A short history of the Middle East, from the rise of Islam to modern times

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

THE MIDDLE EAST

A SHORT HISTORY OF
THE MIDDLE EAST

from the Rise of Islam to Modern Times

by

GEORGE E. KIRK

M.A. (Cantab.)

sometime Sandy s Classical Student

“Universal history .. . is not a burden on the memory ,
but an illumination of the soul ” (lord acton)

METHUEN & CO. LTD. LONDON

36 Essex Street , Strand , WX 2 *2

F'iyst f>ttblushed irt 7P4 S

CATALOGUE 3 STO - 378B/XJ

TJHLXS BOOK IS PROI>UGEr> IN
CO MPLETE CONFORMITY WITH THE

AUTHORIZED ECONOMY STANDARDS

TO MARGARET

Tor the Resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come/

Contents

Page

INTRODUCTION ix

I. A.D. 600—THE MIDDLE EAST IN DISINTEGRATION I

II. THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE MUSLIM CIVILIZATION,

(6IO-I517) II

III. THE OTTOMAN AND PERSIAN EMPIRES, AND THE GROWTH

OF EUROPEAN ENTERPRISE (15I7-I770) 58

IV. BRITAIN AND HER RIVALS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

(1770-1914) 71

V. MODERNIZATION AND THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM,

(1800-1917) 98

VI. THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE (1918-39) 129

VII. THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND AFTER (1939-48) 194 .

Vm. PRESENT-DAY ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 232

IX. RUSSIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST (1907-47) 259

X. THE WESTERN POWERS AND THE MIDDLE EAST TO-DAY 283

LIST OF AUTHORITIES 291

INDEX 294

Maps

1. the middle east Frontispiece

Page

2. THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY 7

3. THE EXPANSION OF THE ARAB EMPIRE 17

4. MUSLIM DOMINION IN THE TENTH CENTURY 29

5. PRINCIPAL MUSLIM DYNASTIES 33

6. THE CRUSADER ‘BEACH-HEAD ’ 47

7. MONGOL INVASIONS 49

8. THE EXPANSION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 55

9. THE EGYPTIAN ‘EMPIRE’ IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 79

10. THE ‘DRANG NACH OSTEn’ 91

11. ARAB ASIA, 1914 123

12 . UNPARTITIONABLe’ PALESTINE 221

13. MIDDLE EAST ECONOMIC RESOURCES 238-9

14. PERSIANS, KURDS AND THE U.S.S.R. 2J1

From drawings by S. O. Pritchard and N. S. Hyslop

Introduction

T he present volume has grown out of a course of lectures
delivered since the War at the Middle East Centre for Arab
Studies to British students who required a general grounding
in Middle East history and current affairs to assist in fitting them
for active careers in that region, but not to make them historical
specialists. The views stated throughout are entirely personal, and
are in no way to be taken to represent any official view presented
to students at the Centre; nor has there been any access to unpub¬
lished official information. It is thought that the content of these
lectures may interest a wider public whose attention has been
drawn to the Middle East by current political questions, and for
whom no general introduction to the subject exists.

What then do we mean by the ‘Middle East’?

At the time of the First World War there was in general use a
satisfactory terminology for the sub-divisions of Asia, south of
Siberia, as viewed from Europe: the Far East comprised China
and Japan, and the geographically dependent lands of South-
East Asia; India-with-Burma, Afghanistan, and Persia formed
the Middle East; and the Near East was understood to comprise
the Ottoman Empire and the Arabian Peninsula.

For some reason which is not clear, this accepted terminology
was upset at the outbreak of the Second World War, when the
British forces based on Egypt were called the Middle East Com¬
mand. There has been some criticism of this change of name; but
in answer to a question in the House of Commons in April 1946 the
Prime Minister stated, ‘It has become the accepted practice to use
the term “Middle East” to cover the Arab world and certain
neighbouring countries. The practice seems to me convenient and
I see no reason to change it.’ American usage is still divided be¬
tween ‘Near East’ and ‘Middle East’.

In this work the Middle East is taken to comprise the Arabian
Peninsula and the Arabic-speaking lands on its northern border;
the Arabic-speaking lands ofNorth East Africa (Egypt, the Anglo-

X

A Short History of the Middle East

Egyptian Sudan, Cyrenaica, and Tripohtania); Asia Minor or
Anatolia, which now forms the greater part of the Turkish Re¬
public; and Persia or Iran. The Arabic-speaking lairds form, both
geographically and historically, the central core of this region, and
it is with them mainly that this work is concerned; but they camiot
be studied in isolation, either in the past or the present, from the
linguistically-foreign lands of Anatolia and Persia which border
them on the north.

CHAPTER I

A.D. 600—The Middle East in Disintegration

T he position that the Middle East occupies in history is
a unique one. It was there in all probability that Man,
having Jived for perhaps one million years in complete
dependence on the wild vegetable and animal foods that he could
acquire by gathering and hunting, learnt by laborious trial and
error some 8,000 or so years ago to cultivate food-plants and to
domesticate certain useful animals, and so for the first time became
capable of advancing to a higher civilization. From between three
and two thousand years ago, as the map of that higher civilization
in the Middle East was beginning to bum lower, there sprang from
it two beams of dazzling light, the moral-intellectual beam of
Greek humanistic thought and the moral-spiritual beam of the
Judaeo-Christian awareness of God's Presence, which have con¬
jointly illuminated Western civilization down to the present time.
There have been periods in which one of these twin lights has
shone more brightly than the other; but without the two of them
our own civilization could not have come into existence; and
where eidier of them is extinguished, as some men have thought to
extinguish them in the last thirty years, our witness is that the very
tissue of civilization degenerates by rapid and dreadful processes
into a malignant and swelling growth of barbarism.

Man’s great step forward from food-gathering to agriculture,
his Response to a great Challenge 1 presented by fundamental
changes in his natural environment, has been well set forth by
archaeologists in the last diirty years. So many learned and bril¬
liant books have been written about the Greek genius, and about
the origins and growth of our Christian Faith, that one would be
perplexed where to advise the enquiring reader to turn first for
enlightenment on these subjects. On the Silver Age of the Middle
East also, the age of the Islamic or so-called Arab Civilization,

1 cf. A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, one vol. abridgement, part II,
especially 6S fT.

2

A Short History of the Middle East

there are numerous scholarly works; but for those, made aware
by the daily paper that the Middle East is still of great significance
in the modern world and desirous of orientating themselves in
its recent history, there is no single guide. This book is an attempt
to provide that guidance, though the course it has to follow is
neither a clear nor a brilliant one. We cannot embark on our voyage
at a nearer point than the eve of the rise of Islam; and already

£ sands begin

to hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
and split his currents; that for many a league
the shorn and parcelTd Oxus strains along
through beds of sand and matted rushy isles—

Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
in his high mountain-cradle in Pamere,
a foil’d circuitous wanderer—till at last
the long’d for dash of waves is heard. . . d 1

To the pioneers of the Arab Awakening thirty years ago the
‘luminous home of waters’ did indeed appear to be ‘opening wide’;
but we are now proving all over the world that the nineteenth-
century solutions, liberal-democracy and national self-determina¬
tion, were at best palliatives, and at worst symptoms, of Man’s
primeval disease, his Original Sin of self-will; 2 that the twentieth-
century totalitarianisms only foster that self-will in its most hideous
form; and mankind will find no home

‘bright

and tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
appear

this side of the Civitas Dei.

* * *

Climatic changes covering thousands of years, which may be
summarized in popular language as the recession of the last Ice Age,
had by about 6000 B.c. reduced large tracts of the Middle East to
the virtually rainless and desert conditions which still obtain in the
Sahara, lying athwart Africa with a depth of 1000 miles from north

1 Matthew Arnold, Sohrab and Rustam, end.

2 cf. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 16 f.

The Middle East in Disintegration 3

to south, and its extension, the Arabian Desert. To the north of
this sterile belt, the mountain-ranges of Syria, Anatolia, and Persia
receive an adequate winter rainfall from the Mediterranean; and
tills relatively well-watered region is flanked to west and east by
the basins of two great river-systems, the Nile and the Euphrates-
Tigris, to form a Fertile Crescent which was in all probability the
home of the original Agricultural Civilization to which reference
has been made above. 1

The state of society in the Middle East in 600 a.d. was still the
direct outcome of the expansion and development of this Agricul¬
tural Civilization. Agriculture had naturally not been possible in
the vast desert regions, except in small oases isolated from one
another, where subterranean water could be tapped by wells; but
in the marginal ^steppe-lands one of the arts of this civilization, the
taming of useful animals, had enabled man to gain a precarious
footing and win a hard livelihood as nomad Bedouin with their
herds of sheep and goats and camels. The more favoured lands
produced abundant grain and fruits for consumption and export,
while in the towns secondary manufactures were worked up, and
there was eventually a lively commerce in luxury goods between
India and the Mediterranean, and in objects of less value over
shorter distances. The distribution of the products of labour was,
however, so far from equitable that it had become a brake on mater¬
ial inventiveness and economic enterprise. While the precarious
little communities of men in a ‘food-gathering’ state, before the
discovery of agriculture, had probably practised a primitive com¬
munism of goods as the only way of ensuring their group-survival,
the growth of the Agricultural Civilization with its rapid develop¬
ment of new techniques had (like the Industrial Revolution of the
nineteenth century) temporarily caused the supply and variety of
goods to outstrip the increase of population; and it was probably
with general approval that those .sections of the population deemed
most instrumental in bringing about or maintaining this new
abundance had acquired an unequal share of the goods. These
privileged sections were the priesthoods, originally the repositories
and guardians of the traditional science and other learning of each
community, and the military leaders who protected the com¬
munity’s goods against the depredations of uncivilized raiders from

V'

1 For a study of the historical process, see C. F. C. Hawkes, The Prehistoric
Foundations of Europe, 70.

4 A Short History oj the Middle East

the wastes or struggled with jealous neighbours over some debat¬
able right. On successively lower levels came the small class of
public servants, the merchants, the artisans, and, on the lowest
level of all, the cultivators, close to the soil and scarcely reached by
the higher material and intellectual gifts of successive periods of
civilization. Such is the force of tradition that the individual’s
place in one of these social and occupational classes was generally
determined by his parenthood and upbringing, though the
Middle East never knew the rigidity of the Hindu caste-system
and it was always possible for an exceptional man to improve his
station.

Since a large section of the population, the artisans and peasants,
received so small a share of manufactured goods, there was little
incentive to expand their production, beyond the limit ofwhat was
consumed by the small privileged classes or exported, by the har¬
nessing of power other than that supplied by human or animal
effort. Consequently, although the motive power of steam had
become known as a scientific curiosity, it was not applied to in¬
dustry or transport, and both were restricted to the tempo fur¬
nished by muscular power. Thus circumscribed, technical inven¬
tiveness, which had been lively in the earlier stages of the Agricul¬
tural Civilization, had slackened, and the rate of material progress
had tended to slow down.

In the realm of ideas, however, there was still plenty of activity
on various planes. Politics had grown out of economic needs, a
community’s quest for materials not present in its own area, or the
defence of its goods against a predatory neighbour. From this be¬
ginning war-leaders-become-kings had sought to bring ever
larger areas under their domination in the will-o’-the-wisp pursuit
of economic self-sufficiency or complete security. Successive
empires had crossed the stage of history—Egyptians, Hittites,
Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Alexander the Great and his
generals, the Roman Empire—each uniting an ever larger area
under their domination, but finding it continuously difficult to
maintain that unity in view oflocal separatisms and the slowness of
communications. ‘While the earlier of these warlike peoples had
done litde more than impose their tax-collectors and impart some
elements of their civilization to the conquered peoples, the unifica¬
tion that ensued under the later ones had gone deeper. The Persian
Empire had a common coinage and a common everyday language

5

The Middle East in Disintegration

of commerce; in the Hellenistic kingdoms that followed Alexander
the Great’s conquests in Egypt and Western Asia the Greek
language and the elements of Greek intellectual civilization had
spread over the urban middle-classes, and commerce extended
almost to the limits of the Old World; and this process had been
confirmed and intensified by the Roman Empire, which was the
line al heir of die Hellenistic civilization.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the peoples of the Roman
Empire enjoyed greater security and a higher general level of
material, social, and intellectual civilization than had ever been
known before, there were millions of peoples who were unhappy
and dissatisfied and saw no prospect of improving their lot in
existing circumstances, or who felt more profoundly that con¬
tentment did not He in the acquisition of material goods. Many of
these had, through captivity in war or through commerce, been dis¬
placed from their homes and flung together to form the proletariat
of the great cities—Rome, Alexandria, Antioch—where their var¬
ious traditions of thought and behef were fused in a cosmopoHtan
crucible, with the added flux of Greek philosophical speculation.
Displacement from one’s home meant losing contact with that
normal type of rehgious cult that had fixed local associations, and
had caused lonely men to turn for comfort and hope to the un¬
localized mystery-reHgions that had found favour throughout the
Mediterranean, offering in this world communion with the divine
and the hope of a blessed, hereafter.

One originally localized cult, that of the Hebrew god Yahweh,
had itself suffered displacement when the Jewish people were
taken away into exile. It had already acquired moral and spiritual
overtones of exceptional richness through the teaching of prophets
in protest against rehgious laxity or social injustice; and in the
h umilia tion of the Exile it had survived only by its enlargement
from being the national cult of a small people into a rehgion with a
universal message in the teaching of the Second Isaiah. But the
Return from the exile, giving the Yahweh-cult once more a local
habitation in Jerusalem, had reversed this spiritual expansion, and
the Jewish religion had become bound in those fetters of national
exclusiveness and legalistic minutiae from which it has never
escaped. Individuals had however broken loose from time to time;
and in His human aspect the Founder of Christianity had met the
fate of such a rebel against Jewish authority. St. Paul, a Jew of

6 A Short History of the Middle East

Greek education, and others had propagated their Master’s
Gospel of Love among the cities of the Levant, clothing it in
philosophical terms which had made it more readily acceptable
to men of Greek civilization. 1 Thus, among those drawn to
Christianity by dissatisfaction with the cosmopolitan materialism
of the Roman Empire there had been a continual influx of alert
minds who had brought it to the forefront of the intellectual
activity of the age. When therefore in a.d, 313, after two
generations of military anarchy had brought the Roman Em¬
pire near to economic and political ruin, the emperor Constantine
had sought some institution to take into partnership for the
restoration of order and the preservation of civilization, he
had found it in the Christian Church which, though still a
minority in the Empire as a whole, had withstood the shock
of the ‘Time of Troubles 5 and gained adherents despite inter¬
mittent persecution, and now had no rival. Constantine’s
recognition of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman
Empire, and the close association of Church and State in the
highly institutional type of government that followed, had
caused Christianity to spread rapidly throughout the settled lands
of the Empire until only scattered pockets of paganism were left
there, and it also spread beyond the Roman frontiers along the
routes of commerce.

Nevertheless, the triumph of Christianity at this stage had not
made the majority of men appreciably happier or fundamentally
altered the springs of their conduct. The Church had become
bound to the state-machine which, faced with the task of
salvaging as much as possible from the third-century anarchy
which had destroyed the middle-class liberalism of the self-
governing cities of the earlier Roman Empire, had been forced
to truss up the shattered body-politic in a harness of compulsory
enactments that, while it averted total collapse, hindered free
economic and social development and imposed a constant
burden of heavy taxation. The unity conferred by the Greek
language and culture and by the Christian religion was more¬
over only partial, since the former did not effectively descend
beyond the urban middle-classes and barely reached the artisans or
the large rural population who maintained their local languages
and customs; and Christianity had come to these multitudes in

1 cf. A. J. Toynbee, op. cit., 426.

8 A Short History of the Middle East

translations from its original Greek, and through the mouths of
men of their own stock, so that the masses without Greek culture
were not brought by Christianity very much closer to one
another. National particularism and the general resentment
for the heavy-handed, exacting, and corrupt bureaucracy through
which they were rules from Constantinople, having no out¬
let in politics, found expression in the dogmatic disputes to
which the Christian Church had become a prey when men
had brought the keen edge of Greek philosophical reasoning
to bear upon the difficult concept of the Triune Godhead.
In the Levant early in the fifth century a dispute between the
theologians, concerning the relative degrees to which our Lord’s
Nature during His life on earth had been divine or human, was
taken up by the fanatical Egyptian monks and the ignorant popu¬
lace of Alexandria, who made of the Monophysite doctrine of the
One Divine Nature a raUying-cry against Greek reasoning and
thought. A Council of the entire Church, held at Chalcedon
in A.D. 451, adopted a compromise formula which neither
emphasized the Humanity of Christ on earth to the extent
favoured by die followers of the patriarch Nestorius, nor
subordinated it to His Divinity as totally as did the extreme
Monophysites. The result was a violent Monophysite re¬
action: the Patriarch of Alexandria was murdered on Good
Friday in his own cathedral and his body dragged through
the streets by the mob. Despite harsh attempts by the imperial
government to repress the secession, the movement spread through
that majority of the population of Egypt and Syria that had never
effectively been reached by Greek civilization, and they broke
away to form two national churches, the Coptic Church of Egypt
and the Syrian or Jacobite Church, using in their respective litur¬
gies, in place of the Greek which was the cultivated language of the
Eastern Mediterranean and the language of the Church throughout
that region, their native Coptic (the contemporary form of
Ancient Egyptian) and Syriac. 1

1 These churches, together with the followers of Nestorius, have survived to
the present day among those Oriental churches which are little known in
Western Europe: the Copts, despite thirteen centuries of Muslim rule, still
number over a million adherents in Egypt, and the national Church of Ethiopia
also derives from them; the Syrian Church has 150-200,000 followers in North
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Southern India; the Nestorians, after evangelizing a
large part of Central Asia during the Middle Ages, have shrunk to the few score
thousands of homeless ‘Assyrians 1 .

9

The Middle East in Disintegration

Thus in the civilization of the Middle East at the beginning of
the seventh century a.d. it was difficult to find a single unifying
factor. Two great military empires, the Later Roman or Byzantine
and the Persian, had contended for centuries for mastery over the
region, the Byzantines holding the Levant lands but failing to
make a lasting conquest of Mesopotamia, while during the sixth
century the Persians had made several serious inroads into Syria,
once destroying its capital of Antioch and in 614 capturing
Jerusalem and burning its churches. Despite these wars, commerce
and industry were far from inactive. There was a sufficient surplus
of wealth to make possible the founding of many new churches,
especially in the reign of Justinian (527-65), to whom we owe the
rebuilding of Constantine’s Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem,
as well as Hagia Sophia at Constantinople. The towns, of which
Jerash in Transjordan and Palmyra are the best extant examples,
together with many lesser sites in Syria, presented a picture ofbusy
life, though the archaeologist, looking below the surface, finds
much of the apparent opulence to have been Ersatz. 1 While landed
proprietors, the wealthy religious houses, and merchants pros¬
pered, the urban and rural masses were oppressed by heavy taxa¬
tion and corrupt officials, and had no sense ofloyalty to the regime.
The Christian Church, in becoming an established institution, had
itself become as stratified as official society; and while the monas¬
teries did a valuable service for posterity in keeping alive some part
of the tradition of Greek science and scholarship that would other¬
wise have been irreparably lost, there was no longer that sense of
brotherhood in the Church which had characterized primitive
Christianity as it was to characterize primitive Islam. Moreover
the Church had ceased to be universal and undivided: but the
nationalism betokened by the breaking away of the Monophysite
churches was manifested only in opposition to the centralizing
and Hellenizing tendency of the bureaucracy and the oecumenical
church, it did not make a positive patriotic appeal to their ad¬
herents: there was nothing that could be called an Egyptian or
Syrian nation, only a congeries of individuals at the mercy of any
determined external force. Successive emperors after the Council
of Chalcedon were fully aware of the political danger to the
Empire of the estrangement of the Levant provinces, and sought to

1 Lankester Harding, Official Guide to Jerash (Transjordan Dept, of Anti¬
quities, 1944), 8.

10

A Short History of the Middle East

reclaim them by doctrinal concessions to the Monophysites: but
the latter were hard bargainers, and the emperors’ freedom of
negotiation was restricted by the watchfulness of the Popes who,
while less concerned in Rome than the emperors in Constantinople
with the political exigencies of the Levant, were insistent that
orthodoxy should not be imperilled by excessive indulgence of the
Monophysite heresy; and for thirty years they broke off relations
with an over-accommodating emperor. The Monophysites for
their part were not disposed to compromise with the hated Greeks,
and periodically imperial conciliation was replaced by savage per¬
secution. Thus the breach with the Levant provinces was never
bridged ,and they were ripe to fall to any invader who would offer
them greater freedom from imperial interference.

CHAPTER II

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization

(610-1517)

T he arid climate of the Arabian Peninsula had caused its
level of civilization to remain well below that reached in the
Fertile Crescent, except for the Yemen with its monsoon
rains, where the legend of the Queen of Sheba and archaeological
evidence combine to indicate a more advanced culture founded on
the profits of seafaring in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The
greater part of the Peninsula, however, was suitable only for the
nomad tribes whose livelihood depended on the rearing of camels
and small cattle, and whose characteristic social trait was the raiding
of other tribes for plunder, for prestige, and in the pursuit of
traditional feuds, and the celebration of these raids in heroic lays
handed down from generation to generation. Such nomads,
speaking a family of languages that has been termed Semitic, had
from the beginnings of the Agricultural Civilization pressed upon
the inner margins of the Fertile Crescent and at intervals broken
in to pillage the cultivated lands and sometimes settled there. It was
one such wave of invaders that brought the Hebrews into Palestine
soon after 1400 b.c. Later, Arabic-speaking peoples had begun to
appear in North Arabia, among the first of them the Naba¬
taeans who from about 300 b.c. were setded in Southern Trans¬
jordan round their stronghold of Petra, and lived by agriculture
based on highly-developed water-conservation and by the tolls
they exacted from the profitable trade in incense and other luxuries
that came up by caravan through their territories on their way from
Southern Arabia to the Mediterranean coast and Syria. Early in the
Christian era other Arab tribes had succeeded them, and in the
sixth century the Beni Ghassan were enlisted by the Byzantine
Emperors to protect the desert borders of Syria and Transjordan
against the Persians and their Arab allies.

The land-route from Southern Arabia up through Western

12 A Short History of the Middle East

Arabia to the Mediterranean remained commercially important
after the decline of Petra; and among the goods which the Fertile
Crescent exported in return were the elements ofits higher civiliza¬
tions, Christianity and Judaism: colonies of adherents of these
faiths lived in the towns along this route, side-by-side with the
Arabs who worshipped the manifold forces of nature through the
medium ofidols. The principal town in the sixth century a.d. was
Mecca, where the road to the Mediterranean branched from
another leading to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf; it had an
important pagan cult centring round a meteoric Black Stone built
into a sanctuary called the Ka’ba; and it was in this environment,
culturally outlandish but impregnated by its commercial contacts
with the higher civilization of the Fertile Crescent, that the Prophet
Mohammed was bom in 570.

When he began to undergo his religious experience about
a.d. 610, he could have had no adequate first-hand knowledge of
the Jewish or Christian scriptures, which had not been translated
into Arabic while he knew no other language; but he had oppor¬
tunities for conversations with Jews and Christians both on his
caravan-journeys and in Mecca itself; and his religious experience,
which took the form of an uncompromising monotheism in oppo¬
sition to the polytheistic idol-worship of Mecca, was affected to a
considerable degree by indirectly-acquired and imperfect notions
of these two developed religions. At the time a dissatisfaction with
the traditional polytheism was evidently stirring in the minds of
other Arab thinkers, whose personalities have been obscured for
posterity by the triumphant Muslim tradition. 1

At the early'stage of his ministry Mohammed evidently did not
regard himself as the founder of a new religion, but merely as one
whose mission it was to warn his fellow-townsmen of the im¬
pending Judgement Day revealed to Christians and Jews in their
scriptures. Though his preaching made no great headway, it
aroused the opposition of the leading merchant-tribe of Mecca,
the Quraish (to a somewhat unimportant family of which
Mohammed himself belonged): not only had he attacked their
traditional beliefs, but he threatened the commercial profits which
the town derived from the annual pilgrimage (hajj) which the in¬
habitants of the surrounding country paid to the Ka’ba. The
menaces of the Quraish eventually constrained Mohammed to

1 cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, arts. Hanif and Musailima.

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 13

seek another home; and after receiving overtures from merchants
of Madina (then called Yathrib), some 200 miles to the north of
Mecca, where the presence of a substantial minority of the Jewish
faith offered a more sympathetic milieu than conservative Mecca,
he followed his three hundred adherents thither in a.d. 622. From
this Flight (Hijra) the Muslim world dates the beginning of its era.

It was now that Mohammed first found it necessary to act as
lawgiver for his little community of refugees from Mecca (Muha-
jirun), and for the converts that he made among the people of
Madina (Ansar). He had hoped to receive cordial support from
the Jewish community in Madina, since he regarded himself as the
successor of the major Hebrew prophets, notably Abraham, and
he adopted some Jewish forms of worship, including especially that
\o( facing Jerusalem when at prayer. But it soon became obvious
that the Jews of Madina had no use for this new revelation, and
they ridiculed his misunderstanding of various Old Testament
narratives and Jewish rituals. He retaliated by denouncing them as
concealing or falisfying parts of the divine revelation given to
them; and since he had already begun to regard current Christian
doctrine as a perversion of the original teaching of Jesus, in so far as
he had any clear idea of either of these two things, he underwent a
sharp revulsion from the two religions which had hitherto inspired
him, and instead proclaimed the true and uncorrupted revelation
of God to himself as the ‘seal of the prophets’; this revelation he
termed Islam, resignation to the will of God. Reverting to his
Meccan traditions, he transferred the direction of prayer to the
Ka’ba and proclaimed the Hajj one of the obligations of the Mus¬
lim faith. He revived or invented a tradition that the Ka’ba and the
rites connected with it, though since corrupted by polytheism and
idol-worship, had been founded by none other than Abraham and
Ms son Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs. It was his mission to
restore this cult in its original purity.

From this time onwards it appears that Mohammed experienced
little in the way of spiritual exaltation, and that the rest of his career
was devoted to the more mundane tasks of regulating the public
and private conduct of his devoted Muslim followers at Madina,
and of asserting his supreme authority over the townsmen of
Mecca who had rejected him. Faced by this striking change in the
motivation of the Prophet’s teaching, some European writers 1

1 Summarized by Tor Andrae: Mohammed, the Man and his Faith, ch. VII.

14 A Short History oj the Middle East

have in the past declared that he was never anything more than an
ambitious politician who insincerely professed a new religion as a
vehicle for attaining political power. But this cynical interpreta¬
tion will not bear analysis: there are too many hazards in the
preaching of a new religion to commend it to the politically am¬
bitious. Mohammed himself had to endure twelve years of neg¬
lect, derision, and growing hostility before he attained political
authority over the small band who followed him into exile. It is far
more reasonable to suppose that his original religious experience
was entirely genuine, but that when the call came to undertake the
governance of the Muslim community at Madina, it opened up or
confirmed in him a rich vein of practical authority which from
now on superseded his spiritual powers. ‘Had not God laid upon
him the duty of conveying the revelation of God’s truth to his
fellow-men, and would he not be executing this duty if he em¬
braced this heaven-sent opportunity of providing the new reli¬
gion, whose path had been obstructed for ten years by human
force-majeure, with a human political vehicle without which, as
personal experience showed, Islam could make no further practical
progress?’ 1

He now proclaimed a holy war (jihad) against the people of
Mecca who had rejected his teaching and driven him out, and in¬
duced some ofhis followers to attack a Meccan caravan during the
truce of a holy month. This was the prelude to a series of minor
skirmishes with the Meccans (622-28), in most of which the Mus¬
lims gained the upper hand. During this period he expelled two of
the Jewish tribes from Madina, and had the third tribe massacred
on suspicion of treasonable correspondence with his enemies in
Mecca. By this time an increasing number in Mecca had grown
tired of the desultory warfare which interfered with the caravan-
trade and was prepared to compromise with Mohammed, especi¬
ally now that he had incorporated tiie Pilgrimage into the Muslim
ritual In 628 they agreed by the Pa ct of Hudaibiya to allow him to
make the Pilgrimage in the following year, on which occasion some
of the leading personalities of Mecca embraced the new faith. In
630 he advanced upon Mecca at the head ofhis armed forces and,
meeting with resistance only from a few'irreconcilables, received

1 A. J, Toynbee, ‘The Political Career of Mohammed*, an appendix to Vol. Ill
of A Study of History , 466 ff. For a modern Muslim commentary, see Abdul
Latif Tibawi, in Journal of the Middle East Society, I, No. 3-4 (Jerusalem,
19471, 23 ff.

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 15

the submission to Islam of almost all the townspeople, and des¬
troyed all the idols in and around Mecca. His triumph was com¬
plete, and the small Jewish and Christian communities of the
Hijaz, and Arabs from as far away as Bahrein, Oman, and Southern
Arabia recognized him as their overlord. 1

His sudden death in 632 left the Muslim community in con¬
fusion, since he left no son and had not designated a successor.
The very real danger of a breach between the diverse sections of
the community was averted by the selection of the venerable and
respected Abu Bakr as Khalifa (successor, hence our 'caliph 5 ) of
Mohammed in his secular capacity as ruler and lawgiver only, but
not in his spiritual role as prophet. In Abu Bakr s short reign of two
years the whole of Arabia was brought under the dominion of
Islam. Already in the lifetime of the Prophet the Muslim bands
had essayed a raid across the borders of the Byzantine Empire into
Southern Transjordan, but had met with a serious reverse. Now
however, under the second elected caliph ’Umar able commanders
led large raiding-parties into Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, and
met with astonishingly little effective resistance. What began as
raids for booty after the customary Arab fashion thus developed
imperceptibly into campaigns of permanent conquest. Muslim
historians attribute the great successes of their ancestors to the
inspiration of Islam but though it cannot be denied that the new
religion played an important part in providing a social bond which
held together for the time the fickle loyalties of the tribes, the main
factor in the Arab conquests was the feebleness of the forces that
opposed them. The Byzantine and Persian Empires were both ex¬
hausted by a generation of warfare; the Semitic majority of the
inhabitants of Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia were more
nearly akin to the Arabs, in race and sympathies, than to their
Byzantine and Persian rulers, from whom they were further
estranged by generations of excessive taxation and bureaucratic
misrule; the Bani Ghassan, who should have taken the first shock
of the invasion of the Byzantine Empire, had been alienated be¬
cause the Emperor Heraclius, his treasury emptied by his victorious
Persian expedition, had in 629 stopped his annual subsidy to them;

1 The Muslim tradition that the whole of Arabia was converted in the Pro¬
phet’s lifetime, and that he addressed to the rulers of the great Empires to the
North demands that they also should accept Islam, is probably fabulous.
Effectively, his political control did not extend beyond the Hijaz. (Fr. Buhl, in
Encyclopaedia of Mdfri, Art. Muhammad, 653 ff.)

16 A Short History of the Middle East

in Egypt the Patriarch of Alexandria had attempted to impose
a doctrinal compromise on the Monophysite Copts by force,
and in Ms complementary role of civil governor had been
ruthless in the collection of taxes, with the result that the Coptic
Bishop of Alexandria ordered his coreligionaries not to resist the
Arabs. The only effective resistance to them came therefore from
such centres of Greek civilization as Alexandria, Caesarea, and
Jerusalem; and by 660, one generation after Mohammed’s death,
his green banner was flying over an empire which extended from
Persia in the east, through the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and Libya,
to Tunisia in the west. Of these the only country to offer a deter¬
mined resistance was Persia, which had been the seat of an empire
with a thousand-year-old tradition of proud domination. It is this
period of conquering puritanism, of the very essence of Islam, and
not the great age of cosmopolitan culture that was to follow, which
Muslims themselves have always regarded as their Golden Age,
the age of the rightly-guided (Rashidun) caliphs. 1

The task of improvising an administrative system for the vast
Arab empire was taken up in the main by the second caliph ’Umar.
Authority in the provinces was placed in the hands of the Arab
military commanders who had conquered them. Arab garrisons
were established in newly-created cantonments in each of the con¬
quered countries, of which Fustat, by Old Cairo, and Basra in
Lower Iraq, are examples. In order to maintain their separate
identity from the conquered peoples the Arabs were not at first
allowed to acquire land outside Arabia. Civil administration was
left in the hands in which the Arab conquerors found it—Christians
of Greek education in the lands of the Roman Empire, and non-
Muslims of Persian education in the lands of the former Persian
Empire. It is doubtful whether Arabs, in the stricter racial sense,
have ever acquired any taste, or much aptitude, for such prosaic
occupations.

For the Muslim conquerors themselves the Qur’an, the com¬
pilation of the divine revelations received by Mohammed through¬
out his ministry, provided the rudiments of a civil and criminal
code of laws, as enunciated by him in the ten years in which he
governed the Muslim community at Madina. This was supple¬
mented where necessary by reference to what his Companions
could remember of his day-to-day habits, his Sunna or custom;

1 Christopher Dawson, op. cit., 143.

THE EXPANSION OF THE ARAB EMPIRE

18 A Short History of the Middle East

and the constant necessity for such supplementation gave rise in

succeeding decades to the production, first orally and later in
writing, of many scores of thousands ofTraditions of the Prophet’s
conduct, each enshrining some legal or ritual principle. Many of
these Traditions were fictitious, but the fiction was an innocent
device whereby religious sanction could be obtained for some
necessary piece of legislation, generally borrowed at this early
stage from the customary law of Madina. 1

It was also necessary, however, for the new Arab rulers to regu¬
late the legal position of the millions of their non-Muslim subjects,
who represented the overwhelming majority of the population of
the Empire. 2 In this ’Umar followed the example ofMohammed,
who had left undisturbed the Christian and Jewish communities of
the northern Hijaz whom he brought under his sway, on condition
of the payment of an annual tribute. ’Umar extended this usage to
all the Christian and Jewish inhabitants of the Empire and to the
Zoroastrians of Persia; and these subjects thus became known as
the Ahl adh-Dhimma or 'people of the covenant’. Far from there
being any idea of compulsorily converting them to Islam, their role
was to provide revenues for the Arab ruling-race by the payment
of taxation, which apparently was at first lighter than that of the
Byzantine Empire; and since Muslims were exempt from such
taxation, the conversion of non-Muslims was actually discouraged,
as it would have lessened the number of taxpayers. Since moreover
the Muslim law (the Shari’a) was not applicable to the non-Muslim
majority, they were left under the jurisdiction of the civil code
which had obtained before the Conquest, such jurisdiction being
now placed in the hands of their own religious dignitaries. This
was the origin of the system of self-administering religious com¬
munities or millets which was to prevail throughout Islam until the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and still survives for the purposes
of civil law in that majority of Middle Eastern countries which
have not yet undergone a thorough secularization. 3

1 For the compilation of fictitious documents by the early Christian Church
with similarly innocent motives, cf. C. Delisle Bums, The First Europe (London,
1947), 354f.

a It is hardly necessary in these days to remark that the traditional Christian
account, that the Muslim conquerors gave the conquered Christians and Jews
the choice only of conversion to Islam or death by the sword, is totally erroneous.

8 The institution had indeed already been foreshadowed in the dealings of the
Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman Empire with the Oriental temple-
communities under the authority of local priesthoods. In Alexandria under the

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 19

In spite of these statesmanlike foundations laid for the Empire by
5 Umar, it was not destined to enjoy a long period of peaceful con¬
solidation. After the murder of ’Umar by a discontented slave
after a reign of ten years, the caliphate passed by election among
the Muslims to the elderly and ineffectual ’Uthman, a member of
the aristocratic House of Umayya, a section of the Quraish tribe of
Mecca which had been one of the last to accept conversion to
Islam. Under ’Uthman his Umayyad kinsmen acquired most of
the leading positions in the Empire, and aroused the active jealousy
of the earlier converts, theMuhajirun and the Ansar. ’Uthman was
murdered in 655, and the caliphate passed by election to Ali, w T ho
as cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet was his male next-of-kin,
but had been passed over in the previous three elections. Nor did
he now show that the doubts of the Muslims concerning his fitness
to govern had been misplaced. £ Ali had almost every virtue except
those of the ruler: energy, decision, and foresight. He was a gallant
warrior, a wise counsellor, a true friend, and a generous foe ... but
he had no talent for the stern realities of statecraft, and was out¬
matched by unscrupulous rivals who knew that “war is a game of,
deceit” h 1 When his attempt to remove the Umayyad governors
appointed by ’Uthman was resisted by a show of force by Mu’-
awiya, the able Umayyad governor of Syria, Ali weakly agreed to
submit the matter to arbitration. This brought upon him in Iraq, a
strategic centre of the Empire to which he had removed his seat of
government from too-remote Madina, the revolt of a group of
Arab conservatives, who insisted that he had no right to submit the
caliphate to arbitration, as it had been conferred upon him by the
God-guided j udgement of the whole body of the Faithful. One of
this group, the Khawarij or Seceders, 2 murdered Ali in 661, after
the arbitrators had awarded the caliphate to Mu’awiya, no doubt
on the grounds of his greater fitness to govern.

Mu’awiya ruled for some twenty years, and for seventy years
more the caliphate remained hereditary in the House of Umayya,
thus bringing to an end the original elective caliphate and replacing
it by a hereditary monarchy of the traditional oriental kind. Syria,

Ptolemies the Greek civil law applied only to the Greek community and to
Hellenized Egyptians; the large Jewish community and the non-Hellenized
Egyptians remained subject to their traditional civil law administered by their
own priesthoods.

1 Nicholson, op. cit.,191.

2 In the singular, Kharij. The movement survives to this day as the Ibadi
sect of Oman and Zanzibar, and some scattered communities in North Africa.

20

A Short History of the Middle East

the seat ofMu’awiya’s power before his elevation to the caliphate,
now became the centre of gravity of the Empire, and Damascus its
capital.

Under the Umayyads the military extension of the Arab Empire
continued, until by 732, the centenary of the Prophet’s death, it
had reached its geographical limits, Transoxiana and Northern
India in the east, Spain in the west. The Muslims had indeed in¬
vaded France, but in the centenary year itself were decisively
checked half-way to the English Channel, at a battle fought be¬
tween Tours and Poitiers, by the Frank Charles Martel. Though
the Muslims had conquered Crete, they had twice failed to take
Constantinople, which remained the capital of a substantial
Byzantine Empire comprising the Balkans and Asia Minor. 1 In
the south the Sahara remained a barrier, and it was some centuries
before Islam effectively penetrated up the Nile beyond Aswan.

The Umayyads maintained the broad lines of internal ad¬
ministration laid down by ’Umar, those of an Arab military
aristocracy. The Arab military governors of the provinces through¬
out the vast Empire enjoyed a freedom from central control
amounting almost to independence. Civil administration remained
in the same non-Arab and mainly non-Muslim hands as before.
For a whole century, from the Arab conquest in 636 down to 743,
the financial administration of the city of Damascus itself remained
in the hands of a Syrian Christian family, one of whose members
has been canonized by the Church as St.John of Damascus.

Already at this stage however, the great social defect of the Arab
character, its unreadiness to subordinate its overmastering self-will
and self-interest, whether of individual, of family, or of tribe, to
the good of a larger group, was manifesting itself in incidents that
boded ill for the future of the Arab Empire. ! "The Arabs arc in¬
capable of founding an empire’, wrote the fourteenth-century
Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, "unless they are imbued with
religious enthusiasm by,a prophet or a saint’| and the social
cohesive force ofMohammed’s teaching was alreldy largely spent
on the generation which personally knew him. The most im-

1 recognition of the de facto independence of the Byzantine Empire

conflicted with their theoretical duty to bring about the conversion of the whole
world to Islam. The orthodox explanation was that a respite had been granted
to the Byzantine Empire because Heraclius, unlike the Persian King who had
tom to pieces the Prophet’s fictitious letter bidding him adopt Islam, had
preserved his letter in musk! (D. S. Margoliouth, The Early Development of
Mohammedanism , 103.)

21

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization

portant dissident group, the Shi’at ’Ali (party of Ali), upheld the
rights of the dead Ah and maintained that the caliphate should pass
hereditarily to his sons Hasan and Husain. The elder son Hasan
was a colourless figure who did not press his claim; but Husain
raised his banner in Iraq and was killed by the Umayyad troops at
Karbala in 680. Round his tomb, and that of Ah in the neigh¬
bouring city of Najf, there rapidly grew an emotional Shi’i
martyrology among the large numbers ofpoor Arabs who had not
benefited materially from the spoils of conquest and the Persian
converts to Islam who were denied equality of status by the race-
proud Arabs. They evolved the doctrine that Ah and his des¬
cendants had inherited with the caliphate, not merely Mohammed’s
temporal authority over all Islam, but also his spiritual inspiration.
Some Shi’is indeed went so far as to maintain that Ah was greater
than Mohammed; that while the mission of the latter was merely
to transmit to mankind the text of the Qur’an, its inner spirit ual
significance was contained in Ah; while the Mushm profession of
faith declared Mohammed the apostle of God, the Shi’is pro¬
claimed Ali the saint of God. His death and that of Husain were
conceived as a martyrdom for the salvation of mankind, a notion
probably inspired by the Christian doctrine of the Atonement.
The spiritual inspiration of Ah and his sons was held to be passed
on to their descendants, the Saiyids descended from Husain and
the Sharifs descended from Hasan, who are to this day objects of
Shi’i veneration. In particular, both temporal and spiritual power
was beheved to pass from Husain to his legal heir in each genera¬
tion, to whom as the infallible Imam (leader) the implicit obedi¬
ence of the Shi’a was due in all matters, religious or secular. Had
any of the descendants of Ah possessed something of the political
talent of the best Umayyads, he would certainly have been able to
supplant them, such was the superstitious reverence of the Shi’is
for their imams; 1 but in fact the Umayyads, whose power rested
on the mass of moderate people, Mushm and non-Muslim alike,
who wanted above all things law and order, were able with some
difficulty to maintain their ascendancy.

In addition to the rising of the Shi’a the early Umayyads had to
contend with a revolt of Madina, the city of the Prophet, which
resented the passing of authority from it to Damascus; there were
feuds between great Arab tribal groups drawn originally from
1 Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism , 91.

22

A Short History of the Middle East

Northern and Southern Arabia respectively; and the Khawarij
overran Iraq, Southern Persia, and the greater part of Arabia. As a
contemporary poet sang:

'They are split in sects: each province hath its own

Commander of the Faithful, each its throne. . . .’

Thus the Arab nation was torn asunder by the old tribal preten¬
sions which Mohammed sought to abolish. That they ultimately
proved fatal to the Umayyads is no matter for surprise; the sorely-
pressed dynasty was already tottering, its enemies were at its gates.
But by good fortune it produced in this crisis an exceptionally able
and vigorous ruler, ’Abd ul-Malik (685-705), who not only saved
his house from destruction, but re-established its supremacy and
gave the Muslim civilization an opportunity to enrich itself cul¬
turally. His iron-handed governor of Iraq ruthlessly put down the
rebellion in the eastern provinces, and for twenty years provided
peace and security by his despotic rule. In order to knit together
the far-flung empire and curb the separatist tendencies of the
provinces Abd ul-Malik borrowed from earlier empires the
institution of an official postal system by means of relays ofhorses;
he substituted for the Byzantine and Persian coins, which had
hitherto been in general use, new gold and silver pieces on which
he caused sentences from the Qur’an to be engraved; and he made
Arabic, instead of Greek or Persian, the official language of
financial administration. 1

This reform does not mean that the non-Arab personnel of the
administration, largely Christian by religion in the Levantine
provinces, were replaced. But by this time the social barrier which
’Umar had attempted to impose between the Arab garrisons and
the non-Arab and non-Muslim majority of the population was
beginning to break down. The Arab cantonments had soon grown
into towns and cities; Arabs had acquired land; and, as formerly
between Alexander’s Greeks and Orientals, social contact and
intermarriage (for Muslims were permitted to take non-Muslim
wives) were doing their levelling work. Moreover, non-Muslims

1 Nicholson, op. cit., 199 ff. It is of interest that, because these coins bore
quotations from the Qur’an, the eighth-century founder of one of the four
schools of Muslim jurisprudence objected to their being given in payment
to non-Muslims. (D. S. Margoliouth, The Early Development of Moham¬
medanism, 119.)

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 23

were being attracted to Islam by reason of the social prestige and
freedom from taxation that it conferred, to such an extent that
under the later Umayyads of the early eighth century new legis¬
lation compelled Muslims acquiring land, and non-Arab converts
to Islam, to continue to pay the appropriate tax.

Nevertheless, the majority of the inhabitants of Syria and
Lower Egypt were still Christian in the ninth century, and Bagh¬
dad itself is stated to have had as late as a.d. 900 a Christian popula¬
tion of 40-50,000. Except for the brief reigns of two bigoted
Umayyad caliphs the still influential Christian Church was
tolerated. The adoption of the Arabic language and of Islam seems
to have been most rapid in Iraq, where the Semitic mass of the
population had been comparatively little affected by Greek in¬
fluences. In Syria and Palestine the process was slower, and
Aramaic remained the principal language there till the ninth
century. In Persia with its strong national culture Arabization was
very superficial, and the Arabic language was adopted only tem¬
porarily and by a small proportion of the population for official
purposes. Islam had made considerable headway in Persia by 750,
and a reliable class of Muslim Persian officials had come into
being; but Persia did not become completely Muslim till the tenth
or eleventh century. In conservative Egypt the official adoption of
the Arabic language under Abd ul-Malik affected only the smallest
fraction of the population; but the language of their Arab rulers
was gradually adopted, and by the tenth century a Coptic ecclesi¬
astic had to write in Arabic to be understood by his coreligionaries.
c The chief factor in the spread of Arab culture in Egypt, which
gave it so much greater effect than the preceding Hellenism, was
the gradual settlement of the country districts by Arab nomads....
Sections, or even whole tribes, gradually succumbed to the ad¬
vantages of settled life, and thus a strong strain of Arab blood was
constantly being added to that of the Copts. It was apparently a
considerable migration, which even sent offshoots as far as the
Sudan... . The ancient civilization of the Nile Valley assimilated
these nomad Arabs, and only their Arabic language remained.
The Arabs became Nilotized, but also the Copts were Arabicized,
and it is inexplicable that the essentially conservative Copts should
have adopted another language without a great deal of mixing.’ 1

The Umayyad caliphs were descendants and representatives of

1 C. H. Becker, Encyclopaedia of Islam, art. Egypt.

24 A Short History of the Middle East

the pagan aristocracy of Arabia who, fully exposed in their new
Syrian environment to the influences of the old blend of Greek
and Oriental civilization, were ready to assimilate it and adapt it to
both their secular and religious purposes. The almost total de¬
ficiency of Arab culture in the sciences and liberal and useful arts,
and the supremacy in these matters of the Christians, Jews, and
Persians, were freely acknowledged. The conquered peoples were
regularly employed in commerce and industry, banking, the arts,
as architects, engineers, and irrigation-specialists, as schoolmasters
and secretaries, even as court-physicians and political advisers.
The caliphs at Baghdad in the ninth and tenth centuries had some
Christian wazirs (viziers), and most of the court-physicians in the
early centuries of Muslim rule were Nestorians. The employment
of Christian advisers in Egypt as late as the fourteenth century was a
cause of annoyance to fanatical Muslims. 1 The only function ab¬
solutely reserved to Muslims was service in the army and navy.
Not only were the Umayyad caliphs’ country-palafes decorated
in a mixture of Graeco-Syrian and Mesopotamian-Persian styles
which completely disregarded the orthodox Muslim ban on the
human figure, 2 but also Graeco-Syrian influences strongly
affected the development of the mosque, whose architecture was
still rudimentary at the beginning of the Umayyad period.
Though the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem (often miscalled the
Mosque of Omar), which was founded in 691 by Abd ul~Malik,
was a shrine built for Muslim worship, it must nevertheless be re¬
garded as a product of Christian art. Its plan, a circle within an
octagon, existed in the Church of the Ascension then standing on
the Mount of Olives, and elsewhere in Palestine and Syria. The
geometric setting-out of the plan and elevation of the Dome of the
Rock appears to be derived from Syrian-Christian architectural
practice. Before its exterior was re-covered with Persian tiles in
the sixteenth century it was covered with marble and mosaic, and
its external appearance must then have been as Byzantine as its
internal appearance still largely is. 3 The Great Mosque at Damas¬
cus, founded in 708, was likewise the work of architects and
builders supplied from the Byzantine Empire.

1 A. S. Tritton, The Caliphs and their Non-Muslim Subjects. J. H. Kraemer,
Encyclopaedia of Islam, art. Egypt, 7.

2 e.g. the recently-discovered palace at Khirbat Mafjar near Jericho: Quarterly
of the Dept, of Antiquities of Palestine, XII (1945), 17 ff.

8 E. T. Richmond, Moslem Architecture (623-1516), ch. II.

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 25

The increased penetration of the Muslim culture by Christian
and Persian civilization even affected Muslim law and theology.
The greater complexity of the civilization of which the Muslims
now found themselves a part made necessary new elaborations of
their legal code, mainly by the assimilation of the Roman Law
existing in the conquered provinces of the Levant. By the end of
the Umayyad period a new critical approach to the mass of
Traditions had begun to appear, and the science of Muslim juris¬
prudence was beginning to take shape. Contact with the older and
more subtle Christian religion, which had retained some of the
questioning Greek spirit, was causing some Muslims to look more
deeply into the foundations of their own faith, where they found
numerous ambiguities and inconsistencies amid the obscure and
uncoordinated phraseology of the Qur’an. This new spirit of
inquiry in Islam was stimulated, as it had been among the Chris¬
tians, by the disputes of rival sects: in this case the Shi’a and the
Sunnis, as the mass of moderate believers called themselves, claim¬
ing to be following the custom (Sunna) of the Prophet. In parti¬
cular, some were brought to question the Prophet’s doctrine of the
eternal and uncreated Qur’an, which seemed to them to place a
second eternal existence in conflict with the essential unity
(tawhid) of God. Secondly, they were exercised by the alternative
of free-will or predestination, which the Qur’an characteristically
left ambiguous. Thus a sect, known to Muslim historians as the
Mu’tazila or secession, which came into being towards the end of
the Umayyad period, adopted a rationalist attitude towards both
of these questions, and was to exert an important influence on the
history of the following century.

In spite of the readiness with which they had assimilated what
survived of Greek civilization, the Umayyad period is marked by a
certain economic decline when compared with the later Roman
Empire. Mediterranean commerce, already shaken in the West by
the Germanic invasions, was even more seriously affected by the
partition of the Mediterranean coastlands between two conflicting
civilizations, the Christian on the northern shores and the Muslim
on the south. Moreover the Muslims in the West had conquered
Spain and were energetically raiding into Italy and Provence,
while in the East they were making every attempt, though vainly,
to conquer the remainder of the Byzantine Empire. Though in
spite of frequent Muslim raids the trading cities of Southern Italy

26 A Short History of the Middle East

maintained some commerce with the Southern Mediterranean and
the Levant, the effect of the Muslim conquests was gradually to
check the flow of Oriental goods to Christian Western Europe. 1

The fertility of Egypt was maintained on about the same level as
before the Muslim conquest by a policy of non-interference with
the Coptic administration and irrigation-specialists. Historians no
longer hold, as formerly, that the Muslim conquest abruptly ended
the prosperity of Syria and Palestine; instead they ascribe the be¬
ginnings of their economic decline to the shifting of the centre of
gravity from the Levant to Iraq and Persia which followed the
transfer of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad with the acces¬
sion of the Abbasid dynasty in the middle of the eighth century.

The Umayyads never succeeded in securing the loyalty of the
whole of even the Arab inhabitants of their vast Empire; and their
non-Arab subjects became increasingly estranged by the oppressive
rule of their deputies. The Arabs dived as soldiers at the expense
of the native population whom they inevitably regarded as an in¬
ferior race. If the latter thought to win respect by embracing the
religion of their conquerors, they found themselves sadly mistaken.
The new converts were attached as clients (mawali) to an Arab
tribe: they could not become Muslims on any other footing. Far
from obtaining the equal rights which they coveted, and which,
according to the principles oflslam, they should have enjoyed, the
Mawali were treated by their aristocratic patrons with contempt,
and had to submit to every kind of social degradation.... And these
Clients, be it remembered, were not ignorant serfs, but men whose
culture was acknowledged by the Arabs themselves—men who
formed the backbone of the influential learned class and ardently
prosecuted those studies, divinity and jurisprudence, which were
then held in highest esteem. Here was a situation full of danger.
Against Shi is and Khawarij the Umayyads might claim with
some show of reason to represent the cause oflaw and order, if not
oflslam; against the bitter cry of the oppressed Mawali they had
no argument save the sword... /

Active propaganda against the Umayyads was made, not only
by the Shi’is, but also by a branch of the Prophet’s family des¬
cended from his uncle Abbas. These Abbasids nad genius enough
to see that the best soil for their efforts was distant Khurasan, the
extensive north-eastern provinces of the old Persian Empire.

1 H. Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, 148 ff.

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 27

These countries were inhabited by a brave and high-spirited people
who inconsequence of their intolerable sufferings under the Umay-
yad tyranny, the devastation of their homes and the almost servile
condition to which they had been reduced, were eager to join in
any desperate enterprise that gave them hope of relief.’ 1 While
the Abbasids succeeded in persuading the Shi’is into allying them¬
selves with them, the Umayyad rulers had become soft and
negligent in the civilized luxury of sophisticated Syria. Quarrels
broke out within the royal house over the succession to the
caliphate, which changed hands no fewer than four times in the
Muslim year 743 ^4. In these circumstances the warnings of the
loyal governor of Khurasan were disregarded. In 747 the Abbasids
openly raised the standard of revolt. By 750 they had supplanted
and virtually exterminated the Umayyads, and the victor trans¬
ferred the seat of the new dynasty to Iraq, where in 762 a new
capital was founded at Baghdad.

-k ★ ★

This shifting of the political centre of gravity brought with it a
decline in the Arab influence which had formerly been predomi¬
nant, and an increase in that of the Persians who had done so much
to place the Abbasids in power; for the first fifty years of their rule,
for example, the Abbasid caliphs drew their prime ministers
(wazirs) from the Persian Barmaki family, the "Barmecides’
of the Arabian Nights. (With this relative decline of Arab
supremacy, the many races cytHe Empire became fused into a
common MusliriTculture, the non-religious aspects of which were
shared by the many Christians and Jews who had not embraced
Islam*. In the Empire as a whole, the relative decline in the import¬
ance 6f Syria was far more than compensated by the economic ad¬
vance of its eastern provinces. The Abbasids, completing the work
of the Sassanian Persians, restored to Lower Iraq a rudimentary
but sound system of irrigation and land-drainage which checked
the formation of stagnant water and the salination of the land.
Baghdad, the new capital, rapidly became a rival of Constantinople
in its material prosperity. A second centre of agricultural develop¬
ment and urban civilization was promoted in Transoxiana, with
its great cities of Bukhara and Samarqand, and in Khurasan. This

1 Nicholson, op. cit., 248 ff.

28

A Short History of the Middle East

agricultural progress was of special benefit to the landowning
class, but wider circles of the population must also have profited
from it. Sea-borne trade through the Persian Gulf, already of great
antiquity owing to the eminence of Mesopotamia as one of the
earliest centres of urban civilization and commerce, underwent a
great revival, with Basra assuming great importance as the port of
Baghdad. By about 850 Muslim ships had reached China to trade
for silk, and there was a considerable Muslim colony at Canton;
some Muslim traders pushed further north, and probably reached
Japan and Korea. Trade with East Africa was less important, but
was carried as far south as Madagascar. There was even some re¬
vival of trade between the Levant ports and those of Christian
Europe, especially Venice and the ports of southern Italy, with
Jews playing an important part as middle-men, since they enjoyed
a comparative toleration from both sides which neither Christian
nor Muslim was yet prepared to extend to each other. More im¬
portant than the Mediterranean trade at this period, however, was
that with the Swedish masters of Russia and the Baltic, evidence
for which is furnished by the enormous numbers of Muslim coins
found in that region; they were struck in the mints of Tashkent and
Samarqand and extend over a period from a.d. 700 to 1500 . Mus¬
lim indirect influence even reached the British Isles: a gold coin
struck by King Offa of Mercia in the eighth century closely imi¬
tates an Arabic dinar, even to the Arabic inscription; and a gilt-
bronze cross found in an Irish bog bears the inscription b’ismi’llah
(in the name of God) in Arabic characters. 1

This material prosperity has become legendary through the
popularity of the Arabian Nights, with their stories of Baghdad
under the Abbasid caliph Harun ar-Rashid (786-809), the con¬
temporary of Charlemagne with whom he was on friendly rela¬
tions. Of the immense cultural superiority of the Muslim East to
Western Europe at this time there can be absolutely no question.
With its material wealth there went also an increasing interest in
matters of the intellect. The rising Muslim civilization felt the
growing need of certain branches of practical knowledge which
could be supplied by the higher civilizations on which it had im¬
pinged: medicine; mathematics for land-survey, architecture, and
navigation; geography for the promotion of commerce; and

1 J* H. Kramers, in The Legacy of Islam, 94 ff. Christopher Dawson, op. cit,
243 f.

MUSLIM DOMINION IN THE TENTH CENTURY

3°

A Short History of the Middle East

astronomy, to determine the direction of Mecca and the dates of
the beginning and end of Ramadhan, the month of the sacred fast,
and also for astrology. Already the Umayyads had employed
architects and craftsmen trained in the Byzantine-Syrian or the
Persian tradition. They had also attracted to their court physicians
and other scholars from Jundishapur in south-west Persia, which
had had since Sassanian times an important medical school and
academy where Greek, Syrian, Persian, and Indian scientific
knowledge was pooled; but the Umayyads had done little con¬
sciously to promote and encourage learning. The second Abbasid
caliph al-Mansur (754-75), the founder of Baghdad, on the other
hand, had astronomers, engineers, and other learned men at his
court, and the plans of his new city were prepared by a Persian
astronomer and a Jew. From this time began the translation of
scientific works into Arabic from Greek, Syriac, Persian, and
Sanskrit, the work being done in the main not by Arabs, but by
Syrian Christians and Persians. This work was put on an organized
basis by the caliph al-Ma’mun, who founded at Baghdad in 830, in
the interests of the rationalist Mu’tazila sect which he favoured, a
Bait al-Hikma or ‘house of learning’, which was a combination of
academy, library, translation-bureau, and observatory. By means
of such translation-enterprises the Arabic-speaking world soon
became possessed of the outstanding works of Greek science and
philosophy at a time when Western Europe was almost entirely
ignorant of the Greek learning. Translation from the Greek was
sometimes direct, but more frequently through the Syriac versions
which had been made some centuries before by the Syrian
Christians; the Nestorians in particular had been assiduous in
translating the Greek philosophers in order to use them as ammuni¬
tion in theological controversy with their orthodox opponents.
In addition, Persian and Indian mathematical and astronomical
works were translated into Arabic; and early in the ninth century
the simple Indian system of numerals with its arrangement in
columns by powers of ten and the all-important use of the zero
(our so-called ‘Arabic’ numerals) was introduced into the Middle
East, which had previously known only the clumsy Semitic,
Greek, and Roman numerals . 1

1 It was not until the twelfth century that Christian arithmeticians in Europe
began to adopt the ‘Arabic’ system. (Carra de Vaux, in The Legacy of Islam,
384 ff.)

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 31

Following this work of translation it was not long before
original research, observation, and speculation began to be prac¬
tised within the Muslim Empire. But before this the political unity
of that Empire had been shattered for ever. Ibn Khaldun, looking
back over Muslim history from the end of the fourteenth century,
came to the conclusion that kingdoms are born, attain maturity,
and die within a period which rarely exceeds three generations, or
120 years. 1 The Umayyad Empire had been precariously main¬
tained by the awe with which his Sunni subjects regarded the
caliph as temporal successor of the Prophet. But dynastic struggles
were bound to diminish that awe: in the West the success of one of
the few Umayyad survivors of the collapse of their dynasty in
making himself independent ruler of Spain in 756 was followed in
the next half-century by the breaking-away from the Abbasids of
North-West Africa under two separate dynasties. I11 the heart of
the empire, moreover, the Abbasid caliphs, realizing from the fall
of the Umayyads that the fickle and inconstant Arab individualism
intolerant of discipline provided a most unstable military basis for
their authority, had begun to recruit from the north-eastern con¬
fines of the Empire mercenaries from among the Turks, a people
less gifted intellectually than the Arabs and Persians, but with
those more solid and stable qualities of obedience and endurance
that have made them such excellent soldiers through the centuries.
Already in 808 we find Turks serving in Egypt; but they soon
realized the military and moral weakness of their Arab masters,
and were not content to remain subordinates. The Turkish body¬
guard with which the caliph al-Mutasim had provided himself
clashed so frequently and violently with the populace of Baghdad
that the caliph was obliged in 836 to quit the city and found a new
capital at Samarra, three days journey up-river, where he and his
successors rapidly came under the political domination of the
commanders of their own mercenaries. In 868 the Turkish soldier
Ahmed ibn Tulun made himself the independent ruler of Egypt,
Palestine, and Syria, and introduced a short period of sound
government in place of the reckless exhaustion of the economic re¬
sources of Egypt which she had suffered under the tax-farming
governors of the Abbasids, and which had provoked a great rising
of the oppressed Copts in 831. 2 In 874 Transoxiana and the

1 Nicholson, op. cit., 440.

2 C. H. Becker in Encyclopaedia of!sla?n f art. Egypt,

32 A Short History of the Middle East

greater part ofPersia, which had already been in revolt against the
Abbasids, became finally independent under the Persian Samanid
dynasty. In Iraq itself, which was practically all that now remained
under the direct rule of Samarra, the authority of the caliph was
challenged by the ferocious revolt in Lower Iraq of the Zanj or
negro slaves (870-83). And worse was to follow. Though the
Shi’is had helped the first Abbasid to overthrow the Umayyads,
the new dynasty proved itself no less oppressive of the Shi’a than
its predecessor had been, no doubt because the sect with its tendency
to fanatical extravagances was regarded as potentially subversive of
all ordered government. Driven underground by oppression, the
Shi 5 is remained numerous especially in Lower Iraq, and both there
and in the cities ofPersia they perhaps found especial support from
the artisan class, as an expression of class-consciousness against the
ruling aristocracy, whether composed of Arabs, Persians, or
Turks. 1

In this atmosphere of suppressed ferment it was natural that
schisms over doctrine should occur within the Shi’a. In particular
there was a difference of opinion which of the two sons of the
sixth Imam, who died in 760, should succeed him. The minority
who supported the claim of the elder son Ismail held that the suc¬
cession of imams ended with him. They thus regarded Ismail as the
Hidden or Expected Imam, who according to Shi’i doctrine was
shortly to return among men as the Mahdi (the divinely-guided)
to restore true Islam, conquer the whole world, and introduce a
short millenium before the end of all things. In the ninth century a
Persian, Abdullah ibn Maymun, began to organize a secret esoteric
cult of Ismail in nine degrees in which all religious belief was pro¬
gressively allegorized away until only an atheistic philosophy was
left. 2 This cult was extensively propagated by enthusiastic mis¬
sionaries and made many converts among the unhappy and dis¬
contented who always constitute the majority of mankind. At the
end of the century an Isma’ili sect, called the Qaramita or Carmath-
ians, organized itself as an independent political state on the Arabian
coast of the Persian Gulf and in the Yemen. Declaring total war on
all non-Isma ills its armies menaced Baghdad, interfered with the
pilgrim-traffic, and in 930 actually sacked Mecca and carried off

1 H. A. R. Gibb, in Toynbee, A Study of History, I, 400 ff.

2 The .most recent study of this intricate subject is Bernard Lewis’s The Origin
of Isma’ilisrn.

5. PRINCIPAL MUSLIM DYNASTIES
(after S. Lane-Poole, The Mohammedan Dynasties)

34 A Short History of the Middle East

the Black Stone. Meanwhile the grandson of Abdullah ibn May-
mun, in danger in Syria, escaped to Tunisia, where he won sup¬
port, was proclaimed Imam in 909, and succeeded in overthrowing
the reigning dynasty. Claiming descent from Husain, the son of
Ah and the Prophet's daughter Fatima, he thus became the
founder of the Fatimid dynasty. This dynasty was the first to
throw off even the nominal authority of the Abbasids by pro¬
claiming an independent caliphate, and extended its conquests
along the North African coast until in 969 it captured Cairo and
made the city its capital. Western Arabia, Palestine, and Syria
were also brought under Fatimid rule. Meanwhile the hapless Ab-
basid caliphs had in 945 passed under the domination of the
Buwayhids, rough mountaineers from North Persia, who were
moderate Shi’is. Thus the Shi’ a had become politically the domi¬
nant sect in the greater part of the Muslim world, though it never
converted the majority of Muslims. Egypt had taken the place of
Iraq as the centre of gravity, and the famous University of Al
Azhar 1 was founded at Cairo in 972 for the propagation of
Isma’ili doctrine. The fatal Arab tendency to political separatism
and restiveness under authority had had free rein: for the next
thousand years down to our own day the Arabic-speaking world
was to remain divided, and for the most part under foreign
domination.

But when a civilization begins to break down, the deterioration
is not uniform over the whole range of its activities; and just as in a
diseased human body, the deterioration may actually be masked
for a time by an increased stimulation of certain functions. 2 For the
Muslim civilization the first effect of its political disruption on its
rising science and scholarship was temporarily favourable.
Scholars required the patronage of a benevolent ruler in order to be
able to pursue their studies. Now, instead of scholarship being
confined to the caliph’s court at Baghdad and dependent on the
will of one sovereign who might or might not be interested in
furthering such pursuits, it was fostered in the courts of a dozen
dynasties from Samarqand to Spain. Among the most notable of
these centres of learning were Baghdad, Cairo, Bukhara and
Samarqand; Shiraz, Isfahan, and Nishapur; Aleppo and Damascus;
and Cordoba. Like their medieval European successors, students

1 Pronounced, Az-har.

2 cf. Lewis Mumford, The Condition of Man, 153,

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 35

made long and laborious journeys to sit at the feet of some famous
master. For example, al-Ghazzali, bom at Tusin north-east Persia,
studied at Nishapur, Baghdad, and Damascus, a total journey of
some 1,400 miles.

Though Arabic was the principal language of scholars, with
Persian steadily increasing in importance, only a small minority of
the scientists and scholars of the Muslim world were Arabs by race.
An analysis of the origins of the leading scholars and scientists of the
Muslim East indicates that over the whole chronological range of
Muslim culture from its rise to its decline Persia and Transoxiana
furnished consistently some 40 per cent, of the distinguished names.
Christians were predominant in the initial period of the translators,
but fell away later, and Jews in the East were relatively unimportant
in contrast to their great contribution to the culture of Muslim
Spain. 1

The assessment of the contribution of the Muslim world to
science and scholarship has tended to run to two extremes. On the
one hand, some protagonists of Greek civilization have been will¬
ing to see little originality in the Muslim achievement, and to con¬
cede them only the credit for preserving and handing on what sur¬
vived of Greek learning to Western Europe in the later Middle
Ages. On the other hand, modem Arab writers, and also some
European historians of science, reacting too far against the exces¬
sive exaltation of Greek civilization by students of the classics,
have claimed too much for the medieval Muslim scientists, exag¬
gerating their original achievement out of all proportion to
what they had received from the Greeks or from their oriental fore¬
runners. The true assessment lies between these two extremes, and
has been well embodied in a vivid word-picture: ‘Islamic medicine
and science reflected the light of the Hellenic sun, when its day had
fled; and shone like a moon, illuminating the darkest night of the

1 This is based on data given by A. Mieli, op. cit., for three successive periods:
(I) the period of translators and first beginnings, eighth-ninth centuries; (II) the
‘Golden Age’, tenth-eleventh centuries; (III) the age of decline, twelfth-
thirteenth centuries:

I

Christians 12

Jews 0

Persians (including Transoxiana) 10
Iraqis 2

Syrians 3

Egyptians 1

Arabians 0

In Spain one-quarter of seventy-three names cited

II

III

8

*5

3

4

23

18

9

3

7

9

4

5

0

0

by Mieli are those of Jews.

36 A Short History of the Middle East

European Middle Ages; some bright stars lent their own light; but
moon and stars alike faded at the dawn of a new day—the
Renaissance/ 1 The Muslim contribution to mathematics and
astronomy is exemplified by the number of Arabic loan-words in
the terminology of these sciences: algebra, azimuth, zenith; and the
names of many stars, such as Algol, Aldebaran, Betelgeuze. In
medicine considerable progress was made, thanks to the numerous
hospitals founded in the principal cities by benevolent rulers: there
were said to be six thousand medical students in eleventh-century
Baghdad. Though Muslim law forbade dissection of the human
body, the course of diseases was carefully and systematically ob¬
served and recorded. The knowledge of chemistry and other
natural sciences was advanced, and Muslim cartography and des¬
criptive geography greatly influenced medieval European map¬
making in the Mediterranean. When all has been justly claimed for
the originality of Muslim science, however, the fact remains that
it was essentially the pupil and continuation of Greek science,
Though it made some important original contributions to learning,
its great service lay in the systematization and preservation of older
learning at a time when Western Europe was ignorant of it and in¬
capable of preserving it. The Muslim scholars lacked in general
the scientific imagination and originality of thought of the Greeks:
they found difEculty in passing from the accumulation of practical
data to a theoretical conclusion, and in the unifying of detail into a
harmonious system. 2

Muslim thought at its best has had its gaze turned upwards to¬
ward the One God; and, entirely absorbed by contemplation of
Him, has not looked about itself at Man. Muslim society has
always tended towards aristocracy; and Muslim science and learn¬
ing, as compared with that of the Greeks, has suffered in the ab¬
sence of a substantial middle-class, which has given it less vitality to
survive great political upheavals. When all the necessary discount¬
ing of the ‘democratic' character of the ancient Greek city-state has
been done, the fact remains that Greek culture was genuinely the
property ofa considerable urban middle-class, which grew in
importance till it reached its peak in the second century a.d.
Islam, on the other hand, ‘has known periods of intellectual life
only under the protection of isolated princes here and tfiere. It has

1 Max Meyerhof, in The Legacy of Islam, 354.

2 cf. Edward Atiyah’s criticism, in An Arab Tells His Story, 186

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 37

had Augustan ages; it has never had great popular yearnings after
wider knowledge. Its intellectual leaders have lived and studied
and lectured at courts; they have not gone down and taught the
masses of the people .’ 1 The masses have remained in much the
same economic and social conditions and at much the same intel¬
lectual level as their ancestors four thousand years ago.

Little Muslim science and scholarship found its way to medieval
Europe via the Byzantine Empire, whose cultural contacts with the
Muslim world were tenuous, though Arabic medical works were
being translated into Byzantine Greek in the eleventh century . 2
The Crusaders, settled during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
in a strip of the Levant lands whose depth from the coast rarely ex¬
ceeded fifty miles, were for the most part rough, unpolished ad¬
venturers, whose contacts with the native population were mainly
with the peasantry, not with its scholars. Consequently, though
there was an appreciable cultural interchange between the ‘Franks’
and the people of the Levant, it was mainly of a material kind. In
any case, by the time of the First Crusade (1099) the intellectual
ossification of the Muslim East was already beginning, and conse¬
quently the Crusades played no greater part man the Byzantine
Empire in the transmission of Muslim learning to theWest . 3

Of considerably greater importance in this connexion was
Sicily, which had been conquered by the Muslims of North Africa
in the course of the ninth century, and enj oyed a period of stable and
orderly Muslim government from c. 950 until Sicily was recon¬
quered for Christendom towards the end of the eleventh century
by the Normans, ‘a dynasty of gifted pirates’ which had entered the
service of the Byzantine Greeks and then wrested Southern Italy
from them. At the time of the Muslim conquest Sicily had long
been rich with the past civilization of Greece and Rome. Though
Eastern cultural currents had streamed in during the period of
Muslim domination, the Arab rulers had been too involved in war¬
fare to develop the finer arts of peace. But under the tolerant rule
of the Normans the varied culture-strains were able to intermingle
and flower. H. A. L. Fisher draws an attractive miniature pen-
picture of the civilization of Sicily under Roger II (1130-54),
whom his critics called the ‘half-heathen king’: ‘His kingdom was

1 D. B. Macdonald, op. cit., 153 f.

2 R. Walzer, in Bulletin of the John Ry lands Library, 1945, 171.

3 Hitti, op. cit., 662.

38 A Short History of the Middle East

half-oriental, half-western, providing a shelter for Greek, Latin,
Moor, and Jew, and better organized . . . than any other European
government of that age. Among the orange-groves of Palermo
Roger, the descendant of the Vikings, sat upon his throne, robed in
the dalmatic of the apostolic legate and the imperial costume of
Byzantium, his ministers part Greek, part English, his army com¬
posed as to half of Moors, his fleet officered by Greeks, himself a
Latin Christian but, in that balmy climate of the south, ruling in
half-Byzantine, half-oriental state ... a true representative of his
lovely island, shared then as ever between east and west. 1 Rogers
grandson Frederick II (1215-50), Holy Roman Emperor and King
of Sicily, still kept a semi-oriental court, and incurred the excom¬
munication of the fierce Pope Innocent III by his reluctance to
undertake the Crusade; for he was in friendly political and com¬
mercial relations with Muslim rulers, and eventually won back
Jerusalem temporarily for Christendom, not by the way of the
sword but by a treaty-compromise with the tolerant Sultan of
Egypt. In 1224 Frederick founded the University of Naples, 2
and encouraged the translation into Latin of Arabic science and
philosophy. Here at Naples studied St. Thomas Aquinas (1226-
74), who made a profound study of the Arabic commentators on
the Greek philosophers, but had the originality to go beyond them
to the original Greek texts, which were now at last becoming
available to the Western world.

But the country of outstanding importance for the transmission
of Muslim learning to the West was Spain, whose level of civiliza¬
tion at the tim e of the Muslim conquest had been almost as high as
that of Sicily. In particular, her cities'contained many thousands of
literate and energetic Jews, endowed with that spirit of restless in¬
quiry which characterizes their race. During the ninth century
Muslim Spain became one of the wealthiest and most thickly-
populated lands of Europe, sending abundant industrial and
agricultural exports both to Christian Europe and to the Muslim
East. Cordoba, the capital, was the most cultivated city in Europe,
the rival of Constantinople, Baghdad and Cairo. With its popula¬
tion of half-a-milhon, its three hundred public baths, its seventy
libraries, and its miles of paved streets lit at night, it was centuries in

1 History of Europe, one-vol. ed., 190 f.

2 For Muslim influence on the Medical School of Salerno in the eleventh
century or even before, see Mieli, op. cit., 219 f.

