LAWRENCE RULES IN DAMASCUS, AND THE TREACHERY OF THE ALGERIAN EMIR
The next morning they saw Damascus in the center of its gardens as
green and beautiful as any city in the world. The enchantment of
the scene, “like a dream that visits the light slumbers of the
morning—a dream dreamed but to vanish,” reminded Lawrence of the
Arab story that when Mohammed first came here as a camel-driver,
upon seeing Damascus from a distance, he refused to enter, saying
that man could only hope to enter paradise once. Coming out of the
desert and beholding this view, than which there is none more
enchanting and alluring in the world, it is no wonder Mohammed was
sorely tempted and even trembled for his soul. Seen from afar, this
oasis of verdure, rimmed round by yellow desert against a background
of snow-capped mountains, is indeed a pearl in an emerald setting.
So it is only natural that the desert-dweller should look upon it
as an earthly paradise.
Photograph: “SIDI” LAWRENCE AND HIS “SONS”
Photograph: “DRINKERS OF THE MILK OF WAR”
As the sun-rays fell aslant, weaving a fairy gossamer veil over
the minarets and cupolas of this dream city, Lawrence and Stirling
drove into Damascus in their famous Rolls-Royce, the Blue Mist.
They went straight to the town-hall and there called a meeting of
all the leading sheiks. Lawrence selected Shukri Ibn Ayubi, a
descendant of Saladin, to act as the first military governor under
the new régime. Then he appointed a chief of police, a director of
local transportation, and numerous other officials. These details
arranged, Shukri, Nuri Said, Auda Abu Tayi, Nuri Shalaan, and
Lawrence, at the head of their Bedouin irregulars, proceeded
through the streets of Damascus.
The twenty-nine-year-old commander-in-chief of the greatest army
that had been raised in Arabia for five centuries, who in less than
a year had made himself the most important man in Arabia since the
days of the great Calif Harun al Rashid, made his official entry
into this ancient capital of the old Arabian Empire at seven
o’clock on the morning of October 31. The entire population,
together with tens of thousands of Bedouins from the fringes of
the desert, packed the “street that is called straight” as Lawrence
entered the gate, dressed in the garb of a prince of Mecca. All
realized that at last their glorious city had been freed from the
Turkish yoke. Howling dervishes ran in front of him, dancing and
sticking knives into their flesh, while behind him came his flying
column of picturesque Arabian knights. For months they had heard
of the exploits of Shereef Lawrence, but now for the first time
they saw the mysterious Englishman who had united the desert tribes
and driven the Turks from Arabia. As they saw him come swinging
along through the bazaars on the back of his camel, it seemed as
though all the people of Damascus shouted his name and Feisal’s in
one joyful chorus. For ten miles and more along the streets of
this, the oldest city in the world that still remains standing,
the crowds gave the young Englishman one of the greatest ovations
ever given to any man. Dr. John Finley, of the American Red Cross,
who came north with Allenby, said, in describing it, that “there
were scenes of joy and ecstasy such as may never be witnessed on
this earth again. The bazaars were lined with hundreds of thousands
of people. The ‘street that is called straight’ was so packed that
the horses and camels could hardly squirm through. The housetops
were crowded. The people hung priceless Oriental carpets from their
balconies and showered Lawrence and his companions with silken
head-cloths, flowers and attar of roses.”
Fortunately for the Arabs, Allenby had ordered Light Horse Harry
Chauvel to hold his Australians back and let Feisal’s advance-guard
enter the city first, and Allenby also had not given any arbitrary
orders regarding the establishment of a temporary government in
Damascus. So Lawrence was astute enough to see to it that
representatives of the Arabian army entered just ahead of the
British, thereby giving Emir Feisal first possession.
Colonel Lawrence remained in Damascus only four days. But during
that time he was the virtual ruler of the city, and one of his
first moves was to visit the tomb of Saladin, where the kaiser,
back in 1898, had placed a satin flag and a bronze laurel wreath
inscribed in Turkish and Arabic: “From one great emperor to
another.” The wreath and inscription adorned with the Prussian
eagle had irritated Lawrence on his pre-war visits to Damascus,
and early in the campaign, when they were far south at Yenbo,
Lawrence and Feisal had vowed that they would not forget Saladin’s
tomb. The bronze wreath now adorns the office of the curator of
the British War Museum, while the kaiser’s flag returned with me
to America.
During Lawrence’s brief rule of Damascus, the kaleidoscopic bazaars
of that most orthodox of all Oriental cities were seething with
excitement. Only his intimate acquaintance with the personal
caprices of the conspirators behind the innumerable intrigues and
counter-intrigues made it possible for him to control the situation.
Even then there were thrilling incidents and danger from assassins.
On November 2 a riot broke out in Damascus, a disturbance that
might easily have blossomed into a counter-revolution. The moving
spirit in it was an Algerian emir, one Abd el Keder, who had long
been an arch-enemy of King Hussein and his sons. This blackguard
was the grandson of the celebrated Emir Abd el Keder, who for many
years had fought the French in Algiers and, when finally defeated,
had fled to Damascus. His two grandsons, Emir Muhammed Said and
Emir Abd el Keder, played an unsavory part in the war in the Near
East. The former served as an agent of the Germans and Turks in
Africa, where he exhorted the Senussi of the Sahara to invade
Egypt, while his younger and even more truculent brother, Abd el
Keder, as a super-spy for Enver Pasha, joined the Shereefian army.
