Gallipoli, August 20th 1915
On the first day of the landings so many men died coming ashore that the surf turned red.
That was four months ago and since then hundreds of thousands of entente soldiers: British, French, Canadian,
British Indians, and Anzacs have died in the futile attempt to take Constantinople.
But there are regular truces to clear the dead.
That's what they think is happening when they see the Ottoman officer walking toward their trench, holding a white flag.
But then he jumps in with the startled Allies announcing that he is an Arab officer in the Ottoman army and intends to defect.
His story is so incredible, he's immediately put on a boat to British headquarters in Cairo.
He claims that the Arabs are about to rise against the Ottoman Empire.
Cairo September 10th 1915
Two weeks later the defector sits in a room filled with cigarette smoke and maps.
Before him sit three British intelligence officers.
The one questioning him the most, a diminutive shabbily dressed lieutenant and Syria expert, named Lawrence tells him to start at the beginning.
The defector says he's part of a secret arab nationalist group within the Ottoman military, and acted as liaison to an allied civilian organization.
and acted as liaison to an allied civilian organization.
Stationed in Alexandretta, their Arab units originally planned to revolt against the Ottomans
once the British landed troops outside the city.
They'd even sabotage the defences.
Wai wai wai wai wait, originally? So the plan has changed?
Well, the British never came, did they? And the Ottomans transferred the Arab units to Gallipoli where nearly the whole secret network got killed.
Lawrence and the other officers exchanged a dark glance,
because they had argued that landing at Alexandretta would trigger an Arab revolt,
and be the best course of action, but Winston Churchill had instead chosen the bloody quagmire at Gallipoli.
It was political. Alexandretta was right next to Syria, and the French wanted Syria after the war.
So what they didn't want was a bunch of British troops and Arab rebels mucking about in their future territory
Simple as that. In truth, the war was not going well in Arabia.
Though the entente had thrown back and early assault on the Suez Canal,
and a British Indian force had seized oil fields in southern Iraq,
the debacle at Gallipoli was taking both focus and troops from the theater,
and things were about to get even worse.
Two months later, the Ottomans would smash a British Indian force advancing on Baghdad,
and put the survivors under siege eventually forcing a full surrender.
British generals had walked into the conflict sure that they would roll over the Ottomans,
but instead, they dangerously underestimated the enemy, and found themselves in a stalemate.
But what this defector said next could shift the calculus.
He said that Sharif Hussein was prepared to declare a revolt against the Ottoman Empire,
and that he was in contact with what remained of the Arab secret societies.
If Britain agreed to back an independent Arab nation,
that stretched the whole of the Arabian Peninsula, including Iraq and into Syria,
they could have their uprising.
And this blew the Cairo intelligence office away.
They were aware that Sharif Hussein had been exchanging letters with the British High Commissioner for Egypt,
promising revolt in exchange for an Arab nation.
But they dismissed Hussein as blowing smoke when he hinted at being able to rally Arab support.
Plus, these army officers and civilian officials were liberals,
far different from the conservative circles they'd assumed Hussein could win loyalty from.
Yet, the territorial descriptions Hussein had asked for were exactly the ones now being rattled off by the defector.
The offer was real.
Hussein's last letter, which the High Commissioner blew off,
had given them 30 days to respond to his territorial requests.
They quickly sent a recommendation to take Hussein up on his offer.
Hussein, for his part, was not sure what was taking the British so long.
He was on a short timeframe, and the ideal time to rise probably would have been last year,
before the Arab units got decimated at Gallipoli.
All he could do was stall the Ottomans, Who were seeking his support as well,
As both the Sharif and Emir of Mecca,
both secular and religious guardian of the holy pilgrimage city,
he carried a certain amount of religious authority.
The Ottomans had requested that he used that clout to endorse the Empire's declaration of holy war on the entente allies,
and Hussein had entered negotiations over a possible Arab state with them as well.
But, as we mentioned in the last episode, Hussein did not like the Young Turks
He was old and deeply traditional.
Offended by the government's liberalization program,
where they'd secularized legal codes, granted women more freedom
and campaign to enforce anti-slavery laws.
