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The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence was a protracted exchange of letters (July 14, 1915 to January 30, 1916) during World War I, between the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn bin Ali, and Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, concerning the future political status of the Arab lands under the Ottoman Empire. The Arab side was already looking toward a revolt against the Ottoman Empire and the British encouraged the Arabs to revolt and thus hamper the Ottoman Empire, which had become a German ally in the War after November 1915.

Origins and ramifications

The Damascus Protocol

On his return journey from Constantinople in 1914, where he had confronted the Grand Vizier with evidence of an Ottoman plot to depose his father, Faisal bin Hussein visited Damascus to resume talks with the Arab secret societies al-Fatat and Al-'Ahd that he had met in March/April. On this occasion Faisal joined their revolutionary movement. It was during this visit that he was presented with the document that became known as the 'Damascus Protocol'. The document declared that the Arabs would revolt in alliance with Great Britain in return for recognition of Arab independence in an area running from the 37th parallel near the Taurus Mountains on the southern border of Turkey, to be bounded in the east by Persia and the Persian Gulf, in the west by the Mediterranean Sea and in the south by the Arabian Sea.

Early in April 1914 Abdullah asked the British High Commissioner in Cairo, what would be the British attitude if the Arab Ottomans revolted. The British response, based on its traditional policy of preserving "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire" was negative. However, the entry of the Ottomans on Germany's side in World War I on November 11, 1914, brought about an abrupt shift in British political interests concerning an Arab revolt against the Ottomans.

Following deliberations at Ta'if between Hussein and his sons in June 1915, during which Faisal counselled caution, Ali argued against rebellion and Abdullah advocated action, the Sharif set a tentative date for armed revolt for June 1916 and commenced negotiations with the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon.

The letter from McMahon to Hussein dated 24 October 1915 is key. It stated on behalf of the Government of Great Britain that:

The districts of Mersin and Alexandretta, and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, cannot be said to be purely Arab, and must on that account be excepted from the proposed delimitation. Subject to that modification, and without prejudice to the treaties concluded between us and certain Arab Chiefs, we accept that delimitation. As for the regions lying within the proposed frontiers, in which Great Britain is free to act without detriment to interests of her ally France, I am authorized to give you the following pledges on behalf of the Government of Great Britain, and to reply as follows to your note: That subject to the modifications stated above, Great Britain is prepared to recognize and uphold the independence of the Arabs in all the regions lying within the frontiers proposed by the Sharif of Mecca.

The Arab Revolt

Although the correspondence did not result in a written treaty, McMahon's promises were seen by the Arabs as a formal agreement between them and Great Britain. On this understanding the Arabs established a military force under the command of Hussein's son Faisal which fought, with inspiration from 'Lawrence of Arabia', against the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt. In an intelligence memo written in January 1916 Lawrence described the Arab Revolt as

beneficial to us, because it marches with our immediate aims, the break up of the Islamic 'bloc' and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because the states would set up to succeed the Turks would be … harmless to ourselves … The Arabs are even less stable than the Turks. If properly handled they would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of small jealous principalities incapable of cohesion (emphasis in original).

The Arab Revolt began in June 1916, when an Arab army of around 70,000 men moved against Ottoman forces. They captured Aqabah and cut the Hejaz railway, a vital strategic link through the Arab peninsula which ran from Damascus to Medina. This enabled the Egyptian Expeditionary Force under the command of General Allenby to advance into the Ottoman territories of Palestine and Syria.

The British advance culminated in the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918 and the capitulation of Turkey on 31 October, 1918.

