the railroad from Madina to Mecca. Husayn and the Arab tribes of the Hijaz strongly opposed the arrival of the new vali. Wahib advised the government to depose Husayn and requested at least two divisions for this purpose. The grand vizier, Sa’d Halim, who was a personal friend of Husayn, intervened with the promise to send the emir a warning. When Halim failed to dissuade Husayn, the minister of the interior, Talat, arranged to send a division from Smyrna. Again the grand vizier intervened, protesting that such an act would have an adverse effect upon obtaining a desired loan from France. The crisis was settled in favor of Husayn, and both sides agreed to start immediate discussions. Husayn’s son Abdullah, who had left the Hijaz before the arrival of Wahib to attend the coming session of the parliament, spent the time of the crisis in Egypt, but was asked to proceed to the capital immediately. When he arrived in Constantinople, he presented Husayn’s position to the grand vizier and the minister of the interior: Husayn asked them to maintain the traditional autonomy of the Hijaz as had been granted by Sultan Selim I and requested the abandonment of the plans to extend the railroad to Mecca, as such a project would disturb the longstanding employment of the Bedouin and others who depended on the practice of transport by camel. The tribesmen also were involved in the instruction of the pilgrims in the circumambulations and other duties related to the rituals of the pilgrimage. Talat presented a compromise plan which called for the completion of the railroad to Mecca; in return, the sharif would be given complete control over one-third of the revenues of the railroad in addition to a quarter of a million guineas to spend among the tribes. 93
On April, 1914, Abdullah returned to the Hijaz to present the government’s offer to his father. Husayn’s answer was, “Are they bribing me?” Although the government was willing to give up its attempts to apply provincial law in the Hijaz, its insistence on extending the railroad worried the Hashemites, because it would have greatly aided future Turkish efforts to subdue the emir of Mecca by military means. A series of family councils were held to discuss this problem. Abdullah proposed that they prepare for an uprising in the Hijaz aiming at independence from the Turks, with the aid of the Arab units in the Ottoman army in Syria and Iraq, and that they then work toward the formation of a large independent Arab state. Abdullah’s knowledge of the Arab national movement convinced him that a revolt could be successful. The nationalists had confided in Abdullah since 1909, though his father’s involvement in the campaign against al-Idrisi had caused Husayn to be alienated from nationalist circles. Finally, however, the actions of Wahib seemed to have brought Abdullah and the nationalists back together.
Husayn decided to present to the government a counterproposal aimed at delaying any action. Abdullah was commissioned to present his father’s response to the Turks. Upon his arrival on July 1, 1914, two days after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo—the event generally considered to be the catalyst for World War I—Abdullah had a meeting with the grand vizier and Talat, and presented his father’s proposal: “The emir of Mecca is requesting the formation of a committee under his presidency which would meet with the grand vizier and the sheikh alIslam or some minister and draw up and agree to certain projects, the execution of which will be prerequisites to the construction of the railroad.” Talat responded: “Is this the time for thinking about the building of rail roads? . . . We wish you to travel immediately to the Hijaz to raise volunteers, for it is possible that the state will be forced to enter the war.” 94 Following his meeting with Halim and Talat, Abdullah had a meeting with Enver, the minister of war. Enver repeated Talat’s request for Abdullah to return to the Hijaz and raise volunteers. The emir asked where the Hijazis would be used. When the minister of war said that the Arabs would be used with the regular troops in the Caucasus and Europe, while Turkish forces manned the Egyptian front, Abdullah declared that the volunteers must be employed on the Egyptian front.
When Abdullah returned from Constantinople to Mecca, he informed his father of the discussion with the Turks. In August 1914, Husayn wrote a letter to the sultan in which he advised against entering the war. He pointed out the difficulties the empire would face as a result of being cut off from her source of supply in Germany. In addition, Basra, Yemen, and the Hijaz would be vulnerable to the pressure of British sea power. Husayn also wrote to the grand vizier that if the Empire should enter the war, it would be necessary to provide Yeman, Asir, and the Hijaz with three years’ stores of supplies, and arms and equipment for both regular troops and volunteers. After Turkey entered the war, Husayn wired the government requesting money be sent to the three provinces. He received neither supplies nor money even after repeated requests.
