A Peace to End all Peace

by David Fromkin

  When he saw Kitchener’s pledge to protect Arabian independence, Hirtzel protested that it was “a startling document,” “a guarantee given…in writing without the authority of H.M.G.”3 Hirtzel’s protest was buttressed by an earlier memorandum from the Foreign Department of the Government of India, forwarded to the India Office with support from the governors of Aden, Bombay, and elsewhere, which explained that, “What we want is not a United Arabia: but a weak and disunited Arabia, split up into little principalities so far as possible under our suzerainty—but incapable of coordinated action against us, forming a buffer against the Powers in the West.”4 This misunderstood British Cairo’s intentions: as Clayton later wrote to Wingate, “India seems obsessed with the fear of a powerful and united Arab state, which can never exist unless we are fool enough to create it.”5

  Attempting to soothe feelings in the India Office and in the Government of India, Lord Crewe explained that there had been no prior consultation about the Kitchener pledge because “this was a private communication of Lord Kitchener’s” rather than an official communication from His Majesty’s Government.6 But the jurisdictional dispute that had flared up was not extinguished by such assurances; it flamed on heatedly throughout the war and afterward.

  II

  India’s institutional outlook was that of a beleaguered garrison spread too thin along an overextended line. Her instinct was to avoid new involvements. Her strategy for the Middle East was to hold the bare minimum—the coastline of the Gulf, to keep open the sea road to and from Britain—and to refuse to be drawn inland.

  Nonetheless the unwanted war against the Ottoman Empire opened up the possibility of annexing nearby Basra and Baghdad. Colonization and economic development of these provinces would bring great riches, it was believed; and the Government of India was tempted, even though in the past its officials had often warned against assuming further territorial responsibilities. Whatever she did, British India was determined to identify her interests with those of her subjects, many of whom were Moslem; and Lord Kitchener’s Islamic policy posed a threat to this vital interest.

  Kitchener’s initiatives also intruded into a foreign policy sphere in which the Government of India jealously guarded its rights against competitors within the British government. The Foreign Department of the Government of India exercised responsibility for relations with such neighboring areas as Tibet, Afghanistan, Persia, and eastern Arabia; and the Government of India also administered Britain’s protectorate over Aden and the Gulf sheikhdoms through a network of governors and resident agents. Thus when Kitchener entered into discussions with the ruler of Mecca, he intervened in an area of Indian concern and activity.

  Though the Government of India had long followed a policy of holding the coastal ports along the Persian Gulf sea route to Suez, it had avoided involvement in the politics of the interior. Even so, Captain William Henry Shakespear, an officer in the Indian Political Service, had, as Political Agent in Kuwait, entered into relations of political and personal friendship with Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, an emir and a rising power in central Arabia, in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of war.7 Like Abdullah in Cairo, Ibn Saud had expressed a willingness for his domain to become a British client state; and like Kitchener and Storrs, Shakespear was obliged to indicate that his government was unwilling to interfere in matters of purely domestic Ottoman concern. This was even more true at the time because the Foreign Office backed the pro-Turkish House of Rashid, the paramount rulers of central Arabia and the House of Saud’s hereditary enemy. But with the outbreak of war, India was free to back her protégé Ibn Saud, only to find Cairo backing a rival in Mecca.

  Cairo, in turn, found its own projects thwarted by India. In November 1914, the month that the Ottoman Empire entered the war, Cairo proposed (with the approval of Sir Edward Grey) to send Major al-Masri on an expedition to organize agitation and perhaps revolution in Mesopotamia. Ever fearful of igniting a conflagration that could blaze out of control, India blocked the proposal.