The Hogarth Message

In January 1918 Commander David Hogarth, head of the Arab Bureau in Cairo, was dispatched to Jeddah to deliver a letter written by Sir Mark Sykes on behalf of the British Government to Hussein (now King of Hejaz). The message assured Hussein that

The Entente Powers are determined that the Arab race shall be given full opportunity of once again forming a nation in the world. This can only be achieved by the Arabs themselves uniting, and Great Britain and her Allies will pursue a policy with this ultimate unity in view.

and with respect to Palestine and in the light of the Balfour Declaration that

Since the Jewish opinion of the world is in favour of a return of Jews to Palestine and inasmuch as this opinion must remain a constant factor, and further as His Majesty's Government view with favour the realisation of this aspiration, His Majesty's Government are determined that insofar as is compatible with the freedom of the existing population both economic and political, no obstacle should be put in the way of the realisation of this ideal.

The meaning of the Hogarth message, and in particular whether it modified the commitments made in the Balfour Declaration is still debated, although Hogarth reported that Hussein "would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed to warn him that such a state was contemplated by Great Britain".

Declaration to the Seven

In the wake of the Balfour Declaration and the publication by the Bolsheviks of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement seven Syrian notables in Cairo who were members of the newly-formed Party of Syrian Unity issued a memorandum requesting from the British Government a "guarantee of the ultimate independence of Arabia". The Declaration to the Seven issued on 16 June, 1918 in response stated the British policy that the future government of the regions of the Ottoman Empire occupied by Allied forces in World War I should be based on the consent of the governed.

Allenby's assurance to Faisal

On 19 October 1918, General Allenby reported to the British Government that he had given Faisal,

official assurance that whatever measures might be taken during the period of military administration they were purely provisional and could not be allowed to prejudice the final settlement by the peace conference, at which no doubt the Arabs would have a representative. I added that the instructions to the military governors would preclude their mixing in political affairs, and that I should remove them if I found any of them contravening these orders. I reminded the Amir Faisal that the Allies were in honour bound to endeavour to reach a settlement in accordance with the wishes of the peoples concerned and urged him to place his trust whole-heartedly in their good faith.

Anglo-French Declaration of 1918

In the Anglo-French Declaration of 7 November 1918 the two governments stated that

The object aimed at by France and Great Britain in prosecuting in the East the War let loose by the ambition of Germany is the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks and the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations.

According to civil servant Eyre Crowe who saw the original draft of the Declaration, "we had issued a definite statement against annexation in order (1) to quiet the Arabs and (2) to prevent the French annexing any part of Syria".

Following World War I

During the Revolt Faisal had commanded the northern Arab army in Transjordan, Palestine, and Syria. In 1920 he was chosen as King of Syria by the Syrian National Congress but was expelled by France, now the mandatory power, following the Battle of Maysalun. During the war, thousands of proclamations were dropped in all parts of Palestine, which carried a message from the Sharif Hussein on one side and a message from the British Command on the other, to the effect 'that an Anglo-Arab agreement had been arrived at securing the independence of the Arabs.'

The Arabs believed that Great Britain's undertaking to them was violated by the region's subsequent partition into British and French League of Nations mandates under the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain, France and Russia of May 1916 (made public by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution) and by the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 which favoured the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

Lawrence's post-war advocacy

Lawrence became increasingly guilt-ridden by the knowledge that Britain did not intend to abide by the commitments made to the Sharif, but still managed to convince Faisal that it would be to the Arabs' advantage to go on fighting the Ottomans. At the Versailles peace conference in 1919 and the Cairo conference in 1921 Lawrence lobbied for Arab independence, but his belated attempts to maintain the territorial integrity of Arab lands, which he had promised to Hussein and Faisal, and in limiting France's influence in what later became Syria and Lebanon were fruitless. However, as Churchill's adviser on Arab affairs (1921–2) Lawrence was able to lobby for a considerable degree of autonomy for Mesopotamia and Transjordan. The British placed Palestine, promised to the Zionist Federation in 1917, under mandate with a civilian administration headed by Herbert Samuel, and divided their remaining territory in the Middle East into the kingdoms of Iraq and Transjordan, assigning them to Faisal and his brother Abdullah, respectively.

