Historiography 1918-Today (Middle East/Arab Lands)

By Charles D. Smith

1914-1918 Online

Internal Encyclopedia of the First World War

This text is licensed under Creative Commmons Licence

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Table of Contents

- 1 Introduction

- 2 Wartime and Post-War Historiography: Personal Experiences, Historical Accounts, and Links to Contemporary Scholarship

- 3 Archival Access and Scholarship on European and Ottoman Campaigns, Military Intelligence, and Goals in the Arab Lands

- 4 T. E Lawrence, Sharif Husayn of Mecca, and the Arab Revolt: The Sincere British Imperialist Theory of the Arab Lands and World War I

- 5 Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, Palestine and Jerusalem

- 6 The Paris Peace Conference and the Arab Lands

- 7 Conclusion

- Notes

- Selected Bibliography

- Citation

1 Introduction

General studies on World War I and its significance for the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire date from shortly after 1918 to the present day, the latter inspired by the centennial observance of the war. Overviews include a recent special issue of the International Journal of Middle East Studies devoted to the subject.[1] The region had long been a matter of Anglo-French rivalry for future control. This issue emerges in the extensive scholarship on the war aims and military campaigns of both countries during and after the war and the conflicting promises made, especially by Britain, to both Arab officials in the region and Zionist leaders in England and France regarding the fate of Palestine. Scholarship on these promises, especially since the 1970s, has varied in quality, some material omitting key documentation to fit the author’s arguments. The literature on the region has expanded greatly in recent decades with major fields emerging in subjects such as intelligence gathering; the wartime experiences of the regions’ inhabitants who suffered from widespread famine and disease; treatments of key figures, Arab and Jewish; and events such as the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 and its impact on the Palestine mandate; and the resistance of Arab nationalist movements to European occupation. As a result of the war, new countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon were created by their imperial overseers, and in Palestine Britain took responsibility for sponsoring Jewish immigration that, from the Zionist perspective, would result in a Jewish state in Palestine. Whereas nationalist movements had opposed British or French occupation in Egypt and Iraq (Britain) and Syria (France), competing nationalisms, Palestinian and Zionist, existed in Palestine.

2 Wartime and Post-War Historiography: Personal Experiences, Historical Accounts, and Links to Contemporary Scholarship

Concern over the fate of the Arab lands emerged at the outbreak of the war when a Lebanese Maronite Catholic cleric visited France to seek guarantees of French protection.[2] Later publications indicated French interest in Syria and Palestine, and similar British concern for Mesopotamia, as well as a 1916 account of Ottoman political repression and food shortages in Syria, including Lebanon. The subject of famine would not be mentioned again until the publication of Jean Pichon’s Le Partage du Proche Orient appeared in 1938. Scholarly awareness of the extent of the impact of famine and natural disasters on the populations of Greater Syria, including Palestine, in part due to the Anglo-French naval blockade of the Syrian coast depicted in L.B. Weldon’s (1875-?) ‘Hard Lying’: Eastern Mediterranean, 1914-1919, awaited Linda Schatkowski Schilcher’s The Famine of 1915-1918 in Greater Syria, using German sources.[3] Since then, the subject has grown in importance, establishing a counterpoint to the numerous studies of imperial policies and goals in the region, with Elizabeth Thompson, like Schilcher, viewing the blockade as a major contributing factor, and recent studies such as that of Leila Fawaz, A Land of the Aching Hearts, recounting the views of the indigenous populations during the war. The horrors of famine and the impact on food supplies in especially Syria and Lebanon are also made clear in the articles found in the works edited by Olaf Farschid et al., and Heike Liebau, and in Najwa al-Qattan’s “When Mothers Ate Their Children: Wartime Memory and the Language of Food in Syria and Lebanon”, and Melanie Tanielian’s “Feeding the City: The Beirut Municipality and the Politics of Food During World War I”.[4] Following the war, personal memoirs, publication of official records, and advocacy of retention of regions dominated the historiography of the war to after World War II.[5]

3 Archival Access and Scholarship on European and Ottoman Campaigns, Military Intelligence, and Goals in the Arab Lands

The era following World War II saw an explosion of especially British studies on Anglo-French interests (including oil), in the Arab lands, as archives became available to researchers. For the most part, studies of Iraq focused on that country, with few efforts to widen the scope of investigation, notably those of Marian Kent, Oil and Empire: British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil, 1900-1920; Priya Satia, “Developing Iraq: Britain, India, and the Redemption of Empire and Technology in World War I” and Ian Rutledge, Enemy on the Euphrates: The British Occupation of Iraq and the Great Arab Revolt, 1914-1921.[6] Works on Egypt, Syria and Palestine have been often more wide-ranging and comparative, including studies of Italian interests in Palestine.[7] A sub-genre has dealt specifically with Ottoman suppression of Arab nationalist circles in Syria and Lebanon, as first addressed by Nicholas Ajay in 1978 and subsequently in works such as Najwa al-Qattan’s “Safarbarlik” and M. Talha Ҫiҫek’s study of Ahmet Cemal Pasha’s (1872-1923) governorate in Syria.[8] A broader subject involves French claims to those regions that led to the crushing of the incipient Arab state in Syria after the war.[9] Finally, there has been an explosion of publications on the uses of military intelligence covering all of the Arab lands and including Zionist-British collaboration.[10]

