The most important well in Mecca is this well of Zem Zem in the courtyard of the mosque. The water in it is slightly brackish but is said to be delightful when one becomes accustomed to using it. The well is eight feet wide and quite deep. According to Moslem tradition one of the direct routes to heaven is through the bottom of this well. The pilgrims from India, who take such superstitions literally, frequently threw themselves into the well, making the water undrinkable for days. In fact, so many people tried the short cut to paradise that it became necessary to stretch a net over the bottom to break their fall.
There is an ancient tradition among Mohammedans that the approach of the day of resurrection will be indicated by the sun rising in the west and by the appearance of a monster which will rise out of the earth in the courtyard of the Masjid Al Haram. This beast is to be sixty cubits in height, just twice as high as the Lord commanded Noah to make the ark. It is to be a complex combination of eleven different animals, having the head of a bull, the eyes of a hog, the ears of an elephant, the horns of a stag, the neck of a giraffe, the breast of a lion, the color of a tiger, the back of a cat, the tail of a ram, the legs of a camel, and the voice of an ass. She is to bring with her the rod of Moses and the seal of Solomon. So swift will be this monster that none will escape. With the rod of Moses she will smite all true believers on the cheek, branding them with a mark which will indicate that they are of the faithful. Unbelievers will be stamped with the seal of King Solomon. It is also believed that this strange beast will speak Arabic. After the appearance of this mammoth creature all mortals who have inhabited the earth since the dawn of creation will be required to cross a valley on a hair, from which the iniquitous will tumble off into the fires of hell, while the pure in heart will cross safely into paradise. There are many different versions of this tradition which were believed in by the adherents of other religions long before the time of Mohammed.
Among other signs believed by some to be indications of the approach of the day of resurrection are a war with the Turks; the advancement of the meanest to positions of dignity and power; the coming of Antichrist from Khorasan, mounted on an ass and followed by seventy thousand Jews; the return of Jesus, who certain Mohammedans believe will embrace the Mohammedan religion, marry a wife, slay Antichrist, and rule the earth in peace and security; and the bestowal of the power of speech on all animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, and inanimate things.
Until recently Mecca was, perhaps, the most evil and licentious city in the world. “The holier the city, the wickeder its people,” runs the Arab proverb. A block away from the Holy Kaaba stands the slavemarket, which was closed not long ago by Hussein. There were in the city of Mecca until recently, and perhaps still are, many women who are legally married and divorced almost monthly, and sometimes semi-monthly. A pilgrim arriving at Mecca, before King Hussein’s puritanical régime, could be legally married during the time he was a resident and performing his religious rites. He could then have his marriage legally dissolved when he left the city. The people of Mecca do not share those fine primitive virtues and simplicity of tastes which have made the Bedouins famous. Since olden times those born there have been distinguished from other Arabians by three scars on the cheek—a trade-mark of viciousness, say visitors to Mecca. The language of the Meccans is the most salacious to be found anywhere in the dissolute East. The city is filled with unspeakable diseases and practices. Travelers have described scenes occurring in the Great Mosque as licentious as any reported to have occurred in the most dissolute days of ancient times.
But to get back to our story of the capture of the holy cities by the Arabs, the aged Grand Shereef supervised the attack on Mecca, while Feisal and Ali were in command of the force directed against Medina. The Grand Shereef was successful at Mecca. The forts on the three hills overlooking that forbidden and sacred city were garrisoned by the sultan’s most faithful Circassian mercenaries and by picked Turkish troops. On the day of the attack the Arabs swept through the gates and captured the main bazaar, the residential section, the administration buildings, and the sacred mosque of the Holy Kaaba. For a fortnight the battle raged around the two smaller forts, which were finally taken. During all this fighting the aged shereef remained in his palace directing operations in spite of scores of Turkish three-inch shells that riddled his residence.
The Turks might have been able to hang on for many months had it not been for their own folly. The Ottoman seems to be a Mohammedan in theory only, occasionally adhering to the ritual, and even less frequently adhering to the spirit of the Koran. Heedless of the deep-set religious feelings of their enemies and coreligionists, they suddenly began to bombard the mosque of the Kaaba, the most sacred shrine of all Islam. One shell actually struck the black stone, burning a hole in the holy carpet and killing nine Arabs who were kneeling in prayer. Hussein’s followers were so enraged by this impious act that they swarmed over the walls of the great fort and captured it after desperate hand-to-hand fighting with knives and daggers.