  India believed that if the Arabs ever were to turn against the Turkish government, Ibn Saud should lead this revolt; but as of December 1914, the Viceroy argued that action along these lines would be premature.8 Taking a contrary view, Kitchener and his followers in Cairo and Khartoum looked to Sherif Hussein as Britain’s important Arabian ally, and issued proclamations urging Arabs to revolt. Apart from this difference in overall strategy, Simla,* on the basis of prewar dealings, was aware of others in the Arabic-speaking world who might be alienated by British support for the Emir of Mecca’s pretensions. There was Sheikh Mubarak of Kuwait, long a friend of Britain; there was the friendly ruler of the Persian port of Muhammara; there was even Sayyid Talib, the magnate of Basra, “dangerous scoundrel” though Hirtzel believed him to be.9 A Foreign Office official, in warning of repercussions in Arabia, noted that the Emir of Mecca’s two enemies there—Ibn Saud and Seyyid Mohammed al-Idrisi, the ruler of Asir—were, in his view, Britain’s friends.10

  Indian officials made the point that Cairo’s policies were reckless; worse, they would not work. Britain’s sponsorship of an Arab caliphate would not only adversely affect Moslem opinion in India (and Moslem opinion in India was, from the British point of view, what the caliphate issue was principally about); it would also do no good in the Arab world. Percy Cox, of the Indian Political Service, reported in December 1915 that he had held meetings with the Sheikh of Kuwait and Ibn Saud, and that he had found the caliphate question to be of no interest to them. Ibn Saud said that among the Arabian chiefs “no one cared in the least who called himself Caliph,” and claimed that his Wahhabi sect did not recognize any caliphs after the first four (the last of whom had died more than a thousand years before).11

  III

  Oddly, nobody in London or in Simla seems to have drawn the appropriate conclusion from an episode at the end of 1914 that showed the power of the Caliph had been put to the test and had been shown to be illusory.

  In November 1914, upon entering the First World War, the Sultan/Caliph proclaimed a jihad, or Holy War, against Britain, amidst well-planned demonstrations in Constantinople. There were crowds, bands, and speeches. The Wilhemstrasse ordered copies of the proclamation to be forwarded immediately to Berlin for translation into “Arabic and Indian” (sic) for leaflet propaganda among Moslem troops in enemy armies.12 The staff of the German Foreign Ministry predicted that the Sultan’s actions would “awaken the fanaticism of Islam” and might lead to a large-scale revolution in India.13

  The German military attaché in Constantinople believed that the proclamation would influence Moslem soldiers in the British and French armies not to fire on German troops. However, the skeptical German ambassador proved a better prophet: he wrote in a private letter that the proclamation would “coax only a few Moslems”14 to come over to the side of the Central Powers. He was right. The jihad proved to be, in a coinage of the First World War, a “dud”: a shell that was fired, but failed to explode.*

  Enthusiasm for a Holy War was low, even in Constantinople. The jihad was proclaimed, but nothing happened. The British, however, continued to be wary and feared that any jolt might cause the unexploded shell suddenly to go off. In October 1915 Gilbert Clayton wrote a memorandum arguing that although the jihad until then had been a failure, it still might come alive.15 According to Lord Crewe, Secretary of State for India, the only reason it had not worked was because the Porte did not control the Holy Places of the Hejaz: “If the Committee of Union and Progress get control of Mecca, they might be able to declare a regular Jehad [sic], probably affecting Afghanistan, and giving serious trouble in India.”16

  Meanwhile Wingate, Clayton, and Storrs were actively pursuing the Kitchener plan that called for an association in the postwar world with Arabia and with an Arabian religious primate. The cautious Clayton warned that the Arab caliphate was a delicate matter and should be proposed by Arabs themselves;17 but Wingate, as always impatient to move forward, assured FitzGerald/Kitchener th
at “We shall do what we can to push the Arab movement & I have got various irons in the fire in this connection.”18

  But the India Office continued to fear that, as a result of these activities, Mecca would be drawn into the vortex of world politics—an eventuality that might disturb opinion in India at a time when any disturbance could prove fatal. During the course of the war, Simla was going to send many of its European soldiers to Europe, and large numbers of Indian troops as well. For the duration of the war it was in a weak position to quell whatever uprisings might occur. Cairo and Constantinople both seemed to Simla to be pursuing policies that threatened to inflame Moslem passions in India and thus to imperil the Indian Empire.

  As the war progressed, British officials who ruled India increasingly came to believe that their most dangerous adversaries were neither the Turks nor the Germans, but the British officials governing Egypt; for despite India’s protests, British Cairo went ahead with its intrigues in Mecca.