4 T. E Lawrence, Sharif Husayn of Mecca, and the Arab Revolt: The Sincere British Imperialist Theory of the Arab Lands and World War I

A separate field exists for works on Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935) in both English and French. The best study, using French archives a well as British, is Jeremy Wilson’s Lawrence of Arabia: the Authorized Biography (1990). Lawrence backed Arab independence in Syria not for its own sake but to deprive France of control of the region, a matter debated down to the present.[11] Lawrence’s own intelligence analyses during the war can be found online at www.telstudies.org as selections from The Arab Bulletin, intelligence information sent from the Hejaz to the Arab Bureau in Cairo, parts of which were published in 1980.[12]

Lawrence’s role in the war was to advise Husayn ibn Ali, King of Hejaz (c.1853-1931) and Sharif of Mecca in the progress of the June 1916 Arab Revolt, led by Husayn’s son, the Emir Faysal, who later became Faysal I, King of Iraq (1885-1933). Sharif Husayn has been the subject of two monographs, by Randall Baker and Joshua Teitelbaum, and articles that include studies of French and German policy toward him, but also Alia El Bakri’s use of oral history to recount the siege of Medina by Faysal’s forces.[13] Husayn’s importance in the literature is based on his correspondence with the British Consul in Cairo, Sir Henry McMahon (1862-1949), and the significance attached to it with respect to promises of Arab independence after the war when set against Anglo-French agreements for control of the same lands. Here scholarship has varied considerably in quality and accuracy. A number of monographs argue that Sharif Husayn was not promised independence for the Arab lands or that the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 fulfilled such promises that were made. Moreover, Sharif Husayn was supposedly fully informed of Anglo-French agreements and of the implications of the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 that provided protection of civil and religious rights for Palestinian Arabs but reserved political rights for incoming Jewish immigrants.

This argument originated with the publication in 1956 of Elie Kedourie’s England and the Middle East(1978). Without access to still-unavailable archival materials, Kedourie argued that British officials had been sincere and open in their exchanges with Sharif Husayn and other Arab representatives, but had never promised the full independence of Arab lands after the war, especially Palestine. This theme was adopted more forcefully by Isaiah Friedman, once archives had opened, in an exchange of articles with Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) and then with the publication of his own study, The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab-Relations, 1914-1918.[14] Friedman’s work, especially his book, contained inaccurate representation of documents, and omission of materials, practices then followed by Elie Kedourie in his In the Anglo-Arab Labryinth: The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and Its Implications, deficiencies detailed by Charles D. Smith’s “The Question of Arab Acceptance of the Zionist Right to Palestine”, and “The Historiography of World War I”.[15] David Fromkin and Efraim Karsh acknowledged Kedourie’s work in defending the sincerity and openness of British officials in their dealings with the Arabs, arguing that Arabs generally and Palestinians in particular had no right to protest Zionist claims to Palestine, while Doreen Ingrams’ compilation of British reports remains a useful counterpoint.[16]

A key element in the arguments of these works, accepted by Fromkin based on Kedourie’s work, is that David Hogarth (1862-1927) of the Arab Bureau in Cairo had visited Sharif Husayn in January 1918 and fully informed him of the elements in the Balfour Declaration and had gained Husayn’s agreement. In fact, Hogarth lied to Sharif Husayn, telling him that Palestinian political rights were protected in the Balfour Declaration, when they were not. Moreover, Hogarth reported to Cairo that Husayn would never accept a Jewish state in Palestine and he, Hogarth, had withheld that information from him. As Hogarth himself acknowledged after the war, Husayn, as opposed to Ibn Saʻud, King of Saudi Arabia (c. 1880-1953), had been the “only possible spokesman for the Arabs from the British point of view” but “in adopting this policy we were not looking beyond the war”.[17] In short, Husayn was not fully informed, agreed to nothing, and British promises had no lasting value. This view was also held by Mark Sykes (1879-1919), who negotiated with François Georges-Picot (1870-1951) to formulate the Sykes-Picot Accord, and had a major role in British policy declarations from 1916-1918.[18] Despite some shortcomings, the arguments advanced by George Antonius and A.L. Tibawi regarding British promises to the Arabs, the former depicted as “worthless” by Kedourie, retain their credibility with respect to treatment of the war and British policy.[19]

