Текст книги "The Arabs: A History"

Автор книги: Eugene Rogan

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

The Wafd’s struggle for Egypt’s independence met only partial success. Though Zaghlul and his colleagues secured Britain’s permission to present Egypt’s case to the Peace Conference, they learned on their arrival in Paris that the American delegation had just issued a statement recognizing Britain’s protectorate over Egypt. The hopes to which President Wilson’s soaring rhetoric had given rise were now dashed. The Egyptians were forced to negotiate directly with the British in London, rather than securing their independence as part of the postwar settlement. The years between 1919 and 1922 were punctuated with periods of civil disorder alternating with periods of negotiations between the British and the Wafd. In the end, the best the Egyptian nationalists could achieve was independence in name alone. In the interest of preserving order in Egypt, Britain unilaterally declared the end of the protectorate on February 28, 1922, and recognized Egypt as an independent sovereign state, subject to Britain retaining control over four key areas “of vital interest to the British Empire”: the security of imperial communications, defense of Egypt against outside aggression, the protection of foreign interests and minority rights, and the Sudan. Both sides recognized the limits of independence when put in these terms, which would allow Britain to keep bases, control the Suez Canal, and interfere in Egyptian domestic matters with nearly as much frequency as it had under the protectorate. For the next thirty-two years, Egypt and Britain would be locked in regular negotiations to redefine this colonial relationship, with Egyptians seeking their sovereignty and Britain doing its all to preserve the imperial order.

Events in Egypt were closely followed across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Iraq. The three Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul had come under British occupation in the course of the First World War. Though the British had given the people of Iraq many reassurances that they would enjoy self-government, their efforts to deny the Egyptians independence were grounds for concern. Upon the outbreak of World War I, British forces from India occupied the southern city of Basra and secured their control over the province as a whole. The British were intent on protecting the Persian Gulf gateway to their empire in India from encroachment by the Ottomans’ German allies. Once in Basra, the British extended their forces northward to engage the Ottoman Sixth Army. By November 1915, British forces had advanced to within 50 miles of Baghdad, whereupon they encountered superior Ottoman numbers. The British were driven back to Kut, where they withstood an Ottoman siege for four months before surrendering to the Turks in April 1916. The Ottomans had now scored two major victories against invading British forces?in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. However, the British resumed their campaign in Mesopotamia, taking Baghdad in March 1917 and defeating the Ottoman Sixth Army in Kirkuk in late summer 1918. British troops occupied the province of Mosul in November 1918, even though technically it fell outside the territory conceded to British occupation by the terms of the armistice agreement. British control over Mesopotamia, as first recommended by the de Bunsen Report of 1915, had been secured.

It proved easier to conquer Mesopotamia than to impose a political order on the country—in 1918 as in 2003. The people of the three provinces—Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiites—were divided in their aims and aspirations. Though the different communities of Mesopotamia were fairly unanimous in demanding the union of the three provinces into a single, independent state they called Iraq and placing it under a constitutional monarchy, they had very different views on what role Britain should play in that new state. Some large landowners and wealthy merchants put a higher premium on stability and economic growth than on full independence and openly supported British administration. Some Iraqi military officers, who had served with Amir Faysal in the Arab Revolt, saw Britain as a guarantor of Sunni political preeminence. However, the majority of Iraqis rejected the idea of foreign interference in their affairs. At the start of their occupation over Mesopotamia, the British had reassured the people of Iraq of their honorable intentions. The Anglo-French Declaration of November 1918, promising Allied support for “the establishment of national governments and administrations” in the Arab lands through a process of self-determination, was widely reproduced in the local press and reassured many Iraqis that the Europeans did not seek to impose a colonial settlement on them. As the Najaf-based newspaper al-Istiqlal (“Independence”) noted: “The two states, Britain and France, delighted us with their statement of intention to assist us towards complete independence and freedom.”