THE ART OF HANDLING ARABS
Colonel Lawrence believed in the Arabs, and the Arabs believed in
him, but they would never have trusted him so implicitly had he
not been such a complete master of their customs and all the
superficial external features of Arabian life. I once asked him,
when we were trekking across the desert, what he considered the
best way of dealing with the wild nomad peoples of this part of
the world. My motive was to try to get him to tell in his own words
something about the methods that had enabled him to accomplish what
no other man could. I am confident that he thought I wanted the
information merely for my own immediate use in dealing with the
Bedouins with whom we were living. Had he suspected that I was
attempting to make him talk about himself, he would have turned
the conversation into other channels.
“The handling of Arabs might be termed an art, not a science, with
many exceptions and no obvious rules,” was his answer. “The Arab
forms his judgment on externals that we ignore, and so it is
vitally important that a stranger should watch every movement he
makes and every word he says during his first weeks of association
with a tribe. Nowhere in the world is it so difficult to atone for
a bad start as with the Bedouins. However, if you once succeed in
reaching the inner circle of a tribe and actually gain their
confidence, you can do pretty much as you please with them and at
the same time do many things yourself that would have caused them
to regard you as an outcast had you been too forward at the start.
The beginning and end of the secret of handling Arabs is an
unremitting study of them. Always keep on your guard; never speak
an unnecessary word; watch yourself and your companions constantly;
hear all that passes; search out what is going on beneath the
surface; read the characters of Arabs; discover their tastes and
weaknesses, and keep everything you find out to yourself. Bury
yourself in Arab circles; have no ideas and no interests except
the work in hand, so that you master your part thoroughly enough
to avoid any of the little slips that would counteract the painful
work of weeks. Your success will be in proportion to your mental
effort.”
To illustrate the importance the Bedouins place on externals,
Lawrence told me that on one occasion a British officer went up
country; and the first night, as the guest of a Howeitat sheik, he
sat down on the guest rug of honor with his feet stretched out in
front of him instead of tucked under him in Arab fashion. That
officer was never popular with the Howeitat. To the Bedouin it is
as offensive to display the pedal extremities ostentatiously as it
would be for us to put our feet on the table at a dinner-party. A
short distance behind us in the caravan rode a chief of the Shammar
Arabs who had a great scar across his face. Lawrence related this
story:
“While that fellow was dining with Ibn Rashid, the ruler of North
Central Arabia, he happened to choke. He felt so much humiliated
that he jerked out his knife and slit his mouth right up to the
carotid artery in his cheek, merely to show his host that a bit of
meat had actually stuck in his back teeth.”
The Arabs consider it a sign of very bad breeding for a man to
choke over his food. Not only does it show that he is greedy, but
it is believed that the devil has caught him. Other fine points of
etiquette are bound up in the fact that the Bedouins never use
forks and knives, but simply reach into the various dishes on the
table with their hands. For instance, it is extremely bad form for
any one to eat with his left hand.
The dyed-in-the-wool nomad of Arabia never makes allowances for
any ignorance of desert customs in forming his judgment of a
stranger. If you have not mastered desert etiquette, you are
regarded as an alien and perhaps hostile outsider. Lawrence’s
understanding of the Arabs and his unfailing ability to do the
right thing at the right moment was uncanny. Of course, he could
not have lived as an Arab in Arabia if he had not learned the
family history of all the prominent peoples of the desert, including
the complete list of their friends and enemies. He was expected to
know that a certain man’s father had been hanged or that his mother
was the divorced wife of some famous chieftain. It would be as
awkward to inquire about an Arab’s father if he had been a famous
fighter as it would be to introduce a divorced woman to her former
husband. If Lawrence desired any information he gained it by
indirect means and by cleverly leading the conversation around to
the subject in which he was interested; he never asked questions.