5 Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, Palestine and Jerusalem

The basic work on the Balfour Declaration and its origins remains that of Leonard Stein.[20] More recent scholarship discusses the Declaration in itself and with respect to Zionist leaders, especially that of Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), in more detail but accepts the argument made by Kedourie and Friedman that Sharif Husayn accepted Palestine’s exclusion from Arab lands that would be independent.[21] Mark Levene has broadened the perspective on Zionist activities during the war with his study of Lucien Wolf (1857-1930), but Zionist activities with respect to the war remain contested.[22]

In contrast, works on Palestine and, in particular, Jerusalem, have multiplied in recent years. The earlier focus on war and postwar political developments has shifted to an emphasis on the lives of the inhabitants, women as well as men. These include their diaries, along with that of the Spanish Consul in Jerusalem who remained there during the war, and American relief efforts, aimed mainly at Jews and Armenians as noted by Abigail Jacobson.[23] A key American in the region at the time was William Yale (1887-1975), initially based in Cairo, who provided private information on Arab as well as British political activities, examined by Max Reibman, and by Scott Anderson in his book on T.E. Lawrence.[24]

6 The Paris Peace Conference and the Arab Lands

Studies of the peace conference and the Arab Lands have generally dealt with the entire Middle East, but there are key works that examine the mandate system and its application to the Arab lands. The earliest was John de Vere Loder’s (1895-1970) The Truth About Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria (1923) that compared the French mandate statements for Lebanon and Syria with the British mandate for Palestine. Whereas the French opening paragraph referred to the eventual independence of these areas in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations, that paragraph was omitted from the British mandate for Palestine since political rights, based on the Balfour Declaration, were reserved for incoming Jewish immigrants. Michael Dockrill and Douglas J. Goold challenge the Kedouriean interpretation of British promises in their Peace Without Promise while Philip Bonsal (1903-1995), a member of the American delegation, recounts his interactions with Arab and Zionist delegates in his Suitors and Supplicants.[25]

7 Conclusion

Anglo-French historiography on the Arab Lands of the Middle East during World War I retains to some extent the focus on campaigns and personalities found soon after the war. On the other hand, important new areas of research have opened, permitting the emergence of Arab and indigenous Jewish voices to be heard, as recounted by scholars. It is hoped that this process will develop further, although the lack of access to national archives in several Arab lands due to political conflicts remains an obstacle.

Charles D. Smith, University of Arizona

Section Editors : Elizabeth Thompson; Mustafa Aksakal

Notes

1. ↑ Aksakal, Mustafa (ed.): World War I. Introduction, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014), pp.653-656. Overviews not cited elsewhere include Bittar, Marie-Claude/Hokayem, Antoine: L’Empire Ottoman, les Arabes, et les Grandes Puissances, 1914-1920, Collection ‘L’Histoire par les Documents’, volume 6, Beirut 1981; Picadou, Nadine: La Décennie que Ėbranla Le Moyen-Orient, 1914-1923, Paris 1992; McKale, Donald: Germany and the Arab Question in the First World War, in: Middle Eastern Studies 29 (1993), pp. 236-253; Kayali, Hasan: Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918, Berkeley 1997; Khalidi, Rashid: The Arab Experience of the War, in: Cecil, Hugh/Liddle, Peter (eds.): Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced, London 1996, pp. 642-655; Khalidi, Tarif: The Arab World, in: Liddle, Peter/Bourne, John/Whitehead, Ian (eds.): The Great War, 1914-1918, London 2001, pp. 293-298; Coates Ulrichsen, Kristian: The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914-1922, New York 2011; idem: The First World War in the Middle East, London 2014; Rogan, Eugene: The Fall of the Ottomans, New York 2015.

2. ↑ Phares, Mgr. Emmanuel: La Syrie et Le Liban dans L’Ėtat Actuel du Problѐme Oriental, in: Bulletin de la Sociéte de Géographie de Lille 5 (1914), pp. 249-265, online: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5720277g (retrieved: 3 November 2016).

3. ↑ Flandin, Ėtienne: Rapport sur la Syrie et la Palestine, Paris 1915; No author, Syria during March 1916, Her Miseries and Disasters (a series of articles published in the Arabic Journal ‘Mokattam’ of Cairo, 30 March, 31 March and 1 April 1916, London 1916); Tyan, Ferdinand: France et Liban: Défense des Intérȇts Franҫais en Syrie, Paris 1917; Barker, J. Ellis: The Future of Asiatic Turkey, New York 1916; Parfit, J.T.: Mesopotamia: The Key to the Future, London 1917 [1925], online: https://archive.org/details/mesopotamiatheke00parf (retrieved 3 November 2016); Pichon, Jean: Le Partage du Proche Orient, Paris 1938; Schilcher-Schatkowski, Linda, The Famine of 1915-1918 in Greater Syria, in: Spagnolo, John (ed.): Problems of the Middle East in Historical Perspective: Essays in Honor of Albert Hourani, Oxford 1992, pp. 229-258.

