World War I • 211During the nineteenth century, however, the Ottoman government had
tried to strengthen its direct rule over the Hijaz, using an appointed local
governor. Sharif Husayn, the leader of one of the contending clans (which
he called the Hashimites, the clan of the Prophet himself), had long strug¬
gled with the Ottoman sultan and his governors, enduring almost sixteen
years of house arrest in Istanbul. Even though he still supported the Ot-
tomanist ideal after he became amir in 1908, Husayn disliked the CUP's
centralizing policies. One of his sons, Abdallah, had ties with Arab nation¬
alist societies in Syria before World War I. Abdallah went to Cairo to seek
support from the British consul, Lord Kitchener, a few months before the
war began. The British hesitated to plot against the Ottoman Empire,
which they had long tried to preserve, but Kitchener remembered the
meeting later. When he went home to help plan Britain's war effort, Lon¬
don became interested in a possible anti-Ottoman alliance with these
Hashimite sharifs in Mecca. The British government instructed its Cairo
representative to contact Husayn, hoping to dissuade him from endorsing
the jihad or, better yet, to persuade him to lead an Arab rebellion against
Ottoman rule.
The Husayn-McMahon Correspondence
In Cairo, Britain's new high commissioner (the new title resulted from the
declaration of the British protectorate over Egypt), Sir Henry McMahon,
wrote to the sharif of Mecca. Britain wanted him to rebel against Ottoman
rule in the Hijaz. Husayn in turn asked for a pledge that the British would
support the rebellion financially and politically against his Arab rivals as
well as against the Ottoman Empire. If he called for an Arab revolt, it was
not for the sake of changing masters. The British in Egypt and the Sudan
knew from talking with Arab nationalists living there that the Hashimites
could not rally other Arabs to their cause—given the power and prestige
of rival families living elsewhere in Arabia—unless the Arabs were assured
that they would gain their independence in the lands in which they pre¬
dominated: Arabia, Iraq, and Syria, including Palestine and Lebanon.
Keeping these considerations in mind, the amir of Mecca and the British
high commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan exchanged some letters in
1915-1916 that have since become famous and highly controversial. In the
course of what we now call the Husayn-McMahon Correspondence, Britain
pledged that, if Husayn proclaimed an Arab revolt against Ottoman rule, it
would provide military and financial aid during the war and would then
help to create independent Arab governments in the Arabian Peninsula and
most parts of the Fertile Crescent.