A mock escape from Constantinople gave Abd el Keder all the alibi
needed for him to get into the good graces of the Arabs, and when
he arrived across the desert at Feisal’s headquarters in Akaba he
posed as an Arab Nationalist. In fact, so plausible and eloquent
was he, and so seemingly genuine were the promises of coöperation
which he made, that even King Hussein welcomed him to Mecca and
gave him an honorary title.
Then when Allenby launched his first great drive which resulted in
the capture of Beersheba, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Jericho, Lawrence
was asked to coöperate by destroying an important railway bridge
between the Turkish army and its Damascus base. It so happened that
Abd el Keder was the feudal lord controlling much of the region
round about the bridge, and when Feisal discussed the project with
him he at once begged to be allowed to take part in the raid. But
after accompanying Lawrence on his trek north for many days, until
the party was actually within a few miles of the bridge, Abd el
Keder and his cavalcade of followers galloped off in the desert
night and delivered the details of Lawrence’s plan to the German
and Turkish staff. Although this left him with only a few men,
Lawrence nevertheless made a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to
destroy the bridge, an adventure from which he barely escaped with
his life.
The Turks at first suspected their Algerian spy of double-crossing
them and of really having turned pro-Arab, but they finally released
him and then showered him with honors. Later on, when Allenby made
his last great drive toward Damascus, Abd el Keder was sent among
the Syrian villagers to cajole them into remaining loyal to their
Ottoman rulers. But when the cunning Algerian and his brother saw
that the Turkish retreat was degenerating into a _débâcle_, their
enthusiasm for their friends, Enver, Talaat, and Djemal, vanished,
and they galloped to Damascus several hours ahead of Allenby and
Lawrence, hurriedly organized an Arab civil government with
themselves as the heads, and prepared a triumphal welcome for the
approaching British and Hedjaz armies. But, naturally, they were
a bit nonplussed to find the victors led by Colonel Lawrence, who
peremptorily ordered them to resign and then appointed men of Emir
Feisal’s choice in their stead. This so upset and enraged the
intriguing brothers that they drew their weapons and would have
attacked Lawrence had the others present at the council not disarmed
them. Then these two unpleasant but immensely rich Algerian emirs
collected together the members of their own personal body-guard,
who were mainly exiles like themselves, and paraded through the
streets making impassioned speeches denouncing Emir Feisal and King
Hussein as puppets of Lawrence and the British. They called upon
the Damascenes to strike a blow for the faith and launch a new
rebellion. Rioting soon broke out, and it took Lawrence’s men six
hours to clear the town. The rioting soon degenerated into pure
looting, and it was necessary for Lawrence, General Nuri Pasha,
Shukri Ayubi, and the other leaders of the Shereefian force to
resort to machine-gunning in the central square of Damascus and
impose peace by force, after killing and wounding a score or more.
The two turbulent Algerian emirs managed to hide, and for a month
they kept under cover, while they planned a new rebellion. But Abd
el Keder’s restless and impulsive spirit got the better of his
discretion, and in a moment of passion he seized his rifle, leaped
on his charger, and galloped down to Feisal’s palace, shouting for
Feisal to come out and fight him, and then started shooting. So
persistent was he that one of the Arab sentries, who had taken to
cover, sent a rifle-ball through his head and thus abruptly ended
the adventures of the Algerian emir.
After the fall of Damascus, the combined British and Arabian forces
occupied the Syrian seaport of Beyrouth, where the famous American
university is located that has done so much to inoculate the Near
East with the spirit of democracy. Here an incident occurred that
warned the Arabs of the diplomatic troubles ahead of them. As in
the case of Damascus, the Shereefian forces, through the local
people, took over the reins of government, but a few days later a
French representative (accompanied by a British officer) came along
and demanded that the Arab flag be hauled down from the town-hall
so that the French tricolor could be raised in its stead. Whereupon
the Arab governor laid his pistol on the table and said: “There is
my revolver. You may shoot me if you like, but I will not take down
the flag!” However, after another three days Allenby wired that no
flag at all should fly over Beyrouth, and that a French officer
should rule the city in the name of all the Allies. From that date
the Arabs had to fight an all-uphill battle on the field of
diplomacy to keep from losing what they had fought for on the field
of war. And once again their champion was young Lawrence.
From Beyrouth the united British and Arab forces pushed on north
to Baalbek, the City of the Sun, where, in the days of the decline
of the Roman Empire, men had erected the mightiest temple on earth,
the columns of which still remain one of the wonders of the world.
Still unsatisfied, Allenby’s armored cars and Feisal’s racing
camelmen under the dashing Arab general, Nuri Said, swept on north
until they had driven the Turks out of Aleppo, one of the most
important strategical points in the East, so far as the Great War
was concerned. And then, if the Turks had not put down their arms,
they would have been driven north into the Golden Horn.