Both Mecca and the near-by seaport of Jeddah were captured during the first month’s fighting. Jeddah was taken in five days as a result of the cooperation of five small British merchantmen under Captain Boyle, a daring red-headed Irishman, who was second in command to Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, then admiral of the Near Eastern Fleet.
More than a thousand Turkish and German prisoners were taken at Jeddah. The bombardment of this port of entry to the holy city of Mecca nearly started a revolution in India. The eighty million Mohammedans living in India are the most fanatical of all Islam in many respects. They erroneously charged the British with having bombarded one of their holy places. As a matter of fact, Jeddah, being merely the port to Mecca, has never been regarded as a holy city by the Arabs themselves and is the one city in the Hedjaz to which unbelievers have always been admitted.
At Medina the Bedouins, under Shereefs Feisal and Ali, were less successful. The tribesmen in northern Hedjaz, who had rallied round the Shereefian flag, swept out of the desert mists early or the same morning in June on which the attack was launched against Mecca. Occupying all the palm-groves which extend for miles around the outskirts, they drove the Turkish outposts from the gardens of the Medina palaces, fabled for their sparkling fountains, apricot, banana, and pomegranate orchards. The troops of the garrison withdrew inside the city walls. There they knew they had the additional protection afforded by the Tomb of Mohammed, the tomb which causes Medina to be regarded as the second holiest city of Islam. Although Feisal and Ali could have brought up cannon from Jeddah and perhaps taken the city by storm after a bombardment, Hussein refused to permit this for fear of causing the destruction of the Prophet’s tomb, a catastrophe which would have incurred the anger of every one of the two hundred and fifty million Mohammedans in the world.
Medina is the city to which Mohammed made his hegira or flight from Mecca in July, 622 A. D., to save himself from the daggers of assassins hired by his religious enemies. All Mohammedans count time not from the birth of Christ but from the date of that flight. Mohammed was buried in Medina, and on one side of him rests his favorite daughter, Fatima, and on the other side the second of the great Arabian rulers, Calif Omar. But between the graves of Mohammed and Omar a space was left, so the Moslem’s say, that Christ upon His second coming and death may be buried by the side of the Prophet. So Medina, in addition to being a city of considerable com mercial importance, is a great pilgrimage center.
Shortly after the war, the Turks, in order to facilitate the movement of troops to quell possible uprisings in Arabia, but ostensibly to make it easier for pilgrims to reach Medina from the north, built a single-track railway line all the way down from Damascus. One of the first acts that the attacking Bedouin hordes committed when they approached Medina was to tear up several miles of rails with their bare hands, in order to isolate the garrison. After surrounding the town the Arabs sat down to await its surrender; but the Turks, encouraged by their inactivity, slipped out of the gates at dawn, surprised some of
the Arabs who were camping in the suburb of Awali, and set fire to all the houses. Large numbers of women and children were shot down by machine-guns, and scores of others were burned alive in their homes. This so enraged the Bedouins and the thousands of Arab townsmen who came out of Medina to join Feisal and Ali that they immediately assaulted the great Turkish fort just outside the walls of the city. But the Turks opened fire with their heavy artillery and mowed great gaps in the tightly packed whirling mass of frenzied Arabians. Never having encountered artillery fire before in their lives, the frenzy soon turned to panic, and the mob fled to the shelter of a near-by hill. Seeing this, the Turkish commander sent out a force of picked men to cut them to pieces. Shereef Feisal saw the plight of his men and dashed up on his horse, utterly regardless of the bursting shrapnel and machine-gun fire from the fort which raked the intervening open ground. The Bedouins whom he had brought up to help him rescue the broken and panic-stricken forces that had made the original attack on the fort held back, reluctant to face the enemy fire that formed such a deadly barrage between them and their comrades. But Feisal laughed and rode on alone. To give his followers confidence he even made his horse walk across the open space. Unwilling to be put to shame by their fearless commander, the relieving force gave a wild desert cry and charged, the name of Allah on the lips of every warrior. The two forces then combined and made a second attempt to storm the fort. Their ammunition was nearly exhausted. Night, which comes in Arabia with a suddenness suggestive of an electrician switching off the sun’s light, dropped down like a black curtain just in time to save them from annihilation. On the morrow, Feisal and Ali called all the tribal chieftains to a conference at their pavilion, and it was agreed that for the present it was futile to continue the attack; so they retired into the hills fifty miles to the south and camped astride the pilgrim road to prevent any Turkish forces from attempting to retake Mecca. The Turks at once repaired the railway line connecting them with Damascus, drove the thirty thousand civilian Arabs living in Medina out into the desert, brought down reinforcements from Syria, and fortified the city to resist all future attacks. After the war refugees from Medina were found all over the Turkish Empire, in Jerusalem, Konia, Damascus, Aleppo, and Constantinople.