Fortunately for the Arab Nationalist movement and for the Allies,
Lawrence had got beyond the stage of making mistakes before the
war and at one time was actually a sheik of a tribe in Mesopotamia.
“It is vitally important for any one dealing with the desert
peoples to speak their local dialects, not the Arabic current in
some other part of the East,” declared Lawrence. “The safest plan
is to be rather formal at first, to avoid getting too deeply
involved in conversation.” Nearly all the officers sent to coöperate
with the Arabs in the revolt spoke the Egyptian-Arabic dialect.
The Arabs despise the Egyptians, whom they regard as poor relations
Therefore, most of the Europeans sent by the Allies to coöperate
with the Hedjaz people found themselves coldly treated. The Allies
succeeded in winning the Arabs to their cause because Lawrence was
able to crystallize the Arabian idea of winning independence from
the Turks into a definite form and because he had attained the
unusual distinction of being taken into the bosom of most of their
tribes.
It was Colonel Lawrence who was mainly responsible for the permanent
elevation of Hussein, Feisal, and Abdullah to their respective
thrones. Lawrence believed that the best way to consolidate the
desert peoples and wipe out their terrible blood-feuds would be to
create an Arabian aristocracy. Nothing of this kind had ever
existed in Arabia before, because the nomads of the Near East are
the freest people on earth and refuse to recognize any authority
higher than themselves. But all Arabs have for centuries accorded
a little extra respect to the direct descendants of the founder of
their religion. Lawrence, in his attempt to persuade the Arabs to
recognize shereefs as specially chosen people, cleverly took
advantage of the fact that the family tree of Hussein towered
higher, in fact, than a eucalyptus—right up to the Prophet himself.
But I am sure he would never have been able to accomplish this if
he had not received the unlimited financial support of the British
Government. A stream of several hundred thousand pounds in
glittering golden sovereigns was poured into Arabia each month to
enable the young archæologist to pay King Hussein’s Arabian army.
Lawrence had practically unlimited credit. He could draw any amount
he desired up to a million pounds or so. But gold alone would not
have sufficed, for the Turks and Germans had tried its lure and
failed. The Arabs hated the Turks even more than they loved gold.
Since the beginning of time the sheiks or patriarchs of one tribe
have had absolutely no influence with members of other tribes.
Shereefs, who really do not belong to any tribe, were recognized
as superior leaders only by the people of Mecca, Medina, and the
larger towns. The word “shereef” or “shrf,” as it is spelled in
Arabic (a language without vowels), signified “honor.” A shereef
is supposed to be a man who displays honor. In the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, Shereef Hussein and Shereef Feisal had long stood
high in the esteem of the inhabitants, who were accustomed to refer
to them as “Sidi” or “Lord.” The care-free Bedouins, unlike their
city cousins, merely addressed them as “Hussein” and “Feisal”
without bothering about titles. But Lawrence, with his usual powers
of persuasion, convinced even the Bedouins that they should adopt
the term “Sidi” in referring to all shereefs. So successful was he
that within a few months, in spite of the fact that he was a
foreigner and a Christian, they honored even Lawrence with this
title because of their deep and genuine admiration for him.
Lieutenant Colonel C. E. Vickery, C.M.G., D.S.O., etc., another
able officer of the regular army who played a prominent part in
the campaign and afterward acted as British agent at Jeddah, gives
us a vivid glimpse into the formality of a shereef’s daily life.
Colonel Vickery is one of the few Europeans who have ever visited
Taif, the summer capital of the Hedjaz, a city that is not nearly
so sacred as Mecca or Medina, but nevertheless a place about which
the outside world knows nothing.