  12

  THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE

  I

  Mecca, where Mohammed was born, and Medina, to which he emigrated, are the holy cities that for Moslems everywhere give unique importance to the mountainous Hejaz, the long and narrow western section of the Arabian peninsula bordering the Red Sea. Hejaz means “separating”—a reference to the highlands that divide it from the plateau to the east. In the early twentieth century Arabia was an empty and desolate land, and the Hejaz, in the words of the 1910 Encyclopaedia Britannica, was “physically the most desolate and uninviting province in Arabia.” Whole sections of it were unwatered and uninhabited wilderness. About 750 miles long and, at its widest, about 200 miles across, the Hejaz precariously supported a population estimated at 300,000, half-Bedouin and half-townsmen. Although it formed part of the Ottoman Empire, its distance from Constantinople, magnified by the primitive state of transportation and communications, had always lent it considerable autonomy.

  Dates, of which a hundred varieties were said to grow, were the staple crop; but the real industry of the province was the annual pilgrimage. About 70,000 pilgrims made the journey to Mecca each year. Protecting the pilgrims from marauding Bedouin tribes was a principal function of the local representative of the Ottoman government; and the authorities made a practice of offering subsidies to the tribes in the hope of persuading them that there was better pay in safeguarding than in molesting the visitors.

  Mecca was a two-day camel journey, or about forty-five miles, from the nearest coastal port. It lay in a hot and barren valley, and controlled the passages through the surrounding hills. Its population was estimated at 60,000. Entrance into its precincts was prohibited to non-Moslems, and exercised the powerful lure of the forbidden. Only a few European travelers had succeeded in penetrating the city in disguise and bringing back detailed descriptions of it.

  These Europeans reported that even in the holy city certain dark practices lingered from a primitive past. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The unspeakable vices of Mecca are a scandal to all Islam, and a constant source of wonder to pious pilgrims. The slave trade has connexions with the pilgrimage which are not thoroughly clear; but under cover of the pilgrimage a great deal of importation and exportation of slaves goes on.”

  Yet European travelers also reported that the people of the Hejaz, and indeed of all Arabia, were among nature’s aristocrats. According to the Britannica:

  Physically the Arabs are one of the strongest and noblest races of the world…Thus, physically, they yield to few races, if any, of mankind; mentally, they surpass most, and are only kept back in the march of progress by the remarkable defect of organizing power and incapacity for combined action. Lax and imperfect as are their forms of government, it is with impatience that even these are borne…

  The job of the Emir of Mecca, if the Britannica was to be believed, was not an easy one.

  For Moslems, Mecca had always been the center of the world. Now, the ambitions of Kitchener’s Cairo and of the C.U.P.’s Constantinople brought the arid Hejaz into the center of twentieth-century politics. The new attentions that Mecca received in the 1914 war brought it into the center in other ways, less welcome to its Emir; he found himself caught in the middle.

  Hussein ibn Ali, who ruled the Hejaz on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan, was styled the Sherif of Mecca and its Emir. To be a sherif, or notable, was to be a descendant of Mohammed; and Hussein, like Mohammed himself, was a member of the House of Hashem.* For some time it had been the practice of the Ottoman regime to appoint the Emir of Mecca from among rival sherifs. In 1908 Hussein, of the Dhawu-’Awn clan, was personally selected by the Sultan, over the opposition of the C.U.P., which backed the candidate of a rival clan.

  Hussein, like his courtly friend the Grand Vizier and like the Sultan himself, was a man of old-fashioned breeding and learning whose style of expression was ornate. Of medium height, with a white beard, and about sixty years of age in 1914, he had spent much of his life in glorified captivity at the court in Constantinople. There, even the prying eyes of enemies were unable to detect him in any improper conduct; he spent his time in meditation.

  Hussein continually expressed strong personal loyalty to the Sultan. The Sultan, however, was a figurehead. Real power at the Porte was wielded by the Young Turks, new men without family background, with whom he was out of sympathy. Though loyal to the Sultan, he found himself increasingly at odds with the Sultan’s government, and in particular with its policy of centralization.