Plus, his hand was simply stronger with the British,
who desperately wanted to undermine the Ottoman's talks of holy war,
and make their invasions into the Middle East look as if they had some internal support.
Not imperialist intervention, of course, but liberation!
Huh?
So the British agreed to back Hussein, with both money and weapons, and in return for his revolt
form an Arab nation in the areas Hussein had described, but...
You know with a few caveats.
And that was the first problem, because those caveats were vague at best.
In fact, many thorny issues, like Arab claims to Syria, were glossed over with language that essentially amounted to:
Totally, but we'll figure that out after the war!
Other thorny regions like Palestine weren't mentioned at all.
So is Palestine part of Hussein's new Arab state?
Well, it depended on who you asked.
and both sides could walk away from this rather vague agreement thinking either yes or no.
So yeah, that was problem one.
Problem two was that at that very moment,
a different representative of the British government was promising that land to someone else.
The great powers had expected the war to be quick and decisive with their side winning, of course!
But as the war lengthened, forcing all sides to pour more blood and treasure into the conflict,
the higher the stakes became.
The winners had to walk away with something big enough to justify the slaughter,
and expanded imperial holdings in Arabia with its strategic real-estate,
holy sites, and oil reserves seemed like just the thing.
But exactly who got what did need to be laid out beforehand.
Otherwise, the victorious powers might fall on each other fighting over the spoils.
Enter Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot.
Two diplomats, given the task to figure out how, in the event of a victory by the Entente,
Britain and France would divide up the Middle East.
The map they decided on is breathtaking in its hubris.
Drawn entirely to serve the interests of European powers, with little to no regard for the people living in the region.
And the resulting treaty kept secret,
would directly contradict Britain's other secret agreement with Hussein.
Sykes and Picot started by stating their priorities.
Picot said that French influence had long been a part of Lebanon, and they wanted the oil assets in Syria.
Sykes for his part wanted a buffer zone to protect India, and the oil fields of southern Iraq,
but both wanted Palestine and the Christian holy sites therein.
The resulting compromise, I kid you not, involved...
rulers!
I would like to draw a line from the 'e' in Acre, said Sykes explaining the plan, to let's say the last 'k' in Kirkuk.
Essentially, they split the arabian peninsula into opposing zones of direct rule separated by zones of influence.
France would get Lebanon, southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, and most of Syria,
while Britain would get southern Iraq, plus what is today known as Jordan,
and parts of what is now Palestine and Israel.
However, the holy sites of Palestine would be under international administration shared by all.
In other words, there was no room for Hussein's independent Arab Kingdom,
unless it was one of the puppet States trapped in those zones of influence.
On May 16th 1916,
the final signature went on the map ratifying the secret Sykes-Picot agreement as official,
and less than a month later, on June 10th, Hussein aimed a rifle at the Ottoman barracks in Mecca,
and fired!
Symbolically beginning the Arab revolt.
Within three months the irregular Arab forces,
fighting along with extensive artillery support from Royal Navy gunships and airplanes,
took four cities on the coast.
Yet after that progress stalled.
Ottoman forces scattered the Arab irregulars in direct attacks,
and Hussein's attempt to take Medina got turned back at great cost.
His sons, who commanded his forces, were proving varied in quality as military commanders.
The forces under his sons Ali and Abdullah were known to panic and break even at the rumor of approaching Ottoman troops.
His third son, Faisal, though soft-spoken and with a casual sense of humor,
had a manner that could rally together the multiple clans operating under his banner.
And his good relationship with, though some might say manipulation of,
a certain embedded British officer named T. E. Lawrence (remember Lawrence?),
meant that his army was always supplied with British money and guns.
Which suited him just fine because Faisal was already thinking beyond his father's plans for an Arab state.
He wanted a kingdom of his own.
And he would get one.
Indeed all three sons of Sharif Hussein,
would become kings in nations that did not yet exist!
Legendary thanks to our patrons Ahmed Ziad Turk, Alicia
Bramble, Casey Muscha Dominic Valenciana Gunnar Clovis Kyle Murgatroyd Al Mamoune Cherkaoui and Orels1