“It was quite dark when we arrived, very cold and stiff,” relates
Colonel Vickery. “We were asked into the guest-chamber—a fine
apartment, its floors covered with priceless Persian carpets, and
round the walls cushions and pillows. Courteously our host turned
to us and, embracing us on each cheek, prayed Allah to bless us
and murmured the graceful compliment that we were now in our own
home. For an hour we sat in that room drinking coffee and highly
sugared tea and smoking, while we watched an Eastern scene that
centuries have not changed. The shereef had only been absent a day,
but such is the etiquette of the East that it behooved all to pay
their respects to him on his safe return from a journey. To the
threshold of the door from time to time came relatives, friends,
and slaves. All removed their slippers and entered the room—the
door was open—according to their station. The slaves came in
quickly bent with due humility, and hastily kissed the two fingers
extended to them and as hastily withdrew. Dependents entered more
leisurely and kissed the back of the shereef’s hand. Turning it
over, they then kissed the part between the first finger and thumb
and withdrew quietly.
“Friends came in, and for these the shereef rose, showed a faint
reluctance at having his hand kissed, and embraced them on one
cheek with murmured salutations. For his relatives he rose, allowed
his hand to be kissed with seeming reluctance, and then saluted
them warmly on each cheek, straining them to his breast and
murmuring many and heartfelt wishes for their long life and
happiness.”
The special deference paid to shereefs by the townsmen and
villagers, in particular, had long ago developed in the city Arabs
a sense of their own superior responsibility and honor. That, of
course, was of great assistance to Lawrence in creating his Arabian
aristocracy. In fact, it was by the sagacious use of this personal
responsibility that Lawrence and his associates were able to unify
the rival tribes and develop men capable of acting as subordinate
leaders under King Hussein, Prince Feisal, and his brothers. In
order to carry out his plans for widening the influence of the
shereefs and making Hussein the recognized ruler of the Hedjaz,
Lawrence had first to win the confidence of all the rival tribes.
Then, quietly, in such a manner as to make them think the idea
entirely their own, he induced them to forget past tribal
differences and unite under the leadership of Hussein and his sons
and the other shereefs, in order to drive out the hated Turk in
the hope of helping bring the war to a victorious conclusion for
the Allies, and in the hope of restoring the califate and the
former splendor of their ancient empire.
King Hussein had to rely entirely on tribal loyalty for his military
strength. His personal Bedouin following was drawn principally from
two of the most numerous tribes of the desert, the Harb and the
Ateibah, together with one tribe of inferior rank, the Juheinah.
These three tribes occupy a great block of territory embracing
three quarters of the Hedjaz and a strip of western Nejd. South
and west of this block, but within the limits of the Hedjaz, dwell
half a dozen small tribes, the Hudheil, Beni, Saad, Buqum, Muteir,
Thaqif, and Juhadlah. Still further south is a group of powerful
tribes, the Dhaur, Hasan, Ghamid, Zahran, and Shahran, whose
adhesion meant the favorable disposal of stouter fighting material
than the Hedjaz itself could supply. All of them sent contingents
to assist King Hussein. From the country north of the central group
he drew reinforcements from three of the smaller Anazeh tribes.
The Billi, immediately north of the Juheinah, enrolled to a man,
and they were followed by the Atiyah and Howeitat. The great
Howeitat tribe, which roams the country between the head of the
Gulf of Akaba and the lower end of the Dead Sea and Central Arabia,
has more enemies, causes more trouble, and takes part in more
blood-feuds than any other group of tent-dwellers. One can meet no
more obstinate, unruly, and quarrelsome people. They seem to have
no fear. The Howeitats find it impossible to unite even among
themselves when attacked from without. About the only thing they
possess in common are wounds and the same tribal marks on their
camels. This great tribe has two subdivisions, the Ibn Jazi and
the Abu Tayi, of which old Auda Abu Tayi, the Bedouin Robin Hood,
is the chieftain. But Auda is chieftain only by virtue of his
daring and prowess, for no man in that spirited group cares to bow
down before the authority of any sheik. For fifteen years the two
sections of the Howeitat waged relentless war upon each other until
the mild-voiced Shereef Lawrence succeeded in getting them both to
unite with Hussein and Feisal to drive out the Turks. But even then
Lawrence found it advisable to keep the two sections attached to
different parts of his army so that they could not leap at each
other’s throats. Both were willing to obey Lawrence’s orders so
long as they were kept apart, but in the event of their meeting
they regarded themselves in honor bound to start a row. Auda Abu
Tayi and his people consider the Druses, who wage the most merciless
war in the desert, among their most bitter blood-enemies, and
Lawrence more than had his hands full to prevent them from killing
each other instead of the Turks. In 1912, fifty of Auda’s fighting
men, mounted on camels, captured eighty Druse cavalrymen in battle.
