Table Of ContentL NEIL FAULKNER NEIL FAULKNER
A LAWRENCE OF
‘A lively history of the Arab Revolt that sheds important new light on W L AW R E N C E
ARABIA’S WAR
Lawrence’s Seven Pillars as a reliable source. Essential reading.’
R
—Eugene Rogan, author of The Arabs: A History
THE ARABS, THE BRITISH
E
O F A R A B I A ’ S
N AND THE REMAKING OF THE
‘Though closely interlinked, the Great Arab Revolt and the Palestine
MIDDLE EAST IN WWI
campaigns are generally studied separately. Neil Faulkner’s eminently C
N
readable account treats them in parallel, opening up a much wider context E WA R Rarely is a book published that revises our
E
for Lawrence’s Seven Pillars.’ I understanding of an entire world region
OL
—Jeremy Wilson, author of Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography and the history that has defined it. This
F
FA groundbreaking volume makes just such a
Dr Neil Faulkner FSA is an archaeologist,
U THE ARABS, THE BRITISH contribution. Neil Faulkner draws on ten
historian, writer, lecturer and broadcaster. A
L AND THE REMAKING OF THE years of field research to offer the first truly
A Research Fellow at the University of Bristol K
R multidisciplinary history of the conflicts that
and Editor of Military History Monthly, he N MIDDLE EAST IN WWI
A raged in Sinai, Arabia, Palestine and Syria
is the author of ten books, among them E
R during the First World War.
Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt Against B
Rome (2011), In Search of the Zeppelin War: I
A In Lawrence of Arabia’s War, Faulkner rewrites
The Archaeology of the First Blitz (2008)
the history of T.E. Lawrence’s legendary
and Rome: Empire of the Eagles (2008, ’
S military campaigns in the context of the Arab
2010). His many TV appearances include
W Revolt. He explores the intersections among
Channel 4’s Time Team, BBC2’s Timewatch
the declining Ottoman Empire, the Bedouin
and Sky Atlantic’s The British. An active
A tribes, nascent Arab nationalism and Western
fieldworker, Faulkner has co-directed various
imperial ambition. The book provides a new
archaeological projects at home and abroad, R
analysis of Ottoman resilience in the face of
including the Great Arab Revolt Project
modern industrialised warfare, and it assesses
between 2006 and 2014, an investigation of the
the relative weight of conventional operations
evidence for Lawrence of Arabia’s War in the
in Palestine and irregular warfare in Syria.
deserts of southern Jordan.
Faulkner thus reassesses the historic roots of
today’s divided, fractious, war-torn Middle
East.
Jacket photographs:
Front: Undated photograph of T.E. Lawrence astride a camel in
traditional Arab dress. © Photo Researchers / Mary Evans.
Back: An Ottoman machine-gun unit poses for a photo. ISBN 978-0-300-19683-2
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Author photograph: Esther Smedvig.
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
9 780300 196832
Printed in Great Britain yalebooks.com yalebooks.co.uk
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA’S WAR
i
ii
LAWRENCE
OF ARABIA’S
WAR
THE ARABS, THE BRITISH
AND THE REMAKING OF THE MIDDLE
EAST IN WWI
NEIL FAULKNER
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
iii
Copyright © 2016 Neil Faulkner
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.
For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:
U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com
Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk
Typeset in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd
Printed in Great Britain by Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Faulkner, Neil, author.
Title: Lawrence of Arabia’s war : the Arabs, the British, and the remaking of the Middle
East in WWI / Neil Faulkner.
Description: New Haven : Yale University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015048301 | ISBN 9780300196832 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914–1918—Campaigns—Middle East. | Lawrence, T. E.
(Thomas Edward), 1888–1935. | Middle East—History—1914–1923.
Classification: LCC D568.4.L45 F38 2016 | DDC 940.4/15—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048301
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
iv
CONTENTS
List of Maps and Illustrations vi
Note on the Text viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction xiii
1 Holy War? 1
2 Young Turks 31
3 Little Mehmet 55
4 For Sultan and Caliph 85
5 Sinai Bridgehead 109
6 The Battle of Romani 136
7 The Arab Revolt 152
8 A Crusader, an Unknown Desert and a New Way of War 190
9 The Gates of Palestine 224
10 Aqaba 257
11 Bull Loose 279
12 The Railway War 302
13 The Third Battle of Gaza 323
14 Jerusalem 343
15 The Mountains of Moab 367
16 Special Operations 402
17 Armageddon 420
Epilogue 457
Endnotes 468
Timeline 494
Bibliography 509
Index 515
v
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Maps
page
1. The world war in early 1916. xviii
2. The Ottoman Empire at the time of the First World War. xix
3. Sinai, Palestine and Syria. xx
4. The Sinai Desert. xxi
5. The Hijaz in 1916. xxii
6. The zone of operations on the Arab front, May 1917–August 1918. xxiii
7. Palestine, showing major British military advances, xxiv
November 1917–September 1918.
