KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK TENTS
After Auda, Mohammed el Dheilan is the chief figure of the Abu
Tayi. He is taller than his cousin and massively built; a
square-headed thoughtful man of forty-five, with a melancholy humor
and a kind heart carefully concealed beneath it. He acts as master
of ceremonies for the Abu Tayi, is Auda’s right-hand man, and
frequently appears as his spokesman. Mohammed is greedy, richer
than Auda, deeper and more calculating. Allah has endowed him with
the eloquence of an Arabian Demosthenes; his tribesmen address him
as “Father of Eloquence.” In a tribal council he can always be
relied upon to persuade his audience to accept his views. He can
wield a sword right lustily too, and is “a drinker of the milk of
war” second only in prowess to the mighty Auda.
Zaal Ion Motlog is Auda’s nephew. He is twenty-five, something of
a dandy, with polished teeth, carefully curled mustache, and a
trimmed and pointed beard. He, too, is greedy and sharp-witted but
without Mohammed’s mentality. Auda has been training him for years
as chief scout to the tribe, so that he is a most daring and
acceptable commander in a _ghazu._
Nuri Shalaan, emir of Jauf, is not such a picturesque character as
his friend and kinsman, Auda Abu Tayi, but as ruler of the Rualla
Anazeh tribe, two hundred thousand strong, the largest single tribe
in the desert, occupying nearly all the territory between Damascus
and Bagdad, he is one of the great men of Arabia. His friendship
was most vital to Hussein and Lawrence in the taking of Deraa and
Damascus, and might have been of tremendous weight to Feisal now
that he has been placed on the throne of Mesopotamia had he not
sold himself to the French in Syria in 1919, after the war. Lawrence
would not let Nuri declare war on the Turks until the last minute,
because Nuri’s allegiance would have meant too many mouths to feed.
Nuri Shalaan was the deadly enemy of Ibn Rashid, who coöperated
with the Turks, but who since the Great War has lost his portion
of Arabia to Sultan Ibn Saud of Nejd. At one time Nuri Shalaan
wanted an armorer. He captured Ibn Bani of Hail, Ibn Rashid’s
armorer, the most skilled man of his craft in Arabia, and put him
in prison with his own smith, Ibn Zarih. He gave them both forges
and tools and declared that they should languish in prison until
Ibn Zarih could make swords and daggers that could not be
distinguished from those of Ibn Bani. They sweated and worked and
the forges were kept burning until late every night, and finally,
after many weeks, Ibn Zarih produced a wonderful dagger with an
edge that could almost cut the wind. Nuri was satisfied; he released
his two prisoners and sent Ibn Bani back to his country with rich
presents. Nuri Shalaan was an old man of seventy when the Arab
revolution broke out. He was always ambitious and determined to be
a leader. Thirty years ago he killed his two brothers and made
himself chief of the tribe. He ruled his people with a rod of iron,
and they were practically the only Bedouins who obeyed orders. If
they fail him he has their heads cut off; but in spite of his
cruelty his followers all admire and are proud of him. Most Arab
sheiks talk like magpies, but Nuri remains silent in the tribal
council and settles everything with a few final clean-cut words of
decision. Until the end of the war he had preferred tent life to
that of all the palaces from Bagdad to the Bosporus, and kept great
state in the largest black goat’s-hair tent in the desert, where
sheep were slaughtered every few minutes for the endless stream of
guests. He owned the best wheat land in Syria and the finest camels
and horses. He is so rich he does not know how to measure his
wealth.