The Arabs, however, were still in undisputed possession of Mecca; and with the possible exception of the capture of Jerusalem and, later on, the combined capture of Damascus, Beyrouth, and Aleppo by Allenby’s army and the Arabs, the fall of Mecca is sure to rank in history as one of the greatest disasters ever suffered by the descendants of Othman. To her control of the holy city of Mecca Turkey largely owed her leadership of the Mohammedan peoples of the world.
Then came a long pause. The Arabs were unable to go on with their revolution because they had expended all their ammunition. Shereef Hussein again appealed to the Allies, and the British responded. At that critical moment young Lawrence appeared on the Arabian stage.
CHAPTER VI
THE GATHERING OF THE DESERT TRIBES
CHAFING under the red tape of army regulations, certain slight differences had arisen between the chiefs at G.H.Q. and independent young Lawrence. His aversion to saluting superiors, for instance, and his general indifference to all traditional military formalities did not exactly increase his popularity with some of the sterner warriors of the old school. In the Arab uprising Lawrence saw an avenue of escape from his Cairo strait-jacket. Ronald Storrs, then Oriental secretary to the high commissioner of Egypt, was ordered to make a trip down the Red Sea to Jeddah, with messages to Emir Hussein, instigator of the Mecca revolt. Although he had played no part in starting the Hedjaz revolution, Lawrence had long realized the possibility of the Arabs’ helping prick the kaiser’s imperialistic bubble; so he asked permission to take a fortnight’s vacation, and he has been on that leave of absence ever since!
Some of his superiors at the Savoy Hotel in Cairo were delighted at the prospect of getting rid of this altogether too obstreperous upstart “shavetail” lieutenant, and his request was granted with alacrity. But Lawrence, contrary to the custom of war-worn veterans on leave, did not go sailing down the Nile to the races at Alexandria, or up-stream to Luxor to while away his holiday at the Winter Palace. Instead, he accompanied Ronald Storrs down the Red Sea. On arrival at Jeddah, Lawrence succeeded in getting permission from Grand Shereef Hussein to make a short camel journey inland to the camp of Emir Feisal, third son of the Grand Shereef, who was attempting to keep the fires of revolution alive. The Arab cause looked hopeless. There were not enough bullets left to keep the army in gazelle meat, and the troops were reduced to John the Baptist’s melancholy desert fare of locusts and wild honey. After exchanging the usual Oriental compliments over many sweetened cups of Arabian coffee, the first question Lawrence asked Feisal was, “When will your army reach Damascus?”
The question evidently nonplussed the emir, who gazed gloomily through the tent-flap at the bedraggled remnants of his father’s army. “In sh’Allah,” replied Feisal, stroking his beard. “There is neither power nor might save in Allah, the high, the tremendous! May He look with favor upon our cause. But I fear the gates of Damascus are farther beyond our reach at present than the gates of Paradise. Allah willing, our next step will be an attack on the Turkish garrison at Medina, where we hope to deliver the tomb of the Prophet from our enemies.”
A few days with Emir Feisal convinced Lawrence that it might be possible to reorganize this rabble into an irregular force which might be of assistance to the British army in Egypt and Sinai. So absorbed did he become in working out this idea that when his two weeks’ furlough came to an end he stayed on in Arabia without even sending apologies to Cairo. From then onward Lawrence was the moving spirit in the Arabian revolution.
When Lieutenant Lawrence arrived the situation was critical. The Turks had rushed an army corps down from Syria to strengthen Medina, and they had sent down mule and camel transport, armored cars, aëroplanes, cavalry, and more artillery with which to stamp out the revolution. An expeditionary force from Medina was already on its way south, to recover Mecca and hang the rebel leaders higher than Haman. To be sure, this advancing army had two hundred and fifty miles of desert to cross, but they would have crossed it had not strange events occurred causing them hurriedly to revise their plans. As the Arab chroniclers recount: “The hosts of Othman, the minions of the usurper califs, advanced defiantly. But God was not with them! Praise be to Allah, the protector of all those who trust in him!”