39

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization

advance of the barbarous condition of contemporary Paris or
London, and was the cultural metropolis for the Christian rulers of
the petty states of Northern Spain. Nevertheless, the intellectual
tone in Muslim Spain was still one of rigid orthodoxy and strict
conservatism. There was scant sympathy with the rationalist in¬
novations of some of the Abbasid caliphs, and little evidence yet of
intellectual originality. Both Muslims and Jews wishing to com¬
plete their education went to the Eastern Mediterranean and on to
Iraq. In the first half of the ninth century, however, the Umayyad
Abd ur-Rahman II sent a scholar to Iraq to obtain copies of trans¬
lations of Greek and Persian scientific works, and surrounded him¬
self with a group of astronomers. 1 A century later the University
of Cordoba was founded by Abd ur-Rahman III, who proclaimed
himself Caliph independently of the Abbasids. His successor in¬
vited professors to Cordoba from the East, established twenty-
nine free schools in the city, and employed agents to buy learned
manuscripts in the eastern cities. At the same time the centre of
Jewish scholarship began to be transferred from Iraq to Spain.
Early in the eleventh century the Umayyad dynasty collapsed, and
for eighty years Spain was torn by civil wars, with Muslim military
commanders playing the same role as they had done in the East
when the Abbasid dynasty fell into decline. But just as in the East,
the partitioning of the caliphate among provincial rulers led to the
diffusion of the culture of the metropolis over a number of pro¬
vincial capitals, such as Seville, Toledo, and Granada. And as the
Christian kingdoms of Northern Spain seized the opportunity to
invade the disunited Muslim state, so they began increasingly to
absorb Muslim cultural influences.

The Muslims, finding themselves hard-pressed by the aggressive
Christians in the north, appealed for help to the Berbers of North-
West Africa, who had been united for the last fifty years in a mili¬
tant Muslim brotherhood, al-Murabitun (whence their Spanish
name of Almoravides). At the end of the eleventh century these
defeated the Christians under their legendary leader the Cid, but
remained in Spain as the ruling Muslim dynasty, only to succumb
to its luxuries. Meanwhile another Puritan movement, al-Muwah-
hidun (Almohades in Spanish) had arisen among the Berbers.
These overthrew the Almoravides in the middle of the twelfth
century and replaced them as rulers of an empire extending from

1 E. Levi-Proven?al, La Civilisation arabe en Espagne (Cairo, 1938), 65.

D

40

A Short History of the Middle East

Central Spain to die borders of Egypt. Both Berber dynasties
were rigidly orthodox in matters of Muslim thought, and accord¬
ing to a fairly reliable tradition even had the writings of the great
Ghazzali, the 'restorer of the faith’, publicly burned in the market¬
place of Cordoba. While, however, they imposed the severest
orthodoxy on the mass of the people, they did not interfere with
the speculations of the Muslim philosophers, provided that these
did not reach the multitude and disturb their faith. Thus twelfth-
century Spain, ruled by religious conservatives, was yet the home
of two outstanding Arabic philosophers, Ibn Bajja (Avempace)
and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), the latter of whom asserted that the
Qur’an, being but an imperfect presentation of truths which might
be learnt more completely and correctly from Aristotle, was a dis¬
cipline fit only for the masses whose intelligence neither desired nor
was capable of philosophical reasoning. But while the Moorish
rulers tolerated such heresy, so long as it did not reach the people,
they vigorously persecuted the many thousands of Christians and
Jews in their Spanish province, and periodically expelled to the
Christian North all who refused conversion to Islam. The twelfth
century thus marked the beginning of the decline of scholarship in
Muslim Spain. The refugees took north with them their advanced
culture, especially to the kingdom of Toledo, which had been cap¬
tured by the Christians in 1085. Here Archbishop Raymond set
up early in the twelfth century a college for the translation of
Arabic philosophy and science, which flourished for 150 years and
attracted scholars from all parts of Europe, including Britain. 1
The following century, the thirteenth, was the great period of
translation from Arabic into Latin. It was encouraged notably by
Alfonso the Wise of Castile, who was interested in philosophy and
astronomy, and had two Jews translate an Arabic record of planet¬
ary movements which was still authoritative enough to be con¬
sulted by Galileo and Kepler in the seventeenth century. It was
through such translations that in the following centuries the cream
of Arabic scholarship, the legacy of their Greek and oriental fore¬
runners and the original Muslim contribution, was passed on to the
rising universities of the West.

¥ ¥ *

1 An attractive and imaginative picture of the procedure followed by these
scholars, and the linguistic and interpretative difficulties they encountered, is
given by Chas. and Dorothy Singer, in The Legacy of Israel, 204 ff.

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 41

Already by the second half of the tenth century the acute and
manifest disunity of the Muslim East had encouraged the Byzan¬
tine Empire, which 250 years before had been threatened at its very
heart by the Arab armies, to take the offensive against its enemies,
raid the Levant coasts, recover Cilicia, Cyprus and Antioch, and
push its frontiers into North Syria and east to the Euphrates. In
Hitti s words, in the first half of the eleventh century .. . political
and military confusion prevailed everywhere. Islam seemed
crushed to the ground.’ 1

Nor was this confusion confined only to externals. It penetrated
to the very core of the Muslim faith. The caliph al-Ma’mun, who
had founded the enlightened Bait al-Hikma in his enthusiasm for
the rationalist views of the Mu’tazila, had encountered the opposi¬
tion of the rigorous theologians of Baghdad. Regarding this
opposition with considerable justification as obscurantist and
pernicious, the Caliph proceeded to impose on theologians and
lawyers the rationalist doctrine, that the Qur’an was created and not
eternal, by the illiberal mechanism of an inquisition. 2 The death
of al-Ma’mun’s successor was followed by an officially-supported
orthodox reaction, upholding the Qur’an and the Sunna as the only
valid sources of knowledge, and again enforced by inquisitorial
methods. The more extreme theologians, led by Ibn Hanbal, re-
j ected all the findings of exact science and philosophical speculation,
as leading to heresy, unbelief, and atheism. But speculation could
not be completely suppressed, and Islam could not exist in a self-
created vacuum. To justify its first principles to those Muslims of
an enquiring mind, and they were not a few, it had to resort to
those very methods of logical argument, derived from the Greek
philosophers, which the extreme reactionaries deplored. A com¬
promise was attempted early in the tenth century by al-Ash’ari,
using logical argument in the demonstration of theological truth.
But while this satisfied a large central block of Muslim thought, it
offended on the one hand the philosophers, who were tending in¬
creasingly to reject the Qur’an and Sunna where they conflicted
with the more subtle and plausible speculations of Aristotle and
later Greek philosophy; and on the other hand it outraged the fol¬
lowers oflbn Hanbal, who rejected any process of thought or argu¬
ment, including al-Ash’ari’s logical defence of Muslim revelation,

1 op. cit., 473.

2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, art. Mihna.

42 A Short History of the Middle East

which was not expressly authorized by the scriptures. Meanwhile
a third strain of Muslim religious thought, the mystical strain of
Sufism, which had developed in the eighth and ninth centuries,
had gained many adherents. 1 The mystics were impelled by the
insistent desire to find a more intimate and personal approach to,
and union with God than was provided by Sunni formalism and
detachment, which placed Man at an almost infinite distance from
his Creator and provided the Prophet as merely an interpreter of
God’s word, but not as a mediator between God and Man. Though
the Sufis sought justification for their ritual practices in some few
and exceptional passages of the Qur’an, their main inspiration was
in fact drawn from other religions, in particular from Christian
mysticism, the Zoroastrians of Persia, and the mystery-religions of
the pre-Christian Middle East. So great is man’s natural desire,
amid the trials of this unsympathetic world, for consolation in
grief and hope in adversity from some more-than-human source,
that many thousands of Muslims were attracted as disciples of the
mystics, who originally practised their devotions individually and
without any sort of mutual association. Following only their
individual inspirations, some of them were led into doctrinal
extravagances, imagining themselves filled with the divine
spirit, even declaring ‘I am the Truth’ and so claiming to be
the Godhead, and disparaging orthodox Islam as a ‘religion
of the limbs’ immeasurably inferior to their own ‘religion of
the heart’.

Thus by the eleventh century Muslim theology was undergoing
a real internal crisis, from which it has never completely recovered.
“While the (mystic) saints, with their innumerable followers and
worshippers, menaced the Islam of history and tradition, the ortho¬
dox party, divided against itself, either clinging fanatically to the
letter of the Qur’an or disputing over legal and ritual minutiae or
analysing theological dogmas in the dry fight of the intellect, was
fast losing touch with the inward spirit and fife which makes reli¬
gion a reality. Many earnest Muslims must have asked themselves
how long such a state of things could last. Was there no means of
preserving what was vital to the Faith without rending the com¬
munity asunder?’ 2

1 Sufi was originally a nickname, derived from suf, wool: the wearer of an
ascetic woollen garment, like that of the Christian monks.

2 R. A. Nicholson, in The Legacy of Islam, 220 £

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 43

In this desperate political, religious, and moral crisis, the salvag¬
ing of what could be saved of Muslim civilization was to come
through human instruments as unpredictable as the salvaging of
what could be saved of the Graeco-Roman civilization at the end
of the third century a.d. through the rough Illyrian soldiers
Diocletian and Constantine. Like that earlier first-aid process, the
permanent loss of lifeblood from the wounded body-politic was
considerable, and the lesion was repaired only with coarser, and
less sensitive and flexible tissue.

The rise in the tenth century of the Fatimid and the lesser Shi’i
dynasties, Arab and Persian, had for the time deprived the Turks of
the political ascendancy they had been gaining in the Muslim
world; but it did not make them any the less indispensable as
garrison-troops and bodyguards. The Arab and Persian dynasts—
Fatimid, Buwayhid, Samanid—continued to employ Turks in
considerable numbers. Early in the eleventh century the Turkish
tribe which later became known as the Seljuks pressed down from
north of the Oxus into north-east Persia, becoming converted to
Sunni Islam as they did so. STo these unlettered, unimaginative
soldiery the pedestrian mattep-of-factness of orthodox Sunni Islam
was more attractive and suitable than the spiritual exaltation or
over-elaborated subtleties of the Sin i sects or the Sufis. By 1055 die
Seljuk Turks had entered Baghdad at the invitation of the effete
Abbasid caliph to rescue the caliphate from its Shii masters who
were intriguing with the rival and schismatic Fatimid caliphate.
To the Sunni majority of the Muslim world, whom a century of
Shii political supremacy and systematic religious propaganda had
failed to convert, the Turks were the more acceptable masters. In
1071 the Seljuks inflicted a crushing defeat on the Byzantine army,
which delivered into their hands the greater part of Asia Minor,
never conquered by the Arabs, as a region for Turkish settlement;
from this time onwards Asia Minor has continuously been pre¬
dominantly Turkish in speech and Muslim in faith. The Seljuks^
now ruled a vast empire extending from the Aegean to India.
While its first Sultans remained culturally uncouth, they were
fortunate in having as their wazir a gifted and intellectual Persian
who bore the title Nizam al-Mulk. This statesman founded at
Baghdad in 1066 the first real university of the Muslim world,
named after him the Nizamiya, a centre for propagating the Sunni
orthodoxy of al-Ash’ari as a counterblast to the Shi’i heresies

44 A Short History of the Middle East

taught at Al Azhar in Fatimid Cairo, and. for training administrators
for the Seljuk Empire. 1

One of the lecturers at the Baghdad Nizamiya at the end of the
century was a thirty-four-year-old Persian, al-Ghazzali, who had
made a comprehensive study of theology, philosophy, and the
sciences, and became a great success as a teacher and interpreter of
Muslim law. But, as he tells us in his Confessions, he went through
an intellectual and spiritual crisis of scepticism, finding that ortho¬
doxy lacked an adequate logical basis, and that on the other hand
philosophy failed to answer the ultimate problems raised in man’s
quest for understanding, and led only to heresy and unbelief.
Accordingly he gave up his lectureship at the age of thirty-eight,
and spent the next two years ofhis life in strict ascetic retreat. After
his re-emergence he lived for fourteen years more, mainly in re¬
tirement devoted to study and writing, but with short periods of
public teaching at Baghdad, Damascus, and Nishapur. His teach¬
ing rejected the subtleties of both the professional theologians
and the philosophers, and sought to lead men back to living con¬
tact with the Qur’an and the Traditions, while admitting the use
oflogical thinking as an intellectual discipline. His great contribu¬
tion was to demonstrate the validity and importance of the per¬
sonal mystical experience which, he taught, enabled the human
soul to renew the contact with the changeless world of divine
Reality from which it had become separated by its entry into the
mortal body: in this way a direct communion with God, bringing
enlightenment and revelation, was possible. But he insisted that
mystical practice must conform with both the letter and the spirit
of the Prophet’s teaching, and condemned such extreme forms of
mystical belief as pantheism and the individual’s identification of
himself with God. Thus, while on the one hand al-Ghazzali
referred Islam back from theological and philosophical subtleties
to its first principles, on the other hand he reconciled the mystical
appeal to the spiritual emotions with those same austere first
principles, and so gave mysticism a legitimate place in the system
of Muslim belief. Called the "Restorer of the Faith’, it has been
said that "Islam has never outgrown him, has never frilly under¬
stood him.’ 2 For nearly eight centuries he found no worthy sue-

1 Nizam al-Mulk also founded in Iraq and Persia five other colleges which
bore his name, and was the patron of ’Umar al-Khayyam,

2 Macdonald, op. cit,

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 45

cessor, with the result that, while the transfusion of warm and
living blood which he administered to the Muslim, religion averted
a fatal outcome ofits crisis, he could not arrest the creeping paraly¬
sis, the choking of the spirit by the letter, which in the following
centuries spread progressively over its members. The only vitality
that survived was in the mystics, and as the centuries passed they
diverged ever further from orthodoxy into extravagance or vulgar
chicanery. Meanwhile, original scientific and scholarly speculation
tended to be abandoned for less original and intellectually-exacting
pursuits, such as the compilation of encyclopaedias and universal
histories; and even the Nizamiya was devoted to the amassing of
conventional learning rather than the promotion of research.

The Seljuk Turkish unification of the greater part of the Middle
East lasted less than forty years. Immediately after 1092 their
empire broke up into independent Seljuk principalities, leaving
Syria and Palestine a crazy quilt of Turkish and Arab petty states.
Christian Europe, which saw in the pilgrimage to the Holy Land a
means of absolution from the most grievous sins, and had enjoyed
access to the Holy Places with only the minimum of molestation
from the Fatimids and their predecessors, had found that a genera¬
tion of warfare between the Seljuks and the Fatimids had made
travel more hazardous for the pilgrims. After the Seljuk conquest
of Asia Minor the Byzantine Emperor had appealed to the Pope
for a Christian alliance against Islam. The energetic Nordic peoples
who dominated Western Europe were seeking new outlets for
their warlike instincts, and now that the expulsion of the Muslims
from Spain was making progress, they were attracted further
afield. The feudal laws of succession produced a numerous class of
landless younger sons who, with other adventurers, were eager to
carve out for themselves estates in new lands. The Italian and other
rising commercial cities of the Mediterranean were anxious to
develop a larger trade in the luxury products of the Levant and
further Asia. All these martial and material impulses were canal¬
ized, directed, and consecrated by the powerful influence of the
Church into the First Crusade, which took the Levant by storm in
I0 99 *

The importance of the Crusades in the cultural history of
Western Europe can hardly be overestimated for their effect in
throwing open the windows of men’s minds to the influences of the
Middle East, whose level of civilization was still far higher than

4.6 A Short History of the Middle East

that of the West; but their influence on the history of the Middle
East itself is much more restricted. The cultural contribution
which the Crusader settlers in the Levant could make was com¬
paratively slight, except in the field of military architecture and
tactics; and their presence in the Levant for two centuries was
detrimental to it, in that their final expulsion was accompanied by
the destruction of such important cities as Antioch, Tripoli, and
Akka. The psychological impact of their invasion on the Muslim
world was much smaller than might be supposed. While the
Christian minorities in the Levant welcomed the Franks and gave
them valuable help, the petty Muslim princes of Syria, impressed
by their warlike prowess, preferred to pay them tribute rather than
to resist. Appeals for help to the feeble Abbasid caliph in Baghdad
were ignored. The centre of Seljuk authority was now in Isfahan,
six weeks’ journey from the Levant coast in those days; and the
Seljuk sultan paid no heed to such distant alarms. The Crusaders
were unable to consolidate their position more deeply than some
fifty miles inland from the coast, and never occupied such strategic
Muslim cities as Aleppo or Damascus. They were not, therefore,
regarded for some time as a dangerous enemy to Islam, and no
general jihad was declared against them. Instead they became a
factor in the internecine intrigues and petty wars of the Muslim
principalities, the parties to which had no aversion from making
alliances with the Crusaders against their own coreligionaries.
Hence for the first thirty years the Crusaders had matters much
their own way, and succeeded by their expansion across the Jordan
in cutting the communications between Fatimid Egypt and Mus¬
lim Syria. Then, however, they found themselves threatened by the
Turkish atabeg (prince) of Mosul, whose ambitions for territorial
aggrandizement found the exposed Crusader County ofEdessa in
1144 an easier victim than his Muslim neighbours. As the Fatimid
dynasty was now fast degenerating, the contest between the
Crusaders and the Atabegs resolved itself from 1154 onwards,
when the Atabegs had occupied Damascus, into a struggle for the
possession of Egypt. This was won by the Atabegs, whose Kurdish
commander became the master of the Nile Valley in 1169. Two
years later his nephew, the famous Saladin (Salah ud-Din al
Ayyubi), deposed the last feeble Fatimid and reigned as Sultan in
his stead. Asserting his independence of the Atabegs, he made him¬
self by 1183 ruler of a kingdom comprising Egypt and inland Syria,

SELJUK SULTANATE
OF KONYA

6. THE CRUSADER ‘BEACH HEAD .

48 A Short History of the Middle East

completely enveloping the Crusader kingdom except for its out-
• post on the Red Sea at Aqaba. The Crusader freebooter Raynald
de Chatillon provoked Saladin to a jihad by an abortive attempt to
seize Mecca and Madina by way of the Red Sea. At the Horns of
Hattin above Tiberias Saladin outgeneralled and shattered the
Crusader army in 1187; Jerusalem fell, and two years later all that
was left of the Frankish kingdom were the ports of Antioch,
Tripoli, and Tyre.

The Third Crusade, in which Richard Coeur-de-Lion of Eng¬
land played a prominent part, failed to do more than recover
Cyprus and a strip of the Levant coast with Akka as its principal
port; and for fifty years (1192-1244) the situation was a stalemate
with, on the whole, peace between the Franks and their Muslim
neighbours. Characteristic of the new age, in which both the
fierce Crusading spirit and that of the jihad were out-of-date, was
the peaceable accommodation between the Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II and Saladin’s successor on the throne of Egypt, by
which in 1229 the Frankish kingdom recovered the Holy Places of
Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth and a strip of territory con¬
necting them with the port of Akka. In these pacific conditions the
most important contribution of the Crusades was able to take root:
namely, the great development of the Eastern trade by the Italian
and other commercial cities, notably Venice, Genoa, and Pisa.
Already in the early years of the Crusader kingdom they had ob¬
tained from the Frankish feudal rulers important concessions for
their traders as the price of their participation in the material
fitting-out of the Crusades: exemption from taxation and customs-
dues, and legal autonomy in their special quarters in the Levant
ports under the jurisdiction of their own consuls. Their friendly
relations with Egypt at the beginning of the thirteenth century en¬
abled them to extend their commerce to that country, by treaties
with the Ayyubid sultans dating from 1208, and so to lay the
foundations of the prosperous Levant trade of Mediterranean
Europe.

After Saladin’s victories the Muslims no longer had any fear of
the Crusader power, but treated them as a convenient minor piece
on the Middle Eastern chessboard. Early in the thirteenth century,
however, the Muslims had to face a far more deadly menace in the
invasion of their eastern lands by the headien and desperately cruel
Mongols, who, under their leader Jingiz Khan, came out of the

MONGOL INVASIONS

50 A Short History of the Middle East

steppes of Eastern Asia that still bear their name. Between 1219 and
1224 they overran Transoxiana and North Persia, and utterly
destroyed the highly-civilized cities of those lands and massacred
their inhabitants, before passing on across South Russia to establish
an empire which extended from the Vistula to the Pacific. Such is
the mental tortuousness of political strategists, especially those
dominated by an ideology, that the directors of Christian policy
actually conceived the idea of an alliance with these savages
against the civilized and treaty-keeping Muslims of the Levant. In
1245, following the loss ofjerusalem, largely as a result of Crusader
intrigue against Egypt, Pope Innocent IV sent John de Piano
Carpini on a political mission to Mongolia, and three years later
St. Louis ofFrance was also negotiating with the Mongols and sent
the friar William ofRubruquis to their homeland. These missions
brought no political success to the Crusader cause; but in 1253
another and more grievous blow fell on the Muslim world in a
Mongol invasion under Hulagu, the grandson ofjingiz. He over¬
ran South Persia and in 1258 captured Baghdad, massacring its
inhabitants. He laid open Iraq to uncouth Turcoman 1 and Mongol
herdsmen from the north-east, who by their neglect allowed the
elaborate irrigation-system on which the country’s fertility de¬
pended to fall gradually into decay. Hulagu finally put an end to
the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, that pitiful relic offormer Arab
greatness. The triumphant Mongols pressed on to invade Syria
and destroyed Aleppo, but were decisively defeated in North
Palestine by the armies of Egypt in 1260. In Egypt, meanwhile, an
important dynastic revolution had taken place: the last feeble
sultan of Saladin’s line had been deposed by the Turkish com¬
mander-in-chief of his slave armies, himself originally a slave
(mamluk); and for the next 250 years a ‘dynasty’ of these Mamluk
commanders—usually Turkish by birth, sometimes Mongol or
Circassian—was to rule Egypt, Palestine and Syria. The succession
to the throne was sometimes hereditary, but more often the prize
of the strongest, and intrigue and assassination were the rule. The
millions of native Egyptians and Syrians, Muslim and Christian
alike, had even less part in the government of their countries under
this turbulent foreign soldateska than they had known in previous

1 Medieval Arab and Persian historians apply this term to all the Turks of
Western Asia, including the Seljuks and even sometimes the Ottoman Turks
{Encyclopaedia of Islam t art. Turcoman).

51

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization

centuries; but the day-to-day administration of Egypt, inherited
from its Byzantine and Fatimid governors and in all probability
the most efficient instrument of government which existed in the
Middle Ages, 1 remained in the same patient Coptic and Jewish
hands as before, sometimes to the unruly indignation of the Muslim
city mobs, who vented their anger in pogroms.

Some of the Frankish towns and strong-points of the Levant had
assisted the Mongol invasion; and now the Mamluk Sultan Bay-
bars took a merciless revenge. Between 1265 and 1268 he wrested
from them Jaffa, Caesarea, Nazareth, and the great city of Antioch.
From 1272 to 1282 there was a precarious truce, during which his
successor Qalawun inflicted another heavy defeat on the Mongols
in Syria. In 1289 the Crusaders lost Tripoli, and two years later
Akka, their last stronghold, fell and the seat of the Frankish king¬
dom was withdrawn to Cyprus. A third Mongol invasion of
Syria c. 1300 was again checked by the Mamluk armies.

By thus turning back from the Levant the threat of Mongol in¬
vasion, with its insensate lust for destruction of all that was finest
and most civilized, the early Mamluk sultans have deserved well
of history. Like the Ayyubids they were given overmuch to self-
indulgence in military and palace architecture and the pleasures of
the flesh. Nevertheless, consciously imitating Saladin and his fore¬
runner the Atabeg Nur ud-Din of Aleppo, the earlier Mamluks did
spare an appreciable fraction of their revenues for the development
of irrigation-canals, aqueducts and harbours, and for building
hospitals, libraries, and schools. The primary purpose of these
schools, however, was not so much to promote science and general
learning as to propagate Sunni orthodoxy and combat the Shi a,
which was evidently still formidable. 2 The great Jewish physician
and philosopher Moses Maimonides had found a welcome at
Saladin’s court when Moorish intolerance had driven him from
his native Spain; and for a century Jewish and other doctors con¬
tinued his medical tradition in Egypt. By 1300, however, original
scientific research was almost at an end in the Muslim East. In
Egypt ancient superstition and magic, deeply rooted in the masses
of the people as it still is, was reasserting itself; and scientific and
scholarly activity was running to seed in unoriginal imitativeness

1 H. A, R. Gibb, Ibn Battuta : Travels in Asia and Africa, 20.

2 Saladin had grimly closed the Fatimid network of Shi’i schools, the Diyar
al-’Ilm, and dispersed their libraries. It was now that al-Azhar became a
Sunni mosque.

$2 A Short History of the Middle East

and facile compilation. A high level of esoteric scholarship had
been maintained in the higher grades of the Isnia’ili sect, which was
re-propagated c. 1090 in North Persia and North Syria; but both
these centres were practically exterminated in the late thirteenth
century by the Mongols and the Mamluks respectively. 1 Strangely
enough, a temporarily fertile ground for at least some branches of
science and scholarship was provided in North Persia and Trans-
oxiana by the courts of the Mongols themselves. Inspired by his
unlettered interest in astrology as a means of fore telling the future,
Hulagu, the destroyer of Baghdad, founded an astronomical
observatory and library at his capital of Maragha near Tabriz.
About 1300 one of his descendants, who had been converted to
Islam, endowed an observatory, library, and schools at Tabriz. A
century later the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur Leng (Tam-
berlane) deported to his capital at Samarqand scholars, architects
and craftsmen from the cities he had destroyed, such as Aleppo and
Damascus; and his successor was patron of a flourishing astrono¬
mical observatory at Samar qand in the first half of the fifteenth
century.

Instead of the resurgence of uncouth Turk and Mongol ending
abruptly the growing commercial penetration of the Middle East
from Europe, as might be supposed, it actually fostered it. Al¬
though the Mamluks severely punished the native Christians of the
Levant for their complicity, real or suspected, with the Mongol
invaders, 2 the Christian pilgrim-traffic to the Holy Places was too
profitable a source of Mamluk revenue to be stopped; and this
material consideration applied still more to the trade in the silks,
spices, and other products of the further East, for which the peoples
of Europe, now growing in sophistication, had acquired an
insatiable appetite. Consequently, the Mamluks encouraged and
took a heavy toll of this trade through Alexandria and the Levant

1 On Alamut, the Persian centre, see Freya Stark ,The Valley of the Assassins,
The Isma’ilis continued a ruthless underground struggle against the Sunni
rulers of the Muslim world, and gained the sinister title of‘Assassins’ (originally
Hashshashin) by allegedly furnishing with ‘Dutch courage’ in the form of
hashish members chosen from their lower grades whom they used to murder
their political opponents. One of their first and most distinguished victims was
the enlightened Seljuk wazir Nizam ul-Mulk.

A minority of the Isma’ilis survived the destruction of their centres, and to¬
day some 200,000, who have long abandoned the aggressive tendencies of their
forerunners, venerate as their Imam the Agha Khan, who claims descent from
Ali in the forty-seventh generation, through the medieval Grand Masters of
Alamut.

2 V. Minorsky, Royal Central Asian Journal, XXVII (1940), 436.

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 53

ports, while the Mongols permitted Marco Polo and his kinsmen
to make their famous journeys to Mongol-dominated China in the
late thirteenth century. In the following century we find mer¬
chants of Venice, Genoa, and other European cities trading with the
Mongol capital at Tabriz via the Black Sea; and though the re¬
assertion of exclusive Chinese independence under the Ming
dynasty once more closed China to Europeans, Timur Leng and
his successors in the fifteenth century continued to encourage
European trade with their dominions in West-central Asia. Trade
with the Mamluk kingdom in the Levant became a virtual mono¬
poly of Venice, who had finally disposed of her rival Genoa in a
ruthless commercial war. Both Venice and the Mamluks extracted
an exorbitant profit from the trade; but in the fifteenth century
Mamluk predatoriness became too much even for the Venetians,
and when the exacting Sultan Bars-bay raised his excise-duty on
pepper to 160 per cent, they successfully brought pressure on him
by threatening to withdraw their merchants from Alexandria.

Meanwhile, the political stability of the Middle East countries
had continued to deteriorate, until only an enforced re-unification,
however roughly and arbitrarily imposed and with whatever
further loss of cultural vitality, could save the whole from ruin.
The raids of Timur Leng c. 1400 had ruined Aleppo, Damascus,
and other Syrian cities; had erected 120 towers of skulls of the in¬
habitants of Baghdad alone; and had completed the work begun
by Hulagu in converting Iraq from a land of irrigated agriculture
to a land given over in the main to the nomadic herds of the Tur¬
coman and the Bedouin. Mamluk rule likewise deteriorated
sharply after c. 1340. In the next 128 years there were no fewer
than twenty-nine Mamluk sultans, ruling for an average of only
four and a half years apiece. In Egypt, Palestine and Syria alike the
cultivator was oppressed by the irresponsible Mamluk feudal land¬
lords, whose incomes depended on the amount of land-tax they
could extort from their peasantry. Bedouin and Turcoman raiders
pillaged the settled lands, and the former actually sacked Jerusalem
in 1480. The cities of Syria and Palestine were largely ruined by the
continual revolts oflocal governors, and the public benefactions of
better days, such as schools and hospitals, were extensively con¬
verted by the trustees to their personal profit. A contemporary
Muslim historian estimated that the population of the Mamluk
empire was reduced to one-third of its figure at the beginning of

54 A Short History of the Middle East

their rule; 1 and though his figures cannot be statistically verified,
the hundreds of archaeological sites, which are abundantly covered
with medieval Arab pottery but are now abandoned, bear material
testimony to the extent of the depopulation. An important factor
contributing to this depopulation in the later fourteenth century
was the Black Death and the famine which accompanied it in two
appalling visitations in successive generations. In a young and
vigorous society the effects of such a disaster soon disappear; but
where the social order is already reeling, many decades are required
before equilibrium can be regained. This respite was not granted to
the Islamic world/ 2

For already the political forces which were to fill the anarchic
vacuum of the Mamluk empire and of equally disorganized Iraq
and Persia were taking shape. The Seljuk unity of Asia Minor had
been shattered by the Mongol invasions of the mid-thirteenth
century, but without basically altering the Turkish character of the
dominant section of the population. About 1300 a small Turkish
principality founded by one Othman around Brusa in the north¬
west of the peninsula was beginning to expand at the expense of its
Turkish neighbours and the moribund Byzantine Empire to the
north. In 1353 Othman s descendants invaded Europe and in 1361
established their European capital at Adrianople (Edirne), blocking
the route from Constantinople to the Balkan hinterland and so
isolating the capital of Orthodox Christianity from its potential
Orthodox allies, the Slavs. A powerful coalition led by the Serbs
was shattered by the Ottoman Turks in the battle of the Kossovo
Plain in 1389. By 1400 they had extended their northern frontier
to the Danube and incorporated the greater part of Asia Minor;
Constantinople itself was on the point of falling; but at this
moment the irresistible thunderbolt of Timur Leng struck them.
Crushingly defeated at Ankara in 1402, the Ottomans lost Asia
Minor, but their kingdom survived in the Balkans. From 1420
onwards they began to acquire from Western Europe the use of
firearms; in 1453 they gave the coup-de-grace to the Byzantine
Empire by taking Constantinople; and by 1468 they had com¬
pleted the reconquest of Asia Minor, and so became neighbours
and rivals of the Mamluk empire on the borders of North Syria.
For a generation they were kept in check by Qait Bey (1468-95), a

1 Hitti, op. cit., 696.

2 H. A. R. Gibb, Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa, 24 f.

56 A Short History of the Middle East

Mamluk sultan at last worthy of his fust predecessors. Instead they
successfully assaulted Persia. 1 In 1514 the Turkish troops armed
with muskets and supported by 300 cannon were too much for the
Persian cavalry without firearms. It was now the turn of the Mam-
luks, who were suspected of complicity with the Persian shah.
They also had no guns as yet, and their cavalry were routed near
Aleppo in 1516. They hastened to acquire some few pieces of ord¬
nance to meet the advancing Ottoman army, but the outcome of a
second battle outside Cairo next year was the same. The Mamluk
sultanate was no more. The pitiful Abbasid puppet-caliph, last of a
line which had been set up in Cairo by the first of the great Mam-
luks in 1260 following the Mongol sacking of Baghdad, and
under whose nominal authority the Mamluks had continued to
rule, was carried off from Cairo to Constantinople. By this token
the centre of gravity once more passed from Egypt to the city on
the Bosporus; and Cairo sank to the level of a provincial capital.

Appendix: The Principal Doctrines of Islam.

The essential core of Muslim belief is the Oneness of God. The
Muslim Creed begins with the words la ilah ill'Allah, 'There is no
god but God 5 . From this follow his various attributes of omni¬
potence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc.

The Creeds ends, wa-Mohammed rasul Allah, 'and Mohammed is
the apostle of God 5 . Mo divinity is thereby claimed for the Prophet.
He is wholly human, the last and greatest of an ascending series of
prophets, borrowed from the Jewish Old Testament. The series
comprises the Patriarchs culminating in Moses, and the kings
David and Solomon, but not the prophets of the periods immedi¬
ately before and after the Exile. Higher than all, and next in rank
to Mohammed himself comes Jesus, 'from the breath (spirit) of
God 5 as the Qur 5 an describes him. He and His Mother are honoured
by Muslims; but Jesus again is regarded as wholly human, and the
Christian doctrines of His Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resur¬
rection are held to be misguided.

The doctrine of the Trinity is especially obnoxious to .Muslims,
who consider it to conflict with the essential Unity of God; yet

1 A new dynasty, the Safavid, winning the support of the populace of the
Persian cities by its adoption of moderate Shi’i doctrines as the religion of
dynasty and state, had newly unified Persia c. 1500 after centuries of disunion
and anarchy. Their dynasty lasted until 1722.

The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 57

Muslim orthodoxy itself through its belief in the eternal, uncreated
Qur’an, the archetype of that dictated to Mohammed by the Arch¬
angel Gabriel, elevated the Qur’an to a status co-existent and co-
etemal with God, and caused the important seventh-century sect
of the Mu’tazila to protest that the Unity of God was thereby
infringed.

Muslims believe in a Resurrection of the body preceding the Last
Judgement, with physical rewards in Heaven and punishments in
Hell. These Last Things will be preceded by the coming of the
Mahdi, the divinely-guided, having the same names as the Prophet
himself. This concept of the Mahdi has been left obscurely in the
background of orthodox Sunni Islam, but among the poor and
underprivileged sections of the Sunni community self-styled
Mahdis have appeared from time to time to deliver them from op¬
pression and institute a reign of righteousness; and in the Shi’a the
Mahdi has much greater importance, since he is there none other
than the Hidden Imam returning to his people.

In its dogmatic essentials Islam is thus closely akin to Judaism,
with some superficial borrowings from Christianity, the whole
given a distinctively Arabian orientation after its rejection by the
Jews of Madina. Its importance in world-civilization lies not so
much in its undistinguished dogmatic as in the cohesive force of
the system of legal and social regulations for the direction of the
Muslim community, begun by the Prophet himself and incor¬
porated in the Qur’an, and continued under the Caliphs in the form
of the Traditions. It was these regulations, superimposed on the
simple dogmatic foundation, that originally brought together the
individualist Arab tribes as a conquering force, that imposed a
social unity upon the national and cultural diversity of the Muslim
world in its greatest days, and that maintains a sense of unity even
to-day after centuries of decay and neglect. The present machine-
age may have undermined the belief of many ‘educated’ Muslims
in the dogmas of their religion; but though they have become
free- think ers or even atheists, they remain notwithstanding within
the social community oflslam.

C PI A P T E R III

The Ottoman and Persian Empires and the Growth
of European Enterprise (1517—1770)

L ike the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Turks had to divide
their effective power between the Middle East and their even
more important interests in the Balkans. Both empires were
essentially Levantine; but they wasted their resources in continual
wars against a powerful rival in Persia, from which they were
estranged by deep religious differences. Just as the inconclusive
Byzantine-Persian wars weakened both states and exposed them to
the Arab invasion and conquest, so the inconclusive Ottoman-
Persian wars of the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries weakened both
and exposed them to European commercial penetration, leading
eventually to their helpless manipulation by European Powers in
the nineteenth century. In both the Byzantine and the Ottoman
periods the possession of Iraq was disputed with Persia, and in both
periods likewise the sovereign in Constantinople, being also the
master of Egypt, was led by force of geographical propinquity to
seek to control the opposite Arabian coast of the Red Sea; but with
little permanent effect, so that in both periods the greater part of the
Arabian peninsula remained practically independent of the Great
Power ruling in the Levant, and was only lightly touched by its
civilization.

The Ottoman principles of provincial administration were not
unlike the Byzantine, though in a cruder form. The Empire was
essentially military in its organization, and its object was frankly the
power and well-being ofthe state, personified by the sovereign, with
little thought for the well-being of its subjects. It distributed large
tracts of land in feudal fiefs to its military commanders, though with¬
out disturbing the existing tenant-cultivators. The function of the
provinces was to provide the central government with revenue in
the form of material wealth and manpower for the armies, and the
function of the provincial governor to collect this revenue, with

The Ottoman and Persian Empires 59

only secondary thought for the social or economic good of the
provincials. Provided that these demands were met, there was little
deliberate interference with the racial or religious status of the
population, except such as might arise locally from the presence of
garrisons and officials of the ruling race and creed. The Christians
in the Ottoman Empire continued to fare much as they had fared
under preceding Muslim rulers, and their lot was distinctly better
than that of the Jews in medieval and twentieth-century Central
and Eastern Europe. The Turks showed greater toleration to the
Christians in the Asiatic provinces, where they were a small and
submissive minority, than in the Balkans, where they constituted a
rebellious majority constantly intriguing with the neighbouring
enemy Powers, Austria and Russia. 1 Catholic missions were ad¬
mitted, not only to the Levant, but to Baghdad and Basra as early
as the seventeenth century, though they were always exposed to
the caprice of changing local authority. In the depopulated Pales¬
tine of the eighteenth century the pilgrim-dues were the most
important item of revenue. The yearly pilgrimage of some 4,000
persons c. 1750 had risen to 10-12,000 when the French traveller
Volney visited Palestine in 1784, and the tax collected for their
visit to the Jordan alone amounted to three times the tax-assess¬
ment of the town of Gaza, then the most populous town in Pales¬
tine. 2

The Turks were a racial minority in their great empire, and made
no attempt at the general colonization of the conquered provinces.
The empire was conceived on no narrow Turkish-national basis,
but was a comprehensive empire like the Abbasid or the Roman.
Whatever a man’s race or birthplace, he was eligible for govern¬
ment-service and could attain the highest office, provided that he
conformed to the general cultural pattern of the empire: the reli¬
gion and social customs of Sunni Islam; a military background of
training and experience; and the Turkish language, which under
the Ottomans (while absorbing a multitude of forms of expression
and loan-words from Arabic and Persian) had yet triumphantly
asserted itself as the language of the ruling-class against those .two
languages of an older and higher civilization. While the bulk of

1 The Armenian atrocities of the last fifty years had their origin in the rise of
an insistent Armenian nationalism encouraged by Turkey’s traditional enemy,
Russia. Cf. the contemporary comments of D. G. Hogarth, A Wandering
Scholar in the Levant (1896), 146 ff.

2 De Haas, op. cit., 357 f., with references.

6o

A Short History of the Middle East

senior officials were Turks, Syrian and Palestinian townsmen
gained by their innate keenness of intellect an appreciable number
of senior posts; the sturdy and vigorous Kurds found openings in
the military and administrative career; but Iraqis were mainly con¬
fined to the lower grades; and before 1850 the native Egyptian was
treated, like the fellahin everywhere in the empire, as a beast of
burden. The Turks left considerable local authority to non-Turk¬
ish ruling-groups, especially in the less accessible districts: examples
are the Kurds in their mountain-valleys; the Shi’i Arab tribal chiefs
of Lower Iraq; the Druze 1 amirs who then dominated the
Lebanese mountains. Even the defeated Mamluks remained more
numerous than the Turkish officials and soldiery in Egypt. They
were indispensable for the administration of that country; their
amirs remained governors of the sanjaqs (sub-provinces); and they
continued through the centuries to maintain their numbers by im¬
porting fresh slaves, especially from the Caucasus. By 1600 no
distinction could be made between the Mamluks and the Ottoman
Turks in Egypt. Both were called 'Turks' to differentiate them
from the native Egyptians; Turkish blood and speech had pre¬
ponderated among the Mamluks from the beginning. To sum up,
it has been well said that at its best Turkish rule was marked by 'a
skilful, vigorous opportunism, well informed of conditions, well
executed within limits, gaining limited and immediate ends, rather
cunning than wise. It lacked ideals, save the vaguest that Islam and
humanity could prompt; it lacked knowledge and theory; it
abounded in follies, abuses, injustices; yet it met each immediate
problem with a suitable expedient, and gained the applause of the
moment without thought for the larger morrow/ 2 3

The absence ofa constructive long-term policy of administration
was greatly aggravated by the shortness of tenure of the pashas, or
provincial governors. They were often changed annually; in 280

1 The Druze sect, numbering to-day some 150,000 persons in the Jebel Druze
(Southern Syria), Lebanon and North Palestine, originated in the eccentric
Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, the fanatical destroyer of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem, who in 1017 declared himself the incarnation of God on
earth, and shortly afterwards mysteriously disappeared. His followers declared
that he was not dead, but merely in hiding till his return as Mahdi. Persecuted
by his successors on the Fatimid throne, they found a refuge in Syria under the
leadership of one Darazi, after whom the Druze are named. Practising their cult
in secret to avoid persecution through the centuries, they have always been

considered by Muslims of all sects to be so extreme in heresy as to constitute a
distinct religion.

3 Longrigg, op. cit., 169,

The Ottoman and Persian Empires 61

years of direct Ottoman rule Egypt had 100 pashas, while Damas¬
cus had 133 in the first 180 years of Ottoman dominion. High
office was purchased by bribery, and retained only by the prompt
forwarding of tribute to Istanbul and repeated bakhshish to power¬
ful courtiers. The pasha compensated himself out of the pro¬
vincial revenues, and by farming out the collection of taxes to the
highest bidder. Such impermanent and irresponsible administra¬
tion could not be better than indifferent. The far-seeing Sultan
Sulaiman III (sumamed by Turks the Lawgiver, and by contem¬
porary Europeans the Magnificent, 1520-66) carried out useful
public works, such as the improvement of the water-supply of
Jerusalem and Mecca, and work on canals and flood-prevention in
stricken Iraq. There were pashas who founded new mosques under
the impulse of piety or the prickings of overburdened consciences;
but on the whole the Ottoman administration built very few roads,
or hospitals, or schools; as late as 1838 a traveller could not find a
single bookshop in either Damascus or Aleppo. The Turks paid
little attention to the improvement or maintenance of agriculture
and irrigation, or to the settlement and control of the Bedouin,
who had greatly encroached on the settled lands in the Time of
Troubles of the preceding centuries. Many villages were aban¬
doned and towns dwindled in size, except such ports as were
temporarily favoured with European trade. Great Alexandria,
by-passed by the opening of the Cape Route and left with only a
meagre trade in the products of Egypt, the Sudan, and Southern
Arabia, shrank from a populous city to a town of 10,000 people or
less. The peasant sowed only sufficient land to produce a crop he
could harvest quickly and hide away from the tax-collector. In
Syria cultivators abandoned their fields and sought a living in the
towns or took refuge in the less accessible mountain-valleys. In
Egypt irrigation was allowed to decay, and the orderly distribution
of water lapsed. ‘Village fought village for the right to a water-
channel; farmers came in the night, cut the dykes, and emptied
their neighbours’ water on to their own land. Deprived of water,
beaten and oppressed by their overlords, many of the fellahin de¬
serted their land and turned to a life ofbrigandage and crime on the
waste lands between the villages.’ 1 By the eighteenth century
Egypt, once the granary of the Roman Empire with seven to ten
million inhabitants, had become barely self-supporting in food,
1 Crouchley, op. cit., 14.

62

A Short History of the Middle East

even though her estimated population had fallen to two and a half
millions. Famine was frequent, and so was pestilence, by which
half-a-million died in Egypt in 1619, and 230 villages were deso¬
lated in 1643. In the mid-seventeenth century the country between
Aleppo and that part of the Euphrates nearest to the city was fertile
and efficiently irrigated, but a century later the land had become a
desert; 1 and at the end of the eighteenth century it is stated that only
one-eighth of the villages formerly on the tax-register ofthe Aleppo
pashaliq were still inhabited. The population of Syria and Palestine
combined was then estimated at only one and a half millions,
with that of Palestine shrunken to perhaps under 200,000.

Already by 1600 the authority of the provincial governors was
weakening as the brief noontide of the Ottoman Empire passed.
Sometimes the provinces relapsed into anarchy; but sometimes the
power of the pashas was superseded by that of local rulers who
afforded greater internal stability, the possibility of sounder econo¬
mic life, and freer commercial enterprise to European merchants,
than did the transient and rapacious Turkish administrators. The
Druze amirs of the Lebanon became virtually independent of the
Porte, and the relative security of life under their rule attracted a
considerable immigration from other parts of Syria. Outstanding
among them was Fakhr ud-Din, who carved out a kingdom for
himself in Lebanon and North Palestine between 1585 and 1635.
He made his own diplomatic agreements with European Powers;
encouraged the production and export of silk and cotton through
his ports of Sidon and Beirut in exchange for European goods; and
introduced Christian missions and European engineers. From 1600
to 1669 the pashaliq of Basra enjoyed firm government and pros¬
perity under the local family of Afrasyab. Later it was the turn of
the Baghdad pashaliq to find stability and tolerant rule under
Hasan Pasha and his son Ahmed Pasha, 1704-47. After the death
of the latter, effective control remained till 1832 in the hands of a
corps of Georgian Mamluks, the majority Christian by birth,
which the two pashas had built up. The Georgian Sulaiman Pasha
the Great united the three pashaliqs of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul
from 1780 to 1802, paying only formal recognition to the Ottoman
Sultan in the form of'constant reports, rarer presents, and yet less
frequent tribute/ 2 Until about 1750 Egypt was less fortunate. The

1 C. P, Grant, The Syrian Desert , 161, n. 1.

* Longrigg, op. cit., 199,

The Ottoman and Persian Empires 63

Ottoman pashas had long ceased to exercise any real authority, and
the unhappy country was tom by the struggles for supremacy of
the Mamluk beys. Their tyranny and oppression of the weak went
uncontrolled. ‘In no province did Muslim fervour burn so bright
against the infidel; nowhere was the power of the Sultan more re¬
laxed; and the Franks who dwelt there were subjected to a regime
of extortion and ill-treatment at the hands of the beys, which in its
insolence and regularity far exceeded that experienced elsewhere
in the Levant. . . . The natives seem to have had an innate antipathy
to all Europeans, and lost no opportunity of molesting or reviling
them with ferocity and fanaticism.’ 1 The situation was temporarily
improved by Ali Bey, who tried to reform the financial system and
the administration of justice and suppress the brigandage of the
Bedouin. In 1770 he declared his complete independence of the
Sultan, and allied himself with adh-Dhahir, the governor of
Galilee, who had expelled the Turkish officials from his province,
revived the derelict port of Akka for the export of cotton and silk,
and was in the habit of distributing free seed to the fellahin and re¬
mitting their taxes in bad years. Before the two rebels could
achieve much in their respective provinces, however, they met
their deaths in 1773 at the hands ofjealous rivals.

* * *

In antiquity the Mediterranean had been the main focus of
European civilization and commerce; and though the importance
of that sea as a channel of cultural contacts had been diminished
when the Muslims overran and conquered its southern shores, the
Crusades had done much to restore its former commerce. Even
after the expulsion of the Franks from the Levant, the Mediter¬
ranean trading-cities, especially Venice and Genoa, had continued
to enjoy a lively commerce with the Muslim East. In the mean¬
time, however, the small Atlantic kingdom of Portugal had suc¬
ceeded in the fourteenth century in freeing itself from the Muslims,
and under the inspiration of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-
1460) her seamen began to explore the Atlantic coast of Africa
southwards. Henry’s general motive was evidently to carry on the
Crusades by an attempt to outflank the Dar ul-Islam both strategic¬
ally and commercially; to divert the trade in the gold and other

1 Wood, op, cit., 124, 234,

64 A Short History of the Middle East

products of West Africa from Muslim hands; to make contact
south of the Sahara with the Negus of Ethiopia (‘Prester John’)
and jointly assail the Muslims from the south; and he may also have
planned in his later life to win control for Portugal of the Indian
trade, which was now the main source of wealth of the Muslim
world. 1 The progress of Portuguese exploration was naturally
slow at first, and by the time of Henry’s death had gone no further
south than Sierra Leone; but in the following generation their
seamen pushed onwards, until in 1488 Bartholomew Diaz at last
rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Ten years later Vasco da Gama
went on to reach the Muslim coastal towns ofEast Africa, where he
secured an Indian pilot who conducted him on to Southern India.
The King ofPortugal now adopted the grandiose title of'Lord of
the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia,
Persia, and India’, and in spite of Muslim resistance further trading
expeditions were sent to their station at Calicut, bringing home
cargoes of spices.

The Mamluks ofEgypt and the Republic of Venice were equally
alarmed at this by-passing of their extremely profitable joint
monopoly of the Indian trade with Europe. The Mamluk Sultan
threatened to destroy the Christian Holy Places if the Portuguese
did not abandon their Indian voyages, and the Prior of St. Cather¬
ine’s Monastery on Sinai actually j ourneyed to Rome and tried to
persuade the Pope to forbid them. The Venetians, who had in¬
stigated the so-called Fourth Crusade against Constantinople in
order to destroy a trade-rival and had looked with complacency on
the fall of the same city to the Ottoman Turks, even went so far as
to supply timber to the Mamluks to build warships in an attempt to
sweep the Portuguese from the Indian Ocean. But the Portuguese
ocean-going ships and mariners were more than a match for the
Muslim vessels and sailors, accustomed in the main to the more
sheltered seas of the Levant and the Middle East. They occupied
the strategically-placed islands of Socotra and Hormuz in an
attempt to blockade the Muslim fleets within the Red Sea and the
Persian Gulf respectively, and repelled a Mamluk naval attack on
their Indian ports. Lisbon rapidly took the place of Venice as the
European clearing-house for Indian goods, and the Cape Route
began to supersede the old sea and land-routes to the Mediter¬
ranean. Admiral de Albuquerque is even said to have formed a

1 Prestage, op. cit., 29 ff., 165 ff.

The Growth oj European Enterprise 65

plan to divert the Upper Nile into the Red Sea and so deprive
Egypt of her vital water-supply.

In the Persian Gulf the Portuguese had occupied by 1515 the
strategic and trading posts of Muscat, Hormuz, and Bahrain; but
they were never able to seize permanent bases in the Red Sea,
since the opposition of the Mamluk and subsequently the Otto¬
man navies held them in check. Though they enjoyed for the
moment a monopoly of the Cape Route, they had by no means
diverted all the traffic from the Overland Route. Throughout the
sixteenth century Arab traders were still bringing the silks, spices,
dyes and drugs of the East and the coffee of the Yemen up the Red
Sea and across the desert to Cairo and Alexandria, and trade also
continued to follow the route from the Persian Gulf via the Syrian
steppe to the Levant ports. Caravans of four to six hundred camels
were common, and Aleppo became the leading trading-centre of
Syria; there are several references to the city in Shakespeare. In
1521 Venice obtained from the Sultan a commercial concession of
the form which was to become common, granting her traders
freedom from customs-duties or other taxation beyond a stated
limit, and judicial extraterritoriality under the authority of their
own consuls. These were the so-called Capitulations (i.e. the
‘chapters’ of the concession) modelled on precedents of the
Crusader and Mamluk periods. 1 Commercial pre-eminence in the
Mediterranean was now, however, passing from Venice to France,
to whom capitulations were granted in 1536. By the time Eliza¬
bethan England entered upon the Levantine commercial scene,
founding in 1581 the Levant Company of Merchants to trade her
good woollen cloth and tin for eastern products, the French were
already well established; and though they could not prevent the
English from opening a consulate in Aleppo, they did successfully
obstruct the opening of an English consulate at Alexandria. In any
case, the stout English woollens found little sale in torrid Egypt.

Already before the accession of Queen Elizabeth the English had
begun to chafe at the Portuguese monopoly of the Far. Eastern
trade. The population was increasing. The manufacture of woollen
cloth was outstripping the demands of the home market; but not
yet feeling strong enough to challenge the Portuguese by attempt-

# 1 They were destined to survive^ down to the twentieth century and make
difficulties for diplomats and administrators in the altered conditions of the
Middle East.

66

A Short History of the Middle East

ing the Cape Route, the English tried to by-pass it by seeking a
North-East Passage round northern Europe to the Far East, and in
1553 founded the Muscovy Company for this purpose. 'The ad¬
vocates of the scheme asserted with confidence that in Cathay with
its cool climate, its teeming and (it was believed) wealthy popula¬
tion, a lucrative market for English woollens would certainly be
found; while, once the dangers of the northern ice had been passed,
it would be a comparatively easy matter to proceed from Cathay
to the Moluccas, and there lade for the return voyage the spices so
much in demand in the European markets.’ 1 The climatic diffi¬
culties of the North-East Passage frustrated these hopes; but
Antony Jenkinson, commander of the Company’s fleet, travelled
from Moscow down the Volga and crossed the Caspian to establish
trade-relations with the Persian capital at Qazvin in 1561. This
roundabout route was, however, abandoned twenty years later
owing to the founding of the Levant Company and to the anarchy
which was already threatening Persia.

In 1583 four English travellers set out on an exploratory journey
from Aleppo to Malacca via Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. In
1591, the year in which the sole survivor of this expedition arrived
in England, three English ships were sent via the Cape to the Far
East on a voyage of reconnaissance, the Portuguese power being
now in decline. Meanwhile the Dutch had in 1581 wrested their
independence from Spain, and were now ready to embark on the
commercial enterprises which the dense population of their small
country, totalling about half that of contemporary England,
forced upon them. By 1599 the Dutch had sent successful expedi¬
tions to the East Indies; and in that year the English East India Co.
was founded, largely by merchants of the Levant Co., 'to set forth a
voyage to the East Indies and the other isles and countries there¬
abouts.’ In its infancy the Company undertook a voyage only once
every two or three years, each being separately financed by sub¬
scriptions and levies from its members. The Dutch companies, on
the other hand, were federated in 1602 into the 'United East India
Company’, practically a department of state with a permanently
subscribed capital of the then immense sum of over half-a-million
pounds. 2 Soon it was 'covering the Indian Ocean with its fleets,
threatening to displace the loose Portuguese monopoly in favour

1 Foster, op. cit., 5 f.

* J. A. Williamson, Short History of British Expansion, I, 219.

The Growth of European Enterprise 67

of one far more complete and aggressive, and making the effort of
the English company seem puny.’ 1 The English company was
indeed for the first fifty years of its existence chaotically financed
and administered, and it was obstructed rather than helped by the
early Stuart governments. 2

Meanwhile the English brothers Sir Antony and Sir Robert
Sherley had in 1598 received a warm welcome from the illustrious
and enterprising Shah Abbas the Great of Persia (1587-1629), who
was seeking the most favourable market for Persia’s raw silk, her
main commodity for export and largely a royal monopoly. The
Persian Gulf was still dominated from Hormuz by the Portuguese,
who ‘were everywhere hated by the native populations on ac¬
count of the savage cruelty which they had constantly used to
mask their deficiency in real force’; 3 the route to the Levant coast
was controlled by the Shah’s enemy, the Ottoman Sultan, for his
own profit; and the Caspian route was impossibly roundabout.
The Shah accordingly sent first Antony and then Robert as his
ambassador to the capitals of Europe to seek alliance against the
Ottoman Empire and trade-relations. The East India Co., which
had already opened a factory (trading-station) at Surat north of
Bombay in 1612, accepted the Shah’s proposals, and sent ships in
1616 to the Persian Gulf to trade with his capital at Isfahan. The
Portuguese at Hormuz made a determined attempt to intercept the
Company’s merchant-ships, in return for which a joint Anglo-
Persian expedition in 1622 expelled them from Hormuz and the
Persians drove them out of Bahrain also. Their decline was
accelerated by their loss of Muscat in 1650 and the closing of their
factory at Basra.

The East India Co. now had factories at the Shah’s new port of
Bandar Abbas, with branches at Isfahan and Shiraz; at Mokha for
the Yemen coffee-trade; and soon afterwards at Basra for trade
by river-boat with Baghdad. However, the reorganization of the
Company in 1661 was followed by a change of policy and the
abandoning of all these factories. Experience had shown that it was
not profitable for the Company to operate the local coastal trade,
which was the natural business of the highly efficient Asiatic ship¬
ping. The Company accordingly concentrated its staffs at a few

1 Foster, op. cit., 183.

2 J. A. Williamson, The Ocean in English History , 104 ff.

3 Williamson, Short History, I. 223.

68

A Short History of the Middle East

central factories, but without losing the local trade, since its
regular liners making the Cape passage continued to be fed by the
‘country ships’ not under its command. 1

The successful development of the Cape Route had largely
diverted the trade in East Indian products from the Overland
Route. The transport costs of the long desert crossing and the
profits exacted by the several middlemen through whose hands the
goods passed raised the cost of pepper from 2 \L per lb. in India to
25. at Aleppo, and that of cloves from 9 d. per lb. to 45. The spices
which reached Western Europe via the Cape cost only one-third
of what they cost via Aleppo, and thus it was actually profitable for
the Levant Co. in 1614 to re-export Indian goods from England to
the Levant, since they could still undersell the same commodities
brought there by the Overland Route. By the second half of the
seventeenth century the Levant Co., three-quarters of whose im¬
ports into England had consisted of Persian silk, was feeling severe¬
ly the competition of the East India Co., which was importing
Persian raw silk and Indian manufactured silks and calicos via the
Cape Route. But the Privy Council had the foresight to support
the East India Co.; and the silk trade through Aleppo continued to
decline to one-half of its former figure.

The strain of the wars of the later seventeenth century, first
against England and then against Louis XIV of France, was too
much for the vitality ofthe Dutch state, and her commercial activi¬
ties in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulfbegan to flag. Mean¬
while France, under Louis XIV’s far-seeing minister Colbert, had
begun to plan the creation of a maritime commercial empire. He
opened factories in India, sent an embassy to Persia in 1664 and ob¬
tained trading-rights at Bandar Abbas and Isfahan. French com¬
petition in the Levant also was stimulated by Colbert, and during
the eighteenth century her commercial interests in these lands were
always greater than the English. In Egypt France secured a virtual
monopoly, with fifty merchants in Cairo in 1702 and other estab¬
lishments at Alexandria and Rosetta, compared with only two
English merchants at Cairo and Alexandria. The policy of the
Levant Co., which was content to secure a high rate of profit on a
comparatively small volume of sales, was partly responsible for the

1 Williamson, The Ocean in English History, 101 ff., and especially 109 ff., cor¬
recting the older hypothesis that the withdrawal of the East India Co. from
local trading was primarily due to successful Dutch competition.

The Growth of European Enterprise 69

sharp decline in English trade in favour of France. While the
English cloth had the highest reputation, the French was lighter and
better suited to the climate, It was, moreover, 10 per cent, cheaper;
and when English clothiers did produce a thinner and cheaper cloth
its quality was so inferior that the Levant merchants would not
touch it. It was said that the Turks of Istanbul ‘could neither be
clothed, at the price and in the manner they wished, nor have coffee
to drink 5 without buying from the French. 1 French trade with the
Levant increased with extraordinary rapidity, and on the eve of
the French Revolution was three times as great as the volume of
English trade to those countries. Between 1778 and 1791 the
English Levant Co. was compelled to close down its four factories
in Syria, leaving the French in full possession of the trade. Politic¬
ally also France was acknowledged by the Sultan as protector of all
the Catholics within his Empire.

In Persia and Iraq however, the commercial situation in the
eighteenth century was far different. The French East India Co.
was ill-organized and ill-supported from Paris; and consequently
the decline of the Dutch left the English to enjoy the bulk of the
Persian Gulf trade through the prosperous factories which it re¬
opened at Bandar Abbas and Basra. As a result of the internal
anarchy in Persia which followed on the Afghan invasion of 1722,
however, most of the European factories in that country had
eventually to be closed, and in 1761 the main seat of British trade
was shifted to Basra, where the East India Co/s resident was raised
to the rank of consul. In 1766 the Company lent the Pasha of
Baghdad six ships to deal with unruly tribesmen in Lower Iraq, and
in 1780 it helped Sulaiman Pasha the Great to secure his succession
to the pashaliq and so won his friendship. Britain’s commercial
position in the Gulf was now pre-eminent, and she was acquiring
through it a growing political influence also. In 1798 the Com¬
pany’s Resident at Bushire, which had become the principal
station on the Persian coast after the closing of Bandar Abbas, was
asked to arbitrate in a dispute between the Pasha of Baghdad and
the Sultan of Oman.

Like the Chinese, the rulers and inhabitants of the Ottoman
Empire continued, long after their civilization and power had
passed its peak, to regard the European strangers in their midst as

1 They had made a trade treaty with the Governor of Mokha in 1709, and in
1738 temporarily occupied the port in a dispute over debts to French traders.

70

A Short History of the Middle East

immeasurably their inferiors. Till about 1830a foreign ambassador
was kept waiting on a bench in the courtyard of the Serai to await
the Grand Vezir’s pleasure, and was finally introduced to the Sultan
as ‘the naked and hungry barbarian who has ventured to rub his
brow upon the Sublime Porte 5 . The Grand Vezir informed the
English Ambassador c. 1680: 'You and all other ambassadors are
sent here by your respective princes to answer for the lives and
estates of all Muslims all over the world that are endangered or
suffer by their respective subjects, and you are a hostage here to
answer for all damage done by Englishmen all over the world. 5 As
late as 1798, when the Ottoman Empire went to war with a
European state its ambassador was flung into the Prison of the
Seven Towers, 'a pile of noisome dungeons’. If this was the pre¬
vailing tone of diplomatic courtesies, it Is not surprising that
European merchants in the Levant were obliged to wear Oriental
dress to minimize the risk of insult by the populace. The merchants
were beginning to revert to European dress c. 1700 in Istanbul and
Smyrna, and about 1750 in Aleppo; but in the more distant parts
of the Levant, and especially in Egypt, they were still obliged to
wear full Turkish dress till nearly 1800. It is entertaining to specu¬
late whether the English merchants in Aleppo continued to wear
the enormous Turkish turbans and voluminous pantaloons for the
games of cricket which they played on the 'Green Platte 5 outside
the city.

CHAPTER IV

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East,

1770-1914

‘Power-politics is the only kind of politics there is. 5

(James Burnham, The Struggle for the World).

I n the early eighteenth century European political influence in
the Middle East and India was still slight. The Ottoman,
Persian and Mogul Empires were still relatively strong; and
though Western Europe was now well in advance of the stagnating
East in technical skill and in the quality of its manufactures, its
traders still lived in these lands as clients, dependent on the good¬
will of the Oriental rulers and officials. Their insecurity led them
to make common cause among themselves, and even the outbreak
of a general war in Europe did not greatly affect their mutual rela¬
tions. In 1696, for example, the English chaplain at Aleppo and his
companions travelling to Jerusalem met with hospitable treatment
from French merchants on their journey and at their destination,
even though their countries were at war; and during the same war
British and Dutch merchants in the Persian Gulf made an agree¬
ment with the French merchants for their mutual protection
against the nuisance of piracy.

However, with conditions in the Oriental empires becoming
more anarchic, local Oriental rulers increasingly courted the
assistance of the European traders with their gold, their garrisons
and naval units, and it was not long before the Europeans
began to enter into the complexities of Oriental political intrigue
and turn it to their own advantage. In this way the strategic
rivalries of the European Powers at home were at length repro¬
duced in the East. Since the Mogul Empire was the most advanced
in decay, it was there that the English and French trading companies
first came into conflict. As late as the outbreak in Europe of the
War of Jenkins 5 Ear in 1739, indeed, the French company was still

F

72 A Short History of the Middle East

anxious that it and the English company should continue to ob¬
serve a strict neutrality. Hostilities however broke out between
them in 1745, and there followed sixteen years of fierce Anglo-
French struggle with each company using Indian rulers as allies.
By 1761 the French hopes of empire had been shattered and the
English East India Co. was on the way to becoming the supreme
authority over large parts of India.

The next country to become the scene of these Anglo-French
rivalries was Egypt. On the initiative of Ali Bey, for a few years
the independent ruler of Egypt, and of Warren Hastings, the
vigorous and unconventional governor of Bengal, the East India
Co. sent more than one expedition in the I770 ? s from India to
Suez, 1 whence the freight was transported under Egyptian
guarantee to the Mediterranean for shipment to England. By
opening up this route, which foreshadowed the speeding-up of
communications in the following century, Calcutta was brought
within two months of London, as compared with five months by
the Cape Route. Although a variety of jealous influences inter¬
rupted this traffic after a few years, it had been enough to alarm the
French for the future of their virtual monopoly of the Egyptian
trade; and English and French interests competed for the favour of
the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, with control of the Red Sea-Mediter¬
ranean route as the prize, until the attention of both countries was
diverted by the French Revolution and the European war which
grew out of it.

By 1797 Napoleon, commanding the French armies at the age of
twenty-eight, had knocked Austria out of the coalition of counter¬
revolutionary Powers, leaving France free to turn on her next
most formidable enemy, Britain. Since a direct invasion across the
Channel was considered too difficult, the French government de¬
cided on an expedition to conquer Egypt. This project, which had
been mooted by French political thinkers at various times since the
beginning of the century, had been considered impolitic as long as
Egypt was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, with which
France had continually been on good terms in opposition to their
common enemy Austria. But now that the Ottoman authority
over Egypt had ceased to be more than nominal and that Britain
had shown signs of establishing commercial interests there, the

1 The Ottoman government, jealous for its customs-revenues, did not allow
European trading-ships to sail north of Jidda.

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 73

French case for annexation was strengthened, especially now that
her victories in Italy and her alliance with Spain had caused the
British fleet to withdraw from the Mediterranean to the shelter of
Gibraltar. The instructions which the French government gave
Napoleon for the Egyptian expedition included the expulsion of
British interests from the Red Sea in favour of France and the
cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. If the expedition
were successful, there were reasonable hopes of ousting the British
from India, since their hold on that country was still far from com¬
plete, and French military adventurers and mercenary troops
exerted a powerful influence on several important Indian
princes.

Napoleons force landed near Alexandria in July 1798, and pro¬
claimed its ostensible purpose of overthrowing the Mamluks and
restoring the authority of the Ottoman Sultan. But though the
French met with little resistance from the decadent Mamluk army,
their hopes of consolidating their position were shattered by
Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet at the battle of Abuqir
on 1 August. Napoleon was now cut off by superior British sea-
power from supplies, from reinforcements, and even from news
from France; and he could do little more than mark time in Egypt.
In January 1799 Britain, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire reached
an agreement to expel him. Learning that an Ottoman army was
being assembled in Syria for the invasion of Egypt, he advanced
through Palestine to meet it, but was checked before the fortress
of Akka, which was held by its Bosnian tyrant Ahmed al-Jazzar
(‘the Butcher’) supported by a British naval squadron. After two
months Napoleon was forced to raise the siege and retire with his
plague-stricken army to Egypt. Meanwhile the situation in Europe
had deteriorated for the French, and Napoleon himself slipped
away ignominiously to France in August 1799. The French army
stayed on ineffectually, and was eventually withdrawn by agree¬
ment with Britain in 1801. Its only direct achievement was the
great ‘Description of Egypt’ compiled by the staff of scholars
which had accompanied it. Nevertheless, it had the enormously
important indirect effect of‘bringing to the attention of a few men
in Egypt a keen sense of the advantage of an orderly government,
and a warm appreciation of the advance that science and learning
had made in Europe’, with results that were to galvanize into new
life the torpid economic and social system of Egypt and the Levant

74 -

A Short History of the Middle East

The romantic interest of the Egyptian expedition has over¬
shadowed other, and not less significant, proceedings in other parts
of the Middle East. Until about 1770 Britain had been content to
be represented in the Middle East by trader-consuls ‘humbly asking
for nothing but capitulations and to be left alone’. From 1770 on¬
wards, in their dealings with an Ali Bey or a Sulaiman Pasha of
Iraq, her representatives were attaining the status of equals in
power and authority. But, just as it had been the bid to create a
French empire in India which turned the East India Co. from trade
to the tasks of empire, so it was Napoleon’s threat to that growing
empire in India which first constrained Britain to increase her
political influence in the Middle East; and in both instances, once
committed, she followed the course thus imposed on her with
greater tenacity than the more opportunist French, and so achieved
success and empire almost in spite ofherself.

In the Southern Red Sea Britain immediately countered
Napoleon’s thrust towards India by occupying Perim, in the nar¬
rowest part of the Straits ofBab al Mandab. But soon, when living
conditions on this torrid rock had proved intolerable, the occupy¬
ing force was moved to Aden, by agreement with its ruler, the
Sultan of Lahaj. A treaty was made with him in 1802, and six years
later Lord Valentia commented prophetically, ‘Aden is the
Gibraltar of the East’. In 1799 Napoleon had made overtures from
Egypt to the Sultan of Oman, who by his possession of harbours
on either side of the Straits of Hormuz (he held Bandar Abbas at
this time) could control the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The Sul¬
tan was however persuaded to conclude with the East India Co. a
treaty excluding from his territories French and Dutch subjects
(Holland was now under French domination) for the duration of
the war; and in 1800 the Company established a permanent
Resident at Muscat.

Both at Basra and Baghdad French consuls had been established
earlier than those of the East India Co.; but since they were ill-paid,
ill-provided, often ill-chosen, and no great volume of French trade
passed through their hands, they failed to impress the ruling
Pashas. In 1798 the French consuls were arrested, their papers
confiscated, and their premises occupied. It is not clear whether
this was done entirely on the initiative of Sulaiman Pasha on ac¬
count of the Ottoman declaration of war on France following the
invasion of Egypt, or whether perhaps it may have been suggested

75

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East

to him by the East India Co/s Resident, now permanently estab¬
lished in Baghdad and on friendly terms with him. The French
consuls were eventually released, but the Pasha rejected with little
ceremony their claim to formal precedence over the British repre¬
sentatives. In 1802 the Resident at Baghdad was promoted to the
rank of Consul with a guard of Sepoys, and Britain’s position in
Iraq grew in prestige and prosperity to the jealous indignation ofthe
French.

For nearly ten years, from 1800 to 1809, the French were engaged
in tortuous intrigues with Fath Ali Shah of Persia, with a view to
an overland invasion of India in which they hoped to have the
Russians as allies; and after the crushing French victories in
Europe in 1805-6 a French military mission was sent to Persia fol¬
lowing a treaty between the two countries. But this entente was
broken when Napoleon went on in 1807 to make the Treaty of
Tilsit with Russia, who had been steadily encroaching on Persian
territory in Transcaucasia for the past eighty years and against
whom the Persians looked for French assistance. In these new cir¬
cumstances the British authorities in India had little difficulty in
reasserting their own influence with the Shah and squeezing out the
French military mission.

Meanwhile in 1806 Britain had regarded an ephemeral alliance
between the Sultan of Turkey and Napoleon as likely once more
to open Egypt to the French. A small British force accordingly
occupied Alexandria, but twice failed to take Rosetta and suffered
considerable losses. The Albanian Mohammed Ali, who had made
himself Pasha of Egypt in 1805, now offered, provided that the
British force was withdrawn, to oppose any European force that
might attempt either to occupy Egypt or pass through it en route
for India. He had rightly concluded that the French army was a
much more remote instrument of power than the British navy,
which in the later years of the war practically drove the French
merchant fleet from the Levant. There was a flourishing British
trade with Egypt in grain for the Mediterranean naval squadrons
and for the army in the Iberian Peninsula. 1

In 1810 the British capture ofMauritius, which had been the base
for French privateers in the Indian Ocean, was a severe blow to

1 Nevertheless, Mohammed Ali was already so intent on consolidating his
position as master of Egypt that in 1810 he offered the French an alliance if they
would recognize him as independent; but in view of the French desire to remain
on good terras with the Ottoman Empire, they rejected his proposal.

76 A Short History of the Middle East

what remained of French prestige in the Persian Gulf area. In the
following years France’s increasing difficulties in the Russian and
Peninsular campaigns gave her no opportunity for further ad¬
ventures in the Middle East; and the fall of Napoleon left Britain as
the dominant and unquestioned authority in that region.

* * *

Mohammed Ah combined ambition with perspicacity to a
greater degree than any other Oriental ruler of the nineteenth
century. Conscious of the declining powers of the Ottoman
Empire, he was anxious to confirm himself and his heirs in here¬
ditary possession ofEgypt. He was content to recognize the nomi¬
nal suzerainty of the Sultan provided that he enjoyed autonomy in
practical matters. But the impact of the Napoleonic wars had
taught him that, if he was to attain and maintain such a position, he
must have an army and navy equipped and trained on Western
lines; and to Western Europe he consequently turned for arma¬
ments and technical experts. He would have preferred to obtain
these from Britain, for whose dominant position as a sea-power he
always had the greatest respect, and of whose friendship he was
always genuinely desirous. He told the Swiss traveller Burckhardt
in 18x5, ‘The great fish swallow the small.. . England must some¬
day take Egypt as her share of the spoil of the Turkish Empire.’
But the main imperial principle ofBritish governments was already
the maintenance of the British position in India, and to this the
preservation of the status quo in the Middle East, i.e. the support of
the Ottoman Empire which had assisted in checking Napoleon’s
ambitions in this direction, was a corollary. As Palmerston put it
in 183 3, with reference to the pan-Arab policy ofMohammed Ah’s
son Ibrahim Pasha in Syria. ‘Turkey is as good an occupier of the
road to India as an active Arabian sovereign would be.’ When
therefore his overtures to Britain were declined, Mohammed Ah
turned for material help and guidance to France, who, in spite of
the fall of Napoleon, survived through Talleyrand’s diplomacy as a
leading European Power. French officers, doctors, and savants
accompanied Mohammed Ah’s armies in the successful campaigns
which subdued the wild Wahhabis of Central Arabia (1811-18). 1

1 The religious teacher Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, a follower of the
school of the ninth-century Ibn Hanbal in his desire to return to the simplicity
of the Qur’an and the Sunna and cleanse Islam of all later excrescences, had

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 77

A French colonel, who became a Muslim and is commemorated as
Sulaiman Pasha by one of Cairo's principal streets, was engaged to
reorganize and train the Egyptian army on French lines. Another
Frenchman planned and organized the naval dockyard, and others
came as doctors, engineers, surveyors, and as managers of the
numerous factories founded by Mohammed Ah in his attempt to
modernize and develop the whole productive economy of Egypt.
Anxious to build up a cadre of young Egyptians with a modern
technical training, it was natural that he should send them to France,
whose educational system had been entirely modernized since the
Revolution and now provided the finest scientific and technical
instruction in the world. In contrast, all that contemporary Eng¬
land could offer was the unreformed medieval structure of Oxford
and Cambridge, the few great collegiate schools, and the country
grammar schools, all greatly mouldered by the neglect of two
centuries—a crumbling monumental ruin not unlike the Great
Pyramid, and of about as much utility to the ambitious Pasha. It
was therefore to Paris that his young men were sent to study.

French educational influence was predominant in the fifty ele¬
mentary and secondary schools which were opened in Egypt from
1836 onwards, and French scientific and technical works were
translated into Arabic as text-books. A French military mission
and ten naval officers were lent to Mohammed Ali in 1824 to
accompany the forces with which he undertook to suppress the
revolt of the Greeks against the Ottoman Sultan; and when the
Great Powers had finally agreed on a joint intervention to end the
Revolt, lest it should provoke a general European war, the French
naval officers were withdrawn only two days before Ibrahim
Pasha's fleet was destroyed by a joint Anglo-French fleet at Navar-
ino. The French continued to intrigue with Mohammed Ah for
their own ends and, having set their minds on annexing Algeria
but not wishing to disturb the concert of Europe by a direct attack
on what was still nominally Ottoman territory, they suggested to
the Pasha in 1829 that he should conquer and annex the whole of
North Africa with French help. But the British government

won the ear of the Najdi noble Mohammed ibn Sa’ud about the middle of the
eighteenth century. The Wahhabi tribesmen, influenced by this puritan creed,
extended the domain of the Sa’udi rulers, and at the beginning of the nineteenth
century occupied and ‘purified’ Mecca and Madina and sacked the Shi’i shrine
of Husain at Karbala. These acts brought down upon them the vengeance of the
Ottoman Empire, with Mohammed Ali as its instrument.

