Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

Feisal’s correspondence with his father in Mecca was an extremely dangerous one: old family retainers were used to take messages up and down the pilgrims’ railway, messages hidden in sword hilts, in cakes, sewn between the soles of sandals, or written in invisible ink on the wrappers of harmless packages. In all his letters Feisal begged his father to wait, to delay the revolt until a wiser time. But Hussein trusted in God rather than in military common sense and decided that the soldiers of his province were able to beat the Turks in fair fight. He sent a message to Feisal with the news that all was now ready. Ali had raised the troops and they were waiting for Feisal’s inspection before starting for the front.

Feisal told Jemal of his father’s message (without, of course, explaining its hostile significance) and asked permission to go down to Medina. To his dismay Jemal replied that Enver Pasha, the Turkish Commander-in-Chief, was now on his way to the province and that Enver, Feisal and himself would attend the inspection together. Feisal had planned to raise his father’s crimson banner of revolt as soon as he arrived in Medina and so take the Turks unawares: but now he was saddled with two uninvited guests, the two chief generals of his enemy, to whom, by the Arab laws of hospitality, he could do no harm. They would probably delay his action so long that the secret of the revolt would be given away.

In the end, however, everything passed off well, though the irony of the review was almost unbearable. Enver, Jemal and Feisal watched the troops manœuvring in the dusty plain outside the city gate, rushing up and down in sham camel-fights or playing the ancient Arab game of javelin-throwing on horseback. At last Enver turned to Feisal and asked, ‘Are these all volunteers for the Holy War?’ ‘Yes,’ said Feisal, with another Holy War in mind. ‘Willing to fight to the death against the enemies of the faithful?’ ‘Yes,’ said Feisal again, and then the Arab chiefs came up to be presented, and one of the prophet’s family drew Feisal aside privately, whispering, ‘My lord, shall we kill them now?’ Feisal answered, ‘No, they are our guests.’

The chiefs protested that it must be done, for so the war could be ended in two blows. They tried to force Feisal’s hand, and he had actually to go among them, just out of hearing of Enver and Jemal, to plead for the lives of these two uninvited guests of his, monsters who had murdered his best friends. In the end he had to make excuses and take the party quickly back into the town under his personal protection and from there escort them all the way to Damascus with a guard of his own slaves to save them from death on the way. He explained this action as being merely great courtesy shown to distinguished guests. But Enver and Jemal were most suspicious of what they had seen and at once sent large Turkish forces by the railway to garrison the holy cities. They wanted to keep Feisal captive at Damascus; but telegrams came from the Turks at Medina asking for him to return at once to prevent disorder, and Jemal reluctantly let him go. Feisal was forced, however, to leave his suite behind as hostages.

Feisal found Medina full of Turks, an entire Army Corps of them, and his hope of a surprise rush, winning success with hardly a shot fired, had become impossible. His chivalry had ruined him. However, he had been prudent too long now. On the same day that Feisal’s suite escaped from Damascus, riding out into the desert to take refuge with a desert chief, Feisal showed his hand: he raised the banner of revolt outside Medina.

His first rush on Medina was a desperate business. The Arabs were badly armed and short of ammunition, the Turks were in great force. In the middle of the battle one of the principal Arab tribes broke and ran, and the whole force was driven outside the walls into the open plain. The Turks then opened fire on them with artillery and machine guns. The Arabs, who only used muzzle-loading guns in their tribal battles, were terrified: and thought that the noise of the bursting shells was equalled by their killing powers. Feisal as a trained soldier knew better, and with his kinsman, young Ali ibn el Hussein, rode about on his mare among the shell-bursts to show that the danger was not so great as the tribesmen feared. But not even Feisal could draw the Arabs to the charge. Part of the tribe that had first broken approached the Turkish commander and offered to surrender if its villages were spared. There was a lull in the fighting and the Turkish general invited the chiefs to talk over the matter; secretly at the same time he sent troops to surround one of the suburbs of the city which he singled out for his object lesson in Turkish terror. While the conference was in progress these Turks were ordered to carry the suburb by assault and massacre every living creature in it. It was done, horribly. Those who were not butchered were burned alive—men, women and children together. The Turkish general and these troops had served together in Armenia and such methods were not new to them.

The massacre sent a shock of incredulous horror across Arabia. The first rule of Arab war was that women and children too young to fight must be spared and that property which could not be carried off in fair raiding should be left undamaged. Feisal’s men realized what Feisal knew already, that the Turks would stick at nothing, and they fell back to consider what must now be done. They were in honour bound, because of the massacre, to fight to the last man; and yet their arms were plainly worth nothing against modern Turkish (and German) rifles and machine-guns and artillery. The Turks in Medina realizing that they were henceforward in a state of real or threatened siege, made their situation better by driving out into the desert many hundreds of the poorer Arab townsmen whom they would otherwise have had to feed.

Feisal’s attack on Medina had been timed to the day of his father’s attempt on the Turks at Mecca. Hussein was more successful; he succeeded in capturing the city itself at the first rush, but it was some days before he could silence the Turkish forts that commanded the city from the hills outside. The Turks were foolish enough to shell the holy Mosque which was the goal of the yearly pilgrimage. It contained the Kaaba, a cubical shrine into whose walls was built the sacred black stone worshipped there as a rain-bringing charm long before Mohammed’s time and the one exception that Mohammed was forced to make in his orders against the worshipping of idols. The black stone was said to have fallen from Heaven and what is more, probably had; it is apparently a meteorite. In the bombardment a Turkish shell killed several worshippers praying before the Kaaba itself and a second shudder of horror ran through the Mohammedan world. Jiddah, the port of Mecca, was also captured with the assistance of the British Navy; and the whole province with the exception of Medina, was after a time cleared of Turks.

From their camp to the west of Medina, Feisal and Ali sent messenger after messenger to the Red Sea port, Rabegh, which was on the roundabout road between Medina and Mecca. They knew that the British, at their father’s request, were landing military stores there. Yet they got nothing from Rabegh but a little food and a consignment of Japanese rifles, rusty relics of the fighting at Port Arthur ten years before, which burst as soon as fired. Their father remained in Mecca.

Ali went at last to see what was happening: he found that the local chief at Rabegh had decided that the Turks were bound to win and so had decided to join them. Ali made a demonstration and got help from another brother, Zeid, and the chief fled as an outlaw to the hills. Ali and Zeid took possession of his villages and found in them great stores of arms and food landed from the British ships. The temptation to settle down for a spell of ease and comfort was too much for them. They stopped where they were.