As soon as it became obvious that Turkey was entering the war, Aziz Ali, from his retirement in Cairo, sent a message to the leaders of alAhd, asking them not to initiate any hostile activities against the Ottoman Empire until satisfactory guarantees were obtained from the allies in regard to future Arab independence. His fear was that a revolt might only result in the substitution of one domination for an other; thus, he urged the alAhd’s leaders to refrain from making hasty decisions. 95
Siding with the British
The British interest in the conditions of Arabia had been clear to Abdullah as early as the spring of 1912, when Lord Kitchner, the British agent in Egypt, called on the emir, who was then in Cairo as the guest of the viceroy of Egypt. Kitchner expressed his government’s approval of the improvement in the conditions of the pilgrimage that had taken place since Husayn became emir of Mecca. Two years later, early in February, 1914, during the height of the crisis in the Hijaz, Abdullah had a meeting with Kitchner when he was in Cairo on his way to Constantinople. The emir spoke to the British agent at length of the Arabs’ desire for independence and inquired whether Britain was willing to assist their national movement in the event of an Arab revolt. Kitchner’s reply was that Great Britain could not interfere in the internal affairs of Turkey, with which it had friendly relations. In April 1914, during his return trip to the Hijaz, Abdullah again stopped in Cairo and met with Ronald Storrs, Britain’s Oriental secretary. In the course of a lengthy conversation, Abdullah asked Storrs whether Great Britain would send guns to Husayn for use against the Turks. Storrs replied that his government could not supply arms for use against a friendly power, and that Britain’s interest in the Hijaz was only the safety of the Indian and Egyptian pilgrims. 96
When the war broke out in August 1914, Kitchner was in England on leave, and as he was ready to return to his post in Cairo, he was appointed secretary of war. Storrs, who had returned to Egypt, wrote privately to Kitchner asking to be authorized to contact Emir Abdullah. Kitchner responded positively, instructing Storrs to ask Abdullah whether, in the event Turkey entered the war on Germany’s side, the sharif would join Great Britain in the war against the Turks. These instructions were issued in the last week of September, 1914, about six weeks before the declaration of war on Turkey. Emir Abdullah, who was aware of the strength of the revolution- ary feeling in Syria, and was confident that Damascus and Baghdad would respond with enthusiasm to a call to revolt, felt that the proper course would be to find out by negotiations whether there was indeed an absolute guarantee of Arab independence. Faysal, on the other hand, had great reservations. He felt that Kitchner’s offer contained no guarantee for Arab independence, and he also felt that the Arabs were not sufficiently prepared for a revolt.
Sharif Husayn shared Faysal’s views on the unpreparedness of the Arabs of the other provinces, but he could not ignore Abdullah’s strong beliefs, so he decided to send emissaries to Syria to discover the state of national feelings and prepared ness. At the same time he composed a letter to Storrs for Abdullah to sign, in which he stated his willingness to come to an understanding with Great Britain, but indicated he was not yet able to depart from the neutrality which his position in Islam bound him to observe. However, he confined his remarks to the Hijaz, carefully avoiding committing the rest of the Arab world, and hinted that he might find it possible to lead his immediate followers to revolt, in the event that the Turks should bring matters to a head, provided England were to promise effective support. 97
At about the same time he received the sharif’s letter, Kitchener also received a letter from Sir John Maxwell, the commander of the British forces in Egypt, urging Kitchner to approach the Arabs in Mecca and Yemen about joining the war against Turkey. On October 31, Kitchner telegraphed the British Agency a defi nite promise to the sharif that if he and his followers were to side with England against Turkey, the British government would guarantee his retention of the dig nity of grand sharif with all the rights and privileges pertaining to it, and would defend it against all external aggression. It held out a promise of support to the Arabs in general in their endeavors to secure freedom, on the condition that they would ally themselves to England. It concluded with a hint that, if the sharif were proclaimed caliph, he could count on England’s recognition. 98 This message was the beginning of negotiations between the sharif of Mecca and Britain aiming at establishing an alliance against the Ottomans, who sided with Germany in the war. The message reached Abdullah on November 16, 1914, shortly after Turkey entered the war. Husayn asked Abdullah to respond to Kitchner’s message. Abdullah sent the answer to Cairo in which he stressed again the inability of the sharif, without req uisite preparations, to commit to any act of overt hostility against the Turks. This reply reached Cairo in the early days of December 1914. George Antonius describes this response as being the end of the first chapter in the Anglo-Arab conspiracy. The second chapter was to open eight months later, in July 1915, as soon as Husayn had completed his inquiries among Arab leaders and after he had reached an agreement with them. 99