²⁸ But Iraqis grew increasingly suspicious as months passed without any tangible progress toward Iraqi self-rule. Instead of helping the Iraqis set up their own government, the British seemed to be establishing their own administration over the country. When in February 1919 a group of Iraqis sought permission from the British authorities to send a delegation to Paris to secure recognition for their claims to national independence, the British authorities refused. When the Iraqis pressed the British to elaborate their plans for the political future of their country, they could not obtain a straight answer to their question. The British were, in fact, of two minds themselves on how best to rule Iraq. Some, like Sir Arnold Wilson, who as civil commissioner headed the British administration in Iraq, sought to establish the instruments of direct colonial rule on the model of British India. He even encouraged a steady stream of immigrants from India into Mesopotamia as a ready work force for a colonial administration. Others, like Gertrude Bell, who served as Oriental Secretary in Baghdad, thought it in Britain’s best interests to work with the Arab nationalists in Iraq. Bell argued that a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq would provide an ideal structure for informal empire, at far less cost to the British government and far less risk of confrontation with the growing Arab nationalist movement. The Iraqis did not know whom to believe—Bell, who seemed to support their wishes, or her boss, Sir Arnold Wilson, who seemed intent on the British ruling Iraq.²⁹ By 1920 the Iraqis were convinced that the British intended to subject their country to colonial rule. They had witnessed the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 from afar. They had watched with growing concern as Britain abandoned Faysal’s government in Damascus and evacuated their troops from Syria and Lebanon, paving the way for a French colonial occupation there. It seemed as though Britain and France intended to deny independence to the Arab lands and to divide those territories among themselves—as of course they did. Iraqi suspicions were confirmed in April 1920, when the League of Nations assigned Iraq to Britain as a formal mandate. The Iraqis, who had always opposed the idea of a mandate as imperialism by another name, began to mobilize to confront British plans. The opposition was led by a new organization, the Guardians of Iraqi Independence, which had emerged in 1919 primarily among the Shiite community. The Guardians attracted many Sunni supporters with their demands for complete independence and a complete British evacuation from Iraq. They held their meetings in mosques to avoid British interference, alternating between Shiite and Sunni places of worship. This political collaboration between the Muslim communities of Iraq was unprecedented, and it laid the foundations for an Iraqi national community that transcended religious boundaries. The first public demonstrations against the British mandate in Iraq were peaceful. Shiite clerics, tribal leaders, and members of nationalist organizations demonstrated en masse in Baghdad in May 1920. The British responded immediately with a crackdown on all peaceful demonstrations and arrested those suspected of inciting opposition to the occupation. Under British repression, the Iraqi nationalists were driven from Baghdad to continue their resistance in provincial towns and villages. The Iraqi Uprising of 1920 broke out at the end of June, encouraged by the Shiite clerics of the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. The British made the mistake of arresting the son of the most prominent Shiite cleric, Ayatollah al-Shirazi, and he responded with a fatwa, or legal opinion, that encouraged revolt against foreign occupation. Fearing an escalation of the crisis, the British administration in Baghdad arrested a number of Shiite activists and tribal leaders they believed to be instigating the ferment. Predictably, the crackdown hardened what had begun as peaceful opposition into violent confrontation. The Iraqi resistance movement was both well-organized and disciplined. The leadership drew up guidelines for common action, which they had printed and distributed through local printing presses. One leaflet printed in Najaf in July 1920 decreed the rules of engagement: “Each head of tribe must make all their members understand that the goal of this uprising is the demand for complete independence.” ³⁰ The insurgent tribesmen were instructed to make “independence” their battle cry. They were to ensure the smooth administration of all towns and villages that fell under their control, they were to take good care of all English and Indian prisoners, and most of all they were to preserve all weapons, ammunition, equipment, and medicines captured from the British, as such supplies were “among the greatest means to achieve victory.” Initially, the uprising spread across all three provinces, though the principal area of conflict lay in the Middle Euphrates region, between Baghdad and Basra, with Najaf and Karbala at the center of the movement. Here, the British were forced to withdraw their troops as the insurgents took control of towns and villages, established local government, and managed to collect taxes and preserve order. Although the British managed to prevent any major outbreaks in the capital city, the areas surrounding Baghdad were soon overrun by insurgents. The tribes to the northeast of Baghdad raised a major revolt in August 1920 and, for one month, held Baquba and the other towns to the north of the Diyala River. Another major uprising took place to the west of Baghdad, in Faluja.