Farther north, in the part of Cilicia entirely occupied by Kemalist troops, Colonel Brémond, commanding a group of 3,000 to 4,000 men consisting of French troops and native recruits, after being blockaded at Adana for six weeks, had to sign a truce in August because he was short of water, and the provisioning of Adana could only be ensured by establishing a base in the former Roman port of Karatash. Mersina, where the French had enlisted all the Armenian and Greek manhood, was also besieged and blockaded, except along the coast where a French warship overawed the rebels. Lastly, Tarsus, the third place occupied by French troops, was in the same predicament, and was cut off from the other two towns. Under these circumstances whoever could flee sailed to Cyprus, and the few boats which called at Mersina took away crowds of fugitives.
In Mesopotamia the situation was quite as bad, and everywhere the Arabs evinced much discontent. In the zone of the lower Euphrates and Lake Hamar, as well as in the Muntefik area, many disturbances occurred.
The Sunday Times of August 21, 1920, in an article in which the attitude of the British Government was severely criticised, wondered whether it was not too late to atone for the mistakes of England, even by expending large sums of money, and concluded thus:
“Would it not be wiser to confess our failure and give up meddling with the affairs of three million Arabs who want but one thing, to be allowed to decide their own fate? After all, Rome was not ruined when Hadrian gave up the conquests made by Trajan.”
The Observer too asked whether a heavy expenditure of men and money could restore the situation, and added:
“The situation is serious; yet it is somewhat ludicrous too, when we realise that so much blood and money has been wasted for a lot of deserts and marshes which we wanted ‘to pacify,’ and when we remember that our ultimate aim is to impose our sovereignty on people who plainly show they do not want it.”
The diversity of creeds among the various Moslem sects had also, from the beginning, imperilled the unity of the Arabian world within the Ottoman Empire by endangering its religious unity. By the side of the Sunnis, or Orthodox Moslems, the Shia—viz., the rebels or heretics, belonging to a schism which is almost as old as Islam itself—recognise nobody but Ali as the lawful successor of Mohammed. According to them, the title of Caliph should not go outside the Prophet’s family, and his spiritual powers can only be conferred upon his descendants; so, from a religious point of view, they do not recognise the power of the other dynasties of Caliphs—for instance, that of the Ottoman Sultans. As Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, was killed at Kufa in Mesopotamia, and as Ali’s sons, Hassan and Hossein, were also massacred at Kerbela, near the ruins of Babylon, together with some of their descendants who had a lawful right to the title of Imam, Mesopotamia is looked upon by the Shia as their Holy Places.
Many wealthy Persians, to whom the worship of the members of Ali’s family has become a symbol and who consider their death as a religious sacrifice, have their own coffins carried to Mesopotamia that their bodies may lie in the holy necropolis of Kerbela or of Nejef, to the north-east of Mecca and Medina; and as a great many Arabs of Mesopotamia are still Shia, this schism practically divides the Persian world from the Turkish world.
But though the Persians, who have never recognised any Caliph, and for the last thirteen hundred years have been waiting till the Khilafat should revert to the lineal descent of Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, to acknowledge a Caliph’s authority, do not recognise the Ottoman Caliphate, yet their monarchs do not seek to deprive the Sultan of his title of Caliph to assume it themselves.