8. North-west Sinai, showing the locations of the Battles of Katia, 114
Romani and Bir al-Abd in 1916.
9. The First Battle of Katia, 23 April 1916. 117
10. The Battle of Romani, 4 August 1916. 139
11. The Battle of Magdhaba, 23 December 1916. 231
12. The Battle of Rafa, 9 January 1917. 237
13. The First Battle of Gaza, 26–27 March 1917. 243
14. The Second Battle of Gaza, 19–20 April 1917. 250
15. The Hallat Ammar Ambush, 19 September 1917. 304
16. The Third Battle of Gaza, 29 October–7 November 1917. 324
17. The Yeomanry action at Huj, 8 November 1917. 344
18. The Battle of El-Mughar, 13 November 1917. 351
19. The area of operations around Jerusalem, 18 November– 357
9 December 1917.
20. The Battle of Tafila, 25 January 1918. 374
21. The Amman raid, 21 March–2 April 1918. 386
22. The Battle of Maan, 13–17 April 1918. 390
vi
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS vii
23. The Salt raid, 30 April–4 May 1918. 396
24. The Battle of Mudawwara, 8 August 1918. 416
25. The Battle of Megiddo, 19–25 September 1918. 429
26. The race from Damascus to Aleppo, October 1918. 442
Illustration credits
Plate 1 is photographed by Harry Chase, 1917, © 2005 TopFoto. From T.E.
Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, subscribers’ edition, 1926, the following
images (artists’ names follow in parentheses): plate 5 left (W. Nicholson), right
(Augustus John) and bottom (William Roberts); plate 6 bottom right (Eric
Kennington); and all three images on plate 7 (Eric Kennington). Plate 6 top of
the Emir Feisal is by Augustus John, 1919 © Ashmolean Museum, University of
Oxford (WA1936.30). Plate 8 right of Sir Henry McMahon is by Walter
Stoneman, 1920 © National Portrait Gallery, London. Plate 11 top and plate 17
top are courtesy of the Imperial War Museum (Q58863 and Q59193). Plate 13
top is courtesy of the Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California. Plate 13
bottom is a photograph from Lt George Pascoe’s album, courtesy of John B.
Winterburn. Plate 20 bottom left is by Eric Kennington at Clouds Hill, Dorset
© National Trust/R. Goldsmith.
NOTE ON THE TEXT
The transcription of foreign- language names is always problematic. I
have avoided the somewhat pedantic academic practice of using a stand-
ardised system of transcription, since this is of little use to a general reader
unfamiliar with the language in question. The matter, anyway, is hopelessly
complicated by changing conventions, to the extent that arbitrary use of a
modern standard can render some places referred to in the primary sources
unidentifiable to the uninitiated.
Instead, in each case, I have adopted whatever form seemed most natural,
both as it appears on the page and as a rough guide to pronunciation. I
have, however, been wholly consistent in always using the same transcription
for any particular name. Djemal Pasha is always Djemal, never Cemal or
Jemal, and I have done this partly because this spelling was widely used in
contemporary sources, partly because it more closely resembles the Turkish
pronunciation.
Another problem arises in relation to place- names. Different names for the
same place were sometimes used in the past, and these are often different from
those in use today. I have generally opted for the names most commonly used
in contemporary British military sources.
Military terminology is another source of difficulty. It is useful to know that
an Ottoman regiment was the equivalent of a British brigade, and that both
typically comprised three battalions. A battalion at full strength numbered
about 1,000 men, but on campaign actual strengths tended to be far lower, in
the case of the Ottomans very much so. Regiments/brigades were, of course,
incorporated into divisions, corps and armies. In numbering these, I have
followed the convention of using words for armies, Roman numerals for corps
and Arabic numerals for divisions, brigades and battalions, as in Seventh Army,
VIII Corps, 43rd Division, 130th Brigade and 3rd Manchesters.
viii
NOTE ON THE TEXT ix
In relation to occasional references to money, it is worth knowing that in
1914 a British pound was worth about US $3, a Turkish pound 50 cents and a
German mark about 25 cents. I have rounded any figures used because values
varied considerably in the course of the First World War.
I have modernised, standardised and corrected the punctuation in the
quotes, and also standardised spellings, so that they are easier to read and do
not jar.
