Arab Revolt
The Arab Revolt, also known as the Great Arab Revolt, was an armed uprising by the Hashemite-led Arabs of the Hejaz against the Ottoman Empire amidst the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I.
On the basis of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, exchanged between Henry McMahon of the United Kingdom and Hussein bin Ali of the Kingdom of Hejaz, the rebellion against the ruling Turks was officially initiated at Mecca on 10 June 1916. The primary goal of the Arab rebels was to establish an independent and unified Arab state stretching from Aleppo to Aden, which the British government had promised to recognize.
The Sharifian Army, led by Hussein and the Hashemites with backing from the British military's Egyptian Expeditionary Force, successfully fought and expelled the Ottoman military presence from much of the Hejaz and Transjordan. By 1918, the rebels had captured Damascus and proclaimed the Arab Kingdom of Syria, a short-lived monarchy that was led by Hussein's son Faisal I.
The Arab-majority Ottoman territories of the Middle East were broken up into a number of League of Nations mandates, jointly controlled by the British and the French. Amidst the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the defeated Ottomans' mainland in Anatolia came under a joint military occupation by the victorious Allies. This was gradually broken by the Turkish War of Independence, which established the present-day Republic of Turkey.
Background
The rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire dates from at least 1821. Arab nationalism has its roots in the Mashriq, the Arab lands east of Egypt, particularly in countries of the Levant. The political orientation of Arab nationalists before World War I was generally moderate. Their demands were of a reformist nature and generally limited to autonomy, a greater use of Arabic in education and changes in peacetime conscription in the Ottoman Empire to allow Arab conscripts local service in the Ottoman army.The Young Turk Revolution began on 3 July 1908 and quickly spread throughout the empire. As a result, Sultan Abdul Hamid II was forced to announce the restoration of the 1876 constitution and the reconvening of the Ottoman parliament. The period is known as the Second Constitutional Era. In the 1908 elections, the Young Turks' Committee of Union and Progress managed to gain the upper hand against the Liberal Union, led by Sultanzade Sabahaddin. The new parliament had 142 Turks, 60 Arabs, 25 Albanians, 23 Greeks, 12 Armenians, five Jews, four Bulgarians, three Serbs and one Vlach.
The CUP now gave more emphasis to centralisation and modernisation. It preached a message that was a mixture of pan-Islamism, Ottomanism, and pan-Turkism, which was adjusted as the conditions warranted. At heart, the CUP were Turkish nationalists who wanted to see the Turks as the dominant group within the Ottoman Empire, which antagonised Arab leaders and prompted them to think in similarly nationalistic terms.
Arab members of the parliament supported the countercoup of 1909, which aimed to dismantle the constitutional system and to restore the absolute monarchy of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The dethroned sultan attempted to restore the Ottoman Caliphate by putting an end to the secular policies of the Young Turks. He was driven away to exile in Selanik by the 31 March Incident, in which the Young Turks defeated the countercoup. He was eventually replaced by his brother Mehmed V.
In 1913, intellectuals and politicians from the Mashriq met in Paris at the First Arab Congress. They produced a set of demands for greater autonomy and equality within the Ottoman Empire, including for elementary and secondary education in Arab lands to be delivered in Arabic, for peacetime Arab conscripts to the Ottoman army to serve near their home region and for at least three Arab ministers in the Ottoman cabinet.
Forces
It is estimated that the Arab forces involved in the revolt numbered around 5,000 soldiers. This number probably applies to the Arab regulars who fought during the Sinai and Palestine campaign with Edmund Allenby's Egyptian Expeditionary Force, and not the irregular forces under the direction of T. E. Lawrence and Faisal, though other sources place this number lower, at 2,000-3,500 soldiers. On a few occasions, particularly during the final campaign into Syria, this number grew significantly. The Arab Bureau of the British Empire in Cairo believed that the revolt would draw the support of all Arabs throughout the Ottoman Empire and Arab lands.Faisal and Sharif Hussein reportedly expected to be joined by 100,000 Arab troops. The large desertions predicted by the British Arab Bureau never materialized, as the majority of Arab officers remained loyal to the Ottomans until the end. Many Arabs joined the Revolt sporadically, often as a campaign was in progress, or only when the fighting entered their home region. During the Battle of Aqaba, for instance, while the initial Arab force numbered only a few hundred, over a thousand more from local tribes joined them for the final assault on Aqaba. Estimates of Faisal's effective forces vary, but through most of 1918 at least, they may have numbered as high as 30,000 men, though it is claimed that the initial forces numbered at 70,000, and even 100,000+.
The Hashemite Army comprised two distinctive forces: tribal irregulars who waged a guerrilla war against the Ottoman Empire and the Sharifian Army, which was recruited from Ottoman Arab POWs and fought in conventional battles. Hashemite forces were initially poorly equipped, but later received significant supplies of weapons, most notably rifles and machine guns from Britain and France.
In the early days of the revolt, Faisal's forces were largely made up of Bedouins and other nomadic desert tribes, who were only loosely allied, loyal more to their respective tribes than the overall cause. The Bedouin would not fight unless paid in advance with gold coin. By the end of 1916, the French had spent 1.25 million gold francs in subsidizing the revolt. By September 1918, the British were spending £220,000/month to subsidize the revolt.
Faisal had hoped that he could convince Arab troops serving in the Ottoman Army to mutiny and join his cause, but the Ottoman government sent most of its Arab troops to the Western front-lines of the war, and thus only a handful of deserters actually joined the Arab forces until later in the campaign.