Motlog Ibn Jemiann, sheik of the Beni Atiyeh, south of Maan, added
four thousand fighting men to King Hussein’s forces. He is
hard-working and brave as a lion. He helped Lawrence blow up trains
near Maan and was in the thick of the fray whenever there were
railway stations to be captured or any other little jobs of a
particularly dangerous nature. During the scouting around Maan,
two of Lawrence’s officers were trying to find an ancient Roman
road in the desert. Motlog, always eager for adventure, went with
them. In the deep sand their Ford careened madly from left to right
and then at one point swerved so sharply that Motlog was thrown on
his head. The officers jumped out of the car and ran back to pick
him up and apologize to him, thinking he would be very angry. But
the old sheik brushed off the sand and said ruefully, “Please don’t
be offended with me; I haven’t learnt to ride one of these things
yet.” He regarded riding in a motor-car as an art that had to be
mastered just like riding a camel.
The Robber Harith Clan may not have been in the good graces of
Hussein before the war, but their shereef, Ali Ibn Hussein, a youth
of ‘nineteen, was responsible for converting nearly the whole of
the Hauran to the revolt. He was the most reckless, most impertinent,
and jolliest fellow in the Arabian army. The fastest runner in the
desert, he could catch up with a camel in his bare feet and swing
into the saddle with one hand while holding his rifle with the
other. When Ali went into battle he took off all his clothing
except his drawers. He said it was the cleanest way to get wounded.
He had a wild sense of humor and made jokes about the king in his
presence. He was one of the two shereefs in the Hedjaz who did not
stand in terror of King Hussein.
The other was Shereef Shakr, a cousin of Feisal and the richest
man in the Hedjaz. He was the only big shereef who plaited his
hair, and, in addition, he encouraged lice in it, to show his
respect for the old Bedouin proverb, “A well-populated head is a
sign of a generous mind.” His home was in Mecca, but he spent most
of his time in the saddle with the Bedouin tribesmen.
These are a few of the leading chieftains, in some of whom
enthusiasm for Arabian nationalism had to be kindled, others
cajoled by appeals to their vanity, and almost all inflamed with
the zest for war on a big scale—the game they had known and played
at from childhood. When they had once sworn allegiance they were
as true as steel. Without their loyalty and dauntless courage and
epic love of blood-curdling adventure the Arabian campaign would
have been a dream on paper fabricated by an impractical young
archæologist.
In his dealings with Auda and other Arab chiefs, Lawrence found
their rich sense of humor an important asset. Make an Arab laugh,
and you can persuade him to do most things. Arabic is a solemn
language, full of ceremony and stateliness; and Lawrence, who had
an unusual knowledge of the various dialects spoken in Arabia, made
the discovery that the direct translation into Arabic of ordinary
colloquial English, spiced with wit, delighted his hearers. Another
highly useful weapon in Colonel Lawrence’s mental armory was the
faculty of mastering the unexpected with some inspired improvisation.
Time and again he happened upon a desperate situation from which
there was no obvious means of escape. In the space of a few seconds
his alert brain would work out some seemingly fantastic but really
brilliant method of dealing with the emergency.
Such an incident was one of his many adventures in the Syrian
Desert. He was at the town of Azrak among the shifting sand-dunes
southeast of Damascus, when a courier brought news that some
Turkish spies were in a caravan of Syrian merchants which was on
its way to the Arabian army supply-base at Akaba, three hundred
miles to the south. He immediately decided that in order to draw
the teeth of the spies he must reach Akaba either in company with
the caravan or soon after its arrival. Normally the journey from
Azrak to Akaba is twelve days by camel, and already the Syrian
caravan had a start of nine days.
Realizing that his followers could not stand the forced pace at
which he meant to travel, Lawrence took with him but one man—a
half-breed Haurani—who was famous in the North Arabian Desert for
his endurance. The pair were racing over the ridges between Azrak
and Bair, eighty miles south of the camp from which they started,
when suddenly a dozen Arabs appeared over the edge of a sand-dune
and galloped their camels down the slope to cut off the strangers.
As they approached, the Arabs shouted a request that Lawrence and
his companion should dismount, and at the same time announced
themselves as friends and members of the Jazi-Howeitat tribe. When
only thirty yards away they themselves dismounted by way of
encouraging the lone couple to do likewise. But Lawrence had
recognized the Arabs as of the Beni-Sakr, allies of the Turks and
blood-enemies of most of the Bedouin tribes that were fighting for
King Hussein and Emir Feisal. It was known to the Beni-Sakr that
gold passed up and down the caravan route, and they were out
looking for loot.