Lawrence had no definite plan but the thought was in his mind to devise a way of harassing the Turk and attracting the attention of a portion of the Ottoman forces opposing the British to the north in Sinai. He had startled Feisal with the remark that he believed his troops would be in Damascus within two years. “If Allah wills,” had replied the emir with a dubious smile, as he stroked his beard and gazed at his riffraff army lolling in the shade of the datepalms. But something in Lawrence’s quiet manner impressed him with confidence, and he accepted the offer to cooperation. To the young archaeologist turned soldier the thought of participating in a desert war appealed greatly. Here he saw an opportunity not only of beating the Germans but of testing the theories of the great military experts whose books had so fascinated him.
Once he had made up his mind to help the Arabs, Lawrence was immediately transformed from a scholarly student of the metaphysical and philosophical side of war to a student of the stern realities of war. To reach Mecca he thought the Turkish expedition would first attempt to drive Feisal’s force out of the hills in order to capture Rabegh, the tiny but strategically important Red Sea port one hundred miles north of Jeddah. Here, behind coral-reefs, under a picturesque grove of palm-trees, were excellent wells. Lawrence’s first plan was to supply the Bedouin irregulars in the hills between Medina and Rabegh with modern rifles and plenty of ammunition, in the hope that they would be able to hold up the advancing Turks in the narrow defiles, until a regular army of Arab townsmen, more amenable to discipline, could be wh
ipped into shape. Next, he planned to intrench them outside Rabegh, where they could cooperate with the British fleet and give battle to the enemy when the latter finally broke through the hills. The Turks, however, upset this scheme with alarming speed. Much sooner than anticipated, and without warning, they pushed straight through the hills as though the Bedouin irregulars were not there. The situation now was even more precarious than when Lawrence first arrived. It seemed to the Arabs as though “the Maker of the Sun and Moon and Stars were guiding the destiny of the enemy.”
It was at this stage in the campaign that Lawrence decided to disregard Foch’s dictum, that the object of modern war is to locate the enemy army and annihilate it. He came to the conclusion that to win a war against the Turks, or any other well-trained troops in the desert, it would be better to imitate the tactics of Hannibal and other military leaders of pre-Napoleonic wars. He realized that in a stand-up fight against the better disciplined Turks the Arabs would be doomed. On the other hand, he figured that if Hussein’s followers confined themselves exclusively to the hit-and-run type of guerrilla warfare, to which they were so thoroughly accustomed, the Turks would be helpless to retaliate. The failure of his first plan opened Lawrence’s eyes, and the situation as he now saw it resolved itself to this:
Shereef Hussein’s followers had captured Mecca, the most important city of the Hedjaz. They had also taken Taif and Jeddah, and had swept the hated Turk from the whole of their country, with the exception of the city of Medina and the fortified posts protecting the Hedjaz Railway, connecting Medina with Damascus. In other words, the Arabs were already in possession of all of their country with the exception of a very small part. Furthermore, the Turkish garrisons at Medina and along the Hedjaz Railway could not move easily from their base without the consent of the Arabs, for they were surrounded by that mysterious element to which they were not accustomed, the unknown and unfathomable desert. An army corps of Turkish infantry would be as helpless in the desert as they would be at sea. On the other hand, the Arabs were at home among the shifting dunes. When a Bedouin tribe starts off on a raid, each man and his camel are a separate unit, each desert warrior as independent as a war-ship at sea; there are no lines of communication. Mounted on his racing-camel, a Bedouin can cruise across the desert sands for weeks without returning to his base of supplies. The dictum of a Bedouin strategist is quite contradictory to the dictum of Marshal Foch. His theory is not to hunt out his enemy and fight it out to the finish, but to stalk his prey as a hunter stalks his game. At an unguarded moment he sweeps down upon him, accomplishes his mission, and then, before his opponent has time to collect his wits, he vanishes, swallowed up by the trackless sands. This was the game Lawrence decided to play for all it might be worth.
With Lawrence in Arabia Page 7