By the beginning of the First World War, Arab conscripts constituted about 30% of the wartime Ottoman military of 3 million, serving in all ranks, from the lowest to the highest, and forming a crucial component of the Ottoman Army. Ottoman troops in the Hejaz numbered 20,000 men by 1917. At the outbreak of the revolt in June 1916, the VII Corps of the Fourth Army was stationed in the Hejaz. It was joined by the 58th Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Ali Necib Pasha, the 1st Kuvvie- Mürettebe led by General Mehmed Cemal Pasha, which had the responsibility of safeguarding the Hejaz railway and the Hejaz Expeditionary Force, which was under the command of General Fakhri Pasha.
In face of increasing attacks on the Hejaz railway, the 2nd Kuvve i Mürettebe was created by 1917. The Ottoman force included a number of Arab units who stayed loyal to the Sultan-Caliph and fought well against the Allies.
The Ottoman troops enjoyed an advantage over the Hashemite troops at first, in that they were well supplied with modern German weapons. The Ottoman forces had the support of both the Ottoman Aviation Squadrons, air squadrons from Germany and the Ottoman Gendarmerie or zaptı. The Ottomans relied upon the support of Emir Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Rashid of the Emirate of Jabal Shammar, whose tribesmen dominated what is now northern Saudi Arabia, and tied down both the Hashemites and Saʻudi forces with the threat of their raiding attacks.
The great weakness of the Ottoman forces was they were at the end of a long and tenuous supply line in the form of the Hejaz railway, and because of their logistical weaknesses, were often forced to fight on the defensive. Ottoman offensives against the Hashemite forces more often faltered due to supply problems than to the actions of the enemy.
The main contribution of the Arab Revolt to the war was to pin down tens of thousands of Ottoman troops who otherwise might have been used to attack the Suez Canal and to conquer Damascus, allowing the British to undertake offensive operations with a lower risk of counter-attack. This was the British justification for supporting the revolt, a textbook example of asymmetric warfare that has been studied time and again by military leaders and historians alike.
History
Revolt
The Ottoman Empire took part in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I, under the terms of the Ottoman–German Alliance. Many Arab nationalist figures in Damascus and Beirut were arrested, then tortured. The flag of the resistance was designed by Sir Mark Sykes, in an effort to create a feeling of "Arab-ness", in order to fuel the revolt.Prelude (November 1914 – October 1916)
When Herbert Kitchener was Consul-General in Egypt, contacts between Abdullah and Kitchener culminated in a telegram of 1 November 1914 from Kitchener, recently appointed as Secretary of War, to Hussein, wherein Britain would, in exchange for support from the Arabs of Hejaz, "guarantee the independence, rights and privileges of the Sharifate against all foreign external aggression, in particular that of the Ottomans." The Sharif indicated that he could not break with the Ottomans immediately, and it did not happen till the following year.From 14 July 1915, to 10 March 1916, ten letters, five from each side, were exchanged between Sir Henry McMahon and Sherif Hussein. Hussein's letter of 18 February 1916 appealed to McMahon for £50,000 in gold, plus weapons, ammunition, and food. Faisal claimed that he was awaiting the arrival of 'not less than 100,000 people' for the planned revolt. McMahon's reply of 10 March 1916 confirmed British agreement to the requests and concluded the correspondence.
Hussein, who until then had officially been on the Ottoman side, was now convinced that his assistance to the Triple Entente would be rewarded by an Arab empire, encompassing the entire span between Egypt and Qajar Iran, with the exception of imperial possessions and interests in Kuwait, Aden, and the Syrian coast. He decided to join the Allied camp immediately, because of rumours that he would soon be deposed as Sharif of Mecca by the Ottoman government in favor of Sharif Ali Haidar, leader of the rival Zaʻid family. The much-publicized executions of the Arab nationalist leaders in Damascus led Hussein to fear for his life if he were deposed in favour of Ali Haidar.
Hussein had about 50,000 men under arms, but fewer than 10,000 had rifles. On 5 June 1916, two of Hussein's sons, the emirs ʻAli and Faisal, began the revolt by attacking the Ottoman garrison in Medina, but were defeated by an aggressive Turkish defence, led by Fakhri Pasha. The revolt proper began on 10 June 1916, when Hussein ordered his supporters to attack the Ottoman garrison in Mecca. In the Battle of Mecca, there ensued over a month of bloody street fighting between the out-numbered, but far better armed Ottoman troops and Hussein's tribesmen. Hashemite forces in Mecca were joined by Egyptian troops sent by the British, who provided much needed artillery support, and took Mecca on 9 July 1916.
Indiscriminate Ottoman artillery fire, which did much damage to Mecca, turned out to be a potent propaganda weapon for the Hashemites, who portrayed the Ottomans as desecrating Islam's most holy city. Also on 10 June, another of Hussein's sons, the Emir Abdullah, attacked Ta'if, which after an initial repulse, settled down into a siege. With the Egyptian artillery support, Abdullah took Ta'if on 22 September 1916.
French and British naval forces cleared the Red Sea of Ottoman gunboats early in the war. The port of Jeddah was attacked by 3,500 Arabs on 10 June 1916 with the assistance of bombardment by British warships and seaplanes. The seaplane carrier, provided crucial air support to the Hashemite forces. The Ottoman garrison surrendered on 16 June. By the end of September 1916, the Sharifian Army had taken the coastal cities of Rabigh, Yanbu, al Qunfudhah, and 6,000 Ottoman prisoners with the assistance of the Royal Navy.
The capture of the Red Sea ports allowed the British to send over a force of 700 Ottoman Arab POWs, who primarily came from what is now Iraq, who had decided to join the revolt led by Nuri al-Saʻid and a number of Muslim troops from French North Africa. Fifteen thousand well-armed Ottoman troops remained in the Hejaz. A direct attack on Medina in October resulted in a bloody repulse of the Arab forces.