4. ↑ Thompson, Elizabeth: Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privileges, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon, New York 2000, Chapters 1-2; Farschid, Olaf/Kropp, Manfred/Dähne, Stephan (eds.): The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, Würzburg 2006; Liebau, Heike (ed.): The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia, Leiden 2010; Fawaz, Leila Tarazi: A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War, Cambridge, MA 2014; Al-Qattan, Najwa: When Mothers Ate Their Children: Wartime Memory and the Language of Food in Syria and Lebanon, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014), pp. 719-736; and Tanielian, Melanie: Feeding the City: The Beirut Municipality and the Politics of Food During World War I, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014), pp. 737-758.

5. ↑ Stiénon, Charles: Les Campaignes d’Orient et les Intérȇts de l’Entente, Paris 1918, online: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k370310j (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Clark, Arthur Tillotson: To Baghdad with the British, New York 1918; Barber, Major Charles H.: Besieged in Kut and After, London 1918, online: https://archive.org/details/besiegedinkutaft00barb (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Massey, W.T.: The Desert Campaigns, London 1918, online: https://archive.org/details/desertcampaigns00massgoog (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Masterman, Ernest W. Gurney: The Deliverance of Jerusalem, New York 1918, online: https://archive.org/details/deliverancejeru00mastgoog (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Thompson, Edward J.: The Leicestershires Beyond Baghdad, London 1919, online: https://archive.org/details/leicestershiresb00thomrich (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Reynardson, H. Birch: Mesopotamia, 1914-1915: Extracts From a Regimental Officer’s Diary, London 1919; Candler, Edmund: The Long Road to Baghdad, 2 volumes, New York 1919, in: https://archive.org/details/longroadtobaghda02cand (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Gontauf-Biron, R. de: Comment La France s’est installée en Syrie, Paris 1919; Bernard, Augustin: La Syrie et les Syriens, Paris 1919; Zangwill, Israel: Palestine Before the Peace Conference, Asia, in: Journal of the American Asiatic Association 19 (1919), pp. 105-106; Ormsby-Gore, William: Great Britain, Mesopotamia and the Arabs, in: The Nineteenth Century and After 88 (1920), pp. 226-238; Townshend, Charles Vere Ferrers: My Campaign, 2 volumes, New York 1920, online: https://archive.org/details/mycampaign00towngoog (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Tennant, J.E.: In the Clouds Above Baghdad, Being the Records of an Air Commander, London 1920, in: https://archive.org/details/incloudsabovebag00tennrich (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Betts, Ernest.: The Bagging of Baghdad, London 1920, online: https://archive.org/details/baggingbaghdad00bettgoog (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Samné, Georges: La Syrie, Paris 1920; Lawrence, T.E.: The Evolution of a Revolt, in: Army Quarterly (October 1920), included in: Lawrence, A.W. (ed.): Oriental Assembly, London 1991; Hogarth, David G.: Mecca’s Revolt Against the Turk, in: Century Magazine 100 (1920), pp. 403-409; Woolf, Leonard: Mandates and Empire, London 1920; Lee, D.C.: The Mandate for Mesopotamia and the Principle of Trusteeship in English Law, London 1921, online: https://archive.org/details/cu31924052878265 (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Secretary, Institute of Royal Engineers: Work in the Field in Other Theatres of War: Egypt and Palestine, Water Supply, Chatham, U.K. 1921; Tramerye, P. L’E.: La Lutte Mondiale pour le Pétrole, Paris 1921; Gouraud, General Henri: La France en Syrie, in: Revue de France 1 (April 1922), pp. 506-507; Douin, Georges: Ėpisode de la Guerre Mondiale: l’Attaque de Suez (3 Février 1915), Paris 1922; Catroux, Georges: Le Mandat Francais en Syrie: Son Application a l’Ėtat de Damas, Revue Politique et Parlementaire 10 (February 1922), pp. 211-216; Lawrence, T.E.: Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London 1922, online: https://archive.org/details/SevenPillarsOfWisdomByT.e.LawrencewithIllustrationsAndMaps (retrieved: 3 November 2016) and later editions; Vere Loder, John de: The Truth About Mesopotamia, London 1923; Ashbee, C.: A Palestine Notebook, 1918-1923, New York 1923; Leslie, Shane: Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters, London 1923, online: https://archive.org/details/marksykeshislife00lesluoft (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Hogarth, David G.: Wahhabism and British Interests, in: Journal of the British Institute of International Affairs IV (1925), pp. 68-76; Moberly, F.H.: Official History of the Great War: The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, 4 volumes, London 1924-1927; McMunn, George F.: Military Operations, Egypt and Palestine, based on official documents, 2 volumes in 3, London 1928-1930; Kearsey, Alexander: The Operations in Egypt and Palestine, August 1914-June 1917, Aldershot, U.K. 1929; idem: A Summary of the Egypt and Palestine Campaigns with Details of the 1917-1918 Operations, Aldershot 1931; Wavell, A.P.: The Palestine Campaigns, London 1929; Wilson, Arnold T.: Loyalties: Mesopotamia, 1914-1917, New York 1969; idem: A Personal and Historical Record, London 1930; idem: Mesopotamia, 1917-1920; A Personal and Historical Record, London 1931; Black, Donald [pseudonym]: Red Dust: An Australian Trooper in Palestine, London 1931; Bremond, Edouard: Le Hedjaz dans la Guerre Mondiale, Paris 1931; Nunn, Wilfred: Tigris Gunboats: A Narrative of the Royal Navy’s Cooperation with the Military Force in Mesopotamia from the Beginning of the War to the Capture of Baghdad (1914-1917), London 1932; Liddell Hart, B.H.: T.E. Lawrence in Arabia and After, London 1934. Bray, Norman N.E.: Shifting Sands, London 1936; idem: A Paladin of Arabia: The Biography of Brevet Lieut-Colonel G.E. Lleachman, C.I.E., D.S.O. of the Royal Sussex Regiment, London 1936; Goybet, General Mariano: Le Combat de Khan Meiseloun, 24 Juillet, 1920, in: Revue des Troupes de Levant 2 (1937), pp. 7-38; Pichon, Jean: Les Origines Orientales de La Guerre Mondiale, Paris 1937; idem: Partage, Paris 1938; Pingaud, A.: Partage de la Asie Mineure pendant la Grande Guerre, 1914-1917: Ėtude de Diplomatie Secrѐte, in: Revue d’Histoire de la Guerre Mondiale (April 1939), pp. 110-125; Catroux, Georges: Deux Missions en Moyen-Orient, 1919-1922, Paris 1958.