This is striking evidence of the fighting ability of the Howeitat
warriors, because one horseman is usually worth two camelmen in a
fight, because of the fact a horse can be manœuvered so much more
rapidly. Since that engagement the Druses have been continually on
the alert, hoping to take the Howeitat by surprise and annihilate
them. In spite of these minor insurgencies, the Howeitat, under
Auda’s leadership, became the finest fighting force in Western
Arabia, regarded by Colonel Lawrence as the backbone of his wild
desert army.
Perhaps train-wrecking was Lawrence’s most spectacular pastime,
but nothing he did was more significant or remarkable than this
consolidation of the Arab tribes. With them, raiding hostile
neighbors was both their amusement and their business. To invite
two enemy chieftans into Emir Feisal’s tent to swear friendship
and loyalty over the ghosts of stolen horses and camels was like
asking a Wall Street Magnate to turn over his fortune to Communists.
In order to illustrate the delicacy of the problem that Lawrence
manipulated, let me cite a particular instance. In June, 1917, we
were attending a conference in the courtyard of Emir Feisal’s
palace at Akaba, a one-story structure resembling, with its
extensive interior courtyard, a Spanish hacienda. The palace is
situated in the little town back of a fringe of waving palm-trees,
the only green splash of color in this stretch of sand, where once
was located the great seaport of King Solomon. In a circle around
the emir were seated thirty shereefs and sheiks, all heads of
prominent tribes, and among them six sheiks of the Ibn Jazi
Howeitat. All of a sudden I saw a swift change come over the
unusually impassive countenance of the young Englishman. Jumping
to his feet, Lawrence slipped noiselessly to the doorway of the
courtyard. I saw him speak to a group of Arabs who were about to
enter and then lead them off in another direction. Later, when I
asked him the reason for his speedy exit, he informed me that the
warriors at the entrance were none other than the renowned Auda,
his cousin, Mohammed, and some of the other leading fighting men
of the Abu Tayi. He added that if Auda and his companions had come
on through into the palace courtyard, a bloody battle might have
been fought right in front of Emir Feisal, possibly resulting in
the total disruption of the Arabian forces.
Photograph: BEDOUIN “IRREGULARS” READY FOR A RAID ON THE TURKS
Photograph: MR. CHASE OPENING FIRE WITH HIS CINEMA CAMERA
FROM THE TURRET OF AN ARMORED CAR
Until he became an undisputed leader, Lawrence kept in constant
touch with the king of the Hedjaz and his four sons, principally
Emir Feisal. He lived with the leaders that he might be with them
when they were dining or holding audiences in their tents. It was
his theory that giving direct and formal advice was not nearly so
effective as the constant dropping of ideas in casual talk. At his
meals the Arab is off guard and at his ease, engaging in small talk
and general conversation. Whenever Lawrence wanted to make a new
move, start a raid, or capture a town, he would bring up the
question casually and indirectly, and before half an hour had
passed he usually succeeded in inspiring one of the prominent
sheiks to suggest the plan. Lawrence would then seize his advantage,
and before the sheik’s enthusiasm had time to wane he would push
him on to the execution of the plan.
On one occasion Lawrence was dining with Emir Feisal and some of
his leaders, not far from Akaba. The Arab chieftains thought it
would be a splendid plan to take Deraa, the important railway
junction hundreds of miles farther north, just south of Damascus.
