1. Pan-Arabism

Lawrence of Arabia

While the Ottoman Empire was facing a deadly external threat with the outbreak of World War I, it was also facing a threat from within. The demise began in 1901 when, on instructions from Herzl, Joseph Cowen asked W.T. Stead—a founding member of the Round Table, a friend of Blavatsky and Besant, and of Juliette Adam who led the circle of forgers associated with the Protocols of Zion—to arrange a meeting with Cecil Rhodes, highlighting his excellent relationship with Kaiser Wilhelm II.[1] Herzl’s plan had been to convince Rhodes and his partners to buy up the debt of the Ottoman Empire, which he could present as an offer to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, in exchange for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.[2] However, after a meeting arranged by his friend Arminius Vambery, the Sultan famously replied:

 

Please advise Dr. Herzl not to make any serious move in this matter. I cannot give up even one small patch of land in Palestine. It is not something that I own as a part of my personal estate. Palestine in fact belongs to the Muslim Nation as a whole. My people have fought with their blood and sweat to protect this land. Let the Jews keep their millions and once the Caliphate is torn apart one day, then they can take Palestine without a price. To have the scalpel cut my body is less painful than to witness Palestine being detached from the Caliphate state and this is not going to happen…

 

Therefore, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and the Empire he governed, had to be removed. Rallying the forces of Pan-Islam and Arab nationalism that Afghani and his co-conspirators had been successful in infecting various parts of the Arab world with, the British embarked on a devious plan to pit Muslim against Muslim—once again—this time mobilizing the traitorous Arab leaders of the Hijaz against their brothers in Istanbul, ultimately contributing to the downfall of the Ottman Empire, ending seven centuries of continuous rule. Known as the Great Arab Revolt, it was all part of a mythology celebrated in the West through the Oscar-winning epic, Lawrence of Arabia, which depicted T.E. Lawrence (1888 – 1935) as a benevolent British agent who helped lead the Arabs to their own “liberation,” as a purported struggle against Ottoman “despotism.”

It was a plan devised by London’s Middle East team, which included foreign secretary Lord Curzon, Robert Cecil and his cousin Arthur Balfour, and also Mark Sykes and David George Hogarth, the chief of the Arab Bureau. They were joined by Winston Churchill, son of Blunt’s friend Randolph Churchill, and Arnold Toynbee.[3] According to T.E. Lawrence:

 

If the Sultan of Turkey were to disappear, then the Caliphate by common consent of Islam would fall to the family of the prophet, the present representative of which is Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca. Hussein’s activities seem beneficial to us, because it marches with our immediate aims, the breakup of the Islamic bloc and the disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because the states the would set up would be as harmless to ourselves as Turkey was. If properly handled the Arab States would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of jealous principalities incapable of cohesion, and yet always ready to combine against an outside force.[4]

 

The designated agent of this duplicity was the compliant Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who belonged to the Hashemite clan that claimed descent from the Prophet Mohammed, and who had ruled on behalf of the Ottoman Empire in the region. As explained by Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh in “Myth in the Desert, or Not the Great Arab Revolt”:

 

It was Cairo officialdom, notably Storrs, Wingate, and Gilbert Clayton, Director of Military Intelligence, who, together with their former master-turned-secretary-of-war, Lord Kitchener, had conceived of separating the Arabic-speaking subjects of the Ottoman Empire from their Turkish suzerain as a means of winning the war in the East; and who was a better candidate for such a venture than the Sharif of Mecca, whose unique combination of “the strongest religious and weakest material power” was deemed sufficiently attractive for weaning away the Arabs from Turkey without endangering Britain’s imperial interests through the creation of a new powerful empire.[5]

 

