210 • 13 THE ROOTS OF ARAB BITTERNESSby their exposure to German military advisers, but their main motives were
to regain Egypt from the British and the Caucasus Mountains from Russia.
At the time, Muslim Arabs applauded these aims; later, writers would casti¬
gate the Young Turks for committing the empire, already shaken by defeats in
Libya and the Balkans, to war against the Western Allies. In 1914 Germany
was respected for its economic and military might. The Germans were build¬
ing a railway from Istanbul to Baghdad that would hold together what was
left of the Ottoman Empire. A German military mission in Istanbul was
training officers and soldiers to use modern weapons. Two German war¬
ships, caught in the Mediterranean when the war started and pursued by the
British navy, took refuge in the Straits, whereupon they were handed over by
the German ambassador as gifts to the Ottoman government (complete with
their German crews, who donned fezzes and called themselves "instructors").
They replaced two ships then being built for the Ottoman navy in British
shipyards, already paid for by public subscription, that had been comman¬
deered by the British navy when the war broke out. So strongly did the Ot¬
toman government and people support the German cause that after the new
"Turkish" ships had drawn the empire into the war by bombarding the port
of Odessa, the sultan officially proclaimed a jihad against Britain, France, and
Russia. All three had millions of Muslim subjects who, if they had heeded the
message, would have had to rebel on behalf of their Ottoman sultan-caliph.
Britain and the Palestine Problem,
The British, especially those serving in Egypt and the Sudan, wanted to
counter this pan-Islamic proclamation serving the Turks and Germans,
who launched a well-publicized invasion of Sinai in late 1914 as Britain
declared its official protectorate over Egypt. Some Ottoman army units
reached the Suez Canal in February 1915, and one even crossed to the
western side under cover of darkness. For three years, Britain had to sta¬
tion more than 100,000 imperial troops in Egypt—partly to intimidate
the Egyptian nationalists, but mainly to stop any new Ottoman effort to
take the canal, which the British now viewed as their imperial lifeline.
Britain responded by contacting an Arab leader in the Hijaz—namely,
Husayn, the sharif and amir of Mecca. Let us explain these titles. A sharif is
a descendant of Muhammad, of which there were many in the Hijaz, espe¬
cially in the Muslim holy cities. Being protectors of Mecca and Medina
conferred prestige on the Ottoman sultans; they lavished honors on the
sharifs but also exploited their rivalries to control them. The various clans
of sharifs competed for the position of amir (prince), which carried some
temporal authority.