On November 5, 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of Germany against Russia, Britain, and France. The call for jihad was issued in three stages. The first was the fatwa on November 7, 1914, rendered by the sheikh al Islam, declaring it “a sacred personal duty on all Muslims in the world, including those living under the rule of Great Britain, France, or Russia, to unite against those three enemies of Islam; to take up arms against them and their allies and to refuse in all circumstances, even when threatened with death penalty, to assist the governments of the Entente in their attacks on the Ottoman Empire and its German and AstroHungarian defenders.” Then came the sultan’s proclamation to the army and fleet, issued on November 11, 1914, in which he exhorted them to fight for the liberation of enslaved Islam as well as in defense of the threatened empire. Lastly, there was the manifesto to the Muslim world, issued on November 23, 1914, over the signatures of the sheikh al-Islam and twenty-eight other religious dignitaries. It called upon all the Muslims of the world, whether subjects of the entente powers or not, to obey the injunctions of the Holy Book as interpreted by the sacred fatwa, and participate in the defense of Islam and the holy places. 100
In December 1914, Ahmed Jemal Pasha, the maritime minister in the Ottoman cabinet, was made the head of the government in Syria and the com mander of the Fourth Army. He was assigned the mission of liberating Egypt. To achieve his goal, he was determined to win the hearts of the Arab population and to inspire them to play an active role in the holy war. Shortly before his arrival to Syria, Turkish officials had raided the French consulates in Beirut and Damascus and seized documents incriminating certain well-known Arab personalities. Jemal Pasha chose to ignore the contents of the documents; he locked them in a drawer and devoted his efforts to preparations for the military campaign against the British in Egypt. Jemal launched his offensive on the Suez Canal on February 1915. He was counting on provoking an uprising against the British in Egypt, which did not happen. His attack was repelled, and he had to retreat and return to Damascus, leaving a small force in Sinai.
When Jemal Pasha returned to Damascus, papers were placed before him incriminating a Maronite priest, Yusuf Hayek, in the exchange of treasonable correspondence with the president of the French Chamber. Jemal signed the death warrant of the priest, who was publicly hanged in Damascus on March 22, 1915. Then Jemal received reports related to the activities of the British and French military intelligence that prompted him to take several measures against the Arab nationalists. On June 25, 1915, a division of the Fourth Army which was entirely Arab was sent to Gallipoli. A large number of people were arrested, brought before a mili tary court, interrogated, tortured, and tried. On August 21, 1915, thirteen of them were sentenced to death, and were hanged in Beirut’s main square. They came from different parts of Syria; among them was Muhammad Mihmisani, a brilliant graduate of the school of law in Paris and one of the founders of al-Fatat. Forty-five others who were abroad or had escaped received the same sentence in absentia—all of them men of great fame throughout the Arab world. A large number of Muslim and Christian notables were arrested and tried, and many were executed. The first was Joseph Hani, hanged in Beirut on April 5, 1915. A month later twentyone were executed. Sharif Husayn tried to intervene with telegrams to Jemal, to the grand vizier, and to the sultan. Faysal pleaded with Jemal in person. But their efforts were in vain. 101
During this period, Husayn was under pressure from the grand vizier to proclaim the holy war and to send volunteers. Husayn replied with assurances of his loyalty and devotion to the caliphate and his religious enthusiasm for the holy war. As Jemal continued his requests for volunteers for the second campaign against the Suez Canal, Husayn promised to send a force from the Hijaz to assist in the expedition, which was planned for the winter of 1915.102
Husayn Backs the Revolt; the McMahon Correspondence
As a result of the general conscription of August 1914, Ahmad Fawzi Bey alBakri was called to service and assigned to Mecca, where he arrived in the summer of 1914. Fawzi, whose older brother Nasib was a member of alFatat, had been chosen by the nationalist leaders to reveal the existence of the societies to Husayn. Fawzi contacted Husayn in January 1915 and told him of the nationalists’ plans, proposing that Husayn assume the leadership of the Arab revolt. It would take the form of a mutiny by the Arab troops stationed in Syria, whose officers were members of alAhd. 103
At Jemal’s request, Husayn had ordered an Arab force under the command of his son Ali to accompany the Turkish forces under Wahib Bey, the vali for the Hijaz. On the way from Mecca to Madina, one of Ali’s men discovered a case that had fallen from the baggage of a well-known Hijazi supporter of the CUP. The documents in the case contained plans to depose Husayn and his family and to end the special position of the Hijaz. Only the outbreak of the war had interfered with the execu tion of these plans. Therefore Ali stopped at Madina and returned to Mecca, where he showed the documents to his father. Despite this evidence, Husayn personally was still inclined to seek a solution within the Ottoman Empire. Faysal, who had traveled to Damascus for the purpose of assessing the status of the nationalists in Syria in order to estimate the feasibility of a revolution, was instructed, after completing that mission, to proceed to Constantinople to present Wahib’s documents to the grand vizier.