78 A Short History of the Middle East

warned him off such a scheme, and he then turned in 1831 to the
conquest of Syria and Palestine, which he had been previously
promised by the Sultan for his part in opposing the Greek Revolt;
moreover, he wished to use the forests of the Lebanon to rebuild the
fleet he had lost at Navarino. By 183 3 Ibrahim Pasha had conquered
Syria and his army, for which the feeble Ottoman army was ab¬
solutely no match, was less than 150 miles from Istanbul. 'Wc
rejoice, 5 commented the French Foreign Office, 'that we have
facilitated the birth and development of a Power worthy of our
collaboration and as interested as we are in the prosperity of the
Mediterranean. We shall always be ready to give to the Pasha in
the future the same evidence of our friendship and goodwill as he
has received in the past from the French government. 5

The Ottoman Sultan appealed to Britain for support; but
Britain, preoccupied with a delicate situation in Western Europe,
could spare no naval detachments for the Eastern Mediterranean at
this moment. In his helplessness the Sultan was compelled to accept
an offer of aid from Russia, who had emerged a Great Power from
the Napoleonic Wars. 1 She had encouraged the Greek Revolt,
in the hope of eventually dominating that country through the
medium of the Orthodox Church; and now a Russian force was
promptly sent to the Asiatic side of the Bosporus to 'protect 5 the
Sultan. Alarmed at the prospect of Russian domination of the
Ottoman Empire, Britain and France were at length impelled to
concerted action. Mohammed Ali was pressed to recall his army
from Anatolia; the Sultan ceded him Palestine, Syria, and Cilicia,
which were henceforth administered by Ibrahim Pasha; and the
Russian force was withdrawn from Turkey. The crisis of the First
Syrian War was over; but it had had the effect of stimulating in the
mind of Palmerston, who was to dominate British foreign policy
for the next thirty years and whose constant concern was the
possibility of a Franco-Russian combination against Britain, a
lasting, deep, and possibly exaggerated mistrust of Mohammed Ali
as a pawn in the hands of these Powers.

1 Her bid to replace the Ottoman Empire as the dominant power in the Black
Sea had begun with Peter the Great’s invasion of the Ukraine a hundred years
before, and had advanced her frontiers by 1815 to the Lower Danube. In 1813
she had forced Persia to acknowledge the cession to her of Transcaucasia in¬
cluding the Baku region, the value of whose oil-deposits was not then under¬
stood; and when Persia attempted to set aside this treaty by an ill-advised act of
aggression, Russia forced on her in 1828 the Treaty of Turkmanchai, which
made serious inroads on Persian sovereignty to the economic advantage of Russia.

8o

A Short History of the Middle East

Encouraged by their success, Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim
pressed on with their ambitious schemes for uniting the whole of
the Arab lands under their rule. While the Pasha encouraged the
British in developing once more the Mediterranean-Red Sea
route to India, this time using the first paddle-steamers which re¬
duced the voyage from London to Bombay from four months to
six weeks, Ibrahim was less favourably disposed to a British experi¬
ment in 1835-6 at steamship-navigation on the Euphrates, as being
liable to limit his expansion south-eastwards from Syria. The
Foreign Office suspected that this obstruction was not uncon¬
nected with Russian intrigues, and the French Consul at Basra had
also attempted the physical sabotage of the Euphrates expedition. 1
When in the following years the Pasha’s ambitions brought turn
into political and military contact with the Arab sheikhdoms of
the Persian Gulf and with Southern Arabia respectively, regions in
which the East India Co. had been steadily consolidating its
commercial and strategic position since the Napoleonic Wars,
Palmerston’s response was swift. He warned the Pasha off any
encroachment on the Turkish pashaliq of Baghdad and declared
that ‘H.M. Government could not view with indifference any
advance by Mohammed Ali towards Baghdad and the Gulf.’ In
1839 Britain acquired the ancient and decayed port of Aden in the
teeth of a drive by Mohammed Ali into the Yemen, and suggested
that he should withdraw his troops, with the menace that any
attempt on Aden would be regarded as an attack on a British
possession. 2

In the same year the Ottoman Sultan, whose army had been
trained by the rising young Prussian officer Von Moltke, invaded
Syria with the intention of avenging the humiliation of the First
Syrian War and crushing his rebellious subject; but Ibrahim’s
French-trained forces decisively defeated them, and the Ottoman
fleet deserted to Alexandria. The Ottoman Empire lay at the mercy
of Mohammed AH, who continued to enjoy French support. But
by this time Palmerston, who was simultaneously engaged in the
First Afghan War in an attempt to check Russian intrigues in that
country, had become convinced that Mohammed Ali was acting
in the interests of Russia; and he decided that the only way to

1 Longrigg, op. cit., 293.

2 H. L. Hoskins, ‘The Background of the British Position in Arabia,’ in
Middle East Journal, I. (Washington, 1947), 137 ff.

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 81

prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was to oust Ibrahim
from Syria. He accordingly succeeded in July 1840 in bringing
about an agreement between Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia,
by which Mohammed Ali was presented with an ultimatum to
evacuate Syria, with the threat of losing all his possessions if he
procrastinated unduly. This threat to their protege caused great in¬
dignation in Paris and the French government threatened war; but
Palmerston knew that it was unprepared for such extremes and
kept up the pressure of the Powers on Mohammed AH. While the
French government vacillated and eventually fell, British and
Ottoman forces blockaded and occupied Beirut and Akka, and
forced Ibrahim to evacuate Syria and Palestine. His father had to
give back the Ottoman fleet, but was confirmed in the hereditary
pashahq of Egypt. The Second Syrian War was over. As the
French historian Driault ruefully comments, ‘All the advantages
had fallen to Britain. She had pushed back Mohammed Ah and ‘
France in the south, Russia in the north, and kept open for the J
future the overland route to India via Iraq. She had made safe the j
development of her influence along this route. She was pre-i
eminent in the lands of the Levant.’ 1

In the previous twenty years, while numbers of French officials
were being introduced into Mohammed AH’s service, Britain was
less obviously, and certainly less consciously, estabfishing her
commercial predominance in Egypt. The key to this was the
Egyptian production of high-grade cotton, which had been
fostered by Mohammed AH and was first introduced to the
“spinners of Lancashire in 1821. The export of cotton from Egypt
actually increased 200 times in the next three years and became
from now on her principal export. It was absorbed in the main by
Britain, whose factory-made cottons now displaced the more ex¬
pensive hand-woven French fabrics. Soon after 1830 British trade
with Egypt was greater than that of any other country. By 1849,
the year of Mohammed Adi’s death, she provided 41 per cent, of
Egypt’s imports and took 49 per cent, of her exports.

But since the defence ofher position in India remained a cardinal
feature of her overseas pohcy, she was not anxious to see com¬
munications through the Middle East modernized or made more
speedy to give an opportunity to any jealous and aggressive Power
to assail her. She had refused in 1834 to give any financial guaran¬
tees for a proposed railway to connect Alexandria, Cairo, and

82

A Short History of the Middle East

Suez; and when the French government showed itself ready to
sponsor the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez, Palmerston commented
that however great the commercial advantages might be, this
'second Bosporus’ might be a source of grave political embarrass¬
ment to Britain. In the declining years of the aged Mohammed Ali
the project was not pressed, and nothing could be done under his
reactionary and anti-European successor Abbas I. 1 But the murder
of Abbas brought to the throne in 1854 the fat, indolent, and easy¬
going Sa’id, who had as a boy been friendly with Ferdinand de
Lesseps, the young son of the French Political Agent. Onhis friend’s
accession de Lesseps, who had subsequently been French Consul
at Alexandria for seven years, sent him a letter of congratulation
and was invited to revisit Egypt. These were the go-getting days
of Napoleon III: within ten days of his arrival de Lesseps had
presented the Pasha with a detailed scheme for the cutting of a
Suez Canal which Sa’id accepted; and a fortnight later the Pasha
signed the concession for the 'Compagnie Universelle’, subject to
the approval of his Ottoman suzerain. It was alleged that he had
not even read the agreement, and it had certainly not been exam¬
ined by his judicial and financial advisers. But de Lesseps was his
friend, and he was promised 15 per cent, of the profits. What
more was needed?

De Lesseps took the opportunity of the Franco-Ottoman
friendship during the Crimean War to go to Istanbul to obtain the
Sultan’s approval for the concession. He found himself however
vigorously opposed by the British Ambassador, who represented
to the Ottoman government that such a concession would eventu¬
ally lead to a French protectorate over Egypt. That British opposi¬
tion to the scheme was not without justification is shown by the
fact that the anti-British section of the French press had been
exulting that 'in piercing the Isthmus of Suez, we are piercing the
weak point in the British armour’. While British commercial
interests, such as the East India Co. and the P. Se O. Steamship Co.,
favoured the scheme, Palmerston strongly opposed it as 'profitable
to France, but hostile to British interests’. In 1858 the British
government warned the Turks that if the Sultan gave his consent
he could no longer count on Britain to maintain the integrity of
his Empire. When work on the alignment of the Canal began in
1859, Sa’id replied blandly to British protests that under the

x Ibrahim had died before his father.

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 83

Capitulations he had no control over what French subjects did in
Egypt. The French won the support of Russia and Austria for the
scheme. Britain, thus isolated in her opposition, was reduced to
creating prejudice against it by attacking the use of forced Egyptian
labour, though she had urged its use on the British-built Cairo-
Suez railway a few years before. Nevertheless the work went on;
JP^lmerston, its arch-opponent, died in 1865 and the British
opposition died with him. The Sultan finally approved the under¬
taking in 1866, and the Canal was opened to the shipping of the
world by the Empress Eugenie in 1869.

Britain’s statesmen had not however been content merely with
obstructing the Canal project. They had also taken active steps to
strengthen her defences along the short sea-route to India in
case the Canal became an accomplished fact. In 1863 the harbours
and docks of Malta were extended, and its fortifications streng¬
thened. I111854 Britain had acquired from the Sultan of Oman for
use as a cable-station the Kuria Muria Islands, which the French
also had made several attempts to acquire. In 1857 Britain re¬
occupied Perim. In 1862 she reached a mutual agreement with
France to respect the independence of Oman, which was in fact
already under strong influence from the Government of India. By
1870 British influence was being extended from Aden along the
southern coast of Arabia to the ports ofMukalla and Shihr, whose
trade with East Africa passed largely through Aden and whose
ruling sultan usually resided in India. Britain thus established here a
protectorate in fact, if not yet in name; and in 1876 she took
Socotra under her formal protection.

ic ★ ★

During the nine years of his occupation of Syria (1831-40),
Ibrahim Pasha had encouraged European and American mission¬
aries to settle there. In particular the French Jesuits were eager to
resume their work, which had stagnated since the temporary
suppression of their order by the Pope in 1773; and by 1840 they
had re-established a powerful influence over the Maronites 1 of the
Lebanon, which was exercised not only in ecclesiastical matters

1 This Christian sect, which forms the majority of the inhabitants of the
Mountain Lebanon, entered into communion with the Church of Rome at the
time of the Crusades, but is distinguished by its retention of Syriac as its
liturgical language.

84 A Short History of the Middle East

but also for the furtherance of French policy in the Levant. During
the intrigues of the Second Syrian War Britain, on the other hand,
had made use of the friendship of some of the Druze chiefs of
Southern Lebanon. Ibrahim Pasha’s government, and the steady
increase of population in the mountain-valleys of the Lebanon,
had had the effect of unsettling the peasantry and making them less
tolerant of their subservience to their landlords. Social relation¬
ships were complicated by the fact that, while in North Lebanon
landlords and peasantry were both mainly Maronite, in the South
there were both Maronite and Druze peasantry in the service of
Druze lords. The proclamation in 1839 of the equality before the
law of all religions within the Ottoman Empire had encouraged
the Christian communities; and the Maronite priesthood, which
was drawn largely from the peasantry and was anxious to extend
its influence over the people, stimulated the social unrest. It finally
came to a head in 1857, when the peasants of North Lebanon, in¬
cited by their clergy, rose against their Maronite lords and divided
up the large estates, while those in South Lebanon were forbidden
by their priests to pay rents to their Druze landlords. This show of
Maronite truculence had the effect of uniting the Druze peasantry
with the Druze lords, since they saw that the Maronites already
outnumbered them in fighting-men and were increasing at a faster
rate. The antagonism of the two unruly communities was fanned
by the Turkish Pasha in Beirut, who hoped to see them weaken one
another; while the rival intrigues of French and British agents, the
one taking seriously France’s role as protector of the Maronites,
the other giving some encouragement to the Druze, added to the
tension. In i860 the Druze made a general attack on the Maronites,
in which some 14,000 of the latter were massacred. 1 In Damascus
the Druze, helped by Kurdish and Syrian Muslims, attacked the
Christian population and killed some 5,000. The news of the
Damascus massacres caused horror in Western Europe, coming as
it did soon after the attacks on Christians in Jidda in 1858 as a
second example of anti-Christian fanaticism in the Ottoman
Empire. In France it was welcomed as providing an opportunity
for a military adventure in the Lebanon, for which immediate

1 It is stated that the smaller Protestant communities, evangelized in the main
by the American missionaries, were left for the most part in peace, except where
they sided with the Maronites to resist the Druze (J. Richter, History of Protestant
Missions in the Near East, 199). See in general the objective summing-up by
Pierre Rondot, Les Institutions Politiques du Liban (Paris, 1947), 44 ff.

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 85

preparations were made. The other Powers gave their consent to
the French expedition. When it landed at Beirut there was little
for it to do, as the Turks had already practically completed the task
of restoring order. The French wished to keep the force there in¬
definitely as a guarantee against a recurrence of the disorders, but
the British government insisted that, calm having been restored,
the French should withdraw after nine months. This they reluc¬
tantly did: ‘the undertaking had failed to realize the hopes of the
Protecting Power’. 1 In place of the protectorate envisaged in
Paris, an international commission created in 1864 the autonomous
sanjaq of the Lebanon, no longer subject to the Pasha of Beirut, but
to a Christian governor appointed by the Ottoman Government.
Under this satisfactory compromise, which kept the peace in the
Lebanon down to the First World War, French educational mis¬
sions were free to continue their cultural work, and it was claimed
that in 1914 more than half of the school-going children in Syria
and Palestine attended French schools. 2

Immediately after the Damascus massacres Napoleon III had
summoned to Paris from Syria the Jesuit priest William Gifford
Palgrave, who had been an Indian Army officer before he took
Holy Orders. He presented himself to the Emperor as a likely
envoy to Arab societies, on account of his facility in Semitic
languages (his grandfather was a Jew), and was sent on a mission to
the Amir of the Shammar in Northern Arabia, ‘the one effective
power in the lands east of the Red Sea 9 . The nature ofhis mission
has never been disclosed, but it was regarded by the British
government sufficiently seriously for the Resident at Busliire to
counter it by a visit in 1864 to the rival North Arabian Power, the
Sa’udi Amir.

At the same time France also took an active interest in the efforts
of the Ottoman government to reform and modernize itself.
‘The Turks were the only bond capable of preventing all the races
of the Empire—Slav, Greek, Axab—from disintegrating into
Russian, Austrian, or British dust. It was necessary to change
Muslim habits, to destroy the age-old fanaticism which was an
obstacle to the fusion of races, and to create a modem secular state.
It was necessary to transform even the education of both con¬
querors and subjects, and inculcate in both the unknown spirit of

1 Lammens, op. cit., II, 186 f.

2 id., II, 201.

86

A Short History of the Middle East

tolerance—a noble task, worthy of the great renown of France.’
In 1863 the Ottoman Bank was founded with the controlling
interest in French hands, British interests being secondary; it had
the monopoly of the banknote-issue and branches in every im¬
portant town in the Empire. In 1867 the French government in¬
vited the Sultan to visit Paris, and recommended to him a system
of secular public education and the undertaking of great public
works and communications. As a contribution to the first, there
was opened in 1868 under the joint direction of the Turkish
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French Ambassador the Lycee
of Galata-Serai, a great secondary school open to Ottoman sub¬
jects of every race and creed, where more than six hundred boys
were taught by Europeans in the French language— £ a symbol of
the action of France, exerting herself to teach the peoples of the
Orient in her own language the elements of Western civilization’.
In the same year a company consisting mainly of French capitalists
received a concession for railways to connect Istanbul and Salonica
with the existing railways on the Middle Danube. 1

But all these schemes for establishing a French cultural and
financial dominion in the Middle East were 'brutally interrupted’
by the disaster of the Franco-German War of 1870. France
emerged from the War permanently weakened, and her imperial
energies were now focused in the main on her expanding colonies
in N.W. Africa. Not that she has ever renounced her aspirations
in the Middle East; but after 1870 her relation to Britain in this
region was that of an envious, and sometimes spiteful, loser in a
race, rather than that of a serious rival. She could for twenty years
obstruct the efforts of Lord Cromer to restore the financial stability
and promote the economic progress of Egypt; 2 in the ’nineties she
could intrigue against Britain at Muscat, or seek to forestall her in
establishing a position on the Upper Nile, 3 but whereas from
1815 to 1870 British imperial interests in the Middle East had been
thought to be challenged by France and Russia to a roughly equal
degree, from 1870 to 1900 there is no doubt that the Russian chal¬
lenge, real or imagined, easily assumed the first place.

* * *

Palmerston’s fears of a Franco-Russian coalition against Britain

1 Driault, op. cit., 187 ff.

2 Lord Milner, England in Egypt, ch. XIII.

8 Temperley and Penson, Foundations of British Foreign Policy , 501 ff.

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 87

had been allayed by the development of a dispute between those
two Powers over the respective claims of the Catholic and the
Orthodox Churches to the Holy Places in Palestine. In the first
half of the nineteenth century the Russians had established numer¬
ous claims which the Ottoman Empire had accorded in previous
centuries to the Catholic Church and its French protector, but
which had been allowed to lapse during the Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon III, however, wishing to win for his
regime the support of French Catholics, revived in 1852 all the
Latin claims to the Holy Places which had been conferred by the
Capitulations of 1740, and demanded that any subsequent con¬
cession to the Orthodox Church which conflicted with them
should be set aside. The Russian government responded with
counter-claims, and went so far as to demand the right to protect
all Orthodox Christians of whatever nationality throughout the
Ottoman Empire. Such a claim was deemed by the Powers to
disturb the European Balance of Power by encroaching on the
authority of the Sultan over his millions of Orthodox subjects in
the Balkans. Negotiations produced agreement on the question
of the Holy Places, but on the larger issue Russia remained ob¬
durate. She allowed herself to be diplomatically outmanoeuvred
by the British Ambassador in Turkey, and had to fight the Crimean
War against an alliance of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Em¬
pire. The Treaty of Paris which ended the war in 1856 forbade the
Russians to launch warships on the Black Sea, and thus removed one
potential danger from Britain's Mediterranean route to the East.

While the other Powers were preoccupied with the Franco-
German War, however, Russia resumed her freedom of action in
the Black Sea. She had for forty years been progressively bringing
under her direct rule what is now Russian Turkestan, for her im¬
portant trade-route across Siberia, the forerunner of the Trans-
Siberian Railway, had been continually harassed by the lawless
Turcomans to the south. Her southward expansion seemed to
have been completed with the ratification of the Anglo-Russian
Convention of 1873, in which the Amu-Darya was recognized as
the definitive Russian frontier, and the Russian government ack¬
nowledged that Afghanistan was 'completely outside the sphere
within which Russia might be compelled to exercise her in¬
fluence’. Within four years Russia was engaged in a war against
the Ottoman Empire which would certainly have left her ,pre-

88 A Short History of the Middle East

dominant in the Balkans, had it not been for the intervention of
the other European Powers. Simultaneously, British opinion was
alarmed 'almost to the point of panic’ 1 by the Amir of Afghani¬
stan’s leanings towards the dynamic Russians rather than the
seemingly irresolute British. While Britain embarked upon the
Second Afghan War to reassert her authority in this vital quarter,
her apprehensions extended also to the Persian Gulf, and Lord
Salisbury, the Foreign Secretary, proclaimed that 'The people of
this country will never allow Russian influence to be supreme in
the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris’. Britain had for sixty years
been steadily establishing her authority over the Arab sheikhdoms
of the Persian Gulf: first using her good offices to put down piracy
and the slave-trade; then arranging for the submission of disputes
between the sheikhs to the British Resident at Bushire, who thus
became virtually ruler of the Gulf; and finally in 1869 persuading
the sheikhs of the Trucial Coast to undertake not to make any
territorial concessions or enter into agreements with any govern¬
ment other than Britain. Following the Russian scare of 1878,
this 'exclusive agreement’ was extended to the sheikhs of Bahrain
and Qatar when treaties with them were renewed in 1880, with the
additional proviso that they should not accept any diplomatic or
consular representatives, except with the approval of Britain. In
1885, after a further Russian annexation to the very borders of
Afghanistan, war between the two Great Powers was narrowly
averted, and British apprehensions once more inflamed. Curzon,
at thirty years of age a budding British authority on the Middle
East, could in 1889 express the moderate view that Russian move¬
ments in the direction of India were designed, not for conquest,
but to draw British attention from her real objectives in the Bal¬
kans; 2 but three years later, having been appointed Under¬
secretary for India, he wrote: £ I should regard the concession by
any Power of a port upon the Persian Gulf to Russia (that dear
dream of so many a patriot from the Neva or the Volga) as a
deliberate insult to Britain, as a wanton rupture of the status quo,

1 K. W. B. Middleton observes that ‘As a maritime Power, with compara¬
tively weak land-forces, Britain has always been particularly nervous about the
frontier of her Indian possessions, by far the most valuable and important part
of her subject empire. She has therefore tended to magnify out of proportion to
reality any development which could conceivably constitute a threat to Indian
security. 5 {Britain and Russia (1947), 11).

2 cf. W. E. Wheeler, in Journal of the Roved Central Asian Society } XXI (1934),
596 f.

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 89

and as an international provocation to war; and I should impeach
the British minister who was guilty of acquiescing in such a sur¬
render as a traitor to his country. 5 At the same time he applauded
Britain’s imposing on the Sultan of Oman the customary prohibi¬
tion from ceding or leasing any concessions, and commented,
c We subsidize its ruler; we dictate its policy; we should tolerate no
rival influence 5 . While the two Powers were locked in tense
rivalry for obtaining preponderance in Persia through loans and
commercial concessions, several countries were canvassing plans
for a railway connecting the Levant with the Persian Gulf. The
Russian Consul at Baghdad was scheming to obtain a Russian port
and naval base on the Gulf; and it was learnt in 1898 that an Austro-
Russian syndicate had applied to the Ottoman government for a
concession for a railway from Syrian Tripoli to Kuwait, the finest
natural harbour on the Persian Gulf. Britain had recently declined
a request for protection from Sheikh Mubarak of Kuwait, who
had come to the throne by murdering his pro-Turkish brother; but
in these new circumstances Lord Curzon, now Viceroy of India,
sent the Resident in the Persian Gulf to negotiate a secret agree¬
ment with the Sheikh, in which he too undertook to grant no
leases or concessions without Britain’s agreement. Curzon now
summed up British policy in this region in a series of Olympian
rhetorical questions. 'Are we prepared to surrender control of the
Persian Gulf and divide that of the Indian Ocean? Are we prepared
to make the construction of the Euphrates Valley Railroad or some
kindred scheme an impossibility for England and an ultimate cer¬
tainty for Russia? Is Baghdad to become a new Russian capital in
the south? Lastly, are we content to see a naval station within a few
day’s sail ofKarachi, and to contemplate a naval squadron battering
Bombay? 5

At this stage no one could have foreseen that within seven years
of the beginning of the new century these longstanding and bitter
conflicts of interest between Britain on the one hand, and Russia
and France on the other, were destined to be temporarily liquidated
in the powerful flux of a still more formidable challenge to all three
Powers from the recently-born German Empire.

•k k *

Until 1870 German interests in the Middle East had been con¬
fined to missionary activities in Syria and Palestine and to a small

90 A Short History of the Middle East

volume of trade, and her political influence had been negligible.
But the War of 1870 naturally increased her prestige greatly with
the Turks, ever respectful of military power and success. The in¬
fluence of France in the Ottoman Empire was correspondingly
reduced. The steps Britain had recently taken to render her in¬
fluence in the Persian Gulf exclusive were resented by the Turks as
an encroachment on their nebulous territorial sovereignty over the
coasts of Arabia, which they were at this time attempting to make
more real; and Britain’s occupation of Cyprus in 1878 and Egypt in
1882 prejudiced her further in the eyes of the Turks. Consequently,
when in 1872 the Ottoman government was seeking an adviser for
the construction of the Balkan railway-system, it was a German
engineer whom they called in; and in 1883 the German Ambassa¬
dor had little difficulty in persuading Sultan Abdul Hamid II to
invite the Kaiser to send a German military mission to Turkey.

By 1886 the Balkan railways were approaching completion, and
the forward-looking Sultan was already contemplating their ex¬
tension to his Asiatic provinces in order to strengthen his ad¬
ministrative control and assist their economic development. After
overtures to British and American financiers had met with no
response, a German syndicate undertook in 1888 the extension of
the railway to Ankara, under the name of the Anatolian Railway
Co. The new company was not exclusively German: more than a
quarter of its first loan was subscribed in Britain, and the British
chairman of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration became one
of its directors. In 1889 Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had succeeded his
father in the previous year at the age of twenty-nine, visited
Istanbul, and the Deutsche Levant Linie was formed for steamship
services between the North Sea and the Levant. This was followed
by a German-Turkish trade agreement in 1890, and from this time
onwards German consuls in the Ottoman Empire were assiduous
in the help they gave to German commercial interests. The Kaiser’s
visit to Istanbul and this forward commercial policy were not
favoured by the veteran Bismarck, who was primarily concerned
in keeping France weak and isolated, and in avoiding any other
foreign disagreements: he thus disliked the idea of commercial ex¬
pansion in Asia Minor as likely to arouse the hostility of Russia,
whom he had continually sought to draw into friendly association
with Germany and Austria. But in 1890 the young Kaiser dis¬
missed the old Chancellor and became himself the pilot of foreign

92 A Short History of the Middle East

policy. Bismarck’s intentness on not disturbing the status quo was
indeed becoming obsolete: Germany’s rapidly increasing popula¬
tion, in a country where the possibility of expanding food-produc¬
tion had evident limits, impelled her to a policy of industrial ex¬
pansion with a quest for foreign markets; and her naval inferiority
suggested that the direction of such commercial expansion should
be continental, rather than oceanic.

By 1893 the railway to Ankara had been completed, and the
preliminary survey of the further route to Baghdad begun. The
first proposal, for a route via Sivas and Diyarbekir, was opposed by
Russia on the grounds that it would lie too near her Caucasian
frontier and might be used strategically against her; and eventually
in 1898 the Anatolian Railway Co. applied for a concession for the
route Konya-Aleppo-Mosul-Baghdad. Although there were cer¬
tain competing interests, German commercial influence was now
preponderant in Turkey beyond any doubt, and she was supplying
a large proportion of Turkey’s armament needs. Consequently
the German company obtained the concession, buying out French
opposition by an agreement which gave French railway and bank¬
ing interests an equal share in the undertaking.

At this stage the British attitude to the German project was still
favourable. The threat to Britain’s position in the Middle East still
came overwhelmingly from Russia and France. In 1892 the
British Ambassador in Berlin had urged the Germans to develop a
commercial interest in the Persian Gulf as a counterpoise to Russia
in that region, and in 1898 the British reaction to the German rail¬
way-concession was favourable. Lord Salisbury was reported to
have said, 4 We welcome these concessions, for in this way Germany
comes into line with our interests in the Persian Gulf’. The Times
commented that if the development of the Turkish railways was
.not to be in British hands, the Germans were to be preferred to any
other. The Morning Post remarked that the concession gave Ger¬
many a reason for resisting aggression in Asia Minor from the
North. Imperialists of the standing of Cecil Rhodes and Joseph
Chamberlain also gave the scheme their blessing. The Under¬
secretary for Foreign Affairs alone sounded a warning note by
stating that the government had every intention of maintaining
the status quo in the Persian Gulf.

In 1900 the German technical mission which was planning the
route the railway was to follow visited Kuwait and made a tempt-

93

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East

ing offer to the Sheikh for a concession for a terminus and port.
When he resisted their offer in accordance with his secret agree¬
ment with the Government of India a year before, the Germans
induced the Ottoman Government, which the Sheikh nominally
regarded as his suzerain, to send an expedition to assert its authority
over him; but the presence of a British gunboat at the head of the
Gulf caused them to desist. In other parts of the Gulf German
traders were beginning to find the British "exclusive agreements’
an obstacle to their enterprises.

In 1903 the Anatolian Railway Co. had carried its plans for the
Baghdad Railway to the stage at which it required to raise addi¬
tional capital for their execution, and invited British capitalists to
participate on equal terms with the existing German and French
interests. The Balfour government favoured the acceptance of the
offer, but the Cabinet was not unanimous, remembering perhaps
Curzon’s dictum of 1892 that "Baghdad must be included in the
sphere of indisputable British supremacy’. The proposal was hotly
attacked by the imperialist and big-business section of the press,
which was concerned by the progress made by German com¬
mercial competition In capturing overseas markets from Britain,
and resented the German support for the Boers in the South African
War; moreover, German publicists had been tactless and provoca¬
tive in discussing the opportunities which a war in the Middle East
involving Britain would present for German expansion. Conse¬
quently the government declined the German offer, and the
Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, redefined Britain’s policy in
the Persian Gulf: her aim was to promote and protect British trade
without excluding the legitimate trade of other powers; the estab-
lishment of a naval base or fortified port in the Gulf by any other
power would be a very grave menace, "and we should certainly
resist it with all the means at our disposal. I say that in no minatory
spirit because, as far as I am aware, there are no proposals on foot
for the establishment of a foreign naval base in the Gulf.’

The following year, 1904, saw the culmination in the Entente
Cordiale of the negotiations into which the British and French
governments had been impelled by their growing fear of the ex¬
pansionist policy of their "vigorous and talented competitor’
Germany. In this emergency all the outstanding points at issue
between Britain and France were settled. In particular, France at
last acknowledged Britain’s de facto position in Egypt, though she

94 A Short History of the Middle East

insisted to the end on her stating a time-limit for her occupation,
and only yielded on Britain’s undertaking not to alter the legal
status quo. 1 In 1907 the Entente Cordiale was extended to include
Russia, whose prestige and sense of security had been abased by her
defeat in the Japanese War of 1904-5, a nd who was consequently
more ready to compromise with her long-standing British rival.
An Anglo-Russian Agreement was reached ‘to obviate any cause
of misunderstanding in Persian affairs’ and to delimit the Russian
and British sphcres-of-intcrest in North and South Persia respec¬
tively, leaving a no-man’s-land between them. The Russian
government acknowledged that Afghanistan lay within the
British sphere of influence, while Britain undertook not to en¬
courage the Amir to take any action threatening Russia. The
Russian government ‘explicitly stated that it did not deny Britain’s
special interest’ in the Persian Gulf. The Agreement has subse¬
quently been severely criticized by political moralists as a cynical
partitioning of Persia, ‘absolute respect for whose independence
and integrity’ was declared to be the fundamental principle of the
two Powers; but the fact is that Persia had ceased to be a Great
Power since the time of Shah Abbas the Great, three hundred years
before; she had become a minor piece in the game of Great-Power
chess at the time of Napoleon; and had ceased to be effectively
independent since Russia imposed on her the Treaty of Turkman-
rhai in 1828. In her weakness Persian politicians had been reduced
to playing offBritain and Russia against one another. The Agree¬
ment did at least have the effect of temporarily reducing the tension
of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Persia; and it consolidated Britain’s
position in South Persia, where British concessionaires at last
struck oil at Masjid-i-Sulaiman in 1908, actually after the directors
in London, disappointed by several years’ efforts without results,
had cabled orders for the work to be abandoned. In 1909 the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. was formed with a capital of ^2,000,000,
the Shell Co. being the principal participant.

The ‘Committee of Union and Progress’ which made tire
Young Turk Revolution of 1908 aimed at substituting a liberal
and constitutional government for the autocracy of Abdul Hamid,
and so looked initially for support to liberal and constitutional
Britain and France rather than to autocratic Germany. However,
the enthusiasm for liberalism and modernization was short-lived,

1 Round Table, December 1936, 111,

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 95

and was soon followed by a nationalist reaction of which the
Armenian massacres of 1909 were a feature. While the British and
French press denounced these atrocities, the Germans were silent.
In the next year, after the Turks had applied to France and Britain
for a loan without success, they eventually obtained it from Ger¬
many on conditions which, unlike those proposed by France, were
‘consistent with the dignity of Turkey’.

Meanwhile, in 1907 the new Liberal government in Britain had
announced that its objection to a railway to the Persian Gulf would
be removed if the construction and operation of the section south
of Baghdad were left to British capitalists. Negotiations were
protracted over a period of six years, and eventually resulted in an
agreement between Britain, Germany, and Turkey in 1913-14.
Britain finally consented to the construction of the Baghdad Rail¬
way on terms which may be summarized as follows:

(1) Basra was to be the terminus. The existing status of Kuwait
was confirmed. No harbour or railway-station was to be built on
the Persian Gulf, and Germany was not to support the effort of any
other Power to this end.

(2) Britain was to have two directors on the board of the Bagh¬
dad Railway Co.

(3) An Ottoman River Navigation Co. with exclusive rights
on the rivers of Iraq, and an Ottoman Ports Co. to build and ad¬
minister ports and termini at Baghdad and Basra, were to be form¬
ed on British initiative, generous shares being allotted to the
Turkish government and the Baghdad Railway Co.

(4) The Germans recognized the exclusive right of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Co. to prospect for and extract oil in South Persia and
the vilayet of Basra. The oil-exploitation of the vilayets of Bagh¬
dad and Mosul was to be entrusted exclusively to a Turkish
Petroleum Co., in which British interests were to hold three-
quarters, and German interests one-quarter, of the shares.

It seemed, therefore, as if a compromise over this tangled question
had at last been reached, and Britain’s jealously-guarded control
over the Persian Gulf preserved in its essentials. Bur it has been
rightly said that Germany’s interest in the Railway, like Britain’s
interest in the Persian Gulf, was now as much imperial as economic.
The ‘Drang nach Osten’ had become a principal aspiration of
German imperialists, while on the other hand their Social-Demo¬
crats warned against the Railway as the ‘first great triumph of

g 6 A Short History of the Middle East

German capitalist-imperialism’ and. likely to embitter relations
with Britain. A Turkish liberal Minister of Finance had said,
‘When you entered the board-room of the Baghdad Railway Co.,
you breathed the atmosphere of the Minister’s office in the Wil-
helmstrasse’. Germany had made great efforts to gain influence in
Persia also, exploiting the extreme Persian dislike of the Anglo-
Russian Agreement of 1907. Her Ministers ‘fished assiduously in
the troubled waters of Tehran’; there was a steady increase in
German imports; and a new college at Tehran received a handsome
subsidy from the German government and was staffed with Ger¬
man teachers. The energetic and resourceful German Consul at
Bushire, Wassmuss, recruited a strong pro-German faction among
the tribesmen of Fars province. The officers of the Persian gendar¬
merie, and the Swedish officers who had been training them, be¬
came in effect German agents. So successful was this German pene¬
tration of the British and neutral zones of Persia that, following the
outbreak of the First World War, by the end of 1915 German in¬
fluence was predominant there, except for the Gulf ports. The
Allied colonies had to be withdrawn, and seven branches of the
British-controlled Imperial Bank of Persia fell into enemy hands.
The German Meissner Pasha had undertaken for Abdul Hamid the
building of the Hijaz Railway which, besides its ostensible purpose
of taking Muslim pilgrims to the Holy Cities, had the strategic
advantage of affording the rapid movement of Turkish troops to
Western Arabia without passing through the Suez Canal. In Egypt
the Germans were at some pains to establish friendly relations with
the growing Nationalist party. 1

Britain likewise had not been slow to strengthen her position in
the Middle East. Already in January 1912 a special committee set
up by the Government of India had proposed the occupation of
Basra in the event of war. In 1913 the Admiralty, having decided
to convert the Navy to the use of oil-fuel, bought a controlling
interest in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which had by now sunk two
hundred wells and completed the pipeline from its fields to the
Abadan refinery. The Sheikh ofMuhammara, Arab by race but a
Persian subject, who ruled the Abadan district, was assured of
British support in maintaining his local authority against the
Sultan and the Shah alike. In anticipation that oil might be found
in Bahrain, its Sheikh had been induced in 1911 to undertake to

1 Sir Ronald Storrs, Orientations^ definitive ed. (1943), 120 fF,

Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 97

grant no concessions without the agreement of the Government

of India.

Meanwhile in Europe the naval and military armament-race
had gone on inexorably gathering momentum, like a huge fly¬
wheel which those who had set it in motion were apparently
powerless to stop. Turkey was drawn irretrievably into the Ger¬
man orbit by her nationalist leaders. After all, the privileged posi¬
tions of Britain and France in Lower Iraq and Syria respectively
were encroachments on full Turkish sovereignty; Russia, ever
anxious to expand at the expense of Turkey, was constantly en¬
couraging the Balkan, Armenian, and Kurdish nationalists; where¬
as Germany was the one Power whose Interest it was to favour a
stronger Turkey. In October 1913, two months after the French
General Joffre had gone to Petersburg to re-organize the Russian
army, the German General Liman von Sanders was chosen to re¬
organize the Turkish army, and introduced hundreds of German
staff and regimental officers. When the Triple Entente Powers
protested, the Turks pointed out that their navy was trained by
British officers, their gendarmerie by French, and that the military
connexion with Germany went back thirty years. In March 1914
plans were concerted between Germany and Turkey for the co¬
ordination of their railway-systems in the event of war; and fol¬
lowing the murder of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, which
precipitated the First World War, Turkey was formally admitted
as a member of the Triple Alliance.

CHAPTER V

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism

(1800-1917)

A t the beginning of the nineteenth century Muslim civiliza¬
tion in the Middle East, once far in advance of anything
that the Europe of the ‘Dark Ages’ could show, was but a
ruin, picturesque when viewed superficially by the romantic travel¬
ler, but displaying all the marks of squalor and decay when ap¬
proached more closely. Such innovations as had been effected by
missionaries in the Levant, under the Amir Fakhr ud-Din in the
early seventeenth century for example, were limited in their
geographical scope and did not penetrate deeply into the lives of the
people; the Muslim majority was practically untouched by them.
Agriculture, the mainstay of the economy of the region, languished
under a regime which taxed unmercifully and could not provide
security against administrative extortion or the raids of the
Bedouin. In the cities little public building had been done for
three hundred years, and the imposing remains of the Mamluks or
earlier dynasties were crumbling unheeded and unrepaired amid
the encroaching congestion of ramshackle dwellings. Outside the
decaying city-walls vast mounds of rubble and garbage accumu¬
lated for centuries, the haunt of lawless beggars and scavenging
dogs, extended like veritable ranges of hills towering fifty feet or
more above the natural ground-level, or invaded waste plots
within the city itself. Water-supply, sanitation, the care of the sick,
depended on such benefactions as had survived the slow ruin of the
centuries or were left for the individual to arrange for himself.
Periodic famine and epidemic were regarded as a normal visitation
of the wrath of Allah, not as inconveniences which might be pre¬
vented by human action. Government was rapacious, arbitrary,
venal, slipshod; the life of the subject depended on the whim of the
ruler, and might be lightly taken for the slightest fault . 1 Higher

1 e.g. Lord Zetland , Lord Cromer, 161 f.; Clara Boyle, A Servant of Empire,
45 ff.

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 99

education was confined to the study of the theology and juris¬
prudence of Islam; elementary education, to the learning of the
Qur’an by heart; and only the exceptional individual could read a
book or write more than his own name. The establishment of
Islam had inhibited the development of political ideas. Travel was
slow and beyond the means of the majority: Damascus was three
weeks’ journey by caravan from either Baghdad or Cairo; such
rare travel-books as existed were accessible only to a few; and the
average man’s experience and imagination were therefore con¬
fined to his immediate environment. Consequently the idea of
nationality was unknown; all were subjects of the Padishah, but no
one thought of himself as belonging to a Syrian or an Iraqi, still less
an Arab nation. Instead men were distinguished by their millet, or
by the town of their origin: as Sunni Muslim, Orthodox, Jew,
Druze, Armenian, or Slii’i; as Baghdadi, Halabi (Aleppine),
Shami (Damascene), or Misri (Cairene).

The dominating purpose of Mohammed Ah was to secure his
personal position in Egypt, by making the country a formidable
military and naval power, and to this end he consistently devoted
one-half of the revenues of the state. The well-being of the people,
to whom he was foreign, did not interest him in the slightest; but
to provide the necessary finances for his military schemes, he had to
raise the agricultural productivity of Egypt from the miserable
state to which nearly five hundred years of misrule had reduced it,
and to create industries which did not yet exist. By 1814 he had
' bought out or expropriated almost all the landowners of the
Mamluk period, vesting the ownership in his own government,
i.e. in himself, but leaving the use and cultivation of the lands in the
hands of the existing tenants. From about 1820 he began the con¬
struction of numerous canals in the Delta for the purpose of culti¬
vating that district by perennial irrigation in place of the artificial
basins into which the annual Nile flood was admitted to fertilize
the ground for the main winter crop. By superseding the age-old
basin-irrigation by this new system, incomplete and imperfect
though it was in its beginnings, two or three crops could be grown
from a plot in one year, producing profitable yields of cotton,
indigo, flax, or rice as well as the basic winter grain-crop. Thus it
is estimated that between 1824 and 1840 the area under cultivation
was increased by about a quarter, hi spite of the heavy demand on
man-power for military and industrial conscription. Agricultural

100

A Short History of the Middle East

policy was closely centralized, as it had been under the Greek rulers
of Egypt after the conquest of Alexander the Great. Mohammed
Ali directed what crops should be grown, giving preference to
those which were exportable at a good profit, especially cotton.
Seeds were lent to the cultivators, and funds advanced to cover the
cost of cultivation. A large staff of inspectors was employed to
ensure that the Pasha’s orders were faithfully carried out. Most
classes of crops were declared government monopolies, compul¬
sorily purchased by the government at a fixed price which was
sometimes a half or less of their market-value. The goods were
then either consumed for state needs, as supplies for the army or
raw materials for the state factories, or they were sold abroad at
a handsome profit. In 1836 it was estimated that 95 per cent, of
Egypt’s exports, and 40 per cent, of her imports, were for the
government’s account. In 1816 the existing manufactures had
similarly been declared government monopolies. The government,
at a considerable profit to itself, supplied the artisans with the raw
materials it had purchased from the fellahin, bought back the
finished articles at an imposed low price, and resold them at the
highest prices possible. The Pasha established a number of new
industries, mainly to supply goods for the public service or for
export. They were conducted on the whole at a loss, on account of
the high cost of imported machines and spare parts, the lack of
suitable overseers and engineers, the apathy and discontent of the
workers, dragged from their field and workshops to labour in
‘dark Satanic mills’, the waste of raw material, the breakage of'
machinery, delays, confusion, even deliberate sabotage and ob¬
struction in the working of the factories. A British observer found
in 183 8 that cotton cloth produced in Egypt cost 16 per cent, more
than imported English cloth of the same quality. By 1840 the strain
of the accumulated losses on these undertakings had become un¬
bearable, and the ultimate failure of the industrial enterprise had
become evident even to the Pasha. During the Second Syrian War
many factories were closed to save expense, and thousands of the
workpeople were conscripted into the army. Orders were given
that all factories that could not show a profit on their operations
were to be closed down. Many of them were closed immediately,
others dragged on for a few years. Their ruin was completed in
1842 when, as part of the settlement of the Syrian War, the British
Government compelled the Pasha to accept the application to

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism ioi

Egypt of the Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Treaty of 1838, by
which British merchants were given the right to enter any part of
the Ottoman dominion and buy from the natives the products of
the soil and of the industry of the country. A few years later all
that remained of the vast industrial structure, which had cost
millions to create, was a quantity of rusting machinery in old,
deserted buildings, scattered throughout the country. The
attempt to make Egypt an industrial country had failed.

Its failure was perhaps inevitable. The attempt to impose upon a
primitive agricultural and guild economy a totally new system of
industrial production was bound to meet with very great ob-
stacles. .. . The managers of the factories were for the most part
salaried government officials, ignorant and unenthusiastic about
the work they were called upon to do. The machines imported
were still novelties and enormously expensive, while very few in
Egypt had mastered the new machine technique. ... The attempt
to stimulate agricultural production was no more successful. The
low prices which were paid to the farmers for their crops took
away their incentive to work. .. . They had to be literally driven
to the fields and obliged to work by threats and punishments.
Thousands of them deserted their farms. From time to time the
fugitives were rounded up, in the towns and marshes in which they
had taken refuge, and were sent back to the villages. . .. The
monopoly system did not help in the production of new wealth.
Its only effect was to keep down the standard of living of the
farmers, and to divert into the hands of the government the
additional wealth created by higher prices and increased pro¬
duction.’ x

The experience of our own day has shown how difficult it is to
bring about the rapid modernization and industrialization of an
undeveloped agricultural economy by imposing a bureaucratic
collectivized regime. The resistance which the Soviet govern¬
ment has encountered in this respect is well-known; and Moham¬
med Ah, despite his great energy and iron determination, lacked a
popular ideological appeal which could evoke the co-operation of
thousands of assistants. He was dealing, not merely with a back¬
ward peasantry, but with one exceptionally apathetic by reason of

1 Crouchley, op. cit., 74 f., 103 f. The similarity to the labour-situation
created by the bureaucratic control attempted by the Greek and Roman rulers of
Egypt is very striking.

102

A Short History of the Middle East

its isolation in the closed environment of the Nile Valley 1 and its
debilitation by endemic disease; and he had no instrument for the
execution of his plans comparable for energy, devotion, training,
powers of leadership, and ruthlessness towards opposition or
incompetence, with the Communist party in the U.S.S.R. 2
Another instructive comparison is with the Westernization of the
Japanese economy in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Here again the initial advantages were all with the Japanese since,
although their economic and social system was already being
undermined by degenerative processes, Japan even in her isolation
was a far more healthy organism than decayed and depopulated
Egypt. The Emperor was an institution with divine attributes that
could be used as a focus for the absolute loyalty and fanatical devo¬
tion of a people who had learnt by tradition to regard these as the
supreme virtues of their race. The ruling-class, while enjoying
prestige and self-confidence, was not rigidly separated from the
rest of the population, but provided opportunities for men of
talent to rise into its ranks. ‘In every class there was a capacity for
co-operation and organized effort which was in part the product of
a long experience of group action in the family, the clan, and the
guild.’ 3

In the light of these comparisons, so unfavourable to the ex¬
hausted condition of Egypt at the accession of Mohammed Ah, the
cause for surprise is not that he failed to achieve his plans for
material re-organization, but that he was able to effect what must
have seemed impossible fifty years before, the lifting of Egypt out
of the morass in which centuries of misrule were smothering her.
He permanently increased the agricultural productivity of the
country by the introduction of perennial irrigation, though at the
cost of thereby lowering the natural fertility of the soil, formerly
enriched annually by the Nile mud but now requiring the addition
of fertilizers. It is some index of the improved agricultural pro¬
ductivity that, after centuries in which the population of Egypt
had declined to perhaps only one-third or one-quarter of its ancient
maximum, it should, according to estimates, have increased by
some 75 per cent, in one generation between 1821 and 1847, not-

1 This factor is well brought out by D. G. Hogarth, A Wandering Scholar in
the Levant (1896), 156 ff.

2 This comparison has been independently developed by Dr. A. Bonn6,
in Journal of the Middle East Society, I, No. 3-4 (Jerusalem, 1947), 40 ff.

3 G. C. Allen, A Short Economic History of Modern Japan, 156.

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 103

withstanding the drain of war and conscription. Mohammed Ali
moreover introduced to some thousands of young Egyptians the
elements of Western education and culture. 1 And, not least, he
left his country free from debt.

★ ★ *

During his nine years government of Syria and Lebanon (1831-
40), Ibrahim Pasha followed his father’s example in encouraging
education with a military and technical intention. While govern¬
ment elementary and secondary schools were opened for Muslims
in the principal towns, he provided for the Christian majority in
the Lebanon, a community outstanding in the Middle East for its
combination of intelligence with application and adaptability, by
encouraging the establishment of foreign missions. The French
Jesuits were allowed to return in 1831 and rapidly opened schools,
finally founding their Universite de St. Joseph at Beirut in 1875.
The American Presbyterian Mission wlrich had first arrived at
Beirut in 1820 established a printing-press in that town in 183 4. 2
By i860 they had thirty-three schools with a thousand children,
and in 1866 they founded the Syrian Protestant College, subse¬
quently renamed the American University of Beirut. While the
Jesuits’ printing-press produced from 1853 onwards a series of
scholarly works in French or Latin, the Americans devoted them¬
selves to the production of school-texts in Arabic. Thus, while the
French Catholics made a valuable contribution to the progress of
Syrian education in general, the Americans played the greater part
, in the revival of Arabic as a literary language, after three centuries
of neglect in favour of the official Turkish, and so unconsciously
inspired the first Arab nationalist aspirations, in the propagation of
which some of their students and locally-recruited teachers played
a leading part. What began as cultural societies came to assume an
air of political conspiracy in the sacred name ofliberty from Otto¬
man oppression. About 1880 a secret society of twenty-two
members, including Muslims and Druze but founded by young
Christians educated at the Syrian Protestant College, displayed a

1 The number of students who passed through the government schools has
been estimated at 10-12,000 (J. Lugol, Le Panarabisme (Cairo, 1946), 166 f.,
quoting A. Sammarco).

2 While the first printing-press at Istanbul was set up in 1727, it was not
until the arrival of Napoleon in Cairo that this instrument of intellectual
awakening reached any of the cities of the Arabic-speaking East.

104 A Short History of the Middle East

series of placards in the cities of Syria, demanding in increasingly
violent language the adoption of Arabic as the official language,
the freedom of the press from censorship, self-government for
Syria in union with Lebanon, etc. About 1883, however, the young
conspirators became so nervous of the ubiquitous Ottoman secret
police that they closed down the society and destroyed their re¬
cords, while several of the most active members found it prudent to
retire to the tolerance ofEgypt under its new British rulers. George
Antonius, who alone records this first incident in the history of
Syrian nationalism, has been at some pains to demonstrate, by
eliciting after some fifty years the testimony of surviving partici¬
pants or contemporary Arab observers, that the appeal of this
‘enlightened elite’ to Arab national sentiment had a widespread
effect; 1 but in spite ofhis argument that their secret activities could
not, in the nature of things, have been fully appraised by the British
consular agents then resident in Beirut, his patriotism seems to have
led him to exaggerate the influence of these pioneers, and the con¬
suls’ assessment of the movement as £ a damp squib which excited an
apathetic population only to a faint show of curiosity’ is borne out
by the sequel. For the next twenty-five years Arab nationalist
activity was conducted in the main from the safe remoteness of
Cairo and Paris. In Syria, except for the temporary excitement
provoked by an agitator who was imprisoned in the ’nineties for
his outspoken denunciations of Ottoman tyranny, the movement
lay prone as though in sleep, held down by Abdul Hamid’s
tyranny, and drugged by the opiates of his pan-Islamic policy’.
The resourceful Sultan, 2 indeed, besides encouraging the revival
of Muslim sentiment by such measures as the construction of the
Hijaz Railway to Madina, had systematically bestowed benefac¬
tions on Arab learned institutions, had spent large sums on the
Muslim Holy Cities, had employed large numbers of Arabs in his
personal service, and had had an Arab battalion in his royal Guards.
In these ways, and through his far-reaching spy-system, the in¬
cipient growth of political thought among his Arab subjects was
diverted from a nationalist direction into the safer channel of
pan-Islam. A number of Christian Arabs, on the other hand, and a
few Muslim modernists, were seduced from their cultural tradition

1 op. cit., 79 ff.

2 He was still regarded by the townsmen of Iraq with ‘very remarkable
veneration' as late as 1925 (Longrigg, op. cit., 312, n. 1).

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism lo$

by the European education provided by the French mission-
schools and became ‘Levantines’, ‘living in two worlds or more at
once, without belonging to either;... no longer having a standard
of values of their own, unable to create but able only to imitate;
and so not even to imitate correctly, since that also needs a certain
originality 5 , in the penetrating diagnosis of Albert Hourani. 1

★ ★ ★

In Persia and Iraq the impact of Europe was much more lightly
felt. While the coasts of the Levant and Egypt were directly ex-
posed to the influences of Europe, they reached Tehran and Bagh¬
dad only after they had passed through the filters of Moscow,
Bombay, or Istanbul, which greatly lessened their vitality and
penetrating power. The influence of Christian missions was con¬
fined in the main to the small Christian minorities. More impor¬
tant was the impact of European commerce and techniques, the
influence of European traders and mechanics, of travellers and
archaeologists. In Persia the printing-press had reached Tabriz in
1812 and Tehran in 1823. Persian medical and other students were
sent to England as early as 1810-15. In 1852 the Persian govern¬
ment granted a large subsidy to found and maintain the Dar al-
Funun or House of Sciences, intended to educate a hundred boys,
primarily as army-officers. The subjects taught included some
sciences and French, English, and Russian; and there were Euro¬
pean as well as Persian teachers. In 1855 the Persian Ministry of
Education was set up, and three years later forty-two students
were sent to Europe. However, during his long reign the policy of
Nasir ud-Din Shah (1848-96) was to discourage his subjects from
visiting Europe, and he did not as a rule allow the sons of notables
to be educated abroad. Modernism had thus to come in trickles
through the indirect and uncertain channels of mission-schools and
hospitals, European military missions, consuls, bank and tele-
graph-company officials, and traders. In Baghdad schools and
the first printing-press were established under Da’ud Pasha
(1817-32), and by the middle of the century the efforts that were
being made in Istanbul to modernize the Ottoman administration
were beginning slowly to take effect even in this remote and neg¬
lected province. ‘If government be judged by the freedom and

1 Syria and Lebanon, 70 f.

io6 A Short History of the Middle East

happiness of its subjects, the new era showed no great advance on
the old: security was as low, justice as rare, exaction as cruel, policy
as foolish. In certain aspects indeed there was progress-In¬

creasingly officials appointed to high office had something of
modern education. There was greater specialization of function.
There were, in fact, the bones of reasonable government into
which the rare ability and goodwill of a governor might yet infuse
life.’ 1 For example, the ‘honest, vigorous, and liberal’ Mohammed
Rashid Pasha, who governed for five years from 1853, re-opened a
score of disused irrigation-canals and founded a company for river-
navigation; and he was only the precursor of Midhat Pasha who
in three short years 1869-72 began to organize for the first time a
system of land-registration, in an attempt to put an end to tribal
lawlessness. He made plans for river-reclamation, river-naviga¬
tion, industrialization, town improvements. He founded muni¬
cipalities and administrative councils, enforced conscription, tried
but failed to suppress corruption, and in Baghdad started a news¬
paper, military factories, a hospital, an alms-house, an orphanage,
and numerous schools whereby the literacy-rate among towns¬
people rose from perhaps per cent, in 1850 to some 5 to 10 per
cent, by 1900. In this mass of projects completed or attempted ‘it
is not difficult to find traces of hastiness, of economic considera¬
tions mistaken or ignored, of excessive confidence in the catch¬
words of progress, of a preference for the spectacular to the
judicious... . Yet his vision, his patriotic energy, his absolute
integrity performed greater works than his imperfect education
could mar’, and as recently as twenty years ago his name was still
‘constantly on the lips of townsmen and tribesmen, and always as
an enlightened innovator’. 2 Midhat applied in its entirety the
modernized Ottoman administrative system. ‘A numerous class
of regular officials, the Effendis, stepped into the place of the old
arbitrary Pashas. Literate but not otherwise educated, backward
but decorous in social habit, uniform in a travesty of European
dress, exact and over-refined in the letter of officialdom, com¬
pletely remote from a spirit of public service, identifying the body-
public with their own class, contemptuous of tribe and cultivator,
persistent speakers of Turkish among Arabs and, finally, almost
universally corrupt and venal—such were the public servants in

1 Longrigg, op. cit., 281.

2 Longrigg, op. cit., 298 ff.

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 107

whose sole hands lay the functions of government.’ 1 The period is
marked by 'the change of turban to fez, of flowing beard to the
stubble of the half-shaven, of careless medieval rule to corrupt
sophistication’. 2 In spite of the coming of steamship and telegraph
and a rudimentary postal-system, the historian of modern Iraq
concludes: 'The country passed from the nineteenth century little
less wild and ignorant, as unfitted for self-government, and not
less corrupt, than It had entered the sixteenth; nor had its standards
of material life outstripped its standards of mind and character. Its
resources lay untouched, however clearly indicated by the famous
ages of the past and by the very face of the country. Government’s
essential duty of leading tribe and town together in the way of
progress had scarcely been recognized, barely begun .. .; in the
yet clearer task of securing liberty and rights to the governed, how¬
ever backward, it had failed more signally perhaps than any govern¬
ment of the time called civilized.’ 3

★ ★ ★

The discretion, the judgment, the basic financial soundness
which, in spite of many errors and miscalculations in detail, char¬
acterized the work of Mohammed Ah, were lacking in his suc¬
cessors in Egypt. When Sa’id Pasha died in 1863 he left debts of
about ^12,000,000, composed of his obligations to the Suez
Canal Co. for his 44 per cent, share of the capital issue, of public
works of various kinds, personal loans, etc. But whereas the key¬
note of Sa’id’s character had been easygoing indolence and com¬
placency, his thirty-three-years-old successor Isma’il was a man of
large and ambitious ideas which had been stimulated by his
education in Paris. Moreover, he came to the throne at the height
of the American Civil War, when the interruption of the supply
of American cotton to Lancashire led to a tremendous boom in
Egyptian cotton. Between 1861 and 1864 the export of cotton in¬
creased threefold and its value more than fourfold. Consequently
Isma’il was led by prosperity into extravagant dreams of expanding
and modernizing his country’s economy. He began by taking ex¬
ception to some of the more audacious terms ofthe Suez Canal Co.’s
concession which De Lesseps had foisted upon his complacent pre-

1 Longrigg, op. cit., 281 f.

2 Longrigg, op. cit., 277.

s Longrigg, op. cit., 321 f.

io8 A Short History of the Middle East

decessor, and. to indemnify the Company and meet other liabilities
Isma’il raised in 1864 his first foreign loan, a matter of £5,700,000
from the ‘British 5 banking-house of Friihling and Goschen. 1 In the
years 1863-5 an outbreak of cattle-disease swept Egypt; in order to
restore the herds and carry out a plan for extending the railways,
Ismail went to Friihling and Goschen again in 1866 for another
loan of .£3,000,000. Heavy expenditure on the army and public
works—railways, telegraphs, canals, etc.—caused his budget for
1867 to be in deficit by some £4,000,000. He accordingly con¬
tracted with the ‘British 5 bank of Oppenlieim & Co. a new loan of
.£11,900,000, which was so discounted by the bank that he actually
received only £7,200,000. The end of the American Civil War
having been followed by a fall in the sale of Egyptian cotton, Ismail
had attempted to redress the economic situation by encouraging the
planting and processing of sugar on a large scale. To finance this
he went in 1870 to the firm of Bischoffsheim for a new loan of
£7,000,000, which discounting reduced to about £5,000,000 in
ready cash. He conceived an ambitious scheme for opening up the
Sudan to modern influences and suppressing the slave-trade
‘throughout Central Africa 5 , an enterprise in which he was enthu¬
siastically abetted by the British soldier Sir Samuel Baker, who
promised him that he would place the Egyptian flag ‘at least one
degree south of the Equator 5 . The total cost of this, and other ex¬
peditions to extend Egyptian dominion along the Somali coast to
Cape Guardafui and as far south as Kisimayu (from where he was
warned off by the British government, on behalf of its protege the
Sultan of Zanzibar) is not known; but Baker’s four-year expedi¬
tion to the Equatorial Sudan cost about half-a-million. Baker him¬
self received £10,000 a year and all expenses; he was accompanied
by his wife and nephew; and his successor Gordon was amazed to
discover the superb china, the Bohemian glass, fine cutlery,
damask linen, and the best French wines which had alleviated the
rigours of the expedition. With the lavish expense on such enter¬
prises, on railways and irrigation-canals, the Suez Canal, on
European-style schools, harbours, bridges, shipping, urban deve¬
lopment, telegraphs, water-works, and lighthouses, on the Army,
on presents to the Sultan and bakhshish to his ministers and court¬
iers, on personal display, pageantry, and self-indulgence, on

1 Sa’id had already three times taken the insidiously tempting bait of foreign
loans, but for smaller sums.

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 109

interest and sinking-fund payments on the loans which never
amounted to less than 12 per cent, per annum on the principal, it is
not surprising that, despite a great increase in the taxes levied on
the fellahin, expenditure during Isma’il’s reign amounted to
nearly double the total revenue for the period. In 1873 the floating
debt had risen to £23,000,000; and in order to gain temporary
relief from this burden the Khedive 1 contracted with Oppenheini
& Co. a new loan of £32,000,000, but at a disastrous discount:
after discount, interest and commission had been deducted, he
received less than £20,000,000 in hard cash. In order to
execute his ambitious programme of public works, moreover,
Isma’il had had recourse to large numbers of European con¬
tractors (by 1871 the foreign population had increased to about
five and a half times its size in 1836), and many of these were un¬
scrupulous adventurers who undertook concessions only in order
to find some alleged breach-of-contract on the part of the Egyptian
government and extract an exorbitant indemnity in the appro¬
priate consular court to which the Capitulations gave them access.
When the Mixed Courts were set up in 1873 to regulate foreign
litigation, there was £40,000,000 in foreign claims outstanding
against the government: one case is on record in which the courts
awarded £1,000 to a claimant who had sued for .£1,200,000. So
accustomed was the Khedive to victimization by these sharks from
Europe that he is reported to have remarked sarcastically in the
presence of one of them, 'Shut that window; if this gentleman
catches cold, it will cost me £10,000’. Lord Milner, a far from
sympathetic critic of the extravagance of Isma’il, summed up the
situation: 'The European concession-hunter and loan-monger, the
Greekpubhcanandpawnbroker,theJewishandSyrianmoneylender
and land-grabber, who could always with ease obtain the protection
of some European Power, battened on the Egyptian Treasury
and the poor Egyptian cultivator to an almost incredible extent.’ 2

By the end of 1875 Ism’ail, whose debts now amounted to
£91,000,000, was four millions short on his next payment of inter¬
est. In this plight he decided to dispose of his 44 per cent, share in
the capital of the Suez Canal Co.; and, as is well known, Disraeli
bought these shares for Britain for just under £4,000,000. Isma’il’s

1 He had purchased this impressive but empty Persian title from the Sultan in
1866.

2 England in Egypt, thirteenth ed., 15; cf. also 176 ff.

no

A Short History of the Middle East

rueful comment was,‘This is the best financial and political trans¬
action ever made even by a British government; but a very bad one
for us’. 1 The end could not now be long delayed. By April 1876
the state was bankrupt; and an international Caisse de la Dette
Publique was set up, with British and French commissioners to
receive the Egyptian revenues, supervise the railways and the port
of Alexandria, and maintain the payments due to the creditors.
Tn short, the bailiffs were in’, and the Dual Control, British and
French, had begun to regulate the public life of Egypt.

Egyptian nationalists in our own day have claimed that Isma’il
was an enlightened ruler actuated primarily by the desire to
develop his country, and that it was his misfortune, due to inex¬
perience of the pitfalls in international finance, that submerged
him and Egypt under the burden of debt. 2 Closer examination of
his character, however, fails to exonerate him to this extent. He
was the first of Inis dynasty to be superficially Europeanized in
education and tastes. To instal in Egypt all the external evidences of
European material civilization, regardless of the cost, was for him
to be in the forefront of progress, to be hailed by the world as a
truly illustrious prince. He was actuated by personal ambition and
an inordinate love of display, rather than by prudent regard for the
lasting improvement of his country’s economy. Vast and costly
development-schemes were embarked on after entirely inadequate
study of their practicability. Intoxicated by the showers of gold
which descended on him so frequently in the first ten glorious
years ofhis reign, it was all one to the Khedive whether they were
expended on public works or an agricultural scheme, the annexa¬
tion of some remote Equatorial province, or on a new palace and
lavish entertainments; Milner doubted whether the portion of
Isma’il’s loans devoted to works of permanent utility, excluding
the Suez Canal, equalled 10 per cent, of the amount of debt which
he contracted; and meanwhile his agents drove and pillaged the
peasantry without mercy. 3

1 In 1S71 Gladstone had refused to discuss an offer to buy a share in the
Canal Co., regarding it as purely a matter for private financiers, and unbefitting a
government; but Disraeli with Levantine tuition grasped its imperial implica¬
tions, and immediately on coming to power in 1874 had sent Baron Lionel de
Rothschild to Paris to try to re-open negotiations for a purchase.

2 This is the case put fonvard by P. Crabites: Ismail, the Maligned Khedive,
and by M. Rifaat Bey, op. cit., ch viii, Tsmail the Magnificent*.

3 Milner, op. cit., 179. For a summary of the impressions of an unofficial
and sympathetic British resident in Egypt, cf. Gordon Waterfield, Lucie Duff
Gordon, ch. XLIIL

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism hi

The European penetration of Egypt in the previous fifty years
and the inauguration of a system of education along formally
European lines, had created a small class of young men with a
modern outlook, the Effendis. These young men, who through
their education had imbibed some of the liberal and nationalist
ideas of contemporary Western Europe, were further stimulated
by the agitation of the Saiyid Jamal ud-Din al-Afghani, a pro¬
pagandist for the liberation of all Islam from European influence
and exploitation, and its union under a strong Caliphate; expelled
from Istanbul in 1871, he lived and taught in Cairo for eight years.
Moreover, while Ismail’s public-works schemes had greatly im¬
proved Egypt’s communications, production, and trade, 1 they had
brought little profit to the masses who bore the main burden of the
heavy taxation, which had risen by 1875 to five times its figure in
1861. Thus a strong undercurrent of popular discontent was added
to the nationalists’ criticism of Ismail for his favouritism for
Europeans, his ruinous financial policy, and the preference he
showed for the Turco-Circassians, who survived from Mamluk
times as the ruling-class over the native Egyptians. The inferior
position of the native element in the army especially excited their
indignation* The first nationalist newspapers appeared in 1877,
and the slogan 'Egypt for the Egyptians’ began to be heard.

In 1878 a ministry led by the Armenian Nubar Pasha, and con¬
taining a British Minister of Finance and a French Minister of
Public Works, ordered, among other measures for reducing ex¬
penditure and so furnishing sums to meet Egypt’s creditors, the
drastic reduction in the size of the army to 11,000 men from a
previous maximum of 80,000. Two thousand officers were placed
on half-pay without settlement of their year-long arrears of pay.
This naturally caused the greatest indignation, and in 1879 a riot of
officers forced the resignation of the government. The British and
French Controllers suspected that this demonstration had been
instigated by Isma’il himself, who resented the Nubar government
as an encroachment on his own authority. Accordingly the Powers
obtained from the Sultan the deposition of Isma’il in favour of his

1 The railway-system was increased to nearly five times its size at the begin¬
ning of Isma’il’s reign, telegraphs to nearly ten times, and postal services were
greatly improved. Egyptian exports rose by 50 per cent. The population of
Egypt as a whole increased between 1848 and 1882 by 50 per cent., and that of
Alexandria, which had already grown about ten-fold between the beginning of
the century and its middle, jumped by another 60 per cent, between 1848 and
1882,

H2 A Short History of the Middle East

more amenable son Tawfiq, and the restoration with greater
powers of the Dual Control, whose financial policy was based on
the principle, financially orthodox but extremely callous when
applied to the poverty-stricken masses of Egypt, that ‘no sacrifice
should be demanded from the creditors till every reasonable sacri¬
fice had been made by the debtors’, i.e. by the fellahin who paid the
bulk of the taxes. The nationalist unrest grew, unchecked by the
weak-willed new Khedive, until in September 1881 a military
demonstration headed by Colonel Arabi, an Egyptian of fellah
origin who had played a minor part in the officers’ riot of 1879 and
was now the accepted leader of the native-Egyptian junior officers
against their Turco-Circassian seniors, forced the Khedive to accept
a nationalist government with Arabi as Under-Secretary for War.
Encouraged by this nationalist success, the Chamber of Notables, a
body previously without political authority, had the temerity to
claim the right to vote the Budget without heeding the representa¬
tions of the foreign financial Controllers. Concerned at this
intransigence the French government, zealous as always in its
protection of the interests of the bond-holders who were mainly
French, proposed to the British government a joint armed inter¬
vention in Egypt.

The British Liberal government showed itself reluctant to
interfere so drastically in the affairs of a nominally sovereign state,
but as the situation in Egypt showed no signs of improvement it
finally accepted the French suggestion injanuary 1882. Before any
action could be taken however, the French government fell on a
domestic issue, and its successor proved singularly irresolute on the
subject of Egypt. In February a full-blooded nationalist govern¬
ment came into power in Cairo with Arabi now Minister for War.
He made plans to expand the army and place the effective political
power in the hands of the native-Egyptian officers. The British and
French governments, now thoroughly alarmed at the course of
events, joined in despatching naval squadrons to Alexandria, and
in sending a note to the Khedive demanding the dismissal of the
nationalist government. At the same time the British government
invited the Ottoman government to intervene, and was willing to
refer the whole Egyptian question to an international conference
composed of the ambassadors of the Great Powers at Istanbul;
gestures which appear to rule out any idea of a pre-conceived
British plan to annex Egypt. The dismissal of the nationalist

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 113

government was followed by anti-foreign disorders, the worst
of which occurred at Alexandria and caused the deaths of 57
Europeans and 140 Egyptians. Arabi began to strengthen the
military defences of Alexandria, presumably to meet the threat
of a landing from the British and French squadrons. On 5 July,
the British government decided to demand the cessation of
these military works at Alexandria, with the threat that the
fleet would otherwise destroy them. The French government,
however, declined to co-operate, and withdrew its ships the
day before the British on n July, having had no reply to their
ultimatum, destroyed Arabi’s defences by a heavy bombardment.
The commander of the British force disembarked at Alexandria,
faced by the Egyptian army in prepared positions twelve miles
away, resolved on an outflanking movement from the Suez Canal.
The French government now proposed to concert with Britain
action limited to safeguarding the neutrality of the Canal; but the
Opposition overwhelmingly defeated the motion, arguing the
impossibility of separating the Canal from the general Egyptian
question. While the French chamber debated, British troops were
landed at Port Said. They shattered the Egyptian army at Tell el-
Kebir on 13 September and entered Cairo two days later. In the
following month Britain informed France ofher intention to with¬
draw from the Dual Control. In the following July a Khedivial
decree abolished it altogether, and Evelyn Baring, later Lord
Cromer, became for twenty-four years the de facto ruler ofEgypt.
The French historian Driault claimed that the abstention of France
was due to her desire not to conflict with Egyptian national senti¬
ment, which she had believed capable of more energetic resistance’.
French public opinion had, however, made no objection to the
systematic exploitation of the inexperience of Egypt’s rulers to the
profit largely of French investors in the previous twenty-eight
years, nor to the pitiless spoliation of the Egyptian fellahin to meet
the payment of usurous interest. 1 The abstention of France was
due to her government’s indecision, the besetting weakness ofher
political system under the Third Republic. But French public
opinion has never forgiven Britain for taking action when she hung
back, and for twenty-two years she bitterly obstructed every con¬
structive British effort to restore and improve the economic condi¬
tion of the Egyptian people.

1 Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt , 28 ff.

114 A Short History of the Middle East

With the trial and exile of Arabi the first Egyptian nationalist
movement collapsed utterly. 1 2 It had originally been the genuine
intention of the British government, with the concurrence of
Baring, to withdraw from Egypt as soon as the authority of the
Khedive had been restored. This is clearly demonstrated by tele¬
grams exchanged between the Foreign Office and Baring as late as
January 1884. 2 As late as 1887 the government negotiated with
the Ottoman government for a withdrawal at the end of three
years, provided that at that time the security of Egypt was not
threatened either from within or without. This proposal was
however brought to nothing, mainly (ironically enough) by the
opposition of France to the conditions imposed. The principal
factor behind the continued British occupation was the rising in
1881 of the Sudanese Muslims, under the religious leadership of
the self-styled Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed of Dongola, against
grievous Egyptian oppression and misrule, and their destruction of
Egyptian armies under British command sent to repress them. It
was felt that Britain could not allow this fanatic horde to overrun
Egypt, as it might well have done in view of the collapse of
authority there, and threaten Britain’s imperial communications.
The killing of General Gordon at Khartoum in 1885 let loose a
surge of patriotic sentiment in Britain and finally made it imposs¬
ible for the government to withdraw from Egypt.

The collapse of the nationalist movement gave Cromer some
twenty years to re-organize the finances and promote the economic
development ofEgypt with the passive co-operation of the Egypt¬
ians, except for some opposition from the headstrong young
Abbas II, who succeeded as Khedive in 1892, and his advisers,
jealous of Cromer’s power. The restoration of Egypt’s solvency,
the extension of the crop-area by nearly one-fifth in the ’nineties
as a result of the completion of the Delta Barrage and the extension
of perennial irrigation, and the abolition of the age-old institution
of compulsory unpaid labour (the corvee), which thus gave the

1 The most recent Egyptian historian, a former Director-General of the
Ministry of Education, roundly condemns Arabi and his associates, but in
terms highly significant of the present-day Egyptian political outlook. They
were f a handful of adventurers who knew nothing about war, statesmanship, or
even decent government. . . . Had a death-sentence been pronounced against
them ..their crime would not only have been treason and rebellion, but also
ignominious failure and incompetence in battle.' (M, Rifaat Bey, op. cit, 213;
italics not in the original.)

