There is great misunderstanding of the history of the Hashemite Kings, Sharif Hussein and Sharif Abdullah, and their role in the Arab Revolt. Many think that they revolted against the Ottoman caliph, when in fact they revolted against the Turkish nationalists who had hijacked the Ottoman empire, deposed the caliph, and turned the empire into a military dictatorship on its way to imminent destruction. Thus Sharif Abdullah convinced his father that if they did not abandon ship quickly, Arab territories would sink with the Ottoman Empire. Their revolt, therefore, was not against the Ottomans, but against the Young Turks. Here are the details below, which I copied from:
The Modern History of Jordan by Kamal Salibi. London & New York: I.B. Taurus, 2006.
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* The Emirs of Mecca
By the late 9th century C.E., Egypt became one of the more important provinces of the Abbasid caliphate because of the prosperity it gained from the reviving maritime trade.
“The Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad condoned the establishment of two quasi-independent dynastic states in succession: that of the Tulunids (868-905), followed by that of the Ikhshidids (935-969). Each of these dynasties, in turn, was founded by a Turkish officer of the Abbasid army owing allegiance to the caliph of Baghdad; and both of them were permitted to bring the southern parts of Syria- including the present land of Jordan- under their control…. In addition to Syria, these Ikshidids also had control over the Hijaz.” [20]
Towards the end of the 9th century, a heretical Islamic sect known as the Qaramita rebelled against the Abbasids, opposing all standing government control. They established a “republic” in 899 in the eastern Arabia, their stronghold being Bahrain, which at the time was much larger than modern-day Bahrain and included much of eastern Arabia and the islands around it. This rebellion was not finally subdued until 1071.
In 930, they sacked Mecca and Madina, and stole the Black Stone from the Ka’ba as a trophy.
“Unable to handle the emergency in person, the reigning Abbasid caliph in Baghdad left the matter to the care of his vassal, Kafur – the black eunuch who ruled Egypt between 946 and 968 as regent under the later Ikhshidids. In 950, Kafur persuaded the Qaramita to return the Black Stone to Mecca, and also to stop their raids in the direction of the Hijaz and Syria, so that pilgrims travelling by land could again reach Mecca without trouble. In return, the Qaramita were promised an annual tribute.
As a further measure to secure the Meccan pilgrimage, Kafur chose one of the Hijazi sharifs – a man called Jaafar al-Musawi – and installed him as emir of Mecca in about 964. In present Arabic usage, the title of emir denotes a reigning prince, or a non-reigning member of a royal family. In its original use, hoewever, the term meant ‘commander, commanding officer’, from the Arabic verb amara, meaning ‘order, command’. Thus the emirate of Mecca, as originally instituted by Kafur, was envisaged primarily as a military office. The duty of the emir of Mecca was to guard and defend the sanctuaries of the holy city and to take the necessary local measures to facilitate the annual pilgrimage.” [53]
“King Hussein of the Hijaz, the father of the founder of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, was the last sharif to be appointed to this historical Islamic institution, originally founded by the Ikhshidids of Egypt.” [21]
* The Last Line of Emirs
“After the death of Saladin in 1193, his empire was divided between his sons and other members of the Ayyubid family. The most prominent among them was his brother, al-Adel Sayf al-Din Abu Bakr (known to the Franks as Saphadin), who established himself in Cairo as the recognized Ayyubid sultan. His descendants in Cairo continued to hold this title of supreme Islamic sovereignty until 1250…. It was he, in 1200, who appointed a new emir for Mecca – the sharif Qitada ibn Idris of Yanbu – to replace the last of the older sharifian dynasty in the holy city. After that date the emirate of Mecca remained the preserve of Qitada’s descendents, the last emir of Mecca being Hussein, the father of the founder of the present Jordanian kingdom.” [24]
“Sharif Qitada came originally from the seaport of Yanbu, in the Medina region, where his family had held considerable estate since Umayyad times.” [55]
* The Institution’s Increase in Importance Under the Ottomans
Eventually the Abbasid caliphs lost almost all political power, but their symbolic significance remained important, and they would legitimize the rulers of the Muslim world by investing them with their official titles. When the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258, the Abbasid line was moved to Cairo.