Faysal arrived in Damascus on March 26, 1915, and became a guest of Ata Pasha alRikabi. During the four weeks he spent in Damascus he met with the leaders of alFatat and alAhd, who assured him that three of the Arab regular divisions in Syria were ready for the revolution. In the late part of April 1915, Faysal proceeded to Constantinople, where he remained for a month. He presented the evidence of Wahib’s plans to the sultan, the grand vizier, Talat, and Enver, who condemned Wahib’s actions, ordered his transfer, and promised an official inquiry and court martial. However, the ministers told Faysal that if Husayn made the declaration of jihad, he could count on receiving the fullest satisfaction. Faysal assured the sultan and the ministers of his family’s complete loyalty and promised to lead a Hijazi force in the planned second attack on the Suez Canal. During his stay in Constantinople, Faysal learned about the successful British attack on the Dardanelles, which meant that the conditions were favorable for an Arab revolt. He also met two generals who advised him, upon returning to the Hijaz, to warn his father not to support the CUP, who were dragging the empire to ruin. Faysal then decided to join the revolutionaries. 104
While he was in Constantinople, Faysal received from the leaders of al–Fatat and alAhad “The Damascus Protocol” outlining their terms for an alliance with Britain, to be presented to the British through Husayn:
The recognition by Great Britain of the independence of the Arab countries lying within the following frontiers:
- NORTH: The line MersinAdna to Parallel 37° N and thence along the line BirejikUfraMardinMidia (Ibn Umar)Amadia to the Person frontier;
- EAST: The Persian frontier down to the Persian Gulf;
- SOUTH: The Indian Ocean (with the exclusion of Aden, whose sta tus was to be maintained);
- WEST: The Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea back to Mersin.
The abolition of all exceptional privileges granted to foreigners under the Capitulation.
The conclusion of a defensive alliance between Great Britain and the future independent Arab State.
The grant of economic preference to Great Britain. 105
These were the conditions under which the Arab leaders were prepared to support an Arab revolt to be proclaimed by the sharif of Mecca, and to do everything in their power to help the Allied cause.