When Allenby and Lawrence captured Damascus and Aleppo and then
cut the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway, the dream of the kaiser and the
Junkers for a Mitteleuropa reaching from the Baltic to the Persian
Gulf vanished into thin air!
When Turkey threw in her lot with the kaiser, she asserted that
she could mobilize an army of over a million men. But of that
million some fifty per cent were of Arab stock, and from the
outbreak of the Arabian revolution to the final collapse of Turkey
it is estimated that approximately four hundred thousand of them
deserted! The phenomenal number of desertions was due mainly to
two factors: the Arab Nationalist propaganda which Lawrence and
his associates had spread throughout the Near East, and the
brilliant success of the Arabian revolution. In fact, the desertions
alone more than repaid the Allies for backing the Shereefian cause.
In our swift journey north from Akaba to Aleppo with Lawrence, we
have made no reference to the sacred city of Medina and the fate
of the important Turkish garrison there. Although Holy Arabia was
now no longer under Turkish rule, Ottoman forces still occupied
the city famed for the tomb of the Prophet. To be sure, Feisal’s
brother, Emir Abdullah, had long kept it surrounded with an army;
and indeed the fact that the Turks had managed to hold on to Medina
had proved to be one of the blessings of Allah for the Arabs
because all of the supplies required by the garrison were shipped
down across the desert from Syria, and Lawrence had seen to it that
a very considerable part went to the Arabs instead of the intended
destination. In fact Lawrence’s crop of tulips, planted along the
Damascus-Medina railway, had brought forth a bountiful harvest of
Turkish food-supplies, ammunition, and other military stores.
In explaining the reason for not driving the Turks out of Medina,
writing in “The Army Quarterly,” Colonel Lawrence said: “. . . we
were so weak physically that we could not let the metaphysical
weapon rust unused. We had won a province when we had taught the
civilians in it to die for our ideal of freedom; the presence or
absence of the enemy was a secondary matter.
“These reasonings showed me that the idea of assaulting Medina, or
even starving it quickly into surrender, was not in accord with
our best strategy. We wanted the enemy to stay in Medina and in
every other harmless place in the largest numbers. The factor of
food would eventually confine him to the railways, but he was
welcome to the Hedjaz railway, and the trans-Jordan railway, and
the Palestine and Damascus and Aleppo railways, for the duration
of the war, so long as he gave us the other nine hundred and
ninety-nine thousandths of the Arab world. If he showed a
disposition to evacuate too soon, as a step to concentrating in
the small area which his numbers would dominate effectively, then
we would have to try and restore his confidence, not harshly, but
by reducing our enterprises against him. Our ideal was to keep his
railway just working, but only just, with the maximum of loss and
discomfort to him.”
In fact, so little of what was sent down from Syria ever reached
the garrison that for months prior to the Armistice this isolated
Turkish force in Medina had been reduced to a diet of nothing but
dates, gathered from the palms for which the oasis is celebrated.
Even the roofs of all the houses in the city had been torn down
and used for fuel. But still the garrison would not give in, for
the commander, Fakhri-ed-din, was a courageous, determined,
stubborn, and fanatical general.
Even when the news reached him that the combined British and Arab
armies had captured Damascus and Aleppo, and the Turkish forces in
Syria had been completely overwhelmed and compelled to sign an
armistice, and even though Fakhri Pasha knew that it was futile
for him to attempt to hold out any longer, since the war was all
over and he and his garrison were isolated in the midst of the
desert a thousand miles from Constantinople, still this Turkish
tiger refused to acknowledge defeat.
Days went by, and then weeks elapsed. The Medina garrison was now
reduced to worse straits than the British at Kut-el-Amara before
the surrender of Townsend. Of the twenty thousand men who had made
up the defending force, less than eleven thousand now remained.
But still Fakhri Pasha swore on the Koran that rather than surrender
to the Arabs and British he would blow up the Tomb of Mohammed and
wipe out himself and all of his men. The British even guaranteed
Fakhri that he and his troops would be protected from any possible
rapacity of the Bedouin, but still the old tiger stood like adamant.
His troops, however, were not so fanatical and longed to get back
to their homes in Anatolia. So they finally mutinied, arrested
their gallant commander-in-chief, and surrendered the city to Emir
Abdullah on January 10, 1919, months after the war was all over.
Surely the name of General Fakhri-ed-din deserves a high place in
Turkish history; for generations to come Arab mothers of Medina
will use it as a means of hushing their babes.
After the dramatic surrender of Medina, Fakhri Pasha was no longer
heard of in the Near East and seemed to have completely vanished
from the picture. But sometime afterward, when we were traveling
in little known parts of Central Asia, I encountered the defender
of Medina in the city of Kabul, at the court of the emir of
Afghanistan. He apparently had lost none of his fire, and in his
capacity of Turkish ambassador to the Afghans was reported to be
doing his utmost to keep the emir of Afghanistan from becoming
friendly with the British in India.
If Turkey had a million fighting men with the fighting spirit of
Fakhri-ed-din, she not only could regain all of her old provinces
but could conquer the Near East and build up an empire that would
surpass the ancient glory of the Great Moguls.