A circle of British intelligence officers and diplomats in Cairo who were responsible for drawing Muslim support for the war against the Ottoman Empire revived the concept of a Meccan counter-caliphate. Sykes hope, “if possible to stimulate an Arab demand for the Caliphate of the Sherif [Hussein],” as part of a policy “to back the Arabic-speaking peoples against the Turkish Government on one consistent and logical plane.”[6] Storrs agreed, proposing that “it will presumably be not disagreeable to Great Britain to have the strongest spiritual in the hands of the weakest temporal power,” and urged “that nothing remotely resembling an obstacle should be placed between the Sherif and his ambition.”[7] In October 1914, Lord Kitchener, had written to the Sharif Hussein that “it may be that an Arab of true race will assume the Khalifate at Mecca or Medina and so good may come by the help of God out of all the evil that is now occurring.”[8]

 

Meccan Sharifs 

Rashid Rida, a key agent in these intrigues, also promoted the infamous The Protocols of Zion in al-Manar.[9] In “Zionism as told by Rashid Rida,” Shavit argues that Rida’s observations on Zionism shifted radically in the course of his career of four decades, in ways that did not necessarily correspond with the political realities of the time. Shavit identifies five milestones. At first, from 1898, Rida described Zionism as a humanitarian project that brought to light the poor state of Muslims and their disunity, which should inspire Islamic reform. Then, in 1902, he exposed Zionism as a political movement aimed at the seizure of Palestine Between 1910–14, following the Young Turk revolution, he warned that the ultimate aim of the Jews was to convert the al-Aqsa mosque into a Jewish temple and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and called for an Arab response, while also offering a willingness to compromise. Then, between 1914 and 1928, following the outbreak of World War I, the Balfour Declaration and the British conquest of Palestine, Rida largely ignored the issue. Referring to Rida’s reversal in 1914, Shavit remarked:

 

It also demonstrated that he had ceased to consider the Ottoman Empire as a credible Muslim force and now placed his hopes on a new form of identity as a means to protect and revive Islam: Arabism. A majority of the Arabs to whom Palestine belonged, he wrote, were not aware of the gravity of the danger and the power of their enemies, nor of the powers concealed in the Arabs. Discretion, firmness, and unity were required. Defense forces must be established at once. Actions and deeds, rather than tales and words, were what was needed in order to melt the snow that covered the flint under which the fire of Arab abilities hid.[10]

 

As Haddad further elucidated, Rida’s ideological development can be best understood in four important phases, corresponding to the reign of Abdul Hamid II, followed by the Young Turks and CUP after 1908, then World War I and lastly, after 1922, when Turkey abolished the office of the Sultan. According to Haddad:

 

Circumstances were to lead Rida to defend the Ottoman caliphate in the first phase, to become engaged in Arab nationalist endeavors in the second phase, to work for the establishment of an Arab caliphate in the third phase (as secret British archival material now reveals), and to concentrate for a spiritual Arab-Turkey caliphate in the last phase.[11]

 

“The Meccan sharifs,” explains Martin Kramer, “had been urged to assert their claim to Muslim primacy for decades by activities like Blunt, Zohrab and Kawakibi, and finally British officials like Kitchener and Sykes.”[12] By 1885, when al-Urwa al-Wuthqa had ceased publication, Afghani, while still secretly voicing hostility toward the Ottoman incumbents, no longer saw in Mecca an alternative metropolis, if indeed he ever had. In an October 1885 diary entry, Blunt recorded Afghani’s views:

 

A long talk with Jemal-ed-Din about prospects at Constantinople and about the Caliphate. He is for the [Sudanese] Mahdi or the Mahdi’s successor taking the Sultan’s place, or the Sharif Own [of the Aouni line], or the Imam of Sanaa—any of these he thought might now take the lead. But Constantinople must remain the seat of the Caliphate, as Arabia or Africa would be mere places of exile. Amongst other things, he told me that it was he himself who had suggested to the Sherif el Huseyn [of Mecca] to claim the Caliphate, but El Huseyn had said it was impossible without armed support, and the Arabs could never unite except in the name of religion.[13]

 

Helping Rida advance his cause of Pan-Arabism against the Ottoman Empire was his collaborator in al-Manar, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (c. 1854 – c. 1902). Kawakibi’ criticisms of the Ottoman Empire eventually led to Arabs calling for the sovereignty of the Arab Nations, going one step further than Afghani, incorporating his theories into a Pan-Arab nationalism, an ideology that espouses the unification of all Arab people in a single nation-state, consisting of all Arab countries of West Asia and North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, referred to as the Arab world. Rida and Kawakibi discussed ideas of Pan-Arabism as well as Quranic interpretations. Kawakibi believed that Arabs should be representatives of Islam, not the Ottomans Turks.