2 Lord Zetland, Lord Cromer, 88 ff.

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 115

fellahin the first rudimentary rights of free men: these elements of
progress, which form one of the finer chapters in the history of
British imperialism, were possible only because of Cromer’s
creation of an administrative machine which was summed up as
consisting of'British heads and Egyptian hands’. The Egyptian
upper and middle classes were not yet capable of the necessary ad¬
ministrative efficiency and integrity to occupy positions of re¬
sponsibility in so complicated a machine. The Khedive and the
Prime Minister had continually to accept the "advice’ of the august
and masterful British Agent and Consul-General. Each Egyptian
minister and his British adviser, and each provincial governor his
British inspector, who through their direct access to Cromer
wielded the effective power of government. Hence the Turco-
Egyptian upper-class resented the British encroaclnnent on their
freedom to manipulate the governance of their country to their
own advantage, and the growing literate middle-class (the number
of newspapers published in Egypt increased more than four-fold
from 1892 to 1899) envied the British their control of the best
positions in the administration , 1 and was humiliated by that chilly
reserve which afflicts so many Englishmen in the presence of
strangers and foreigners. These grievances were to some extent
fanned by the French, for it was to France that progressive Egyptian
fathers continued to send their sons to finish their education, and
the Egyptian secondary-school system, such as it was, was still
modelled on the French pattern. The necessity for keeping the
capitulatory Powers acquiescent towards Britain’s de facto position
in Egypt by interfering as little as possible with the international
status quo there prevented Cromer from entering into effective
competition with the French virtual monopoly of higher educa¬
tion and cultural and political propaganda, even had the laissez-
faire attitude towards education of successive British governments
admitted such an idea. When Cromer did at length come to
organize an educational system, it was for the utilitarian pur¬
pose of training Egyptian junior officials for the administration,
and served no cultural or political end . 2

Thus it was in anti-British circles in Paris that the apostle
of the second phase of Egyptian nationalism, the consump¬
tive young law-student Mustafa Kamil, was encouraged to make

1 cf. the rather naive comments of M. Rifaat Bey, op. cit., 225 £., 234.

2 cf. Lloyd, op. cit., Vol. I, ch. xi.

A Short History of the Middle East

his first inflammatory speeches against the British occupation. On
his return to Egypt about 1895 he formed the Nationalist Party,
al-Hizb al-Watani, founded a newspaper, and set up a school for
propagating his political creed among the young men. The Anglo-
French Entente of 1904 was a setback for the Nationalists, since the
French could no longer actively support Britain’s enemies in
Egypt. But the defeat by Asiatic Japan of Russia, the European
Great Power that had encroached so extensively and so consistently
on the Dar ul-Islam, encouraged them greatly; and they were
fanned to fury in 1906 by the "barbarity dictated by panic’ with
which the British-controlled administration, during Cromer’s
absence on leave, punished the villagers of Dinshawai for a mur¬
derous attack on British officers who had mistakenly shot their
tame pigeons. In the following year Lord Cromer retired from his
long proconsulship. He was not a man who sympathized with the
pretensions of mediocrities nor, as he grew older, with the head¬
strongness of youth; and his final Annual Report did not spare the
weaknesses of the Nationalist movement: "It can be no matter for
surprise that the educated youth should begin to clamour for a
greater share than heretofore in the government and administra¬
tion of their country. Nothing could be more ungenerous than to
withhold a certain amount of sympathy for these very legitimate
aspirations. Nothing, on the other hand, could be more unwise
than to abstain, at this early period of the National movement,
from pointing out to all who are willing to listen to reason the
limits which, for the time being, must be assigned to those aspira¬
tions. .. , The programme of the National Party is quite incap¬
able of realization at present^ and it may well be doubted whether,
in the form in which it is now conceived, it can ever be realized. .. .
In any case I must wholly decline to take any part in furthering
proposals, the adoption of which would in my opinion constitute a
flagrant injustice, not only to the very large foreign interests in¬
volved, but also to those ten or twelve millions ofEgyptians, to the
advancement of whose moral and material welfare I have devoted
the best years of my life.’ While Cromer did not reject the idea of
self-government as the ultimate goal of Egypt’s political evolution,
he had many doubts of Egyptian administrative capacity, and the
"very large foreign interests’ he had in mind comprised not only the
per cent, of the population that was foreign, but the fact that
78 per cent, of the Egyptian public debt and joint-stock capital was

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 117

in foreign hands. Hence his preference, underestimating the emo¬
tional forces which national sentiment generates, for ‘a constitution
which will enable all the dwellers in cosmopolitan Egypt, be they
Muslim or Christian, European, Asiatic, or African, to be fused
into one self-governing body’. He gave his encouragement to the
newly-formed reformist party Hizb al-Umma, inspired by the
distinguished theological reformer Sheikh Mohammed Abduh,
probably the first great thinker that Eastern Islam had produced
since al-Ghazzali; and he had recently approved the appointment
of one of the most promising members of that party as Minister of
Education: his name was Sa’d Zaghlul.

Cromer’s successor Sir Eldon Gorst had served under him with
considerable distinction; but he returned to Egypt in 1907 with
'strong, if not very precise instructions’ to introduce political re¬
forms. The British general-election landslide of 1906 had brought
into power after twenty years in the political wilderness a Liberal
government which contained a considerable proportion of
humanist Radicals who regarded constitutional representative
government as something of a panacea for the ills of the world.
The kind of directive which Gorst received has been summarized
as to 'relax British control and give the Egyptian government
greater freedom of action in matters of policy and administration,
even at the cost of less efficiency; to help the Egyptian people to
learn for themselves the first lessons ofself-government which some
measure of responsibility, however slight, alone could teach
them’. 1 It was, however, to be no programme of headlong sur¬
render to the Nationalists,'though it was represented as such by
diehards among the official and unofficial British colony in Egypt.
Gorst declared in his first Annual Report that 'until the people
have made a great deal more progress in the direction of moral and
intellectual development, the creation of representative institu¬
tions, as understood in England, would only cause more harm than
good, and would give a complete setback to the present policy of
administrative reform’. He accordingly sought to win the co¬
operation of the Khedive Abbas II, now a man of thirty-five, in the
hope of moulding him into a constitutional monarch, who would
provide stability at the apex for the pyramid of the Egyptian polity;
and he planned to strengthen the base of the pyramid by a con¬
structive extension of the very limited powers of the Provincial

1 Chirol, op. cit. } 108.

118 A Short History of the Middle East

Councils. Thus, underpinned from below and held in place from
above, there was a prospect that the central Legislature might grow
in responsibility and wisdom.

It was not to be. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 had
forced the Sultan to restore the constitution which he had sus¬
pended in 1876; and in an access of emotional liberalism it had de¬
clared equal all the races of the Ottoman Empire. The sympathetic
enthusiasm generated among the Egyptian Nationalists was great,
and found expression in violent and unrestrained agitation. The
campaign reached its climax in 1910 in the murder of the Coptic 1
Prime Minister Butros Ghali, who had given the Nationalists
some reason on three occasions in his career to regard him as
a Quisling of the British. His murderer was characteristic of the
type that commits such political crimes: a physically weak, bank¬
rupt young chemist of fair education, moody and introspective.

In 1911 Sir Eldon Gorst retired, fatally stricken with cancer and
disappointed by the failure of his experiment in the gradual intro¬
duction of representative institutions. He stated in his last Annual
Report: ‘We have to make the Egyptians understand that the
British government do not intend to allow themselves to be
hustled into going further or faster in the direction of self-govern¬
ment than they consider to be in the interests of the Egyptian
people as a whole. Institutions really representative of the people
are obviously impossible in a country in which only 6 per cent, of
the population can read and write.’ A critic might have asked why
Britain persisted in imposing her rule on this people whose vocal
elements were so ungrateful. " The fact was, of course, that since
the German Drang nach Osten had become a serious factor
in her Middle East policy, the control of the Suez Canal was
more than ever vital to her imperial communications; and
in addition, her prestige and a large sum of British capital
were now committed in Egypt. But it was not the British
way to admit openly these material arcana imperii . Instead,
the Spectator could write, It would be an inhuman devolution of
our duty in the world to sacrifice the poor Egyptians, to allow them
to become once more the prey of extortioners and bullies’, and
The Times could declare with less than its customary objectivity,

1 There had never been an Egyptian-Muslim Prime Minister since the
British occupation in 1882: one was Armenian, one a Turkish Jew, two Turkish
Muslims, and now the Copt Butros Ghali.

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 119

'The real object (of the Nationalists) is a return to the old system
of class-privilege, oppression, and corruption’. 1

In choosing a successor to Sir Eldon Gorst the British govern¬
ment made one of those sharp reversals of policy which are not un¬
common when a previous policy has proved unsuccessful. After
consulting Lord Cromer, whose scepticism of the Egyptian
capacity for self-government had hardened in view of the events
which had followed his retirement, it appointed that formidable
soldier Lord Kitchener, who regarded Western political institu¬
tions as an unqualified danger to Oriental peoples. "Party spirit’,
he once said, "is to them like strong drink to uncivilized African
natives. . .. The future development of the vast mass of the in¬
habitants depends upon improved conditions of agriculture which,
with educational progress, are the more essential steps towards the
material and moral advance of the people.’ He declared in his
Annual Report for 1912 his strong disapproval of any encourage¬
ment of the "so-called political classes’, and in his Organic Law of
1913 he sought to re-organize the existing legislative bodies so as to
secure adequate representation for the agricultural population:
"Noisy extremists and outside political influences must be elimin¬
ated if the Assembly is really to represent the hardworking, un¬
heard masses of the people.’ At the same time the administration
provided additional irrigation-water for agriculture by raising the
height of the Aswan Dam, and sought to protect the small pro¬
prietor from the seizure of his holding for debt through the Five
Feddan Law. The prestige attaching to Kitchener’s past career, and
the strength of his personality did restore a measure of political
tranquillity, and his vigorously prosecuted agricultural policy en¬
gendered prosperity and confidence. Nevertheless the Legislative
Assembly, as elected after the passing of the new Organic Law,
continued its factious obstruction. A clash between the administra¬
tion and Zaghlul who, after losing his ministerial office as a result
of his incurring the enmity of the Khedive, had become leader of
the Nationalist opposition with a solid group of followers, was
averted only by the outbreak of the First World War. Moreover,
the administration had deteriorated in quality owing to Kitchener’s

1 J. Alexander, The Truth About Egypt (1911), 209, 92; this work is an excellent
example of contemporary ‘Egyptophobia’. As late as 1934 Lord Lloyd could
write, ‘From 1889 to 1922 our foremost concern had been to secure the humane
and stable administration of the affairs of the Egyptian masses.’ {Egypt since
Cromer, II, 354; the italics are mine.)

120

A Short History of the Middle East

high-handed methods, unwillingness to accept advice, and per¬
sonal prejudices. Some valuable British servants of the Egyptian
government had resigned in consequence, and had been replaced by
men with poorer qualifications. Thus, while the number of British
officials had rapidly increased since Cromer’s time, their standard
had steadily deteriorated. It was said also that Kitchener’s choice
of Egyptian advisers and assistants was not always of the happiest. 1
A contemporary appreciation clearly saw the dangers which lay
below the surface: 'The superficial quiet is that of suppressed dis¬
content—a sullen, hopeless mistrust towards the government of
occupation. The government has not yet succeeded in endearing,
or even recommending, itself to the Egyptian people, but is on the
contrary an object of suspicion, an occasion of enmity. Nationalist
feeling is very strong in spite of determined attempts to stamp out
all freedom of political opinion. The wholesale muzzling of the
press has not only reduced the Muslim majority to a condition of
internal ferment, but has seriously alienated the hitherto loyal
Copts.’ 2 However, the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the War
was followed by the declaration of martial law in Egypt, and the
whole political question was suspended, and discontent driven still
further underground, to fester until the end of the world conflict.

★ * *

Meanwhile, although Arabs were not strongly represented in
the Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress, the nation¬
alists of Syria had been greatly encouraged by the Turkish Revolu¬
tion, and in September 1908 they formed at Istanbul the Arab-
Ottoman Brotherhood, al-Ikha al-’Arabi al-’Uthmani, whose
objects were to unite all the races of the Empire in loyalty to the
Sultan, to protect the new liberal constitution, to promote the well¬
being of the Arab provinces on a footing of real equality, etc.
However, following an attempted counter-revolution promoted
by Abdul Hamid in 1909, the Young Turks introduced new
security measures, one of which was the prohibition of all societies
founded by non-Turkish groups. The Ikha was shut down, and the
Arab Nationalists were driven underground to continue their

1 Amin Yusuf, Independent Egypt , 53.

2 Asiatic Review (April, 1914), quoted by Lothrop Stoddard, The New World
of Islam, 154 f.

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 12 x

political activities in secret. The first of their secret societies, the
Qahtaniya, was dissolved after one year for fear that it had been
betrayed to the Turks. In Paris seven Muslim students, who
included Jamil Mardam (in 1948 Prime Minister of Syria) and
Awni Abdul Hadi (now a Palestine Arab ‘elder statesman’),
founded the Young Arab Association, al-Jam’iya al-’Arabiya al-
Fatat, with the object of securing Arab independence from Turkish
or any other foreign rule. The society grew and in 1913 organized
in Paris a six-day congress attended by twenty-four delegates,
eleven of them Christians, drawn mainly from Syria and Iraq
(the Iraqi delegates included Tawfiq as-Suwaidi, Prime Minister
of Iraq during part of 1946). The congress expressed a general
desire to remain within the Ottoman Empire, provided that
home-rule could be secured, and stressed the importance of
preventing European Powers from meddling in the question. In
the same year al-Fatat moved its headquarters to Syria. By this
time its membership had risen to over 2,000, mainly Muslim, and
included Shukri al-Quwwatli and Paris al-Khuri (who in 1948 are
respectively President of Syria, and Syria’s representative on the
Security Council of UNO).

Nor was Iraq without its local nationalist stirrings. A Patriotic
Society, founded at Baghdad to expel the Turks and establish an
autonomous government, numbered among its members more
than a hundred army-officers and many local notables; am ong
those who came to the unfavourable notice of the Turkish authori¬
ties were Hamdi al-Pachahji (who was Prime Minister of Iraq
early in 1946). In March 1913 a conference of Arab notables of
Lower Iraq and neighbouring territories was held at Muhammara,
in Persian territory, to work for the independence of Iraq and
Turkish Arabia. In November the Iraqi nationalists made over¬
tures to the young Amir Abdul Aziz ibn Sa’ud, who had by now
made himself master ofNaj d with an outlet on the Persian Gulf. He
expressed his sympathy for their cause, but could at present do no
more, neutralized as he was strategically by his ancestral enemy,
the pro-Turkish Amir of the Jebel Shammar to the north. The
Turks were partly aware of this growth of nationalist sentiment,
and attempted to disrupt both the Syrian and the Iraqi movements
by offers of high political positions to some of their leading figures;
but though some few were seduced in this way, the Turks were
not prepared to offer any such concessions in the direction of local

122

A Short History of the Middle East

autonomy as would disarm the politically-ambitious Arab notables
who were as yet the sole exponents of nationalism.

Meanwhile Aziz Ali al-Misri, a young Arab officer who had
distinguished himself in the Ottoman service, but who had re¬
signed his commission feeling that his services had been unworthily
rewarded by the Young Turks, founded early in 1914 as a substitute
for the defunct Qahtaniya a society called al-’Ahd, the ‘Solemn
League and Covenant’. It consisted almost entirely of Arab army-
officers and consequently contained a preponderance of Iraqis, since
they were the most numerous regional group of Arabs in the Otto¬
man Army. Branches of the society were founded at Baghdad and
Mosul, and it is said to have recruited 4,000 members throughout
the Empire. It became to the Arab army-officer what al-Fatat was
to the civilian upper-class intellectual; but neither society knew as
yet of the existence of the other, and contact between them was not
established till early in 1915. Injanuary 1914 the Young Turks had
Aziz al-Misri arrested in Istanbul on charges of trying to set up an
Arab kingdom in North Africa, of receiving bribes from the
Italians during the Tripolitanian War of 1911, etc. He received a
death-sentence, but was reprieved and finally released only on the
Intervention of the British Ambassador, as a result of representa¬
tions from Lord Kitchener in Egypt.

An index of the spread of intellectual, and consequently of poli¬
tical, interest in the Arab world at this time is provided by the great
increase in the numbers of newspapers published between 1904 and
1914. They rose in Lebanon from twenty-nine to 168, in Syria
from three to eighty-seven, in Palestine from one to thirty-one, in
Iraq from two to seventy, in the Hijaz from none to six, a ten-fold
expansion over the entire area. In addition, nationalist newspapers
published by Arab emigres abroad were smuggled in through the
foreign post-offices which existed under the Capitulations. The
nationalist movement was, however, still confined to a very small
group of army-officers and upper-class intellectuals, and touched
the masses hardly at all; and behind the facade of the secret societies
one may without prejudice infer the interplay of personal rival¬
ries, religious differences, and sectional animosities, arising out of
the essential individuality of the Arab character.’ 1 Their disunity
was of course aggravated by the lack of liaison occasioned by the
slowness of communications. Ofthe capitals of states and the chief

1 Ireland, op. cit., 237.

ADANA

WMr

'mSr

Iw

\ ^DIYARBEKIICX

ALEPPO I ,-S

/ / \MOSUL

/ fSANJA Cx.

P^JofMIAAZ^ --

fHomS' i - - - “V, \,

!■ X

STEPPE &
VESEPT

SHEIKHDO.Af*
OF KUWAIT

S HAMM All x.

Medina

N ATT 2 ?

International Frontiers

Administrative Divisions
of the Ottoman Empire
are named.

Effective limit of
Ottoman Control

Railways
Vilayet of Beirut
San/a f of Lebanon

(YEMENJ

II. ARAB ASIA, 1914

124

A Short History of the Middle East

towns of the vilayets, Damascus alone was connected by rail with
Beirut and Aleppo; but between Cairo and Jerusalem, Jerusalem
and Damascus, Damascus and Baghdad, Aleppo and Mosul, there
was as yet no conveyance more rapid than the horse-carriage and
the camel-caravan. This physical factor was, however, less an ob¬
stacle to the national movement than the immoderate and un¬
practical character of the Arab imagination was in the long run to
prove. Their aim of reconstituting an independent Arab kingdom
was inspired by the memory ofthc far-off Arab caliphate ofhistory
and in its ambitious and unpractical flights bore little relation to the
hard facts of the present. Regarding the .European Great Powers
only as interlopers to be kept at arm’s length, the nationalists failed
to realize to what extent, in the impending dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire, their prospects of attaining self-government
would be determined, not by grandiose aspirations and utopian
and wordy manifestoes, but by the relative amounts of material
pressure and influence which they and the interested Powers could
respectively bring to bear on the situation. National freedom
meant primarily to them, as members of leading Arab families,
access to positions of power and authority for which under the
Ottoman Empire they had to compete at a disadvantage with
Turkish aspirants. There is no evidence that the desirability of
improving the economic and social conditions of the poorer classes
of the population played at this stage any part in their progr amme ;
indeed, since so large a proportion of them derived their wealth
from landed property, such a programme would, by inevitably
disturbing the present relation of tenant and landlord, have been
contrary to their interests.

★ ★ ★

In the uncertain interval between August atid October 1914, in
which the Ottoman Empire was still neutral, the Arab nationalists
sought to exploit the situation to win guarantees of their inde¬
pendence, but their tactics remained cautious. The Higher Com¬
mittee ofal-Fatat added to a resolution in favour of independence
the following reservation, ‘In the event of European designs ap¬
pearing to materialize, the society is bound to work on the side of
Turkey in order to resist foreign penetration of whatever hind or form.'
Similarly Aziz al-Misri, who was now living in Egypt, issued a

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 125

warning to the leading members of al-’Ahd not to be tempted into
hostile action against the Ottoman Empire, as her entry into the
war would expose the Arab provinces to European conquest; they
were to stand by Turkey until effective guarantees against Euro¬
pean designs were obtained. These nationalist suspicions of
European intentions are important in the light of the conflict with
Britain and France that was to develop after the War.

Meanwhile, Kitchener and his Oriental Secretary Ronald Storrs
had been in correspondence since February 1914 with the Sharif
Husain of Mecca, who ruled the Muslim Holy Cities on medieval
theocratic lines and heartily disliked the efforts of his Ottoman
suzerain to centralize provincial administration and thus sub¬
ordinate him to the Turkish wali appointed from Istanbul. This
threat to his hereditary authority had become acute with the advent
of the Young Turks, and had been held off only by Husain s skill in
tortuous and non-committal diplomacy. He had, however, found
it prudent to seek the support of the British in Egypt, though his
sons Abdullah and Faisal were anxious not to commit themselves
to the ‘Franks 9 and make an open breach with the Turks pre¬
maturely. The British negotiators were similarly cautious as long
as Turkey remained neutral, but in October 1914 they did commit
themselves in general terms to ‘the emancipation of the Arabs 9 and
‘an Arab nation 9 in return for Arab support against Turkey. At
the same time Storrs and Gilbert Clayton of the military Intel¬
ligence approached Aziz al-Misri and others concerning the possi¬
bility of starting an Arab revolt; but these nationalists insisted as an
indispensable preliminary on guarantees of Arab independence
which the British spokesmen were not empowered to give. In
January 1915 a member of the prominent Bakri family of Damas¬
cus, travelling to Mecca on Turkish official business, took with him
a message from al-Fatat to the Sharif, asking him to concert
measures with them for an Arab rising. The Sharif accordingly
sent his son Faisal to Istanbul, ostensibly on official business, but
really to sound the disposition of both the Ottoman authorities and
the Syrian nationalists. On his northward journey he visited the
Bakris, met members ofboth al-Fatat and al-’Ahd, was admitted to
both societies, and informed them of the Sharif’s parleys with the
British. On his return to Damascus in May he found that in the
meantime the two secret societies had prepared a joint Protocol re¬
quiring, as a condition of an Arab revolt against the Ottoman

126

A Short History of the Middle East

Empire, that Britain should recognize an independent Arab king¬
dom comprising Arabia (except Aden), Palestine, Syria and Iraq.

In July, after Britain had announced her intention of recognizing
an independent Arab state in the Arabian Peninsula, the Sharif sent
to Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt,
a note which repeated the requirements of the Damascus Protocol
brought back by Faisal. The British Arab Bureau in Cairo had still
only vague knowledge of the existence of the two secret societies,
and the notion consequently became established in British minds
that the Sharif’s demands for a Greater Arab Kingdom were solely
the product of his own personal ambition, whereas in fact they
faithfully represented the views of the nationalist movement, (ex¬
cept that its Syrian exponents did not necessarily regard Husain
as a suitable King of the whole Arab world). Husain’s note in¬
augurated the famous Husain-McMahon Correspondence, the
interchange ofwhich continued till January 1916. In the course of
it the British negotiators made reservations on' behalf of French
interests in those parts of the Levant ‘west of the districts of
Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo’, as not being wholly Arab;
another reservation was made for British interests in Lower Iraq.
The Sharif, who insisted that he was waiting only for an oppor¬
tunity to revolt .suggested that the solution of both these problems
should be left till the end of the War. The British agreed, but
warned him that ‘when victory is attained, the friendship of
Britain and France will be stronger and closer than ever’.

in-chief under martial law in Syria, Jamal Pasha, had hardened
against the Arabs since the failure of the first Turco-German
attack on the Suez Canal in February 1915. Before that he had
seized French consular documents incriminating various Syrian
and Palestinian personalities with treasonable conspiracy with
France before the War: the French Consul-General Picot had failed
to destroy these highly secret documents, but had left them in the
charge of the American Consul, who innocently supposed that the
Turkish police would respect the inviolability of the consular
seals. 1 During 1915 and the early part of 1916 Jamal Pasha held a
series of treason trials: thirty-four nationalists, of whom twenty-
seven were Muslim, were executed and hundreds of prominent

^In view of French designs on Syria, which were not compatible with Arab
nationalism, Picot’s negligence may not have been entirely unmotivated,

Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 127

persons deported to remote parts of Anatolia. In the spring of 1916
the Turkish High Command despatched a picked force of brigade
strength with German staff-officers attached to reinforce their
troops in the Yemen, which had driven back the small British
garrison in the Aden Protectorate almost to the narrow confines of
Aden Colony itself. This Turkish force travelling south by the
Hijaz Railway arrived at Madina in May 1916. Its arrival greatly
alarmed the Sharif, who feared that his correspondence with the
British might have become known to the Turks, and that the force
had been sent to deal with him. In addition, the recent news from
Syria of the last and largest crop of political executions had finally
convinced the sceptical Faisal that nothing was to be gained by
further procrastination and haggling with both sides. The Arab
Revolt was accordingly begun on 5 June 1916. Lord Wavell has
commented, ‘Its value to the British commander was great, since
it diverted considerable Turkish reinforcements and supplies to the
Hijaz, and protected the right flank of the British armies in their
advance through Palestine. Further, it put an end to German pro¬
paganda iiiTbiith-westem Arabia and removed any danger of the
establishment of a German submarine base on the Red Sea. These
were important services, and worth the subsidies in gold and
munitions expended on the Arab forces/ 1 That the Revolt did
not succeed in raising the civil populations of the Arab provinces is
partly due in Syria to the effectiveness of the Turkish repression,
and in Iraq to the unsympathetic attitude of the Indian Army
authorities, who withheld or minimized the news of the progress
of the Revolt in order not to encourage ideas of independence in
the local Arab population. The Government of India, aiming at
an outright British annexation of Lower Iraq, regarded the Cairo
Arab Bureau policy of encouraging Arab independence as vision¬
ary, and its support of an Arab rising against the Ottoman Sultan-
Caliph 2 as liable to cause unrest among the ninety million Muslims
of India, whose sentimental attachment to the Caliphate was mag¬
nified by their immunity from the realities of Ottoman rule. The
Viceroy of India actually described the Arab Revolt as ‘a dis¬
pleasing surprise whose collapse would be far less prejudicial to us

1 The Palestine Compaign, 56.

2 Later Ottoman sultans, and especially Abdul Hamid II with his pan-Is¬
lamic policy, “had elaborated a fiction that the medieval Caliphate had passed
from the last Abbasid to them in 1517. cf. T. W. Arnold, The Caliphate, ch.
XIV,

128 A Short History of the Middle East

than would our military intervention in support of it’. Sir Ronald
Storrs declared that the passive resistance of the civil population of
Syria and Palestine to the Turks following the Revolt was worth
almost nothing to the British forces; on the other hand, the Ger¬
man commander Liman von Sanders has recorded that after the
successful Third Battle of Gaza ‘the British advancing towards
Jerusalem found themselves fighting in friendly country, while
the Turks were faced with a decidedly hostile population. We
may, however, ask how far this was due to their enthusiasm for the
Arab Revolt, and how much to a natural desire to be in on the
winning side: Allenby now had a superiority in fighting strength
over the enemy of more than two to one. But whatever the
limitations of the value of the Arab Revolt as a military operation,
its importance in stimulating the aspirations of politically-minded
Arabs cannot be overstated, with effects that were to be immedi¬
ately felt after the end of the War.

CHAPTER VI

The Struggle for Independence (1918—39)

T he war of 1914-18 was the first total war in modern times,
in which the peoples of even the ‘victorious’ countries are
left more or less exhausted, and disillusioned about the ideals
which, they were given to believe, they went to war to defend.
The reaction that followed was consequently all the more acute
because it had not been anticipated by most political thinkers. In
Britain the strong current of imperialist sentiment that had flowed
towards the end of the nineteenth century had already been greatly
reduced by the sordid motives and material setbacks of the South
African War. The ‘Great War’ left in the public mind a strong
disinclination for any foreign or imperial policy which would call
for further efforts from the war-weary people; and there was thus
everywhere support for a policy of ‘appeasement’, which was
strong enough to affect the judgments of statesmen. Furthermore,
the statesmen themselves had been overworked and over-driven
during four years of deadly struggle. They had had to subordinate,
even more than is normal, any long-term considerations of policy
to the short-term aim of securing immediate tactical advantages
over the enemy. They had been driven by force of circumstances
into making a number of contradictory commitments—in the
Middle East, for example, to the Arabs on the one hand, and to the
French, the Zionists, and to British self-interest on the other. In
addition, an important section of informed British opinion, which
may be labelled ‘liberal’ in the wider, non-party sense, regarded
self-government for all peoples as the ultimate ideal of imperial
politics, however remote the attainment of that ideal might be.

The English people had fought for their independence of the
Spaniard and the Pope, of royal absolutism, and of the French;
they had looked with sympathy on the struggles for independence
of the Greeks, the Italians, and the peoples of the Balkans; they had
acquiesced in the British Dominions’ gradual acquisition of the
right to manage their own affairs; and many of them regarded the

130 A Short History of the Middle East

political aspirations of nationalist Indians or Egyptians as having
greater moral force than the interests of Britain in those lands.
Such idealists were only a minority; but for the reasons previously
stated, the maj ority of die British people were reluctant to resort to
any extreme measures to maintain the imperial status-quo un¬
changed. The nationalists of the Middle East and elsewhere were
consequently able from 1918 onwards to obtain greater concessions
by pressure and violence than reasoned argument would probably
have achieved; and not being aware of the symptoms in the British
public mind which favoured their own violent course, they attri¬
buted their success solely to that violence and were encouraged to
continue in it. 1

In the flush of their victorious power in the immediate post-war
period Britain and France extended and intensified their interests
in the Middle East at the expense of the nationalist movements
which were rising there. Britain sought from 1919 to 1921 to make
permanent her direct protectorate over Egypt, which had been
proclaimed as a temporary expedient at the outbreak of war- to
replace the undefined proconsulship of Cromer. British and
French pre-war cultural and economic penetration of the Fertile
Crescent crystallized into the Imposition of their direct rule over
the whole region, Palestine and Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon,
Iraq. Nor was this imposition mitigated in fact by the invention of
the Mandates system as much as might appear on the surface. The
Mandates system was little more than a polite fiction created in
order to satisfy President Wilson and the idealists who had in¬
augurated the League of Nations. Britain and France arrogated to
themselves their mandates over the Middle East by the Treaty of
San Remo in April 1920, and the League dutifully subscribed to
their will. In June 1920 Lord Curzon, then Foreign Secretary,
could tell the House of Lords, ‘It is quite a mistake to suppose that
under the Covenant of the League or any other instrument the gift
of a mandate rests with the League of Nations. It rests with the
Powers who have conquered the territories, which it then falls to
them to distribute. 5 The Permanent Mandates Commission of the
League could in theory recommend the withdrawal of a mandate
from an offending Power, but this authority was never exer¬
cised. It could, and sometimes did, animadvert critically on
the conduct of a Mandatory; but it had no powers to inspect

1 cf. A. J. Toynbee, The Islamic World since the Peace Conference , 11 f.

The Struggle for Independence 1 3 1

on the spot the conditions in a mandated territory. It failed
to induce the French to make timely concessions to nationalism
in Syria. It could not order the adoption, nor the reversal,
of a policy unless it could be shown to be contrary to the original
mandate; and in the special case of Palestine the Mandate,
framed to give legal sanction to a political experiment whose
components had received insufficient preliminary 7 study, was
found in the next twenty years to be incapable of sufficiently
flexible interpretation to meet rapidly changing conditions. 1

It was not surprising that the reaction of the growing nationalisms
of the Middle East to this intensifying of foreign control, this vir¬
tual annexation by Britain and France, should be a violent one.
Examined from this standpoint, the inter-war period falls into two
unequal parts, with the dividing line between them varying by
several years from one country to another. In the first period, the
post-war settlement, the efforts of the nationalists to throw off the
European imperialisms were violent, and they resorted in some
countries to armed rebellion. In the second, or inter-war period
proper, the agitation was more constitutional in character, though
armed action still sometimes occurred. In Palestine, owing to the
special local circumstances, the violence was spread over both
periods, and was actually more intense in the later one; but even
here there was a pause of seven years, from 1922 to 1929? which
makes the division into two periods applicable here also. It is con¬
venient in both periods to examine the subj ect country by country,
since it was only toward the end of the second period that the
co-ordination of nationalist activity between the various Arab
countries, which was to culminate in 1944 hi *h e creation of the
Arab League, became of any significance.

A The Post-War Settlement

In Egypt, while the imposition of martial law had ensured a
respite from political agitation during the War, the exigencies of
the campaign combined with a considerable measure of British

1 After the 1929 Riots in Palestine, which were a direct result of the clash of
the Zionist and Arab nationalisms, the Permanent Mandates Commission, ig¬
noring the realities of the situation, commented that, had the Mandatory more
vigorously carried out a constructive programme in the interest of the peaceful
masses of the population, it ‘would have enabled them to convince the fellahin
more easily of the undeniable material advantages that Palestine has derived
from the efforts of the Zionists’.

132 A Short History of the Middle East

ignorance did much to aggravate the grievances of the National¬
ists. The country was flooded with inexperienced British army
officers and civil officials who treated Egypt, now proclaimed a
British protectorate, almost as an occupied territory in which the
rights and wishes of the inhabitants counted for little. The shortage
of man-power and of transport for the Palestine campaign led to
the conscription of thousands of feflahin for the Labour Corps and
the Camel Transport Corps, and the requisitioning of their draught-
animals. Although such measures were theoretically regulated to
cause the minimum hardship—the conscription period, for exam¬
ple, was limited to six months—their execution was largely left,
owing to the heavy demand on British personnel for the Army, to
Egyptian provincial and local officials, who naturally, applied
them with a view to their own profit: the fellah who paid the
necessary bakhshish to the village ’umda was exempt from con¬
scription or requisitioning; the fellah who could not or would not
pay found himself included in the conscription-list for one six
months’ period after another, and his camel or donkey carried
away by the requisitioning authorities. The fellahin were thus
filled with a strong sense of injury, and blamed the British all the
more because, under their rule, they had acquired some measure of
personal liberty and had lost some of their servile respect for
authority and the patient endurance of oppression. The urban
population was made discontented by the shortage of imported
supplies, especially of cereals in a country whose profitable cotton¬
growing had to a great extent supplanted grain; and they were
offended by the tactless collection of subscriptions for the Red
Cross, from a predominantly Muslim population and by methods
which locally sometimes approximated to compulsion. Politically-
minded Egyptians were further irritated by the establishment of
the Protectorate, which seemed to make the prospect of self-
government more remote. The kind of post-war constitution
which senior British officials in Egypt envisaged was exemplified
by a Note on Constitutional Reform drawn up by the Judicial
Adviser, which leaked out to the Cairo press despite the censor¬
ship. It entirely ignored the existence of the national sentiment
which the War had stimulated .. . and did not spare the deficien¬
cies of the politically-minded classes in an incisive review of their
past activities. It proposed the creation of a new legislature in
whose upper chamber, the Senate, not only British Advisers and

133

The Struggle for Independence

Egyptian Ministers were to have seats, but also representatives of
the large foreign communities, chosen by special electorates, to
voice their commercial, financial, and professional interests. . . .
The opinion of the Senate was to prevail in all matters of essential
policy . . . clearly with a view to securing the passage of whatever
the British government might consider necessary for the main¬
tenance of their controlling authority/ 1

In this atmosphere of discontent it is not surprising that, as the
war drew to an end, Zaghlul was able to recruit strong support for
his campaign to bring about a radical change in the political status
of Egypt. Two days after the Armistice he headed a delegation
(WafdJ to the High Commissioner, informing him 4 on behalf of
the whole Egyptian people’ of the desire for complete inde¬
pendence, and requesting permission to go to Europe to lay
Egypt’s case before the Peace Conference. The Egyptian Prime
Minister then asked permission for a ministerial delegation to go
to London, which the High Commissioner urged the Foreign
Office to receive; but Lord Curzon, the acting Foreign Secretary,
refused, feeling that it would raise hopes in Egypt which it would
be impossible to satisfy, especially as the government was preoccu¬
pied with the greater problems of the settlement of Europe and
would prefer to postpone consideration of the Egyptian question
until the pressure of more urgent business was relieved. To the
Egyptian nationalists, however, their case was the most urgent
matter in the world. They saw Syrians, Arabs, and even Cypriots
sending delegations to the Conference, and interpreted the Foreign
Office refusal as proofthat Britain intended to impose her own solu¬
tion by force. Zaghlul began a nation-wide campaign for inde¬
pendence. The Foreign Office then reversed its decision and agreed
to receive the ministerial delegation; but ZaghluFs campaign had
already gathered so much momentum that the Egyptian Prime
Minister now insisted that Zaghlul should be included in the dele¬
gation and share its responsibility; otherwise he knew well that
whatever the delegation achieved in London would be repudiated
by the nationalists at home. But Lord Curzon was not prepared to
accept Zaghlul; as late as 24 February 1919 he continued to receive
optimistic reports from the Residency in Cairo: ‘The agitation
which the Nationalist leaders have organized is dying out, or is at
any rate quiescent in the country at large.... Zaghlul is trusted by
1 Chirol, op. cit., 145 f.

134

A Short History of the Middle East

no one. ... The agitation has from the beginning been entirely
pacific in character... . The present movement cannot be com¬
pared in importance with that of Mustafa Kamil, and there seems
to be no reason why it should affect the decisions ofH.M. Govern¬
ment on constitutional questions and the proper form to be given
to the protectorate/

The Egyptian Prime Minister, denied permission to plead his
country’s case at the Peace Conference, resigned on i March 1919,
and strikes, disturbances and riots followed. The Residency coun¬
selled firmness: four nationalist leaders, three of whom—Zaghlul,
Isma’il Sidqi, and Mohammed Mahmud—have made their mark
in subsequent politics, were deported to Malta. This was followed
by a widespread insurrection among the fellahin, inspired by the
middle-class nationalists. Railways and telegraph and telephone
communications was extensively cut, and Cairo was isolated from
the rest of the country, where British authority had ceased to be
effective. Provincial 'republican governments’ were proclaimed
and even villages set up their own independent authorities.
Isolated parties of British troops and some European residents
were massacred. By 23 March however railway communication
between Cairo and the north had been restored, and three weeks
later the army had re-imposed order almost everywhere.

The Residency subsequently tried to explain the revolution by
allegations that the hand of Bolshevist, Young Turk and even
German agents had been 'clearly discernible’; but the Milner
Commission placed these hypotheses in their true perspective:
'The Anglo-Egyptian authorities appear to have been so greatly
out of touch with native sentiment that such statements must be
accepted with reserve. They have shown a complete lack of fore¬
knowledge for which it Is almost impossible to account/ The
internal organization of the Residency had in fact become far from
adequate for its increased responsibilities; the duties of the various
senior officials had never been clearly defined, and it had no sound
system for obtaining and assessing intelligence.

Meanwhile Lloyd George had recalled the High Commissioner
and appointed in his place Lord Allenby, the victor of the Palestine
campaign, 'to maintain the Protectorate on a secure and equitable
basis’. The new High Commissioner adopted a conciliatory
policy towards the nationalists. The four deported deputies were
released, and Zaghlul went off to Europe to lay Egypt’s case before

The Struggle for Independence 135

the Peace Conference; but Ms intransigence and rigid inability to
compromise made a poor impression there, and his case was
weakened by the fact that President Wilson had given his recog¬
nition to the British Protectorate. The British Government set up,
under the chairmanship of the Colonial Secretary Lord Milner, a
commission "to enquire into the form of government wMch,
under the Protectorate , will be best calculated to promote peace and
prosperity, the progressive development of self-governing institu¬
tions, and the protection of foreign interests’. In the same docu¬
ment British policy was defined as seeking 4 to defend Egypt against
all external danger and the interference of a foreign power, and to
establish constitutional government, under British guidance as far
as may be necessary, so that the Sultan 1 and Ms ministers and the
elected representatives of the people may in their several spheres
and in an increasing degree co-operate in the management of
Egyptian affairs’. The Mission was met by a complete boycott;
their residence was picketed by the Wafdists (as the followers of
ZagMul now called themselves), and any Egyptian who ventured
to call upon them was pursued by menaces. On the return of the
Mission to London Milner continued negotiations with the
Egyptian Prime Minister and with Zaghlul, and finally in
August 1920 produced a memorandum proposing a definite
settlement provided that Zaghlul would urge its acceptance
upon Ms followers. It recommended 4 a treaty of alliance
under wMch Britain will recognize the independence of Egypt
as a constitutional monarchy with representative institutions*
and Egypt will confer upon Britain the rights necessary to
safeguard her special interests and to enable her to give foreign
Powers guarantees which will secure the relinquishment of
capitulatory rights. Britain will defend the integrity of Egyptian
territory, and Egypt will in case of war render Britain all assistance
in her power within her own borders. Egypt will not adopt an
attitude inconsistent with the alliance, or enter into any agreement
with a foreign power prejudicial to British interests. Egypt will
confer on Britain the right to maintain a military force on Egyptian
soil for the maintenance of her imperial communications. ... Egypt
will recognize the right of Britain to intervene, should legislation
operate inequitably against foreigners. The British representative

1 The Khedive had been made to adopt this title in 1914 when Ottoman
suzerainty was renounced with the Turkish entry into the War.

13 6 A Short History o f the Middle East

will enjoy a special position and precedence’, etc. This memoran¬
dum, which provided the basis for Anglo-Egyptian relations until
1946, was received not unfavourably in Egypt, though Zaghlul
had made the significant counter-proposal that British troops
should be specifically limited in number and confined to the Canal
Zone. The main opposition came from the British cabinet, parlia¬
ment, and public, 'many of whom had come to regard Egypt as an
integral part of the British Empire and were beyond measure
astonished that Milner, whose imperialism was unimpeachable,
should have proposed what they regarded as the surrender and
abandonment of British territory’. 1 Milner, however, showed
how untenable historically this unaccommodating attitude was:
'Unless all our past declarations have been insincere and all our
professions hypocritical, the establishment of Egypt as an inde¬
pendent state in intimate alliance with Britain is the goal to which
all our efforts have been directed. It may indeed be argued that the
goal has not yet been reached, that Egypt is not yet strong enough
to stand on her own feet. Such arguments are entitled to respectful
consideration. But what cannot be maintained, with any regard
for historical accuracy, is that these changes in themselves are not
absolutely in accordance with the constantly declared policy of
Great Britain.’ 2

During 1921 the British government carried on negotiations
with moderate Egyptian ministers drawn from the Turkish
ruling class; but these broke down on the Egyptian insistence that
the British garrison should in peace-time be confined to the Canal
Zone, where it could not be used so readily to exert pressure upon
Egyptian internal politics. The British Army ? on the other hand,
apparently insensible of the constant irritant presented to Egyptian
susceptibilities by the presence of a British garrison in their capital,
stubbornly opposed its withdrawal from Cairo. A familiar theme
of those who opposed any concessions was that The real fellahin, if
their voice could be heard, preferred British rule to that of their
own leaders; yet all the evidence conclusively proved that these
misguided peasants preferred indifferent government by their own
compatriots to the efficient and honest administration of an alien
power’. 3 The Cabinet, dependent on an unstable coalition in the

1 Round Table, December, 1936,110 ff.

2 Preface to the thirteenth edition of England in Egypt, October, 1920.

8 N. G. D., reviewing Lord WavelPs { Allenby in Egypt* in Royal Central Asian
Journal, XXXI (1944), 213.

The Struggle for Independence 137

House of Commons, and fearful that it would be attacked by the
imperialist wing of the press if, after its recent surrender to
Sinn Fein in Ireland, it now made concessions to militant national¬
ism in Egypt, followed the lead of the Colonial Secretary, Winston
Churchill, who characteristically was much more alive to the
broad bearing of the question on imperial strategy than to the
intensity of feeling in Egypt itself Finally Allenby, realizing the
hopelessness of trying to get any agreement in Egypt without some
concessions and holding that Britain was pledged by the Milner
Report to offer a measure of independence, forced the govern¬
ment’s hands by tendering his resignation with that of the four
principal* British advisers to the Egyptian government. The
Cabinet yielded and Allenby was allowed to proceed with his
policy of granting conditional independence. On 28 February 1922
the Sultan was informed that the Protectorate was terminated, and
Egypt declared to be an independent sovereign state. The follow¬
ing four points were however absolutely reserved to the discretion
ofH.M. Government pending the reaching of agreement on them:
(1) The security of imperial communications; (2) the defence of
Egypt against all foreign aggression or interference direct or in¬
direct; (3) the protection of foreign residents and minorities;
(4) the Sudan. This unilateral declaration was followed by a
Note to the foreign Powers warning them that Britain would not
admit any questioning or discussion of her special relations with
Egypt, and would regard as an unfriendly act 1 any attempt
at intervention in Egyptian affairs. Egypt was not proposed
for admission to the League of Nations; and in November
1924 the Conservative government which had newly come to
power informed the League that, should Egypt sign the Geneva
Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes,
H.M. Government would not admit that the act entitled her to
invoke the intervention of the League in any matter covered by the
Four Reserved Points. As Toynbee commented, the granting of
independence to Egypt was so limited by these reservations that it
amounted in fact to less than Dominion Status. Egyptians received
it without gratitude as merely an instalment of independence; as
the Iraqi soldier Ja’far al-’Askari had remarked, ‘Complete inde¬
pendence is never given; it is, always taken. 5

★ * ★

1 The diplomatic euphemism for an act which would be resisted by force.

138 A Short History of the Middle East

As Iraq was progressively occupied during the War, it came
under a military administration whose tone, set by the Indian
Army and the Government of India, was unsympathetic to the new
idea of Arab nationalism as fostered by the British Arab Bureau in
Cairo. An interim compromise plan produced by the British
government in March 1917 provided for the annexation of the
Basra vilayet, while that of Baghdad was to be administered as far as
possible by Arabs, but to be in everything but name a British pro¬
tectorate having no relations with foreign Powers. A new factor
was introduced by an Anglo-French Declaration of 7 November
1918 which stated that: 'France and Britain agree to further and
assist the setting-up in Syria and Iraq of indigenous governments
and administrations, deriving their authority from the free exercise
of initiative and choice of the indigenous populations. The only
concern of France and Britain is to offer such support and efficacious
help as will ensure the smooth working of these governments and
administrations/ This Declaration caused great excitement among
the young nationalists of Baghdad, but, in the opinion of the dis¬
tinguished Arabist and traveller Gertrude Bell who was serving on
the staff of the Administration, 'the prematurity of the national
movement has so clearly been manifest that it has found no support
among the stable elements of the population.’

At this stage the Chief Civil Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, a
man of great experience and personal prestige, was transferred as
British Minister to Tehran, and was succeeded by his assistant
Colonel Arnold Wilson. This thirty-four-year-old Indian Army
officer had rapidly come to the fore for his energy and vigour; but
his previous acquaintance with Arabs and his knowledge of their
character was limited to his experience in the Persian Gulf and on
the Lower Tigris. He had no experience of or sympathy with the
Ottomanized effendi of Baghdad, whose political aspirations were
those of al-’Ahd. More than this, his admirable positive qualities
were offset by a strong vein of self-righteousness and self-justifica¬
tion. On taking over from Cox he advised the Foreign Office that
'There is an almost entire absence of political, racial, and other
connexion of Iraq with the rest of Arabia... . The average Arab,
as opposed to the handful of amateur politicians of Baghdad, sees
the future as one of fair dealing and material and moral progress
under the aegis of Britain. Iraq should not be assimilated politically
to the rest of the Arab and the Muslim world, but should remain

The Struggle for Independence 139

insulated as far as may be, as a wedge of British-controlled terri¬
tory’; and he comments in his apologia Loyalties: ‘A small
independent state of under three millions seemed a retrograde,
almost anarchic step. . . . My imagination envisaged some form
of protectorate which might develop ere long into a fully-fledged
Arab state with Dominion status under the British crown.’
Having determined in November 1918 to obtain confirmation for
his thesis by holding a plebiscite, he was at some pains to ensure
that it produced the desired result. His instructions to his Divisional
Oflicers stated, ‘When public opinion appears likely to take a
definitely satisfactory line, you are authorized to convene an
assembly of all leading notables and sheikhs . . . informing them
that their answers will be communicated to me for submission to
the Government. Where public opinion appears likely to be sharply
divided, or in the unlikely event of its being unfavourable, you
should defer holding a meeting and report to me for instructions.
The effect on the British cabinet of the plebiscite so conducted was
less serious than its effect on Wilson himself, since it led him in¬
creasingly to find reasons for disregarding the views of those with
whom he disagreed. Thus, characterizing the Iraqi nationalist
officers with the Amir Faisal in Syria as ‘such small fry’ and re¬
garding the Shi’i mujtahids and other religious dignitaries with
much justification as ‘spiritual tyrants whose principal ambition
was to stem the rising tide of emancipation’, he ‘underestimated
the influence of the Nationalists, and the susceptibility to their pro¬
paganda and that of the dissident ’ulama of the mass of the people
on the Middle Euphrates’, as he himself later admitted. 1 He was
not, however, averse to cautious constitutionalprogress; he proposed
to the Interdepartmental Committee on Eastern Affairs in April
1919: ‘The legitimate demand for active participation in the
government and administration can best be met, not by creating
central legislative and deliberative councils, but by giving carefully
selected Arabs of good birth and education from the very outset
positions of executive and administrative responsibility. I would
propose to instal selected Arab officials as governors of (the
principal towns) with a specially chosen British official of ability
and character as principal commissioner and adviser to the
governor.’ The Allied Powers were, however, still fully occupied
with imposing terms on Germany, and had not yet approached the
1 Loyalties , II, 254.

140 A Short History of the Middle East

problem of the disposal of the Ottoman Empire. Consequently the
Foreign Office replied to Wilson that it was premature to attempt
constitutional experiments pending the decision of the Peace
Conference on the Mandatory Power for Iraq and the nature of the
Mandate. In these circumstances it is not surprising that Arab
notables who were approached as possible governors of Basra de¬
clined to accept the responsibility and commit themselves until the
future of their country became clearer.

Meanwhile there had existed in Damascus since its liberation in
October 1918 an autonomous Arab government under the Amir
Faisal, assisted by British officers who had taken part in the Arab
Rebellion and were sympathetic to the Sharifian form of Arab
nationalism. Among the officers on Faisal’s staff were many Iraqis,
members of al-’Ahd, who ardently desired to see their country
similarly placed under Arab rule. In 1919 one of these visited
Baghdad and was offered the post of Assistant Military Governor
of the city. He apparently imagined that he had been invited to
assist in setting up a national government; but on finding that he
was merely to be an Arab unit in the British administration hur¬
riedly resigned. ‘This incident evidently confirmed in the minds of
the Iraqi officers in Syria the impression that the British mili tary
administration in Iraq was intended to be permanent, and that it
regarded them as active enemies who were trying to undermine
British influence there.’ 1 The Iraqis in Syria thereupon organized
a rising wave of political feeling in the towns of Iraq, and brought
about a rapprochement between Sunnis and Shi’is. In October
1919 Gertrude Bell remarked in an official Note: ‘When we set
up a civil administration in this country, the fact that a responsible
native government has existed for a year in Syria will not be for¬
gotten by the Iraqi nationalists; and if we seek to make use of those
Iraqis who have done best in Syria, they will claim great liberty of
action, and will expect to be treated as equals. .. . Local conditions,
the vast potential wealth of the country, the tribal character of the
rural population, the lack of material from which to draw official
personnel, will make the problem harder to solve here than else¬
where- I venture to think that the answer to such objections is that
any alternative line of action would create problems whose solu¬
tion we are learning to be harder still.’ Wilson, however, still did
not fully grasp the strong, intimate, and constant influence exerted
1 Sir Hubert Young, The Independent Arab, 292, 297.

The Struggle for Independence 141

on Iraqi nationalism by the autonomous Arab government in
Syria, and sought to nullify Gertrude BelTs conclusions in his
covering despatch: "The fundamental assumption throughout
this Note ... is that an Arab state in Iraq and elsewhere within a
short period of years is a possibility, and that the recognition or
creation of a logical scheme of government on these lines would be
practicable and popular. . . . My observations in tills country and
elsewhere have forced me to the conclusion that this assumption is
erroneous. ... I believe it to be impossible in these days to create a
new T sovereign Muslim state . . . out of the remnants of the Turkish
Empire. ... It is my belief that the Arab public at large would
after a very few years prefer the return of the Turks to the con¬
tinuance of an amateur Arab government. . . . For some time to
come the appointment of Arab governors or high officials, except
in an advisory capacity, would involve the rapid decay of authority,
law and order, followed by anarchy and disorder, and the move¬
ment once started would not be checked.’ Long afterwards he
admitted, fi It is easy to see after the lapse of ten years that I was
perhaps unduly sceptical.’

In May 1920 the British government at last obtained by the
abortive Treaty of Sevres the mandate for Iraq, and instructed
Wilson to consult the recently-created Divisional Councils on
proposals for the development of national life. Wilson and his
advisers objected, since the Arab government in Damascus, sub¬
sidized with gold from the British treasury, had during the long
delay carried on a violent nationalist propaganda with considerable
success among the middle-class younger generation, who had been
greatly encouraged by the proclamation of Faisal’s brother
Abdullah as King of Iraq by the ’Ahd in Damascus in March.
Wilson’s advisers produced a draft constitution: there was
to be a Council of State, consisting of British and Arabs in
equal numbers, and a Legislature. The members of the Council
could, however, be removed at will, and its resolutions over¬
ruled, by the British High Commissioner. The powers of the
so-called Legislature were to be confined to the passing of
resolutions without the force of law and the putting of questions
to the government. Although Wilson claimed that ‘leading Arabs
regarded these proposals as revolutionary and as a generation ahead
of the times’, Lord Curzon critically commented: ‘This is not an
Arab government inspired and helped by British advice, but a

142 A Short History of the Middle East

British government infused with Arab elements... / Meanwhile
nationalist activity had passed from agitation to open defiance.
Already early in the year Arab irregulars with encouragement
from the Arab government in Damascus had forced the British to
withdraw-from Dak az-Zor, their furthest outpost in the direction
of Syria. 1 In June a force under the Iraqi officer Jamil Midfa’i 2
seized the post of Tell Afar, thirty miles west of Mosul anffmassa-
cred its small British garrison, but was driven back before it could
reach Mosul itself. In the months of May and June fypoo in
gold w 7 as reported to have reached extremists at Karbala.

The British government announced on 20 June that Sir Percy
Cox would return in the autumn as Chief British Representative
in anticipation that the Mandate, when finally promulgated, would
constitute Iraq an independent state. But this gesture came too late.
Owing presumably to the severe climate and the steady drain of
demobilization, the Civil Administration v r as staffed mainly by
very young and inexperienced men, who shared the somewhat
headstrong viev r s of their Chief. 3 ‘It seems probable that had the
Civil Administration been less anxious to justify its continued
existence’ (with generous pay and allowances, be it noted, ar a
time of rising unemployment and wage-cuts in Britain) ‘by prov¬
ing its superiority over the previous regime and all other possible
regimes . .. had it been staffed by men older and more experienced
in dealing with the Arab character and temperament, or had it
shown Itself more sympathetic to the idea of Arab government
instead of merely paying it lip service as a possibility in some re¬
mote or indefinite future, many of the classes who hardened their
hearts against the once-popular British regime would have con¬
tinued to support it/ 4 The revenue collected in 1920 was three
and a half times that received by the Turks in 1911. Taxation,
which was enormously heavier than in India, tended to press most
heavily on the fellahin, but was vexatious also to the landlords and
dignitaries and to the tribes, who had formerly largely escaped pay¬
ing taxes. Thelraqishadnosay in the objects on which these revenues

1 Under the Ottoman Empire this part of the Euphrates valley had not be¬
longed to any of the vilayets of Iraq, but had formed an independent sanjaq.

2 He has subsequently been Prime Minister of Iraq, and is now (April
1948) Minister of the Interior.

3 In the autumn of 1919, out of a total of 233 officers only four were over
forty-five years of age. On 1st June 1920 two-thirds of the Divisional Political
Officers were under thirty, and almost one-quarter were only twenty-five or less.

4 Ireland, op. cit., 252. cf. Ph. Graves, Life of Sir Percy Cox, 262 f.

143

The Struggle for Independence

were expended. In the financial year 1919-20 16 per cent, of all
expenditure was devoted to Headquarters and the costs of ad¬
ministration, and this marked a reduction from previous years;
another 11 per cent., nominally for public works, was largely
applied to improving the amenities of British and Indian officials.
Wilson had expressed the view that the interests of the country
would be served by having a large proportion of British personnel
In all branches of the administration. The Divisional Advisory
Councils, composed of Arabs, had no influence on policy. Less
than 4 per cent, of the senior-grade officials were Arab, and on the
railways there were nearly five times as many Indian as Iraqi per¬
sonnel. After the Rebellion had already begun Gertrude Bell
wrote, ‘On the whole, the wonder Is that there are so many
moderates and reasonable people. I try to count myself among
them, but I find it difficult to maintain a dispassionate calm when
I reflect on the number of blunders we have made/

The garrison consisted of 80,000 troops, nearly half the size of
the standing army of India with a hundred times the population.
The general situation had long been known to be threatening; but
Army H.Q. had tended to place little faith in the reports of the
Political Officers of the Civil Administration. When the Rebel¬
lion broke out at the end of June, the C.-in-C. and the bulk ofhis
staff were at their Persian hill-station; only 4,200 British troops,
almost all new to the country and without previous military ex¬
perience, and 30,000 Indians were available for service in Iraq; and
only 500 British and 2,500-3,000 Indians were available as a mobile
force. The main centre of the Rebellion was the tribal area of the
Middle Euphrates, and though the moderate nationalists held aloof
it lasted from July to September, when it was put down by heavy
reinforcements. Over 400 British and Indian troops were killed,
and the rebels were estimated to have suffered 8,450 casualties. It
cost Britain -£20,000,000, and in Iraq the damage to railways and
loss of revenue amounted to more than -£400,000.

Sir Percy Cox arrived on 1 October to take back the supreme
authority from Wilson with the new title of High Commissioner.
He had the advantage of his great personal prestige, and handled
the situation in a more sympathetic spirit than his predecessor. A
provisional Council of State was set up, consisting of Arab
ministers, who were, however, subj ect to the advice of their British
Advisers and, in the last resort, to the High Commissioner whose.

144 A Short History of the Middle East

decision was final in all matters. There was no intention of trans¬
ferring the administration to the Iraqis any faster than practical
considerations demanded. The situation was very comparable
with that of Cromer’s Egypt: British heads and Iraqi hands; and
in fact the country was at about the same stage of development.
But at least a concession had been made to national aspirations by
appointing Iraqi ministers. The Iraqi officers stranded in Syria
after the French suppression of Faisal’s government in July 1920
were encouraged to return to Iraq. The garrisoning of Iraq was in
1921 handed over to the R.A.F., and its cost progressively reduced
in three to four years to one-seventh of its former figure. Never¬
theless the extreme nationalists were not appeased, and it was
alleged that they were receiving material help from nationalist
Turkey and B olshevist Russia. Gertrude Bell wrote, ‘If we hesi¬
tate in appointing a king, the tide of public opinion may turn over¬
whelmingly to the Turks.’ At the Cairo Conference called by the
Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, in March 1921 the choice
finally fell on Faisal, for whom Cox’s staff and especially Gertrude
Bell began to make active propaganda in Iraq. 1 The popular
reception on his arrival was lukewarm, but the administration
made every effort to secure a favourable vote in the projected
referendum. A printed form containing a resolution in his favour
was sent to the Divisional Officers to obtain the signatures of the
notables. Annexures asking for the continuance of British control
were encouraged, while any addition of a nationalist character was
punished, and the mutasarrif of Baghdad was forced to resign for
permitting them. The majority-vote of a town or district was
regarded for the purpose of enumeration as unanimous. 2 As
Gertrude Bell remarked with her curious mixture of cynicism
and ingenuousness, it was ‘politics running on wheels greased
with extremely well-melted grease’. The official return gave
Faisal 96 per cent, of the votes, while independent observers were
disposed to give him two-thirds. 8

1 St. John Philby, then Adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, who favoured a
republic, was dismissed for obstructing the official policy.

* Similarly in the United States, the party in each state which gains a majority,
however small, fills the whole of that state’s seats in the electoral college that
elects the President.

* harkuk liwa with its Turcoman population voted against him, and the
Kurdish liwa of Sulairaaniya boycotted the referendum. The Shi’is, who con¬
stitute a majority in the whole country, demanded the end of foreign control, as
did over 80 per cent, of the poll in Baghdad.

145

The Struggle for Independence

The nationalists hoped that the creation of the monarchy meant
the end of the Mandate, and the estabhshment of full independence
sweetened with British financial support. The British, on the other
hand, proposed to retain control of Iraq’s foreign relations and
'such measure of financial control as might be necessary’. The
King was to agree to be guided by the advice of the High Com¬
missioner, and British officials were to be appointed to specified
posts. Negotiation over the terms of the Treaty to define Anglo-
Iraqi relations was protracted through most of 1922 owing to Iraqi
reluctance to make such large concessions as Britain required.
The King was inclined to associate himself with the nationalist
attitude. Five nationalist leaders were deported, including Hamdi
al-Pachahji, and unrest in the provinces called for the use ofR.A.F.
bombers on four occasions. In September Cox delivered an ulti¬
matum to the King: H.M. Government could not further tolerate
his connexion with the nationalist agitation nor the delay in
ratifying the Treaty. At this moment the King had a very oppor¬
tune, though entirely genuine, attack of acute appendicitis, and in
October the Council of Ministers ratified a twenty years’ Treaty,
subject to its subsequent ratification by the Naional Assembly.
Every royal Act or ministerial order was to receive the previous
approval of the High Commissioner or British Adviser respec¬
tively. If a minister refused to yield to his Adviser’s disapproval,
the High Commissioner had the power eventually to 'advise’ the
King that the measure should not receive the Royal Assent.

The National Assembly did not meet to ratify the Treaty till
March 1924. The High Commissioner had taken pains to 'make’
a pro-Treaty majority. The Opposition objected to the appoint¬
ment of British advisers; it claimed that the financial stipulations,
which required one-quarter of the revenue to be allotted to
national defence and imposed on Iraq a heavy share of the Ottoman
Public Debt, constituted an excessive burden; and it complained
that Britain had given Iraq no guarantee over the question of the
vilayet of Mosul, whose ownership was being vigorously con¬
tested by the nationalist Turkey of Mustafa Kemal. As the Assem¬
bly proved unexpectedly obstructive, the High Commissioner
finally gave the King a fortnight’s warning that, if the Treaty were
not ratified in time to place it before the next session of the League
of Nations Council, H.M. Government would put its own alter¬
native proposals before the League. With only twenty-four hours

146 A Short History of the Middle East

to go, the High Commissioner refused to grant an extension of the
time-limit. The Treaty was finally ratified with about an hour to
spare by thirty-seven votes to twenty-four, with eight abstentions
and thirty-one absentees out of a total of 100 members. Britain had
with difficulty safeguarded her essential interests, and the national¬
ists had ‘gone down fighting’. The immediate obstacle had been
cleared, and the process of historical evolution could go on
without bloodshed.

•k k k

The special position of Palestine as the Holy Land of three great
religions had been not unsatisfactorily met during the nineteenth
century by the Ottoman creation of the Sanjaq of Jerusalem taking
its orders direct from Istanbul, and by allowing a large measure of
civil autonomy to the multiplicity of foreign religious com¬
munities. Though Sir Henry McMahon stated twenty years
afterwards that in his mind Palestine was always excluded from the
territories promised to the Arabs by the Husain-McMahon Cor¬
respondence in 19x5, there is no direct reference to Palestine in that
Correspondence. 1 In 1916, with a large-scale invasion of the
Levant contemplated from Egypt, it was necessary to reconcile the
interests of Britain in that region with those of France, who ever
since i860 had regarded Syria as her special preserve, had con¬
tinued to expand her schools, had built the railways and obtained
other commercial concessions. Some French publicists at this time
even insisted that the French special interest extended to Palestine;
but such a claim was not tenable in view of the variety of religious
interests there other than those of the Church of Rome. In the
secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 it was decided that, while
French interests should be paramount in Syria, in the eventual

1 It has been argued that Palestine was implicitly included in the area ‘west of
the wilaydt of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo*, which was excluded from
the proposed Arab kingdom, since the toilaya (vilayet) of Damascus extended
south as far as Aqaba and consequently Palestine lay immediately to the west of
it. This interpretation breaks down on the immediately-following reference to
Homs and Homa: there were no ‘vilayets* in the strict administrative sense of
Homs and Hama, since these towns lay within the vilayet of Damascus. It
would therefore follow that the word was intended in its alternative general
sense of ‘district*; and as the four cities mentioned all lie well to the north of
Palestine, to argue that an area to the west of them was intended to include
Palestine is as unprofitable as to argue that an area ‘west of the districts of
Warwick, Sheffield, Leeds, and Newcastle’ includes the counties of Hereford
and Monmouth.

The Struggle for Independence 147

partitioning of the Ottoman Empire Palestine should come under
an international administration.

So far, not a word had been officially said about any special
rights for the Jews. In all the centuries that had elapsed since the
destruction ofjerusalem in a.d. 70, there had probably never been
a time when there was not a small Jewish community in Palestine;
and pious Jews of the Dispersion had always dreamed of the
restoration, by the will of God, of the Temple and the Kingdom.
In 1799, when Napoleon invaded Palestine from Egypt, he issued a
manifesto to the Jews of the world offering them 4 the patrimony
of Israel’. Of more practical importance was the sentiment enter¬
tained by many British Protestants in the nineteenth century that
the fulfilment of the Scriptures entailed the restoration of the
Jews to Palestine. This view was held by the philanthropist Lord
Shaftesbury, who as a kinsman of the great Palmerston had some
indirect influence on British policy. B oth Russia and France, whose
activities in the Middle East Palmerston regarded with equal sus¬
picion, were using the benevolence of Ibrahim Pasha in the 1830’s
to expand their respective Orthodox and Catholic missions in
Palestine; and Palmerston therefore sought the opportunity of
using some other community to offset their influence. In 1838 he
appointed the first British Vice-consul in Jerusalem, and in¬
structed him as part of his duties ‘to afford protection to the Jews
generally; and you will take an early opportunity of reporting .. .
upon the present state of the Jewish population in Palestine’.
They were found to number some ten thousand souls, nearly all
of them from the Mediterranean countries. In 1840, at the height
of the crisis of the Second Syrian War, Palmerston wrote to the
British Ambassador in Istanbul, It would be of manifest im¬
portance for the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return to, and
settle in Palestine; because the wealth which they would bring with
them would increase the resources of the Sultan’s dominions; and
the Jewish people, if returning under the sanction and protection
and at the invitation of the Sultan, would be a check upon any
future evil designs of Mohammed Ali or his successor. . .. Bring
these considerations confidentially under the notice of the Turkish
government, and strongly recommend them to hold out every
just encouragement to the Jews ofEurope to return to Palestine.’ 1

This project, however, came to nothing, and there was little

1 cf. A. N. Hyamson, The British Consulate in Jerusalem.

148 A Short History of the Middle East

change in the numbers or status of the Jews in Palestine till the
’eighties, when the nationalist reaction in Russia, then the home of
two-thirds ofworld-Jewry, to the murder of the Tsar was followed
by an outbreak of anti-Jewish outrages, in which hundreds were
killed and thousands ruined, while discriminatory anti-Jewish
legislation was enforced over a period of three years. There was a
large-scale exodus of Jews from Russia, finding ready admission
into North America and Britain in those easygoing and liberal days.
A small proportion of the emigrants went to Palestine, where some
of them settled on the land with the financial help of Baron de
Rothschild, and readily employed the Arab fellahin to cultivate the
lands for them. By the outbreak of the First World War the
Jewish population of Palestine was over 80,000. The growth of
their agricultural settlements, despite many material difficulties, to
the number of forty-four with a total population of about 12,000
had already provoked some Arab opposition. The American geo¬
grapher Ellsworth Huntington, who was in Palestine in 1909,
wrote: 'The fellahin of the Plain of Sharon and of other fertile
parts of Palestine, such as Carmel and parts of the Jordan Valley,
see in the Jew their greatest enemy. . . . Around Jaffa the Jewish
colonies are undoubtedly successful, so much so that the native
population is sorely jealous. In enmity towards the colonists they
steal the fruit and break the branches in the orchards, turn horses
into the grain-fields and break down hedges.’ 1 In 1912 there was
an angry scene in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, when Arab
deputies protested against the Jewish acquisition of large areas of
arable land in the Plain of Esdraelon from absentee landlords and
the threatened dispossession of the tenants. 2

Meanwhile the growing anti-Jewish prejudice in Europe, which
reached flash-point in France in the Affaire Dreyfus, had had a pro¬
found effect on a Viennese j ouriialist Theodor Herzl, 'one on whom
his Jewish origin lay so lightly that it is probable that... he often
completely forgot it.’ But stung now by the sense of helplessness
and homelessness of the Jew's faced by unreasoning persecution, he

1 Palestine and its Transformation (1911), 87.

2 Geo. Antonius, op. cit. 259. In the early years of the British mandate these
lands were transferred to the Jews. Twenty-one Arab villages disappeared from
the map of Palestine, and it has never been definitely established what hap¬
pened to their inhabitants. The tenants (but not the landless labourers) are said
to have been compensated by the Jewish purchasers to the extent of about 4 per
cent, of the purchase-price. The landlords, a wealthy and cosmopolitan Beirut
Christian family, gave them no compensation. (Barbour, op. cit., 117 f.)

149

The Struggle for Independence

produced in 1896 a pamphlet The Jewish State , in which he pro¬
posed the creation of a Jewish national territory. It fell on fertile soil
amongjewish student-societies in European universities, and others
whose dream of the return to Zion had been given urgency by the
persecution of Jewry in Russia. The three motifs: religious Zion¬
ism, the need of asylum from persecution and discrimination, and
Herzl’s political idea, fused. ‘Almost overnight he found himself
the head of a great party in Jewry: political Zionism had been
born.. . .Jewry was to be divested of its peculiar attributes and
made “as other nations”, bound together politically and self-con¬
scious/ After seven years of failure of the Zionist Organization to
interest any Great Power in their plans ho establish for the Jewish
people a home in Palestine secured by public law’, it received in
1903 an offer from the British government to establish an autono¬
mous Jewish settlement in what was then called British East
Africa. Herzl himself, who had never been wedded to Palestine
as the only land for his prospective state, was attracted by this
so-called ‘Uganda Scheme’; but before anything could be finally
settled he died, and the Zionist Congress of 1905, dominated by
Eastern European Jews imbued with the traditional religious
Zionism, resolved on the fundamental principle of the coloniza¬
tion of‘Palestine and the adjacent lands’ and nowhere else. 1

The outbreak of the First World War transferred the centre of
gravity of the growing Zionist movement from the continent of
Europe to Britain and the U.S.A. In these two countries the
principal protagonists of Zionism were respectively Dr. Hayyim
Weizmann, bom in Poland but for some years lecturer in chemistry
at Manchester University, where he had ‘converted Prime
Minister Balfour to Zionism in the middle of the East Manchester
election’ 2 (!): and the lawyer Louis D. Brandeis, who actively
supported Woodrow Wilson for President of the U.S.A. and was
rewarded by being made a Judge of the Supreme Court. 3 A
‘British Palestine Committee’ formed on Weizmann’s inspira¬
tion, Issued a periodical under the slogan ‘To reset the ancient
glories of the Jewish nation in the freedom of a new British domi¬
nion in Palestine’. The only non-Jewish member of this com¬
mittee, the journalist Herbert Sidebotham of the Manchester

1 Hyamson, Palestine: A Policy, ch. V.

2 Herbert Sidebotham, Great Britain and Palestine, 54.

3 Rabbi Stephen Wise, in The Jewish National Home, 1917—42 (Paul Good¬
man, ed.), 41.

150 A Short History of the Middle East

Guardian , had in 1915 written a leading-article advocating the per¬
manent British occupation of Palestine for the defence of Egypt.
This had attracted the interest of Weizmann, who had asked Side-
botham to write a memorandum to the Foreign Office, proposing
a Jewish state in Palestine for the defence of Egypt and the Canal.
Sidebotham claimed that it was the needs, political and strategic,
of British policy that definitely inclined the scales in favour of
Zionism. 1

Balfour had become Foreign Secretary in 1916. The influential
and enthusiastic Sir Mark Sykes, 2 who had helped to make the
Sykes-Picot Treaty, had become a temporary convert to Zionism.
With the gradual exhaustion ofboth Russia and France as effective
military powers in 1917 it had become imperative to ensure the
early armed intervention of the U.S.A., and President Wilson had
shown himself "warmly responsive to the Zionist ideal’. In these
circumstances, after much interchange of opinion between
British and American Zionists, and while Zionists in Germany and
Turkey were conducting parallel negotiations with the enemy
governments, 3 a proposal was submitted in 1917 to the British
government for the "recognition of Palestine as the National Home
of the Jewish people’ with internal autonomy, freedom of immi¬
gration, and the establishment of a Jewish National Colonizing
Corporation for the resettlement of the country. This bold and
uncompromising phraseology was not however acceptable either
to the Foreign Office or to some influential British Jews who were
concerned about its possible effect on their status as British subjects.
After some months of redrafting it finally received official approval
as the famous Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917: ‘H.M.
Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being
clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice
the civil and religious rights of other non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country. 5 There is thus a fundamental distinction between
the original Zionist proposal and the finally approved Declaration,
the one all-embracing, the other ambiguous and hedged with

1 op. cit., chs. IV-V.

2 T. E. Lawrence described him as ‘the imaginative advocate of unconvincing
world-movements' {SevenPillars of Wisdom, 58).

3 Barbour, op. cit., 54 f., 64 f.

The Struggle for Independence 151

reservations. The Zionists have always persisted in interpreting the
Declaration in the terms of their original proposal: as recently as
August 1946 an official Jewish Agency spokesman claimed that
‘the promise to the Jews of the whole of Palestine on both sides of
the Jordan was implied in the Balfour Declaration. 1

The Army authorities in Palestine did their best to keep the news
of the Declaration from the 'non-Jewish communities’, i.e. the
Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who then constituted
90 per cent, of the population; but a report of it reached the Sharif
Husain, who with some concern asked Britain for an explanation.
The government informed him that its support of the Zionist
aspirations went only 'so far as is compatible with the freedom of
the existing population, both economic and political’. This
promise satisfied the Sharif, and early in 1919 his son Faisal reached
with Weizmann a provisional agreement over Zionism in Pales¬
tine, subject however to the confirmation by the Powers of the
Arab kingdom in Syria; 'but if the slightest modification or de¬
parture is made’, wrote Faisal, fi I shall not then be bound by a
single word of the present agreement.’ At this stage the Palestine
Arabs had never been consulted; they had given no mandate to
Faisal to negotiate on their behalf; and his agreement with the
Zionist leader could not be considered binding on anyone but
himself and his father.

At the end of the War the political aspirations of the Zionists,
kindled by the realization at last of their ancient hopes of returning
to the Land of Promise, were heightened by the pressure exerted
on Jews to emigrate in large numbers from the highly nationalistic
; Eastern European states which had emerged from the wreckage of
the Austrian and Russian empires; 2 and they were still further
encouraged by the pronouncements of such responsible statesmen
as President Wilson, Lloyd George, Smuts, and Balfour in favour,
of an eventual Jewish state or commonwealth. The ignorance of
these statesmen with regard to the rise of Arab nationalism was 1
profound, and they apparently thought of the Arabs of Palestine
(in so far as they were aware of their existence) as mere Bedouin,
as little worthy of consideration as the American Indians, the
Bantu, or any other politically unorganized and inarticulate race

1 Palestine Post, 2 August, 1946. It has been well said that Zionism is not
to be judged in terms of logic and politics, but as an intense emotional force.
(Sir Harry Haig, in International Affairs, XXII (1946), 557.)

f Pound Table, 1939, 259.