  Hussein’s ambition was to make his position as Emir secure for himself and, in perpetuity, for his family. He strove to increase his independence, while the centralizing C.U.P. government conspired to decrease it. The government pushed forward with construction of the Hejaz railroad, aimed, among other things, at curtailing the Emir’s autonomy. The railroad already ran from Damascus, capital of what is now Syria, to Medina in the Hejaz. What the government proposed was to extend the line to Mecca and to the port of Jeddah. This was a threat to the camel-owning Bedouin tribes of the Hejaz and to their lucrative control of the pilgrim routes to the Holy Places. Using the railroad and also the telegraph, the C.U.P. threatened to exercise direct rule over Medina, Mecca, and the rest of the Hejaz. If carried into effect, the Turkish government’s plan would make Hussein into a mere subordinate functionary. Hussein responded by inspiring civil disturbances.

  For Hussein, who had begun his administration of affairs by using Turkish troops against the Arabian tribes, this represented a change in policy, but not a change in allegiance. He remained in the ambiguous position of supporting the Ottoman Empire while opposing its government.

  In the years just before the beginning of the European war, the secret societies in Damascus and the various rival lords of Arabia were in frequent touch with one another; they explored the possibility of uniting against the Young Turks in support of greater rights for the Arabic-speaking half of the empire. At one time or another most of the principal Arabian chiefs were involved in such conversations. In 1911, the Arab deputies in the Ottoman Parliament asked Hussein to lead the Arabic-speaking peoples in throwing off the Turkish yoke; he refused. A year later the secret societies seem to have approached his rivals, but not Hussein. By 1913 Arab nationalists apparently regarded him as “a tool in the hands of the Turks for striking the Arabs.”1 Yet the Turkish government also strongly distrusted him, and explored the possibility of deposing him.

  Two of Hussein’s sons were active politically. Abdullah, his favorite, was a deputy from Mecca in the Ottoman Parliament, while Feisal was a deputy from Jeddah. Abdullah counselled his father to resist the government; he believed that with the support of the secret societies and of Britain it could be done. Feisal advised against opposing the government. Abdullah, a short, heavy-set, astute man with a politician’s conciliating manner, was for boldness. Feisal, tall, quick, and nervous, was for caution.

  Hussein, who had played off his enemies against one another for years, was inclined to temporize and delay. With
each year in office as Emir he had increased his prestige and his mastery over the complex web of personal, family, and tribal relationships that made for authority in the Hejaz. He had reduced the political influence of the local C.U.P. lodges in Mecca and Medina. His primacy within his own emirate was established firmly.

  In 1913 and 1914, however, he found himself surrounded by external enemies. There were his neighbors and traditional rivals, the Arabian lords to his south and east, whom he had threatened and who threatened him. There were the Arab nationalists, some of whom regarded him as an essentially Turkish official. There were the British, whose navy could easily dominate the long coastline of the Hejaz once they went to war against the Ottoman Empire—and he knew that they would become his enemies if he threw in his lot with the empire. Finally, there was the Ottoman government which threatened a showdown on the issue of the Emir’s autonomy.

  Now, for the duration of the war, the C.U.P. postponed completion of the railroad and the adoption of its new governmental regulations, as well as its secret plan to appoint a new emir in Hussein’s place. But it ordered Hussein to supply manpower for the army. Hussein and Abdullah may well have suspected a C.U.P. plot: the men of the Hejaz would be sent as soldiers to distant battlefields, while regular Turkish troops would be sent to take their place in garrisoning the Hejaz, and would then seize control of it.

  Hussein assured all his dangerous neighbors that he would act in accordance with their wishes—but put off doing so until some time in the future. He asked the advice of Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, his rival and a powerful warlord to the east, as to whether or not he should associate Mecca with the Sultan’s call for a Holy War against Britain and her allies; and he discussed with Arabic nationalist leaders from Damascus the possibility of joint action against the Porte. In reply to requests and demands from the Porte, he asked for money to raise troops and supplies for the Ottoman Empire, but continued to postpone sending any contingents to the Turkish army.