The Thrice-Promised Land

The debate regarding Palestine derived from the fact that it is not explicitly mentioned in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. The Arab position was that "portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo..." could not refer to Palestine since that lay well to the south of the named places. In particular, the Arabs argued that the vilayet (province) of Damascus did not exist and that the district (sanjak) of Damascus covered only the area surrounding the city itself and furthermore that Palestine was part of the vilayet of 'Syria A-Sham', which was not mentioned in the exchange of letters. The British position, which it held consistently at least from 1916, was that Palestine was intended to be included in the phrase. Each side produced supporting arguments for their positions based on fine details of the wording and the historical circumstances of the correspondence. For example, the Arab side argued that the phrase "cannot be said to be purely Arab" did not apply to Palestine, while the British pointed to the Jewish and Christian minorities in Palestine.

In response to growing criticism arising from the mutually irreconcilable commitments undertaken by the United Kingdom in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour declaration the Churchill White Paper, 1922 stated that

it is not the case, as has been represented by the Arab Delegation, that during the war His Majesty's Government gave an undertaking that an independent national government should be at once established in Palestine. This representation mainly rests upon a letter dated the 24th October, 1915, from Sir Henry McMahon, then His Majesty's High Commissioner in Egypt, to the Sharif of Mecca, now King Hussein of the Kingdom of the Hejaz. That letter is quoted as conveying the promise to the Sherif of Mecca to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories proposed by him. But this promise was given subject to a reservation made in the same letter, which excluded from its scope, among other territories, the portions of Syria lying to the west of the District of Damascus. This reservation has always been regarded by His Majesty's Government as covering the vilayet of Beirut and the independent Sanjak of Jerusalem. The whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus excluded from Sir. Henry McMahon's pledge.

In a 1922 letter to Sir John Shuckburgh of the British Colonial Office, McMahon wrote the following: "It was my intention to exclude Palestine from independent Arabia, and I hoped that I had so worded the letter as to make this sufficiently clear for all practical purposes. My reasons for restricting myself to specific mention of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo in that connection in my letter were: 1) that these were places to which the Arabs attached vital importance and 2) that there was no place I could think of at the time of sufficient importance for purposes of definition further South of the above. It was as fully my intention to exclude Palestine as it was to exclude the more Northern coastal tracts of Syria."

A committee established by the British in 1939 to clarify the various arguments did not come to any firm conclusions. The Arab representatives submitted a statement to the committee from Sir Michael McDonnell which explained that whatever McMahon had intended to mean was of no legal consequence, since it was his actual statements that constituted the pledge from His Majesty's Government. The Arab representatives also pointed out that McMahon had been acting as an intermediary for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Grey. They suggested that a search for evidence in the files of the Foreign Office might throw light on the Secretary of State's intentions. In a speech delivered in the House of Lords on the 27th March, 1923, Lord Grey said:

" A considerable number of these engagements, or some of them, which have not been officially made public by the Government, have become public through other sources. Whether all have become public I do not know, but I seriously suggest to the Government that the best way of clearing our honour in this matter is officially to publish the whole of the engagements relating to the matter, which we entered into during the war. If they are found to be not inconsistent with one another our honour is cleared. If they turn out to be inconsistent, I think it will be very much better that the amount, character and extent of the inconsistencies should be known, and that we should state frankly that, in the urgency of the war, engagements were entered into which were not entirely consistent with each other... ...It would be very desirable, from the point of view of honour, that all these various pledges should be set out side by side, and then, I think, the most honourable thing would be to look at them fairly, see what inconsistencies there are between them, and, having regard to the nature of each pledge and the date at which it was given, with all the facts before us, consider what is the fair thing to be done."