 

Society of the Arab Association

At the beginning of World War I, Rida believed that “the help of Great Britain to the Arabs and Mohammedans to maintain their independence in their own country was quite consistent with her own political and economic interests.”[14] Rida’s notion of a Muslim Ummah united under a new Caliphate based in Mecca, enforcing the adoption of a reformed Sharia based on the tradition of the Salaf—the first three generations of Muslims—in favor of the supposedly divisive Madhabs, was to provide the Muslims the fortitude to withstand European encroachments on their lands. However, Rida chose not to challenge the European powers where they had already achieved control.[15] For the British, in particular, Rida made an exception. As detailed by Mahmoud Haddad:

 

But toward the British, Rida had an accommodating stance. For him, if a Muslim country had to be ruled by a European power, it was preferable that it be British. This was so because Muslims under British rule-as in India and in Egypt-were free in their religious affairs. Thus, the Muslims would prefer British rule as long as their religion and its holy shrines were secured from foreign aggression or from non-Muslim interference.[16]

 

To gain British support for his plans, Rida tried to persuade the British Intelligence Department in Cairo of the influence which his secret society had on the Arab officers of the Ottoman army and of their willingness to rebel against their Turkish and German commanders.[17] Rida established direct contacts with British officials like Gilbert Clayton, the Director of British Intelligence in Cairo, and informed them that he was ready to mediate between Britain and Arab rulers as the war spread to the Middle East. He pushed forward with his plans for an “Arab caliphate” through the activities of his secret society Al-jami‘a al-‘arabiyya (Society of the Arab Association), in opposition to the Ottoman government. Rafiq al-Azm, a member of the Syrian Young Turks, and Shaykh Ali Yusuf, publisher of Al-Mu'ayyad, were supporters of the Society.[18]

According to British intelligence, the society carried out conspiratorial activity in Hijaz, Najd, and Yemen against the Turks.[19] In 1912, Rida had gone on a lecture tour to India on behalf of his society’s cover, the Society of Propaganda and Guidance, and on the way back to Egypt passed through Masqat and Kuwait and got in touch with Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah of Kuwait (c. 1837 – 1915), Khaz’al Ibn Jabir (1863 – 1936), the ruler of Muhammara, and with the Amir of Masqat. Rida corresponded with Ibn Saud of Najd on the necessity of a pact between all the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula in order to strengthen the Arabs, and he sent an emissary to the Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din (1869 – 1948), the Imam of Yemen, and to Muhammad ibn Ali al-Idrisi (1876 – 1924) of Asir.[20] Rida went so far as to obey a request from the British to send messengers to Ibn Saud, the Imam Yahya, and a number of Syrian leaders, in order to ask them how they would respond when the war broke out in the Middle East. He even asked the British for 100 Egyptian pounds to finance the messengers. Some of them left for Syria and to the Persian Gulf as representatives of the Ottoman Party for Administrative Decentralization, a political party founded in 1913, in the Ottoman Empire and based in Cairo, by Rafiq al-Azm as President and his cousin and Haqqi al-Azm as Secretary, which called for the reform of the Ottoman provincial administration for Arab provinces through decentralization. Its initial executive committee was a 14-man panel consisting of 8 Muslims, 5 Christians, and 1 Druze.[21]