6. ↑ Barker, A.J.: The Bastard War: The Mesopotamian War of 1914-1918, New York 1967; Klieman, Aaron: Britain’s War Aims in the Middle East in 1915, in: Journal of Contemporary History 3 (1968), pp. 237-253; Rothwell, Vernon E.: Mesopotamia in British War Aims 1914-1918, in: Historical Journal XIII (1970), pp. 273-294; Mejcher, Helmut: Oil and British Policy towards Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, in: Middle Eastern Studies 8 (1972), pp. 377-391; idem: Imperial Quest for Oil: Iraq, 1910-1928, London 1976; Jones, G. Gareth: The British Government and the Oil Companies, 1912-1924: The Search for an Oil Policy, in: Kent, Marion: Oil and Empire, London, in: The Historical Journal 20 (1977), pp. 647-672; Cohen, Stuart: The Genesis of the British Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914, in: Middle Eastern Studies 12 (1976), pp. 119-132; idem: Asiatic Turkey, 1914-1916, in: Hinsley, F.H. (ed.): British Foreign Policy Under Sir Edward Grey, Cambridge 1976, pp. 436-451; Davis, Paul K.: Ends and Means: The British Mesopotamian Campaign and Commission, London 1994. Simon, Reeva Spector/Tejirian Eleanor H. (eds.): The Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921, New York 2004; Satia, Priya: Developing Iraq. Past and Present 197 (2007), pp. 211-255; Knight, Paul: The British Army in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, London 2013; Rutledge, Ian: Enemy on the Euphrates. The British Occupation of Iraq and the Great Arab Revolt, 1914-1921, London 2014.

7. ↑ Manuel, Frank E.: The Palestine Question in Italian Diplomacy, 1917-1920, in: Journal of Modern History XXVII (1955), pp. 263-280; Minerbi, Sergio: L’Italie et la Palestine, 1914-1920, Paris 1970; Darwin, John: Britain, Egypt and the Middle East: Imperial Policy in the Aftermath of War 1918-1922, New York 1981; Lewis, Geoffrey: An Ottoman Officer in Palestine, 1914-1918, Kushner, David (ed.): Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period, Jerusalem 1985, pp. 402-415; Bullock, David: Allenby’s War: the Palestine-Arabian Campaigns, 1916-1918, London 1988. Dawn, C. Ernest: The Influence of T.E. Lawrence on the Middle East. T.E. Lawrence: Soldier, Writer, Legend, Jeffrey Myers (ed.), Hampshire, U.K. 1989, pp. 58-86; Allain, Jean-Claude: Le Commandement Unifié Sur le Front d’Orient: Théorie et Practique en 1918. Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporaines 43 (1992), pp. 37-50; Hughes, Matthew: Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917-1919, London 1999; Fisher, John: Curzon and British Imperialism in the Middle East, 1916-1919, London 1999; Laurens, Henry: La Question de Palestine, in: Volume 1, 1799-1922, L’Invention de la Terre Sainte, Paris 1999, pp. 283-527; Alexander, Zvi: The Ottoman Field Post Offices, Palestine (1914-1918), Istanbul 2000; Dolev, Eran: Allenby’s Military Medicine: Life and Death in World War I Palestine, London 2007; Sheffy, Yigal: Chemical Warfare and the Palestine Campaign, 1916-1918, in: The Journal of Military History 73 (2009), pp. 803-844; Mortlock, Michael: The Egyptian Expeditionary Force in World War I: A history of the British-led campaigns in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, Jefferson, North Carolina 2011; Woodfin, Edward: Camp and Combat on the Sinai and Palestinian Fronts, New York 2012; Kitchen, James E.: The British Imperial Army in the Middle East: Morale and Military Identity in the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns, 1916-1918, London 2014; Hadaway, Stuart: Pyramids and Fleshpots: The Egyptian, Senussi, and Eastern Mediterranean Campaigns, 1914-1916, London 2015.