³¹ The British hastily withdrew their troops to consolidate their forces before striking back—with a vengeance. Faced with a nationwide insurgency, the British had no choice but to reinforce their overstretched military in Iraq to regain authority over their new mandate. Fresh troops from India raised the number of British forces in Iraq from 60,000 in July 1920 to over 100,000 that October. In the course of September and October, the British completed their reconquest of Iraq with overwhelming force, using heavy artillery and aerial bombardment. They regained Faluja in early September, inflicting a heavy punishment on the local tribes. Later that month they proceeded against the tribes of the Diyala River. They then moved on to the Middle Euphrates. A journalist in Najaf described the British onslaught: “They attacked the houses of tribal shaykhs and burned them down, contents and all. They killed many men, horses and livestock.” The British were relentless in pursuing the insurgents and refused all negotiations. “The officers had no other interest than our extermination, or putting us on trial,? he continued. ?We agree to their request for a truce and they violate it. We allow them to withdraw with their arms when we have secured [territory] from them and they respond treacherously with attacks on us. In recent days there has been bloodshed and the destruction of populous towns and the violation of the sanctity of places of worship to make humanity weep.?³² With the surrender of Najaf and Karbala at the end of October, the uprising came to an end. The costs—human and material—were high. According to British estimates, over 2,200 British and Indian soldiers and some 8,450 Iraqis were killed or wounded.³³ There are no estimates for the material losses of the Iraqi people. The Uprising of 1920, referred to in Iraq as the “Revolution of 1920,” has a special place in the nationalist mythology of the modern Iraqi state comparable to the American Revolution of 1776 in the United States. These were not social revolutions so much as popular uprisings against foreign occupiers, and they marked the starting point of nationalist movements in both countries. Whereas most westerners have no knowledge of the 1920 uprising, generations of Iraqi schoolchildren have grown up learning how nationalist heroes stood up against foreign armies and imperialism in towns like Faluja, Baquba, and Najaf—the Iraqi equivalents of Lexington and Concord.

The First World War and the postwar settlement together constituted one of the most momentous periods in modern Arab history. Four centuries of Ottoman rule came to a decisive end across the Arab world in October 1918. Few Arab contemporaries could have imagined a world without the Ottomans. The nineteenth-century reforms had extended Istanbul’s hold on the Arab provinces by a more elaborate bureaucracy, communications infrastructure like railways and telegraphs, and by making an Ottoman education available to a growing number of Arab subjects through expansions in the school system. The Arabs probably felt more connected to the Ottoman world by the start of the twentieth century than they ever had before. The links between the Arabs and the Ottomans only intensified after 1908, under the Young Turks. By that time, the Ottomans had lost nearly all their European provinces in the Balkans. The Young Turks had inherited a Turco-Arab empire and did all they could to intensify Istanbul’s grip over the Arab provinces. Young Turk polices might have alienated Arab nationalists, but they succeeded in making Arab independence seem an unattainable goal. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalists entered a period of intense activity, driven by aspirations to independent rule. For a brief, heady moment between 1918 and 1920, political leaders in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Hijaz believed themselves on the threshold of a new age of independence. They looked to the Paris Peace Conference, and to the new world order promised by Woodrow Wilson, to confirm their ambitions. They were, without exception, to be disappointed. The new age the Arabs faced would in fact be shaped by European imperialism rather than Arab independence. The European powers established their strategic imperatives and resolved all points of disagreement between themselves through the postwar peace process. France added Syria and Lebanon to its Arab possessions in North Africa. Britain was now master of Egypt, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. Though there would be some tinkering with specific frontiers, the European powers drew up the boundaries of the modern states of the Middle East as we now know them (with the significant exception of Palestine). The Arabs were never reconciled to this fundamental injustice, and they spent the remainder of the interwar years in conflict with their colonial masters in pursuit of their long-standing aspiration for independence.