In 1914 in Cairo, Prince Abdullah (1882 – 1951) of the Hijaz met Rida and joined the society. Abdullah was the son of Sharif Hussein, who had been involved in the conspiracy that resulted in the execution of Midhat Pasha in 1883, to allow his own family to ascend to the position of Sharif. Although Abdullah was enthusiastic about the program set forth by Rida’s society, his father Sharif Hussein rejected the proposal for fear of alienating his sponsors, the Allied Powers.[22] Despite Hussein’s refusal, Rida issued a Fatwa for the Syrian Muslims, calling upon them to fight on the side of the Ottoman Empire and assist in their Jihad against the Allied Powers according to the norms of Sharia. However, Rida qualified: “But I remind you that… duty to obey the Empire refers only to its official and legal commands.”[23] The point was that the CUP should not be submitted to. Rida distinguished between the Young Turks, whom he opposed adamantly, and the Ottoman state, insisting that every Muslim’s loyalty is to the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph alone.[24]

Confronted with the prospect that an Ottoman defeat in World War I was now inevitable and would lead to European control of Arab lands, Rida believed an Anglo-Arab alliance that would safeguard Arab independence would be the only way to save the temporal as well as the spiritual authority of Islam. However, as the war was under way, Rida was prepared to go so far as to  work for the re-establishment of an Arab caliphate to substitute for the Ottoman one. This he stated in July 1915 in a letter to the Assistant secretary of the British War Cabinet Mark Sykes:

 

…the fall of Constantinople would mean the end of Turkish military power, and therefore it was necessary to set up another Mohammedan state to maintain Mohammedan prestige.[25]

 

Rida was confident in his plans for collaboration with the British after he received assurances by British officials in Cairo and Khartoum who were initially in favor of an Arab caliphate, despite objections from other British officials, especially in the India Office. According to Rida, Ronald Storrs (1881 – 1955), the Oriental Secretary at the British residency in Cairo, and Gilbert Clayton, Sudan Agent and Director of Intelligence for the Egyptian Army, gave him all the assurances he needed. Rida wrote of the oral promises he received from Storrs on  December 14, 1914, after Istanbul had joined the war the previous month, stating that he:

 

…explained to me that in the event of Turkey joining the enemies of England in this war, England would not associate the Arabs with the Turks and would consider them as friends and not as enemies… If the Arabs seize then the chance to proclaim their independence, I was assured that Great Britain would help them in every possible way and would defend them from any aggression… We were also promised in case it was necessary for military reasons to occupy with military forces certain parts of their country, Great Britain would give them back to the Arabs.[26]

 

Having received these promises orally, Rida suggested that Britain issue a comprehensive proclamation formalizing them. Rida produced a draft which exists in the archives of the British Embassy in Cairo, which the British were to adopt but they refused to do so. It stipulated the areas of Arab independence as “Arabia, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia—the countries lying between the Red Sea, Bahr El-Arab, Persian Gulf, frontiers of Persia and Anatolia and the Mediterranean Sea.”[27] It was to assure the Arab residents of these regions that “the Government of Great Britain… has decided not to attack you nor initiate war against any of you—nor does it intend to possess any part of your countries neither in form of conquest and possession nor in the form of protection or occupation. She also guarantees to you that her allies in the present war will follow the same policy.”[28] And, if the Arabs were to gain their independence by militarily defeating the Turks and the Germans, "then Great Britain and her allies will recognize your perfect independence… without any interference in your internal affairs.” The proposed proclamation promises British help “if you help yourselves and take steps to establish an Empire for the Khalifate to administer your vast countries.”[29]

Instead of being officially published, Rida’s draft was returned to him “with,” in his words, “the most important phrases… crossed out, thus leaving it devoid of the spirit which would tend to gain the hearts and confidence of the Arabs.”[30] The edited version left out British denial of any ambitions in Arab lands and replaced it with “a promise of free trade to the Arabs in the Arab country which will become possessed by the English Government.”[31] Rida protested against those changes which did “not agree with the official assurances hitherto made to us.”[32] Rida shared his ultimate concerns in the following manner:

 

What I seek from Great Britain represents the feelings of Mohammedans in general and Arabs in particular. They all wish Great Britain to use her influence to retain the complete independence of Islam in its cradle in the Arabian Peninsula and the bordering Arabian countries, bound by Persia and the Persian Gulf in the east, the Red Sea, Egypt and Mediterranean in the west, Asia Minor in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south. They ask her not to consent that any part of this country should be the slave of any power or in the zone of influence or under the protection of such a power. This in case the powers think of taking possession of a portion of the dominions of Turkey when peace is concluded, also if the allies be determined on her dismemberment if the final victory be their’s [sic]—as it is desired to be.

