L 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.