During the early part of 1915, the British authorities in Egypt were concerned about the threat of jihad. In June 1915, a declaration was published by Sir Henry McMahon: Great Britain pledged herself to make it a condition of the conclusion of peace that the Arabian Peninsula should be recognized as an independent state exercising full sovereignty over the holy places of Islam, and hinted at the readi ness of the British government to welcome the proclamation of an Arab caliphate. Leaflets were printed and distributed in large quantities throughout Egypt and the Sudan, and smuggled into Syria. The declaration was the result of open conversation that Storrs and Clayton (the director of Military Intelligence in Cairo) had had with Arab leaders in Cairo, Aziz Ali, and the reformer Sayyed Rashid Rida, instructing them to persuade the Arabs that their future lay in an alliance with England. Aziz Ali and Rida asked for guarantees of Arab independence as condition of a call to Arab revolt. 106
When Emir Faysal returned from Constantinople to Damascus on May 23, 1915, he found that some of the Arab divisions which were an important components of the planned revolt had been transferred, which clearly had a significant effect on the morale of the revolutionaries. Faysal was eager to return to Mecca to persuade his father to accept the leadership of the revolt and to present to him the Damascus Protocol as the basis for the negotiations of a final agreement with Britain. Nine of the nationalists had signed a manifesto agreeing to recognize Husayn as king of the Arabs if he obtained an agreement with Britain based on the Damascus Protocol. 107
On June 20, 1915 , Faysal arrived in Mecca, reported to his father the results of his investigations in Constantinople and Damascus, and declared his support for the revolution. Following lengthy discussions among the members of the Hashemite family, they agreed to undertake the leadership of a general uprising by the Arabs and to begin negotiations with the British. They also agreed that the tentative date of the uprising would be June of 1916. Having decided to support revolution, Husayn initiated negotiations with Great Britain by sending an unsigned and undated letter to Sir Henry McMahon, British high commissioner at Cairo. 108 The letter to McMahon stated the Arab terms on which the sharif was prepared, on behalf of the Arab people, to enter into an alliance with Great Britain. Husayn sought to obtain British recognition of an Arab state within the frontiers specified by the Damascus Protocol. This letter is regarded as the first note from Husayn to McMahon.
Sir Henry McMahon replied in a letter dated August 30, 1915. He reiterated the general assurances previously given to the sharif in October 1914, but avoided the discussion of the terms stated by Husayn’s letter of July 14, 1915, claiming that a discussion of these terms seemed to him inopportune because it appeared a waste of time to discuss such things under the stress of war. He was attempting to win an alliance from the sharif while at the same time denying him the only means by which he could make the alliance effective. The British at that time were not aware of the relationship between the Hashemites and the Arab nationalists in Syria. They believed that Husayn was speaking for himself, and that he could be won over by a promise to recognize the independence of the Hijaz and to recognize him as caliph. Husayn replied promptly with a second note dated September 9, 1915. In sharp contrast to McMahon’s evasiveness, Husayn’s reply was firm and clear. He declared that his proposal that included precise frontier had not originated with himself, but had been put forward by “our people” as an essential condition. He expressed his disappointment and irritation with McMahon for harping on the caliphate as it were all that mattered. He made it clear that he regarded the caliphate as a dead institution. Husayn’s response included this statement: “For our aim, O respected Minister, is to ensure that the conditions which are essential to our future shall be secured on a foundation of reality, and not on highly decorated phrases and titles.” 109 He continued to affirm that the question of frontiers must be treated as fundamental, for it was regarded as such by all people on whose behalf he spoke, including those whom circumstances were compelling to serve their Turkish rulers. Husayn made clear that the issue of his negotiations depended solely upon whether the British would reject or admit the proposed frontiers. 110
As McMahon was preparing his reply to Husayn’s letter, a young Arab officer in the Turkish army had arrived in Cairo early in October as a prisoner of war from the Gallipoli front. It was a Muslim from Iraq named Muhammad Sharif alFaruqi. The information he disclosed to the British had a decisive influence on the attitude of McMahon and his advisers. The officer was well acquainted with the alAhd organization as well as alFatat, its civilian sister. He told the British about the real feelings of the Arab nationalists in Syria and Iraq. This was new information for the British officials.
McMahon’s reply to Husayn is by far was the most important document in the whole correspondence. It contains the pledges which brought the Arabs into the war on the side of the Allies. McMahon’s note, which was dated October 24, 1915, began by stating that since the sharif had represented the matter as fundamental and urgent, he [McMahon] had been authorized by the British government to give on their behalf certain assurances to the Arabs: Great Britain pledged to recog nize and uphold the independence of the Arabs in the area contained within the frontiers proposed by the sharif, with the exception of certain parts of Asia Minor and Syria. A reservation was also made in regard to those territories within the same area in which Great Britain was in treaty relations with various Arab chiefs. The areas which were excluded were specified as follows:
The districts of Mersin and Alexandretta, and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, cannot be said to be purely Arab, and must on that account be ex cepted from the proposed delimitation.
Subject to that modification, and without prejudice to the trea ties concluded between us and certain Arab Chiefs, we accept that limitation.