CHAPTER 7

The British Empire in the Middle East

By the time of the postwar settlement conferring the mandates of Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine on Great Britain, the British Empire in the Arab world was already a century old. The British East India Company had been drawn into the treacherous waters of the Persian Gulf in the early nineteenth century to combat the growing threat to merchant shipping posed by the seaborne tribes of Sharja and Ras al-Khaima, now part of the United Arab Emirates. The Persian Gulf was a vital land-and-sea link between the Eastern Mediterranean and India, and the British were determined to put a stop to Gulf piracy. In the process of subduing what they called the “pirate coast,” the British transformed the Persian Gulf into a British lake. The record of British grievances against the Qasimi confederation of tribes in Sharja and Ras al-Khaima dated back to 1797. The East India Company attributed a string of attacks on British, Ottoman, and Arab shipping to the Qawasim (plural of Qasimi). In September 1809, the East India Company dispatched a sixteen-ship punitive expedition to the pirate coast. The fleet was under instructions to attack the town of Ras al-Khaima and burn the ships and stores of the Qasimi raiders. Between November 1809 and January 1810, the British fleet inflicted significant damage on Ras al-Khaima and a string of four other Qasimi ports. The British burned sixty large and forty-three small vessels and seized some Ј20,000 in allegedly stolen property before returning home. Yet for failing to secure a formal agreement with the Qawasim, the British would continue to face attacks on their shipping in the Gulf.¹ Within five years of the first British expedition, the Qasimis had rebuilt their fleet and resumed their seaborne raiding. In 1819 a second British expedition was dispatched from Bombay to subdue the Qasimis. With twice the forces, and a focus on Ras al-Khaima, the expedition not only succeeded in seizing and burning most of the Qasimi shipping but also achieved the political settlement that had eluded the first campaign. On January 8, 1820, the shaykhs of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain, and Bahrain, as well as the Qasimi family who ruled over Sharjah and Ras al-Khaima, signed a general treaty pledging a complete and permanent cessation to all attacks on British shipping. They also accepted a common set of maritime rules in return for trade access to all British ports in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. By granting the seafaring shaykhdoms access to ports under British control, the agreement gave all parties an economic incentive to preserve the peace on the high seas and in-shore waters. These terms were confirmed in the Perpetual Treaty of 1853, which outlawed maritime hostilities between all of the states in the Gulf. The mini-states of the ?pirate coast? now came to be known as the Trucial States, so called for the formal truce struck with Britain and among themselves. It was the beginning of a nineteenth century Pax Britannicus during which the Persian Gulf developed into an out-and-out British protectorate. The British deepened their control over the Gulf through a series of bilateral agreements concluded with the rulers of individual shaykhdoms. In 1880 the shaykh of Bahrain signed an agreement that effectively placed his foreign relations under British control, promising “to abstain from entering into negotiations or making treaties of any sort with any State or Government other than the British without the consent of the said British Government.” The British concluded similar agreements with the other Persian Gulf shaykhdoms.² In the 1890s the British went even further, obtaining from the Gulf rulers “nonalien-ation bonds,” in which they pledged not to “cede, sell, mortgage or otherwise give for occupation any part of [their] territory save to the British Government.”³ Britain took these measures to ensure that neither the Ottoman Empire, which since the 1870s had sought to extend its sovereignty over the Persian Gulf, nor any of its European rivals might threaten Britain’s paramount control over this strategic sea route to its empire in India. Kuwait and Qatar both sought British protection against Ottoman expansionism and joined the Gulf “protectorate” in 1899 and 1916, respectively. Britain’s growing reliance on oil gave the Persian Gulf added significance in the twentieth century. With the conversion of the Royal Navy from coal to oil in 1907, the Arab shaykhdoms of the Persian Gulf took on a new strategic role in British imperial thinking. In 1913 Winston Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty, confronted the House of Commons with Britain’s new dependence on oil. “In the year 1907,” he revealed, “the first flotilla of ocean-going destroyers wholly dependent upon oil was created, and since then, in each successive year, another flotilla of ‘oil only’ destroyers has been built.” By 1913, he claimed, there were some 100 new oil-powered ships in the Royal Navy.