In doing this Great Britain will gain the friendship and loyalty of more than one hundred million of her Mohammedan subjects, because they would then be confident that the precepts of the Koran and the sanctity of the holy places will not be interfered with.[33]

 

Rida repeated his well-known position that “England is preferable in the eyes of the Mohammedans to Russia, Germany and France, on account of its justice and the religious freedom she gives to her subjects.”[34] However, he very clearly cautioned the British not to misinterpret his sympathies as Arab and Muslim approval of putting the Muslim holy places under British protection.[35] As the world war escalated, tensions and mutual hostilities between Rida and British officials deepened. More and more inflammatory articles were published through Rida’s Al-Manar , which the British responded to by censoring the magazine. In July 1915, Rida engaged in direct talks with Mark Sykes, outlining his vision of a sovereign pan-Islamic state. He argued that the era of Turkish domination of Muslims had ended and said that the time for an Islamic Caliphate led by Arab Muslims has approached. Sykes wrote the following about Rida after meeting him a few months later:

 

[Rashid Rida] is a leader of Pan-Arab and Pan-Islamic thought. In conversation he talks much as he writes. He is a hard uncompromising fanatical Moslem, the mainspring of whose ideas is the desire to eliminate Christian influence and to make Islam a political power in as wide a field as possible…

His ideal was that the Sherif should rule over Arabia and all the country south of the line Ma’arash, Diarbekir, Zakhu, Rowanduz, that the Arabian chiefs should each rule in his own district, and that Syria and Irak should be under constitutional governments. He resolutely refused to entertain any idea of control or advisers with executive authority of any kind. He held that the Arabs were more intelligent than Turks and that they could easily manage their own affairs; no argument would move him on this point; the suggestion of partition or annexation he countered by the statement that there were already

German officers who had become Moslems, that more would do so, and that England would hardly dare annoy her numerous Moslem subjects in India and elsewhere.

I understand that Shaykh Reshid Rida has no great personal following but that his ideas coincide with those of a considerable number of the Arab Ulema. It will be seen that it is quite impossible to come to any understanding with people who hold such views, and it may be suggested that against such a party force is the only argument that they can understand.[36]

 

In December 1915, the British decided to show Rida the exact terms of the letter sent by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon (1862 – 1949), British High Commissioner to Egypt, to Sharif Hussein, famous as the McMahon–Hussein correspondence, in order to counter unofficial reports which he had received. His reaction was blunt: “This is an agreement that only an enemy of the Arabs could possibly be satisfied with, or a donkey who does not understand its meaning.”[37] A heated exchange followed with Storrs who showed him the document. Rida complained about the vagueness of most of the articles in the letter, especially in regard to Syria’s boundaries, and pointed out that they were contrary to the expectations of the Arabs. When asked to put his views in writing, he returned two days later with a document outlining his comprehensive scheme for a Qurayshite Caliphate, entitled “General Organic Law of the Arab Empire,” which he submitted to the British authorities, and which he told Lloyd George met with approval from both Muslims and non-Muslims, for it “combined the precepts of modern civil government with the precepts of the sharia.”[38] Rida’s plan proposed a constitutional and decentralized Arabian Empire, governed by a Caliph from the house of the Sharifs of Mecca, and composed of the principalities and provinces of Arabian peninsula, Syria and Iraq. The Caliph should have a special legislative Council to help him in managing the empire and he should appoint a Vicar General for the Council of Ministers, called Sheikh el-Islam. The seat of the Caliphate would be in Mecca, while the seat of the Presidency of the Government and its Council of Deputies would be in Damascus.[39]