This particular sector was the only war-time trade-route between
Syria and Arabia, along which the merchants of Syria had for many
months journeyed to Akaba for the purchase of Manchester cotton.
Lawrence used cotton both as an aid to propaganda and as a means
of getting as much gold as possible from Syria and Turkey. The
Ottoman Empire needed cotton urgently, and for this reason the
military authorities allowed traders to pass back and forth through
the lines. When they reached Akaba. Lawrence and the Arab leaders
would make converts among them by preaching Arab Nationalistic
doctrines. At the same time they would collect much valuable
information regarding conditions in Turkey. The merchants were also
useful in smuggling down to Akaba German field-glasses which
Lawrence needed for the equipment of his desert troops.
Meanwhile, the dismounted marauders of the Beni-Sakr stood on the
sand and fingered their rifles expectantly, while still passing
friendly greetings. Of a sudden Lawrence grinned so genially that
they became mystified.
“Come near; I want to whisper something to you,” he said to their
leader. Then bending down from the saddle of his camel he asked,
“Do you know what your name is?”
The sheik looked speechless and rather amazed. Lawrence continued,
“I think it must be ‘Terrace’ (Procurer)!”
This is the most terrible insult that one can offer a Bedouin. The
Beni-Sakr leader was dumfounded and rather nervous. He could not
understand how an ordinary traveler would dare to say such a thing
to him in the open desert when numbers and arms were on his side.
Before the sheik had time to recover himself, Lawrence remarked
pleasantly:
“May Allah give you peace!”
Quietly telling the Haurani to come along, he swung off across the
sand. The men of Beni-Sakr remained half bewildered until the pair
had ridden about a hundred yards. Then they recovered their senses
and began shooting; but the blond Prince of Mecca galloped over
the nearest ridge and escaped. Bullets, by the way, have but little
immediate effect on a camel that is traveling at twenty miles an
hour.
Both Lawrence and his Haurani nearly killed their camels during
the journey. They rode on an average of twenty-two hours a day.
From dawn to setting sun they crossed the burning sands, only
stopping then for a moment’s rest for their camels. When they
reached Auda Abu Tayi’s country, east of the southern end of the
Dead Sea, they exchanged their mounts for fresh beasts. They
covered the whole distance of three hundred miles in just three
days, a record for fast camel trekking that should stand for many
years.
This weird adventure was but one of a hundred that befell Lawrence.
I heard of another which explains why he always carried a Colt
revolver of an early frontier model.
Some years ago, while wandering in Asia Minor, near Marash, a fever
came upon him, and he made for Birgik, the nearest village. He
happened to meet a Turkoman. They are a semi-nomadic crowd of
Mongol descent, men with crooked eyes and faces that look as though
they had been modeled in butter and then left out in the sun. He
was not quite sure of his directions and asked the Turkoman to
point out the way. The reply was, “Right across those low hills to
the left.” As Lawrence turned away from him the Mongol sprang on
his back, and they had a bit of a dog-fight on the ground for a
few minutes. But Lawrence had walked more than a thousand miles
and, apart from the fever, was nearly done up. Soon he found
himself underneath.
“He sat on my stomach, pulled out my colt,” said Lawrence, “pressed
it to my temple, and pulled the trigger many times. But the
safety-catch was on. The Turkoman was a primitive fellow and knew
very little about revolver mechanism. He threw the weapon away in
disgust and proceeded to pound my head with a rock until I was no
longer interested. After taking everything I had, he made off. I
went to the village and got the inhabitants to help me chase the
scoundrel. We caught him and made him disgorge the things he’d
relieved me of. Since then I’ve always had a profound respect for
a Colt, and have never been without one.”