⁴ As a result, Britain’s priorities in the Persian Gulf expanded from trade and communications with India to reflect this new strategic interest in oil. The first major oil reserve in the Persian Gulf region was struck in May 1908 in central Iran. Geologists had every reason to believe that exportable quantities of oil remained to be discovered in the Arab states of the Gulf. The British began to conclude agreements with the gulf shaykhdoms for exclusive rights to explore for oil. The ruler of Kuwait gave the British a concession in October 1913, pledging to allow only persons or firms approved by His Majesty’s government to prospect for oil in his territory. A similar agreement was concluded with the ruler of Bahrain on May 14, 1914. The prospect of oil, combined with commerce and imperial communications, made the Persian Gulf an area of particular strategic importance to Great Britain by the First World War. In 1915 a British government report defined “our special and supreme position in the Persian Gulf” as “one of the cardinal principles of our policy in the East.”⁵ In 1913 a new Arab state burst upon the Pax Britannicus in the Persian Gulf. The Al Sa‘ud (whose eighteenth-century confederation challenged Ottoman rule from Iraq to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina until defeated by Muhammad ’Ali’s forces in 1818) had reestablished their partnership with the descendants of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab to launch a new Saudi-Wahhabi confederation. At their head was a charismatic young leader named Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Faysal Al Sa’ud (1880–1953), better known in the West as Ibn Saud. Ibn Saud began his rise to power in 1902 when he led his followers to victory over their long-standing rivals, the Rashidi clan, to seize the Central Arabian oasis town of Riyadh. His fighters, known as the Ikhwan (“the brothers”), were zealots who sought to impose their austere Wahhabi interpretation of Islam across the Arabian Peninsula. They also reaped the rewards of religiously sanctioned plunder whenever they conquered a town that rejected their message. These incentives of faith and gain combined to make the Ikhwan the strongest fighting force on the peninsula. Ibn Saud declared Riyadh his capital, and over the next eleven years he deployed the Ikhwan to expand the territory under his rule from the Arabian interior to the Persian Gulf. In 1913 Ibn Saud conquered the Hasa region of Eastern Arabia from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had attempted to integrate this isolated Arabian region (known today as the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia) to their empire in 1871 in a bid to extend their influence over the Persian Gulf—a bid the British were determined to stymie. By 1913 the Ottomans had all but abandoned their administration in the district. The Saudis took the main town of Hufuf unopposed and emerged as the dominant new power among the Arab Gulf states. Faced with a powerful new Gulf ruler, the British concluded a treaty with Ibn Saud by the end of 1915. The treaty confirmed British recognition of Ibn Saud’s leadership and extended British protection over the central and eastern Arabian territories then under his control. In return, the Saudis pledged not to enter into agreement with, or to sell any territory to, any other foreign power without prior British consent, and to refrain from all aggression against other Gulf states?in essence turning Ibn Saud?s lands into another Trucial State. In concluding the agreement, Britain gave Ibn Saud ?20,000, a monthly stipend of ?5,000, and a large number of rifles and machine guns, intended to be used against the Ottomans and their Arab allies, who had sided with Germany against Britain in World War I. But Ibn Saud had no interest in fighting the Ottomans in Arabia. Instead, he used British guns and funds to advance his own objectives, which increasingly led westward toward the Red Sea province of the Hijaz, in which lay Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Islam. Here Saudi ambitions confronted the claims of another British ally—Sharif Husayn of Mecca, with whom Britain had concluded a wartime alliance in autumn 1915. Sharif Husayn, like Ibn Saud, aspired to rule all of Arabia. By declaring the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule in June 1916, Sharif Husayn hoped to realize his ambitions in Arabia, Syria, and Iraq with British support. Yet by fighting the Ottomans and extending his forces along a 1,300-kilometer (810-mile) stretch of desert, the sharif had left his home province of Hijaz vulnerable to Ibn Saud’s forces. The vast Arabian Peninsula was not big enough to accommodate the ambitions of both men. Between 1916 and 1918, the balance began to shift in Ibn Saud’s favor.