The Mamluk rulers, since 1260, “had made a point of establishing a line of Abbasid caliphs in Cairo to invest them with the supreme Muslim authority of sultans.” However, the Ottomans rulers “had called themselves sultans since the fourteenth century without bothering about the legalities of the question. It was the tremendous prestige they had gained as the conquerors of the Christian lands of the Balkans that earned them the title.” [58]
In 1517, Sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluks and entered Cairo. “The Abbasid caliph in the city- a man named al-Mutawakkil – had already invested the Mamluk Tuman Bay with the sultanate… Once Timay Bay was captured and killed, however, Selim I ceased having a rival to the sultanate….Later, in July 1517, the caliph was taken from Cairo to Alexandria, then sent from there to Istanbul. Interestingly, this happened shortly after Sharif Abu Numai (the emir of Mecca at the time) arrived in Cairo. The Ottoman Sultan, perhaps, chose that particular moment to send al-Mutawakkil into exile to indicate that he considered the Islamic legitimacy of the Meccan sharifs more important than that of the Egyptian caliphs. Al-Mutawakkil was later permitted to return to Cairo as caliph, but his position had meanwhile come to count for nothing. After his death in 1543, the Egyptian caliphate quietly passed out of existence, and the Abbasid family was soon forgotten.
According to an old legend, al-Mutawakkil transferred his rights as caliph to Selim I and his successors before leaving Istanbul. What gave rise to the legend was the fact that the insignia of the caliphate – most important of all, the Prophet’s mantle (salla Allahu alayhi wa ‘alaa Aalihi wa sallam)- were confiscated by the Ottomans after their conquest of Egypt and transferred to the sultan’s palace in Istanbul, where pious Muslims continue to visit them to this day. From the late eighteenth century, when Ottoman power was at its lowest ebb, the sultans of Istanbul began to make a great issue of being caliphs of Islam, explaining that the Abbasids of Cairo had passed this title to their dynasty at the time of the Egyptian conquest. But this was not so in the days of Selim I and his immediate successors. To these powerful Ottoman sultans, the most important attribute of their Islamic sovereignty was the fact that they were the ‘Servants and Protectors of the Holy Places’ in the Hijaz. This title they never got from the caliphs of Cairo, but from the recognition accorded to them by the emirs of Mecca: the true representatives of the Ahl al-Bayt whose claims to Islamic pre-eminence, as Alid Hashemites, had finally been vindicated against those of their discredited Abbasid cousins.” [58-9]
* Sharif Hussein ibn Ali
The Ottomans needed to keep the emirate of Mecca firmly under their control, and so whenever they appointed a new emir, they sent all his potential rivals, from the family, to Istanbul as “honored exiles.”
Sharif Hussein ibn Ali was born in Istanbul in 1853. At the time, his father was living in Istanbul became the emirate of Mecca was in the hands of someone from another branch of the family. In 1858, the emirate was given to sharif Hussein’s uncle Abdullah, and sharif Hussein was sent to the Hijaz “to live with his uncle Abdullah and grow up among the bedouin Arabs, as was the sharifian custom.” His father had died in Istanbul in 1861. [68]
When the sharif Hussein grew up, he became deeply involved in Meccan politics, and began to oppose his uncle’s policies. Thus the Ottomans summoned him to Istanbul where he arrived in 1893 with his sons.
“The enforced stay of Hussein in the Ottoman capital lasted for fifteen years. The sharif was now in middle age, and looked extremely impressive with his Meccan turban and Arabian robes. He was a man of considerable Islamic learning, highly knowledgeable in world affairs, and his patriarchal personality, coupled with excellent manners, won him general respect. The sharif, however, had a will of iron, and was inflexible in his views. The sultan continued to be wary of his political ambitions and the exalted view he held of the paramount Islamic standing of the sharifian office, and hardly any member of the Ottoman ruling establishment wished to see the emirate of Mecca fall into his hands.” [69]
In 1905, sharif Ali son of sharif Abdullah, being the cousin and brother-in-law of sharif Hussein, was given the emirate. But in 1908, when the Young Turks revolted against the Ottomans and took charge of the empire, sharif Ali opposed them and encouraged the local units of the Ottoman army to rebel against the new regime. His rebellion was crushed and he was deposed. His uncle Abdul-Ilah, living in Istanbul, was appointed as his successor but died of old age before he could leave the city. This left two choices for the emirate: Sharif Hussein, and sharif Ali Haidar, from another branch of the family. The CUP (see below) favored Ali Haidar. “Abdul-Hamid, however, was still on the throne, and it was his privilege as caliph to have the final say in the appointment of the emir of Mecca. Unwilling to accept the candidacy of Ali Haidar, he reluctantly agreed to the appointment of Hussein, who now left Istanbul to return with his family to the Hijaz.
The following year, the CUP deposed Abdul-Hamid, placing his compliant brother Muhammad Rashad – or Muhammad V – on the throne.” [69-70]
* Who Were the Young Turks and the CUP?
In 1839, the Ottomans began a program of general reform called the Tanzimat. In 1876, the Tanzimat reforms established a constitution for the empire, and the election of the first Ottoman parliament. But two years later, sultan Abdul-Hamid II suspended the constitution, dismissed the parliament, and ruled the empire single-handedly.