152 A Short History of the Middle East

of ‘natives’, whose destiny it was to give place to the coloniza¬
tion. of more ‘progressive’ peoples. At the Peace Conference, Dr.
Weizmann could state his movement’s aspirations in the un¬
equivocal words, "To make Palestine as Jewish as England is
English or America American’; and a volume issued by the
promoters of the Zionist Foundation Fund (Keren ha-Yesod)
declared: ‘The object of the modern Jewish pioneer in Palestine is
to prepare room and work for the thousands and millions who wait
outside.’ ‘The potency of Zionism swept like a tide over all the
types of Jew on whom Britain’s original assumption (the recon¬
cilability ofJew T and Arab) had been based—the religious Jews who
had always lived unobtrusive lives in the holy cities of Palestine;
the pre-war agriculturalists who spoke Arabic and employed
Arabs; and the farseeing scholarly Jews who thought that the
surest way of fulfilling the Messianic promise was to join with the
local population in forming a covenant of peace. Zionism
brushed aside every consideration that did not contribute to the
immediate increase of the National Home.’ 1

The Arab reaction to the exuberance of the Zionist ‘invasion’
was swift. Mark Sykes, who revisited the country in 1919 was,
in spite of his earlier enthusiasm, ‘shocked by the intense bitterness
provoked there’. The King-Crane Commission, which toured
the Fertile Crescent in 1919 on the instructions of President
Wilson to test the reactions of the population to the proposed
mandatory arrangements, ‘began their study of Zionism with
minds predisposed in its favour. . . . They found much to approve
in its aspirations and plans, they had warm appreciation for its
devotion, and its success by modern methods in overcoming great
natural obstacles.. . . Nevertheless, actual facts drove them to
recommend a serious modification of the extreme Zionist pro¬
gramme of unlimited immigration. ... The fact came out re¬
peatedly in the Commission’s conference with Zionists that they
look forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present
non-Jewish population of Palestine by various forms of purchase.
More than 72 per cent, of the petitions received by the Com¬
mission in the whole of Syria were against the Zionist programme.
The whole non-Jewish population of Palestine was emphatically

1 Elizabeth Monroe, The Mediterranean in Politics, 58. The pre-war Zionists
had had a characteristically self-centred and misleading slogan, ‘The people
without a land for a land without a people* (James Parkes, The Emergence of the
Jewish Problem, p. vii).

153

The Struggle for Independence

against the entire Zionist programme. No British officer con¬
sulted by the Commission believed that the Zionist programme
could be carried out except by force of arms. Officers generally
thought that a force of not less than 50,000 soldiers would be
required even to initiate the programme/ The American govern¬
ment pigeon-holed the Commission’s Report, and it was pub¬
lished unofficially only after Wilson had relinquished the Presi¬
dency.

In their intense and passionate enthusiasm and zeal to rebuild
their National Home the Zionists in Palestine struck out wildly
against anyone who made objections to their extreme demands,
anyone who imposed a brake on their dynamic career. Sir Ronald
Storrs who became Military Governor ofjerusalem in 1918 with a
sincere sympathy for Zionism, has written, ‘From the beginning
we encountered a critical Zionist press, which soon developed into
pan-Jewish hostility. We were inefficient, ill-educated; those with
official experience strongly pro-Arab, violently anti-Zionist, even
anti-Jewish/ 1 Their incomprehension and intolerance for the
British officers who were administering the country extended also
to its Arabic-speaking inhabitants. The Anglo-American Com¬
mittee of 1946 has impartially summed up their attitude: 'Too
often the Jew is content to refer to the indirect benefits accruing to
the Arab from his coming, and leaves the matter there. Passionately
loving every foot of Eretz Israel, he finds it impossible to look at
the issue from the Arab point of view, and to realize the depth of
feeling aroused by his “invasion” of Palestine. He compares his
own achievements with the slow improvements made by the
Arab village always to the disadvantage of the latter; and forgets
the enormous financial and educational advantages bestowed upon
him by world Zionism. When challenged on his relations with
the Arabs, he is too often content to point out the superficial
friendliness of everyday life in town and village—a friendliness
which indubitably exists. In so doing, he sometimes ignores the
deep political antagonism which inspires the whole Arab com¬
munity; or thinks that he has explained it away by stating that it is
the “result of self-seeking propaganda by the rich effendi class”. It
is not unfair to say that the Jewish community in Palestine has
never, as a community, faced the problem of co-operation with
the Arabs. It is, for instance, significant that, in the Jewish Agency’s
1 Orientations , 359 ff.

154 A Short History of the Middle East

proposal for a Jewish State, the problem of handling one and a
quarter million Arabs is dealt with in the vaguest of generalities. 51
As a shrewd observer had concluded ear her, 'Seeing the Jews and
hearing their arguments in Palestine, even an admirer of their great
gifts is forced to the conclusion that they are politically an obtuse
people—that the very characteristics which give them such force as
preservers of a race, a religion, or a business are a hindrance in
social intercourse, or in the give-and-take of democratic politics. 5 2

From the beginning they have never been prepared to concede
any validity to the growing Arab nationalist movement. Though
provincial Palestine had played a smaller part in the movement
than the cities of Syria, the young Awni Abdul Hadi, members of
the Nashashibi family of Jerusalem and other Palestinian notables
had been prominent in the nationalist secret societies, and some had
suffered death under Jemal Pasha. The Muslim community was
divided into two great clan-partisanships, the Husainis and the
Nashashibis. 'In the face of Zionism Husainis might be said to
represent Church and extreme Arab nationalism, Nashashibis
State and making the best of a bad job.’ 1 2 3 Sir Herbert Samuel as
High Commissioner sought to moderate the Husainis by appoint¬
ing the most active of their younger members Mufti of Jerusalem
and head of the Supreme Muslim Council; 'and in fact Hajj Amin
was for years denounced by extremist Arab politicians as a British
agent/ 4 The Nashashibis, in spite of holding for years the
Mayoralty ofjerusalem, were conscious that their influence in the
country as a whole was less than that of the Husainis, and sought to
redress this inferiority by a loose alliance with the Zionists, receiv¬
ing some encouragement from their middle-class elements.
The Zionist leftists, however, sought from the first to drive a wedge
between the Arab ruling-class as a whole, stigmatizing them as
'feudal exploiters’, and the unorganized and inarticulate feUahin 5
and town-labourers, holding out promises of material benefits to
the former and trade-union organization to the latter. The Arab
Rebellion of 1936-9 showed the Zionists that their efforts to
divide the Arabs had almost completely failed, and they have

1 Ch. VIII, paras. 4-5.

2 Eliz. Monroe, op. cit., (1938), 59 f.

8 Storrs, op. city, 401 f.

* Barbour, op. cit., 130.

6 F. H. Kisch, Palestine Diary (1938), Index, s.w. Nashashibi; Dajani;
Peasants* Party.

The Struggle for Independence 15 5

subsequently tended to speak plainly to the Arabs as a whole. At a
May-Day rally in 1946 the labour-leader Mrs. Golda Meyerson,
now head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, hold the
Arab labourers and fellahin that no force would swerve the Jewish
people from their goal’. Three months later the Zionist Labour
party Mapai, the strongest Jewish party in Palestine, passed a
resoludon at its annual conference 'appealing to the Arab people
and assuring them that the Jewish people were ready to co¬
operate as equals for the peaceful development of Palestine. At the
same time, all measures intended to destroy the Zionist programme
would be fought.’ 1 The Zionists may be perfectly right in sup¬
posing that the only language the Arabs understood is the
language of force. They are behaving as colonists have always be¬
haved towards an indigenous population less well equipped with
material and intellectual resources. But the fact remains that this
is the language of force, not the language of conciliation; and it
contrasts curiously with Dr. Weizmann’s habitual gesture of
'stretching out his hands to the Arabs in friendship’. 2

Finding that the Arab masses still preferred to follow their own
ruling-class rather than their Zionist mentors, and that their efforts
to divide the Arab community met with little success, the more
moderate Zionists criticized the Palestine Government for not
suppressing the Arab extremists. 3 The extreme Zionists, however,
reacted by creating a myth, which they still ventilate with assiduity
and versatility, that there is at bottom no clash of interests between
Arab and Jew, and that the discord between them is entirely a
product of British machinations. While Zionist allegations of
British hostility to their aims have been levelled principally at the
Administration in Palestine, military and civil alike, 4 they have
more recently, since Britain’s official policy became less favourable
and their own demands more extreme, attacked official circles at
home also. The London correspondent of the Palestine Post has
pilloried the 'official caste, deeply committed to policies which
treat the East as an area hitherto unspoilt by the hideousness of the
twentieth century, and if possible to be kept in a state of pristine
purity for the benefit of all that is most decorative in Arab and most

x Palestine Post, 10 September, 1946.

2 e.g. Palestme Post, 19 June, 1946.

3 Kisch, op. cit., 19, and Index, s.v. Officials, Attitude of British.

4 Storrs, op. cit., 362, makes a frank appreciation of anti-Zionist sentiments in
the Military Administration.

156 A Short History of the Middle East

snobbish in British, society.’ 1 A more candid admission comes, as
so often, from a Jewish Revisionist: 2 It is to be assumed that a
clash between Jews and Arabs in Palestine would have taken place
even without any prompting from the British administration.
The Jews wanted Palestine for a Jewish state. The Arabs would
sooner or later object to that. . . . There had to come a psycholo¬
gical clash between the Jew and the Arab, a clash between the
Jewish immigrant and the British colonial official. ... A clash
between Jewish dynamics and dormant Arabia was inevitable.’

From the outset, the atmosphere of total lack of understanding
and sympathy, mistrust and suspicion, steadily darkened. Denied
the independence which they believed had been promised to them,
the Arab ruling-class was not slow to retaliate against the Jews
whom they held responsible. The scene was set for the agitator and
the killer; and at Easter 1920 occurred the first of the many com¬
munal riots that have disgraced the Holy Land. The Chief Ad¬
ministrator reported, "I can definitely state that when the strain
came the Zionist Commission did not loyally accept the orders of
the Administration, but from the commencement adopted a
hostile, critical, and abusive attitude. It is a regrettable fact that,
with one or two exceptions, it appears impossible to convince a
Zionist ofBritish good faith and ordinary honesty. They seek, not
justice from the military occupant, but that in every question in
which a Jew is interested, discrimination in his favour shall be
shown. ... In Jerusalem, being in the majority, they are not
satisfied with military protection, but demand to take the law into
their own hands; in other places where they are in a minority they
clamour for military protection. . . . The representative of the
Jewish community threatens me with mob law, and refuses to
accept the constituted forces of law and order.. . . My own
authority and that of every department of my Administration is
claimed or impinged upon by the Zionist Commission. .. . This
Administration .. , has strictly adhered to the laws governing the
conduct of the military occupant of Enemy Territory, but that has
not satisfied the Zionists, who appear bent on committing the
temporary military administration to a partialist policy before the
issue of the Mandate. It is manifestly impossible to please partisans

1 George Lichtheim, 4 June, 1946.

2 Eliahu Ben-Horin, The Middle East: Crossroads of History , 132. For an ex¬
planation of the term Revisionist, see below, p. 179f,

157

The Struggle for Independence

who officially claim nothing more than a “National Home”, but in
reality will be satisfied with nothing less than a “Jewish State”.’ The
Zionists promptly countercharged that, on account of the sym¬
pathy of some members of the military administration for the
Arabs, there had been dilatoriness in suppressing the outbreak. The
Lloyd George government abolished the military administration
and replaced it by a civil one, with the Mandate as its charter.

It is illuminating that in the Mandate the only reference to the
predominantly Arabic character of the population was still merely
Indirect, in the article which recognized Arabic as one of the three
official languages. 1 The first High Commissioner Sir Herbert
Samuel was, if not himself a Zionist, very sympathetically
disposed to Zionism as he then understood it. 2 It must be said,
however, that during his tenure of office he was conspicuously im¬
partial, to the point of being strongly criticized by extreme Zionists
for being pro-Arab. In 1921 he was violently denounced by the
Zionist Congress for having recommended immigration ‘within
the limits fixed by the numbers and interests of the present popu¬
lation’ to develop the country ‘to the advantage of all its inhabi¬
tants’. 3 Another and more serious outbreak of Arab violence in
1921, arising out of a May-Day riot between two Jewish labour
factions, was followed by the first of the many Inquiry Commis¬
sions which have visited Palestine. This Haycraft Commission
declared that the Zionist Organization had ‘desired to ignore the
Arabs as a factor to be taken into serious consideration, or else has
combated their interests to the advantage of the Jews’, and that it
had ‘exercised an exacerbating rather than a conciliatory influence
of the Arab population of Palestine, and has thus been a contribu¬
tory cause of the disturbances’. In reply to Zionist arguments that
Arab antagonism was directed more against British rule than
against themselves, and had been artificially stimulated among the
uneducated mass of the Arab population by the effendis, it de¬
clared that ‘feeling against the Jews was too genuine, too wide¬
spread, and too intense to be accounted for in the above superficial

1 Elsewhere the Arabs were described as ‘the existing non-Jewish communities’
(in the Preamble, quoting the Balfour Declaration); ‘the inhabitants of Palestine,
irrespective of race and religion 9 (Art. 2); ‘other sections of the population 9
(Art. 6).

2 Hyamson, op. cit., 131.

3 Storrs comments, ‘I cannot conceive that any Gentile High Commissioner
could have weathered the storms of Zionist public opinion for five years,’
(op. cit., 358, 392).

158 A Short History of the Middle East

manner. If it means that had it not been for incitement by the not¬
ables, the efiendis and the sheikhs, there would have been no riots,
the allegation cannot be substantiated.... Any anti-British feeling
on the part of the Arabs that may have arisen in the country
originates in the association of the Government with the further¬
ance of the policy of Zionism. 5

Concerned at the continued unrest, the Cabinet resolved to
make a new definition of its policy, which appeared in the
‘Churchill White Paper 5 of 1922. While affirming that the place
of the Jews in Palestine was ‘of right and not on sufferance 5 , it
marked a definite recognition of the hard facts of the situation, in
that it did for the first time acknowledge the existence of the Arabs
as such. It remarked that ‘unauthorized statements have been
made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly
Jewish Palestine.... H.M. Government regard any such expecta¬
tion as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they
at any time contemplated . . . tbe disappearance or the subordina¬
tion of the Arabic population, language, or culture in Palestine.
They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the
(Balfour) Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine
as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but
that such a home should be founded in Palestine / The White
Paper introduced for the first time the principle of‘economic ab¬
sorptive capacity 5 as a regulator of immigration. It proposed to
set up a Legislative Council, but this was boycotted by the Arabs,
who refused to recognize the validity of the Mandate. The com¬
position of the proposed Council was indeed distinctly weighted
against the Arabs, since, though Muslims and Christians combined
still constituted 89 per cent, of the population, their ten elected
members could be outvoted by the ten official members and the
two elected Jewish representatives. A proposal to set up an Arab
Organization with an official status comparable with that of the
Zionist Organization was also rejected by the Arabs, ‘since its
members were to be nominated by the High Commissioner, him¬
self a Zionist, and the offer was conditional on its being understood
that acceptance signified the settlement of all Arab claims, together
with Arab recognition of the Balfour Declaration. 51

For the next six years a sullen but superficially quiet status quo
was maintained. By 1926 it had been possible to reduce the gar-

1 Barbour, op. cit., 111.

The Struggle for Independence 159

rison, and entrust internal security to the R.A.F., to disband the
British gendarmerie, and cut down the police. By 1928 the Jewish
population had risen to 150,000, about two and a half times what it
had been at the end of the W ar, and now amounted to 16 per cent,
of the population. Jewish agricultural settlement had made marked
progress, thanks to the boundless enthusiasm and devotion of the
Pioneers; but funds for development were scarce, the economic
situation difficult, unemployment rife, and in 1927 Jewish emigra-
tion exceeded immigration by 2,300. The Arab population also
had rapidly increased in numbers, thanks to the very high birth¬
rate, the cessation of the Turkish conscription which had taken
many young men never to return, the lowering of the high deathrate
for which the Public Health Department of the Government may
claim at least some credit, and to some illegal immigration from
neighbouring Arab countries. Beneath the superficial order and
progress, however, e a conflict had been created between two
national ideals, and under the system imposed by the Mandate it
could only be solved if one or both of these ideals were aban¬
doned’. 1

* * *

The lands east of the Jordan, which had been little more than
nominally administered by the Ottoman government, were ad¬
ministered from 1918 by Faisal’s Arab government at Damascus.
However, at the San Remo Conference of April 1920 this region
was assigned to Britain as part of the mandate for Palestine, with
the proviso^ however, that 'in the territories between the Jordan and
the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the
mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the
League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such
provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the
existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the ad¬
ministration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those
conditions’. 2 Soon after the collapse of the Damascus Arab
government before the French in July 1920, therefore, the High
Commissioner for Palestine convened the local Arab notables at
as-Salt, then the principal town of the region, and informed them

1 Royal Commission Report (1937), 61.

2 Mandate, Art. 25.

i6o A Short History of the Middle East

that H.M. Government intended to grant them immediate self-
government with the help of a few British advisers. Local councils
were accordingly set up in the four principal towns; but before any
coherent administrative system could take shape, the Amir Abdul¬
lah arrived in February 1921 with an Arab force at Ma’an, which
had been provisionally left within the boundaries of his father’s
kingdom of the Hijaz, and announced his intention of raising a
rebellion against the French in Syria. He advanced to Amman, was
welcomed by the local councils and unopposed by the British, and
took over the effective administration. At the close of the Cairo
Conference in April, the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Churchill, agreed
to recognize him as de facto ruler of Transjordan, provided that he
abandoned his aggressive intentions against the French and
accepted British protection and financial help in setting up a
modern administration. In September 1922 Britain seemed the
consent of the Council of the League, as provided for in Art. 25 of
the Mandate, to the exemption of Transjordan from all the clauses
of the Mandate concerned with the establishment of a Jewish
National Home, including the Mandatory’s obligation to facilitate
Jewish immigration and land-settlement. In 1923 Britain recog¬
nized the existence of an ‘independent government in Trans¬
jordan under the rule of the Amir Abdullah, provided that such
government is constitutional.’-

The Zionists have never accepted the exclusion of Transjordan
from their potential embrace. In 1921 Dr. Weizmann told the
Zionist Congress, ‘The question of the eastern frontier ... will be
better answered when Cisjordania is so full of Jews that a w r ay is
forced into Transjordania’; 1 and in March 1946, shortly before the
announcement of the treaty in which Britain terminated the Man¬
date and recognized the independence of Transjordan, the Jewish
Agency Executive objected to the Colonial Office that ‘the Jewish
people had a contingent interest in the retention of Transjordan
within the scope of the Mandate’; w hile previously M oshe Shertok,
then head of the Agency’s political department, had commented:
‘We have looked forward to arrangements that would make
Jewish setdement in Transjordan feasible and permitjoint develop¬
ment with Palestine, which the Jewish Agency could initiate and
implement together with the Arabs of Transjordan. This would
make it possible for Jewish settlement to be fostered and to improve

1 Barbour, op. cit., 104, n, 1.

The Struggle for Independence 161

the conditions of the inhabitants., . . We have never excluded
from our considerations those great, desolate, and uncultivated
stretches of land across the river which are capable of settlement
and development.’ 1

-k 'k 'k

During the war Britain had sought to protect her pre-eminent
position in the Arabian Peninsula by agreements with France and
Italy by which these powers undertook not to acquire, nor to con¬
sent to a third pow 7 er acquiring, territory in Arabia or a naval base
in the Red Sea. Britain had also from the beginning been on
friendly terms with the young Wahhabi Amir Abdul Aziz ibn
Sa’ud. Early in the War she, like the Arab nationalists, had sent
emissaries to him to enlist his support for an Arab rising against
the Turks; but the pro-Turkish Amir of the Jebel Shammar to the
north, his ancestral enemy, was too nearly a match for him to give
more than moral support. It was psychologically difficult for him
to make common cause with the Sharif Husain, the ruler of Mecca
and Madina, those centres of what the strict Wahhabis regarded as
idolatrous and corrupt saint-worship unauthorized by the Qur’an
and Sunna; and the Sharif made matters worse by his assumption
in 1916 of the title ofKing of the Arabs. With his Ottoman culture
and his overweening personal ambition he evidently regarded Ibn
Sa’ud as a barbarian upstart, and behaved to him with 4 a show of
studied condescension and even discourtesy’ combined with
'somewhat highhanded methods’. 2

Turkish support for the Shammar having ceased with the col¬
lapse of the Ottoman Empire, Ibn Sa’ud was able to annex their
territory in 1921, and was now in a position to settle scores with
King Husain. He had already for some years been making Wah¬
habi propaganda among the tribes on the Hijaz border to win them
away from Husain, and when Abdullah had led a force against him
in I 9 I 9 had severely defeated him. He was at that time deterred
from invading the Hijaz by the British government, which was
still supporting Husain. But the old King, with greater consistency
than worldly wisdom, broke with Britain, mainly over the poli¬
tical disability imposed on the Arabs of Palestine by the Balfour

1 24 January, 1946.

2 Antonius, op. cit,, 329,

162 A Short History of the Middle East

Declaration and the Mandate. Refusing to compromise on this
point, he forfeited Britain’s support and subsidy. At the same time
he had been misguided enough to intrigue against Ibn Sa’ud with
such enemies or potential rivals of his as the Shammar, tribal chiefs
of outer Najd, and the Imam of the Yemen. He became in¬
volved in an unnecessary quarrel with Egypt about the medieval
sanitary conditions of the Holy Places; and in 1924 he alienated
what remaining support he had in Islam by having himself pro¬
claimed Caliph. Ibn Sa’ud invaded the Hijaz. Husain abdicated in
favour ofhis eldest son Ah; but the Wahhabi prince in the follow¬
ing year drove out Ah and annexed the Hijaz. His former 'semi¬
vassal’ relationship to Britain was now clearly out-of-date; and in
1927 by the Treaty ofjidda Britain recognized him as sovereign
and independent King of the Hijaz, Najd, and its Dependencies,
which were later fused as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ibn
Sa’ud in return undertook to maintain friendly relations with the
British-protected sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf. He had already
acknowledged the presence of Husain’s two sons Faisal and
Abdullah on the thrones of Iraq and Transjordan, and allowed
Britain to determine his frontiers with these two states; but in
respect ofhis frontier with Transjordan he has always maintained
mental reservations which may yet disturb relations between the
two kingdoms.

* * ★

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1915 had arranged that the Fer¬
tile Crescent should be divided into four areas, two to be directly
administered by France and Britain respectively, while the other
two should be administered by Arab governments under the
guidance and protection of France and Britain respectively.
France’s direct share was to be the Syrian coastlands and Cilicia,
while her protectorate was to consist of the hinterland of Syria
including the vilayet of Mosul. By 1919 British troops had how¬
ever occupied the Mosul vilayet after driving out the Turks; and
Lloyd George succeeded with great difficulty in persuading
Clemenceau to give up the French claim, so that this oil-bearing
district could be added to Iraq. The French were compensated by
the transfer to them of the German quarter-share in the Turkish
Petroleum Co., now renamed the Iraq Petroleum Co., and the
promise that France should have a quarter-share of its output.

The Struggle for Independence 163

Britain handed over to her the military occupation of the Syrian
coastlands, while the independent Arabs under Faisal still governed
the cities of the interior. The situation was very unstable. The Arabs
resented and feared the very presence of the French: France's part
in the campaign against the Turks had been confined to the pre¬
sence of a small token-force, and the Arabs could not be expected
to agree that her enormous sacrifices on the Western Front en¬
titled her to claims on Syria. The French, on the other hand,
had no sympathy for the Arab Revolt or for Arab nationalism in
general, having in mind their millions of Arabic-speaking subjects
in North Africa; they regarded these phenomena as a British
manoeuvre to trick France out of her rightful legacy in Syria. Her
claim was carried back to the Crusades, in which France had played
a preponderant part, and was reinforced by the educational mis¬
sions, and railways and other public utilities she had established in
the country. Nevertheless, over 60 per cent, of the petitions pre¬
sented to the King-Crane Commission in 1919 protested directly
and strongly against a French mandate.

In April 1920, one month after a 'General Syrian Congress’
of nationalists had proclaimed an independent kingdom of
Greater Syria, including Lebanon and Palestine, with Faisal as
King, the San Remo Conference awarded France the mandate
for the whole of Syria. The French now had legal authority
to deal with the unfriendly Arab administration in the interior,
whose troops had unofficially attacked French military positions
near the demarcation-line between the two zones, while the
Arab authorities had carried on anti-French propaganda,
and obstructed French commerce; the French in their turn
were not guiltless of counter-provocation. In July 1920 General
Gouraud sent Faisal an ultimatum demanding satisfaction on
all these points, and the unqualified acceptance of the French
mandate for the whole country. While Faisal was attempting to
negotiate, there were armed clashes between his troops and the
French. The latter then occupied Damascus and expelled him from
the country. Masters of the situation, they could now reshape the
prostrate bulk of Syria at their will. Conscious that their main
support lay in the Maronites of the Lebanon, that the other
Christian communities were only lukewarm, and that they were
cordially disliked by the bulk of the Muslims, they decided to ease
their task by an unashamed policy of c divide-and-rule, by ex-

164 A Short History of the Middle East

ploiting and widening the religious divisions with which Syria,
more than any other Middle Eastern country, is vexed. Sunni
Muslim Arabs constitute about 53 per cent, only of the population
of Syria and Lebanon combined. Some minorities form more-or-
less compact geographical blocks: the 340,000 Maronites in the
Mountain Lebanon; the 325,000 Alawis or Nusairiya 1 in the Jebel
Nusairiya (Ansariya) along the northern half of the coast; the
160,000 Druze, mainly in the Jebel Druze but also in Lebanon;
perhaps as many as 200,000 Kurds in the Jazira of the north-east.
The separatist tendencies of all these minorities, which had un¬
doubtedly suffered discrimination at the hands of the Sunnis under
Ottoman rule, were encouraged. In 1920 the old sanjaq of
Lebanon was expanded to three times its size by the inclusion of
the predominantly Muslim towns of Beirut, Tripoli, and Saida
(Sidon); South Lebanon down to the Palestine frontier, with a
predominantly Shi’i population; and the fertile Biq’a, with a mixed
population consisting mainly of Muslims and Orthodox Chris¬
tians. In this enlarged Lebanon the Maronites no longer had an
absolute majority as in the old sanjaq, and Christians of all sects
constituted only a precarious majority. 2 This weakening of the
Christian position was perhaps designed to make them more
dependent on French protection and less inclined to follow a
nationalist line of their own. In 1921 the Jebel Druze, and in 1922
the Territory of the Alawis, were recognized by the French as in¬
dependent. The remainder of Syria was divided in 1920 into the
two states of Damascus and Aleppo, in an attempt to exploit the
traditional rivalry between the two great cities but this experiment
did not last, and in 1924 the two states were united.

Having thus dismembered the country, the French set to work
to impose their cultural pattern on it in a fashion which was pas¬
sively accepted by the inarticulate majority, but was bound to
estrange further the minority that had political aspirations. The
pinning of the Syro-Lebanese currency to the French franc,
though logical, had the unfortunate effect of causing it to follow
the franc’s severe devaluation. The teaching of French was carried
to such a pitch that it was reported that in some districts children

1 Their religion is a curious amalgam of Shi’i Islam, with early Christian and
pagan elements; cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, art. Nusairi.

2 This they are now losing, owing to the higher Muslim birth-rate, and the
disproportionate amount of emigration by Christians. (Pierre Rondot, Les
Institutions Politiques duLtban (Paris, 1947), 25 ff. and sketch map, p. 32 bis.)

The Struggle for Independence 165

who could scarcely read Arabic were taught the Marseillaise.
Specially-prepared history-books were at pains to demonstrate
that the Syrians were not ethnically Arab. The administrative
machine was frequently abused to further the interests of French
companies and concession-holders. As instruments of their policy
the French made great use of two minority communities foreign to
Syria and without any defined habitat in the country: the Cir¬
cassians, who had been introduced by the Turks fifty years before
when their homeland was annexed by Russia; and the Armenians
who had escaped the Turkish massacres during and after the War.
The former made useful if undisciplined soldiers, especially apt for
punitive expeditions and for garrisoning restive districts; the
latter, with their keen intelligence and sense of superiority to other
Levantines, gave good service as informers.

By 1925 the ruling families of the Jebel Druze, who had not
originally been averse to French rule in preference to Sunnis from
Damascus, had grown restive under their impetuous French local
governor, who may be described as a French equivalent of Arnold
Wilson: ‘sincere, disinterested, energetic; extremely effective in
putting his immediate aims into action, especially when they were
related to the production of material results; but he was tyrannical
in his methods, and psychologically blind in his dealings with
human beings, to a degree which made it inevitable that his well-
meant efforts should end in disaster. During twenty months he
forced upon the outraged but intimidated Druze a host of material
benefits which they neither dreamt of nor desired/ 1 Protests to
the French High Commissioner met with a discourteous rebuff
and the four principal Druze leaders were arrested as conspirators.
This was followed by a general rising in the Jebel, landlords and
tenants together, which completely overpowered the French
garrison. The revolt spread to the cities of Syria, the rebels being
well-organized and led by members of the great families and ex-
Ottoman officers with military experience. 2 By November 1925
the French began to gain the upper hand by greatly increasing
their garrison, but they did not penetrate the Jebel Druze till the
early summer of 1926, and peace was not finally restored for
another year. The rebellion had been even more costly in fives and

1 Toynbee, Islamic World after the Peace Conference, Part III, sec. vii.

2 Such as Fawzi al-Qawuqji, who was to lead the Palestine Arab rebels in 1936
and served the Axis during the Second World War.

1 66 A Short History of the Middle East

money than the Iraq Rebellion, and the French had twice found it
necessary to bombard the centre of Damascus by artillery and air¬
craft, killing over a thousand persons. The revolt had, however,
taught the French that it was impossible to hold down Syria in¬
definitely by martial law. The series of military High Com¬
missioners was ended in November 1925, and in 1926 the first
High Commissioner with civil administrative experience was ap¬
pointed. The Lebanese Republic had been proclaimed in 1926, and
an attempt was made to reach an understanding with the more
moderate Syrian nationalists, but without success; the first two
nominal Presidents of Syria were both aliens, a Turk and a Cir¬
cassian.

★ ★ ★

B. The Inter-War Period

The unilateral British declaration of Egyptian independence in
1922 did not immediately bring about the end of violent agitation,
since the Wafd refused to accept the limitations imposed on
Egyptian sovereignty by the Four Reserved Points. Encouraged
by the successes of the Turkish nationalists in extorting major con¬
cessions from Britain and France by armed force, the Wafd con¬
ducted a murder campaign inspired by well-educated fanatics and
executed by weak-minded students and a number of professional
killers. In Cairo four British subjects and two Egyptian moderates
were murdered, and nine British wounded. The Egyptian public,
intimidated by the terrorists, gave no help to the police, and it was
left to a special force under British direction to track them down:
three students were executed and ten imprisoned.

At the beginning of 1924 general elections had produced the
combination of the first Wafdist government in Egypt and the
first Labour government in Britain, some of whose members when
in Opposition had shown sympathy for Wafdist aspirations.
Zaghlul was invited to London to negotiate, but demanded in
effect complete independence, with the withdrawal of all British
troops, the return of die Sudan to Egypt, etc. This was far too much
for the British government which observed that, while British
troops would not interfere in the functioning of the Egyptian
government nor encroach on its sovereignty, no British govern¬
ment could divest itself of all interest in the defence of the Canal,

The Struggle for Independence 167

nor could the good administration and development of the Sudan
be jeopardized. Zaghlul showed himself as inflexible as ever in
negotiation, and returned to Egypt without achieving anything.
Meanwhile his government had made gestures hostile to the
presence of the British garrison and the position of the Sirdar, the
British commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army. On 19
November the Sirdar, Sir Lee Stack, was murdered in the streets of
Cairo. On his own initiative Allenby presented to the Egyptian
government an ultimatum in which the following were the
principal demands:

(1) The withdrawal from the Sudan of all Egyptian officers and
purely Egyptian units, which had been inciting the Sudanese troops
to mutiny, with some effect.

(2) Egyptian consent to the unlimited irrigation of the Sudanese
cotton-growing district of the Gazira, which had previously been
limited to ensure adequate water-supplies to Egypt.

(3) Payment of a fine of .£500,000.

The British colony in Egypt, prone as ever to ‘Egyptophobia 5 ,
was indignant at the ‘weakness 5 of Allenby’s ultimatum; but the
Foreign Office instructed him to moderate the second and third of
the above demands; and there is no doubt that the threat to divert
Nile water from Egypt for unlimited irrigation in the Sudan has,
in spite of subsequent agreement on this vital subj ect, left Egyptians
with the uncomfortable realization that the water supplies on
which their economy depends are at Britain’s mercy as long as she
remains in control of the Sudan.

The Lee Stack murder was the culmination of the murder-
campaign, in which a number of the younger Wafd leaders 1 were
charged with criminal complicity. The Wafd government fell,
leaving the ground free for King Fuad to take a more active part
in the country’s politics. The son of Isma’il and now in the prime
ofhis life, he had inherited enough of the autocratic spirit of his line
not to accept tamely the limited authority of a constitutional
monarch. As a Europeanized Turk who spoke but indifferent
Arabic, he despised the middle-class Egyptian politicians of the
Wafd, and their demagogic appeal to the city-rabble and the ig¬
norant rural masses. The greatest landowner in Egypt, he mis-

1 These included Mahmud Fahmi an-Nuqrashi, now Prime Minister. They
were acquitted by a majority of two Egyptian judges to one British judge, who
resigned in protest.

M

168 A Short History of the Middle East

trusted the radical and republican tendencies of the younger
Wafdists; and he was therefore ready to exploit to the full the
considerable powers left to him under the constitution, especially
those of nominating a third of the Senate and dissolving at will the
Chamber of Deputies. Even before the Wafd came to power in
1924, he had had an unsuccessful struggle with the moderates in an
attempt to enlarge his powers; and now he dissolved the Chamber
of Deputies with its overwhelming Wafdist majority and ruled
without a parliament through a newly-formed group of 'King’s
friends’, the Ittihadparty. 1 So unpopular was this regime, however,
that the moderate Liberal party joined the Wafd in a coalition
against it; and early in 1926 the new British High Commissioner
pressed the King to permit the holding of a general election. It
returned the Wafd to power with over 70 per cent, of the seats. 2
In view of the murder-campaign under the previous Wafd
government, Britain refused to accept Zaghlul as Prime Minister;
and a compromise was reached by which the Liberal leader headed
a cabinet of six Wafdists, three Liberals and an Independent, with
Zaghlul President of the Chamber.

In 1927 Sarwat Pasha, now Prime Minister in this coalition, came
to London and the Foreign Office put forward for negotiation a
draft treaty closely following the recommendations of the Milner
Report. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Austen Chamberlain, des¬
cribed it as "the high-water mark of British concessions to Egyp¬
tian nationalism’. The difference of views between the two sides
was narrowed down to two points: (1) the British personnel in the
Egyptian Army, whom Britain was prepared to convert into a
military mission, and (2) the maintenance of British officials in the
Departments of Police and Public Security pending the reform of
the Capitulations. On this point Britain undertook to support an
Egyptian appeal to the League of Nations if the reform had not
been effected within five years.

At this stage, however, Mustafa an-Nahhas, who had just suc¬
ceeded to the leadership of the Wafd on the death of Zaghlul, took
the party into opposition to the draft treaty because it did not

1 Its founder Hasan Nash’at became Egyptian Ambassador to Britain in the
earlier years of the Second World War.

2 The Wafd was, in fact, and has remained the only party in Egypt with a
permanent party-machine covering the whole country: the other parties are Httle
more than small groups centred round certain personalities without any apparent
positive principles other than personal hostility to the Wafdist leaders.

The Struggle jor Independence 169

amount to a complete British evacuation of Egypt. A majority of
Sarwat’s coalition cabinet voted against the treaty and he resigned.
Nahlias now headed an entirely Wafdist cabinet, and soon came
into conflict with both the High Commissioner and the King. In
June 1928, three months after the formation of the Wafd govern¬
ment, some Egyptian newspapers published an alleged agreement
by which, before they came into office, Nahhas and the new vice-
president of the Chamber of Deputies were stated to have under¬
taken to secure the handing-over of the insane prince Saif ud-
Din’s estate, now being administered by the King, to the prince’s
mother in return for the payment to them of ^150,000. The King
dismissed Nahhas and issued a royal decree dissolving both
Houses of Parliament and legalizing the postponement of elections
for three years.

The High Commissioner, Lord Lloyd, whose conception of the
British position in Egypt was as conservative as his handling of
affairs was masterful, had several times come into conflict with
successive Egyptian governments. The Foreign Office came to
feel that their representative was in danger of over-stressing
Britain’s position, and in May 1929, therefore, he was sent a rede¬
finition of British policy, which contained the following impor¬
tant passage: ‘Because the interests at stake are of supreme im¬
portance to the safety and well-being of the Empire, H.M. Govern¬
ment reserved by the Declaration of 1922 certain matters for its
own determination, but even in these cases it is the desire of H.M.
Government to act with, and where possible through, the
Egyptian Government, respecting in the largest possible measure
the liberties and independence which by the same Declaration they
conceded to Egypt.

It is not in the interest of H.M. Government to intervene in the
internal aflairs of Egypt further than is necessary to secure the poli¬
tical objects defined above. The influence which they must ever
possess in the councils of Egypt will be best secured by ensuring
that the closest harmony shall always govern the relations between
the Residency and the Government, and these conditions can only
obtain if the interventions of H.M. Government into the purely
internal affairs of Egypt are reduced to a minimum.. . f 1

1 On three occasions between 1927 and 1930 British warships were despatched
to Alexandria, twice to exert political pressure on the Egyptian government and
once to be in readiness in case political disturbances got out of hand. (Survey of
International Affairs, 1936, 663, n. 1.)

170 A Short History of the Middle East

The advent to office of the second Labour government in 1929
brought the Egyptian Liberal Prime Minister Mohammed Mah¬
mud to London to reopen negotiations, hoping for greater con¬
sideration than Sarwat had received from the Conservatives.
While these were in progress, however, a general election in
Egypt produced once again a sweeping victory for the Wafd, and
Nahhas came to London in 1930 to take the place of Mohammed
Mahmud. The Sudan proved a stumbling-block, since Nahhas in¬
sisted that, pending a final agreement, there should be no restriction
on Egyptian immigration into the Sudan, while the furthest con¬
cession Britain would make was that ‘the Governor-General
would not exercise unreasonably the right which any government
has to control immigration in the interests of its own nationals’.
The Wafdist press had created the impression in Egypt that the
Labour government was prepared to concede anything, and
Nahhas thus had to justify himself in the eyes of the extremists by
obtaining terms conspicuously better than those offered to
Mohammed Mahmud. When a report did reach Cairo that
Nahhas might be disposed to compromise, he was violently
attacked as a traitor.

Meanwhile, mindful of his humiliating dismissal from office by
the King in 1928, he had drafted two bills which would prevent the
King from ruling without parliament in future. The King refused
to give the royal assent to these, holding that, inasmuch as the
Wafd was the only party with a country-wide organization, the
diminution of the powers of the Crown would amount to the
creation of a permanent Wafd dictatorship. Nahhas resigned in
protest, and the King invited Isma’il Sidqi, now one of the
wealthiest men in Egypt and a bitter opponent of the Wafd,
to form a government. Thus driven into opposition, Nahhas
began a campaign for non-co-operation with the govern¬
ment and refusal to pay taxes. There were serious disorders
all over the country, and Sidqi dissolved parliament and pre¬
pared to "make 5 an election, returning to the pre-1924 system
of voting in two stages as a check on demagogy and provid¬
ing for the nomination by the King of three-fifths of the Senate.
He banned Wafdist newspapers and prohibited the holding
of the annual Wafdist congress. This was too much for the Liberal-
Constitutionals, to which party Sidqi himself belonged, and they
joined the Wafd in boycotting the elections. Nothing daunted.

The Struggle for Independence 171

Sidqi formed round himself a new party, which he cynically called
the Sha’b or People. At the election in May 1921 the Sha’b and the
Ittihad ‘King’s Friends’ won a comfortable majority. The Wafd
tried to organize the growing Trades Union movement to make
political difficulties for the government, to which Sidqi replied by
dissolving the unions. In 1933, however, he had to resign, as his
health had been impaired by overwork. There followed what
amounted to the virtual dictatorship of the Director of the Royal
Estates. Palace rule did not prove to be appreciably better for Egypt
t-han so-called democratic rule, since public money was now poured
out on an enormous civil list and other expenditure without much
value to the public. 1

The Italian invasion of Abyssinia in the summer of 193 5 brought
a new note of urgency to the question of an Anglo-Egyptian settle¬
ment. In December a united front composed of Nahhas, Sidqi, and
Mohammed Mahmud sent a note to the High Commissioner
declaring their readiness to conclude the draft treaty of 1930. The
British replied, however, that in the light of the Abyssinian W ar the
military clauses needed revision, and that it was desirable to reach a
preliminary agreement on the status of the Sudan. Negotiations
began in March 1936 with an all-party delegation consisting of
seven Wafdists and six non-Wafdists. There was still a considerable
gap to be bridged between the views of the British and the Egyp¬
tian negotiators, and the unaccommodating attitude of the British
service advisers, unsympathetic as ever towards Egyptian national
aspirations, called forth a reproof from The Times : ‘It is natural
enough that the technical advisers of H.M. Government should
recommend such a military agreement as would achieve an ideal
security for this country’s interests for ever ... but the military
ideal of 100 per cent, security takes no account of the political side
of the question. ... An alliance, if it is to have any real value, must
be based on respect for national feeling. It must be freely negotiat¬
ed, not dictated; and one of its primary conditions... is that it
should be inspired by a spirit of mutual trust. This spirit will
hardly be encouraged by efforts to persuade the delegates to make
concessions for which their countrymen would never forgive
fhpm, in the hopeless quest for the unattainable ideal of a perfect
military security for all time and in all circumstances. An alliance
based upon common interests and confidence is surely worth
1 Round Tablet December 1936, 110 ff.

I7 2 A Short History of the Middie East

minor military risks, some of which are likely to prove imaginary
on closer examination. . . d 1

In the end a Treaty was successfully negotiated, and signed in
August 1936. It was for twenty years, but capable of revision any
time after ten years. (1) Its principle was that of a close military
alliance, which was to be maintained in any revised form of the
Treaty until its final expiration. Each country was to aid the other
in the event of war, and was to give Britain all facilities, including
the imposition of martial law and an effective censorship, in the
event of any threatened international emergency. Each country
undertook not to conduct its foreign policy in any way inconsistent
with the Treaty.

( 2 ) Egypt recognized the vital interest to Britain of ensuring
the liberty and entire security of navigation in the Canal, and
accordingly granted Britain the right to retain troops in the C anal
Zone, to the number of 10,000 land-troops and 400 R.A.F. pilots
with the necessary ancillary services, until it should be agreed that
the Egyptian forces could themselves assume full responsibility for
the Canal. Egypt was to build specified strategic roads, and to
improve the railways in the Canal Zone and the Western Desert.
As soon as all these works were sufficiently advanced, British
troops would be withdrawn from Cairo. The British Navy might
continue to use Alexandria for not more than eight years. Britain
would provide a military mission to the Egyptian army, which
would obtain its equipment from Britain and send its specialists
there for training.

( 3 ) Egyptian troops, officials, and immigrants were once again
to be admitted to the Sudan, though the Egyptian government
recognized that the primary purpose of the Condominium was the
welfare of the Sudanese, and that the Sudan government would
appoint British or Egyptian officials only if qualified Sudanese were
not available (an important recognition, for the first time, of the
growing Sudanese claim to manage their own affairs).

(4) The Egyptian government would henceforth be responsible
for the protection of the foreign communities, and Britain under¬
took to support its approaches to the capitulatory Powers to
remove the restrictions on the application ofEgyptian legislation to
foreigners. Egypt undertook not to impose on foreigners legis¬
lation inconsistent with modem principles or to discriminate

1 Quoted by Survey of International Affairs , 1936, 687 f.

The Struggle for Independence 173

against them. The abolition of the Capitulations was finally
negotiated in the Montreux Convention of 1937.

(5) Britain was to be represented in Egypt by an Ambassador
taking precedence over all foreign representatives.

Thus after seventeen years of fruitless negotiation, the gap that
separated the Egyptian demand for complete independence and the
British conception of what powers it was necessary to retain in
Egypt in the interests of imperial security w T as bridged by conces¬
sions from both sides. But these concessions were made only be¬
cause both parties were acutely aware of the menace to their
respective interests from Italy, now an aggressive Mediterranean
and Red Sea Power; and there was no reason to suppose that, if this
menace were removed, Egyptian nationalist sentiment would not
once more compel its leaders to seek to achieve complete inde¬
pendence by obtaining the evacuation of the British forces, freedom
to follow a foreign policy untrammelled by the alliance with
Britain, and the reassertion in fact of Egypt’s sovereignty over the
Sudan.

* ★ *

In Iraq the final ratification of the Treaty of 1924 was followed
by a marked reduction in the number of British and Indian officials,
but left in being a Dual Control whose proper working called for
patience and tact on both sides. The nice relation between Iraqi
officials and British advisers and inspectors was made more delicate
by the fact that the British were paid more than their Iraqi
nominal superiors, and that they were permanent while the Iraqis
were liable to change with every government; and these changed
far too frequently for good administration. Thus there was often
friction between the Iraqis and British, leading to deadlocks wdiich
sometimes lasted for several months, impeding the administration
and confirming the Iraqis in their opinion that the British officials
were primarily interested in furthering imperial policy rather than
in the welfare oflraq. The Iraqi officids, on their side, were not yet
ready to accept a western type of administration and fiscal system,
democratic institutions, and the principle of government by the
consent of the governed, in so far as these things varied from the
methods and institutions time-honoured under the Ottoman
Empire. The privileged ruling-class refused to give up the prac¬
tices which they had found so lucrative under the Ottomans, and

174 H Short History of the Middle East

both the tax-system and the execution of the law were given a
pronounced bias in their favour.

In 1925 the Council of the League of Nations was so doubtful
about the fitness of Iraq for self-government that it recommended
that the Mandate should continue for twenty-five years, unless she
were previously admitted as a member of the League. Two years
later the British government announced that it would propose the
admission of Iraq in 1932 ‘provided that all went well in the inter¬
val, and the present rate of progress in Iraq was maintained’; it in¬
sisted, however, on a government ‘friendly and bound by gratitude
and obligation’ to Britain. In 1928 the Iraqi government asked
that it should be allowed to assume immediate responsibility for
external and internal defence, and that British control of the army
should cease. It rejected counter-proposals, and for three months
Iraq was without a government. Sir Gilbert Clayton, the recently-
appointed High Commissioner, urged the British government to
break the deadlock by a declaration that would at least partially
satisfy Iraqi aspirations. He died in 1929, but was the posthumous
father of the Treaty of 1930, which was to come into force when
Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations, and to last for twenty-
five years: (1) Britain was to have air-bases at Habbaniya, in the
desert west of Baghdad, and at Shu’aiba near Basra, and to have the
right to move troops and supplies across Iraq by any means.

(2) In the event of war or the threat of war Iraq was to fnmisb
Britain with all facilities and assistance, and place all means of
communication at her disposal.

(3) Britain’s diplomatic representative was to have precedence
over those of all foreign Powers.

(4) Britain would continue to give military assistance to Iraq
and send her a military mission. Iraqi service personnel sent abroad
for training would normally go to Britain, and when engaging
foreign experts Iraq would give preference to British subjects.

(5) Britain would sponsor Iraq’s admission to the League of
Nations.

The Treaty was ratified by a comfortable majority in the Iraqi
parliament, and the progressive transfer of the administration to
Iraqis was accelerated, though the High Commissioner had fre¬
quently to restrain an inclination to disregard British advice and
cancel the contracts of British officials. When Iraq’s application
for admission came before the League of Nations, there was some

The Struggle for Independence 175

scepticism about her fitness which was dissipated only by a British
guarantee which stated that ‘H.M. Government have never re¬
garded the attainment of an ideal standard of administrative
efficiency and stability as a necessary condition either of the termi¬
nation of the mandate or the admission of Iraq to membership of
the League; nor has it been their conception that Iraq should from
the first be able to challenge comparison with the most highly-
developed and civilized nations in the modern world.’ Britain’s
argument was accepted and Iraq admitted.

In Faisal’s reign 1921-33 Iraq had no fewer than fifteen govern¬
ments, and twenty-one more in the four years 1933-36. All these
were merely the reshufflings of a small and narrow group of
professional politicians, well-to-do landowners and merchants,
outside which there was no adequate class from which to draw
responsible and public-spirited officials, and no substantial body
of literate and informed citizens. 90 per cent, of the population was
still illiterate. The government was not controlled by the Chamber
of Deputies; instead it was the government that ‘made’ the
Chamber, often during the mandatory period under pressure from
the British High Commissioner. Confidential orders from the
government to the provincial mutasarrifs were sufficient, except in
Baghdad, to ensure the election of government candidates. In 1925
all but four of the government candidates were returned. In 1928
half of the twenty-two opposition deputies had previously been
given the government coupon. Political parties were abolished
as a sign, of ‘national unity’ when Iraq became independent in
1932, and were revived only in 1946. Nuri as-Sa’id has described
111 ah interview with an Egyptian newspaper how elections to the
Chamber of Deputies have been managed: ‘Nominations to the
elections are arranged so as to include the names of all former
prime-ministers, all ministers who were in office more than twice,
the presiding officers of parliament, eminent ex-officials receiving
government pensions, distinguished heads of communities and
professional men, tribal chiefs, etc. These make up nearly 60 per
cent, of the Chamber; the remainder depends for the most part on
the will of the government in power, though such Iraqis as wish to
put themselves forward may also submit their candidacy.’ 1

With the diminution and ending of direct British influence the
only check on this narrow oligarchy, in which personal interest

1 Quoted in Middle East Times (Jerusalem), 28 February, 1946,

176 A Short History of the Middle East

prevailed over public spirit, was that of King Faisal. When the
constitution was first promulgated, the King announced his with¬
drawal from direct participation in the affairs of state. But as time
passed, acting on the advice of the British authorities, he not only
resumed his place as the executive of the state but even exceeded
his constitutional powers. Every Prime Minister had to choose
ministers not only prepared to deal sensibly with relations between
Britain and Iraq, but also with the King’s personal wishes, likes and
dislikes. As the point ofbalance between Britain and his people he
had every encouragement to concentrate power within himself.
The British used him as an instrument of their control and ‘en¬
couraged him to go beyond the strict interpretation of the consti¬
tution in order that their control might be more complete’. He
manipulated his position adroitly to win concessions, sometimes
encouraging the anti-British forces, and at others using his influence
in the interests of moderation, e.g. to obtain the ratification of the
Treaty of 1930. His influence was on the whole good. He initiated
a scheme by which the oil-revenues were earmarked for definite
development-projects, and favoured the settlement of the tribes,
who still constituted about one-sixth of the total population. It is
possible that if the King had not assumed the role of benevolent
despot, the political system might have faltered and even collapsed
entirely. Without his guiding influence it is probable that in their
impatience the people would have refused to agree to the obliga¬
tions imposed by Britain as the price of her assistance, in which
case Britain would either have been forced to resume direct control
or withdraw, delaying Iraq’s achievement of independence. 1

King Faisal died in 1933, and was succeeded by his twenty-one
year-old son Ghazi. Almost immediately on his accession the
country was plunged into the emotional crisis of the Assyrian
incident. The Assyrians were Nestorian Christian mountaineers
from the region of Lake Van, whom in their original habitat the
Commission set up by the League of Nations to inquire into the
incident described as ‘in normal times just as truculent as the
Kurdish tribes and no less savage’. In the Ottoman Empire they
had been treated rather better than other Christian minorities, en¬
joying a fairly large measure of local autonomy under the rule of
their hereditary Patriarchs. However, when the Russians invaded
north-east Anatolia in 1915, the Assyrians rose in sympathy with

1 Ireland, op. cit., 420 ff.

The Struggle for Independence 177

them as Christians. Abandoned by the Russians on the outbreak
of the Revolution in 1917, some 20,000 fought their way south
through the Turkish lines to join forces with the British in northern
Iraq, losing twice that number en route. Some were now settled
in northern Iraq and took some ‘rather drastic steps’ to clear the
area of the existing Muslim population. In 1920 an Assyrian band
attempted to establish a buffer-state on the Turco-Persian frontier,
but the venture degenerated into an indiscriminate raid on both
unfriendly and friendly Turks. In 1921 the British began to form
the ‘Iraq Levies’ from their excellent fighting-men, as being the
one element in the mixed population on whom they could rely for
suppressing sporadic Kurdish risings and expelling Turkish ir¬
regulars from northern Iraq. In 1924 two companies of the As¬
syrian levies mutinied in Kirkuk, killing fifty of the Turkish
townspeople. From this time onward their exploits were less
remarkable, but they continued to be employed and favoured by
the R.A.F. for their qualities as garrison-troops, and the Anglican
Church encouraged them as a Christian minority which had
suffered persecution and was, moreover, because of its ancient
heresy, not protected by any other Christian church. Thus the
patronage of Britain encouraged the young and inexperienced
Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimun 1 and some of their secular chiefs to
presume too much, and to isolate themselves still further from the
other inhabitants of Iraq. With the ending of the Mandate in 1932
the Iraqi government was ready to settle old scores with this un¬
invited and overweening minority. A party of 800 Assyrians
crossed the Tigris into Syria in the hope that the French would allow
them to settle, but recrossed and destroyed an Iraqi post. The
Iraqi main body defeated this party, with wild excitement at
having broken the Assyrian reputation for invincibility. The same
Iraqi troops then attacked another group of 400 Assyrians, who
were not at all in agreement -with their leaders’ hostile attitude to¬
wards the Iraqi government and had taken refuge in an Iraqi
police-post. The Iraqis first disarmed them, and then murdered
them in cold blood, before going on to sack and destroy twenty
Assyrian villages and badly damage twenty more out of a total of
sixty-four. There is little doubt that the massacre was, if not pre¬
meditated, at least arranged by the local army-officers and that
some local civil officials must have connived at it. The news was
1 He is now in the U.S.A.

178 A Short History of the Middle East

received in Baghdad with savage rejoicing, as a national triumph
over this Quisling minority. 1

Young King Ghazi openly displayed his approval of the part
played by Iraqi troops in this discreditable affair, decorated the
colours of the regiments involved, and conferred on their Kurdish
commanding-officer Bakir Sidqi the title of pasha. He thereby
won immense popularity, which he tried to exploit for the mani¬
pulating of cabinets and governments after the manner of his
father; but he lacked his father’s personality, and government
degenerated into the intrigues of political cliques. Between 1932
and 1936 cabinets rose and fell at an average of more than five a
year. Then in 1936 Bakir Sidqi, who had in the meantime sup¬
pressed a tribal revolt with great ability and ruthlessness, advanced
with a military force and air-support 011 Baghdad, demanding the
dismissal of the cabinet 6 with which the army had lost patience’
and the formation of a cabinet of ‘sincere citizens’. The existing
government had suppressed newspapers, heavily bribed tribal
leaders to keep the peace, curbed the opposition, and dismissed
over 300 officials, many of them highly-placed. There was a
general feeling that the country was making no progress; but
Sidqi’s principal grievance was that the army vote had been cut
and that its organization was not being carried out according to his
ideas. He was supported by many aspiring politicians who were
out of office. In order to shake the morale of the cabinet he had
Baghdad bombed from the air; and when the Minister of Defence,
the honoured Ja’far al-’Askari, a veteran of the Arab Revolt,
sought to negotiate, he had him treacherously murdered. There
was no further opposition to the formation of a new government
with Bakir Sidqi as military dictator. King Ghazi ‘possibly con¬
nived at, and certainly did not disapprove’ of this coup d’etat, but
achieved no increase of power from it. The dictatorship showed
itself no more effective than previous governments, and after the
murder ofBakir Sidqi in 1937 constitutional government was out¬
wardly restored under the same old round of politicians. But the
army had tasted power and sought to hold on to it, backed up by

1 This summary of the historical background of the Assyrian incident draws
on the following sources:

Toynbee, The Islamic World after the Peace Conference, 483 ff.

Sir H. Dobbs, High Commissioner of Iraq, in Gertrude Bell's Letters, II, 551.

G. Antoni us, op. cit., 365 ff.

J. Van Ess, Meet the Arabs, 152 f.

The Struggle for Independence 179

the young men whose imaginations and desires were kept at fever-
heat by the Palestine Rebellion and the grievances of Syria against
the French.

★ ★ ★

In Palestine the comparatively peaceful years that followed the
1922 White Paper were used by the two contending communities,
not to seek an understanding with one another, but to improve
their respective organization for further efforts, the one to establish
their conception of the National Home, the other to destroy it. In
1921 the government had created the Supreme Muslim Councilas an
autonomous body for the administration of Muslim religious
properties and the direction of the Shari’a courts; but on to this
innocuous trunk there was grafted a multitude of political activities
by its head, that indefatigable schemer Hajj Mohammed Amin al
Husaini, a youngish man proscribed for his part in the 1920 Riots
but pardoned and appointed Mufti of Jerusalem (an office heredi¬
tary in his family) by Sir Herbert Samuel. The Zionist Organiza¬
tion, which had been recognized by Article Four of the Mandate as
the ‘appropriate Jewish public body for the purpose of advising
and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine, so long as
its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Manda¬
tory appropriate’, had passed through some difficult years in the
middle ’twenties owing to the inadequacy of Its finances; but in
1928 Weizmann finally succeeded in putting through a plan for
enlisting the large-scale financial support of American Jewry, non-
Zionist and Zionist alike, by broadening the Zionist Organization
into a Jewish Agency for Palestine. The constitutional change was
more apparent than real, since executive powers were vested in
the Zionist Executive with the addition of three non-Zionist mem¬
bers; and the latter have gradually withered away; 1 but it did have
the important practical effect, once the American financial crisis
of the early ’thirties was passed, of placing much larger sums at the
disposal of the Zionist movement.

Meanwhile, there were some enthusiastic Zionists who were not
satisfied with the pace set by their official leaders. These ex¬
tremists, who later crystallized as the Revisionist Party, so-called
because they demanded a revision of the Mandate in favour of the

1 Hyamson, op. cit., 121 f.

i8o A Short History of the Middle Bast

Zionists, had drawn up after the 1921 Riots comprehensive plans
for an exclusively Jewish defence force to form part of the British
forces in Palestine. The minds of these zealots were formed on a
diet of ancient revolt—the Maccabees (whose name has been given
to a widespread sport organization), the revolt of 66 A.D., and the
desperate revolt in a.d. 132 of Bar Kokhba (whose memory was
enshrined as a Zionist hero at least as early as 1910). 1 While these
young extremists kept up their aggressive attitude, the desire of the
Arab political leaders for independence was stimulated by the
constitutional concessions which were obtained or foreshadowed
in Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, and Syria. The opposition of the two
rival nationalisms came to a head in 1928 in the dispute over the
Wailing Wall, that shrine of Orthodox Jewry which is yet Muslim
property and the outer face of part of the wall of the chiefMuslim
sanctuary of Jerusalem, the Haram ash-Sharif, the third most
holy spot in the Sunni world. While official Zionist bodies had
given no offence, less responsible individuals among them had
expressed their hope of ultimately winning back the Haram, the
site of their historic Temple. The Muslims were therefore made
even more than usually suspicious; and when some Jews began to
encroach slightly on the status quo at the Wailing Wall they inter¬
preted it as the thin end of the wedge, and the Mufti riposted with
vigorous and provocative counter-measures. An attempt by the
government to bring about agreement in the matter was baffled as
much byjewish reluctance to give way as by the Arabs. 2 In August
1929 there were provocative demonstrations by both Jews and
Arabs. Meanwhile the Arabs had been whipping up fanaticism
throughout the country, and at the end of the month there were
massacres of Jews in all the mixed towns of the country. 133 Jews
were killed and six agricultural settlements totally destroyed. The
security forces in the country had been reduced to small propor¬
tions in the quiet years, and were now taken by surprise. There was
little Jewish retaliation, though they killed seven Arabs at Jaffa
and desecrated a mosque in Jerusalem. The Shaw Commis¬
sion, set up to investigate the causes of the riots, emphasized the
basic conflict of the two opposing nationalisms. 'Neither side have
made any sustained attempt to improve racial relationships. The
Jews, prompted by eager desire to see their hopes fulfilled, have

1 Clara Boyle, A Servant of the Empire , 173.

3 Royal Commission Report (1937), 67.

The Struggle for Independence 181

pressed, on with a policy at least as comprehensive as the White
Paper of 1922 can warrant. The Arabs, with unrelenting opposi¬
tion, have refused to accept that document and have prosecuted a
political campaign designed to counter Jewish activities and to
realize their own political ambitions/ The Commission made
four main recommendations: (1) A clear statement of policy with
the least possible delay, including a definition of the meaning of the
passages in the Mandate which purported to safeguard the interests
of the ‘non-Jewish’ communities.

(2) A revision of the immigration regulations to prevent a
repetition of the excessive immigration of 1925/6 which had re¬
sulted in considerable unemployment, and to provide for consulta¬
tion with non-Jewish representatives with regard to it.

(3) An expert inquiry into the prospects of improving Arab
agricultural methods, and the regulation ofland-policy according¬
ly.

(4) A reaffirmation of the 1922 statement that ‘the special posi¬
tion assigned to the Zionist Organization by the Mandate does not
entitle it to share in any degree in the government of Palestine/

Sir John Hope-Simpson, who was sent to Palestine to conduct
the agricultural inquiry, reported very conservatively on the ex¬
tent of lands suitable for development. He did agree that 'with
thorough development there will be room, not only for all the
present agricultural population on a higher standard of life than it
at present enjoys, but for not less than 20,000 families from out¬
side’; but pending the completion of this development he was
opposed to the admission of any more Jews as settlers on the land,
as tending to displace Arab cultivators. The Passfield White Paper
of 1930, based on these two reports, restated the words used by
Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald a few months earlier: 'A
double undertaking is involved, to the Jewish people on the one
hand, and to the non-Jewish population of Palestine on the other/
and added that much of the recent agitation had arisen from the
failure, both by Arabs and by Jews, to realize the limits imposed on
British policy by this double undertaking. A new Department of
Development was to be given control of all disposition of land,
and land-transfers would be permitted only in so far as they did not
interfere with that authority’s plans; any state land becoming
available should be earmarked for the settlement of landless Arab
cultivators.

182 A Short History of the Middle East

It came just at a time when the reconstitution of the Jewish
Agency with substantial financial support from the U.S.A. had
raised Zionist hopes high. Dr. Weizmann protested that the
White Paper was inconsistent with the terms of the Mandate, and
resigned his presidency of the Jewish Agency and the Zionist Or¬
ganization. In Britain prominent members of the Conservative
opposition—Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain, Amery, Churchill—
sought to make political capital out of the situation by supporting
the Zionist complaints. 'The public ventilation of the controversy
was an impressive demonstration of the political power the Zion¬
ists could mobilize in England/ Ramsay MacDonald, with the
lack of firm resolution characteristic ofthe later stages of his career,
capitulated to the Zionist pressure, invited the Jewish Agency to
confer with the government, and eventually restated its policy to
Weizmann in what the Arabs have nicknamed the 'Black
Letter’. Defining itself as the 'authoritative interpretation 5 of the
White Paper, it declared that H.M.G. did not intend to prohibit the
acquisition of additional land by the Jews, since this could be done
without prejudice to the rights and position of other sections of the
population, nor to stop or prohibit Jewish immigration. 1

'The first serious attempt to reduce the implications of the
Balfour Declaration to terms compatible with our pledges to the
Arabs had failed/ 2 The most important feature of the White
Paper, the control of land-transfers, was never put into effect; for
in January 1933 the Nazis came into power in Germany and a
steadily increasing stream ofjewish refugees began to pour out of
that country. Meanwhile the situation of the Jews in Poland and
Roumania, where government and unofficial pressure to get rid of
them had grown stronger since the creation of the National Home
had offered an outlet, w^as growing steadily worse. The need of the
Jews was more widespread, and in some respects more acute, than
in the pre-war Russian pogroms. They naturally turned to
Palestine as the only country they could enter 'as of right and not
on sufferance 5 . Confronted with this demand for asylum the
British government promptly pigeon-holed the Shaw Com¬
mission Report, with its admonition that the 1929 Riots were but a
symptom ofthe dangerous and fundamental clash of the two rival

1 The Political History of Palestine under British Administration (Jerusalem,
1947), 13.

2 Round Table , 1939, 463.

The Struggle for Independence 183

nationalisms, and tacitly admitted a new principle not provided for
in the Mandate, that Jewish refugees from persecution in Europe
should be admitted to Palestine in unprecedented numbers.
While Jewish immigration from the promulgation of the Mandate
down to 1932 inclusive had averaged 9,000 a year, it rose in 193 3 to
30,000; in 1934 t0 42,000; and in 1935 to nearly 62,000; and these
figures do not include clandestine illegal immigrants, who
amounted to thousands per year. Immigrants from Poland con¬
tinued to constitute over 40 per cent, of the total; but those from
Germany, who had been negligible before 1929 and under 4 per
cent, of the total in 1932, quadrupled themselves. Official esti¬
mates showed that by 1935 the Jewish population had more than
doubled itself since 1929 and now amounted to one-quarter of the
total. Statistical calculation demonstrated that if the rate of immi¬
gration of the last three years were allowed to continue, the Jewish
population would equal that of the Arabs by 1952.

It was not surprising that in these circumstances the Arab nation¬
alist leaders felt little sympathy for the persecuted Jews of Europe,
failed to understand why their small country should be the
principal asylum for them, and treated the nullification of the 1930
White Paper as a British breach of faith. As the Mufti later put it,
4 We have had so many commissions; so much has been recom¬
mended by them in our favour; and what is the result? Over
60,000 Jewish immigrants in one year/ 1 Arab terrorists began to
murder Jews, uproot their trees, maim their cattle, and herdsmen
squatted on blocks of land to obstruct their sale to the Jews. The
rapid increase of Jewish immigration in 1933 was followed by
violent Arab attacks on government policy, alleging that its de¬
liberate purpose was To drive the Arab nation away from its home¬
land 5 . Demonstrations against the government in several towns in
October 1933 led to the deaths of twenty-six Arab civilians and one
policeman. Meanwhile the Jewish Revisionists, who demanded
the opening of Palestine and Transjordan to, not thousands but
millions of Jewish immigrants, were becoming more extreme in
their opposition both to Government and to the Jewish Agency,
and were generally believed to have been responsible for the
murder of Dr. Arlosoroff, a leading member of the Agency. In the
following year Sir Herbert (now Lord) Samuel wrote, 'Everyone
in Palestine agrees that the economic development is astonishing;

1 Humphrey Bowman, Middle East Window, 335.

N

184 A Short History of the Middle East

no one thinks that the political situation shows any appreciable
improvement.’ In the summer of 1935, with Jewish prospects in
Poland worse and in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe no
better, the Zionist Congress recorded its resolve ‘to focus the
energies of the Jewish people on the extension and acceleration of
its resettlement in Palestine’. In November the five Arab parties,
in an atmosphere of extreme political excitement stimulated by
hopes of progress towards independence in neighbouring Arab
countries, presented the High Commissioner with three main
demands: (1) The establishment of democratic government;
(2) the prohibition of land-transfers from Arabs to Jews; 1 (3) the
immediate stopping of immigration.

The High Commissioner was authorized to announce that an
Ordinance was to be enacted prohibiting the sale of land unless the
owner kept a sufficient amount to provide for his family, and to
offer the two communities a scheme for the constitution of a
Legislative Council, in which the proportion ofunofficial members
was, as in the 1922 proposal, weighted somewhat against the Mus¬
lims and in favour of the Jews and Christians. The Council was not
to be competent to question the validity of the Mandate, and the
High Commissioner would be able to override the Council in
certain circumstances. While the Arab leaders did not reject the
proposal outright, the Zionist Congress denounced it as ‘contrary
to the spirit of the Mandate ... at the present state of the develop¬
ment of Palestine’, i.e. as long as the Jews were in a minority. In
Britain both Houses of Parliament showed strong opposition,
pardy on general considerations of its inadvisability and partly
because of the likelihood that it would operate to the disadvantage of
the National Home. The Zionist press hailed the attitude of Par-

1 Arab nationalist appeal has at no time had sufficient moral force to bring
about, in the absence of legal sanctions, an effective voluntary refusal to sell
lands to the Jews. ‘Those who sold land, almost all at good prices, fell roughly
into three classes: the landlord, very often an absentee, the sale of whose land
raised the problem of ejected tenant occupiers; the industrious peasant, who sold
part of his land and worked up the remainder on his profits; and the type who
sold all his land at prices beyond his dreams of avarice, and who failed to use the
substance thus acquired in a way that would keep himself and his family* {Great
Britain and Palestine, 7975-45’ 57). The Jewish Agency has generally paid
compensation to the uprooted tenants, in addition to the purchase-money.
Rumour adds that the Jewish organizations have made it worth the while of
Arab moneylenders holding mortgages on land to foreclose and sell to them at a
handsome profit, and that Arab lawyers prominent in the nationalist movement
have not been above acting as brokers in land-transfers. Such venal Arabs have
from time to time been murdered by extremists.

The Struggle for Independence 185

liament as ‘a great Jewish victory’, and indeed the debates were a
'striking illustration of the disadvantage which the Arabs suffer
whenever the field of controversy shifts from Palestine to the
United Kingdom’. 1 The Arabs interpreted the abandonment of
the proposal as proof that they had no constitutional means of
resisting their political subordination to the Jews who, at the
present peak of immigration, would be in a majority within
twelve years. It must have seemed to them, encouraged by the
increase of violence in the whole world since the Japanese invasion
of Manchuria four years before, that their only salvation lay in
armed insurrection. Disturbances in mid-April 1936 began on a
scale hardly greater than had been customary in recent months: two
Jews were murdered by Arab bandits; on the following night two
Arabs were murdered near a Jewish town, as an act of reprisal as the
Arabs believed; the funeral of one of the murdered Jews led to
angry Jewish demonstrations and a series of assaults on Arabs in
Tel Aviv; excited by false rumours that Arabs had been killed
there, Arab mobs in Jaffa murdered three Jews. At this moment an
Arab National Committee proclaimed a general strike throughout
the whole country until their demands of the previous November
were met, and set up the Arab Higher Committee composed of all
Arab parties. The strike was effective, and was accompanied by
assaults on Jews and much destruction of Jewish trees and crops.
The British government announced its intention to send out a
Royal Commission to 'investigate the causes of unrest and alleged
grievances’ of both communities. Meanwhile Arab violence and
sabotage increased, and armed bands appeared in the hills; among
them were volunteers from Syria and Iraq. Attempts by the Amir
Abdullah of Transjordan and Nuri as-Sa’id, then Foreign Minister
of Iraq, to mediate between the Arab leaders and the government
came to nothing. The activities of the Arab bands increased in
scope and magnitude, they were joined by trained guerilla leaders
from outside Palestine, and sabotage to communications became
frequent and systematic. There were a few acts of reprisal by Jews,
but they were quickly checked by their own authorities; and the
government acknowledged the self-restraint of the Jewish com¬
munity in the face of great provocation by enrolling nearly 3,000
as supernumerary constables and authorizing the acquisition of
rifles as an addition to the permitted arms held in the Jewish settle-

1 Royal Commission Report, 92.

186 A Short History of the Middle East

ments. The British forces were reinforced to a total of about
20,000, and it became clear that the rebels could not long hold out.
The civilian strikers were tiring of incurring financial losses, and
the prospect of not participating in the profits of the impending
orange season was an additional reason for calling a halt. In
October, therefore, the strike was ended, the armed bands dispersed,
and the Commission began its work. In all, eightyjews and twenty
eight British had been killed; the total Arab death-roll has been
estimated at 800.

The Royal Commission s Report, published in July 1937,
has been justly described as 'a great State Paper . . . direct, out¬
spoken, incisive, showing remarkably sympathetic understanding
both of the Zionism of the Jews and the nationalism of the Arabs’.
After a penetrating analysis of the causes of the antagonism between
them, it reached the conclusion that the promises made to Jews and
Arabs were irreconcilable and the Mandate in its existing form
unworkable. It therefore proposed the radical solution of a surgical
operation, dividing the country into a Jewish and an Arab state,
with a small residuary enclave from Jaffa to Jerusalem left in charge
of the Mandatory. The proposed frontiers would have given the
Jewish state (in addition to rounding off their existing holdings in
the coastal plain, the plain of Esdraelon, and the upper Jordan
valley) the whole of Galilee, which contained thirty times as many
Arabs as Jews. It would have included initially 225,000 Arabs, or
almost a quarter of all the Arabs in Palestine. The Jews would have
had a precarious majority of 53.4 per cent.; but it was recom¬
mended that a part of the large Arab minority should be resettled,
either voluntarily or compulsorily. 1 If, however, the Mandate were
to be continued in its existing form, the High Commissioner
should be empowered to prohibit the transfer to Jews of land in
certain areas, and to subject immigration to a ‘political high level 5
which should be 12,000 per year for the next five years.

The Zionist Congress authorized its Executive to enter into
negotiations with the British government ‘with a view to ascer¬
taining the precise terms for the proposed Jewish state 5 . Ben
Gurion, chairman of the Executive, explained to the press, ‘The
debate has not been for or against the indivisibility of Eretz Israel.
No Zionist can forego the smallest portion of Eretz Israel. The
debate was over which of two routes would lead quicker to the

1 p. 391, para. 43.

The Struggle for Independence 187

common goal 9 ; and Dr. Weizmann, defending the non-inclusion
of Southern Palestine within the proposed Jewish frontiers, re¬
marked, ‘It will not run away.’ 1 The Arabs, supported by the
neighbouring Arab states, rejected the partition plan entirely, and
asserted their right to independence in the whole of Palestine with
an immediate stopping of Jewish immigration and land-purchase.
The state of security deteriorated, and the Acting District Com¬
missioner for Galilee and his police-escort were murdered by Arab
terrorists; he was widely considered to have been one of the
principal authors of the partition scheme. The Mufti was dis¬
missed from his presidency of the Supreme Muslim Council; the
Arab Higher Committee and all national committees were dis¬
solved; and five prominent Arab leaders were deported. Jamal al-
Husaini escaped to Syria, and the Mufti absconded in disguise to
Beirut. But Arab terrorism increased, and some Jewish extremists
also began to resort to terrorism, in spite of the restraint previously
commanded by the Zionist leaders. In 1938 armed Arab gangs
found a footing in all the main towns and rebel bands openly
dominated the smaller towns. Communications were everywhere
sabotaged. While heavy concentrations of British troops alone
preserved a semblance of order in the northern and central parts of
the country, Jerusalem and the south passed for a time entirely out
of control. The active rebels probably amounted to no more than
1,000-1,500, split up In small bodies and mixed among peaceful
citizens; but they had the sympathy and protection of a large part
of the Arab population. Under the direction of the Mufti and the
remnants of the Arab Higher Committee from outside Palestine,
the Husaini faction carried on by intimidation and murder their
traditional feud against the Nashashibi faction, the so-called moder¬
ates. In 1938 5,700 major acts of terrorism were recorded; casualties
increased to fifteen times the figure for 1937; those killed included
sixty-nine British, ninety-two Jews, 486 Arab civilians, and 1,138
armed Arab rebels. Some 100 Arabs were convicted by the military
courts and hanged. Meanwhile the Woodhead Commission, sent
out to prepare a detailed scheme of Partition, reported that it was
unable to recommend any plan whatever: it was impossible to give
the Jews a workable area without leaving an unfairly large Arab
minority and the bulk of the Arab-owned citrus areas in the Jewish
state, while the residual Arab state would not be economically self-
1 Barbour, op. cit., 184 f.

