Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia

In Rabegh, ‘Ali quickly discovered the answer to this last question: the supplies had been stolen by Sheikh Hussain ibn Mubeiriq of the Zebayd Harb, who had been put in charge of the port. Ibn Mubeiriq, who had an old blood-feud with the Hashemites, was secretly a Turkish sympathizer. ‘Ali sent word to his youngest brother, Zayd, who arrived with Ahmad bin Mansur and a troop of his Bani Salem, took possession of ibn Mubeiriq’s villages by force and seized the stores, driving the ‘traitor’ and his men out into the hills where they lingered like malevolent spirits. Instead of returning to the field, however, ‘Ali and Zayd settled down to wait for al-Masri and Nuri as-Sa’id to build up their forces, leaving Feisal to face the Turks alone. The situation was fast becoming critical. Feisal, who had taken up a position on the Darb Sultani– the main road to the coast – had under his command 4,000 irregulars with rifles and the Egyptian artillery, whose ancient field-pieces were far outranged by the Turks’ Krupp mountain-guns. In Medina, Fakhri’s forces now amounted to twelve battalions with sixteen mountain-guns and two heavy field-pieces – thanks to the railway, fresh troops were arriving all the time. Feisal’s forces were unable to meet the Turks head-on, and the Sharif sent camel-mounted raiding-parties, under the ferocious young Sharif ‘Ali ibn Hussain of the Harith, to harass them by night, hitting guard-posts and convoys and fading back into the hills. These pinpricks were hardly felt by the enemy, but they were costly in Arab lives, and Feisal’s Bedu were melting rapidly back to their tents and villages. Feisal could not prevent them: they were hired on a daily rate, and he had no money to pay them with. He was obliged at one point to have a chest filled with heavy stones and put a guard on it at night to convince his troops that he was still solvent. Feisal felt that at the very most he could hold out for three weeks, but to push the Turks back to Medina was now impossible. At the end of August he rode down to the coast, where at Yanbu’ he met Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Wilson, who had been posted to jeddah as British representative. Wilson, who was actually Governor of the Red Sea Province of the Sudan, was spokesman for Sir Reginald Wingate, the officer responsible for supplying the Hashemites from neighbouring Port Sudan. This had been Feisal’s first meeting with a British officer, and he had complained volubly about the lack of ammunition and supplies, which were supposed to be reaching him from the beach-head at Rabegh. He wanted machine-guns, modern artillery and aircraft, as well as a contingent of British troops at Rabegh. The Turks were clearly building up for an advance on Mecca, for which Rabegh, as the major source of water on the

Darb Sultani, would be a vital stepping-stone. The Arab regulars at Rabegh were not yet ready to hold it, and the Bedu could not hold it either. Feisal felt that the only solution was to land a seasoned British brigade. Hussain agreed that such a landing was necessary, but thought it should be limited to 300 men. He feared to allow Christian soldiers – or even Muslim soldiers in Christian pay – to land en masseon sacred soil, for the Turks, who had now appointed a rival Sharif, ‘Ali Haydar, as Emir of Mecca in his place, were already declaring that Hussain had ‘sold out’ to the British infidels. On recapturing Mecca, their first act would be to hang Hussain publicly as a traitor and install ‘Ali Haydar as Emir. Feisal met Wilson for a second time in early September, together with Lieutenant-Colonel A. C. Parker – now posted to the Hejaz as intelligence officer – and repeated his urgent request for British troops at Rabegh. Wilson and Parker were convinced that the Arab Revolt was about to collapse, and had rushed to Cairo on the Dufferinto persuade Murray to send a British force. As September faded into October, though, no such force arrived. The weather grew cooler and a Turkish advance on Mecca looked increasingly imminent. All that stood in the way of the juggernaut was the thin, ragged band of Feisal’s Bedu, hidden in the hills.