Conflict between the Saudis and the Hashemites became inevitable when Sharif Husayn declared himself “king of the Arab Countries” in October 1916, following the outbreak of the Arab Revolt. Even his British allies, who had promised him an “Arab kingdom,” were only willing to recognize him as “king of the Hijaz” in addition to sharif of Mecca. Ibn Saud was unlikely to let the self-proclaimed King Husayn’s claim stand. Throughout World War I Britain tried to keep the peace between its two Arab allies and to focus their energies on fighting the Ottomans. However, the Saudi-Hashemite battle for ascendancy broke into open conflict just months before the collapse of the Ottoman war effort. A remarkable exchange of unpublished letters written by the two desert monarchs captures the rivalry just as tempers rose with the summer heat in 1918. With his forces fully engaged against the Ottomans all along the Hijaz Railway line, King Husayn was growing increasingly concerned by reports that the Saudi ruler had been distributing weapons among tribes that had recently pledged allegiance to the Wahhabi cause. These were no doubt arms that the British had provided Ibn Saud, and the Hashemite ruler was increasingly concerned that British arms would be used against his own forces. In February 1918, Husayn wrote to admonish Ibn Saud: “Do the [Wahhabi] tribesmen believe God will find them innocent of hostilities against the people of Islam,” he wrote, “who trust in God to protect their lives and property?? Husayn warned his rival that it was an act against God?s religion to arm Muslims to fight against fellow Muslims.⁶ Ibn Saud was outraged by Husayn’s letter. After all, what went on in the Najd was no business of the sharif of Mecca. Ibn Saud’s response provoked a fresh riposte from Husayn in May 1918. If Ibn Saud’s actions had been limited to the Central Arabian province of the Najd, the Hashemites might not be so concerned. However, the Saudi ruler had recently secured the allegiance of one of King Husayn’s own governors, a man named Khalid ibn Luway, in the oasis town of al-Khurma on the Najd-Hijaz frontier. “There is no cause for deceiving Khalid ibn Luway, or to use tricks and subterfuge on him,” the old king complained.⁷ The oasis town of Khurma was strategically located between the rival Arab rulers’ territories, and with a population of 5,000 it was an important settlement in its own right. Though he had been a subject of the sharif of Mecca, Khalid had declared his adherence to Wahhabi doctrine in 1918, placed his town under Ibn Saud’s rule, and diverted its taxes from Mecca to the Saudi treasury. In his memoirs, King Husayn’s son Amir Abdullah wrote that Khalid “killed innocent people, even putting his own brother to death because he did not share his religious convictions. He kept persecuting any of the Hashemite tribes who would not follow the Wahhabi movement.”⁸ King Husayn tried to persuade the wayward governor to return to the fold, but to no avail. The dispute over Khurma led to the first armed conflict between the Hashemites and the Saudis. King Husayn dispatched a force of over 2,600 infantry and horsemen in June 1918 to retake Khurma but found the town reinforced by Ibn Saud’s Ikhwan fighters.⁹ The Hashemite troops were decimated by the Saudis in two separate engagements. The British, concerned lest their Arab allies succumb to internecine fighting before the Ottomans had been defeated, put pressure on Ibn Saud to seek peace with King Husayn. Buoyed by his fighters’ victories in Khurma, Ibn Saud drafted a condescending letter to Husayn in August 1918. The Saudi leader deployed titles as a way of asserting geographic sway. Whereas Ibn Saud claimed to be “amir of Najd, Hasa, Qatif and their dependencies,” he only recognized Sharif Husayn as “amir of Mecca”—not “king of the Arab Lands,” as Sharif Husayn wished, nor even king of the Hijaz, as the British acknowledged. He pointedly avoided making any reference to the Hijaz at all, as though the sovereignty of that vast Red Sea province had yet to be decided. Ibn Saud acknowledged receipt of King Husayn’s letter of May 7 with the reservation that “some of the things expressed in your letter were not appropriate.” He also acknowledged British pressure to reconcile their differences, for the campaign against the Ottomans was reaching a critical stage and “the dispute is harmful to all,” he explained. Yet Ibn Saud could not let prior Hashemite provocations go unchallenged. ?Your Eminence will undoubtedly have suspicions that I played a role in the matter of the people of al-Khurma,? he wrote. However, he argued that the Hashemites themselves were to blame for the governor?s defection and the townspeople?s adherence to the Wahhabi cause. ?I kept them in check as far as I could,? he continued, ?until your forces marched over them twice??referring to the two Hashemite engagements at al-Khurma??and that which God had ordained happened,? a smug reference to the defeat the Saudis dealt the Hashemite forces.