 

Al-Fatat and Al-Ahd 

It is well known Pan-Arabism and other forms of such nationalism are contrary to Islam. The Prophet Mohammed is recorded to have said, “He is not one of us who calls to ‘Asabiyyah (tribalism or nationalism). He is not one of us who fights for the sake of tribalism. He is not one of us who dies following the way of ‘Asabiyyah.”[40] The Prophet further explained that the that the real problem was a kind of blind patriotism, that brought about obedience to one’s nation in defiance of justice. When he was asked, “is it part of ‘Asabiyyah that a man loves his people?” he answered: “No, rather it is tribalism that he supports his people in wrongdoing.”[41] Rida’s excuse was that, while for other Muslims ‘Asabiyyah was in opposition to Islam, it was in perfect harmony with Islam as far as the Arabs are concerned. As Rida saw it, Islam was Arab and it was the non-Arabs who had introduced all the foreign influences and spoiled it. Therefore, only through the Arab nation could the strength of early Islam be restored, as it was in the days of the Arabs’ power over Islam that its most glorious victories were achieved.[42] Rida rationalized the contradiction in an article that was published in al-Manar in 1917, where he wrote:

 

I am a Muslim Arab or an Arab Muslim… I said that I am a Muslim Arab because I am a brother in religion to thousands of thousands of Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs, and a brother in race to thousands of thousands of Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims.[43]

 

Although Rida’s collaborator Kawakibi did not have a tremendous amount of support during his lifetime, his Pan-Arab ideas influenced entire future generations of Arab reformers and leaders, such as Sharif Hussein’s son, Faisal I (1885 – 1933). As a political project, pan-Arabism was first pressed by Faisal’s father, Sharif Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, who sought independence from the Ottoman Empire, with the establishment of a unified Arab state in the Mashriq (“the East”), a term used by Arabs to refer to the eastern part of the Arab world, as opposed to the Maghreb (“the West”) region, and located in Western Asia and eastern North Africa. After the 1909 overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Sharif Hussein’s relationship with the Ottoman government under the leadership of the CUP had begun to deteriorate. He was dissatisfied with the state’s increasingly centralizing initiatives which would undermine his own autonomy. The CUP, for its part, harbored suspicions over his refusal to publicly endorse Mehmed V’s declaration of Jihad, or holy war, against the Allied powers following the empire’s decision to join World War I on the side of the Central Powers.[44]

Faisal, therefore, aligned himself with the Arab nationalist movements that participated in the Arab Congress of 1913, which met in a hall of the French Geographical Society in Paris from June 18–23 to discuss more autonomy for the Arab people living under the Ottoman Empire. Among them was the Ottoman Party for Administrative Decentralization, headed by Rafiq al-Azm and Haqqi al-Azm. Also joining the congress were organizations, like the CUP and two secret societies, al-Fatat (“Young Arab Society”) and Al-Ahd (“Covenant Society”), a political group organized in the same year, mainly by Iraqi officers serving in the Ottoman military. A highly secretive organization, al-Fatat was established in 1909 in Paris by several Arab students studying there.[45] Also attending was Rashid Rida, as founder of the Society of the Arab Association.[46]

When the World War broke out in Europe, al-Fatat hoped that the Ottoman Empire would not enter it. When the Ottoman Empire finally did enter the war, the administrative committee passed the following resolution:

 

The goal of the Arabs is independence, and this in order to guard the existence of the Arab countries, and not out of hostility to the Turks. Therefore, if the Arab countries will stand up to the danger of European imperialism, the Society will work alongside the Turks, together with all free Arabs to protect the Arab countries.[47]

 