188

A Short History of the Middle East

supporting. They therefore suggested a scheme of economic
federalism, by which the Mandatory would determine the fiscal
policy for Arab and Jewish areas which would be otherwise
autonomous. The British government then invited representatives
of the Jewish and Arab communities and of the neighbouring Arab
states, who had shown themselves increasingly concerned in the
Palestine question in the past two years, to a Round-Table Con¬
ference in London early in 1939. Both parties rejected new British
proposals, and the government was eventually left to announce a
new policy in May 1939, when Hitler had occupied Czechoslovakia
and the war-clouds were visible even to the most complacent eye.

The 1939 White Paper proposed to create an independent Pales¬
tinian state in treaty relations with Britain at the end of ten years.
75,000 Jewish immigrants were to be admitted in the first five
years, after which further immigration was to be dependent on
Arab consent. The High Commissioner would have powers to
regulate or prohibit the transfer of land. The Paper 'declared un¬
equivocally that it was not part of Government’s policy that
Palestine should become a Jewish State, regarding it as contrary to
their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate’.

The Zionists furiously condemned the White Paper as an out¬
rageous breach of faith, claiming that it denied them the right to
reconstitute their National Home in Palestine. Since its publication
their vituperation of the Paper has never lessened. 1 They have
never acknowledged how essential it was for Britain at this time to
end the conflict with the Arabs of Palestine, and avert one with
those of the neighbouring countries, in view of the impending
World War.

The British parliament received the White Paper with little
enthusiasm. The Labour opposition naturally opposed it whole¬
heartedly, and it was also strongly attacked by such strong im¬
perialists as Churchill and Amery, presumably because they re¬
garded a strong Jewish community as a better ally than the fickle
Arabs.

In June the seven members of the Permanent Mandates Com¬
mission reported unanimously to the League Council that the

1 Gershon Agronsky, the so-called moderate editor of the Palestine Post
expressed the hope that the report of the Anglo-American Committee of
Inquiry of 1946 would 'roll away the perfidy of the monstrous W T hite Paper, a
creature of funk spawned by a government dominated by a passion for appease-
ment\ {Palestine Post, 2 May, 1946).

The Struggle for Independence 189

White Paper ‘was not in accordance with the interpretation
which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power and the Council,
the Commission had placed upon the Palestine Mandate’. It also
considered whether the Mandate ‘might not perhaps be open to a
new interpretation which ... would be sufficiently flexible for the
policy of the White Paper not to appear at variance with it’; and
the majority of four to three declared that ‘they did not feel able
to state that the policy of the White Paper was in conformity with
the Mandate, any contrary conclusion appearing to them to be
ruled out by the very terms of the Mandate and by the fundamental
intentions of its authors’. The minority, consisting of the repre¬
sentatives of Britain, France, and Portugal, considered that ‘exist¬
ing circumstances would justify the policy of the White Paper,
provided the Council did not oppose it’. The outbreak of the
Second World War prevented the Council from discussing the
White Paper, which thus remained de facto in force. Nevertheless
the Zionists have continued to defend their opposition to it by the
pretence that the disapproval of a majority of one of the Mandates
Commission automatically rendered the White Paper illegal; this,
although the Commission had no veto over the proposals of a
Mandatory, but only the power to advise the League Council. The
Mandatory could hardly afford to mark time without a policy till
the end of the War. Indeed, as Dr. James Parkes, who cannot be
accused of lacking sympathy for Zionism, has commented, the
White Paper was not, ‘as it might appear to be, a violent reaction
against the policies of previous British governments. .. . From the
moment when the Balfour Declaration stated that the rights of the
existing population would be safeguarded, it was evident that no
final solution was possible while these rights, as the population
itself understood them, were ignored. The Arabs of Palestine
stated their objection to the Declaration quite openly on the first
occasion on which they were able. They have never wavered from
that position. .. . This being so, then the only possible sequence of
events was one in which the original encouragement given to the
Jews was steadily whittled down in the face of Arab intransigence. 1

* * *

In Syria, after the suppression of the Rebellion of 1925 jz 6 , the
French civilian High Commissioner made a genuine attempt to

1 op. cit., 63.

190 A Short History of the Middle East

allow the Syrian ‘moderate’ politicians to draw up a constitution.
A draft was produced in 1928, but the High Commissioner ob¬
jected to certain articles deemed to infringe the rights of France,
and one which insisted on the political unity of Greater Syria.
After many attempts to reach a compromise, the High Com¬
missioner dissolved the Assembly in 1930, promulgating a con¬
stitution by his own act. Elections under this constitution were
held in 1932, and negotiations begun for a Franco-Syrian Treaty
modelled on the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930. But again no com¬
promise could be found between French interests and the national¬
ist demands for a limitation in time and location on the French
garrison and the inclusion in Syria of the governments ofthejebel
Druze and Latakia; and again in 1934 the High Commissioner
suspended the Chamber of Deputies sine die.

In 1936, after nationalist disorders causing sixty deaths had ex¬
torted from the French permission to send a deputation to Paris,
the Front Populaire government came into power in France and
immediately showed a more sympathetic attitude towards the
Syrian demands, with the result that agreement was reached on a
Draft Treaty closely modelled on the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. It was
to last for twenty-five years. There would be a close alliance
between France and Syria, and France would support the admission
of Syria to the League of Nations. The governments of Jebel
Druze and Latakia would be annexed to Syria, but have special
administrations. France would have two air-bases, and ma intai n
troops in the districts of Jebel Druze and Latakia for five years.
Syria would provide all facilities required by the French forces.
France would be represented by an ambassador taking precedence
over the representatives of all other powers. The existing monetary
parity between the two countries would be maintained, and Syria
would normally recruit foreign advisers and officials from France.
A similar draft treaty was agreed between France and the more
compliant Lebanon, the main difference being that no limitations
were placed on the size or locations of the French forces there.

A government of the National Bloc party was elected in Syria,
and exiled nationalists returned. ‘It seemed as if the country were
entering upon a new period of national construction under leaders
whose patriotic energy had only been strengthened by disappoint¬
ment, imprisonment and long years of exile ... but the next two
years saw the collapse of these hopes.’ The Turkish government,

The Struggle for Independence 191

which had agreed in 1921 to the inclusion under the French man¬
date of the sanjaq of Alexandretta with its large Turkish minority
on condition that it had a special regime, now objected to its sub¬
jection to an inexperienced Arab nationalist government of Syria.
A League of Nations Commission was set up in 1937 to supervise
the election of a local assembly with seats allotted proportionately
to the different communities. This placed the Turks in a difficult
position since the population estimates showed only about 39 per
cent. ofTurkish-speakers; but if every elector should be ‘presumed
to be a member of the community to which he declared himself to
belong’, and if the Turks could obtain control of the police and the
electoral machinery, a Turkish majority might be obtained. The
Commission finally gave way to the Turkish demand for registra¬
tion by declaration, apparently fair, but in reality opening the door
wide to intimidation; the British representative on the Commission
immediately resigned in protest. But since the Turks were still not
assured of their majority, they brought pressure to bear on the
French, who were anxious to preserve Turkey’s friendship as an
offset to Fascist Italy’s threatening behaviour in the Mediter¬
ranean. A Franco-Turkish Treaty of Friendship in June 1938 per¬
mitted Turkish troops to enter the Sanjaq ‘to assist the French in
maintaining order’. The electoral Commission abandoned its
work, accusing the French of systematic efforts, by means of
arrests and other forms of intimidation, to deprive the non-Turkish
majority ofits freedom ofvoting. The Turkish troops marched in,
and the final electoral lists only showed the Turks as constituting
63 per cent, of the total. A cabinet consisting entirely of Turks was
formed. Finally, in June 1939, with France’s need of Turkish sup¬
port becoming greater as the shadow of impending war grew
larger, she made a Declaration of Mutual Assistance with Turkey,
in which Turkey was allowed to annex the Sanjaq. 1

Meanwhile there was unrest in the Jebel Druze, the Latakia
district, and the Jazira, where there were strong separatist move¬
ments among the minorities. Undoubtedly some of the inexperi¬
enced Syrian officials appointed by the Damascus government had
acted hastily and irresponsibly in their efforts to bring about the
political assimilation of these minorities, but on the other hand the
separatists were encouraged by some French officials on the spot,
anxious to create difficulties for the Syrian government.

1 It was renamed Hatay (‘Hittite-land’).

192

A Short History of the Middle East

But worst of all for the Syrian government, the Draft Treaty of
1936 had to face a formidable and growing weight of opposition in
France. Besides those who were genuinely concerned over the
future of the Christian minorities under a predominantly Mus lim
administration, there were others whose opposition to the tend¬
ency towards Syrian independence was less disinterested; and their
influence on French policy was greater after the fall of the Front
Populaire government. Moreover, the growing tenseness of the
international situation made the French increasingly reluctant to
weaken their strategic position in the Levant. Towards the end of
1938 the French Foreign Minister assured the Syrian Prime
Minister, in return for new guarantees of French and minority in¬
terests, that the Treaty would be ratified before 31 January 1939;
but a month later he yielded to the opposition of the Foreign
Affairs Commission, and announced that the government did not
intend for the present to ask parliament to ratify. Six months of
deadlock between the nationalists and the French followed; and in
July 1939 the High Commissioner once more suspended the Syrian
constitution and appointed a council of directors to rule under his
own orders. Separate administrations were re-established in the
JebelDruze, the territory ofLatakia, and thejazira.

★ ★ 'k

Thus, while the twenty-one years that elapsed between the two
Wars raised the Middle East as a whole out of the stagnation in
which it had lain under the Ottoman Empire, and appreciably im¬
proved its economic and social conditions under European tute¬
lage, the progress made towards political self-determination had
by no means come up to the aspirations of the nationalist forces.
Egypt and Iraq had achieved national sovereignty, though with
important limitations in the field of foreign affairs, and subject to
the presence of British garrisons on their soil; the Syrian national¬
ists had continually been frustrated of their hopes, most sharply in
the last year when sovereignty seemed within their grasp; and
whatever economic and social progress the Arabs of Palestine had
made under the Mandate, their political status had been markedly
worsened by the rapid increase in the Jewish immigrant com¬
munity, for whose sake Palestine was subjected to crown-colony

The Struggle for Independence 193

government with no direct authority for Arab politicians and no
opportunity for men of talent and ambition to rise higher than very
secondary positions in the administration. The states which had
achieved full political independence were those on the outer edge
of the Middle East: Turkey, Persia, Sa’udi Arabia, Yemen, under
their autocratic rulers Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Riza Shah, Ibn
Sa’ud, and the Imam Yahya; 1 and even these, in ascending order,
were hampered in their dealings with greater Powers by their
economic weakness and the social backwardness of their peoples.

1 Imam Yahya of the Yemen was muidered in a rising of ‘progressive
elements in February, 1948; but the Crown Prince Ahmed succeeded in re¬
asserting his authoritv in the following month (cf. Times editorial, 16 March,
1948).

CHAPTER VII

The Second World War and After 1

T he denial of independence to the Arab populations of
Palestine and Syria had created intense feeling against
Britain and France, not only in these countries but among
the politically-conscious younger generation in Egypt and Iraq
also. In all these countries the rapid extension of a superficial
education along Western lines had greatly widened the cleavage of
opinion which naturally exists between middle-aged parents and
their adolescent offspring. The young men resented the fact that
political power in their own countries remained in the hands of the
elderly, who were slow to admit the claims of the young to parti¬
cipate. The nationalists of the older generation had organized the
young students and secondary-schoolboys for political agitation
against the inhibiting Western imperialisms in such movements as
the Wafdist Blueshirts in Egypt; and now the young men were
themselves forming new extremist organizations which exalted
the principle of devotion to a Leader on distinctly Fascist lines.
Among such extremist organizations were the Misr al-Fatat or
Young Egypt, also known as the Greenshirts, founded by the
lawyer-demagogue Ahmed Husain; the Syrian National Party,
founded by Antun Sa’adi, which drew its membership mainly from
Lebanese who desired reunion with Syria; the Syrian League of
National Action; and the Arab Club of Damascus, founded by a
young dentist educated in Germany. In Iraq especially the great
influence of the Army in public affairs, which reached a peak under
the dictatorship ofBakir Sidqi but remained important down to the
outbreak of war, stimulated the youth to the formation of extreme
nationalist organizations run on militarist lines.

The Axis Powers were not slow to exploit this favourable situa¬
tion. It appears that they had reached an agreement that the
Levant and Egypt fell within the Italian sphere of interest, while

1 The writer is now engaged in a detailed study of the Middle East in
this period.

The Second World War and After 195

Iraq and Persia should come under the influence of Germany.
From 1935 Radio Bari devoted itself through its broadcasts to in¬
citing the Arab world against Britain, especially over the raging
question of Palestine. The Italians had built up a powerful pro¬
paganda organization in Egypt, working under the auspices of the
Italian Legation and through the medium of the 60,000 Italian
inhabitants of the cities of Lower Egypt, who were brought under
the aegis of the Fascist organizations; there can be no doubt that
they were also used to spy on British activities. Having completed
the conquest of Abyssinia in 1936, Italy proceeded to build up her
strategic position against Britain In the Southern Red Sea. She
fortified the port of Assab in southern Eritrea and, by playing on
the suspicions of British policy in Aden in the mind of the Imam of
the Yemen, persuaded that conservative monarch to admit into his
country an Italian medical mission which was a convenient cover
for anti-British propaganda and espionage. During the Palestine
Rebellion both the German Protestant (Templar) colonies and
some Italian Catholic orders extended their protection and
material help to the Arab rebels, and some arms and money
were smuggled in to them from the Axis Powers. 1 In 1938 the
German radio took over from the Italians the broadcasting of anti-
British propaganda in Arabic. In Iraq the German Minister, Dr.
Grobba, was assiduous and open-handed in cultivating the young
nationalists. Germans played cleverly on the Persians’ hatred of
both Britain and Russia and flattered their boundless vanity by
emphasizing their Aryan origins. German propaganda films were
provided free, and were believed to have amounted to 40 per cent,
of all films shown in Persia. The Lufthansa obtained permission
to land at Tehran on their Berlin-Tokvo route. Persian students,
like those of the Arabic-speaking countries, were tempted by low
fees to finish their studies in German universities; and in 1939-40
a number of German university lecturers and directors of tech¬
nical institutes were imported into Persia. Leading Nazi person¬
alities, such as Goebbels, Schacht, General von Blomberg, and
Baldur von Schirach, paid official visits to Middle Eastern capitals.

In spite of this propaganda campaign the immediate reaction
of the Middle Eastern countries to the outbreak of war was not
unsatisfactory to Britain and France. Egypt and Iraq immediately

1 Though the extent of this aid has probably been exaggerated by Zionist
propaganda. (Barbour, op. cit., 192; Great Britain and Palestine, 1915-45, 119).

196 A Short History of the Middle East

broke off diplomatic relations with Germany; the Arab Rebellion
in Palestine, already in its dying struggles, ceased with the arrival
of a cavalry division and other troops in the autumn of 1939; and
the Syrian nationalists were firmly repressed. The months of the
‘Sitzkrieg’, however, confirmed the idea, already prevalent in
Middle Eastern political circles, that this war between European
powers was none of their business. The German invasion
of France, the entry of Italy into the war, and the capitulation
of France, leaving the small British forces in the Middle East
denuded of the support of the 100,000 French troops in the
Levant States, brought the war to the threshold of the Middle
East in one bound. By this time the Alhed disasters of that
dreadful summer and the isolation of Britain had not surpris¬
ingly shaken the confidence of the Middle Eastern politicians
in her ability to survive. In Iraq the weak-willed Prime Minister
Rashid Ah al Qilani was merely the catspaw of four ambitious
colonels nicknamed the ‘Golden Square’, while a shadow-
cabinet of Palestinian extremists was directed by the hostile
Hay Amin. Freya Stark vividly describes how she encoun¬
tered the Mufti in his hotel and saw ‘little good, and certainly

nothing disinterested in that face-He sat there all in white,

spodess and voluminous, wearing his turban like a halo; his eyes
fight, blue, and shining, with a sort of radiance, like a just-fallen
Lucifer’. 1 In these circumstances the Iraqi government refused to
break off diplomatic relations with Italy; and as the Battle ofBritain
raged, ‘the highest military authorities were openly broadcasting
to the Iraqi people that their army and air-force had the glorious
mission of renewing the heroic days of the Arab conquests and the
Crusades, and of liberating the oppressed brethren of Syria and
Palestine from the servitude imposed on them by Europe and the
Jews’. 2

In Egypt the British Embassy and military authorities had
reason to suspect the Prime Minister Afi Mahir, son of that
Mahir Pasha whom Cromer had caused to be removed from
office as Under-Secretary for War as ‘a bad adviser, a cause of strife,
and an obstacle to harmonious co-operation’ between Britain and
the young Khedive Abbas II. 3 Following in bis father’s footsteps,

1 East is West, 143.

2 Round Table, 1941, 705.

s Lord Cromer, Abbas II, 50-59.

The Second World War and After 197

Ali Mahir had acquired great influence over the young King
Faruq, who since his accession in 1936 had taken growing offence
at the authority and the personal attitude to him of the British
Ambassador Sir Miles Lampson (now Lord Killearn). 1 It now
appeared that the Prime Minister was actively encouraging the
King to adopt a policy of reinsurance with the Axis Powers in view
of the impending defeat of Britain, and he resisted British requests
for the breaking-off of diplomatic relations with Italy. Such
conduct in a country so vital for her imperial strategy could
not be tolerated in this crisis of British fortunes; and in June
1940 pressure was exerted to obtain the dismissal of Ali Mahir s
cabinet and its replacement by one more ready to co-operate.
That the British suspicions were not without grounds was
demonstrated some months later, when the columns advancing
into Cyrenaica in Wavelfs push captured on an Italian general a
highly secret letter addressed by the G.O.C. British Troops in
Egypt to the Egyptian Minister of Defence and discussing the
defence of the Siwa Oasis, which had been entrusted to an Egyptian
unit. The British authorities concluded that the Italians had
obtained the letter before the departure of the Italian Legation
staff, and accordingly suspected Ali Mahir and his "inner cabinet 5 —
Salih Harb, the Minister of Defence, and Aziz AH al-Misri, the
Chief of Staff—of being responsible for the leakage. The Egyptian
authorities subsequently held an enquiry which purported to
vindicate these persons, claiming that it was not established
whether the leakage had occurred on the British or the Egyptian
side.

Although Egypt did not declare war against the Axis, her army
did assist in the defence of the Western Desert and in the anti¬
aircraft defence of the Canal Zone and the cities of Egypt; and in
April 1941, stimulated by General Wavelfs winter success in
routing the ItaHan armies in Cyrenaica with a force only a fraction
of their size, the Egyptian government accepted British representa-

1 The remarks of Lord Lloyd on the relations between Lord Cromer and
Abbas II apply with curious exactness to those between Lord Killearn and King
Faruq fifty years later: ‘There was a considerable school of thought which held,
and not without some justification, that the Khedive was what he was largely
because of the method which Cromer had used towards him. It was argued that
at his accession Abbas’s position vis-&-vis the overshadowing position of the
great Consul-General had been one of great difficulty for a young and sensitive
ruler, and that by no means enough had been done to help and encourage him.’
{Egypt since Cromer, I, 71 f.)

198 A Short History of the Middle East

tions that the consulates of such neutral, but unfriendly Powers as
Japan, Hungary, Roumania and Bulgaria in such strategic centres
as Alexandria, Port Said, and Suez were nests of espionage, and
closed them down.

But the easy optimism engendered by Britain’s swift liquidation
of the grandiose Italian African empire in 1940/1 was soon to be
rudely awakened. In April 1941 Germany struck at the Balkans
and in one month overran Jugoslavia and Greece; at the same time
Rommel and his Afrika Korps came to the help of the routed
Italians in Libya and drove the British forces, depleted for the
Greek campaign, back from the Gulf of Sirte to the Egyptian
frontier. In Iraq, where the Golden Square and Rashid Ali had
suffered a temporary reverse in an attempted coup d’etat in January,
the incitement of the Mufti and his followers to a breach with
Britain had been supported by the propaganda of the German
Armistice Commission sent to the Levant States after the French
collapse. Directed by Baron von Hentig, who had been a member
of the German mission to Afghanistan in the First World War, it
disposed oflarge sums of money and won the support ofsome of the
Arab extremists in Syria. It apparently sent emissaries to the Mufti,
who was in receipt of subsidies from the Axis through the Italian
Minister in Baghdad. Early in April the invasion of Greece
seemed to the conspirators in Baghdad to be the signal for their
rising. How could Britain, represented in Iraq only by a small air¬
force and by a ‘gentle, pleasant, and optimistic’ ambassador with no
previous experience of the Middle East, resist them? They over¬
threw the flabby existing government, reinstated Rashid Ali as
Prime Minister, and sought to secure the person of the Regent for
the boy-King Faisal II; he was however safely smuggled away by
the American Minister. After this coup the Golden Square hesi¬
tated, since German help was not yet forthcoming. The newly-
appointed British Ambassador, Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, with
twenty years’ experience of the Iraqis, seized this opportunity to
secure the landing in Basra, under the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi
Treaty, of Indian troops to reinforce the Middle East. When a
second contingent arrived, the Iraqi government, encouraged by
the German successes in Greece and Libya, demanded that the first
contingent should leave Iraqi territory before the second dis¬
embarked. The British authorities refused to comply. On 1 May
the Iraqi army invested the British air-base at Habbaniya with some

The Second World War and After 199

fifty field-guns, while detachments seized the pumping-stations
on the oil-pipeline to Haifa. By all normal rules Habbaniya should
have fallen; but after four days’ fighting the R.A.F. assisted by their
Assyrian and Kurdish Levies succeeded in driving back the Iraqis,
and were reinforced by a small motorized column, including the
Arab Legion of Transjordan, hastily got together in Palestine and
rushed across the desert. The Iraqis now appealed to Germany for
help; but Hitler had decided that major operations to expel Britain
from the Middle East must wait till after the launching of the in¬
vasion of Russia, now in an advanced state of preparation. The
Germans were held up in Crete, whose conquest took them
eighteen days instead of the two on which they had counted; and
they could spare their Iraqi allies only some fifty aircraft. This was
insufficient, and the Golden Square had failed to win the support of
the apathetic Iraqi people. On 29 May, the British forces, still far
inferior in numbers to the Iraqis, had reached the outskirts of
Baghdad. Rashid Ah and his ministers, the Golden Square, the
Mufti and his shadow-cabinet all decamped in haste, some to
Persia, and some to Aleppo and eventually through Turkey to
Axis Europe. An armistice was concluded on 31 May. Britain,
pressed back on Egypt and Palestine by this premature pincer-
movement of the Axis and its sympathizers, had fought back and
won in the first great testing-time of the Middle East campaign.
Beyond ensuring the establishment of a friendly government, she
imposed no punitive terms on Iraq; but proceeded to attack the
Vichy French in Syria, who had in their impotence harboured for
many months the spies and propagandists of the Axis Armistice
Commission, and had recently allowed German aircraft to
refuel on Syrian airfields on their way to Northern Iraq, and
material supplies to travel to Iraq by the Syrian railways. The
Vichy French fought back grimly against the British and Free
French, but by mid-July they were forced to capitulate, and under
the Lyttleton-De Gaulle Agreement a Free French government
was installed in the Levant States, British forces being free to oper¬
ate there for the duration of the war. Meanwhile Hitler had invaded
Russia. One of the only two routes by which contact between
Russia and Britain could be established was through Persia, where
the Germans had been steadily building up their staffs of tech¬
nicians and spies during the past six months. A joint Anglo-
Russian demand that the Persian government should expel them

200

A Short History of the Middle East

met with the insolent reply that Persia was anxious to get rid of
alFforeigners. 1 The response to this was the joint Anglo-Russian
invasion ofPersia in August. The greater part of the Persian army
was kept back by Riza Shah to overawe the unruly tribes who
hated his tyrannical rule, and what was available was no match for
the invading forces. Before September was out the avaricious old
Shah had been forced to abdicate in favour of his young son.
Russian and British troops occupied the Northern and Southern
parts of Persia respectively, and the Trans-Iranian Railway and
road-systems were extensively used for the supply of American
and British munitions and supplies to Russia. The political situa¬
tion was regulated by the Anglo-Soviet-Persian Treaty of 1942,
whereby Persia gave the Allies full wartime facilities, and they
undertook in return to withdraw their troops within six months of
the end of hostilities. Nevertheless the sympathies of most poli-
ticaUy-minded Persians remained with the Axis, and some officials
continued during 1942 to intrigue with the German agent Franz
Mayr, who had escaped when the Germans in Persia were rounded
up for internment.

The Middle East political barometer continued to fluctuate with
the changing strategic situation. By January 1942 the disasters of
Pearl Harbour and Singapore, and the second British retreat in
Cyrenaica before RommeFs forces, gave new encouragement to
her enemies. In Egypt the government of Husain Sirri had since
1940 co-operated loyally; but having no majority backing in par¬
liament its life was precarious and its policy correspondingly ir¬
resolute. Faced in the autumn of 194.1 with a growing tide of pro-
Axis and anti-British propaganda, in which the powerful and ex¬
tremist Ikhwan al-Muslimin or Muslim Brotherhood organization
played a prominent part, it acceded to British representations by
arresting its leader Hasan al-Banna, only to release him a few days
later, apparently under pressure from the Palace, which was
believed to have been generously subsidizing him. A month later
the breaking-off of diplomatic relations with Vichy France at
Britain’s request caused the resignation of the Foreign Minister,
again apparendy the victim of royal displeasure. In January 1942
the failure of the Egyptian authorities to break the black market
and ensure a proper distribution of bread in Cairo coincided with
the military disasters referred to above, and promoted a wave of

1 Elwell-Sutton, op. cit., 186.

201

The Second World War and After

anti-British feeling, with students marching down main streets
shouting, ‘We are Rommel’s soldiers’. For some time the British
Embassy and military authorities had been coming to the con¬
clusion that a stronger government in Egypt was necessary to
secure the military position, and that this could only be secured by
bringing back the Wafd, which had recently been growing restive
in opposition. King Faruq, however, who had dismissed Mahhas
from office in 1937 and was reported to be on the worst of personal
terms with the Wafd leader, refused to accept him as Prime
Minister and insisted on an all-party coalition under Ali Mahir,
whom the British authorities obviously could not accept as Prime
Minister. The young King was obstinate, and eventually on
the evening of 4 February the British Ambassador and the
G.O.C. British troops in Egypt found it necessary to present the
King with an ultimatum: accept Mahhas or leave the country.
The King yielded, the Wafd returned to office and easily secured
its position in a general election. Though within a month the
party’s secretary, the capable but difficult Copt Makram Ubaid,
and several ofhis supporters had seceded, apparently as the result of
a personal difference with Mahhas, the Wafd government loyally
co-operated with Britain in the anxious days of June-July 1942,
when the Eighth Army was forced back from beyond Tobruk to
the prepared position of al-’Alamein, only seventy miles west of
Alexandria. In this second great military crisis of the Middle East
campaign, faced clearly with choosing for Britain or the despised
Italians, the Egyptian government and people stood firmly behind
Britain. There was none of the prophesied sabotage and little anti-
British propaganda; the only incidents were that two or three
Egyptian Air Force pilots absconded to the enemy lines, and that
the veteran Aziz al-Misri, 1 was detected in intrigue with two
ineffectual German spies who had been introduced into Cairo via
the Western Desert, and was interned for his pains. Arab Asia like¬
wise, though apathetic towards the outcome of the war, did not
choose or dare to stab Britain in the back in the perilous days of al-
’Alamein and Stalingrad; and in Persia the intriguing Franz Mayr
could only dream or the day when he would raise Persia against
the British, and meanwhile scribble in his diary of ‘those three
great strategists—Rommel, Von Bock, and myself’.

1 He had attempted to join the Iraqis in the putsch of May, 1941, but his air¬
craft was forced down ignominiously when only ten miles from Cairo.

202

A Short History of the Middle East

As the year of trial and danger 1942 drew towards its close the
picture changed. Montgomery was advancing from al-’Alamein
and the Russians from Stalingrad. The movement had begun
which did not stop till the remnant of the Afrika Korps surrendered
at Cape Bon in May 1943. The German spies, saboteurs, and pro¬
pagandists who continued to operate against the Middle East from
their embassy and consulates in Turkey achieved nothing. In
Tehran the British security authorities brilliantly captured two
parties of German parachutists who had been sent to reinforce
Franz Mayr, and eventually secured the surrender ofMayr himself
and the remnants ofhis little band by the tribesmen among whom
he had taken refuge. Apart from British plans for invading the
Greek islands, the Middle East campaign was at an end; and the
region could revert to its norma] condition of political inflamma¬
tion, exacerbated by its suppression during the war.

* * ★

In Palestine the Arab Rebellion was already petering out during
1939, and in October of that year the Mufti and his entourage of
extremists, no longer tolerated by the French in the Levant States,
took refuge in Baghdad, from where his influence over the rebel¬
lion-weary Arabs of Palestine declined. It was hardly to be ex¬
pected that the Arabs would take an active part in the war against
the Axis, since many of them felt that Axis conquest would at least
free them from the Zionist incubus, and few had much reason to
feel any loyalty to Britain. On the other hand, they gave little
trouble, their attitude remaining essentially neutral. The Jewish
authorities pressed for permission to raise forces on a Jewish-
national basis, but the government resisted this as it was unwilling
to concede the principle of Jewish, as opposed to Palestinian
nationality. Separate Jewish sub-units were, however, permitted
from the start; the urgent need for man-power prompted further
iconcessions; and the process culminated in 1944 in the creation of
,thejewish Brigade with its distinctive Zionistcolours. But while the
Zionists co-operated whole-heartedly in the struggle against
the Nazis, they .continued 4o, oppQ.se, the .hated White Paper. In
February 1940 the issue of the Land Transfer Regulations, denying
Jews, the right to acquire land in the greater part ofPalestine, came
|as a severe blow to them, since they had hoped that the White

The Second World War and After 203

Paper policy might, owing to the war, never be put into effect. 1
They organized country-wide demonstrations with arson and
some bomb incidents, but their co-operation in the war-effort
nevertheless continued. Even the Revisionists concurred in this
policy, and only a small fanatical dissident group of the latter, led
by one Abraham Stem, and alleged to have contacts with the
Italian Fascist government, continued their implacable terrorist
antagonism to the Mandatory.

What continued to excite the whole Jewish community to still
more furious protest, even with Palestine threatened with enemy
invasion, was the insoluble question of immigration. The Manda¬
tory had been compelled to limit this severely, having regard to the
extreme sensitivity to this vital question of the Arabs, whose
neutrality, both in Palestine and the neighbouring countries, it was
essential to maintain during the war. All that the Jews saw was that
thousands of their kin were thus denied a refuge in Palestine from
the appalling Nazi terror In Europe; and in their horror and
despair they were blind to the difficulties of the British government, y
The first strain came in 1940 with a succession of illegal immigrant
ships from Europe, well organized on the Zionist side and en¬
couraged by the Nazis, who saw in them a means of embroiling the
British with the Arabs. The Patria, chartered to remove nearly
2,000 illegal immigrants from Palestine to Mauritius, was actually
blown up in Haifa harbour by Jewish terrorists, causing 268 deaths
among its helpless Jewish passengers. Another ship, the Struma ,
was held up in 1942 off Istanbul while the British and Turkish
governments negotiated over its disposal. Before this was con¬
cluded the Turks ordered the unseaworthy and grossly overloaded
vessel to return to the Black Sea port whence it had sailed. In
heavy weather she went to the bottom with over 750 Jewish
refugees.

These events caused a hardening of Zionist feeling in Palestine
and an increased resort to terrorism. Abraham Stern had been
' shot in a gun-fight with the police, but some of his followers es¬
caped from prison and continued the terror. The Revisionist Irgun
Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), which had actually
assisted the British forces during the Iraq campaign of 1941, once

1 Since the publication of the White Paper they had acquired twenty-five square
miles of land in the area which the new Regulations closed to them, and the
Colonial Secretary stated that he feared further unrest among the Arabs if land-
restriction were not enforced.

204

A Short History of the Middle East

more resumed, its terrorist activities. Moreover, the official
Zionist organization, under the leadership of David Ben Gurion
and encouraged by the Zionists of the U.S.A., pleasantly remote
from the realities of the Middle East problem, became more ex¬
acting and unequivocal in its demands, and in 1942 adopted the
Biltmore Programme (drawn up, significantly, in New York). It
demanded:

(1) The establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth.

(2) A Jewish army.

(3) Unlimited immigration, placed under the control of the
Jewish Agency, which should also have authority for the develop¬
ment of unoccupied and uncultivated lands. 1 The Zionist under¬
ground army, calledHagana (self-defence), became more active.
This organization traced its beginning to the self-defence organiza¬
tion formed by young Jews in Russia at the time of the pogroms of
1903. 2 It was transplanted to Palestinian soil before the First
World War in the form of an organization of armed watchmen to
guard the agricultural settlements from Arab attack. The British
military authorities gave it tacit recognition and some arms during
the Arab Rebellion of 1936-9, when Wingate’s ‘Night-Fighters’
were organized from its ranks. Again in the perilous days of 1941-2
the Army recognized it as a home-guard in case the Germans broke
through to Palestine. It now numbered some 60,000 young men
and women, drawn principally from the settlements, who clan¬
destinely carried out periodical training and military exercises.
Some of the young Jews called up since the outbreak of war by the
National Council of Palestinian Jews (Vaad Leumi) for national
service were directed into the Hagana, and the thousands of Jews
who were directed by the Zionist authorities into service in the
British Middle East Forces continued to be under the clandestine

. orders of the Hagana high command. Information was now re¬
ceived for the first time of the Palmach, a crack force selected from
the Hagana, permanently mobilized for shock-troop action, and
numbering some 2,000 strong. The exigencies of the war brought
the Palmach also into association with British specialist organiza-

1 One of the foremost leaders of the principal Jewish party in Palestine, the
Mapai labour party, explained to the Arabs in a book of essays, ‘We shall be
ready not to be your foes, and even to support your aspirations for indepen¬
dence, provided you cease disturbing us and provided you recognize Palestine as
a Jewish State/ (Quoted by J. L. Magnes, Foreign Affairs, 1943, 240).

* Palestine Post, 25 June 1946.

205

The Second World War and After

tions, and some of Its members were given commando trainin^^r
action against the Germans. Many of the Palestinian Jewish troops
in the Middle East Forces were employed in supply and ordnance
companies along lines of communication and in base areas, 1 an
admirable situation for the smuggling of arms to Palestine, to
which they resorted on a large scale under Hagana direction. The
organization of this ‘underground railway 5 was excellent; there
was no lack of funds and transport; and corruptible Allied and
British soldiers were drawn into the racket. The difficulty of
supplying the Middle East Forces by the dangerous and slow long-
sea-route round Africa had caused the British military authorities to
give contracts to Palestinian Jewish concerns for the manufacture
of small-arms, including mortars, which they produced with effi¬
ciency; but these arms also found their way to the armouries of the
Hagana. These were well-constructed underground caches, mainly
in the collective settlements, though the search of Tel Aviv in
July 1946 revealed arms-caches in the basements of the Great
Synagogue and of a school. Ostensibly the Hagana 5 s purpose
behind all this arming and drilling was the self-defence of the
Jewish community against Arab attack, such as had occurred before.
the war; but the Zionist leaders made it clear that the self-defence
of the community included resistance to any limitations placed on
immigration or land-purchase, i.e. resistance to the obnoxious 1939
White Paper on all points. The reports of the accumulation of
illicit arms were so frequent that late in 1943 two settlements were
raided by military and police in order to search them. At Ramat
ha-Kovesh the police met with furious resistance from both men
and women with missiles and boiling water; and the brigadier in
charge of the military party, who had had wide experience of civil
disturbances in various parts of the world, declared that he had
never seen anything to compare with the ferocity of the villagers.
It was not for nothing that Ben Gurion had exhorted the Jewish
youth to prepare themselves for the fighting which would fall to
their lot at the end of the war.

During 1944 Jewish terrorism increased, in spite of the indefinite
extension of the now-expired five-year period in which the final

1 Which does not prevent an American Revisionist from building up a myth
that ‘At one time 40 per cent, of Alexander’s effectives were Jewish boys from
Palestine. They formed the intrepid desert scouts on which Alexander relied
for much of his intelligence. ... It was a Jewish contingent which held Tobruk
during the siege.’ (W. B. Ziff, The Rape of Palestine (New York, 1946), 111.)

20 6

A Short History of the Middle East

75 ,ooo Jewish immigrants allowed by the White Paper might come
in. Now that the war had receded from the Middle East, the
Zionists were free to begin an all-out campaign against the White
Paper policy of strictly limited immigration and land-purchase,
and their demand was now for a Jewish State into which any Jew
who wished might enter freely. The Irgun Zvai Leumi made an
unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the High Commissioner; and the
Stern Group went one better by murdering in Cairo the British
Minister-Resident, Lord Moyne, who, they believed, had as
Colonial Secretary obstructed the admission into Palestine of
Jewish refugees from the Axis terror. This murder came as a great
shock to the Jewish Agency, who evidently feared drastic action
against the whole community; and they made an offer to the
British military authorities to co-operate in rounding up the
terrorists. This co-operation produced some results over a number
of months: a number of suspected terrorists were arrested and in¬
terned, and as late as June 1945 the Agency gave the authorities
information which assisted in the detection of a terrorist plot to
bombard with delayed-action mortars the King David Hotel, the
headquarters of the British forces and the government secretariat.
But this liaison between the Agency and the British was subse-
. quently discontinued, perhaps because it was found that the
I Agency was exploiting it as a means of furthering its own sub¬
versive purposes.

* * *

At the outbreak of war the French had suspended the Lebanese
constitution and, there and in Syria, dissolved a number of extreme
j nationalist organizations believed to be in sympathy with the Axis,

' sentencing some of their members to long terms of imprisonment.
The majority ofpohtically-minded Syrians, like their brethren in
Palestine, decided that there was nothing to choose between op¬
pression by a democracy and that exercised in the name of Fascism;
and consequently the general attitude towards the war was one of
apathy and scepticism towards both sides, though some flirted with
the Axis Armistice Commissions and a few committed themselves
more deeply.

On the first day of the Allied invasion of the Levant States in
1941, the Free French General Catroux proclaimed that he had

The Second World War and After 207

come to put an end to the mandatory regime and declare Syria and
Lebanon free and independent. But the Free French reluctantly
allowed nationalist exiles to return; they made no constitutional
concessions beyond a formal declaration of independence; and the
Syrian and Lebanese governments were filled with French puppets.
There was no change in the methods, and little change in the per¬
sonnel, of the French administration. In the spring of 1943, how¬
ever, the French permitted the holding of elections, which resulted
in Syria in an overwhelming Victory for the National Bloc led by
Shukri al Quwwatli, and in Lebanon for a complete defeat of the
French-supported Lebanese separatists led by Emile Edde. The
elections were thus a signal defeat for the French, and it was to be
expected that the new governments would not be slow to attack
the French limitations on their independence. The French Com¬
mittee of National Liberation, the acting French government in
Algiers, insisted, however, that no radical changes could be made
without the approval of the League of Nations, which had author¬
ized the original mandate, or its successor; and that any concessions
by France depended on the conclusion of treaties recognizing her
special position and interests. It was indeed difficult for the French
Committee, which still had to justify to the forty million French¬
men under German occupation its claim to speak in the name of
France, to sign away at this stage any of the hard-won and jealously-
guarded rights of France in the Levant; and it was equally .hard fox'
the two nationalist governments of Syria and Lebanon to admit
any further limitation of the sovereignty for which they had
struggled for a generation. The first challenge came from the
Lebanese government led by Riyadh as-Sulh, which in November
1943 unanimously voted amendments to the constitution throwing
off all French limitations upon its sovereignty. The French Delegue-
General responded by suspending the constitution, arresting the
Lebanese president and the majority of the cabinet, and appointing
[the pro-French Emile Edde as head of the state. The townspeople
[proclaimed a general strike, there were bloody clashes with
French troops in Beirut and elsewhere, and two ministers who had
escaped arrest began to organize their retainers in the mountains;
into armed bands. The British government declared that it re^
garded the Lebanon as ‘of vital importance to the war-effort both
as an operational base and from the point of view of communica-.
dons’ and was therefore ‘directly concerned in any threat of a.

20S A Short History of the Middle East

breakdown of law and order’. It accordingly brought pressure 1
upon the French to release and reinstate the imprisoned president
and ministers. Having reluctantly and sulkily accepted the in¬
evitable, the French did transfer many services to the new govern¬
ments, and by the end of 1944 the only important attribute still
withheld was the control of the locally-recruited Troupes Spe¬
ckles, which was, however, of particular importance for Syrian and
Lebanese prestige. The French made these concessions with an ill
grace, and they execrated the British Minister, Sir Edward Spears,
and his staff for their unconcealed sympathy with the'nationalists.

Sir Terence Shone, who succeeded Sir Edward Spears early in
1945, made every effort to improve relations between the French
and the local governments and bring negotiations to a satisfactory
conclusion. But the French demanded the right to maintain bases
and troops in both countries, apparently imagining that time had
stood still since 1936. On 17 May, nine days after VE-day, a
French cruiser arrived at Beirut with Senegalese troops on board.
The Syrian nationalists immediately assumed that military pressure
was about to be exerted on them; the French declared that the
troops were merely to replace others who were being repatriated;
the British made every effort to dissuade the French from dis¬
embarking them at this delicate juncture, but De Gaulle, now in¬
stalled in Paris as head of the provisional government, was char¬
acteristically obstinate. 2 The situation deteriorated rapidly,
riots and fighting occurred in the principal Syrian cities, and on
29 May the French repeated their exploits of twenty years earlier
by bombarding Damascus with aircraft and field-guns. Next day
the British military authorities received instructions to intervene
and restore order. As long as the war withjapan continued, Britain
could not allow the security of her line-of-communications to be
threatened by anti-European disorders which might spread to other
Middle Eastern countries. The French commander sulkily com¬
plied with a British order to cease fire and confine his troops to
barracks, and order was restored. Relations between Britain and
France were very strained, the French again accusing the British of

1 Mons. R. Montagne declares that the talks between General Catroux and
:he Nationalists were at that moment progressing favourably. {International
Affairs , XXIII (1947), 120).

2 The French were faced at this moment by a local rising in Algeria in which
110 French citizens were massacred, and 1,500 Muslims killed in the subsequent
•eprisals. (R. Montagne, International Affairs^ XXIII (1947), 47.)

209

The Second World War and After

Having deliberately and consistently abetted the nationalists against
them in order to oust France from her position in the Levant. In
December 1945 the two Powers agreed to consult on the re¬
grouping and evacuation of French and British troops. Since,
however, it was envisaged that they should remain in Lebanon
until U.N.O. had decided on the organization of collective security
in this region, and since the agreement entailed British recognition
of French ‘interests and responsibilities’ in the Levant, the Syrian
'and Lebanese governments appealed in February 1946 to the
Security Council for the immediate withdrawal of the foreign
troops from both countries. Britain and France accepted an
American compromise-resolution expressing confidence that the
troops would be withdrawn as soon as practicable and that
negotiations to that end should be undertaken without delay. The
evacuation of Syria was completed in April, and that of Lebanon
by the end of the year. Because, however, the Syrian government
has recruited a number of British among its foreign advisers, while
refusing to employ Frenchmen or even admit them to the country
unofficially, the French are still inclined to accuse Britain of break¬
ing the spirit of the agreement between them.

★ *

Throughout the war the Jewish Agency had kept up an intense
and effective propaganda-drive among the British and Alhed
forces in Palestine, sparing neither effort nor expense in providing
them with organized hospitality of every kind, encouraging them
% to spend their leave in the collective settlements, and demon¬
strating the high idealism and devotion and the material progress
and efficiency of the National Home, to say nothing of its ability
to get on with the ordinary Arabs ‘if they were not incited against
us by the effendis and British officials’. When visitors were in a
settlement, its few ‘tame’ Arabs were paraded for inspection, of
course with a Jew to interpret. 1 While this propaganda was
' variously directed to all interests, imperial, commercial, liberal, and
socialist, the demonstration of the collective settlements and of the *
large part played in the life of the community by the Histadrutty
trades-union organization appealed particularly to Socialists,

1 The stage-management.o£,-,the,,fdlahin.-has sometimes broken down, with

revealing results*, cf. R. H« S. Crossman, Palestine Mission, 157 f.

210

A Short History of the Middle East

especially the serious-minded, rather naive young men with a
secondary-school education who were numerous among the
junior officers and N.C.O.s of the British wartime army.

Consequently, the Zionists were greatly encouraged by the
coming to power injuly 1945 of the Labour party, whose executive
had only six months before declared its support for unlimited
Jewish immigration, the Arabs being 'encouraged to move out as
the Jews move in. But the new government, shocked by the
plunge into the responsibilities of office, was not stampeded into a
precipitate change of official policy. While three months passed
without any statement from London, Dr. Moshe Sneh, the
'security member’ of the Agency Executive, proposed in Septem-
; ber to its London office 'that we cause one serious incident. We
would then publish a declaration to the effect that it is only a warn¬
ing and an indication of much more serious incidents that would
threaten the safety of all British residents in the country, should the
government decide against us. ... The Stern Group have ex¬
pressed their willingness to join us completely on the basis of our
programme of activity. This time the intention seems serious. If
there is such a union, we may assume that we can prevent inde¬
pendent action by the Irgun Zvai Leumi/ 1 This revealing docu¬
ment demonstrated collusion on a high level between the Agency
^ Executive and the terrorist organizations whose activities they
always officially deplored and declared themselves powerless
to prevent. How long this collusion had been going on, it is at
present impossible to say, but the phrase 'this time 5 implies that it
was nothing new. The London office gave their approval to the
proposed operation, Weizmann himself evidently being a party
to what was afoot. 2 On the night of 31 October-i November,
the Palmach blew up the railways in 153 places, completely dis¬
rupting the system, and destroyed three police launches used for
intercepting illegal immigrants. The Irgun Zvai Leumi attacked
the railway-yards atLydda, and the Stem Group attempted to blow
up the Haifa oil-refinery. The Agency signalled to its London

1 Palestine, Statement on Information relating to Acts of Violence (Cmd. 6873,
July 1946). On the publication of this White Paper the Jewish Agency made a
perfunctory denial of its authenticity; but there can be no doubt of the genuine¬
ness of the intercepted Jewish Agency telegrams which it publishes in extenso.

8 Bernard Joseph, acting head of the Agency Political Dept., to London,
10 October 1945: ‘If Hayyim meant us only to avoid a general conflict, not
isolated cases, send greetings to Chill for the birth of his daughter.’ Shertok,
head of the Political Dept., duly replied with this code-phrase two days later.

The Second World War and After 211

office: 'The activities have made a great impression. The authori¬
ties are bewildered. . . and are waiting for instructions from
London. 5 The British government had meanwhile come to the
conclusion that in determining a post-war policy for Palestine the
collaboration of the U.S.A. must be sought, since both political
parties in that country had courted the Jewish vote in the president¬
ial election of 1944 by pledges of support for the full Biltmore
Programme, and President Truman had in October 1945 called
ppon the British government to open the gates of Palestine im¬
mediately to 100,000 displaced Jews in Europe. Britain, with her
reduced power and authority in the world, could not afford to
continue to have American opinion irresponsibly directed
against her over Palestine. Accordingly on 13 November the
Foreign Secretary announced that it had been agreed to set up a
joint Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, ho examine the
position of Jews in those countries in Europe where they have been
the victims of Nazi persecution . . . and the political, economic and
social conditions in Palestine as they bear upon the problem of
Jewish immigration and settlement therein, and the well-being of
the peoples now living therein 5 .

The Zionists immediately denounced the Foreign Secretary’s
statement, which had been accompanied by some blunt comments
on their recent conduct. A protest strike throughout Palestine was
ordered, and in Tel Aviv Jewish hooligans set fire to government
buildings. On 12 December the Inner Zionist Council announced,
'The policy to which the British government pledged itself in the
Balfour Declaration and the Mandate sprang from the recognition
that the Jewish problem can be effectively solved only by the
greatest possible concentration of Jews in Palestine and by the
restoration ofjewish nationhood. . . . The Jewish Agency .. . up¬
holds the right of every Jew impelled by material or spiritual urge

to settle in Palestine_The Jewish people . .. will spare no effort,

or sacrifice until the restoration of the Jewish Commonwealth of;
; Palestine has been achieved.’ As if to add point to this challenge,
the Irgun Zvai Leumi a fortnight later blew up the C.I.D. H.Q.
in Jerusalem, killing seven police and soldiers, while two more
were killed in simultaneous attacks in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Sum¬
moned to Government House, Ben Gurion and Shertok declared
that the Agency completely dissociated itself from these murderous
attacks and expressed their profound sorrow at the loss of life.

212 A Short History of the Middle East

"But, 5 they stated, 4 any effort by the Agency to assist in preventing
such acts would be rendered futile by the policy pursued in
Palestine by H.M. Government, on which the primary responsi¬
bility rests for the tragic situation created in the country. It was
difficult to appeal to the Yishuv (the Jewish community) to observe
the law at a time when the mandatory government itself was con¬
sistently violating the fundamental law of the country embodied in
the Mandate.’

The Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry began its hearings
in Washington in January, proceeded to London and Europe, and
held its hearings in Jerusalem in March. During this period there
was a slackening of terrorism, though there was another combined
operation in February, the Palmach blowing up the R.A.F. radar-
station at Haifa and attacking camps of the Police Mobile Force,
while the Irgun and the Stern Group attacked airfields and dam¬
aged aircraft to the value of a million pounds. The illicit periodical
of the Hagana, now exalted to the title of 'Jewish Resistance Move¬
ment’, boasted, 'The first warning of i November by the Jewish
Resistance was disregarded, and the whole Yishuv has been com¬
pelled to carry out a second warning.’

With some difficulty in reconciling the British and American
points of view, the Committee of Enquiry produced a unanimous
report on i May. Its effect on British readers was one of dis¬
appointment at a series of platitudes and palliatives and evasions of
a clear-cut decision.

It turned down proposals for partition in favour of a continuation
of the mandate 'until the hostility between Jews and Arabs dis¬
appears’ (Arts. 3 and 4). 100,000 immigration certificates were to
be immediately granted for Jews who had been the victims of
persecution, and their admission to Palestine pushed forward as
rapidly as conditions permitted; Palestine alone could not meet the
immigration needs of the Jewish victims; but immigration was to
be promoted under suitable conditions, 'while ensuring that the
rights and position of other sections of the population were not
prejudiced’. (Arts. 2,1, 6.) While the Land Transfer Regulations
were to be replaced by the free purchase and lease of land, the
Jewish National Fund ban on the employment of non-Jewish
labour was to be prohibited. (Art. 7.) Art. 8 indirectly criticized
the Zionist proposals for a 'Jordan Valley Authority’ which would
dispose of the waters of the Jordan and its tributaries without

The Second World War and After 213

reference to the governments of Transjordan and Syria from
whose territories an important part of this water is derived. 1
Finally Art. 10 recommended that it should be made clear to both
sides that any attempts at violence would be resolutely suppressed:
"furthermore, we express the view that the Jewish Agency should
at once resume active co-operation with the Mandatory in the
suppression of terrorism and illegal immigration, and in the
maintenance of law and order .

The Arab reaction to the Report was a protest against the
modification in favour of the Zionists of the 1939 White Paper
which, though they had received it with coldness at the time, they
had now come to regard as the palladium of their national aspira¬
tions. They demanded the abrogation of the Mandate, the with¬
drawal of British troops, and the establishment of an Arab demo¬
cratic state, and threatened to appeal to Russia for support. The
Zionists characteristically selected from the Report and publicized,
as being the whole Report, those Recommendations which suited
them, and were completely silent about those that they found in-
j convenient. They were in fact prepared to accept the Report as a
first instalment, but no more, of progress towards their Jewish
State.

The British Prime Minister told the House of Commons that the
Report would be considered as a whole in all its implications. It
was clear from the facts presented regarding the illegal armies
maintained in Palestine that it would not be possible to admit
100,000 immigrants unless and until these formations had been dis¬
armed and their arms surrendered. It was essential that the Agency
should take an active part in the suppression of terrorism. The
Government wished to ascertain to what extent the Government of
the U.S.A. would be prepared to share the additional military and
financial responsibilities.

The Zionist leaders were furious at the suggestion that they
should agree to the "liquidation of the Community's defences',
and in spite of their recent collusion with the terrorists reverted to
their constant pretension that terrorism was but "the acts of an
irresponsible few'. 2 The American President and people, who
had clearly imagined that their responsibility for Palestine was

1 cf. M. G. Ionides, ‘Irrigation in Palestine’, The World To-day, III (1947),
188 ff.

2 Palestine Post leading article, 2 May 1946.

214 A Short History of the Middle East

ended with the publication of the Committee’s report, were em¬
barrassed by the challenge that they should share the burden of
imposing the proposed new policy on the country. In June the
President was advised by his cabinet to accept an invitation from
London to send representatives to discuss the new problems it
raised.

On the night of 16-17 June the Palmach attacked the frontier
communications of Palestine, destroying five road- and four rail-
bridges, and doing damage estimated at -£250,000. The illicit
Zionist broadcasting-station accepted full responsibility on behalf
of the 'Resistance Movement’ for the renewal of its activity 'as
a result of the delaying policy of the British government’. 1 It was
clearly time to put an end to the campaign of 'vilification, incite¬
ment, and violence’ pursued by the Zionist leaders. On 29 June
the military occupied the Jewish Agency building and arrested
prominent Zionist leaders, including Shertok and the Canadian-
Jewish lawyer Bernard Joseph who was his political second-in-
command; Ben Gurion was away in Europe. Many Palmach
commanders were interned, and a whole series of well-furnished
arms-caches discovered in the settlement of Yagur, a Palmach
headquarters.

While conversations between the American cabinet mission and
the British experts were in progress, shortly after mid-day on
22 July the Irgun blew up a corner of the Kong David Hotel, killing
ninety-one persons, mainly Arab and Jewish civil-servants. 2
The horror of this outrage had not passed away when the British
government announced on 31 July that the Anglo-American
, Experts had produced a Federal Plan for dividing Palestine into
^ two main autonomous provinces, Arab and Jewish, broadly
managing their own affairs, including the control of immigration
'so long as the economic absorptive capacity of a province was not
exceeded’.

1 Action had already been threatened a month previously in a broadcast
'delivered at the request of Shertok’. (The July 1946 White Paper, quoting a
Jewish Agency telegram.)

2 On 25 July 1947, the Irgun issued a statement declaring that the Hagana
had been consulted and informed in the preparations to blow up the King
David, and after several hesitations agreed to the attack after the arrest of the
Jewish Agency leaders in the previous month. The Irgun had kept silence for a
year but -was now making this disclosure because the Hagana were now colla¬
borating with the British. {Times Correspondent in Jerusalem, 27 July 1947;
the Hagana at that time were helping the British to search for two British
N.C.O’s kidnapped as hostages by the Irgun.)

The Second World Mar and After 215

While the Arab States accepted the British government’s in¬
vitation to a conference to discuss the details of this plan, the
Palestine Arabs, encouraged by the well-timed escape of the Mufti
from France to Egypt, 1 refused to attend the conference unless
they were given a free choice of their representatives, Including the
Mufti. The Jewish Agency Executive decided that 'it could not
participate in any discussions based on the Federal Plan, since it
would deprive the Jewish people of its right under the Mandate In
85 per cent, of Western Palestine; 2 it did not provide genuine
self-government; and it did not secure freedom of Jewish immi¬
gration and settlement’. It would, however, be prepared to parti¬
cipate ‘if the establishment of a viable Jewish State in an adequate
area of Palestine were the purpose of the discussion’. This ‘viable
Jewish State’ was later defined as consisting of the whole of
Galilee and the coastal plain (as proposed by the Royal Commis¬
sion’s Partition Plan of 1937), phis the Southern District with, if
possible, a continuous boundary connecting them, the whole to
comprise 65 per cent, of the total area of Palestine. Describing this
as a ‘supreme sacrifice’, the Zionist official spokesman obligingly
added that ‘the Arabs would be allotted the central plateau’, and
suggested that the Christian Holy Places should be handed over to
an international regime of the Churches. 3

While these parleys with Zionists and Arabs were going on, the
British authorities in Palestine had to deal with the rising flood of
unauthorized Jewish immigration by sea from Central and Eastern
Europe, where the desperate Jewish survivors of the Hitler terror
had, since the collapse of Germany, been encouraged by a con¬
certed barrage of Zionist propaganda to expect and demand im¬
mediate admission to Palestine, and w T ere further impelled by
pogroms in Poland and Hungary. Jewish troops in the Allied
armies and other Zionist agents acting under the direction of the
Jewish Agency had skilfully ^org anized escape-routes t;n the
Mediterranean coast* and purchased or chartered ships for their on¬
ward voyage to Palestine. Most of the liberal funds for these
operations came from Zionist organizations in the U.S.A., which

1 No doubt with the connivance of some French officials.

2 The proposed extent of the Jewish province was unofficially understood to
approximate to that of Plan B of the Palestine Partition Commission (1938),
roughly restricting the Jewish area to the status quo but taking in some small
Arab enclaves.

3 Palestine Post, 25 October 1946.

2i 6 A Short History of the Middle East

conducted their appeals for subscriptions quite openly in the press. 1
The British government stated that ‘food, clothing, medical
supplies, and transport provided by U.N.R.R.A. and other
agencies for the relief of suffering in Europe were diverted to this
“underground railway to Palestine 5 ’ 5 . The majority of the immi¬
grants selected by the Zionist authorities were young men and
women, to swell the population of the agricultural settlements and
the ranks of the Hagana. By mid-August there were sufficient un¬
authorized immigrants in camps in Palestine awaiting legalization
to fill the monthly quota of 1,500 for three months ahead, and
thousands more were reported to be on the way. The government
therefore resolved to transfer all unauthorized immigrants arriving
after 11 August to Cyprus. This policy was received with angry
demonstrations and invective by the Zionists. Within a fortnight
two attempts were made to sabotage the ships used for the trans¬
portation to Cyprus. The Zionists decided to raise .£100,000 for
the furtherance of immigration ‘regardless of the illegal White
Paper restrictions which would doom the National Home to
stagnation 5 ; they had previously always pretended that the exodus
from Europe was entirely a spontaneous, unorganized affair. 2

The London Conference opened in the presence of representa¬
tives of the Arab States, but without either the Arabs or the Jews of
Palestine. The Foreign Secretary was reported to have stated that
the government was not prepared to consider any solution which
disregarded the presence of an organized community of 600,000
Jews who insist upon their political rights as a group or the neces¬
sity for Palestine to contribute to a solution of the refugee-problem.
The Arabs, on the other hand, would propose only the creation of
an independent state offering equal rights for all citizens perma¬
nently resident since 1939 and those acquiring citizenship after
that date; freedom ofeducation for the Jews and the use ofHebrew
as an official language; but complete stoppage of Jewish immi¬
gration and the retention of the existing Land Transfer Regula¬
tions, with no modification of these two provisions except with the

1 Even subscriptions for the terrorist organizations were exempt from American
income-tax as ‘charitable’ donations.

2 The claim that the National Home would stagnate without a high level
of immigration went to confirm the Arab fear that under the government’s
Federal Plan or under Partition the Zionists would pack their territory with
settlers who, at a suitable occasion, would spontaneously invade the Arab
territory. By the end of May 1947 the number of Jews in the Cyprus camps
was nearly 15,000 or ten months’ quota.

217

The Second World War and After

consent of the majority of the Arabs in the legislature. Meanwhile,
the government carried on parallel negotiations with the Agency
with a view to resolving the deadlock, and after the Inner Zionist
Council had Issued an appeal to the Yishuv to Isolate the terrorists
and deny them all support, the government on 5 November re¬
leased the detained Jewish leaders. The effect of this clemency was
only to increase the wave of terrorism; and during the entire year
more British personnel, military and civil, were killed by the
terrorists than in any single year of the Arab Rebellion, the total
being seventy-three against the 1938 peak-figure of sixty-nine.
The total casualties of all nationalities from political unrest were
212 killed and 428 injured.

The terrorist campaign ceased, however, as If by magic with the
opening in December of the twenty-second World Zionist Con¬
gress, in the elections for which In Palestine the Revisionists had
scored a remarkable success, being second only to the Mapai
(Labour) party. However, the Yishuv had only 21 per cent, of all
the seats at the Congress, while the American Zionists held first
place with 32 per cent. The prevailing mood of the delegates was
an extreme one, the great majority of the American Zionists being
united with the Revisionists in demanding a Jewish State in the
whole of Palestine. Weizmann appealed to the Congress to work
for an understanding with Britain for a Jewish state in "an adequate
part 5 of Palestine. He warned them that they were faced with the
alternatives of slow progress or the destruction through terrorism
and counter-measures of all they had gained in twenty-nine years,
and that he could not continue to remain their president if the
Congress saddled the Executive with an unworkable policy. How¬
ever, the Congress resolved by 171 votes to 154 that the Movement
should not participate in the resumed London Conference unless
they received immediate concessions in the all-important matter
of immigration; and on 7 January 1947 Shertok told a press-
conference that since the Agency's compromise-offer of the
previous autumn had met with no response from the British, it
1 now stood for an independent Jewish state in the whole of Pales¬
tine, guaranteeing equal rights to the Arabs, but aiming at attaining
a numerical majority as soon as possible by the introduction of
700,000 immigrants.

Terrorist activity was resumed in the New Year. On 12 January
the Stern Group attempted a bomb-outrage comparable with the

218 A Short History of the Middle East

King David disaster against the Haifa police compound, killing
five persons and injuring thirty-four. The Vaad Leumi passed a
resolution repudiating murder as a means of political resistance.
It condemned the intimidation of the Jewish community by the
terrorists, their impairing of 'national discipline’ and their claim
'to decide when or where the struggle of the Jewish people should
be waged 5 . Asked, however, at a press-conference whether the com¬
munity was called on to intervene if the terrorists attacked the
British, an Agency spokesman admitted that 'from the text of the
resolution that would not appear to be the case 5 , 1 and subsequently
Mrs. Meyerson, head of the Agency Political Dept., and others
explained that the Yishuv could not be expected to act as 'in¬
formers 5 against their kin. 2 On 26 and 27 January the terrorists
kidnapped two British civilians, one a judge actually taken from
his court, as hostages for a terrorist under sentence of death for his
part in an outrage in which five persons were killed. They were
set free after the High Commissioner had given an ultimatum to
the Agency; but on 31 January, in consequence of a terrorist threat
to 'turn Palestine into a bloodbath 5 if the death-sentence were
carried out, the government issued an order for the evacuation of
all British women and children and other non-essential civilians,
and the concentration in guarded cantonments of those who re¬
mained. On 3 February the Government called on the Agency and
the Vaad Leumi, in view of their 'open and continued refusals 5 to
co-operate against terrorism, 'to state categorically and at once
whether they were prepared publicly to call upon the Jewish com¬
munity to lend their aid to the Government by co-operating with
the police and armed forces in locating and bringing to justice the
members of the terrorist groups 5 . They replied that 'the Yishuv
cannot be called upon to place itself at the disposal of the Govern¬
ment for fighting the evil consequences of a policy which is of that
government’s own making, and which the Yishuv regards as a
menace to its existence.

On 14 February the British Foreign Secretary announced that
the government would submit the question to U.N.O., as both
parties had rejected a new federal plan which would have ad¬
mitted 96,000 Jewish immigrants in the next two years, subsequent
immigration being controlled by the High Commissioner after

1 Palestine Post, 22 January 1947.

* ibid. 3 February 1947.

The Second World War and After 219

consulting both jews and Arabs. The Arabs had rejected any
further immigration, and the Zionists refused to admit the prin¬
ciple that the Arabs should have any say in determining Jewish
immigration.

On 1 March, after the detention of an illegal immigrant ship,
terrorist outrages caused the deaths of twenty persons and the
injury of twenty-five others. The government then imposed
statutory martial law on Tel Aviv and neighbouring Jewish towns
and on part of Jerusalem, affecting more than 40 per cent, of the
whole Jewish population. After eleven days it was officiallv
announced that “in spite of the refusal of the Jewish official bodies
to assist the security forces in combating and rooting out the
gangsters, help has been received from members of the Jewish
community. . . . The total number of arrests effected during the
past fortnight is seventy-eight, of which fifteen are members of the
Stern Group, twelve I.Z.L., and fifty-one others connected with
terrorism/ Martial law was subsequently withdrawn, it not being
desired to extend indefinitely the loss, unemployment, and
dislocation of the economic situation, which was reported to have
cost the Jewish community ^500,000.

At the end of April a special session of the General Assembly of
U.N.O. met to consider the Palestine problem, to the accom¬
paniment in Palestine itself of a continuous terrorist campaign.
After a fortnight’s debate which reflected the many international
cross-currents affecting the issue, the Assembly set up a special
committee of representatives of small and medium Powers with
no direct interests or commitments in Palestine To investigate all
questions and issues relevant to the problem’ and make a report for
the next session of the Assembly in September, with proposals for a
solution. The Committee conducted its inquiries in the Middle
East from 16 June to 24 July, being boycotted throughout
by the Arabs of Palestine, but hearing statements from representa¬
tives of the Arab states. Jewish terrorist activity, which had ceased
while the Anglo-American Committee of 1946 was in the Middle
East, went on during the presence of the U.N. Committee,
doubtless because three terrorists were under sentence of death for
\ their part in a raid on Akka Prison. Nor did the Hagana allow the
Committee to leave without witnessing the arrival of the largest
' single contingent of illegal immigrants ever to reach Palestine,
numbering 4,500 in all; when intercepted, the American-Jewish

220

A Short History of the Middle East

crew and the passengers fiercely resisted and broadcast a com¬
mentary for the benefit of the Committee. On 31 August, while
a minority of three made proposals approximating to the Anglo-
American Federal Plan of July 1946, a majority of seven of the
eleven members recommended to the General Assembly a sharper
partition on the lines of the Royal Commission Report of 1937,
though the two states so formed would remain in economic union.
They proposed to award to the Jewish state, in addition to rounding
off its present holdings, the whole of the Beersheba sub-district of
Southern Palestine and Eastern Galilee, though the Arabs were to
keep Western Galilee. In the transitional period of two years
150,000 Jews were to be admitted, as against the 100,000 proposed
tor the same period by Britain in January, and the Land Transfer
Regulations were to cease in the area of the Jewish state. The
scheme contemplated that Britain would continue to administer
the country during the transitional period under the auspices of the
U.N., and if so desired with the assistance of members of the U.N.
The difficulties inherent in the scheme were obvious: while the
Zionists 5 immediate aims were largely met, half-a-million Arabs
were to be included in the area of the Jewish state, and by the loss
of Jaffa, the Arabs were to Be left without a port of their own; they
were to accept in the interim period an even higher rate of immi¬
gration than in the peak years I934~35 before the Arab Rebellion,
k with no guarantee that the subsequently unrestricted population of
the Jewish state might not at some suitable opportunity erupt in
their direction; all this without any compensation except their in¬
dependence, recognition of which was to be conditional on their
guaranteeing fundamental liberties, non-discrimination, and
signing the treaty of economic union with the Jewish state; this
treaty of economic union would presumably take precedence over
any desires the Arabs might have for closer union with other Arab
states. Finally, although the six weeks before the publishing of the
Report had been marked by the worst riots between the two
communities in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area since the Arab Rebellion
the two states were to be presented with an immense problem of
policing, since their modest areas would each consist of three
separate sectors, touching only by means of two specially-created
‘points of intersection 5 .

On 26 September the Colonial Secretary made it clear that
Britain would not feel able to implement a policy not acceptable

12. ‘uNPARTITIONABLe’ PALESTINE

Unshaded areas are in Arab possession, though considerable areas are used only
for rough grazing and would require a great outlay to improve them.

^°rdaH

222

A Short History of the Middle East

to Jews and Arabs, and in the absence of a settlement must plan
for the early withdrawal of the British forces and administration
from Palestine. On 2 October the chairman of the American
section of the Jewish Agency told the U.N. General Assembly,
‘Should British forces not be available, the Jewish people of
Palestine would provide without delay the necessary effectives to
maintain public security’. On 29 November the Assembly
approved the partition plan with minor amendments, though
the necessary two-thirds majority was obtained only by some
remarkable lobbying, which at the last moment swung eight
doubtful votes into the partition lobby. The Times correspondent
commented: ‘The general feeling among the delegates was that,
regardless of its merits and demerits and the joint support given
by the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A., the partition scheme would
have been carried in no other city than New York. . . . The
strength of the Jewish influence in Washington has been a revel¬
ation.’ 1 Immediately guerilla warfare broke out in Palestine: ‘The
Arabs were determined to show that they would not submit
tamely to the U.N. plan of partition, while the Jews tried to
consolidate the advantages gained at the General Assembly by a
succession of drastic operations designed to intimidate and cure
the Arabs of any desire for further conflict.’ 2 In January 1948 the
British Government resisted Zionist claims for recognition of their
armed forces and the right to import arms before the ending of the
Mandate on 15 May. After the problem of executing the partition
scheme had been referred to the Security Council, the United
States on 19 March admitted that it could not be carried out peace¬
fully, and proposed instead that Palestine should be placed under
temporary United Nations trusteeship. The Security Council’s
appeal for a truce between Arabs and Jews served once again to
protract the discussion without reaching any decision. Meanwhile,
as the British troops were withdrawn the Zionists, by a vigorous
counter-offensive, had by the end of April achieved complete
military superiority over the Palestine Arab ‘Liberation Army’ in
the plains. On the afternoon of 14 May the Jewish state of Israel
was proclaimed, 3 and was immediately recognized by the United

1 1 December 1947.

2 Sir Alexander Cadogan to the U.N. Palestine Commission, 21 January 1948.

3 The termination of the mandate at midnight was anticipated because the
Sabbath began at sunset on 14 May.

The Second World War and After 223

States, where an outspoken Zionist supporter had on 28 April been
appointed special assistant for Palestine affairs to the Secretary of
State. Recognition by Russia and her satellites followed, and the
armies of the neighbouring Arab states crossed the frontiers into
Palestine.

k k k

The Zionists are intensely and justly proud of what they have
achieved in material and social development in the last thirty
years, and desperate as a result of the decimation of their kin in
Europe. They do not, however, base their demands to settle in
Palestine only on recent persecution, but on what they claim to
be the bitter experience of many centuries. 'The soul of the
Jewish people is being destroyed by exile. This started long
before Hitler. The exile has continued for nearly 2,000 years
and we are all suffering from its effects; the poisoning effects
of soul-destroying minority existence. ... As relentlessly as
wind and rain carry away the good earth when it is not protected
by vegetation, so does minority life carry away from the soul of
man those qualities that are essential for the harmonious develop¬
ment of a healthy human being. Kindness, cheerfulness, brotherh-
ness, all these tender qualities are washed away, eroded by the flood
of cruelty and hatred raging around the minority; and what
remains in the soul is as hard as rock. And as barren. Only bitter¬
ness and dull frustration. Since the advent of Hitler the flood of
hatred has risen higher. The erosion of the Hebrew soul goes on
at a terrifying rate. What the world sees is only a pitiful collection
of miserable human beings called D.P.s. . . . What the world does
not see is the accumulating bleakness in the soul of this people: the
devilish transmutation of good into evil that goes on, not only in
the D.P. camps, but wherever there are Jews/ 1

This being so, the present-day Zionist claim is not merely an
appeal for asylum, but a demand for statehood falling into line
with the constant endeavour to establish a new Jewish state in the
centuries which followed the destruction of their kingdom by
Nebuchadnezzar. 2 As they then sought Persian favour to right
the wrongs done them by Nebuchadnezzar, and the favour of the
Roman Republic to right the wrongs done them by the Seleucids,
so in the First World War they sought the favour of Britain and

1 S. Rosoff, ‘Soul-Erosion’, Palestine Post, 2 August 1946.

3 Toynbee, A Study of History , one-vol. abridgement, 521 f.

224 A Short History of the Middle East

the U.S.A. to right the wrongs done them in Eastern Europe by
establishing them in Palestine. Protecting Powers have, however,
always failed to satisfy Jewish political ambitions to the full: and
so they rose against Artaxerxes III in the last years of the Persian
Empire, against the Roman Empire, and against the British
mandate. The terrorists (drawn from the younger generation,
indoctrinated in nationalism in the Jewish educational system of
Palestine or in the grim school of the Hitler Terror) are the modern
counterparts of the militant Zealots who carried on terrorism
against the Romans. The attempt to break Arab resistance to
Jewish predominance is paralleled by the Maccabean coercion of
the semi-Hellenized communities who resisted the new Jewish
state. At present the United States is the protecting Power; but
should her support be withheld or prove inadequate, there is a
group within the Zionist movement which would try to enlist
active Russian support.

On the other hand the 'Arabs 51 of Palestine, supported by the
pohtically-minded of the Arab States, are defending what they
conceive to be their rights as a people against this ‘invasion’ of
more energetic, more skilful, and far better equipped aliens.
That they had lived for centuries under a foreign government
does not weaken their case, as they see it. They had preserved,
even in decay, the essentials of their culture, their language
and their religion; and they had begun early in this century
to stir themselves against the foreign ruler, who, after all,
was of their own religion and culture, and to demand the
right of national self-determination. The politically-conscious
among them detest the idea of ceding any part of what they have
for 1,300 years regarded as their land, especially now that their
cousins in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt have achieved their independence.
Unwisely, however, the ‘Liberation Army 5 attacked prepared
Zionist positions instead of following the guerilla tactics for which
they were better fitted, and were heavily defeated. Dissensions
broke out among their commanders, and the wealthier town-
Arabs ignominiously hurried across the frontiers to safety as the
Zionists began their counter-offensive. The massacre by Jewish
extremists of 200 Arab villagers, including 100 women and

1 It must be emphasized that the seventh-century Arab conquerors con¬
stituted only a minority of the existing population, and that consequently the
present-day Arabic-speaking population is an amalgam of all the racial strains
that have entered the country from the earliest historical times.

225

The Second World War and After

children, at Deir Yasin on 9 April, hastened the stampede. The
towns of Haifa, Jaffa, Akka, Tiberias, and Safad were quickly lost,
and the leadership of the Mufti and his Higher Executive dis¬
credited; but the intervention of the Arab states 5 armies brought
about a revival of the mercurial Arabs 5 confidence.

True, there have been Arabs who would admit in private the
material and cultural advantage to themselves of Jewish settlement
in Palestine; but they have always added that it must be restricted
to a limit that would not become an obstacle to their own political
independence. There are Jews, such as the small Ihud group led
bv the wise and tolerant Dr. J. L. Magnes of the Hebrew Univer¬
sity, who have seen the desirability of reaching an understanding
with the Arab population and who were willing to this end to
give up the idea of Jewish statehood; but even they spoke of
* numerical equality, which would inevitably meanjewish economic
and technical superiority.The forces in either community that have
actively sought an understanding with the other do not amount to
more than 10 per cent.; there is a larger proportion that would
like a quiet life; but these submit, from fear of the consequences,
to the uncompromising nationalism of the Jewish Agency and the
Arab Higher Executive respectively. There is in particular the
.political influence exerted by the Jewish trades-union organization
Histadruth, which is closely linked to the Jewish Agency and
’embraces at least 40 per cent, of the entire Jewish community. 1

At the third comer of this infernal triangle stood the British
government, which all-too-lightly entered into conflicting under-
■/ takings thirty years ago in the quest for imperial security. The
Balfour Declaration and the Mandate were "never conceived to
cover the contingency of a mass exodus from Europe by millions
of despairing refugees, and contemplated only the creation of a
Jewish Home where Jewish culture and institutions could live
'secure in a land whose people had been for hundreds of years
'Arab by speech, race, and tradition/ 2 Such a Home of over
boo,000 Jews now exists in Palestine; in no other country between
the two wars did an alien community increase by immigration
so rapidly in proportion to the indigenous population; the Yishuv
enjoyed a large measure of self-government, which would have
been increased if agreement had been reached between the two

1 Palestine Post, 27 August 1946.

2 Times leading article, 11 December, 1946.

226

A Short History of the Middle East

communities. But it was never part of the British pledge to force
the Arabs to submit to a Jewish majority, still less to accept a
Jewish State.