As for the regions within the proposed frontiers, in which Great Britain is free to act without detriment to the interest of her ally France, I am authorized to give you the following pledges on behalf of the government of Great Britain, and to reply as follows to your note: That, subject to the modifications stated above, Great Britain is prepared to recognize and uphold the independence of the Arabs in all the regions lying within the frontiers proposed by the Sharif of
Mecca. 111
McMahon’s response contained other stipulations, the most important being re- lated to Britain’s special interest in the provinces of Basra and Baghdad, which im- plied a measure of Anglo-Arab partnership in that part of independent Arab states.
In his third note to McMahon dated November 5, 1915, Husayn consented to the exclusion of the Vilayet of Adana (including the port of Mersin) from the area of Arab independence, but he refused to accept the exclusion of the districts of Damascus, Hama, and Aleppo, on the grounds that, unlike Mersin and Adana, they were purely Arab regions. He also rejected the exclusion of Alexandretta. He ac- cepted the reservation about those Arab chiefs with whom Great Britain had treaty re- lations, but implied that this included only chiefs in the area around Basra. He accepted the proposed Anglo-Arab partnership in the provinces of Basra and Baghdad which were occupied by Britain with the view that the occupation was a temporary measure.
In their reply to the sharif’s third note dated December 13, 1915, on the subject of the exclusions of areas in Syria, the British continued their reservations, not on the basis of those areas not being purely Arab, but on the new grounds that French interests were involved. McMahon repeated his request to exclude the areas of the Arabian Peninsula controlled by the Arab chieftains who had treaties with Great Britain. He concluded his reply with an assurance that Great Britain would not assent to peace on any terms that did not provide for the freedom of the Arab peoples.
It is important to point out that the text of the McMahon correspondence does not exclude Palestine from the area in which Great Britain had pledged to recog nize and uphold an independent Arab state. 112
It appears that Husayn had not decided upon a definite course of action in the early part of January 1916. He was under constant pressure from Jemal Pasha for Faysal to return to Damascus with the promised contingent. It was decided, therefore, to have Faysal return to Syria in order to dismiss Turkish suspicions. Faysal was accompanied by an escort of about fifty men when he returned to Damascus. He stayed at Jemal’s headquarters for the purpose of helping send the equipment for the volunteers in Mecca. Surveying the situation in Syria, Faysal reported to his father that the arrests of nationalists and the transferal of Arab military units from Damascus had left few Arab leaders of the second rank upon whom a revolt could be based. The weakening of the Arab position in Syria led Husayn to accept some ambiguity in his terms with the British, as he was anxious to secure an agreement so as to begin active preparations for the revolt. This acceptance was relayed to McMahon through a fourth note dated February 18, 1916, in which he stated his willingness to shelve the matter of the coastal Syrian areas for the duration of the war so as to avoid disturbing the concord between France and Great Britain. However, he affirmed his position that he would seize the earliest opportunity after the conclusion of the war to vindicate the Arab claim to all of Syria. The note ended by informing the British of the Hashemites’ plans and requesting specific supplies and funds that would be needed to prepare for revolt to be sent to the Hijaz. On March 10, 1916, McMahon wrote to Husayn accepting his requests and setting forth the arrangements made to deliver these to the sharif. 113
At the beginning of March of 1916, Enver visited Syria, then went to Madina, accompanied by Faysal and Jemal. During their visit to Madina, Faysal presented Enver with a sword of honor on behalf of his father Husayn. Meanwhile, the Turks continued to press the Hashemites to declare holy war and send the volunteers to Sinai. Around the beginning of April, Husayn replied, stating that the Arab aspirations would have to be satisfied before the volunteers could be sent and the holy war proclaimed. The Arab political demands consisted of the grant of a general amnesty to politi cal prisoners, decentralized regimes in Syria and Iraq, and the recognition of the Emirate of Mecca as hereditary in the house of Husayn, with its traditional status and privileges conferred. When these demands were met, Husayn would send the volunteers to Faysal in Damascus, and he would also send another son to the Iraqi front. Unless these demands were met, Husayn could do nothing for the empire except pray for victory. The grand vizier and Enver replied to Husayn, rejecting his demands, and closed the reply with a warning that Husayn would not see his son Faysal again until he had sent the volunteers to the front. Husayn did not give in to the Turkish threat; he replied to the that he could only repeat his previous advice and that Faysal was a guest of the state; moreover, he said the volunteers would not leave Arabia until Faysal came to lead them.