Already in mid-October 1914, Sharif Hussein’s son Abdullah received a message from Lord Kitchener, now Secretary of State for War, asking with whom the Sharif Hussein would side with, “should present armed German influence at Constantinople coerce Caliph against his will and Sublime Porte to acts of aggression and war against Great Britain.”[48] This was followed by another message from Kitchener in early November, shortly after the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war, offering Sharif Hussein an alliance: “If the Emir and the Arabs in general assist Great Britain in this conflict that has been forced upon us by Turkey, Great Britain… recognizing and respecting the sacred and unique office of the Emir Hussein… will guarantee the independence, rights and privileges of the Sharifate against all external foreign aggression, in particular that of the Ottomans.” To make the deal more enticing, Kitchener added:

 

Till now we have defended and befriended Islam in the person of the Turks; henceforward it shall be in that of the noble Arab. It may be that an Arab of the true race will assume the Caliphate at Mecca or Medina and so good may come by the help of God out of all evil which is now occurring.[49]

 

It would not be before the summer of 1915 that Sharif Hussein would see his chance. In December 1914, a major offensive in the Transcaucasus, commanded by Enver Pasha had been routed by the Russians. Some three months later, an Ottoman attack on the Suez Canal, under the direction of Djemal Pasha, succumbed to the British defenses. Finally, in the Spring of 1915, the Allies began landing forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula, the southernmost European shore of the Dardanelles, in an attempt to finally end the Ottoman Empire’s participation in the war. Sharif Hussein’s son Abdullah, who had already been coaxing his father to revolt against the Ottoman before the war, began to insist that the moment was ripe for an alliance with the British. Abdullah was aided in this through communications from al-Fatat and al-Ahd, who promised to help instigate a revolt among the Arab officers and troops in Syria, and urged Sharif Hussein to demand in their negotiations with Britain the establishment of a vast Arab empire stretching from Asia Minor to the Indian Ocean and from the Persian frontier to the Mediterranean Sea.[50] Evidence of a CUP plot to depose him further alienated Sharif Hussein. In response, on May 23, 1915—twenty days after the start of the Armenian genocide carried out by Talaat Pasha—Sharif Hussein instructed Faisal to negotiate with the leaders al-Fatat and al-‘Ahd, producing the Damascus Protocol, which affirmed their support of a revolt led by Sharif Hussein for an independent Arab territory recognized by Britain.[51] The Al-Fatat and Al-Ahd declared they would support Sharif Hussein’s revolt against the Ottoman Empire, if the demands in the protocol were submitted to the British. These demands, defining the territory of an independent Arab state to be established in the Middle East that would encompass all of the lands of Ottoman Western Asia south of the 37th parallel north, became the basis of the Arab understanding of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence.[52]

 


[1] Israel Cohen. Thedor Herz: Founder of Political Zionism (New York: Thomas Yoseloff), p. 251.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Robert Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005), p. 41–42.

[4] Cited in Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 42.

[5] Karsh & Karsh. “Myth in the Desert,” p. 282.

[6] Muslims Assembled, p. 62.

[7] Muslims Assembled, p. 62.

[8] Muslims Assembled, p. 62.

[9] Esther Webman. “The ‘Jew’ as a Metaphor for Evil in Arab Public Discourse.” Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 6: 3 (2015), p. 282.

[10] “Al-brughram al-Sahyuni al-siyasi,” p. 808; cited in Shavit. “Zionism as told by Rashid Rida,” p. 32.

[11] Mahmoud Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era: Rereading Rashid Rida’s Ideas on the Caliphate.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 117: 2 (1997), p. 254.

[12] Kramer. Islam Assembling, p. 80.

[13] Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum, 492; cited in Kramer. Islam Assembling, p. 20.

[14] “Supplementary Note to the Memorandum…” Wingate Papers 135/7/90; cited in Mahmoud Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era: Rereading Rashīd Riḍā’s Ideas on the Caliphate.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 117: 2 (1997), p. 263.

[15] Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era,” p. 260.

[16] Ibid., p. 255.

[17] Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” pp. 107.

[18] Ibid., p. 107.

[19] FO 371/1244: d5, Eldon Gorst (Cairo) to Grey 4 February 1911; cited in Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist Before World War I,” p. 108.

[20] Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” p. 108.

[21] Ahmed Djemal Pasha. Memories of A Turkish Statesman 1913-1919 (London, Hutchinson), p. 231.

