Syria was Faisal’s goal as well as Lawrence’s. In December 1917 a report filed at GHQ intelligence in Cairo, presumably by Lawrence, indicated that Faisal was already entertaining ambitions to move north and put himself at the head of a Syrian national movement. Secret exchanges between representatives of Nuri Shalaan of the Rwallah and Faisal had been under way since October and Lawrence was allowed to be party to them. In January 1917 he told Wilson that Nuri, his son Nawaf and other Anazah sheiks had gathered at al Jawf and read Faisal’s letters. They agreed to make an open breach with the Turks the moment Arab forces occupied el Ela and Tayma. There were snags, since Ibn Rashid would resist any move against Tayma, and there was no harmony among the tribes around al Jawf.
The prospects for a Syrian revolt were promising. During 1917 GHQ intelligence in Cairo had accumulated evidence of widespread discontent generated by the after–effects of the 1915–16 famine, the repressive measures taken against local nationalists, high food prices, taxation and the continued exactions of the Turkish army. The exploitation of these grievances depended on the ability of Faisal and the Allies to suborn tribal and community leaders, of whom the majority still favoured the Turks or who would only make up their minds once it was clear which side would win. In the meantime the Arab Bureau stepped up the circulation of pan-Arabist propaganda.
Faisal needed little prodding in the direction of Syria. He was jealous of his brother Abdullah, whom he knew had Syrian aspirations and whose successes in the field contrasted with his own setbacks. Lawrence, now a close neighbour to Faisal’s counsels, encouraged his ambitions and suggested means by which they could be accomplished. Early in April Adjudant Lamotte, the French representative at al Wajh, found Lawrence and Faisal totally preoccupied with Syrian enterprises. By this time plans were well developed for a programme of subversion designed to draw the Syrian Beduin into an alliance with Faisal.
At the beginning of April, Faisal and his Syrian counsellor, Dr Nasib al Bakri, had further meetings with emissaries from the Anazah, including Nuri Shalaan’s brother. They were told that in June Faisal intended to lead a small force into the Jebel Druze and then move against Dera and Afule, presumably having won over the Druze and with active assistance from the Anazah. Faisal added that he had the approval of his English advisers (Lawrence and Newcombe), who had said that these operations would not hinder the campaign against Medina. Faisal warned his listeners that the French with 60,000 men were about to land in Syria, which was nonsense, and added that, without Arab help, France would never subdue the province. If they tried to, he would fight them once the Turks had been beaten. This bullishness may have been designed to impress his audience, but Faisal had already bluntly told Brémond that he was soon to enter Syria. Brémond took him at his word and feared that the ‘dull and headstrong’ Faisal would give greater trouble to his government than Abdullah.
In Faisal, Lawrence had found a willing accomplice for his private schemes to scotch a post-war French takeover of Syria. Colonel Brémond and the French mission were well aware of this, although Faisal had been chary of any direct confrontation over the Syrian issue. In a charming speech to Brémond and his colleague Colonel Cadi, he ‘begged that they would make me party to their plans and intentions so that I could help them as far as lay in me’. Recounting the conversation to Lawrence, whom he allowed to take notes, Faisal continued, ‘While saying this I saw their faces become parti-coloured and their eyes confused.’ The Frenchmen’s response must have delighted Lawrence. Brémond replied, ‘The firmness and strength of the present bonds between the Allies did not blind them to the knowledge that these alliances were only temporary and that between England and France, England and Russia lay such deep-rooted seeds of discord that no permanent friendship could be looked for.’ If Faisal was telling the truth, his revelation to Lawrence that the French were already thinking in terms of post-war manoeuvres conceived to further their own national interests against those of their former ally would have confirmed what he had already surmised. For him, Wilson and Wingate, this candid admission justified the pursuit of secret stratagems against France in Syria.
This may have been just what Faisal wanted, for he claimed he told the French officers that ‘treaties were made and unmade and not in the West only—but that between Great Britain and the Arabs were unwritten bonds of mutual understanding which had probably as strong an influence as the innate sympathy of a civilised man for the success of a small and oppressed people.’ Britain, not France, would be the partner of his ambitions.