8. ↑ Ajay, Nicholas: Political Intrigue and Suppression in Lebanon during WWI, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1978), pp. 140-160; al-Qattan, Najwa: Safarbarlik: Ottoman Syria and the Great War. From the Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon, Phillip, Thomas / Schumann, Christoff (eds.), Beirut 2004, pp. 163-173; Phillipp, Thomas: Perceptions of the First World War in the Contemporary Arab Press. Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration, Weismann, Itzchak / Zachs, Fruma (eds.), London 2005, pp. 211-224; Ҫiҫek, M.: Talha. War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s Governorate During World War I, New York 2014.

9. ↑ Zeine, Zeine N.: The Struggle for Arab Independence: Western Diplomacy and the Rise and Fall of Faisal’s Kingdom in Syria, Beirut 1960; Nevakivi, Jukka: Britain, France, and the Arab Middle East, 1914-1920, London 1969; Tanenbaum, Jan Karl: France and the Arab Middle East, 1914-1920, in: Publications of the American Philosophical Society 68 (1978), pp. 1-49; Andrew, Christopher / Kanya-Forstner, A.S.: La France à la Recherche de la Syrie Intégrale, 1914-1920, Relations Internationales 19 (1979), pp. 263-278; idem: France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion, London 1981; Russell, Malcolm: The First Modern Arab State: Syria Under Faysal, 1918-1920, Minneapolis 1985; Brecher, F.W.: French Policy Toward the Levant, 1914-1918, in: Middle Eastern Studies 29 (1993), pp. 641-664; Khoury, Gérard: La France et l’Orient Arabe: Naissance du Liban Moderne, 1914-1920, Paris 1993; Fitzgerald, Edward Peter: France’s Middle Eastern Ambitions, the Sykes-Picot Negotiations, and the Oil Fields of Mosul, in: The Journal of Modern History 66 (1994), pp. 697-725; Nouschi, André: La France et le Proche-Orient, 1918-1920: Cohérence ou Contradictions, in: Cahiers de la Méditerranée 48 (1994), pp. 67-82; Kayali, Hasan: Wartime Regional and Imperial Integration of Greater Syria During World War I, The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation, Thomas Phillipp / Birgit Schabler (eds.), Stuttgart 1998; Cloarec, Vincent: La France et la Question de Syrie, 1914-1918, Paris 1998; Gelvin, James: Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire, Berkeley, California 1998.

10. ↑ Winstone, H.V.F.: The Illicit Adventure: The Story of Political and Military Intelligence in the Middle East from 1898 to 1926, London 1982; Bidwell, Robin (ed.): The Arab Bulletin, Volumes 1-3, Oxford 1986; Morris, Peter: Intelligence and Its Interpretation: Mesopotamia, 1914-1916, in: Intelligence and International Relations, 1900-1945, Christopher Andrew / Jeremy Noakes (eds.), Exeter, U.K. 1987, pp. 77-102; Popplewell, Richard: British Intelligence in Mesopotamia, 1914-1916, in: Intelligence and National Security 5 (1990), pp. 139-172; Lawrence, T.E.: Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula, Fordingbridge 1990 – first published 1914, restricted circulation, by War Office, General Staff, Geographical Section; Westrate, Bruce: The Arab Bureau: British Policy in the Middle East, 1916-1920, Pennsylvania 1992; Verrier, Anthony (ed.): Agents of Empire: Anglo-Zionist Intelligence Operations, 1915-1919, London 1995; Gribbon, Brigadier Walter: Aaron Aaronsohn, and the NILI Ring, London 1995; Sheffy, Yigal: British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, 1914-1918, London 1997; Macfie, A.L.: British Intelligence and the Causes of Unrest in Mesopotamia, 1919-1921, in: Middle Eastern Studies 35 (1999), pp. 165-177; Fisher, John: On the Baghdad Road. On the Trail of W.J. Childs. A Study of British Near Eastern Intelligence and Historical Analysis, c. 1900-1930, in: Archives 24 (1999), pp. 53-70; Satiya, Priya: Institutionalized Deception and Perception Reinforcement: Allenby’s Campaigns in the East, 1900-1918: How Much Do We Know?, in: Intelligence and National Security 17 (2002), pp. 33-52; Gill, David W.: Harry Pirrie-Gordon: Historical Research, Journalism, and Intelligence Gathering in the Eastern Mediterranean (1908-1918) in: Intelligence and National Security 21/6 (December 2006), pp. 1045-59; Satiya, Priya: Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East, Oxford U.K. 2008; Mohs, Polly: Military Intelligence and the Arab Revolt: The First Modern Intelligence War, London 2008.