The Eastern Committee met on 5 December 1918 to disuss Palestine. Lord Curzon chaired the meeting. General Jan Smuts, Lord Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, General Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and representatives of the Foreign Office, the India Office, the Admiralty, the Wax Office, and the Treasury were present. T. E. Lawrence also attended. According to the minutes Lord Curzon explained:

"The Palestine position is this. If we deal with our commitments, there is first the general pledge to Hussein in October 1915, under which Palestine was included in the areas as to which Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent in the future . . . Great Britain and France - Italy subsequently agreeing - committed themselves to an international administration of Palestine in consultation with Russia, who was an ally at that time . . . A new feature was brought into the case in November 1917, when Mr Balfour, with the authority of the War Cabinet, issued his famous declaration to the Zionists that Palestine 'should be the national home of the Jewish people, but that nothing should be done - and this, of course, was a most important proviso - to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Those, as far as I know, are the only actual engagements into which we entered with regard to Palestine."

See also

• Pan-Arabism
• McMahon letters

Notes

1. Also sometimes known in the literature as the 'Hussein-McMahon Correspondence'.
2. http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS094.pdf p.8
3. http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS094.pdf p.7
4. ^ Paris, 2003, p. 24.
5. ^ Biger, 2004, p. 47.
6. http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS094.pdf p.7
7. October 24 1915 letter from Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner in Egypt, to Sherif Husayn of Mecca, archived at UNISPAL.
8. ^ Waïl S. Hassan "Lawrence, T. E." The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press 2005.
9. "Arab Revolt" A Dictionary of Contemporary World History. Jan Palmowski. Oxford University Press, 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
10. Report of a Committee Set up to Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca in 1915 and 1916, UNISPAL, Annex F.
11. Report of a Committee Set up to Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca in 1915 and 1916, UNISPAL, Annex F.
12. Friedman, 2000, p. 328.
13. Kedourie, 2002, p. 257.
14. Huneidi, 2001, p. 66.
15. Friedman, 2000, pp. 195-197.
16. Choueiri, 2000, p. 149.
17. Report of a Committee Set up to Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca in 1915 and 1916, UNISPAL, Annex H.
18. Report of a Committee Set up to Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca in 1915 and 1916, UNISPAL, Annex I.
19. Hughes, 1999, pp. 116-117.
20. "Faisal I" A Dictionary of World History. Oxford University Press, 2000.
21. Report of a Committee Set up to Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca in 1915 and 1916, UNISPAL, Annex A, paragraph 19.
22. Federal Research Division, 2004, p. 41.
23. Milton-Edwards, 2006, p. 57.
24. "Lawrence, Thomas Edward, 'Lawrence of Arabia'" A Dictionary of Contemporary World History. Jan Palmowski. Oxford University Press, 2003.
25. Biger, 2004, p. 48.
26. Zachary Lockman "Balfour Declaration" The Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World, 2e. Joel Krieger, ed. Oxford University Press Inc. 2001.
27. British White Paper of June 1922, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.
28. http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/viewanswers.asp?questionID=499

References

• Biger, Gideon. (2004). The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840-1947. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714656542
• Choueiri, Youssef M. (2000). Arab Nationalism: A History. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0631217290
• Cleveland, William L. (2004). A History of the Modern Middle East. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-4048-9 (see pp. 157-160).
• Federal Research Division (2004). Syria: A Country Study. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 1419150227
• Friedman, Isaiah (2000). Palestine, A Twice-Promised Land. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 156000391X
• Hughes, Matthew (1999). Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917-1919. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714649201
• Huneidi, Sahar (2000). A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, 1920-1925. IB Tauris. ISBN 1860641725
• Kedourie, Elie (2000). In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and Its Interpretations, 1914-1939. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714650978
• Mansfield, Peter (2004). A History of the Middle East. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-303433-2 (see pp. 154-155).
• Milton-Edwards, Beverley (2006). Contemporary Politics in the Middle East. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0745635946
• Paris, Timothy J. (2003). Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule, 1920-1925: The Sherifian Solution. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714654515

External links

• The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence at the Jewish Virtual Library.

• Arab-Israeli conflict
• Zionism
• British Empire
• Islamic history
• Correspondences