Lawrence would have endorsed all that Faisal said. Newcombe too, for he was thought by the French to have been of Lawrence’s mind, even though he favoured a British occupation of Syria. Wingate, Murray and Clayton concurred, at least in so far as they were prepared to do all that they could to exclude the French from active co-operation with Faisal’s forces in Syria. What the French took as curmudgeonly British obstruction could be justified on strategic grounds. If Faisal was to make headway in Syria and harass the northern section of the Hejaz line and thereby assist Murray’s operations to the west, he needed a port close to the front through which men and materials could be landed. Only Aqaba could satisfy his needs, although it lay within the vilayet (Turkish administrative district) of Syria and, therefore, in an area allocated by the Sykes—Picot agreements to France. If the French gained Aqaba they would never permit it to be used by the Arabs to foment a Syrian national movement, and so Arab assistance to Murray’s forces would be severely limited.
Hussain had urged the capture of Aqaba in December and, on 31 January, Brémond heard that Newcombe and Faisal were discussing how it could be taken. With Aqaba as a springboard, Faisal would be free to canvas Syria on his own and the nationalist movement’s behalf. To forestall this, Brémond visited Murray at Ismailia on 5 February and proposed a British landing at Aqaba and the establishment there of an aerodrome which would be guarded by French Muslim units then on standby at Port Suez. He was politely rebuffed, but before leaving he warned Murray that if Britain would not co-operate he would seek Italian assistance. On his way back to Hejaz, Brémond ordered the captain of his ship to heave to off Aqaba so that he could estimate its garrison and assess the strength of its defences. He saw no one. At the end of June the Italian Military Mission to Hejaz on board the cruiser Calabria also spied out Aqaba.
Aqaba had interested British strategists since the beginning of the war, when naval landing parties had temporarily occupied the port. Less than a hundred miles from the Hejaz railway, it was the obvious base for sabotage operations and even a permanent occupation of the line. For this reason Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, recommended the seizure of Aqaba in June 1916 in order to isolate Medina, but McMahon ruled out such an operation on the ground that the Egyptian Expeditionary Force could not spare the men. The same kite was flown by Murray a month later, and he was warned off by Robertson, who dreaded another sideshow which would eat up reserves and possibly become another Gallipoli. Still, Murray authorised an aerial survey of Aqaba and its hinterland during August which revealed that the port was thinly defended and that Wadi et Yutm to the east offered good sites for landing strips.
Brémond’s proposition had put Murray in a quandary. Shortly before the Frenchman presented himself at HQ, Murray had turned down Wingate’s request for an Aqaba expedition because it would deprive him of a brigade needed for the forthcoming Gaza offensive. Now he was faced with the likelihood that a Franco–Italian force would occupy the port, which they would then deny to the Arabs. This would have suited Brémond, who openly hoped that the Arab Revolt would stagnate in Hejaz. Matters were further complicated in April when Naval Intelligence got word that a unit of German mine–laying specialists were operating out of Aqaba. On 19 April Wemyss despatched three warships to the port which sent ashore landing parties. Three-quarters of the eighty-man garrison ran off, leaving the sailors free to demolish the mine-laying facilities.
It was imperative to pre–empt the French, so early in April Faisal, with Wingate’s backing, agreed to seize the port as part of his projected armed excursion into eastern Syria. Faisal and Newcombe were the principal architects of a plan which was finally settled on 20 May. Newcombe was to take charge of 1,500 Arabs who would be mustered at al Wajh on 24 June and then transported to Aqaba by RN warships. Their disembarkation on 15 July would coincide with a landward assault on the port by Huweitat irregulars, who had already eliminated the chain of Turkish posts between Aqaba and Maan. Faisal, leading a larger force, would already have ridden cross-country to al Jawf in the Syrian desert, which he was scheduled to reach by 7 July. From there he would turn northwards to el Azraq where Lawrence and Awda would be waiting with supplies which would include the 3,000 camels promised by the Anazah at the beginning of April. Then Faisal would proceed towards the Hawran and fulfil his promise to raise the Druze.