★ ★ ic

Had the British Embassy and military authorities in Egypt not
supported the return to power of the Wafd early in 1942, it would
have made trouble throughout Egypt which might seriously have
embarrassed the British at a time when they were fully engaged
with the Axis forces in Libya. The British authorities must have
been aware, as a result of previous experience, that the advent of
the Wafd government would mean a decline in administrative
efficiency and, in condition of wartime scarcity, an increase in cor¬
rupt practices even beyond the Egyptian norm. But the supreme
necessity of prosecuting the war presumably made these dis¬
advantages appear a lesser evil than the alternative of nation-wide
anti-British agitation organized by the Wafd; and the British
authorities probably did not appreciate the extent to which the
ageing Nahhas in indifferent health was becoming the tool of his
enterprising wife and her family and friends. After Makram
Ubaid’s breach with Nahhas, the keen-witted and spiteful Copt
devoted himself to the compilation and eventual publication in a
|‘Black Book 5 of charges of corruption against those near to
Nahhas.

King Faruq was naturally anxious to avenge his humiliation of
4 February by ridding himself at the first opportunity of the
contumacious Nahhas, and the Black Book charges provided him
with admirable justification for such an act. The first royal attempt
to dismiss the government was prevented by the British Embassy
in the spring of 1943, shortly before the final expulsion of the Axis
from North Africa. In the following year the failure of the Wafd
to deal adequately with the severe and acute malaria epidemic of
Upper Egypt, which was aggravated by a wartime decline in
nutrition below even the miserable peace-time standards and
caused the deaths of scores of thousands of wretched villagers, and
the growing volume of rumour about the prevalance and scale of
corrupt practices very near to the Prime Minister himself, greatly
impaired the prestige of the Wafd, even among its customary-
supporters. The recession of the war from the Middle East made

22 7

The Second World War and After

the military necessity of keeping the Wafd in power no longer so
compelling in 1944 as it had been previously; and though it was
said that in the first half of that year Lord Killearn fought a rear¬
guard-action for Nahhas, for whom he evidently had a personal
regard, by the late summer the situation was becoming untenable.
Had Britain persisted in supporting the Wafd regardless of the
hostility of the influential upper-class and the wider circle of the
King’s supporters, she might have had to face widespread agitation
in Egypt and the resignations of many key officials. This in turn
might have paralysed the complex Egyptian administrative
machine at a time when the country was still intended as an im¬
portant link in communications for the war against Japan; for the
Wafd is notoriously lacking in trained and efficient administrators,
and there were no British personnel available for an emergency.
The suggestion that a continuation of the Killearn-Nahhas com¬
bination would have prevented or moderated the subsequent
. Egyptian demand for radical revision of the 1936 Treaty argues
a fundamental ignorance of the Egyptian political character,
i since the Wafd would have demanded a handsome reward
for its collaboration during the war. The Foreign Office wisely
decided that its support of Nahhas should cease, and that internal
Egyptian politics must be allowed to take their course. Nahhas was
dismissed from office in terms of ignominy by a royal rescript of
October 1944, and succeeded by an anti-Wafdist coalition which
secured a majority in an election which the Wafd boy¬
cotted.

When the Allied victory in the war had become clearly only a

^matter of months, it became evident that as soon as it was over
Egypt would ask for a revision in her favour of the 1936 Treaty.
Revision after ten years was provided for, on the understanding
that the alliance should be preserved. Nationalist feeling in Egypt
was rising, particularly after the fall of the Wafd. The Prime
Minister who succeeded Nahhas was murdered by an extremist
because he was believed to be too pro-British. With the close of
the war the Wafdist press began to clamour for treaty revision.
The Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha tried to temporize, but
nationalist pressure forced him to present a Note in December
1945 requesting the evacuation of all British troops and the estab¬
lishment of effective Egyptian sovereignty over the Sudan—the
so-called 'unity of the Nile Valley 9 . Britain announced her willing-

228

A Short History of the Middle East

ness to open conversations; but before these could begin, violent
demonstrations of students and workers occurred in Cairo and
Alexandria, organized by the Wafd to embarrass the government
by demanding the immediate evacuation of British troops; serious
damage was done to the Anglican Cathedral and the Bishop's house
in Cairo. These riots, and British doubts about Nuqrashi’s ability
to pilot the proposed negotiations through against the weight of
Wafdist opposition, led to his resignation in mid-February.
Sidqi Pasha, still at seventy-one years of age regarded as the
‘strong man of Egypt' and the inveterate enemy of the Wafd,
succeeded him. When he began to form the delegation for the
negotiations with Britain, the Wafd, with little appreciation of the
extent to which it had been discredited by its corrupt and inefficient
last term of office, demanded the right as in 1936 to appoint the
chairman and the majority of the delegates. Sidqi offered them two
out of twelve places, which they refused; and the old man then
proceeded to form his delegation without them. The talks began
in Cairo on 23 April 1946; and on 7 May the Foreign Secretary an¬
nounced Britain’s intention to withdraw all her forces from
Egypt, provided that Egypt made satisfactory arrangements for
affording Britain the necessary assistance in time of war or the
imminent threat of war, in accordance with the Alliance. The
gesture did not, however, evoke a cordial response in Egypt: the
Egyptians hoped for the complete abolition of the Alliance, claim¬
ing that it was inconsistent with the Charter of U.N.O. Regardless
of the fact that their geographical position makes them, like
Belgium, a cockpit of the nations whenever the peace of the Middle
East is disturbed, they hoped to keep out of the struggle with
Russia which they saw looming up, and which they feared might
be less profitable and more uncomfortable for Egypt thanthetwo
German wars had been. The Times commented: ‘Some leaders of
Egyptian opinion are still remote from the outside world, and do
not understand the gravity of its problems, its general bad temper,
and the speed and power of modern methods of aggression. They
seem to believe . .. that the United Nations is a tap which, when
turned, pours out security/ 1 They thus consistently sought to
evade the British proposal (Art. 2) for a joint Anglo-Egyptian De¬
fence Council to organize the defence of Egypt. In October Sidqi
travelled to London for personal talks with the Foreign Secretary
1 28 August 1946.

229

The Second World War and After

in the hope of clearing the deadlock. When the majority of the
delegation declared their objection to Art. 2 even in its watered-
down form 1 and accused him of giving the Sudan a chance of
separating from Egypt, he persuaded King Faruq to dissolve the
delegation and empower himself and the Foreign Minister to con¬
tinue the negotiations.

At this stage, however, the question of the Sudan suddenly as¬
sumed an acute form. The text of the Bevin-Sidqi Sudan Protocol
read: ‘The policy which the High Contracting Parties undertake
to follow in the Sudan within the framework of unity between
Egypt and the Sudan under the common crown ofEgypt shall have
the objective of ensuring the well-being of the Sudanese, the de¬
velopment of their interests, and active preparation for self-
government and the consequent exercise of the right to choose the
future status of the Sudan. Until the High Contracting Parties are
in full agreement as regards this latter objective after consultation
with the Sudanese, the Agreement of 1899 will continue’ and the
appropriate articles of the 1936 Treaty would remain in force. At
the opening of the Egyptian parliament after Sidqi’s return the
Royal Address had declared that £ One of Egypt’s first aims would
be to assure the well-being of the Sudanese, develop their interests,
and prepare them for self-government’; but Sidqi and other
Egyptian statesmen continued in their public speeches to em¬
phasize the approaching assumption of Egyptian sovereignty over
the Sudan and say little or nothing about self-government for the
Sudanese. This roused to vigorous action the Sudanese Umma
party, consisting of men of substance who desire to exercise their
authority in a self-governing Sudan independent of Egypt. 2
Saiyid Sir Abd ur-Rahman, son of the Mahdi who led the revolt
against the Egyptians in 1881, went to London to present the
Umma case; and on 7 December, the Governor-General of the
Sudan was authorized to announce that 'while the British govern¬
ment were proposing to acknowledge the Egyptian Crown as the
titular sovereign over the Sudan, the government were deter¬
mined that nothing should be permitted to deflect the Sudan
government.. . from the task of preparing the Sudanese for self-

1 ‘In case of a threat of war to an adjacent country the two parties agree to
discuss the situation in order to take the necessary measures until the Security
Council takes steps to secure peace.’

2 The less wealthy and influential ‘intelligentsia*, on the other hand, look to
Egypt to put them in high office, and are organized in the Ashiqa party.

230

A Short History of the Middle East

government 1 and for choosing freely what their future status
should be. The Sudan Protocol in fact provides that the Sudanese
people shall, when they are ripe for self-government, be free to
choose the future status of the Sudan. Nothing in the proposed
treaty can prejudice the right of the Sudanese to achieve their
independence.’ Sidqi promptly resigned. Nuqrashi, who suc¬
ceeded him, made the uncompromising statement to the Chamber
of Deputies, ‘In affirming the permanent unity of Egypt and the
Sudan under the Egyptian Crown we are but expressing the
unanimous will and wishes of the inhabitants of this valley’, though
he added the customary saving clause about ‘leading the Sudan
towards self-government’. The Arab League was committed, pre¬
sumably by its Egyptian secretary-general Azzam Pasha, to support
the Egyptian demand for permanent unity with the Sudan. The
British government suggested the establishment of an Anglo-
Egypdan-Sudanese commission to prepare the Sudanese for self-
government in a period not exceeding twenty years, and the Cairo
Embassy stated that the government would do nothing to en¬
courage the Sudanese to separate themselves from Egypt. But on
25 January 1947 the Egyptian government announced its intention
of submitting to the Security Council its two grievances, the con¬
tinued presence of British troops in Egypt and the status of the j
Sudan; and after nearly six months delay its complaint was finall y*
presented on 11 July.

When the case came before the Security Council in August,
Nuqrashi asked it to direct the British to withdraw their troops
from Egypt by 1 September, to withdraw from the Sudan and end
the present administration there. He rejected the suggestion that
jthe 1936 Treaty was still binding on Egypt, since she had signed
it under the pressure of British occupation; in any case it was a
temporary expedient’ in face of the days of war, and the principle
of an Angio-Egyptian alliance was incompatible with the Charter
of U.N.O. All attempts by the Security Council to bring about a
compromise failed, since Nuqrashi insisted that the withdrawal
of British troops from the Canal Area should be completed before
negotiations were renewed. At the end of 1947 the British mission
to the Egyptian army was dissolved, and the Egyptian currency

. 1 proportion of Sudanese in the senior division of the civil service has
nsM from under 1 per cent, to about 15 per cent, in the last twelve years: cf. The
Sudan, A Record of Progress, 1898-1947 (Sudan Govt.).

231

The Second World War and After

had already been detached from its link with sterling. Early in
1948, however, moderate Egyptian opinion was reported to be
coming round to the reopening ofnegotiations, largely on account
of the increasingly menacing international attitude of the U.S.S.R. 1
but this could hardly be realized at the moment, in view of what
had just happened in Iraq.

There, while there had been a succession of moderate govern¬
ments since the suppression of Rashid Ali’s putsch, extremist
forces on both the right and the left wings had been gathering
strength since the end of the war and were acting together in
opposition. 2 It was largely in order to spike the extremists guns
that Prime Minister Salih Jabr asked in 1947 for a revision of the
Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930. He arrived in London on 6 January
1948, armed with a vote of confidence by jo per cent, of the
Chamber. 3 But when the terms of the new Treaty which he
signed at Portsmouth were announced on 16 January (giving the
R.A.F. continued access to the two air-bases 'until such time as
peace-treaties have entered into force with all enemy countries. . .
it being understood that the peace-treaties are to be deemed to be
fully in force when the allied forces axe withdrawn from the
territories of all ex-enemy states’), a violent revulsion occurred
in Baghdad, and on 21 January the Regent broadcast a promise
that the Treaty would not be ratified. On 27 January the Regent
announced the resignation of the Prime Minister, and a right-wing
government came into power two days later. In March the
Sudanese Advisory Council unanimously approved constitutional
proposals, after the Egyptian Government had refused to discuss
them with the Sudan Government.

To sum up, it is probable that none of the Arab states, except
Transjordan and perhaps Sa’udi Arabia, will be prepared to enter
into security pacts with Britain or the U.S.A., unless they feel
themselves much more imminently threatened either by the
U.S.S.R. from without or by Communism from within. 4 The
present struggle with Zionism is calculated only to increase their
xenophobia.

1 Times Cairo correspondent, 5 February.

2 The World To-day, February 1948, 50 f.

3 Eliz. Monroe, in Observer, 25 January.

4 cf. Times editorial, 30 March 1948.

Q

CHAPTER VIII

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions

‘The social scene grows out of economic conditions, to much the
same extent that political events in their turn grow out of social
conditions/ (G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History, p. vii).

T he natural economic assets of the Middle East are not
numerous. The cultivation of high-grade cotton in Egypt
from early in the last century has brought prosperity to a
small number of landowners and middle-men, and has added
greatly to the aggregate national wealth ofEgypt; but most of this
added wealth has been taken up by the extraordinary increase of the
population, so that the individual real income has risen little.
There are such locally important exports as Palestinian citrus and
Dead Sea chemicals, Turkish chromium, and Iraqi dates; but the
commodity which now bulks largest in the economy of the Middle
East as a whole is the oil-deposits, located principally in the Persian
.Gulf region, but with outliers on the shores of the Red Sea and
possible deposits elsewhere. 1 The existing Middle East oilfields,
which began to be exploited only at the beginning of this century,
are estimated to contain 30 per cent, of the total world reserves of
crude oil, 2 and furnish the governments of the countries in which
they lie with royalties as large or larger than their revenues from all
other sources. Other mineral resources are scanty, and are unlikely

1 cf. G. M. Lees, in Royal Central Asian Journal, XXXIII (1946), 47 ff.

2 The part played by oil in modern politics is notorious. In the Middle East
the British were first in the field with the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. before the First
World War; but after the close of that war the Americans became aggressive
competitors for concessions, demanding in Iraq an Open Door which they had
conspicuously failed to grant to other nations in the Philippines and other parts
of their economic empire. One American historian has admitted that the
U.S.A. had in its oil offensive at the Middle East ‘misused the lofty principles of
the open door and the equality of economic opportunity*. American oil-inter¬
ests were alleged to have encouraged nationalist Turkey in its claim in the early
* twenties to the vilayet of Mosul with its oil-deposits. Eventually the British oil-
interests were constrained in 1925 to buy off the Americans by yielding to them a
quarter-share in the Iraq Petroleum Co. (H. A. Foster, The Making of Modern
Iraq , chs. VII and VIII.) Since that time British oil-interests have acquiesced,
as an alternative to aggressive competition in which they were likely to be
worsted, in a progressively increasing American participation in exploiting the
oil of the Middle East. American interests now have exclusive rights in Bahrain

233

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions

to make a large contribution to the region’s economic future. Its
main asset lies then in the primary products of agriculture and
stockbreeding. Here the adverse effects of a limited and seasonal
rainfall are reinforced by the persistence of antiquated farming
methods and systems of land-tenure, comparable with those of
Western Europe in the Middle Ages. As a result, production falls
far below the standards of more advanced agricultural countries.
It was estimated before the war that, except for the Jews of Pales¬
tine, the average male agricultural worker produced only about
one-fifth of the goods produced by his counterpart in Britain, and
that the individual’s share in the national income of these countries
(again excluding Jewish Palestine) was also only about one-fifth of
that of Britain, though still in excess of over-populated India and
China. 1

An important cause of the poverty of the rural masses is the
inequitable distribution of land in most of the Middle Eastern
countries, where a small number of wealthy landowners own a
large proportion of the land, and there are thousands or millions of
dwarf-holders, tenants, and landless labourers. ‘In Egypt in 1933
39 per cent, of the land was held in large estates by 0.6 per cent, of
the total number of owners, while no less than two-thirds of the
owners held an average of only two-fifths of an acre each. Such
minute holdings could hardly be economically sound, even if
devoted to intensive vegetable and fruit production and aided by
co-operative societies for marketing the produce, which is not the
case. . . . With few exceptions, those who have absolute or here¬
ditary titles to any considerable area of land are, to all intents,
absentee landlords. . . . The landlord is a receiver of rent in cash or
kind; he may even sell the right of collecting the rent to the highest
bidder, with obvious consequences to his unfortunate tenants; con¬
sciously or unconsciously, he is in effect an exploiter of the land and

and the whole of Sa’udi Arabia, and a half-share with British interests in the
rich Kuwait oilfield, as well as their share in the Iraq Petroleum Co. In
December 1946 the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., hitherto under exclusive British
control, conceded to two American companies ‘substantial quantities of crude
oil over a period of years’. It is proposed that to this end a new pipeline should
be built to the Mediterranean, in addition to the existing Iraq Petroleum Co.
line and the projected line of the Arabian-American Oil Co. Russia twenty
years ago had a concession in North Persia which was never developed and
lapsed; her demand for a concession covering most of North Persia was rejected
by the Persian parliament in 1947. France has a quarter-share in the Iraq
Petroleum Co.

1 See tables in Bonne, op. cit.

234 -4 Short History of the Middle East

his tenants. It is hardly necessary to point out that the blame for
this disastrous state of affairs rests not with the individual landlord
but with an age-old social system in which a sense of responsibility
for the well-being of the land and its workers did not develop. . . .
There can be no question whatever of the urgent necessity of
attempting to graft on to the system this sense of responsibility, for
history shows that if the problem of the absentee landlord is allowed
to drift, it is liable to be solved by an agrarian revolution. . . .
Throughout the Middle East the peasant-proprietor is in the grip
of the money-lender. Although they own their land, they have
not the means to improve it and *are no better off than the small
tenants of the large landlord who hold only an annual lease.’ 1

Owing to the resultant lack of enterprise of the fellahin and the
primitiveness of their equipment, in some countries a considerable
proportion of the land which is capable of cultivation by the most
modern methods is left uncultivated. It is estimated that in Egypt,
Palestine, and Transjordan over 70 per cent, of the cultivable land
is already utilized, while in the mountainous Lebanon the rate of
utilization is so high that the only outlet for an increasing popula¬
tion has for some decades been emigration. On the other hand, in
Syria and Iraq there are vast areas cultivated centuries ago which
might once more be brought under crops by modern methods of
irrigation. It is estimated that in Iraq irrigated cultivation could be
extended to three and a half times its present area. 2 While Egypt
and Lebanon are already seriously over-populated, and the rapid
natural increase in Palestine threatens over-population in another
generation, Syria and Iraq have only three and four million inhabi¬
tants respectively, or considerably fewer than they supported in
antiquity; and an extension of irrigation would undoubtedly
permit a corresponding increase in their population.

'The whole area, with the exception of the Jews in Palestine, is
included in the groups of population which derive at least 70 per
cent, of the energy of their diet from cereals and roots. A consider¬
able part of the population probably belongs to the group so
deriving 80 per cent, of its calories. That is to say, the area is in¬
cluded among the worst-nourished parts of the world. It is poss¬
ible to make certain broad statements which are true ofpopulations
in general which fall into this category. Malnutrition is wide-

1 Keen, op. cit., 13 f.

2 Times, 25 June 1947.

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 23 5

spread, and starvation threatens the poorest. Deficiency-diseases
are frequent. . . and the picture is complicated and often obscured
by infectious disease.’ 1 2 In spite of improved public health services
in the past thirty years, malaria remains a great scourge in many
rural areas, notably in Syria. It is not a killing disease; but where it
exists, "the people, owing to general debilitation . . . are physically
and morally incapable of taking advantage of such social services
and opportunities for advancement as are provided. Without a
much higher degree of control than at present exists, progress in
education, agriculture, and social welfare generally would be im¬
possible in the areas affected. 5 2 In Egypt the well-being of the very
dense rural population is at a very low level and may even be de¬
clining, partly as a result of the very rapid increase in its numbers,
which have again doubled themselves since 1900. 3 Despite the
spread of health-services infant mortality has actually shown an
upward trend since 1919, 4 and in spite of the great increase
of population the total consumption of such necessaries as
meat and cereals, and such simple luxuries as coffee and tobacco,
actually declined between 1924-5 and 1937-8, both average
years. 5 Concentration on the production of cotton as a cash-
crop, replacing the former self-sufficiency of the country in
staple foods, has placed the Egyptian economy at the mercy of
fluctuating world prices for cotton over which she has no control;
and it is stated that 'the giving-over of a good part of the cotton-
acreage to food crops, as in the war, is required as a permanent
feature and would greatly benefit the health, fitness, and productive
capacity of the population. 6 Malaria is less of a scourge in Egypt

1 Worthington, op. cit., 159.

2 Worthington, op. cit., 142.

3 The total population of Egypt in 1936 is computed at nineteen and a quarter
millions (Times, 14 April 1947). ‘If allowance is made for the fact that only
3 i per cent, of the area of Egypt is fit for cultivation, the density becomes more
than double that of the U.K. If further allowance be made for industrial deve¬
lopment as against agricultural, it is probably not inaccurate to state that the
population-density of Egypt is eight times greater than that of the U.K., in
relation to total resources.’ (K. A. H. Murray, in International Affairs, XXIII
1947, 13.)

4 Worthington, op. cit., 187.

5 Issawi, op. cit., 55.

6 Worthington, op. cit., 163. Failure to find markets during 1946 for more
than about one-third of the crop of high-grade long-staple cotton, to say nothing
of the accumulated surplus of the war-years, has caused the Egyptian govern¬
ment to limit the acreage for this grade of cotton during the 1947-8 season to
under 40 per cent, of that of the previous year. (Annual Report of the National
Bank of Egypt; Times, 14 April 1947.)

236 A Short History oj the Middle East

than in the Levant, though an acute epidemic in Upper Egypt in
1942-3 caused scores of thousands of deaths among the under¬
nourished villagers. Its place as a major debilitating disease is taken
by the endemic worm-diseases contracted as a result of insanitary
habits of excreta-disposal. Three-quarters of the whole population
are estimated to be chronically infected, with a greatly lowering
effect on its vitality. The incidence of these diseases is believed to
have been considerably increased by the great extension of peren¬
nial irrigation with its thousands of channels, from which the
fellah, working bare-foot, is reinfected as often as he is
cured. 1 Another major scourge is the eye-disease of trachoma,
estimated to affect 90 per cent, of the population of Egypt
and a large proportion of those of the neighbouring countries,
with consequences ranging from impaired vision to total
blindness.

The public-health services of the Middle Eastern countries,
especially those least subject to European direction or advice,
naturally reflect the wide social gap that separates the professional
class from the masses, and the small extent to which the former
have as yet acquired a sense of service to the community as a whole.
One is left with the impression that the health-services of the inde¬
pendent countries are designed for the benefit of the medical pro¬
fession rather than for the healing of the sick. In the capital cities
there are government hospitals with imposing buildings and well-
equipped laboratories. The provincial capitals are equipped on a
more modest but similar scale; but even in the largest hospitals the
standard of nursing tends to be unsatisfactory, sometimes even de¬
plorable, because the sense of service and duty is wanting; and the
great majority of medical men and women produced by the
training-schools, "including nearly all the best, are inevitably at¬
tracted to careers in the towns, so that the towns tend to be over¬
doctored and the rural areas left with few or no medical men.. . .
The spirit of service and public responsibility, which is usually
associated with the medical profession, is wanted in the Middle
East even more than technical advance/ 2
Since 1939 increased consideration has been given to the raising
of the economic standards of the Middle East. There was first of all

1 Worthington, op. cit., ISO f.

2 Worthington, op. cit., 174 ff. Some 60 per cent, of the doctors in Persia are
stated to practise in Tehran (E. M. Hubback, in Spectator> 20 June 1947.)

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 237

the question of attaining regional self-sufficiency during the war.
It has also been belatedly realized that a region, placed so strategic¬
ally for world-communications and subsisting at so low a level, is a
centre of social unhealth for other nations; and more specifically,
that the urban and rural proletariat of such a region is potentially
ripe to be attracted to Communism. The British Prime Minister
told the Arab League delegates in London in September 1946: 1
believe that the Arab states now have the opportunity of inaugurat¬
ing important economic developments, from which the common
people of their countries would greatly benefit and which would
increase their strength and stability. I am happy to sec that co¬
operation in such developments is one of the purposes of the Arab
League. I can assure you that H.M. Government will, in so far as
you ask for their help, do everything in their power to help you in
promoting economic expansion and social progress/ A fortnight
later the Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs
of the U.S. State Department similarly declared, ‘Our primary
policy . . . is to take whatever measures may be possible and
proper to promote directly and indirectly the political and econo¬
mic advancement of the Near and Middle Eastern peoples. .. . We
should give appropriate assistance to developing the economics of
the countries of the Near and Middle East and to creating a higher
standard of living for their people/

The prospects for greatly expanding industrialization arc ham¬
pered by the lack of raw materials for manufacture, except for such
local assets as the oilfields, the Egyptian cotton, and the Dead Sea
salts. In Palestine the Zionists claim that there is a sufficient reser¬
voir of relatively skilled Jewish labour to make practicable manu¬
facture from raw materials largely imported. Nevertheless, the
Anglo-American Inquiry Committee expressed considerable
reserve about the future of Zionist industry: ‘There is boundless
optimism and energy, great administrative capacity, but a shortage
of skilled labour and, as a result, more quantity than quality of out¬
put. . .. There is the question, how far the consolidation and
further growth of Jewish industry and trade are dependent upon
maintenance of the momentum provided by continuing immi¬
gration. . . . There is the question whether the high costs of pro¬
duction and inferior quality of some products in Jewish industry
will permit the establishment of a firm position in the home market
without inordinate protection. There is the related question how

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23%% American
23 %% French
5 % Private Shareholders

ECONOMIC RESOURCES

240 A Short History of the Middle East

far external markets can be retained ... in the face of competition
from advanced industrial countries and possible continuation of
the boycott of Jewish products in neighbouring Arab states/ 1 In
the other Middle Eastern countries industrial skill is so wanting
that the advantage of cheap labour is more than outweighed, and
it becomes more than ever difficult to compete against the mass-
production of the highly industrialized countries without recourse
to heavy tariffs. 2 The advantages of industrial development are not
yet fully apparent to the majority of conservative politicians who
rule these countries, since they derive their wealth mainly from
agriculture. While grandiose plans of economic development are
drawn up from time to time, they are apt to be sacrificed to political
considerations. For example, the award of the contract for the con¬
struction of a hydro-electric plant at the Aswan Dam, which has
important industrial potentialities for Egypt, was delayed for a
year by the Egyptian government’s pre-occupation with treaty-
revision.

In view of these limitations that must for some time to come re¬
strict any large-scale industrialization of the Middle East, the
possibilities of improving its agriculture and stock-rearing must be
examined. The Middle East Supply Centre’s expert concluded that
new agricultural systems and techniques are best tried out In areas
that are relatively undeveloped and unoccupied or where, after the
existing structure has disintegrated into chaos, a stable and authori¬
tative administration takes over, as happened in the Sudan.. .. But
the greater part of the population is concerned in, and a very con¬
siderable area of the land is occupied by, the practice of firmly en¬
trenched systems of agriculture . . . and here the methods needed

1 Chs. VIII 7, IV 19. Figures quoted by a Jewish business-man {Palestine
Post } 27 December 1946) afford striking evidence of the combination of high
wages and low output in Jewish industry, since the writer admits that ‘in this
respect the local textile industry is not exceptional’. The following indices,
referring to the textile industry in July 1945, are based on the figure of 100 for
the U.K. rate in each case:

Average Average output Manufacturer's costs
wage per operative. (Wages /output).
U.S.A. 163 193 84

Jewish Palestine 147 71 203

3 In the relatively advanced Turkish coalfields of Zonguldak, for example, the
output per man is only about half the by-no-means adequate British figure, and
the mines are run at a loss made up by a subsidy from other nationalized in¬
dustries. (M. Philips Price, in Manchester Guardian , 5 and 7 December,
1946.)

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 241

to foster the process of evolutionary change are all, in essence, edu¬
cational. Among the problems are (a) to develop among the
larger landowners the sense of their responsibilities to the land and
its workers: (b) to cultivate among the tenants and peasant-
proprietors a desire to improve the lot of themselves and their
families; (c) to evolve a type of education for rural children that
will fit them to live in and profit by a rural environment; (d) to
train teachers for rural schools, and members for the Agricultural
Department, who will be able to evoke and guide the move to¬
wards rural development/ 1 In Iraq the British Middle East Office
is associated with the Iraq government in a scheme for greatly ex¬
tending irrigation, with accompanying progress in education and
other services; and the Foreign Secretary has hinted at 'great
schemes of irrigation and other things on the way 5 in the Middle
East as a whole. 2 The United States has commercial agreements
with Sa’udi Arabia and the Yemen which may greatly develop
those countries.

Zionism also has its concrete plans for the economic future of a
much wider area than Palestine. Dr. A. Bonne, director of the
Economic Research Institute of the Jewish Agency, published in
1943 a book The Economic Development of the Middle East, with the
sub-title: An Outline of Planned Reconstruction after the War.
He summed up his thesis in the concluding paragraphs of the book:
‘It is possibly no mere coincidence that the Jews . . . now find
themselves in Western Asia at the precise moment when this sub¬
continent enters upon a new phase in its history. . .. The trans¬
formation of the Orient and the securing of better social and
economic conditions calls first and foremost for the presence and
co-operation of a human element in fairly large numbers who are
willing and competent to act as pioneers of this process. .. . Ob¬
viously the world has not yet realized the full extent of these im¬
mense possibilities. But it should now recognize that these neg¬
lected spaces can be brought to new life by utilizing the creative
capacities of those who were once a, if not the, spiritual driving
force of the Orient/ 3 Underlying this self-regarding reasoning
lay the assumption that within twenty years of the end of the war
the Jewish population of Palestine would have increased to

1 Keen, op. cit., Ch. III.

2 Times r 25 June 1947; 30 May 1947.

3 op. cit., 132 f.

242

A Short History of the Middle East

2,100,000, constituting 58 per cent, of the resultant population. 1
The Arabs of Palestine and the neighbouring countries are, however
less inclined now than ever to purchase the promise of material
progress at the price of surrendering Palestine to the Jews. Jewish
offers of material improvement, and President Truman’s offer of
generous subsidies to the Arabs if they would accept Jewish large-
scale immigration, overlook the fact that, while many Arabs are
venal, they are accustomed to drive a hard bargain. To many of
them, and those the most influential, the mirage of self-government
is far more attractive than all the prospects of the economic im¬
provement of their countries; the masses are accustomed to poverty
and will listen to their own political leaders rather than to foreigners
who offer them opulence with a political ‘string’ attached. It will
probably be at least two generations before the spread of education
corrects the present over-emphasis on politics and neglect of
economic considerations, unless the process is accelerated by a
social revolution induced from outside the Arab world.

★ * ★

The partial conversion of the Fertile Crescent and Egypt from a
pre-capitalist to a capitalist economy, which has gathered impetus
in the past thirty years, has tended to increase the disparity of
wealth between the very rich and the very poor and to segregate
classes; but it has also called into being a middle-class following
various skilled or semi-skilled professions and occupations, and
enjoying varying levels of wealth and comfort . 2 The upper-class
consists of the wealthy landowners and merchants, with no such
sharp division between the two occupations as formerly existed in
some European countries: while some members of a well-to-do
family are concerned with their estates, others engage in commerce.
The long exposure of Egypt to foreign commercial and cultural

1 P- £ s - N ? Iess a Zionist authority than Dr. Weizmann has repeated to the
U.N. Committee on Palestine this figure of one and a half millions for the
potential increase of the Jewish population of Palestine (8 July 1947).

2 c f* effect of the Industrial Revolution in Britain; Trevelyan, op. cit. 546.
In peninsular Arabia the traditional form of society, that of the Bedouin'tribe
and the sedentary oasis, is still uncontaminated by outside influences* but the
presence of enormous quantities of oil and the granting of concessions in
return for much-needed royalties must inevitably mean the extension of
Western influences, which will eventually cause conditions in those parts
of Arabia most affected to resemble those in the Fertile Crescent to-day.

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 243

influences and her advanced state of political emancipation from
foreign control have caused the upper-class there to begin to lose
its predominant political position to the middle-class. The wealthy
Pashas are still individually very powerful, but relatively unor¬
ganized as a class, since while some have belonged for the past
generation to the small Liberal-Constitutional party, many have
preferred to remain independent of party ties. Sidqi Pasha is per¬
haps one of the last of this class to wield political power in Egypt;
but as long as the King can turn to it for support against the repub-
hcan-minded Wafd intent on a party-dictatorship, the upper-class
will continue to have an influence far beyond its restricted numbers.
It is interesting to observe how, as in nineteenth-century Britain,
this ruling-class is transferring its interest from land to finance-
capitalism as a means ofpreserving its wealth and the privilege that
goes with it. Sidqi himself is president of the Federation of Egyp¬
tian Industrialists and director of nineteen different companies.

The Wafd, while claiming to represent the masses, is in its
personnel essentially composed of middle-class politicians. Its
successive leaders, Zaghlul and Nahhas, were men of the people
who had risen into the professional class through the adminis¬
trative or legal career. Though the Wafd has the advantage ofbeing
the only party well-organized throughout Egypt and has a much
richer political war-chest than any other party, it has under Nahhas
been greatly weakened by ‘maladministration when in office,
dissension, expulsions, and resignations’ to form the new Sadist
and Kutla parties, formed respectively in 193 8 and 1943 and now
headed respectively by Nuqrashi and Makram Ubaid. ‘Nahhas is
the only surviving lieutenant of Zaghlul now left in the Wafd and
its one outstanding figure, and many observers believe that it is
only his strong and engaging personality that saves it from dis¬
integration. The party is completely dominated by the masterful
Pasha. Acceptance of his will rather than agreement with any
programme is the chief condition of membership. As a result the
calibre of Wafdist candidates for parliament is declining. .. . Fol¬
lowing the average party-leader is like going on an expedition
under sealed orders. Nobody but the captain has any idea of the
objective, and it is often doubtful if that objective is anything more
than the immediate interests of the leader and his intimates and the
enjoyment of the sweets and fruits of office.’ 1

1 Times Cairo correspondent, 23 December 1946.

244 A Short History of the Middle East

In Turkey the Kemalist national revolution introduced a large
measure of state-control in industry 1 and created a privileged class
of senior civil-servants with an interest in the maintenance of the
new regime. But since the death of Ataturk and particularly
during the Second World War the state machinery has not worked
too well. There has been a good deal of waste and inefficiency and
some of the old corruption, which Ataturk tried ruthlessly to sup¬
press, has crept back again. This helps to account for the emer¬
gence in 1946 of the so-called Democratic party in opposition to the
People’s party founded by Ataturk which, unlike many totali¬
tarian parties elsewhere, has always admitted in principle and has
recently permitted in fact the existence of legal opposition parties,
unwilling as it may be to see them attain power. The Democratic
party consists in the main of well-to-do merchants and traders who
desire greater economic freedom and the abolition of the state
monopolies which restrict their trading activities.

While Egypt and Turkey have advanced some distance towards
middle-class rule, in the countries of the Fertile Crescent the land¬
owning and mercantile class is still predominant politically, and a
distinct middle-class is only in an early stage of emergence. The
governments of these countries are formed almost exclusively from
the upper-class. A striking feature of political life in Syria (and to
a lesser degree in Lebanon) is the manner in which the great land-
owners exert their influence and pursue their rivalries by means of
armed retainers, for all the world like medieval barons, except that
automatic weapons are now the vogue and that the ballot-box
plays a curious and unreal role on this Montagu-and-Capulet
scene. In 1943, for example, the Lebanese cabinet-minister Majid
Arlan raised his Druze henchmen in the mountains against the
French; early in 1946 Bedouin deputies drew revolvers and fired
several shots in the Syrian Chamber to intimidate a critic; in March
1947 the most recent of many clashes between two rival factions in
Tripoli was reported to have caused the deaths of fifteen to twenty
persons. During the Mandatory period the French were probably

1 This was not a matter of political ideology. ‘Kemalist Turkey, intent on
liberating the country from foreign economic control, made one of its main con¬
cerns the transfer to Turkish hands of the principal national sources of wealth
and industries. As private capital was scarce the State had to take a hand in the
process.. . . Thus the State found itself quite inadvertently committed to a
policy of a State-Socialism owning or controlling the principal industries,
communications, mines, and banks/ {Times Correspondent in Turkey, 13
May 1947.)

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 245

not averse to these phenomena, which tended to divide and weaken
the nationalist opposition to themselves. 1 In Palestine the vendetta
carried on in the second phase of the Arab Rebellion, especially
in 1938, by the dominant Husaini faction against its rivals the
Nashashibis and others is an example of the same phenomenon,
normally repressed by the Mandatory- In Transjordan, Sa’udi
Arabia, and the Yemen personal autocratic government of
the traditional type still persists, and the king’s ministers are
in very truth no more than the servants of their master. As
a consequence of all this the Arab League, which came into
being in the spring of 1945 as a federation of the governments
of the Arabic-speaking states, ‘to draw closer the relations
between them, to co-ordinate their political action with a
view to close collaboration, to safeguard their independence
and sovereignty . . . and to achieve a close co-operation in econo¬
mic, cultural, juridical, social, and health matters,’ 2 can hardly be
said to have manifested a progressive social outlook. Its active
secretary-general, Abd ur-Rahman Azzam, has indeed stated that
‘The Prophet was the first socialist, and it is the duty of all his
present-day followers to do all in their power to encourage the
growth of socialism’. 3 But on the whole the remark of a Times
correspondent 4 remains true that ‘The main, if not the only, co¬
hesive force within the League is an ingrained and traditional
xenophobia, directed according to circumstances against the
French, the British, or the Jews’.

The internal rifts latent within the Arab League are consistently
exaggerated by those who wish to destroy such Arab unity as
exists; but they cannot be ignored. The rivalry between King Ibn
Sa’ud on the one hand and the Hashimite rulers of Iraq and Trans¬
jordan on the other was a serious obstacle to the very inception of
the League. 5 King Abdullah of Transjordan has never renounced
his father’s claim to be King of the Arabs. He plans to cement the
sovereignty of his Hashimite family over the whole Fertile Cres¬
cent. He has intrigued with all the forces in Syria, communal, social
or personal, opposed to the existing government there, in the hope

1 The hanging in 1946 of the Alawi chief Sulaiman Murshid was due to his
intrigues with the French; and it remains to be seen whether similar strong
measures will be taken in the future against other headstrong ‘barons’.

2 Edward Atiyah, in Spectator, 12 October 1945.

3 Palestine Post, 15 July 1946.

4 September, 1945.

5 J. Lugol, Le Panarabisme, 252 f.

246 A Short History of the Middle East

of restoring the Greater Syria over which his brother Faisal ruled
from 1918 to 1920; 1 and he regards Ibn Sa’ud as a barbarous in¬
truder from Najd into his own ancestral Hijaz. Egyptian politic¬
ians desire that the pre-eminence ofEgypt in population and wealth
should continue to be reflected by her predominant influence in the
Arab League; Syrians, on the other hand, regard the Egyptians as
intellectually and culturally inferior to themselves, as speaking an
uncouth kind of Arabic, as Arabized Africans rather than true
Arabs. In Lebanon the majority of the Maronites, or about one-
third of the whole population, reject the notion that Lebanon has
any place in the Arab League, and wish to maintain and strengthen
their links with France as a bulwark against Muslim encroachment;
and though the governments of the last four years are opposed to
this pro-French element, they have to defer to local Christian fears
and suspicions by emphasizing the distinctness and independ¬
ence of Lebanon, while Arab League personalities are con¬
stantly assuring Lebanon that her peculiar status will be respected.
The activities of King Abdullah and the Iraqi politicians who
support him have ranged the rest of the Arab League against the
Hashimite dynasty, and the two blocs so formed are constantly
manoeuvring for position; but the anti-Hashimite block of
Egypt, Sa’udi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon has in itself no
cohesive force other than the common opposition to King
Abdullah.

The budgets of the independent Arab countries are marked by a
characteristic desire to build up armies and air-forces out of their
slender financial resources as a matter of national prestige, however
unserviceable these forces may be in practice. Other disproportion¬
ately large sums are expended by the states of Arab Asia, none of
which numbers more than 4,000,000 inhabitants and those poverty-
stricken, on diplomatic representation abroad and official ostenta¬
tion at home. During the War, faced with the difficulties arising
from the stoppage of supplies from overseas, not only did these in¬
dependent administrations fail to prevent a manifold increase in
the cost-of-living, caused in part by maldistribution and wide¬
spread hoarding and black-marketing on the part of producers and
merchants, but in some cases highly-placed members of the
administrations themselves were involved in these malpractices;
and widespread famine in areas that were not self-sufficient in grain

1 The World To-Day , January 1948, 15 ff.

247

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions

was averted only by the organizing ability and authority of the
Anglo-American Middle East Supply Centre. 1

Attempts are being made to develop the social side of the Arab
League by such projects as the simplifying of passport regulations,
the development of international communications, the co-ordinat¬
ing of law, public health, and education; but as long as any part of
the Arab world remains subject to foreign encroachments on its
independence, and as long as the governments of the Arab world
remain dominated by the ageing personalities of the Arab Awaken¬
ing and the Revolt, so long will the Arab League continue to be
obsessed with politics, propaganda, and boycotts; and so long will
accusations of widespread nepotism and the inefficiency that goes
with it be levelled with much justice at the Arab administrations.

* * *

The younger generation of the growing middle-class is the pro¬
duct of the school-system modelled on more-or-less European
lines and expanded with perilous rapidity in the period between
the two wars. The very considerable increase in the educational
budgets of Egypt and Iraq since these countries achieved self-
government over twenty years ago has not yet produced a com¬
mensurate raising of educational standards, and could not indeed
be expected to do so. It has first been necessary to educate a corps
of teachers along the new lines appropriate to the awakening of the
Middle East. There has been some wastefulness inevitable in the
administrative machinery of these countries at their present stage,
and due in part to inexperience and in part to graft. One is some¬
times tempted to suspect that the zeal to expand the school-system
so rapidly derives, not only from a laudable desire to educate the
masses, but also to render them more receptive of nationalist pro¬
paganda and to find white-collar employment as teachers for large
numbers of young effendis. 2 The younger men have suffered
somewhat from the quality of the education imparted to them, in

1 K. A. H. Murray, in Royal Central Asian Journal, XXXII (1945), 233 ff.

2 A good example of the tendency to spend disproportionately on the middle-
class teacher is provided by a statement of the Egyptian Minister of Education.
After referring to an appropriation for the education of 250,000 children at an
initial cost of £\ 2s. 6 d. per head, he spoke of the opening of two schools for
training 180 students as 'lady social visitors' at an initial cost of £111 per head,
or just one hundred times the other per capita allocation. {Middle East Opinion
(Cairo), 23 September 1946.)

R

248 A Short History of the Middle East

which the forming of character and a broad understanding of the
world about them has been neglected in favour of a superficial in¬
struction administered mechanically by teachers whose own
educational attainments are still often inadequate. Education is
directed far too much merely to the passing of examinations calling
for text-book knowledge learned by rote, rather than to the cultiva¬
tion of original thinking and the exercise of the critical faculty; and
the ultimate goal of such education being safe employment in a
government office, 1 not the moulding of an intelligent citizen of
sound character and ability to perform a useful function in the
community, what has been learnt tends to be discarded thankfully
as soon as the final examination has been left behind, Cairo
University students have in recent years gone on strike, and even
overturned and set fire to trams, in protest against the raising of the
examination pass-standard; and attempts by parents to bribe
examiners in order to get a backward candidate passed are not
uncommon. Even in the most advanced countries, of course,
education tends to lose sight of its true function on account of the
inhibiting effect of the examination-system; but this defeat is felt
with particular acuteness in the Middle East, where the quality of
education is further impaired by the crude and excessive national¬
ist content of much historical and cultural instruction.

The present younger generation, having imbibed more formal
instruction than its parents, and being drawn from a wider and
more comprehensive social background than the wealthy elder-
statesmen, resents the fact that the latter have thus far enjoyed the
fruits of political power, an exclusiveness for which foreign im¬
perialism can no longer, as formerly, be everywhere blamed. They
accuse their rulers, with much justice, of corruption and family-
partiality; but it is questionable how far their indignation is
genuinely moral, and how far they are moved by the fact that they
themselves are not the beneficiaries of these malpractices. Forced
by their education into a bottle-neck in which there are far fewer
desirable administrative or professional posts than candidates for
them, and unfitted for commercial careers in competition with
Europeans, they are driven to seek the patronage of the political
leaders; and those who fail in this rigorous competition tend to

1 Although Iraq has already rather more lawyers than it can hope to employ,
1,000 youths entered the Law School in 1946, (Times Baghdad Correspondent,
25 June 1947.)

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 249

seek compensation for their frustration and inadequacy in some
form of political extremism. If they belong to a racial or religious
minority, as for example the Armenians in Aleppo and. Beirut, the
Kurds and Orthodox Christians in Damascus, or the various alien
communities in Egypt, they often turn to Communism; if Muslim,
they resort more readily to the innumerable extreme nationalist
parties which spring up ephemerally in every Middle Eastern
country. This is the type of dissatisfied young man that supported
the military Golden Square in Iraq, that flirted with the Nazis dur¬
ing the Vichy period in Syria, that supports the Young Egypt
party (Misr al-Fatat) or forms the rank-and-file of the Muslim
Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimin). This last powerful move¬
ment was the creation of an Egyptian schoolmaster Hasan al-
Banna about 1930, and has won some hundreds of thousands of
followers in Egypt, and more recently some thousands in neigh¬
bouring countries, by its appeal for a rejection of European civiliza¬
tion with its alleged materialism and corruption, and a return to the
simple brotherhood of primitive Islam. Violently anti-foreign,
anti-Communist, and anti-Zionist, the movement has been called
Fascist by those who find it convenient to attach this label to every¬
thing they dislike; but it has more evident affinities with Gandhi’s
swaraj in its desire to throw off foreign forms and rebuild upon the
essentials of its native culture, though being Muslim it conspicuous¬
ly lacks the Mahatma s ideal ofnon-violence. Like Gandhi too, its
leader, while apparently of personal integrity, is sufficient of a
realist to understand that a political movement must have material
backing if it is to be effective; and just as Gandhi, for all his con¬
tempt for wealth, tacitly accepted the dependence of swaraj on the
Hindu plutocracy, so al-Banna has accommodated himself from
time to time to what seemed the strongest force in Egyptian poli¬
tics. In the early years of the war the Ikhwan were subsidized by,
and made propaganda for, the Palace; after the return to power of
the Wafd al-Banna yielded to the menaces of Nahhas and trans¬
ferred the allegiance of the Ikhwan to him; but it deserted the
Wafd when that party fell in 1944; and recently, no doubt with the
tacit approval of the government coalition, it was denouncing the
Wafd as permeated with Communists, taking orders from Moscow
and being ‘unethical, unpatriotic, and un-MuslinT. 1 All the time
it has gained adherents among the uncritical thousands of the semi-

1 Tunes Cairo correspondent, 13 May 1947.

250

A Short History of the Middle East

educated, disillusioned by the ineptitude, corruption, or indiffer¬
ence of the professional politicians; it has held out before them the
elimination of the foreigner and the Copt as competitors for the
limited number of desirable jobs, and a paper-programme of social
justice based on the Qur’an and the Sunna; but there have been
some indications in the past year that it may be passing the peak of
its influence.

To sum up, the younger generation of the educated class present
a rather pathetic picture of‘wanderers between two worlds’. They
have not yet had time to acquire more than the bare externals of
Western culture without usually grasping its inner quality. Many
of them, however, having grown up in an atmosphere of material¬
ism, have turned from their own Arab and Muslim culture, feeling
shamefacedly that it has been weighed against that of Europe in the
only test they recognize as valid, that of material success, and found
wanting; and when they do claim merit for their own civilization,
it is too often without apparently being able to express wherein
that civilization has in the past excelled. Professor H. A. R. Gibb,
whom no one could accuse of lack of sympathy for Arab cultural
aspirations, has stated, 1 have not seen any book written in Arabic
for Arabs themselves which has clearly analysed what Arabic cul¬
ture means for Arabs.’ 1 Their superficiality and instability of
thought is not, however, the inherent fault of this generation so
much as its misfortune in being a generation of transition, neither
fully Muslim nor fully European, neither fully traditional nor fully
emancipated. Albert Hourani has analysed the phenomenon in a
penetrating passage: ‘The change is not from one static position to
another, but from a static community ruled by custom to a dyna¬
mic society, moulded and governed by positive laws and by a con¬
ception of individual, social, or national welfare. It may be that
the difficulties will so press on the Arabs that they will accept self¬
division as inevitable and give up the attempt to reconcile the new
and the old. If that happens they will become Levantines. To be a
Levantine ... is to belong to no community and to possess nothing
of one’s own. . . . The special mark of the present age is the spread
of the Levant inland.... In a sense every ... educated Arab of the
towns is forced to live in two worlds. Not only his way of thought
but his social life is becoming daily more deeply affected by Europe
and America; but at heart he is still an Arab and usually a Muslim.

1 The Near East, Problems and Prospects, ed. P. W. Ireland (1942), 60.

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 251

A few may be strong enough to face the problem and create a new
unity out of discordant elements; but the majority are likely to take
the line of least resistance, and passively acquiesce in their division
of soul/ 1

In the melancholy which pervades this passage Mr. Hourani is
characteristic of the Arab intellectual of his generation—over-
formal, self-conscious, frustrated, politics-ridden. But there are
some signs that the teen-age adolescents of to-day, starting
their stage in the upward climb out of stagnation on the shoulders
of Messrs. Atiyah and Hourani, as it were, may find it easier to
laugh at life. The increased interest in sport of the schoolboys
of the present-day Levant should give them a healthier outlook
on life, and they may grow up more physically self-reliant and
extroverted, provided that the eventual achievement of self-
government in their countries is not followed by a reaction
against Western habits of body and mind. At all events the only
hope of the Middle East for the next generation lies in those
educated young men (and to a lesser degree young women
also) who are for the first time in the history of the region
studying the conditions of the masses and considering how
they may be improved. The Village Welfare Service in Syria
indicates the beginnings of such a movement. 2 In Egypt also
‘there is evidence that the younger and more thoughtful men—and
there are plenty of them—are tiring of the personality system’
which at present dominates Middle Eastern politics. ‘Their goal is a
better Egypt. . .. Many Egyptians who hold aloof from party
affiliations would eagerly support a programme designed to rid
Egypt of poverty, ignorance, and disease.. . . But first the net of
narrow parochialism, meaningless slogans, mendacious pro¬
paganda, and distorted history in which the older leaders have en¬
meshed them must be cut away/ 3 This can hardly be achieved as
long as foreign imperialism can be blamed for every defect in the
body politic; and even when these countries have achieved full in¬
dependence, habit and the self-interest of the political bosses
will be slow to allow the social conscience free scope and develop¬
ment. In Egypt and the countries of the Fertile Crescent it is
doubtful whether, owing to the self-regarding conservatism of

1 Syria and Lebanon, 69 ff.

3 Dr. Bayard Dodge, in Middle East Agricultural Develotment Conference
(Cairo, 1944), 215.

3 Times Cairo correspondent, 23 December 1946,

2j2 A Short History of the Middle East

those in power, effective social reform can be achieved by evolu¬
tionary and constitutional means. Palliative five-year-plans and
the like will be drafted and duly pass into law, but how many of
them will be translated into action?

★ * ★

While the masses still hold as unquestioningly as ever to their
traditional Islam, there has been a marked trend towards material¬
ism, agnosticism, and atheism among the upper and middle-
classes, especially among their younger members, as a result of
contact with Western ideas. Many of the young nationalists are
conscious ofbeing Muslims only as apolitical bond with the masses,
and of Islam only as a political rallying-cry against the foreigner.
Between these sceptics and the mass of the population come the
hilama, the preachers, the graduates of the Muslim seminaries,
whose indurated conservatism of centuries has barely been touched
by more modern ideas. Some beginnings of reform in Al Azhar,
the ancient and well-frequented Muslim university of Cairo, have
been effected in the last fifteen years, but the process is bound to be
very slow. Islam has fallen into such a state of moral, intellectual,
and spiritual catalepsy that it will take many decades, if not cen¬
turies, to reanimate the inert hulk; and it is doubtful if outside
forces, whether the impact of the Anglo-American world or that
of Soviet Russia, will give traditions! Islam so long a respite.

Nor can it be said that Christianity in the Middle East is in much
better case. It makes virtually no converts from Islam, and is in
fact losing in Egypt hundreds of Copts annually to Islam for poli¬
tical reasons. Except in Lebanon it is the religion of a minority,
suspected by the Muslim majority, with some justification, of in¬
trigue with one or other European Power, and driven by this very
circumstance to regard its religion as a political instrument rather
than as a way of life. 1 While some Christian Arabs are trying to
fuse their religious differences with the Muslims in the crucible of
Arab nationalism, the Muslims, conscious of their own intellectual
inferiority, are slow to give them full confidence. Some Christians
accordingly entertain the idea of concentrating their numbers by

1 A vivid picture of the mingled physical fear and intellectual contempt with
which the Lebanese Christians regarded their Muslim rulers before the First
World War is given in Edward Atiyah’s An Arab Tells his Story.

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 253

migration into the Lebanon, which they think might thereby be
made strong and homogeneous enough to remain permanently
independent of Muslim Syria. Christian unity is, however, greatly
impaired by its division into sects—Orthodox, Catholic, Mono-
physite, and Protestant—no fewer than ten of which exist in Syria
and Lebanon; and their mutual repulsion is hardly less than the
antipathy with which all regard the Muslim majority. The growth
of nationalism and the struggle for independence has everywhere
subordinated religion to politics, and it cannot be said that a genuine
sense of religion, as opposed to the externals of religious sectarian¬
ism, is an important social force in any wide circle in the Middle
East to-day.

★ ★ *

In spite of attempts made to improve the economic standards of
the rural masses by a few benevolent landowners or by government
action such as the not-very-successful efforts in Egypt and Palestine
to reduce individual self-interest and mutual suspicion by promot¬
ing a rural co-operative movement, the country-people of the
Middle East are for the most part bound by their age-old traditions
of agricultural technique and social organization. The urban
workers on the other hand have been much more affected by the
process of modernization, mechanization, industrialization in the
last thirty years; and with these Western methods of economic or¬
ganization has come the associated Western social grouping, the
trades-union. This arose first in Egypt, as being the country which
was exposed to Western industrialization much earlier and more
deeply than the countries which remained till 1918 integral parts
of the Ottoman Empire. The first Egyptian trade-union was the
League of Cairo Cigarette-Factory W orkers founded in 1903; but a
more important union was the Syndicate of Manual Workers,
mainly those in the State Railways, which was formed in 1908. It
is significant that this syndicate was from its early days courted by
the Nationalist party, which opened night-schools for the general
education and political indoctrination of the workers. Soon after
the First World War workers in some industries, encouraged by
the Wafd, obtained the guarantee of sick-pay and a retiring bonus;
but the growth of trades unions made little progress, possibly
because of the workers’ mistrust, instinctive in the Middle East, for

254 A Short History oj the Middle East

the efiendis who were trying to organize them into this unaccus¬
tomed social pattern. In 1931 Sidqi Pasha, who had come into
office as the result of a Palace-organized reaction against the Wafd’s
bid for dictatorship, dissolved the existing trades-unions as a centre
of Wafdist political activity, and instead set up an official Labour
Office in the Ministry of the Interior, closely connected with the
Department ofPublic Security. On the return to power ofthc Wafd
in 193 6 the trades unions were once more allowed to function, and at
the outbreak of the Second World War they had some 20,000
members, chiefly concentrated in the larger towns. The movement
still had no political ideology of its own, however, but continued to
be the catspaw of the existing political parties. In the early part of
the war the Cairo unions were manipulated by a member of the
Royal Family, the Nabil Abbas Halim, as an instrument of pro-
Palace and anti-British propaganda, which finally resulted in his
internment at the request of the British authorities. The number
of trades-unionists in Egypt has now risen to some 150,000, and the
movement has passed distinctly under the control of Communists
or ‘fellow-travellers’, as a result of the heightened prestige of the
U.S.S.R. during the war and the greater facilities for Communist
propaganda since the opening of the Russian Legation in Cairo in
1943. The decline in real wages during the war on account of the
greatly increased cost-of-living has stimulated labour unrest and
political extremism. A group of trades-union leaders has formed a
‘Workers’ Committee for National Liberation’ with a very radical
anti-capitalist policy. Once again genuine labour unrest has been
exploited for political ends by the Wafd in order to embarrass the
government in power. It was the Wafd-organized ‘students’ and
workers’ committees’ which staged the anti-British demonstra¬
tions and murderous riots early in 1946; and eventually in July
Sidqi Pasha struck at these subversive forces by extensive arrests
and the suppression of eleven organizations, both intellectual and
trades-unionist.

Thus in Egypt the acute need for an improvement of the
workers’ conditions of life has continually been exploited and
diverted by political manipulators, who have shown no sign of
genuine sympathy for the workers, to factious purposes which
offer no guarantee that they would serve the workers’ interests. In
Palestine, in spite of the prevailing conflict of the Zionist and Arab
nationalisms, trades-unionism has had a less chequered and more

255

Present-Day Economic ami Social Conditions

constructive history than in Egypt. Immediately after the First
World War the Histadruth trades-union organization, which al¬
ready played an important part in the life of the Jewish community,
sought to foster trades-unionism among the Arabs, partly in a
genuine attempt to organize the Arab workers in a way which they
themselves found good, partly to eliminate the competition of
cheap unorganized Arab labour, and partly perhaps in the hope of
stimulating among the Arabs a class-struggle which would cut
across and weaken the Arab anti-Zionist national movement.
Whatever the motives, the Zionist attempt to create a parallel Arab
trades-union movement had little success, and in 1925 the inde¬
pendent and anti-Zionist Palestine Arab Workers’ Society was
formed. By the outbreak of the Second World War it had some
17,000 members in twenty branches, representing thirty-six craft
unions; under its aegis were operated a sick fund, a saving-bank,
six co-operative stores, and a co-operative tailoring-shop. Under
the leadership of Sami Taha, a 'decent steady trades-unionist’, 1 its
policy was generally moderate, in view of the still modest role of
industrial labour in the economic life of Arab Palestine, and it was
usually willing to negotiate with employers or with the govern¬
ment Department of Labour for the welfare of its members. The
increased demand for Arab labour in wartime activities greatly
strengthened its bargaining powers; its demands became more
exacting, and it was more ready to enforce them through strikes.
Meanwhile in 1941 a group of young Arabs with Communist
leanings, disliking the influence in the Arab Workers Society of its
legal adviser, the wealthy lawyer Hanna Asfur, had formed a rival
organization, the Federation of Arab Trades Unions, with some
1,500 members in Haifa and supporters in other towns. This group,
profiting from the more lenient attitude of the police towards left-
wing activities following the Russian entry into the war, began a
weekly newspaper Al-Ittihad , edited by its secretary Emil Tuma.
In August 1945 a major secession from the Arab Workers Society
occurred, the majority revolting against the influence of Hanna
Asfur and joining the Federation of Arab Trades Unions in a new
left-wing organization, the Palestine Arab Workers’ Congress,
electing Bulos Farah, a product of the Comintern Training School
in Moscow, as one of their delegates to the International Trades
Unions Congress in Paris. Injanuary 1947 the Arab Workers’ Con-

1 He was murdered by an extreme nationalist, September 1947,

256 A Short History of the Middle East

gress claimed to comprise 60 per cent, of organized Arab labour in
Palestine.

In Lebanon there was a great increase in industrial activity during
the war, and a corresponding increase in the scope of organized
labour. Most unions there are united in a Federation of Trades
Unions organized by the active left-winger Mustafa al Aris. The
wealthy minority that rules the Lebanon is trying to combat the
growth of this Federation by encouraging a rival 'company-
union’ . Trades-unionism is less developed in Syria, which Is
economically and socially far less advanced than the countries al¬
ready mentioned; it is strongest among the Armenian colony in
Aleppo. In economically undeveloped Iraq also trades-unionism is
weak, except in the Iraq Petroleum Co. and in the State Railways;
it was until recently officially discouraged by the governments that
succeeded the military Putsch of 1941. In Persia the growth of the
Tudeh (Workers’) Party and trades-unionism was so intimately
bound up with the Russian occupation that it is more appropriately
treated in the chapter 'Russia and the Middle East’.

★ ★ ★

For centuries one-half of the population of all classes—the
women—have been kept in ignorance, and those of the upper
classes in seclusion. In the last forty years the veil has been lifted
somewhat, and in the more modernized parts of the Middle East
the education of girls is now an accepted thing. In Egypt, for
example, the proportion of girls to the total number of children
actually on the registers of schools has since 1935 risen from about
one-fifth to two-fifths. The first women students were admitted
to the Fuad I University in 1929, one year after it opened, and there
are now a few women, including one professor, on its teaching
staff. Some 3 per cent, of the doctors in Egypt are women, a total
of about 150, though they are not yet accepted on the staff of the
Cairo University Hospital. There are some Egyptian women
lawyers. A bill was submitted to the Egyptian parliament in
January 1947 to extend the suffrage to women, though with a
literacy qualification which is not applied to male voters. Women
play some part in the Egyptian trades-union and left-wing move¬
ments. 1 One of the feminists’ aims which most deserves sympathy

1 Andrew Roth, Palestine Post, 27 December 1946,7 February 1947,

Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 257

is that of reforming the Muslim divorce-laws, which completely
subject the wife to her husband’s caprice. The other Middle Eastern
countries are less ‘advanced’ than Egypt, 1 and everywhere the
forces of reaction against the education and emancipation of
women are still strong. Even in Egypt a bill was recently introduced
into parliament to ban women lawyers, but was defeated. There
is some reason to fear that the achievement of complete inde¬
pendence and the decline of direct European influence may,
temporarily at least, affect adversely the course of their emanci¬
pation. 2

★ ★ ★

To sum up, the present economic and social situation of the
Middle Eastern countries presents many disquieting features. They
are ruled by ageing men of the upper-class whose political charter
has been the achievement of national independence from foreign
imperialisms, and who are insufficiently sensitive to economic and
social change. The impact of Western liberalism and industrializa¬
tion has in the last hundred years shaken the Middle East out of its
post-medieval trance; but its ability to adjust itself to the changed
conditions is still being tested, it has not yet been conclusively
demonstrated. Before it has successfully emerged from this test, it
is already being subjected to the still more formidable impact of the
Russian Communist theory and practice of materialist determin¬
ism. To this new challenge the elder statesmen can reply only with
the repression of‘subversive elements’, with schemes of economic
and social improvement which will convince those familiar with
the history of Middle East paper-reforms only when they have
been realized in fact, and with lip-service to the idea of social wel¬
fare which is rarely confirmed by their conduct. The younger
generation has the advantage of having grown up in a more
mechanized environment running at a faster tempo than their
fathers, and thus finds it less difficult to adjust itself to extraneous
influences; but on the other hand, it lacks the comparative stability
and what passed for a philosophy oflife enjoyed by the older men
who passed their formative years amid the traditionalism of the
Ottoman Empire; and it is therefore almost completely at a loss for

1 For progress in Iraq, cf. Freya Stark, East is West, 178 ff.

2 After the expulsion of the French, Damascus became for a time the scene
of a ‘puritan reaction* (Prof. H. S. Deighton, in International Affairs, XXII
(1946), 520).

2 jg A Short History of the Middle East

any principles, other than the lowest one of material self-interest,
to guide it in its personal and social conduct. Muslim traditionalism
has been tried in the fire of history and found wanting; Anglo-
American liberalism is associated with an insensitive and socially-
exclusive imperialism in its British aspect, or with a somewhat
blatant display of wealth and an uninformed or perverse support
of Zionism in the U.S.A. The Nazi Fuhrerprinzip, which in the
specious glitter of its chromium-plate and ersatz-leather appealed
to not a few, has been bombed out of existence. The Russian
system, with prestige enhanced by its much publicized successes
in the war, holds out hopes of improved material circumstances
and greater consequence to the ‘under-privileged’, while younger
menof the middle-classes who arc instinctively anti-British and
were formerly pro-Nazi have tended since the war to look to
Russia for support, with reckless disregard of the heavier hand that
might replace the influence of Britain. Organized urban labour
has natural ideological affinities with the Russian system. While
Communism has recently made considerable progress in gaining
control of the trades-union movement, it has not yet had much
effect on the fellahin. But the slogans of‘distribution of land’ and
‘cancellation of debts’ could be as attractive in the Middle East
to-day as they were in the Athens of Solon: In Azerbaijan the Rus¬
sian-inspired ‘Democrats’ proclaimed peasant-proprietorship as
one of the principles of the constitution, and were reported to have
begun dividing up the estates of absentee landlords among the
fellahin before they were expelled. Such a reform, however dis¬
honestly proclaimed and imperfectly executed, would win the
support of large numbers of landless fellahin throughout the
Middle East. With the alternatives of nationalist isolationism,
Western liberalism, and Communism before it, it remains to be
seen whether the Middle East will succeed in making for itself a
synthesis or a selection of these variant policies or whether, as
seems at present more likely, it will passively have its future
dictated for it by stronger external forces. Nationalism is in itself a
means, not an end, and a mere attempt to perpetuate present privi¬
lege cannot maJke the Middle East strong and independent. How¬
ever much it decides to retain its own culture as the basic stock, it
must still choose between Anglo-American liberalism and Russian
Communism as a suitable rejuvenating strain to graft on to that
stock.

CHAPTER IX

Russia and the Middle East, 1907—47

T he subject falls into six clearly-distinguished chronological
phases:

(1) The Tsarist Regime, down to 1917.

(2) The Revolutionary Wars, 1917-21*

(3) The Inter-War Period, 1921-39.

(4) The period of‘Friendship’ with Germany, 1939-41.

(5) The War, 1941-45.

(6) The Post-War Period.

★ ★ ★

(1) The Tsarist Period

With the signing of the Anglo-Russian Agreement over Persia
in 1907 the Russian government set to work to absorb completely
the northern zone of Persia. Its policy was made easier by the fact
that the British government was anxious to avoid friction with
Russia, in view of the overriding need to maintain the Triple
Entente as a bulwark against Germany, and had instructed
its Minister in Tehran in this sense. The Persian constitutional
revolution, which had begun in 1905, was now in mid-career,
and had inevitably upset what little stability there was in the
internal regime of Persia. In 1909 the Russians sent a military
force to support the reactionary Mohammed Ali Shah. The
Persian constitutionalists succeeded, however, in deposing
him, and power passed into the hands of the extremist so-
called ‘Democrats’, whose attitude was exasperatingly hostile
to the Russians. In 1911 the ex-Shah, with the connivance of
minor Russian officials if not of the government, passed through
Russia in disguise with a consignment of arms and ammunition
and made a landing on the Caspian coast of Persia, but was defeated

i6o

A Short History of the Middle East

and forced to withdraw. The Russians frustrated attempts by the
Persian government to meet its great financial difficulties and made
impossible the efforts of the American financial adviser. They
constantly found or created pretexts for further intervention, pro¬
tecting rich landowners and merchants in Khurasan, collecting
Persian revenues in Azerbaijan, importing Russian subjects into
Asterabad to till lands they had bought at a nominal price as a result
of pressure. In 1911 Russia went behind her allies’ backs to con¬
clude the Potsdam Agreement with Germany, recognizing the
German interest in the Baghdad Railway in return for German
recognition of her own interest in North Persia, arranging to link
the projected Persian railway-system with the Baghdad Railway
via Khaniqin, and promising Germany an open door for her trade
with Persia.

During the First World War the operation of pro-German
armed bands in Central and South Persia, and of the Turks in
Western Persia, gave the Russians good reasons for occupying a
broad belt of North Persia, including the towns of Kermanshah,
Isfahan, and Meshed. By a secret agreement of March 1915 the
Allied promised Russia Istanbul and the Straits and full liberty of
action in the northern zone of Persia, in return for which Britain
was to be free to annex both the southern and the neutral zones
laid down by the Agreement of 1907.

* * *

(2) The Revolutionary Wars } 1917-21.

The outbreak of the Revolution in March 1917 was followed
by the headlong demoralization of the Russian army and its with¬
drawal from Persia, which gave the Turks an opportunity to
invade Western Persia again. In March 1918 the Bolsheviks, who
had seized power four months before, were compelled to conclude
with Germany the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which allowed the
Germans to conduct military operations on Russian territory and
obtain essential supplies, such as the Caucasian oil. It was this treaty,
made at a time when the Allies were fighting for life against Ger¬
many, at least as much as any dislike for the Bolshevik regime as
such, that caused the Allies to support the local anti-Bolshevik

261

Russia and the Middle East

forces and to undertake military operations against the Reds. 1 A
small British force operating in North-West Persia temporarily
occupied Baku in support of an anti-Bolshevik 'Central Caspian
Force’ consisting mainly of Armenians, but had to withdraw
before a Turkish attack. An Indian force occupied Meshed, and a
British naval flotilla operated on the Caspian from the summer of
1918 to that of 1919, re-occupying Baku from the retreating Turks
and defeating a Red flotilla.

The great German spring offensive of 1918 on the Western
Front had convinced most politically-minded Persians of the cer¬
tainty of a German victory, and as late as September 1918, when
Sir Percy Cox went to Tehran as Minister to bring the Persian
government round to a more pro-British way of thinking, lie found
that it was on the point of throwing in its lot with Germany. 2
When Germany collapsed the extreme 'Democrats’, who in their
hatred of Russia had backed the Germans and Turks during the
war, now turned to support the Turkish nationalists and the Bol¬
sheviks. Cox felt that the country was ripe for Bolshevik revolu¬
tion on account of the hopeless misgovemment by the Persian
ruling-class, and recommended to the Foreign Office that Britain
should guarantee the integrity of Persia in return for a new Anglo-
Persian agreement. This fell in with the views ofLord Curzon, who
had said, 'The integrity of Persia must be registered as a cardinal
precept of our imperial creed.’ By August 1919 accordingly 3 Cox
had negotiated a draft Agreement: the hated Anglo-Russian
Agreement of 1907 was considered cancelled; Britain offered to
supply advisers, officers, and equipment for the establishment of
internal order; there was to be joint Anglo-Persian enterprise in
building railways and improving communications generally;
and Persia was to receive a loan of .£2,000,000. The draft was
generally well received hi Persia except by the extreme ‘Democrats’,
the most conservative mujtahids (Shi’i divines), and the Russian-
officered Cossack Brigade. The Persian Prime Minister could
probably have got the draft Agreement ratified by the Majlis
(parliament) had he presented it immediately, but he procrasti-

1 Sir Bernard Pares pertinently compared Britain’s reaction to the French
armistice in 1940 (Russia (1941), 109).

2 Cox, in Gertrude Bell’s Letters, II, 521.

3 The Persian delegation to the Peace Conference had unsuccessfully de¬
manded the cession to Persia of Transcaucasia including the Baku oil-region,
Turkish Kurdistan, part of Iraq, and Turkestan as far as the Oxus, in spite of
the fact that she had no army capable of defending even her existing territories.

262 A Short History of the Middle East

nated and allowed the opposition, which now regarded victor¬
ious Britain as a greater menace than defeated Russia, to gather
strength.

By the end of 1919 Trotsky had organized the Red armies and
broken the threat of the counter-revolutionary Whites. Under
trades-union pressure Britain had ceased her active intervention
against the Bolsheviks, and in the spring of 1920 the British forces
were withdrawn from Transcaucasia. In April the anti-Bolshevik
republic of Azerbaijan collapsed, and Soviet troops entered Persian
territory. With their support a group of Persian communists set
up a Soviet government in the Caspian province of Gilan. Persian
politicians, impressed by the proximity and the strength of the
Russians, became more and more non-committal about the draft
agreement with Britain. There was an inspired press-campaign
in favour of Bolshevism, the semi-official Iran declaring that its
doctrines closely resembled the pure gospel of Islam. The Cossack
Brigade, the only organized troops in North Persia, was defeated
by the Reds, and the whole country seemed at their mercy; but at
this stage an outstanding and determined officer Riza Khan, as¬
sumed command of the Cossack Brigade. In February 1921 he
marched on Tehran and arrested the cabinet. The new government
promptly denounced the draft agreement with Britain, and instead
accepted the generous terms offered by the Russians. In the
Soviet-Persian Agreement signed in Moscow the Russian govern¬
ment renounced all concessions made to the Tsarist government,
on condition that they should not be transferred to any other
Power. All debts to the Tsarist government or to Russian capital¬
ists were cancelled, and Russian capitulatory rights abolished.
Each party undertook to prohibit organizations conspiring against
the other party. Russia undertook to observe Persian sovereignty
and territorial integrity, and in return Russian troops were to be
allowed to enter Persian territory, if Persia were unable to prevent
a third party from preparing an invasion of Russia on Persian soil.
The Russians followed up this success by making treaties of mutual
assistance against ‘an imperialist state which follows a policy of in¬
vading and exploiting the East’ with the nationalist Turkey of
Mustafa Kemal and the nationalist Afghanistan of King Amanul-
lah, both of whom had recently been in conflict with Britain. As a
token of goodwill the Russians handed back to T urkey the frontier-
provinces of Kars and Ardahan which the Tsars had annexed.

Russia and the Middle East

263

(3) The Biter-War Period, 1921-39

I11 the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 which established the inde¬
pendence of nationalist Turkey and regulated her relations with
the Western Powers, she had to concede the demilitarization of
the Zone of the Straits: the warships of all nations, with slight
restrictions, were free to enter the Black Sea. This was obnoxious
not only to Turkey, as limiting her sovereignty, but also to Russia,
as exposing her Black Sea coast to the threat of an enemy navy; and
in 1925, while Turkey was involved in the acute dispute with
Britain and Iraq over the possession of the villayet of Mosul,
Russia concluded with her a new Treaty of Friendship and
Neutrality. Though official relations between Russia and Turkey
remained cordial and the Russians gave some technical help with
the industrialization of Turkey, there was little contact or cultural
interchange between the two peoples. The Turkish dictatorship
permitted the w 7 orks of Marx and Lenin to be read, but imprisoned
active Communists under laws which forbade associations with
the purpose of propagating ideas of cl ass distinction or of class con¬
flict, or with internationalist intentions. 1 In 1936, when Italy
had emerged as the aggressive naval power which threatened the
status quo in the Mediterranean, Turkey proposed to the signatories
of the Treaty of Lausanne that the regime of the Straits needed
revision, and obtained important concessions in the Montreux
Convention. She was now allowed to fortify the Straits, and in
time of war to close them to the warships of all Powers, unless
acting under the Covenant of the League of Nations. A com¬
promise was thus reached between the Russian,claim for wide
discrimination in favour ofBlack Sea Powers, and the British argu¬
ment that the Straits should be equally open or equally closed to
the warships of all Powers. 2 In the early summer of 1939, when
Turkey entered into pacts with Britain and France directed primar¬
ily against Fascist Italy, Izvestia welcomed them as 'links in the
chain which is the only sure means of preventing the extension of
aggression to new parts of Europe.

