address the status of Palestine, portions of which would become Israel three decades
later. He told Hussein that a new Arab state would need the services of British
advisers—in effect putting the Arabs under some degree of British control—and
expressed hope for an alliance between Britain and the Arabs that he said would lead
to “the expulsion of the Turks from Arab countries.” At the time of this correspon-
dence, several other British officials stated privately that McMahon had made no for-
mal or binding commitments to Hussein, offering only a vague pledge to support Arab
independence in an area yet to be defined.
In a reply dated November 5, 1915, Hussein challenged McMahon’s exclusion
of coastal Syria and Lebanon from an independent Arab state, calling French claims
to those areas “quite out of the question.” Hussein and McMahon exchanged three
subsequent letters, but failed to resolve the question of what lands would be included
in an Arab state. Instead, the two sides agreed to postpone the matter until after
the war.
Although Hussein’s request for formal British recognition of an independent
Arab state had produced mixed results at best, Hussein in June 1916 proceeded to
carry out his part of the bargain: an “Arab revolt” against Ottoman rule. Western-
ers know about this uprising primarily because of the role played by T. E. Lawrence,
a British army officer known in the movies and popular literature as Lawrence of
Arabia. The revolt produced one significant military victory in the ousting of
Ottoman troops from Aqaba, the port at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. An Arab
army led by Hussein’s son Faisal contributed to the British capture of Damascus in
October 1918.
Early in 1916, some aspects of the Hussein-McMahon correspondence were taken
into account (though most were ignored) when senior British and French diplomats
negotiated to divide much of the Middle East among themselves after the war. Again,
in 1917, Britain ignored the thrust of the Hussein-McMahon correspondence when
it asserted that portions of Palestine should be a “national home” for the Jewish people
(Sykes-Picot Agreement, p. 14; Balfour Declaration, p. 24).
The Hussein-McMahon correspondence remained secret until 1938, when it
appeared in The Arab Awakening, a book by the Lebanese-Egyptian historian George
Antonius, who argued that Britain had “betrayed” its promises to Hussein and thus
to the Arabs. The British government formally published the correspondence the fol-
lowing year, when a parliamentary committee reviewed the history of British diplo-
macy on the Middle East during World War I.
Hussein never became the king of the Arabs, as he apparently envisioned himself.
In fact, he lost control of Mecca and the surrounding Hijaz region in 1924 to his chief
rival, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, who went on to incorporate most of the Arabian Penin-
sula into a new kingdom, Saudi Arabia. Two of Hussein’s sons eventually served as
British-appointed leaders of Arab states created by the peace treaties that ended World
War I. In 1920 Faisal briefly headed a government in Damascus before being ousted
by the French. A year later, Britain installed Faisal as Iraq’s first king, a position he
held until his death in 1933. Also in 1921, Britain installed Faisal’s older brother
Abdallah as amir of the new country of Transjordan (present-day Jordan), which
remains a monarchy ruled by his descendants to this day. Abdallah’s grandson Hus-
sein served as king from 1953 until his death in 1999, when Hussein’s son became
King Abdallah II.
FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST 9