Lawrence knew that Deraa could be captured, but he also realized
that at that stage of the campaign it could not be held for any
length of time; so he said: “Oh, yes, that’s a fine idea! But
first, let’s work out the details.” A great council of war was
held, but somehow the longer the matter was discussed the less
enthusiasm manifested itself. In fact, the Arab leaders became so
disheartened that they even suggested retreating from the position
that they occupied at that moment. Then Lawrence delicately
suggested that such a retreat would greatly anger King Hussein,
and little by little he prevailed upon them to go through with the
original plan for capturing Akaba, which was his first objective.
As Lawrence once remarked to me under his breath when we were
attending a consultation of Arab leaders: “Everybody is a general
in the Arab army. In British circles a general is allowed to make
a mess of things by himself, whereas here in Arabia every man wants
a hand in making the mess complete.”
The Arab Shereefs and sheiks are strong-minded and obstinate men.
Nothing hurts them more than to have some one point out their
mistakes. If you say “rubbish” to an Arab, it is sure to put his
back up, and he will ever afterward decline to help you. Lawrence
never refused to consider any scheme that was put forward, even
though he had the actual power to do so. Instead, he always approved
a plan and then skilfully directed the conversation so that the
Arab himself modified it to suit Lawrence, who would then announce
it publicly to the other Arab leaders before the originator of the
scheme had time to change his point of view. All this would be
manipulated in such a delicate way that the Arab would not for a
moment be aware that he was acting under pressure. If Lawrence and
his British associates had acted behind the shereef’s back they
might have attained certain of their objectives in half the time,
but until Lawrence actually had been raised to supreme command by
the voluntary act of the Arabs themselves and was regarded by them
as a sort of superman he was wise enough never to give direct
orders. Even his suggestions and advice to Emir Feisal he reserved
until they were alone. From the beginning of the campaign Lawrence
adopted the policy of trying not to do too much himself, always
remembering that it was the Arab’s war. At times, when it seemed
necessary, he would even strengthen the prestige of the Arab
leaders with their subordinates at the expense of his own position.
The failure of the Turks and Germans, on the other hand, was partly
due to the fact that they rushed at the Arabs blindly and attempted
to deal with them in a brutally direct manner.
Whenever a new shereef or sheik came for the first time to offer
his services to King Hussein, Lawrence and any other British
officer present made it a point to leave the emir’s tent until the
formality of swearing allegiance on the Koran and touching Feisal’s
hand was over. They did this because the strange sheik might easily
become suspicious if his first impression revealed foreigners in
Feisal’s confidence. At the same time it was Lawrence’s policy
always to have his name associated with those of the shereefs.
Everywhere he went he was regarded as Feisal’s mouthpiece. “Wave
a shereef in front of you like a banner and hide your own mind and
person,” was the maxim of this student of Bedouin tactics. But
Lawrence was careful not to identify himself too long or too often
with any one tribal sheik, for he did not want to lose prestige by
being associated with any particular tribe and its inevitable
feuds. The Bedouins are extremely jealous. When going on an
expedition Lawrence would ride with every one up and down the line,
so that no one could criticize him for showing favoritism.
In every way Lawrence used his knowledge of desert psychology to
the best possible advantage. For instance, he was constantly in
need of detailed information regarding the topography of the
country over which the Arabian forces were campaigning; but the
Bedouins are always reluctant to reveal the location of wells,
springs, and points of vantage. Lawrence convinced them that making
maps was an accomplishment of every educated man. Auda Abu Tayi
and many of the other sheiks became so keenly interested in maps
that they often kept Lawrence up to all hours of the night helping
them with maps that were not of the slightest military value and
in which he was not in the least interested.
Photograph: GENERAL JAFAAR PASHA FROM BAGDAD
Photograph: DRUSES FROM THE HAURAN