The success of the plan rested on the unproven ability of Arab forces to synchronise their movements and on a belief that Turkish forces in eastern Syria would be thrown into confusion by the attack on Aqaba and by the presence in the desert of large Arab contingents. Furthermore, it was intended that the sudden appearance of Faisal’s Beduin would trigger local uprisings which the Turks would be too thinly spread to handle. There was no way of calculating the Turco-German response to this audacious stratagem. They were not totally unprepared. A report from Damascus sent by agent ‘Maurice’ which reached Cairo on 27 May noted a recent increase in the hand–outs of gold among the Anazah and Rwallah. Nuri Shalaan’s son Nawaf was reportedly pro–Turkish and it was feared he might sway his father in that direction. A Turkish agent, probably close to Faisal and possibly the same man who had given the warning of the attack on al Wajh, reported the departure of Lawrence’s column on 9 May with an indication of its destination. Ten days later military posts between Maan and Aqaba were being reinforced.
Lawrence knew that the French were considering a coup against Aqaba and that Faisal intended to seize the port as part of his proposed armed demonstration in eastern Syria. The outlines for these operations had been first laid by Clayton in November 1916 shortly before Lawrence’s return from Khartoum. Both men appreciated that possession of Aqaba was vital, although Lawrence had deep apprehensions about Faisal’s Syrian diversion. In the Seven Pillars he recalled fears that precipitate action by Faisal and the Syrians could easily end in a disaster which would cripple all future attempts to liberate the area. Lawrence favoured a piecemeal campaign in which the occupation of Aqaba would be the opening move.
He was attached to the party of thirty–six men which left al Wajh as the representative of the British government, whose prestigious endorsement was needed to give Faisal the authority he needed to convert the Syrian sheiks. As a token of British backing for the Prince, Lawrence carried 20,000 gold sovereigns, of which half were earmarked for Druze leaders, or so Adjudant Lamotte heard. Before the group set off, Lamotte took their photograph and was told that they would be back in five weeks, which was not so.
Lawrence’s party was commanded by the Sharif Nasir, a kinsman of Faisal whom Lawrence found ‘most capable, hard working and straightforward’. Less to his liking was Nasib al Bakri, Faisal’s Interior Minister, who had been entrusted with negotiations. He ‘is volatile and short-sighted, as are most town-Syrians’ and Lawrence suspected he would not carry out his orders.
Lawrence left two accounts of what passed. The first comprised a bundle of secret official reports written in Cairo during the second week of July 1917 (some of which were published in 1938), and the second was set down in the Seven Pillars. According to his reports, the first phase of the expedition was an eastwards trek towards an Kabk which was interrupted by the demolition of the section of railway track at Kilo 810. The party of thirty-six reached an Kabk and the point of rendezvous with Awda and his Huweitat warriors on 2 June. For the next fortnight Nasir and Nasib camped there and at nearby Kaf, where they used Lawrence’s sovereigns to recruit Huweitat, Shararat and Rwallah tribesmen for the attack on Aqaba.
According to the reports he wrote in Cairo, the second phase of the expedition began on 4 June, when Lawrence and two servants rode north-east into the Syrian desert on the first leg of a circular tour through Turkish-held Syria. On 8 June the trio approached Tadmor and then turned eastwards towards Baalbek Yarmud in eastern Lebanon. Returning southwards, Lawrence passed near Damascus, entered the Jebel Druze and then continued through el Azraq to an Kabk. The journey lasted fourteen days.
At each stage of the expedition, Lawrence met local notables. Near Tadmor he had planned to arbitrate a feud between the Bishr and the Huweitat, but one party failed to appear. A small railway bridge was blown up in the Baalbek Yarmud region to please local tribesmen. ‘The noise of dynamite explosions we find everywhere the most effective propagandist measure possible.’ Outside Damascus he spoke with Aziz al Ridha al Rikabi, a former Turkish general and Mayor of the city, a future Hashemite adherent as yet unwilling to risk an open statement of his loyalties. Passing through the Laja district Lawrence met a local sheik, and at Salkhad he had discussions with the Druze Sultan Salim al Atrash, another secret Hashemite sympathiser who delivered the terms on which his followers would rise. The Druze would not rebel until British forces occupied Nablus in northern Palestine, a line they consistently followed until October 1918. They were a hard-hearted people disinclined to throw away their considerable privileges, including exemption from conscription and taxation. At el Azraq Lawrence faced more trimming, this time from practised hands: Nuri Shalaan and his son Nawaf repeated their old plea that they would take the plunge the moment the Druze declared themselves for Faisal. They were ‘playing a double’, but Lawrence felt assured they would join the Allies when ‘we require them’.