The grand vizier, Jemal Pasha, warned Faysal about his father’s actions and advised him to write to Ali to come to Damascus with the volunteers immediately. This warning was followed by sending a new Turkish force some 3,500 strong to Madina en route to Yemen toward the end of April. At the same time, he sent rifles to equip the 1,500 volunteers to Madina and not to Mecca. Finally, around March 12, 1916, he sent a threatening wire to Husayn which made it clear that the government was not willing to make any concessions to Husayn and the other Arabs. 114
While Faysal was in Damascus, he had secretly been corresponding with his father concerning conditions in Syria and the nationalists’ plans. Because of the replacement of the Arab military units in Syria with Turkish units and the arrest and execution of the Syrian nationalists, it was obvious that the rising could not depend principally on Syria, as had been originally planned, but would have to be based entirely on the Hijaz. As Turkish actions became more threatening in the first half of May, it was decided that the break would have to be made soon. At the time of Faysal’s departure from Damascus, Jemal instructed the governor of Madina to hold the special forces destined for Yemen in Madina. A short while later Jemal sent Fakhri Pasha, deputy commander of the Fourth Army, to Madina with instructions to have Faysal and Ali placed under constant surveillance and to arrange plans for the defense of the city with the governor. 115
On May 23, 1916, Abdullah sent a message to McMahon requesting that Storrs come at once to the Arabian coast, as the Hashemites had decided to change the date of the uprising to the early part of June. The revolt was to begin simultaneously in Madina with Ali and Faysal, in Mecca with Husayn, in alTa’if with Abdullah, and in Jidda with Sharif Muhsin. On June 2, 1916, Ali and Faysal succeeded in slipping away from Madina with the volunteers and began to raise the tribes of the district. Abdullah was doing likewise at the same time, preparing the tribes of al-Ta’if region for the rebellion. At sunrise on June 5, 1916, Ali and Faysal rode out to the tomb of Hamza, 116 where the 1,500 recruits raised by the sharif were encamped, and proclaimed the independence of the Arabs from Turkish rule in the name of the Sharif Husayn. Then they marched with the recruits to join the tribesmen at the appointed place southeast of Madina. On June 9, Ali and Faysal cut the railroad near Madina. On June 10, 1916, Abdullah proclaimed the beginning of the revolt, and the Arab forces attacked the Turks in the cities of the Hijaz.
Summary
In examining the relationship between Sharif Husayn and the Ottomans, it is clear that Husayn was a strong believer in Ottomanism. His policies were consistent: he cooperated with the Ottoman government in suppressing al-Idrisi’s uprising in Asir against the Turks. Throughout the period between 1908 and the early part of January 1916, he continued to show his loyalty to the sultan, despite all the attempts of the Ottomans to change the autonomous status of the Hijaz—a territory that had been established since the rule of Sultan Selim I. As he became convinced that all his efforts to persuade the Ottoman officials to maintain his autonomy had failed, he concluded his negotiations with Great Britain in early May 1916 and accepted their offer, although it did not meet all his demands.
The revolt does not indicate that Husayn was converted to Arabism completely. His proclamations of rebellion were based not on Arab nationalist ideology, but were rather justified on the basis of traditional Muslim political ideas. In his proclamations, Husayn denounced the anti-Muslim practices of the CUP and the arbitrary tyranny of the Enver-Jemal-Talat clique, who had overseen the executions and terrorism in Syria and other crimes against Islam and the Arabs. Husayn represented the revolt as a religious and national duty, and as a God-given opportunity for the attainment of independence. His proclamation ended with a call for all Muslims through- out the world to follow his example, thereby fulfilling their obligations to him, as sharif of Mecca, and to the cause of Islamic solidarity. 117
The Arab revolt was a significant step in the growth of the Arab National Movement. It was the most important step before the end of World War I, even though Arab nationalism as an independent force did not play a large role in bringing about the Arab revolt. The sharif of Mecca adopted and put into effect the political program of Arabism, despite the fact that he did not adhere to its ideology.