[22] Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” pp. 109–110; Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” p. 235.

[23] Al-Manar, XXIV (1923), 607; XXVIII (1927), 5. Sa‘id, Al-Thawm, I, 50; cited Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” p. 110.

[24] Itzchak Weismann. Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration: Studies in Honour of Butrus Abu-Manneh (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 215–218.

[25] “Policy in the Middle East II. Select Reports and Telegrams from Sir Mark Sykes. Report No. 14 (Secret).” From Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, Bart., M.P., to the Director of Military Operations. Shepherds Hotel, Cairo,14 July 1915. London, India Office Records, L/P&S/10/525, 5; cited in Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era,” p. 263.

[26] “Translation of a Memorandum by Rashid Rida.” Wingate Papers, 135/7/61; cited in Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era,” p. 264.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid., p. 265.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid., p. 267.

[35] Ibid., p. 268.

[36] “Policy in the Middle East II. Select Reports and Telegrams from Sir MarkSykes. Report No. 14 (Secret),From Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, Bart., M.P., to the Director of Military Operations. Shepherds Hotel, Cairo,14 July 1915. London, India Office Records, L/P&S/10/52, 5-6; cited in Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era,” p. 267.

[37] FO 882115: note. Ronald Storrs (Cairo) to Clayton. 5 December 1915; cited in Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I.” The Muslim World, 79: 2 (2007), p, 111–112; see also Tauber, ’Rashid Rids as Pan-Arabist,’ pp. 110-111.

[38] Memorandum dated 25 June 1919, written in Arabic and signed by Rashid Rida, addressed to Prime Minister Lloyd George, entitled “Mudhakkirafi ragha’ ib al-musliminwa’l Carab al-siyasiyya marfuca ila maqam wazir al-dawla al-baritaniyya al-akbar al-mistir lloyd George” (Hereafter “Rida’s Memorandum to Lloyd George”) FO. 371/4232; cited in Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era,” p. 268.

[39] “General Organic Law of the Arab Empire.” Enclosed in “Note on Proposals Drawn up by Sheikh Rashid Rida, for the Formation of an Arab Kingdom,” secret, dated December 9, 1915. Wingate Papers 135/7/102-4.; cited in Haddad. “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era,” p. 269.

[40] Sunan Abu Dawud, 5121.

[41] Sunan Ibn Majah, 3949.

[42] Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I.” p. 104.

[43] Al-Manar, XX (1917), pp. 33-34; cited Tauber. “Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” p. 104.

[44] Alia El Bakri. “Revolutions and Rebellions: Arab Revolt (Ottoman Empire/Middle East” International Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/revolutions-and-rebellions-arab-revolt-ottoman-empiremiddle-east/

[45] Eliezer Tauber. “Secrecy in Early Arab Nationalist Organizations.” Middle Eastern Studies, 33: 1 (January, 1997), p. 119.

[46] David S. Thomas. “The First Arab Congress and the Committee of Union and Progress, 1913-1914.” In Donald P. Little (ed.). Essays on Islamic Civilization (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1976).

[47] Eliezer Tauber. The Arab Movements in World War I (Routledge, 1993).

[48] FO 371/2139/52598, 24 Sept. 1914; cited in Efraim Karsh & Inari Karsh. “Myth in the Desert, or Not the Great Arab Revolt.” Middle Eastern Studies, 33: 2 (April, 1997), p. 270.

[49] Cheetham to Foreign Office, 13 Dec. 1914, FO 371/1973/87396.; cited in Karsh & Karsh. “Myth in the Desert,” p. 271.

[50] Karsh & Karsh. “Myth in the Desert,” p. 271.

[51] Alia El Bakri. “Revolutions and Rebellions: Arab Revolt (Ottoman Empire/Middle East” International Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/revolutions-and-rebellions-arab-revolt-ottoman-empiremiddle-east/

[52] Tareq Y. Ismael. Politics and Government in the Middle East and North Africa (University of Florida Press, 1991), p. 65.

Divide & Conquer