In Persia Riza Shah, like Ataturk, followed a strongly nationalist
and anti-foreign policy, and his commercial relations with Russia

1 Arts. 66 and 69 of the People’s Party Programme.
- Survey of International Affairs } 1936, Part IV (i).

264 A Short History of the Middle East

were darkened from time to time by embargoes and boycotts.
However, Russia supported him in his dispute with the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Co. in 1932, and by 1936 she was taking 28 per cent, of
Persia’s exports and supplying 30 per cent, ofher imports. 'Russian
engineers and technicians began to pour into the country. Russian
contracts were obtained for flour-mills and bakeries, granaries and
workshops. Russian surveyors were employed on new road-
projects, and Russian pilots and tank-experts began to appear in
unusually large numbers.’ 1

During this period the Soviet government was not in diplo¬
matic relations with any of the other Middle Eastern countries,
and her connexion with them was virtually confined to the en¬
couragement given by the Comintern to the embryonic Commun¬
ist parties in those countries. The conservative governments of
the Middle East, whether mandatory or nominally independent,
were strongly opposed to Communism, and Egypt went so far as
to deprive ofhis nationality any Egyptian who visited the U.S.S.R.

k ★ ★

(4) The period of 6 Friendship' with Germany , 1939-41

In August 1939 the Soviet government, having reached the con¬
clusion that Britain and France could not be brought to an alliance
on its somewhat exacting terms, preferred to do a deal with Ger¬
many, and Molotov concluded with Ribbentrop the opportunist
and cynical Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression. In further¬
ance of its new friendship with Hitler, the Soviet government con¬
cluded a new commercial treaty with Persia in March 1940, which
allowed Persian goods in transit to Germany to cross Russia duty¬
free, and so assisted the greatly increased German trade with
Persia. The Turkish Foreign Minister had been in Moscow at the
time of the signing of the Treaty with Germany, but failed to reach
an understanding with Molotov, who required as the price
of a Black Sea mutual-assistance pact that the Turks should in
all circumstances keep the Straits closed to the warships of any
nation hostile to the U.S.S.R.; and this the Turkish government
held to be inconsistent with their agreements with Britain and

1 Elwell-Sutton, op. cit., 162. Germany, Persia’s second-largest customer,
took in 1936 13 per cent, ofher exports and supplied 15 per cent, of her imports.

Russia and the Middle East

265

France. The Soviet press thereupon linked together Italy and
Turkey as attempting to disturb the peace of the Balkans. Anti-
Soviet feeling in Turkey was stimulated by the Soviet invasion of
Finland, since Turkish theorists were aware of the distant con¬
nexion between the Finnish and Turkish languages. Following
the German publication of captured French documents in July
1940, the Soviet accused the Turkish government of conniving at
Anglo-French plans, now revealed, for bombing the Caucasian
oilfields and the pipeline to Batum, as a potential source of supply
to Germany. At the Hitler-Molotov meeting in November
1940 the Russians, according to the captured German minutes,
asked for the control of the Straits, as well as for the right to
expand ‘south of Batum and Baku 5 . 1 In March 1941, when Hitler
was on the point of invading Jugoslavia and Greece, Russia
assured the Turks of her neutrality. Her establishment in May of
diplomatic relations with Rashid Ali’s government in Iraq, when
it was already in armed conflict with the British, who for their
part had warned the Russians of Hitler’s preparations to invade
them, is an incident whose significance has not yet been clarified.

ic ic ★

(5) The War , 1941-5

After the Anglo-Russian invasion of Persia in August 1941, the
northern zone which came under Russian military occupation was
withdrawn behind the now familiar ‘iron curtain’: the Persian
government’s authority ceased to be effective there, and British
and American officers found great difficulty in entering the Rus¬
sian zone even on official business. The American Dr. A. C. Mills-
paugh, then Adniinistrator-General of the Finances of Persia, has
accused the Soviet government of seeking a ‘thorough-going and
exclusive domination over the entire country.. . . They intended
that Persia should be a puppet-state, and until that end was attained,
the Soviet government would not be interested in stability or good
government in Persia. Chaos served their purpose better than
order. They wanted the kind of government that could be pur¬
chased, hoodwinked, or intimidated.’ 2 In Tehran the Tudeh or

1 Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-1941. (U.S. State Department, 1948), 217 ff.

2 Americans in Persia (Washington, D.C., 1946).

266

A Short History of the Middle East

Workers’ Party came to life, with an ostensibly moderate socialist
programme. It did not originally have obvious connexions with
the Russians, but unsuccessfully sought the support of the British
Embassy; some of its leaders were, however, men who had taken
part in the shortlived Soviet Republic of Gilan twenty years before,
and had since lived in exile in the U.S.S.R. It formed trades-unions
in the principal industrial cities of Tehran, Tabriz, and Isfahan, and
obtained for the workers some concessions from their employers;
but from 1943 onwards it became openly the pro-Russian party. 1
In March 1944 the Persian government rejected applications by
representatives of British and American oil-companies for con¬
cessions in south-east Persia, and on 2 September the cabinet re¬
solved that it would make no concessions to any foreign oil com¬
pany until the foreign armies had been withdrawn from Persian
soil. Only four days afterwards the Persian Ambassador in Mos¬
cow informed his government that the Assistant Commissar for
Foreign Affairs, Kavtaradze, wished to discuss with the Persian
government an old oil-concession in Khurasan, which had been
registered in 1925 as a Persian company financed by the Soviet
government; the Majlis had, however, never ratified this concession,
and no oil had in fact been found. M. Kavtaradze arrived in Tehran
a week later and asked for a five-years’ exploratory concession for
almost the whole of North Persia. When the Persian government
demurred, it became the object of a violent propaganda attack
from the Tudeh party, and M. Kavtaradze issued thinly-veiled
threats at his press-conferences. Weeks passed without the nego¬
tiations reaching any conclusion; and on 2 December the Majlis
finally screwed up its courage, and rushed through a bill prescribing
a penalty of eight years imprisonment for any minister or official
who approved an. oil-concession to any foreign company before the
end of the foreign occupation of Persia. M. Kavtaradze had to
return to Moscow without achieving his object. During 1945 the
attitude of the Soviet military to the Persian authorities in the
northern provinces became increasingly unco-operative. 2

Following the Anglo-Russian Alliance of June 1941, the two
Powers sought to reassure Turkey in August by guaranteeing their
loyalty to the Montreux Convention, declaring that they had no

1 On the combination of c half-baked’ ideologues and genuine would-be
reformers in the Tudeh membership, see A. C. Edwards, in International
Affairs , XXIII (1947), 54 f.

2 For details, see A. K. S. Lambton, International Affairs , XXII (1946). 265 ff.

Russia and the Middle East 267

aggressive designs nor any demands to formulate in regard to the
Straits, and pledging themselves to respect the territorial integrity
of Turkey. As long as the Russians were on the defensive against
the Germans, Russian leaders hinted at rewarding Turkey with
territorial acquisitions at the expense of Bulgaria, Greece, and
Syria. 1 Public opinion in Turkey, however, had not been sorry to
see the Germans invade the U.S.S.R. It had come to regard both
the German and, after the invasion ofFinland, the Russian armies as
potential threats to the integrity of Turkey, and was gratified to
see them destroying each other; as a popular slogan put it, ‘The
Germans in the hospital and the Russians in the grave’. The Pan-
Turanian irredentists, who dreamed of forming a confederation
under the leadership of the Turkish Republic of all the Turkish
peoples of Russian and Chinese Turkestan, ‘regarded as inevitable
the defeat and disintegration of the U.S.S.R. and were confident
that the liberation of Russian Turkestan was at hand. When, how¬
ever, it was the Germans, and not the Russians, who suffered defeat,
the Turkish authorities appear to have decided that it would be
politic to suppress the pan-Turanians, thinking no doubt that the
denunciation of the movement and the arrest and trial of its leaders
would gain them good marks in Moscow. The proceedings in
1944 received the greatest possible publicity. Moscow, however,
was far from being impressed. In fact the Russians regarded the
whole affair as so much eyewash, and did not hesitate to say so in
their press and radio.’ 2 They began to assail the Turks for the
economic aid they had given to the Germans—concessions which,
in fact, the Turkish government had felt constrained to make in
order to maintain its precarious neutrality, with the German troops
occupying the line of the Maritza only 130 miles from Istanbul. In
March 1945 the Soviet government denounced the twenty-year-
old Turco-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality.

★ ★ ★

(6) The Post-War Period

It appears that when in June 1945, one month after the close of
the war in Europe, the Turks approached the Soviet government

1 Times correspondent in Turkey, 3 April 1947.

2 A. C. Edwards in International Affairs, July 1946, 398.

268

A Short History of the Middle East

for a new treaty of alliance, they were informed that this was condi¬
tional on the establishment of a new regime for the Straits, and also
on the return to Russia of the provinces of Kars and Ardahan,
which she had voluntarily restored to Turkey in 1921; apparently
she now hoped to find oil there. At his speech at Fulton (Missouri)
in March 1946 Mr. Churchill disclosed that at the Potsdam Con¬
ference the U.S.A. and Britain offered Russia a joint guarantee of
the complete freedom of the Straits in peace and war; Tut we
were told that this was not enough. Russia must have a fortress in¬
side the Straits from which she could dominate Istanbul’. In the
months that followed, Armenians, both within the Soviet Re¬
public of Armenia and in other parts of the world, were encouraged
to make propaganda for the return to Russia ofKars and Ardahan.
In December 1945 the Soviet press and radio gave wide publicity to
the claim put forward by Georgian professors to a coastal belt of
north-eastern Turkey some 180 miles in length, on the grounds
that this had been Georgian territory 2,000 years ago. The Soviet
propaganda contained sinister hints that she desired to see in
Turkey a 'government inspiring greater confidence’ than the exist¬
ing one; and any signs ofa rapprochement between Turkey and the
Arab League were strongly denounced. In August 1946 the Soviet
government made positive proposals for the revision of the Mon-
treux Convention, the essential point being that 'The Soviet
Union and Turkey, as the Powers most interested in and cap¬
able of ensuring the freedom of merchant shipping in the Straits,
should organize by joint means the defence of the Straits in order
to prevent their use by other states for purposes hostile to Black Sea
Powers.’ Next month, to the accompaniment of propaganda
charges that the Turks had allowed Britain to establish military
bases in the neighbourhood of the Straits, the Russians delivered a
second Note, rejecting the Turkish proposal of an international
conference of the signatories of the Montreux Convention and the
U.S.A., and warning them that any attempt to bring in the U.S.A.
or Britain, would, of course, run directly contrary to the security
interests of the Black Sea Powers. Towards the end of November
the Communist bands which had for some months been harassing
Northern Greece, with the connivance of the Russian satellite-
states in the Balkans, began to operate close to the Turkish frontier.
Turkish garrisons were accordingly strengthened, and a home-
guard organized in every village in the frontier district. In mid-

Russia and the Middle East

269

December the Istanbul police arrested over seventy persons be¬
longing to two 'Socialist’ parties, suppressing the parties and six
newspapers and periodicals published by them. The American
offer of financial aid to Greece and Turkey in March 1947 greatly
changed the strategic situation on this important sector of the
Russian war-of-nerves. While Pravda denounced the American
action as 'the liquidation of Greek and Turkish sovereignty and the
brutal establishment of American hegemony’, the Turks were at
once relieved of the 'crushing sense of insecurity and isolation’ 1
which had subjected them during the past two years to the econo¬
mic and psychological strain of keeping under arms one million
men who had already been kept mobilized throughout the war.
When the steady consolidation of Russian power in the Balkans
caused a member of the Democratic party on 22 December to
inquire about Turkey’s attitude to the two great ideological blocs,
Foreign Minister Hasan Saka replied that Turkey remained loyal
to the United Nations and refused to be drawn into ideological
quarrels; her policy was to rely on her own forces, to grasp hands
extended in a spirit of friendship, and to resist with all her strength
aggression from any quarter. This unexpectedly non-committal
statement gave rise to some concern in Ankara; 2 and it produced,
as it was perhaps designed to do, an announcement from the U.S.
Navy Department on 9 January 1948 that fifteen warships,
including four modern submarines, would be handed over to
Turkey in April.

In October 1945 a new 'Democratic Party’ was formed in
Azerbaijan, the richest province of Persia, which produces the
bulk of its grain and contains about one-third the total population
of the country. The province had been under Soviet occupation
since 1941, and it appeared that a considerable number of Com¬
munists had been introduced from Soviet Azerbaijan, divided
from Persian Azerbaijan only by an arbitrary frontier and not by
any linguistic or cultural differences. The new party was led by
Ja’far Pishevari, who had taken part in the formation of the Soviet
Republic of Gilan in 1920 and had returned to Persia with the
Soviet army in 1941. All the local members of the Tudeh joined
the new party and there followed an armed revolt of a peculiar
kind. ‘A few Russians in a town or village would let it be known

1 Renter's Correspondent, Istanbul, 19 March 1947.

2 Observer special correspondent, 4 January 1948.

270 A Short History of the Middle East

that the Democrats were taking over the administration, and that
they would not tolerate intervention from the government
gendarmes or anyone else. Then at night the armed Democrats
would enter the few key-buildings and take over. Sometimes
there would be a little shooting, and a few gendarmes or other
opponents killed. In the morning the mass of Democrats would
arrive, singing and with banners, and would take over. Through¬
out, the Russians remained discreetly in the background.’ 1 The
active Democrats, who with their supporters numbered only
about io per cent, of the population, advanced southwards on the
provincial capital of Tabriz. Its Persian garrison of 400 men was
confined to barracks by the Russian military authorities and
capitulated to the Democrats on 15 December. An autonomous
State of Azerbaijan was proclaimed under the leadership of
Pishevari. According to Moscow radio, it had been elected by a
free vote’. While it recognized private property as legitimate, it
undertook to confiscate and share out among the peasants the
estates of ‘reactionary landlords who have fled the province’.
Credits would be made available to peasants to buy land from land¬
lords ‘willing to sell at reasonable prices’. The Persian government,
receiving no reply to its proposal to the Soviet government to
negotiate over Azerbaijan, appealed to the Security Council.
When the case came up on 28 January 1946 M. Vyshinsky stated
that the Persian government had broken off previous negotiations
early in December, and that Russia was now ready to continue
them. The Council accordingly resolved that the two parties
should inform it of the results of their negotiations. In the mean¬
time, however, the seven ty-two-year-old Persian Prime Minister,
who had been subject to increasing left-wing pressure to dismiss
a number of cabinet ministers and other officials who were alleged
to be under British influence, had resigned. The Majlis elected as
his successor, by the narrow margin offifty-three votes to fifty-one,
Qavam as-Sultani, a wealthy owner of lands in Azerbaijan. When
he was previously Prime Minister early in 1942 there was reason
to believe that he took some steps towards ‘reinsurance’ with the
Germans; and now it was generally expected that, while taking a
strong line with any in ternal opposition, the ‘ancient equivocator* ®
would seek a reasonable compromise with the Russians. The

1 Jon Kimche, in Tribune, 18 January 1946.

2 Robert Stephens, Observer, 24 November 1946.

2J2 A Short History of the Middle East

Soviet Embassy in Tehran, which had for several weeks avoided
contact with the previous Prime Minister, promptly paid courtesy
visits to Qavam; and on their invitation he set off for Moscow on
19 February at the head of a carefully-picked mission. While
American and British troops were withdrawn before 2 March, the
day appointed for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from
Persia, the Soviet radio announced on 1 March, while Qavam was
still negotiating in Moscow, that Russian troops would be with¬
drawn 'from those parts of Persia which are undisturbed; those in
other areas would remain pending a clarification of the situation’.
Qavam returned to Persia without reaching any agreement; but on
3 April the Persian delegate informed the Security Council that ten
days previously the Soviet Ambassador had informed the Persian
government that the Red Army would begin its evacuation im¬
mediately and complete it in five to six weeks; he had also proposed
a joint Soviet-Persian oil corporation and an autonomous govern¬
ment for Azerbaijan. On 5 April an agreement was signed setting
up a joint oil-company in North Persia for a period of fifty years.
For the first twenty-five years Russia was to own 51 per cent, of the
shares, to pay the costs of prospecting and provide the machinery,
and in return receive half the oil. Persia was to be free to dispose of
the other half, but for geographical reasons Russia would be the
most likely buyer. Concessions to other Powers in North Persia
were barred. 1 The evacuation of British troops duly began, and an
Azerbaijani mission led by Pishevari arrived in Tehran for talks
with the Persian government. Qavam had meanwhile been sup¬
pressing the most actively anti-Russian elements in Persian political
Hfe, threatening in a radio speech to 'destroy them like harmful
insects’. His negotiations with the Azerbaijanis were none the less
difficult, since at the first obstacle that presented itself Tabriz radio
announced a treaty of mutual assistance with the 'national govern¬
ment’ of Persian Kurdistan, where unruly tribes had with Russian
support been in revolt against the central government for some
years. When a second deadlock was reached, the Persian spokes¬
man having informed the Security Council that his government
was unable to confirm the Russian evacuation of Azerbaijan as it
did not exercise < effective authority there, pressure was again
exerted on it through a Tabriz radio allegation of a Persian armed
attack and the proclamation of a military government in Azer-

1 Times Tehran correspondent, 11 July 1947,

Russia and the Middle East 273

baijan. Agreement was, however, finally reached in June: Azer¬
baijan was to have an autonomous provincial council, with a
governor-general appointed by the central government; it was to
retain three-quarters of the provincial revenues; its national army’
was to come under the command of the Persian army, details being
worked out by a joint commission. While, therefore, the central
government received acknowledgment of its de jure authority in
Azerbaijan, the 'Democrats’ remained in actual control; and for
five months the name of the province disappeared from the news-
paper-headlines. The Soviet propaganda-machine had, however,
been carrying on a campaign against the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. in
South Persia for some time. It was accused of encouraging opium¬
smoking among its Persian workers in order to render them in¬
sensible of their poverty, and Pravda righteously remarked that
'the brazen and imperious behaviour of the British oil company is
an example of disrespect for the sovereignty of a small country’.
In July the local Tudeh party organized a political strike of 100,000
of the oil-company’s workers, and seventeen people were killed in a
clash between Tudeh adherents and Arab workers. Simultaneously
the Iraq Petroleum Co. had to deal with a strike at Kirkuk, in which
five people were killed in a clash between strikers and police. Evi¬
dently this was the beginning of a typical 'softening-up’ process,
but the despatch of a brigade group of troops from India to Basra
prevented further developments. In September the Persian Pro¬
paganda Minister, Prince Muza’far Firuz, who had shown himself
outspokenly pro-Russian in recent months, announced that while
visiting Isfahan he had unearthed a separatist plot among the chiefs
of the powerful Bakhtiari tribe to set up with foreign help a 'reac¬
tionary feudal tribal government’. Moscow radio named two
British consular officials whom it accused of inciting the Bakhtiari
to revolt, and the Persian Ambassador in London asked the Foreign
Office to inquire into their conduct; but evidence in support of
these allegations was not forthcoming from the Persian govern¬
ment. Later in September the great Qashqai tribe revolted in Fars
province, seizing the provincial capital of Shiraz and the port of
Bushire; simultaneously the Arab tribal chiefs of Khuzistan
province appealed to the Arab League for protection against Per¬
sian oppression. The Qashqai chiefs demanded the creation of an
autonomous provincial council with the right to retain two thirds
of the provincial revenues, and to approve or veto the appointment

274 A Short History of the Middle East

of officials; they also called for the resignation of the Persian cabi¬
net, except for Qavam himself, and the release of the arrested
Bakhtiari chiefs. It was evident that the southern tribal chiefs, see¬
ing the apparent drift of the Persian government towards sub¬
servience on Russia, had decided to strike in defence of their own
traditional authority against the Tudeh, which had been strong
enough in Tehran to muster some 50,000 adherents for the May
Day labour demonstration and had been given three seats in the
cabinet early in August. Warned by these ominous signs of pro¬
vincial disintegration, and by appeals from merchants and muj-
tahids to protect the country from foreign ideologies and end the
coalition with the Tudeh and the Azerbaijani Democrats, the
Prime Minister decided that it was time to ‘hedge’. In mid-October
he pacified the Qashqai rebels by dropping from his cabinet the
three Tudeh representatives and Prince Firuz, whom he appro¬
priately appointed Ambassador to Moscow. He then turned to
the question of general elections for a new Majlis, having dissolved
the previous one in March. The Tudeh wanted them at once, in
order that the new Majlis might ratify the all-important Soviet-
Persian oil agreement. The Prime Minister at length announced
that they would begin on 7 December, under the supervision of
government forces throughout the country in order to ensure
freedom of voting and suppress possible disturbances. The
Governor-General of Azerbaijan was informed that government
forces would enter his province also for that purpose. Despite the
protests of the Azerbaijani provincial council and a call to arms, the
government troops crossed the provincial border on 10 December.
They met with only slight opposition, since the ‘Democrat’ forces
were found to be iil-equipped and undisciplined, and there were
many desertions. Tabriz was occupied, evidently to the hearty
satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of the population.
Some of the ‘Democrat’ leaders, including Pishevari hims elf fled
over the border into Soviet territory. The Soviet propaganda
treated the collapse of their puppet with remarkably little concern,
waiting evidently for Persian ratification of the proposed oil-
concession. Persian elections, are, however, a leisurely process,
and the new Majlis was not ready for official duties till 26 August
1947. By that time the Soviet propaganda had lost patience,
strongly attacking ‘Persian reactionaries’, ‘stranglers of the working
class’, and the ‘intriguers of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.’ On

Russia and the Middle East 275

12 August the Soviet Ambassador handed to the Persian Prime
Minister for signature a draft oil-treaty on the lines agreed at
Moscow in the previous year. 1 When the Persian Government
pointed out that it was necessary first to obtain the consent of the
Majlis, a second Soviet Note was presented on 15 September
demanding swift action without 'delaying tactics’. On 22 October
the Majlis, against the advice of the Prime Minister, adopted by
102 votes to 2 a bill rejecting the oil-agreement of 1947 and pro¬
posing new negotiations. A third Soviet Note on 20 November
accused the Persian Government of 'treacherously violating’ its
undertakings. By this time Qavam as-Sultani was hopelessly
isolated in the Majlis, partly as a scapegoat for the rejected agree¬
ment and partly on account of the corruptness ofhis administration
(though by Persian standards it was probably not outstanding in
this respect); and though he made a desperate bid for popularity
in an anti-foreign broadcast, he fell to a vote of no-confidence on
10 December. On 31 January 1948 a fourth Soviet Note accused
the Persian government of lending itself to American plans for
converting Persia into a ‘military-strategic’ base, and darkly re¬
minded it of the Soviet-Persian Treaty of 1921 (which gave Russia
the right to send troops into Persia ‘if a third party should desire
to use Persian territory as a base for operations against Russia ). 2
The Persian Government in reply accused the Russians of har¬
bouring the Azerbaijani and Kurdish rebels against Persian
authority.

As a result of her wartime alliance with Britain, Russia was able
for the first time to open legations in the Middle Eastern capitals—
Cairo, Beirut and Damascus, Baghdad. In this new international
relationship it was no longer possible for Middle Eastern govern¬
ments to repress left-wing movements as indiscriminately as
hitherto; the prestige won by the Red Armies in the war caused a
considerable increase in the membership of left-wing parties in the
Middle East; and in Egypt Nahhas welcomed the establishment of a
Russian Legation, which might enable him to drive a harder bar¬
gain with Britain in the future. The tone of Soviet propaganda has
been critical of the Arab League, as a British creation representing
in the main conservative interests; but it is always ready to abet the

1 Times diplomatic correspon dent, 18 August 1947.

2 do., 3 and 4 February 1948.

276 A Short History of the Middle East

nationalists in their efforts to throw off British influence, and the
left-wing parties have been quick to adopt such catchwords as
‘national, ‘liberation 9 , and ‘democratic 9 in their titles. There is a
‘National Liberation committee,jparty, and league, in Egypt, Iraq,
and Palestine respectively, and a ‘National Co-operation Front 9 in
Cyprus, the counterparts of the ‘National Liberation Front 9 which
is seeking to seize power in Greece. Some of the ‘intellectuals 9 who
form the leadership of these movements join them out of genuine
disgust at the inefficiency and corruption of the present ruling-
class; others despair of ever finding what they consider, none too
modestly, a fair return for their abilities under their present con¬
servative rulers; and some are chronic malcontents who, in their
envy of the established order and hatred of the British in¬
fluence they see behind it, have sold themselves to Communism
now as they sold themselves to Nazi propagandists nine years
ago.

In the cities of Egypt bookshops dealing in Soviet and Com¬
munist propaganda were opened in the latter part of the war, and
Communist opinions gained some adherents among members of
the foreign communities and Egyptian students and organized
labour. In a number of strikes in 1945-6 the strikers appeared to be
well supplied with funds from some undisclosed source. The
Egyptian authorities, always on the alert for any revolutionary
movement, for which Egypt with its glaring contrasts of wealth
and poverty provides a favourable field, arrested seventeen alleged
Communists in December 1945; and in July 1946 nearly 300
suspects, apparently ‘intellectuals 9 for the most part, were arrested,
and eleven social or cultural organizations suppressed. They were
alleged to be working in league with the radical wing of the Wafd
to organize opposition to Sidqfs negotiations for a revision of the
Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. No positive charge was made that the
movement was Russian-inspired, though the paper Akhbar al-Yom
declared that it was doubtful whether the full facts would be dis¬
closed ‘owing to international considerations 9 ; and it is significant
that about this time Soviet press and radio propaganda had been
applauding the Wafd for its opposition to compromise with
Britain. In October a royal decree was signed, prescribing severe
penalties for persons who sought ‘to spread propaganda to change
the basic constitutional principles of the country 9 or to form with¬
out official permission societies with an ‘international colour-

Russia and the Middle East 277

mg’, or who received funds from abroad for subversive pur-
poses.

Before the First World War the Russian Church had assiduously
cultivated the Orthodox Christian communities in the Levant,
attracting them by a richly-endowed educational mission which
established in Syria and Palestine 100 schools with 360 teachers and
some 10,000 pupils. After the Revolution the Soviet government
claimed the properties of the Russian ecclesiastical mission and the
schools, but the mandatory governments of the Levant States and
Palestine held that in view of its open persecution of religion in
Russia the claim was unreasonable. The properties were accord¬
ingly administered by the mandatories, and most of the schools
lapsed for lack ofsubsidies from Russia. In March 1945 the Russian
Patriarch, recently set up in Moscow by the Soviet government,
visited the Holy Land in state, and celebrated a solemn liturgy at the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre which was attended by repre¬
sentatives of all the oriental churches. It was reported in August
1947 that agreement had been reached on the recognition
of the Soviet title to property in Syria and Lebanon which had
belonged before 1917 to the Tsarist government or the Russian
Church. 1

At the beginning of 1946 the Soviet Minister in Beirut offered
Russian support to the Syrian and Lebanese governments in their
efforts to get rid of the British and French occupying forces, and the
Soviet veto was exercised in the Security Council to quash an
American compromise-resolution, because it did not state that the
presence of these forces was a threat to international peace. 2 Here
again no indication of collusion between the Soviet diplomatic
missions and the local left-wing movement has been published,
though it was unofficially stated in the summer of 1946 that Soviet
agents were spending large sums on propaganda. The conservative
Syrian Muslim population has been little affected by Communism,
and those attracted to it belong in the main to minorities: the large
Armenian communities in Aleppo and Beirut, urbanised Kurds and
Orthodox Christians in Damascus. In Beirut and other parts of
Lebanon the large class of semi-educated Levantines employed at
poor wages as teachers, clerks, mechanics etc. constitute, next to
the Persian Tudeh, the most vigorous Communist party in the

1 Bourse Egyptienne, 12 August 1947.

2 The World To-day, III (1947), 84.

278 A Short History of the Middle East

Middle East, and have a powerful influence over the Lebanese
trades-union movement. The Syrian and Lebanese governments
were reported to have detained some 500 suspected Communists
in the summer of 1946; but during 1947 the propaganda made by
the agents of King Abdullah of Transjordan for his Greater Syria
project, in which no Arab can believe that he does not have at least
the tacit approval of the British government, caused the ruling
clique in Syria to seek the support of the Communists, who are
naturally hostile to Abdullah as an ally of Britain. 1

In Iraq there are two Communist parties which appear to differ
over personalities rather than policy. Some fifty members were
arrested in January 1947 and seven leaders were sentenced to long
terms of imprisonment for ‘conspiracy to overthrow the govern¬
ment by force, and inciting members of the armed forces and the
police to bear arms against the government’. The left-wing press
appealed to Arab nationalist sentiment in strongly attacking' the
Turco-Iraqi Treaty. The main instrument of Russian policy in Iraq
has, however, been not the class-struggle, but the discontent of the
Kurdish minority in Northern Iraq, which is nearly one-fifth of the
total population of the country and has been neglected by the Arab
politicians of Baghdad. This discontent has periodically found
expression in tribal revolts, duly countered more or less effectively
by Iraqi military expeditions. This normal routine was given a new
direction when in 1945 the leaders of the rebellious Barzani Kurds
escaped into Persian Kurdistan and joined forces with Kurdish
rebels against the Persian central government who were receiving
strong Soviet encouragement from Azerbaijan. 2 Iraqi fears of a
Soviet-inspired Kurdish irruption from Persia into Iraq in the
spring of 1946 did not, however, materialize; and the collapse of the
‘national government’ of Persian Kurdistan in December, follow¬
ing the Persian government’s assertion of its authority in Azer¬
baijan, eased the tension in Iraq. In April 1947 the Persian authori¬
ties executed three of the Persian Kurdish rebel leaders, and drove
the Barzanis back to the Iraqi frontier, where their deputy-leader
Sheikh Ahmed surrendered to the Iraqi authorities. Some 1,500,
however, escaped back into Persia, and a thousand with their leader
Mullah Mustafa crossed into Russian territory.

1 The World To-Day, January 1948, 25.

2 On this movement, see Archie Roosevelt Jr., in Middle East Journal, I
(Washington, 1947), 247 ff.

279

Russia and the Middle East

In Palestine the former united. Communist party split during the
war into Jewish and Arab sections, since they could not reconcile
their attitudes towards Zionism. The Jewish Communists are still
an insignificant fraction of their community, completely over¬
shadowed by the Zionist movement. The Arab left-wing move¬
ment has made considerable headway among the semi-educated
and the ranks of organized labour, and is strongly opposed to the
conservative leaders of the Arab nationalist movement. Ittihad,
the left-wing organ of the Palestine Arab Workers’ Congress and
the ‘intellectual’ League of National Liberation, has constantly de¬
manded that the unrepresentative Arab Higher Executive should
give place to a new organization in which the workers would be
represented. On the Zionist question both the Jewish and the Arab
Communists repeated the party-line, as stated by M. Gromyko
to the U.N.O. Assembly in May 1947, that the solution of the
Palestine problem lay in the ending of British control, after which
Arabs and Jews could be left to settle their differences in a bi¬
national ‘democratic’ state. On 13 October, however, the Soviet
representative at U.N.O. came out in support of the partition
plan, and on 31 December M. Gromyko spoke at a Jewish dinner
in New York of die new Jewish State as an instrument of the
‘liberation of the peoples of the Arab East from the last shackles
of colonial dependence’. In response the two parties on the left
wing of the Zionist movement, which between them polled nearly
a quarter of all the Palestine votes for the last Zionist Congress,
merged on 24 January 1948 in a new group which had on its central
committee the former Hagana leader Dr. Moshe Sneh. On 31
January the British government protested to the Communist
government of Bulgaria against its allowing 19,000 illegal Jewish
i mmig rants to sail from Bulgarian ports in the latter part of 1947. 1

The Soviet demand early in 1946 that she should be given the
trusteeship of the former Italian colonies of Tripolitania and
Eritrea was withdrawn in favour of the compromise-agreement
to maint ain the status quo for one year after the Italian peace-treaty
came into force. Russia was duly represented at the meetings to
consider the future of the Italian colonies which began on 3
October 1947. At the end of January 1948 she protested against
the American decision, announced a fortnight before, to reopen
the Mallaha airfield near Tripoli; it was, however, explained that

1 Times diplomatic correspondent, 7 February.

T

280 A Short History oj the Middle East

this arrangement would continue only so long as Britain remained
responsible for the territory. 1

Before the First World War the Russian Church sent repeated
missions to Ethiopia to induce union between the two churches. 2
Since the recent war Russia has established diplomatic relations
with Ethiopia. The Russian propaganda-machine denounced
the British proposal in 1946 for a united Somaliland, and in Janu¬
ary 1948 the Italian Communist paper Unite accused the British
government of responsibility for the deaths which had recently
occurred at Mogadishu in a clash between Italian colonists and
the Young Somali League, provoked by the former. 3

The governments of the Arab states have shown concern at
Russian post-war policy in the Middle East in proportions varying
with their proximity to the U.S.S.R., their antipathy to Com¬
munism, and their personal ambitions and standing in the complex
internal politics of the Arab League. Iraq has been the Arab coun¬
try most exposed to the Russian activities of the past three years,
and it was therefore natural that the names of Nuri as-Sa’id, Iraq’s
elder statesman and the ablest judge of foreign politics in the Arab
world, and of King Abdullah of Transjordan should have been
connected with a plan to bring Turkey and the Arab League into a
defensive alliance, which would also include Persia, and Afghani¬
stan, who with Turkey and Iraq were signatories of the 1937 Saad-
abad Pact of mutual assistance. 4 The visits of Nuri and Abdullah
to Turkey have established in treaty-form an entente between
Turkey and Iraq and Transjordan, significantly the most pro-
British of the Arab states; but the factors militating against the
Arab League as a whole entering into closer association with
Turkey are numerous. Syrian politicians still hope to recover the
lost sanjaq of Alexandretta (the Hatay), while the Turks insist that
they should acknowledge its cession to Turkey as final; Ibn Sa’ud
andFaruq are bothjealous and suspicious of the Hashimite dynasty,
while King Abdullah’s open effort to succeed his brother Faisal as
king of a Greater Syria has been supported by a body of malcon¬
tents in Syria, but is actively opposed by the rulers of Syria,

1 Times diplomatic correspondent, 31 January 1948.

2 J. Richter, History of Protestant Missions in the Near East, 57.

3 Times diplomatic correspondent, 28 January.

4 This Pact was occasioned by the challenge to the status quo in the Levant
and Middle East presented by the rise of Italy as an aggressive naval and
military power. (Survey of International Affairs, 1936, 201 ff.) Subsequent
attempts to read into it an anti-British or anti-Russian orientation are gratuitous.

Russia and the Middle East

281

Lebanon, and Sa’udi Arabia. Azzam Pasha, the secretary of the
Arab League, is reported to be jealous of Nuri Pasha. Though
King Faruq visited Turkey in September 1946, Egyptian nation¬
alist opinion resented Turkish suggestions that Egypt should
renew her alliance with Britain so as to strengthen the front
against any Russian aggression. Now that the Turks have
secured guarantees of American support, they are probably less
inclined to embroil themselves in the fickle politics of the Arab
League, close association with which would probably be a hind¬
rance rather than a help to Turkish interests.

The Russian statesmen to-day regard the Middle East as a 2,000-
mile-long breach in the deep defensive glacis which they have been
busily constructing since the war from the Baltic to the Pacific, and
as a base from which some of their most precious assets, the corn-
lands of the Ukraine and the oilfields of the Caucasus, appear
exposed to aerial invasion at short range by the capitalist'
Powers. They have, therefore, sought to convert Turkey, the Fer¬
tile Crescent, Persia, and Afghanistan into a series of friendly
satellite-states. The most suitable time for attempting this consoli¬
dation of their position was immediately after the War, when
public opinion in Britain was war-weary and in large measure
averse from opposing an ally whose superior social and political
virtues had been extolled in four years of propaganda; when the
Russians ‘thought they could see the British Empire crumbling,
and that expansion to fill Britain’s place in Europe and the Middle-
East would be easy and inexpensive’; 1 and when ‘there was a
serious chance that the United States might refuse to help Britain
hold the line’. 2

Secondly, Stalin stated in February 1946 that the U.S.S.R.
needed to attain an oil-production of roughly twice the pre-war
level in order to be self-sufficient for the increasing mechanization
of both her economy and her armed forces; but at present she owns
only about 9 per cent, of the world s proven oil reserves, whereas
some 86 per cent, is in American, British and Dutch hands. 3 She is
therefore impelled to seek new sources of supply, and is naturally
attracted to the known deposits in Persia adjacent to her frontiers.
Frustrated, at least for the present, in her demand for an oil-

„ r 1 party P am P hlet > Cards on the Table, summarized in The Times. 22

May 1947. *

2 A. Wolfers, in International Affairs , XXIII (1947), 24.

3 Economist, 3 January 1947.

282

A Short History of the Middle East

concession in North Persia, she jealously sees the abundant
supplies of South Persia and the Persian Gulf region, estimated
to contain 30 per cent, of the total world reserves, in the hands
of British and American interests. Britain, on the other hand, clings
to her Middle East oil as the one source of supply under her own
control; while the U.S.A., with her gigantic domestic consump¬
tion of oil and the decreasing reserves of the American continent, is
anxious to acquire new sources of supply in the Middle East. The
relations obtaining between Russia and the other Powers rule out
the possibility of an agreement on the fair allocation between them
of the Middle East oil supplies, which would be acceptable to the
U.S.A. and Britain only as part of a general settlement of all the
points at issue. 1

To sum up the present situation, while Russia’s interest in
gaining control of the Straits and the oilfields is obviously strategic,
her interest in the rest of the Middle East may be described as
tactical, her object being to exploit its political and social instability
in order to harass the Western Powers and make it more difficult
for them to use the region as a base for the ‘capitalist war’ which
she dreads.

1 At the 1947 Labour party conference Mr. Bevin, recalling a delegate’s sug¬
gestion that parts of the Middle East should become the responsibility of an
international organization, said, ‘I am not going to be a party to voluntarily
putting British interests in a pool, while everybody else sticks to his own/
(Applause.) (Times, 30 May 1947).

CHAPTER X

The Western Powers and the Middle East To-day

I n the First World War Britain confirmed the dominant
position which she had in the nineteenth century established

in the Middle East for the purpose of using it as an inert shock-
absorber interposed between her European rivals and her Indian
, Empire. However, immediately after that war nationalism, which
the Foreign Office had cautiously encouraged during the war as a
tactical instrument against the Ottoman Empire, continued to
press its demands for independence so violently and at so many
points that Britain could not offer it a total resistance without
becoming involved in repressive military operations, for which
the war-weary British public were not prepared. Such repression
would, moreover, have sharply conflicted with the principle of
national self-determination then manifest in the world, to which
the rulers of Britain, conscious that the period of her unchallenge¬
able supremacy in the world had passed, could not entirely run
^counter. 1 Accordingly, successive British governments sought
to compromise with the nationalist forces, conceding a large
measure of self-government but striving to retain for Britain
strategic bases and some control over their foreign policy designed
to prevent the Middle Eastern countries from becoming the
allies or instruments of any Power unfriendly to Britain. Com-
, promises providing temporary satisfaction to both parties were
thus reached with Egypt, Iraq, Sa’udi Arabia and Transjordan.
In Palestine, while permitting a ten-fold expansion and consolid¬
ation of the Jewish National Home, Britain made concessions
to the growing insistence of Arab nationalism by ever-increasing
attention, in her interpretation of the elastically-worded Balfour

1 An important factor in British foreign policy has been the need to ensure
that it ‘is so directed as to harmonize with the general desires and ideals common
to all mankind, and more particularly that it is closely identified with the
primary and vital interests of a majority, or as many as possible, of the other
nations’. Foreign Office memo, by Sir Eyre Crowe, quoted in British Security,
by a Chatham House Study Group (1946), 34 f.

284 A Short History oj the Middle East

Declaration and the Mandate, to the clauses safeguarding Arab
rights.

Professor E. H. Carr has remarked that while Britain was able
to abandon her formal authority in Egypt and Iraq, and yet
maintain her military and economic predominance there by
indirect influence and control, France shrank from taking the same
step in Syria; and he suggested that this difference in policy was
the direct consequence of Britain’s superior economic power to
that of France. 1 While this is true, it is probably not the whole
truth, for there is a fundamental difference between the principles
underlying the British and French policies towards dependent
peoples. Basically, British principles, while realist and self-inter¬
ested, have in their working-out usually been ready to consider
and be influenced by the salient needs and wishes of those peoples.,
French colonial policy, on the other hand, has a certain idealist
basis; but since that idealism is itself rooted in an excess of self¬
esteem, it is commonly not prepared to give consideration to con¬
flicting claims and interests. In the French acquisition and retention
of the Levant mandate material factors did not bulk very large; 2
a more important factor was the desire to expand the extensive
French educational and cultural organizations there, or at least
to prevent them from passing under the possibly unsympathetic
aegis of any other Power. Since the flower of French genius is
essentially intellectual, Frenchmen have persuaded themselves that
the intellectual elite of other cultures cannot fail to be so convinced
of the transcendent superiority of French culture that they will
readily discard for it the essentials of their own culture. They
have thus disregarded the fact that the sum of habits and beliefs
which is the basis of a culture does not consist of intellectual
concepts to be adopted or discarded at will, but is derived from
deeply-rooted emotions handed down through successive gener¬
ations of the culture-group. Consequently, when the centri¬
fugal emotion of nationalism has reasserted itself in those who
have acquired French culture, their French mentors have been
offended at their perversity; and the reaction of French colonial
policy to such rebuffs has been the fostering of minorities and the
thwarting of attempts at national unity. Thus her policy of pro¬
tecting the Lebanese Christians led France on to annex the Syrian

1 Twenty Years' Crisis (1939), 131.

2 Elizabeth Monroe, The Mediterranean in Politics, 77 ff.

Western Powers and the Middle East To-day 285

hinterland, to whose mainly Muslim culture she was distinctly
antipathetic; and once committed, not only were the interests of
French concessionaires and officials and the upholding of French
prestige obstacles to the handing-over of authority, but she could
not lightly contemplate relinquishing her hold in the face of grow¬
ing Arab nationalism without stimulating the demands of the
Arab nationalists and supporters of pan-Islam in those North
African dependencies which were so much more essential to her.
Consequently, even after the collapse of metropolitan France in
1940, her representatives clung on to her Levantine sphere of
influence with a desperation that was probably a direct conse¬
quence of their inner awareness of their lack of effective power
and ability to attain France’s ends by means less crude than force;
until at length the fait accompli of 1945 compelled Frenchmen
reluctantly to abandon much that might have been saved by greater
readiness to compromise even as late as the previous year.

It is significant that the only period, in which the British have
imagined that their culture might be transmitted to others merely
* by a process of intellectual education, was when the utilitarian
Macaulay was planning to educate the elite of India along exclu¬
sively British lines. Since that time, however, Englishmen in
close contact with peoples of alien culture have become aware
that a culture is deeply rooted in inherited emotions which it is
both difficult and dangerous to try to uproot. The more under¬
standing British official, in India or in the colonies, has acquired
' an understanding of, and a respect for, the culture of those among
whom he is living, to a degree that seems much less common in
the French colonies. The French insistence on their own language
I as the almost exclusive medium of instruction has no counterpart
| in British colonial practice. The Englishman, with his physical
concept of 'race’, does not, like the Frenchman with his intel¬
lectual concept of civilisation, imagine that other races can be
educated into becoming British or French. 1 While the British
colonial administrations have been accused of taking., too little
interest in education, the French have certainly been too much
concerned with assimilation . When the dependent peoples have
1 shown themselves self-centred, alien, and hostile to this process,

\ the French have been indignant, if not revengeful; but the British,

1 Though when uprooted from their traditional homes and shipped across
the Atlantic they have become Americans.

286 A Short History of the Middle East

wliile over-sensitive to their lack of gratitude for the material
benefits of orderly administration, have more philosophically
resigned themselves to the transfer of authority, though with
typical realism they have hitherto always retained for themselves
a strategic point d’ appui.

Although the Second World War confirmed beyond any
doubt the unchallengeable position of the U.S.A. as the greatest
world Power, she did not at first adjust herself in her Middle
East relationships. Until the war, wliile reserving for herself the
economic "open door and the unrestricted right to criticize, she
* was content that Britain should bear the full responsibility for
"this region. The war increased American interests and responsi¬
bilities there; but when in 1944 political differences in liberated
Greece came to a head, the Americans hastened to withdraw their
forces and liaison-officers and left Britain to deal with the problem
alone. Similarly, at the beginning of 1946, with Russian pressure
on Persia visibly increasing from week to week, the U.S. govern¬
ment precipitately withdrew their troops two months in advance
of the agreed date. But the impoverishment of Britain’s resources
in capital, material, and productive capacity as a result of the war
, subsequently became evident; early in 1947 she had to ask the
: U.S.A. to take over and augment her financial commitments to
. Greece and Turkey; and her abdication of authority in India and
Palestine is a in part at least, an index of her diminished power in
the world. Already in the first half of 1946 an eminent American
student of the Middle East had pointed the moral:

"Whereas Great Britain is no longer capable of preserving a
balance of power in this strategic area, the question is whether
the United States, in co-operation with Great Britain or alone,
is able or willing to restore the balance, and whether from the
point of view of global politics the United States can afford now,
any more than Great Britain could formerly, to contemplate the
entrenchment of the Soviet Union in strategic positions along that
‘vital line extending from the Mediterranean to India.’ 1

Later in 1946 the American government stated that it regarded

1 Dr. H. L. Hoskins, The New Era of Power-Politics (Foreign Policy Associa¬
tion, Headline Series, No. 57, New York, May-June 1946). On the other
hand E. A. Speiser’s apprehensions of America’s ‘pronounced dependence on
Britain . . . amounting to a state of vassalage’ in Middle Eastern affairs {The
United States and the Near East> part III, sec. 10), though expressed later in
1946, were already outdated by events.

Western Powers and the Middle East To-day 287

the maintenance of the independence of Turkey as an essential
part of its foreign policy, and was opposed to the Soviet aim of
winning exclusive control over the Straits. Henry Wallace’s
campaign for the abandoning of American 'support of the British
Empire’ and its replacement by 'collaboration with Russia in the
undisturbed economic development of areas in which we have
joint interests, such as the Middle East’, was sharply rebuffed by
the electorate in the congressional elections of November, 1946.
The agreement between American and British oil-interests in
the following month for sharing the output of the South Persian
oilfield foreshadowed a closer collaboration; and in March 3947
President Truman called on Congress to take over and augment
the British commitments to Greece and Turkey. In support of
’ this policy Senator Vandenberg, the leader of the Republican
majority in the Senate, told that House:

'If the Middle East falls within the orbit of aggressive Com¬
munist expansion, the repercussions will echo from the Dardan¬
elles to the China Sea and westward to the rims of the Atlantic.
Indeed, in this foreshortened world, the Middle East is not far
*■ enough for safety from our own New York... f 1 The U.S.A.
has also given moral support to the Persian government in resisting
the Soviet demands for an oil-concession, and is supplying it with
arms.

Until the autumn of 1947 it had appeared that the Middle
East, with its great contrasts of a self-indulgent and arbitrary
plutocracy, an intelligentsia discontented with its economic and
social status, and an urban and rural proletariat living in great
poverty, provided an admirable breeding-ground for Communist
propaganda, even though this had not yet had time to produce far¬
-reaching results. Critics were free with their rebukes to the British,
and to a lesser degree the American, governments for their apparent
* attachment to the 'reactionary ruling cliques’ of the Arab League
countries, Turkey and Persia, and for their apparent failure to
single out for support more deserving 'democratic’ and pro¬
gressive’ elements in the population. 2

However, the situation has temporarily, at least, been greatly

1 8 April 1947.

2 The most recent criticism of this kind appeared in The Fortnightly, February
1948, 96 ff., by an American, Professor Hans Heymann. On the political
inadequacy, at the present stage, of Middle Eastern liberal intellectuals, cL
A. C. Edwards, in International Affairs XXIII (1947), 56 f.

388 A Short History of the Middle East

changed by the Russians’ support of the partition of Palestine
and their apparent solicitude for the embryonic Jewish State. The
changes of Soviet policy are apt to be so abrupt and radical that
the Zionists are liable to be dropped as soon as they have fulfilled
their purpose in the devious tactics of Soviet foreign policy.
Meanwhile, it is probable that the U.S.S.R. has lost a considerable
proportion of its support in Arab left-wing circles, which are in
general just as anti-Zionist as the rest of politically-minded Arabs;
and even if (or when) Soviet policy is subsequently reversed, it
will be some time before the loss of confidence can be repaired.
This gives the U.S.A. and Britain a short respite in which to assist
and encourage Middle Eastern governments to develop their
economies for the benefit of the mass of the population. Not that
the financing of ambitious plans is an infallible or short-term
instrument of economic and social betterment, since ‘sums of
money starting on a highroad with a definite j oumey ’ s end in view
have a nimble trick of slipping into by-ways’ 1 in the Middle East.

, The longer-term goal is the orderly and evolutionary extension
> of economic and political power from the present narrow ruling-
class to a much wider cross-section of the population, with the
1 urban and rural masses being fittingly educated to fill a more con¬
structive role in the economic life of their communities, and
eventually to assist in shaping their political future also. But the
process of social change by evolutionary means is inevitably a slow
one: Lewis Mumford likens it to ‘a geological process of leaching
and displacement’ 2 ; and to accelerate it by impulsion from outside
is liable to produce reactions disadvantageous to the impelling
Power. Never perhaps has either the American or the British
government been required to display a more delicate combin¬
ation of sensitive understanding, firmness and suppleness of pur¬
pose, and tactful handling of personalities, than the situation in
the Middle East will demand in the years to come.

In the longer perspective, however, nothing would be more
erroneous than to suppose that the development of an economy,
the improvement of a social system, the spread of democracy or of
socialism, or any combination of these things, will of itself radic¬
ally improve the condition of man, in the Middle East or else¬
where. After some three centuries of increasing complacency in

1 Times Tehran correspondent, 11 July 1947.

2 The Condition of Man (1944), 335.

Western Powers and the Middle East To-day 289

human ingenuity in constructing machines and institutions
(culminating simultaneously in the atomic bomb and the United
Nations Organization!), experience is at last teaching our gener-
ation that the mere changing of economic, or social, or political
systems does not extirpate or sublimate the inordinate self-will
which lies at the root of most human evils: it only causes it to
assume new, and perhaps more virulent, forms. The humanist
reformer is working against the relentless gravitational pull of
human self-will. Sooner or later, he sees all the hard-won progress
of generations of peaceful endeavour dissipated in a decade of
passion or panic; and in his despair and humiliation he may then
realize that the reform of human institutions is no substitute for
the regeneration of the human soul Only religion, divesting
mankind of his conceit in himself and restoring him to a proper
sense of his true place, can make him see that his own nature
'impels him to corrupt the very instruments and institutions
which he devises for the ordering of his social life', and that civiliza¬
tion can be transformed and politics redeemed only through 'the
contact of Eternity with the Historical, and through the accept¬
ance of Divine sovereignty as the source from which the many
forms of human sovereignty are derived’. 1

1 Canon C. E. Hudson, in International Affairs, XXIII (1947), 6; Rev. Geraint
Vaughan Jones, Democracy and Civilization (1946), 281.

List of Authorities

(Works prefixed with a * are important for succeeding chapters also)

Ch. I

L. Dudley Stamp: Asia. (London, 1946.)

V. Gordon Childe: What Happened in History. (London,

1942.)

W. F. Albright: From Stone Age to Christianity. (John

Hopkins Press, 1946.)

Christopher Dawson: The Making oj Europe. (London,

1934 *)

Ch. II

Ph. Hitti: History of the Arabs. (New York,

1937.)

R. A. Nicholson: Literary History of the Arabs. (London,

1923.)

De Lacy O'Leary: Arabic Thought and its Place in History.

(London, 1921.)

Sir Thos. Arnold and A.

Guillaume (edit.): The Legacy of Islam . (London, 1931.)

A. Mieli: La Science Arabe. (Leiden, 1938.)

D. B. Macdonald: Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and

Constitutional Theory. (London,
1903.)

Ernest Barker: The Crusades. (London, 1923.)

J. La Monte: Crusade and Jihad (in The Arab

Heritage, ed. Nabih A. Faris; Prince¬
ton, 1944).

S. Lane-Poole: History of Egypt in the Middle Ages.

(London, 1901.)

Encyclopaedia of Islam, art. Turks,
B.IV.

J. H. Kramers:

292

A Short History of the Middle East

Ch. Ill

Encyclopaedia oj Islam, Art. Egypt.

*A. E. Crouchley: Economic Development of Modem Egypt.

(London, 1938.)

Jacob de Haas: History oj Palestine. (New York,

1934 .)

H. Lammens:

*S. Longrigg:

*Sir A. Wilson:
*Sir Percy Sykes:
*D. G. Hogarth:
A. C. Wood:

Edgar Prestage:

Sir W. Foster:

La Syrie. (Beirut, 1938.)

Four Centuries of Modern Iraq. (Lon¬
don, 1925.)

The Persian Gulf. (London, 1928.)
History of Persia. (London, 1930.)
History of Arabia. (London, 1922.)
History oj the Levant Company. (Lon¬
don, 1935.)

The Portuguese Pioneers. (London,
1933 .)

England's Quest of Eastern Trade.
(London, 1933.)

J. A. R. Marriott:
E. Driault:

H. Dodwell:

Sir Arnold Wilson:
Ph. Graves:

E. M. Earle:

Sir Valentine Chirol:

Lord Cromer:

*Lord Lloyd:

M. Rifaat Bey:

*Geo. Antonins:

Ch. IV

The Eastern Question. (London, 1918.}
La Question d*Orient. (Paris, 1898.)
The Founder of Modern Egypt. (London
1931 .)

The Suez Canal. (London, 1933.)

Life of Sir Percy Cox. (London, 1941.)
Turkey, the Great Poivers, and the
Baghdad Railway. (New York,

1923*)

Ch. V

The Egyptian Problem. (London,
1920.)

Modern Egypt. (London, 1908.)

Egypt since Cromer. (London, 1933.)
The Awakening of Modern Egypt. (Lon¬
don, 1947.)

The Arab Awakening. (London, 1938.)

293

List of Authorities

*P. W. Ireland: Iraq, A Study in Political Developments

(London, 1937-)

*L. P. Elwell-Sutton: Modern Iran. (London, 1941.)

Chs. VI, VII

Lord Wavell: Allenhy in Egypt. (London, 1943.)

Great Britain and Egypt , 1914-36 (Royal Institute of Inter¬
national Affairs: London, 1936).

Sir A. Wilson: Loyalties, Vol. II. (1936.)

Royal Commission Report on Palestine, 1937.

Great Britain and Palestine, 1915-45 (Royal Institute of Inter¬
national Affairs: London, 1946).

A. M. Hyamson: Palestine, A Policy. (London, 1942.)

James Parkes: The Emergence of the Jewish Problem.

(London, 1946.)

Nevill Barbour: ‘ Nisi Dominus, a Survey of the Palestine

Controversy. (London, 1946.)

The Political History of Palestine under British Administration.
(Memo, by H. M. G. presented in July 1947 to The United
Nations Special Committee on Palestine.)

A. H. Hourani: Syria and Lebanon. (London, 1946.)

Ch. VIII

Economic Development of the Middle
East . (London, 1945.)

Middle East Science. (London, 1946.)
Agricultural Development of the Middle
East. (London, 1946.)

Egypt: An Economic and Social Analysis.
(London, 1947.)

Land and Poverty in the Middle East,.
(London, 1948.)

Ch. IX

Raymond Lacaste: La Russie sovietique et la Question

d* Orient. (Paris, 1946.)

A. Bonne:

E. B. Worthington:

B. A. Keen:

Charles Issawi:
Doreen Warriner:

Index

Abbas II, Khedive of Egypt, 114,
117, 197 n. 1.

Abbasids, 26-34, 46, 50, 56.

Abduh, Sheikh Mohammed, 117.

Abdul Hadi, Awni, 121, 154.

Abdul Hamid II, 90, 94, 96, 104,
120, 127 n. 1.

Abdullah, King of Transjordan,
125, 141, 160, 162, 185, 245-6,
278, 280.

Abuqir Bay, Battle of, 73.

Aden, 74, 80, 83, 127.

Afghani, Jamalud-Din al, 111.

Afghanistan, 69, 80, 87-8, 94, 198,
262.

Agriculture, 1, 3, 11, 27, 119, 233,
236, and see Irrigation.

’Ahd, al- (political society), 122,
125, 140-1.

Akka (Acre), 46, 48, 51, 73.

Alawis, 164, 245 n. 1, and see
Latakia.

Aleppo, Medieval, 34,46,50,52-3;

Ottoman, 62, 65, 68, 70;

Modern, 164, 256, 277,
280.

Alexandretta, Sanjaq of, 191, 280.

Alexandria, Ancient and Medieval,
5, 8, 16, 52-3;

Ottoman, 61, 65, 68;

Modern, 112-13,172.

Ali, Caliph, 19, 21.

Ali Bey of Egypt, 63, 72.

Allenby, Lord, 134, 137, 167.

Almohades and Almoravides, 39.

American University of Beirut,
103.

Anglo-American Committee of
Inquiry (Palestine), 212-13.

Anglo-Egyptian Treaty (1936),
171-3, 227.

Anglo-Xranian Oil Co., 94, 96,
232 n. 1, 264, 273.

Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1930, 1948),
174, 231.

Anglo-Persian Agreement (1919),
261-2.

Anglo-Russian Agreement (1907),
94, 96.

Antioch, 5, 9, 41, 46, 48, 51.

Arab Bureau (Cairo), 127, 138.

Arab character, 20-2, 31, 124.

Arab Higher Committee/Execu¬
tive (Palestine), 185, 187,

225.

Arab League, 131, 215, 219,
230-1, J 245-7, 275, 280-1,

287.

Arab Revolt, 125-8.

Arabi Pasha, 112-14.

Arabia, 11-19, 34, 58, 76, 85, 161,
193, 232 n. 1. 241, 245, and see
Yemen.

Arabic language, 59, 103.

Aris, Mustafa al-, 256.

Armenians, 59 n. 1, 165, 249, 256,
268, 277.

Ashiqa party (Sudan), 229 n. 1.

Asia Minor, 20, 43, 54.

Assyrians, 8 n. 1, 176-8, 199.

Aswan hydro-electric scheme, 119,
240.

Atabegs, 46, 51.

Ayyubids, 46, 48.

Azerbaijan, 258, 269-74.

Azhar, al-, 34, 44, 51 n. 2, 252.

Azzam, Abd ur-Rahman, 230,
245, 281.

A Short History of the Middle East

2 96

Baghdad, Medieval, 23-4, 26-8,
30-1, 34, 43, 50, 53;

Ottoman, 62, 74-5, 80;

Modem, 138, 199.

Bahrain, 65, 67, 88, 96, 232 n. 1.

Bakhtiari tribe, 273-4.

Balfour, Lord, 149-51, 283-4.

Bandar Abbas, 67-9, 74.

Banna, Hasan al-, 200, 249.

Basra, 16, 28, 62, 67, 69, 95-6,
138

Bedouin, 3, 53, 242.

Beirut, 62, 103, 277.

Bell, Gertrude, 138, 140-1,143-4.

Ben Gurion, David, 186, 204-5,
211, 214.

Black Death, 54.

Black Stone (Mecca), 12, 34.

Britain, 65-70; ch. IV, passim)
108, 110-20; chs. VI and VII,
passim) 239, 241, 258-62, 272,
281-8.

Bukhara, 27, 34.

Buwayhids, 34.

Byzantine Empire, 6-11, 15, 20,
37, 41,45,58.

Cairo, 16, 34, 56, 68, 136, 172.

Cairo Conference (1921), 144,
160.

Caliphate, 15, 16, 19, 34, 39, 50,
56, 127.

Cape Route, 61, 64, 68, 72.

Capitulations, 65, 172-3.

Carmathians, see Qaramita.

Chalcedon, Council of, 8-9.

Christianity, Early, 5-9, 12;
in medieval Muslim world, 13,
18, 20, 22-4, ^ 30, 35, 42;
in Ottoman Empire, 59, 83-6,
103-5, 121, 147,

Modern 163, 215, 246, 249,
252-3, 284, and see Ortho¬
dox Church.

Churchill, Winston, 137, 144,158,
160.

Circassians, 50, 111, 165-6.

Clayton, Sir Gilbert, 125, 174.
Coffee, 65, 67,169.

Communism, 239, 249, 254-6,
258; ch. IX, passim) 287.
Constantinople, 8, 9, 20, 54, 58,
69, and see Straits.

Copts, 8, 16, 23, 26, 31, 51, 118,
201 252

Cordoba, 34, 38-9.

Cotton, 81, 99, 100, 107, 237, 239.
Cox, Sir Percy, 138, 142-3, 145,
261.

Crimean War, 82, 87.

Cromer, Lord, 113-7, 119, 197

n. 1.

Crusades, 37, 45-51.

Curzon, Lord, 88-9, 93, 130, 133,
141,261.

Damascus, Medieval, 19, 24, 26,
34, 46, 53, 61;
Modern, 84,125,140-
1, 163-4, 166, 257
n. 1, 277.

Democratic party (Turkey), 244.
Druze, 60, 84, 464-5, 190-2, 244.
Dutch, 66, 68, 71, 74.

East India Co., 66-9, 72-4.

Edde, Emile, 207.

Education, 77, 85-6, 99, 103, 106,
115, 247-8, 250, 256, 288.

Egypt, pre-Islamic, 4, 5, 8,

Medieval, 15, 23-4, 26,
31, 34, 46, 50-1, 53,
64-5;

Ottoman, 58, 60-3, 72-5;

Nineteenth Century, 76-
83, 86, 93, 96, 99-103,
107-20;

Independent, 131-7, 166-
73, 194-8, 200-1, 226-
31,242-4,275-6,280-1;

Economic and Social, 236-
40, 251-4, 256-7, 264.

‘Exclusive Agreements’, 88-9, 93.

Index

2SF

Faisal I, King of Iraq, 125-7, 140,
144-5, 151, 162-3, 175-6.

Fakhr ud-Din, Amir, 62, 98.

Farah, Bulos, 255.

Faruq, King of Egypt, 197, 201,
226-7, 249, 280-1.

Fat at, al- (political society), 121,
124-5.

Fatimids, 34, 43, 46, 60 n. 1.

Fertile Crescent, term defined, 3.

Firuz, Prince Muza 5 far, 273-4.

France, 65, 68-9, 71-87, 93, 97,
103, 110-16, 130-1, 146, 161-6,
189-92, 199, 206-9, 215, 232
n. 1, 244-6, 284-5.

Frederick II, Holy Roman Em¬
peror, 38, 48.

Fuad, King of Egypt, 167-70.

Germany, 89-97, 126-8, 195-6,
198-202, 258, 260, 264.
Ghassan, Bani, 11, 15.

Ghazi, King of Iraq, 176, 178.
Ghazzali, al-, 35, 40, 44—5.

Gilan, Soviet republic of, 262,
266, 269.

‘Golden Square 5 , 196, 198-9.
Gorst, Sir Eldon, 117-18.

Hagana, 204-5, 212, 214 n. 2, 219.
Hajj, 12-14, 32.

Hanbal, Ibn, 41, 76 n. 1.

Harb, Salih, 197.

Harun ar-Rashid, 28.

Hashimite dynasty: see Husain,
Sharif; Abdullah; Faisal; Ghazi.
Hattin, Horns of, 48.

Haycraft Commission (Palestine),
157-8.

Health, public, 226,237-8.

Hijaz Railway, 96, 104, 127.
Histadruth, 209, 225, 255.
Hope-Simpson Report (Palestine)
181.

Hormuz, 64-5, 67, 74.

Hourani, Albert, 105, 250-1,

Husain ibn Ali, 21, 34.

Husain, Sharif, 125-7, 151, 161-2.
Husaini family, 154, 187, 245,
and see Mufti.

Ibrahim Pasha, 76, 78, 80, 82 n. 1,
83-4.

Ikhwan al-Muslimin, see Muslim
Brotherhood.

Imam, 21.

Immigration, Jewish, 148, 152,
158-9, 181-4, 186-8, 203-6,
212-16, 218-20.

Industries, 100-1, 239-40.

Inquisition, Muslim, 41.

Iraq, Medieval, 9, 15, 23, 26-7,
32, 34, 53;

Ottoman, 58, 60, 69, 74-5,
92-7, 105-7, 121, 127;

Under mandate and Inde¬
pendent, 138-46, 173-9,
194-6, 198-9, 231, 236,
241, 246, 256, 257 n. 1,
265, 278-80.

Iraq Petroleum Co., 162, 176, 232
n. 1, 256, 273.

Irgun Zvai Leumi, 203, 206, 210-
12 214 217.

Irrigation, 26-7, 50, 53, 61, 99,
114, 236,241.

Isfahan, 34, 46, 67-8.

Islam, Ch. II, passim) 117, 252.

Isma’il, Khedive of Egypt, 107-

11 .

Isma’ili sect, 32, 52.

Istanbul (see Constantinople).

Italy, 161,171,191,194-8.

Jabr, Salih, 231.

Jamal Pasha, 127.

Jazira (Syria), 164.

Jerusalem, 9, 16, 24, 48, 53, and
see Zionism.

Jews, before Islam, 5,12;

in medieval Islam, 13, 14,
18 , 35 , 38 - 9 , 51 ;

298

A Short History of the Middle East

Nineteenth Century, 108-9,
147-8;

and see Zionism.

Jewish Agency, 179, 209-15, 218,
222, and see Zionism.

Joseph, Bernard, 210, 214.

Ka’ba (Mecca), 12, 13.

Kamil, Mustafa (Egyptian nation¬
alist), 115-16.

Karbala, 21, 76 n. 1.

Kars and Ardahan, 262, 265, 268.
Khawarij, 19, 22.

KiUearn, Lord, 197, 201, 227.
King-Crane Commission, 152-3,
163.

Kitchener, Lord, 119-20.

Koran, see Qur’an.

Kurds, 46, 60, 164, 178, 199, 249,
272, 277-9.

Kuwait, 89, 92, 95, 232 n. 1.

Land Transfers (Palestine), 148,
152, 159, 181-4, 186, 188, 202-
6,212,216,220.

Latakia, 190-2.

Law, Muslim, 16,18, 25, 57.
Lebanon, 83-5, 103-5, 163-4,
206-9, 236, 244, 246, 252-3,
255,284.

Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 82.

Levant Co., 65, 68.

Levantines, 105, 277-8.

Lloyd, Lord, 119 n. 1, 169, 197

n.l.

Madina, 13, 14, 19, 21, 76 n. 1,
104, 127.

Magnes, Dr. Yehuda L., 225.
Mahdi, 32, 57,114, 229.

Mahir, Ali, 196-7.

Mahmud, Mohammed, 134,170-1.
Makram ’Ubaid, 201, 226, 243.
Mamluks, 50-56, 60, 63-4, 72.
Ma’mun, Caliph al-, 30, 41.

Mandates, 130-1, 141, 145, 157,
174, 188-9.

Mapai Party (Zionists), 155, 204
n, 1, 217.

Mardam, Jamil, 121.

Maronites, 83, 163, 246.

Maymun, Abdullah al-, 32, 34.

McMahon, Sir Henry, 126,146.

Mecca, 12, 32, 76 n. 1.

Medina (see Madina).

Meyerson, Mrs. Golda, 155, 218.

Midfa’i, Jamil, 142.

Midhat Pasha, 106.

Millet system, 18, 99.

Milner Report (Egypt), 135-7.

Misri, Aziz Ali al-, 122, 124, 197,
201 .

Mohammed, the Prophet, 12-16,
18,21,56.

Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt,
75-82, 99-103, 107, 147.

Mokha, 67, 69 n. 1.

Mongols, 48-51, 53.

Monophysites, 8-10, 253, and see
Copts.

Montreux Convention (1936, Tur¬
key), 263, 266, 268.

Montreux Convention (1937,
Egypt), 173.

Mosul, 46, 145, 162, 263.

Mufti of Jerusalem, 154, 179-80,
183,187,196, 202,215, 224-5.

Muscat, 65, 67, 74, 86.

Muslim Brotherhood, 200, 249-
50.

Mu’tazila, 25, 30, 57.

Nahhas, Mustafa an-, 168, 171,
201, 226-7, 243, 249, 275.
Napoleon I, 72-6.

Napoleon III, 82-7.

Nashashibi family, 154,187, 245.
Nationalism, 9, 96, 99, 104, 111-
28; chs. VI and VII, passim;
247-8.

‘National Liberation’ movements,
254, 276.

Index

Nestorians, 8, 24, 30, 176-8.
Nizam al-Mulk, 43, 52 n. 1.
Nuqrashi, Mahmud Fahmi an-,
167 n. 1, 227-8, 230, 243.

Nuri as-Sa’id, 175, 185, 280.

Oilfields, 78 n. 1, 94-6, 232, 239,
266, 272-5, 281-2, 287.

Oman, 69, 74, 83, 89.

Omar, Caliph, see ’Umar.
Orthodox Church, 78, 87, 249,
276-7.

Ottoman Empire, see Turks,
Ottoman.

Pachahji, Hamdi al-, 121, 145.

Palestine, Medieval, 9, 15, 23, 26,
31, 34, 53, and see
Crusades;

Ottoman, 59, 60, 62,
78,81,87, 89;
under Mandate, 131 n.
1, 146-59, 179-89,
202-6, 209-26, 245,
288;

Economic and Social,
233, 236, 239-42,
254-6,279, 288.

Palmach, 204, 210, 212, 214.

Palmerston, Lord, 76, 78, 80,
82-3, 147.

Pan-Islam, 104,127 n. 1.

Pan-Turanianism, 267.

Passfield White Paper (Palestine),
181-2.

Peel Commission (Palestine), 185—

6 .

Perim, 74, 83.

Persia, pre-Islamic, 4, 9, 11;

Medieval, 15, 16, 26, 32,
35, 56;

Safavid, Ch. Ill, passim;

Nineteenth Century, 75,
78 n. 1, 89, 94, 96, 105;

Modern, 193, 195, 199-

299

202, 259-66, 269-75,
282, 286-7.

Persian Gulf, 28, 64, 69, 80, 88-9,
92-5.

Pilgrimage, Christian, 45, 52, 59.

do., Muslim, see Hajj.
Pishevari, Ja’far, 269-72.
Portuguese, 63-7.

Printing-press 103, 105, 122.

Qaramita, 32.

Qashqai tribe, 273-4.

Qavam as-Sultani, Ahmed, 270-2,
274-5.

Quraish tribe, 12, 19.

Qur’an, 16, 25, 57.

Quwwatli, Shukri al-, 121, 207.

Railways, 81, 86, 89-96, 146,
256.

Rashid Ali al-Qilani, 196, 198-9,
265.

Red Sea, 65-6, 74, and see Aden.
Revisionist party (Zionism), 156,
179-80, 183,203,205 n. 1,217.
Riza Shah of Persia, 193, 262-4.
Russia, 75 , 78, 80, 87-92, 94, 97,
199, 228, 231, 232 n. 1, 254;
ch. IX, passim) 286-8.

Sa'dabad Pact, 280.

Sa’dist party (Egypt), 243,

Safavid dynasty, 86 n. 1.

Sa’id Pasha of Egypt, 82, 107.
Saladin, 46,48, 50.

Salisbury, Lord, 88, 92.
Samarqand, 27, 34, 52.

Samarra, 31-2.

Samuel, Lord, 154,157, 183.
Sa’ud, Ibn, 76 n. 1, 85,121, 161-2,
193,245,280.

Science and Scholarship, Muslim,
30, 34-45, 51-2.

Seljuks, see Turks, Seljuk.
Shammar tribe, 85,121,161,

300 A Short History

Shari’a law, 18.

Shaw Commission (Palestine),
180-2.

Shertok, Moshe, 160, 211, 214,
217.

Shi’a, 21, 27, 32, 34, 43, 51, 60,
139-40, 164.

Sicily, 37-8.

Sidqi, Baqir, 178.

Sidqi, Isma’il, 134, 170-1, 228-30,
243, 254, 276.

Sneh, Dr. Moshe, 210, 279.

Spain, Muslim, 20, 31, 35, 38-9.
Stern Group (Palestine), 203, 206,
210, 212, 217, 219.

Storrs, Sir Ronald, 125, 153.

• Straits, Black Sea, 78, 260, 263-5,
267-8.

Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian, 114, 137,
166-7, 170-2, 228-31.

Suez Canal, 72-3, 82-3, 96, 107,
109,113,118, 136,172,197.
Sufism,- 42.

Sulaiman PashaM Ikaq, 62, 69.
Sulh, Riyadh as-\20f.

Sunna, Sunnis, lo, 25, 43.
Supreme Muslim Council (Pales¬
tine), 179, 187.

Suwaidi, Tawfiq as-, 121.
Sykes-Picot Agreement, 146, 162.
Syria, pre-Islamic, 9;

Medieval, 15, 19, 23, 26,
31, 34, 45-6, 50, 53;
Ottoman, 60, 62, 78, 81, 89,
103-5, 120-1, 125-6;
under Mandate, 140-1,146,
161-6, 189-92, 194-6,
199, 206-9, 284-5;
Independent, 236-7, 244,
253, 256, 277.

4 Greater Syria* 245-6, 278,
281.

Tell el-Kebir, battle of, 113.
Timur Leng, 52-4.
Trades-Unionism, 171, 225, 253-
6 .

f the Middle East

Traditions of the Prophet, 18,
25.

Transjordan, 159-61, 185, 199,
231,236, 245,278.

Transoxiana, 20, 27, 31, 35.

Tudeh Party (Persia), 265-6,
273-4.

Tuma, Emile, 255.

Turkey, Turks, Turcomans, 31,

50;

Seljuk, 43-6;

Ottoman, 54, 56; ch. Ill,
passim ; 72-3, 77-8, 80,
84-6, 90-7, 103-7;

120 - 8 ;

Young Turk Revolution,
94, 118, 120;

Turkish Republic, 145,
190-1, 193, 202, 244,
262-9, 280-1, 287.

Turkish Petroleum Co., 95.

*Umar, Caliph, 15, 18, 19.
Umayyads, 19-26, 31, 39.

Umma party (Sudan), 229.

United Nations Organization,
219-23, 289.

United States of America, 209,
211-13, 217, 233 n. 1, 239, 241,
258, 269, 272, 281-2, 286-8.

Venice, 48, 63-5.

Wafd party, 133, 135, 166-71,
194, 201, 226-8, 243, 254, 276.
Wahhabis, 76, 161.

Wailing Wall dispute (Jerusalem),
180.

Weizmann, Dr. Hayyim, 149,
151-2, 160, 179, 182, 187, 210,
217.

White Paper, 1939 (Palestine),
188-9, 202, 206, 213.

Wilson, President, 135,149,151-3
Wilson, Sir Arnold, 138-43,

Index

Women, position of, 251, 256-7.
Woodhead Commission (Pales¬
tine), 187-8.

Yemen, 11, 32, 65, 67, 80, 127,
162, 193, 195, 241, 245.

301

Zaghlul, Sa’d, 117, 119, 133-6,
166-8, 243.

Zanj revolt, 32.

Zionism, 148-61, 179-89, 202-6,
209-26, 233, 236, 239-42, 279,
283-4, 288.

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