¹⁰ Looking to the future, Ibn Saud proposed a truce with the Hashemites based on the status quo. Khurma would stay under Saudi rule, and King Husayn would write to the governor of the oasis town to reassure him that there were no differences between the Saudis and the Hashemites. Ibn Saud and King Husayn would preserve the peace between their followers, guaranteeing the compliance of the tribes of Najd and Hijaz to the truce. In hindsight, it was the best offer Husayn would ever get from the Saudis—mutual recognition of borders and territories with the Hashemites left in control of the Hijaz. King Husayn did not even consider Ibn Saud’s offer; he returned the letter unopened, telling the messenger: “Ibn Saud has no claim on us and we have no claim on him.” Instead of pursuing a truce, King Husayn dispatched another force to al-Khurma in August 1918 in a bid to restore his authority over the oasis. He assigned one of his most trusted commanders, Sharif Shakir bin Zayd, to command the expedition. The king reassured his commander that he had dispatched sufficient camels and supplies “for you to do great things with.”¹¹ Shakir’s expedition, however, was easily repelled by Saudi forces before even reaching the contested oasis. Infuriated and humiliated by his repeated defeats to Ibn Saud’s forces, King Husayn ordered his son Amir Abdullah to lead a new campaign against Khurma. Abdullah had no stomach for such a fight. He and his soldiers had maintained the siege of the Ottoman garrison in Medina until their commander finally surrendered in January 1919. Abdullah’s troops were battle-weary after years of fighting the Ottomans. He also recognized that the Wahhabi soldiers were zealous warriors. “The Wahhabi fighter,” he wrote, “is anxious to attain Paradise which, according to his faith, he will enter if he be killed.”¹² But Abdullah could not defy his father, and in May 1919 he took up his commission and led his force to battle with the Wahhabis. The Hashemite army met with initial success in its final campaign against the Saudis. In May 1919, on the way to Khurma, Amir Abdullah captured the oasis of Turaba, which had also pledged allegiance to Ibn Saud. Rather than seek the goodwill of the 3,000 inhabitants of the oasis, Abdullah allowed his troops to plunder the rebellious town. No doubt he intended to make an example of Turaba, to discourage other frontier oases from siding with the Saudis. However, the behavior of Abdullah’s troops only served to increase Turaba’s loyalty to Ibn Saud. While Amir Abdullah was still in Turaba, some of the townspeople must have sent word to Ibn Saud to come to their assistance. Abdullah himself drafted a letter to the Saudi leader from Turaba in an attempt to leverage his conquest of the oasis to secure a peace agreement with Ibn Saud on terms more favorable to the Hashemites. The Saudi fighters had no interest in coming to terms with the Hashemites. Having defeated every Hashemite army they had encountered, they were confident of carrying the day against Amir Abdullah’s force. Some 4,000 Ikhwan fighters surrounded Turaba from three sides. They struck Abdullah’s positions at dawn and nearly wiped out his forces. By his own account, Abdullah claimed that only 153 men from his detachment of 1,350 troops survived. “I personally escaped through a miracle,” he later recalled. Abdullah and his cousin, Sharif Shakir bin Zayd, cut through the back of their tent and sustained wounds as they fled the fighting.¹³ The repercussions of the battle reached far beyond the carnage at the oasis. Turaba demonstrated that the Wahhabis were the dominant force in the Arabian Peninsula and that the Hashemites’ days in the Hijaz were numbered. Amir Abdullah recalled: “After the battle there began a period of unrest and anxiety as to the fate of our movement, our country and the person of our King.” Indeed, his father, King Husayn, seemed to be suffering from a mental breakdown. “On returning to headquarters I found my father ill and nervous,” Abdullah wrote. “He was now bad tempered, forgetful and suspicious. He had lost his quick grasp and sound judgment.”