11. ↑ Lawrence, T.E.: Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London 1922 and later editions; Liddell Hart, B.H.: Colonel Lawrence: The Man Behind the Legend, New York 1937; Moussa, Suleiman: T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View, A. Butros (trans.), Oxford 1966; Lares, J.M.: T.E. Lawrence, La France, et Les Français, Paris 1980; Aldington, Richard: Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry, Chicago 1955; Benoist-Mechin, Jacques: Lawrence D’Arabie, ou le Reve Fracasse, Lausanne 1961; Hulsman, John C.: To Begin the World Over Again: Lawrence of Arabia from Damascus to Baghdad, New York 2009; Florence, Ronald: Lawrence and Aaronsohn. T.E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, New York 2007; Schneider, James J.: Guerilla Leader: T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt, New York 2011; Anderson, Scott: Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, New York 2013; Destremau, Christian: Lawrence d’Arabie, Paris 2014.

12. ↑ Bidwell, Robin (ed.): The Arab Bulletin, Volumes 1-3, Oxford 1986; Westrate, Bruce: The Arab Bureau: British Policy in the Middle East, 1916-1920, University Park 1992.

13. ↑ Baker, Randall: King Husain and the Kingdom of the Hijaz, New York 1979; Teitelbaum, Joshua: The Rise and Fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia, New York 2001; Lieshout, R.H.: ‘Keeping the Better Educated Moslems Busy’: Sir Reginald Wingate and the Origins of the Husayn-McMahon Correspondence, in: The Historical Journal 27 (1984), pp. 453-463, online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639186 (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Tauber, Eliezer: The Role of Lieutenant Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi: New Light on Anglo-Arab Relations During World War I, in: Asian and African Studies 24 (1990), pp. 17-50; Eldar, Dan: French Policy Toward Husayn, Sharif of Mecca, in: Middle Eastern Studies 26 (1990), pp. 329-350; McKale, Donald: German Policy Toward the Sharif of Mecca, 1914-1916 in: The Historian 55 (1993), pp. 303-314; Tauber, Eliezer: The Arab Movements in World War I, London 1993; El Bakri, Alia: Memories of the Beloved: Oral Histories from the 1916-1918 Siege of Medina, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014), pp. 703-718.

14. ↑ Friedman, Isaiah: The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Question of Palestine, in: Journal of Contemporary History V (1970), pp. 83-122, online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/259746 (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Toynbee, Arnold: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence: Comments and a Reply, with a reply by Isaiah Friedman, in: Journal of Contemporary History V (1970), pp. 185-201, online: (http://www.jstor.org/stable/259872 (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Friedman, Isaiah: The Question of Palestine, London 1973, 2nd ed. 1992.

15. ↑ Kedourie, London 1976; Smith, The Invention of a Tradition: The Question of the Arab Acceptance of the Zionist right to Palestine During World War I, in: Journal of Palestine Studies XXII (1993), pp. 48-61; and idem: The Historiography of World War I and the Emergence of the Contemporary Middle East, Gershoni, Israel / Singer, Amy / Erdem, Y. Hakan (eds.) in: Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century, Seattle 2006, pp. 39-69.

16. ↑ Ingrams, Doreen (ed.): Palestine Papers, 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict, London 1972; Fromkin, David: A Peace to End All Peace, New York 1989; Karsh, Efraim / Karsh, Inari: Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery of the Middle East, 1798-1923, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1999; Smith, Charles D.: Review of Empires of the Sand, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 32 (2000), pp. 559-565, online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/259440 (retrieved: 3 November 2016).

17. ↑ Hogarth, D.G.: Wahhabism and British Interests, in: Journal of the British Institute of International Affairs IV (1925), pp. 69-73, quoted in: Troeller, Gary: Ibn Sa`ud and Sharif Husain: A Comparison in Importance in the Early Years of the First World War, in: The Historical Journal 14 (1971), p. 633, online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2637749 (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Al-Enazy, Askar H.: The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914-1927, New York 2010.

18. ↑ Adelson, Roger: Mark Sykes: Portrait of an Amateur, London 1975. Sykes’ papers, including material related to World War I, can now be accessed at http://www.britishonlinearchives.co.uk/collection.php?cid=9781851171507 (retrieved 2 November 2016). Nevakivi, Jukka: Britain, France, and the Arab Middle East, 1914-1920, London 1969.

19. ↑ Antonius, George: The Arab Awakening, New York 1938 contains the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence; Tibawi, Abd al-Latif: Anglo-Arab Relations and the Question of Palestine, London 1977.

20. ↑ The Balfour Declaration, London 1961.

21. ↑ Verete, Mayir: The Balfour Declaration and Its Makers, Middle Eastern Studies 6 (1970), pp. 48-76; Reinharz, Jehuda: The Balfour Declaration and Its Maker: A Reassessment, in: Journal of Modern History 64 (1992), pp. 455-499; idem: Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman, New York 1993.

22. ↑ Levene, Mark: War, Jews and the New Europe: The Diplomacy of Lucien Woolf, New York 1992; Engle, Anita: The NILI Spies, London 1959; Vital, David: Zionism: The Crucial Phase, Oxford 1987; Friesel, Evyatar: David Vital’s Work on Zionism, in: Studies in Zionism 9 (1988), pp. 209-223.

23. ↑ Ashbee, C. (ed.): Jerusalem, 1918-1920: Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council During the Period of the British Military Administration, London 1921, online: https://archive.org/details/jerusalembeingre00proj (retrieved: 3 November 2016); idem: Jerusalem, 1920-1922: Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council During the First Two years of the Civil Administration, London 1924, online: https://archive.org/details/jerusalem192019200ashbuoft (retrieved: 3 November 2016); Shilo, Margalit: Women as Victims of War: the British Conquest (1917) and the Blight of Prostitution in the Holy City, in: Nashim 6 (2003), pp. 72-83; Naguib, Nefissa: A Nation of Widows and Orphans: Armenian Memories of Relief in Jerusalem, Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East, Neguib, Nefisa / Okkenhaug, Inger Marie (eds.), Leiden 2008, pp. 35-57; Jacobson, Abigail: Negotiating Ottomanism in Times of War: Jerusalem During World War I Through the Eyes of a Local Muslim Resident, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (2008), pp. 69-88; idem: A City Living Through Crisis: Jerusalem During World War I, in: British Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (2009), pp. 73-92; idem: American ‘Welfare Politics’: American Involvement in Jerusalem During World War I, in: Israel Studies 18 (2013) pp. 56-76; idem: From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule, Syracuse 2014; Mazza, Roberto: Churches at War: The Impact of the First World War on the Christian Institutions of Jerusalem, 1914-1920, in: Middle Eastern Studies 45 (2009), pp. 207-227; idem: Jerusalem From the Ottomans to the British, London 2009; Ballobar, Antonio de la Cierva Lewita, conde de: Jerusalem in World War I: The Palestine Diary of a European Diplomat, Moreno, Eduardo M. / Mazza, Roberto (notes), and introduction by Roberto Mazza, London, 2011; Tamari, Salim: Year of the Locust: A Soldier’s Diary and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past, Berkeley, California 2011; idem / Nassar, Issam (eds.): The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904-1948, New York 2014, pp. 3-123; Abramson, Glenda: Soldiers’ Tales: Two Palestinian Jewish Soldiers in the Ottoman Army During World War I, London 2013.

24. ↑ Jacobson, Abigail: American ‘Welfare Politics’: American Involvement in Jerusalem During World War I, in: Israel Studies 18 (2013), pp. 56-76. Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia 2013; Reibman, Max: The Case of William Yale: Cairo’s Syrians and the Arab Origins of American Influence in the Post-Ottoman Middle East, 1917-1919, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014), pp. 681-702.

25. ↑ Dockrill, Michael L. / Goold, J. Douglas: Peace Without Promise: Britain and the Peace Conference, 1919-1923, London 1981; Bonsal, Philip: Suitors and Supplicants: The Little Nations at Versailles, New York 1946, Chapter 3, The Arabs Plead for Freedom, pp. 32-51, and Chapter 4, The Zionists and Ben Israel, pp. 52-63.

Citation

Smith, Charles D.: Historiography 1918-Today (Middle East/Arab Lands) , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2017-02-08. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.11048.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

Wartime and Post-War Historiography: Personal Experiences, Historical Accounts, and Links to Contemporary Scholarship

Archival Access and Scholarship on European and Ottoman Campaigns, Military Intelligence, and Goals in the Arab Lands

T. E Lawrence, Sharif Husayn of Mecca, and the Arab Revolt: The Sincere British Imperialist Theory of the Arab Lands and World War I

Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, Palestine and Jerusalem

The Paris Peace Conference and the Arab Lands

Conclusion

Selected Bibliography

Citation

Content