¹⁴ The result of the battle came as a surprise to the British too, many of whom had underestimated the fighting power of Ibn Saud’s forces. They did not wish to see their Saudi ally overwhelm their Hashemite ally, upsetting the balance of power they had carefully established in Arabia. The British resident (or chief colonial administrator under the Political Service of British India) in Jidda sent a message to Ibn Saud in July 1918 demanding he withdraw from the oasis towns immediately, leaving Turaba and Khurma as neutral zones until both sides had agreed on their frontiers. “If you fail to retreat after receiving my letter,” the resident warned, “the Government of His Majesty will consider the treaty they have concluded with you null and void and take all necessary steps to hinder your hostile action.”¹⁵ Ibn Saud complied with the request and ordered his troops to withdraw to Riyadh. To restore the balance of forces in Arabia, the British also needed to conclude a formal treaty with the Hashemites in the Hijaz. The exchange of correspondence between the then Sharif Husayn and Sir Henry McMahon had established a wartime alliance, but this did not constitute the sort of treaty such as Britain had concluded with the Persian Gulf rulers, including Ibn Saud. Without a formal treaty, Britain would have no grounds to preserve its Hashemite allies from the Saudis. And Britain preferred to see many states balancing each other in Arabia to having a single dominant power emerge that straddled both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. It was thus convenient for British imperial interests to preserve the Hashemites as a buffer against the growing power of the Saudi state. As World War I drew to an end, the British government was anxious to conclude a formal alliance with King Husayn and his Hashemite family. They sent Colonel T. E. Lawrence, the famous “Lawrence of Arabia,” who had served as British liaison with the Hashemites during the Arab Revolt, to open negotiations with Husayn. Between July and September 1921, Lawrence tried in vain to persuade King Husayn to sign a treaty that recognized the new realities of the postwar settlement. Husayn rejected nearly every feature of the postwar Middle East as a betrayal of Britain’s promises to him: he refused to limit his kingdom to the Hijaz; he objected to the expulsion of his son, King Faysal, from Damascus and the establishment of a French mandate in Syria; he rejected Britain’s mandates over Iraq and Palestine (which then included Transjordan); and he objected to the policy of a Jewish national home in Palestine. The British ventured one last attempt to reach a treaty in 1923, but the bitter old king refused to sign. As a result, he forfeited British protection just as Ibn Saud began to mount his campaign to conquer the Hijaz. In July 1924, Ibn Saud gathered his commanders in Riyadh to plan the conquest of the Hijaz. They began with an attack on Taif, a mountain town near Mecca, to test Britain’s reaction. In September 1924 the Ikhwan seized the town and plundered it for three days. The townspeople of Taif resisted the Wahhabis, who responded with great violence. An estimated 400 people were killed, and many others fled. The fall of Taif sent a shock wave through the Hijaz. The notables of the province gathered in Jidda and forced King Husayn to resign his throne. They believed Ibn Saud was attacking the Hijaz because of his antagonism toward King Husayn, and that a change in monarch might change Saudi policy. On October 6, 1924, the old king complied with his people’s wishes, declared his son Ali king, and went into exile. However, these measures did not halt Ibn Saud’s advance. In mid-October 1924, the Ikhwan captured the holy city of Mecca. They met with no resistance and refrained from all violence toward the townspeople. Ibn Saud sent messengers to sound out Britain’s reaction to the conquest of Taif and Mecca. He was reassured of Britain’s neutrality in the conflict. The Saudi ruler then proceeded to complete his conquest of the Hijaz. He laid siege to the port of Jidda and the holy city of Medina in January 1925. The Hashemites held out for nearly a full year, but on December 22, 1925, King Ali surrendered his kingdom to Ibn Saud and followed his father into exile. Having conquered the Hijaz, Ibn Saud was proclaimed “sultan of Najd and king of the Hijaz.” The vast extent of territory under his control placed Ibn Saud in a different category from the other Gulf rulers of the Trucial States. Britain recognized the change in his status and concluded a new treaty with King Abdul Aziz in 1927 that recognized his full independence and sovereignty, without any of the restrictions on external relations accepted by the Trucial States. Ibn Saud continued to extend the territory under his rule, and renamed his kingdom Saudi Arabia in 1932. Not only had Ibn Saud succeeded in establishing his kingship over most of the Arabian Peninsula, but he had managed to preserve his independence from all forms of British imperial rule. In this he was assisted by a critical British miscalculation: they did not believe that there was any oil in Saudi Arabia.