“During the thirty years of the so-called Hamidian despotism, the political ideals of the Tanzimat remained alive in Istanbul among a group of intellectuals and European-educated officials and army officers who came to be known as the Young Turks. The idea of nationalism had already begun to permeate the Ottoman world at the time, and the Young Turks were Turkish nationalists. They maintained that the Ottoman empire, while remaining the empire of Islam, was essentially a Turkish concern. In keeping with the spirit of the Tanzimat, the Young Turks were firm believers in the principle of political centralization. In addition, they believed that the empire must be Turkified. These two principles – centralization and Turkification – became the underlying ideals of a group of officials and army officers who secretly organized themselves as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).
In 1908, an army revolution led by the CUP in Istanbul brought the period of Hamidian despotism to an end, and the Ottoman constitution of 1876 was restored. Within five years, however, the Young Turk regime in Istanbul was transformed by stages into a military dictatorship for which the democratic institutions reintroduced in 1908 – among them the Ottoman parliament – served as a mere cover. A succession of military catastrophes which were blamed on civilian politicians, among them the defeat in the war of 1911-12 which ended with the loss of Libya to Italy, hastened the process by which the military finally seized power in Istanbul.
The army officers who became the actual rulers of the Ottoman state by 1913 were all German-trained, which made them naturally pro-German. As newcomers to power, they lacked the resilience of their political predecessors, and were generally inclined to take hard-and-fast positions on debatable issues. When the First World War (or the Great War, as it was called at the time) broke out in 1914 between the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) and the Allies (Britain, France and Russia), the Young Turk regime threw the Ottoman empire into the war on the side of the Central Powers. When these lost the war in 1918, the Ottoman empire was doomed.
Meanwhile, starting from 1908, the policies of increased centralization and Turkification relentlessly pursued by the Young Turk regime were beginning to provoke negative reactions in the Arab countries. In many Arab circles, particularly among the educated and politically ambitious classes in the cities, there were people who were beginning to sense that they were being rapidly transformed from Ottoman citizens into Turkish subjects. Among the general run of Muslim Arabs, however, the Ottoman empire continued to be revered as the empire of Islam, ruled by the sultan-caliph in Istanbul not only as a temporal sovereign, but also as a defender of the Islamic faith.” [32-3]
* Sharif Abdullah ibn Hussein : The Chief Engineer of the Arab Revolt
In 1913-14, sharif Hussein’s sons Abdullah and Feisal sat in the Ottoman parliament as representatives of the Hijaz. “Together, they came to know deputies from other Arab countries who spoke of Arab national hopes and aspirations, and both the brothers were won over to the idea. They could hardly have been otherwise, faced with the offensive arrogance exhibited towards the Arabs by the more militantly nationalistic among the Young Turks: ‘If we said, we and you are the people of Islam, they said, yes, but we are the masters and you are the followers; if we said, we and you, they said, you are traitors and rebels.’ So Abdullah, in his memoirs, sums up the conflict that went on at the time between the two sides. ” [77]
“By general admission, the Arab revolt against the Ottomans was originally Abdullah’s idea. Growing up in Istanbul in the days of Abdul-Hamid, the young sharif was impressed by the pan-Islamic solidarity promoted in the vast Ottoman empire by this last of the great sultans, for whom he retained a life-long admiration. The Ottoman state in those days still seemed to be holding together firmly, its Arab and Turkish subjects standing on the same footing as brothers in the Muslim faith, ready to defend their sovereign and their empire against the world. In 1909, however, Abdul-Hamid was overthrown by the CUP. Abdullah was visiting Damascus for the first time when the great sultan was deposed and replaced by his weak brother, and he could hear the first Arab murmurs against the Young Turks and their policies among the younger generation of notables in the Syrian capital. ‘The gate for popular sedition was breached,’ he wrote, reflecting on the event in his later years. ‘It was boyish play… They usurped power and came to hold the ruler and the subjects in their grip… Most of those who used to love the Ottoman sultanate became confused by the irresponsible and despotic behavior of the Unionists (CUP)…and the fall of government prestige.’ Four years later, the ‘boyish play’ that hard first irked Abdullah in 1909 took a turn for the worse. In 1913, the officers of the CUP seized power directly, to establish their brash military dictatorship in the Ottoman capital.
When he returned to Istanbul as a parliamentary deputy in 1913, Abdullah was shocked by the change he saw. The Young Turks had become overbearing in their attitude towards the Arabs, and it seemed only a matter of time before the Ottoman partnership between the two races would reach breaking-point. From the way the CUP dictators were running the internal and external affairs of the state, Abdullah could easily surmise that the days of the Ottoman empire were nearing their end. Talk of the great war between the Central Powers and the Allies were already in the air, and there were increasing signs that the Ottomans, in the event of such a war, would be taking the side of the former. Abdullah was a regular visitor to Egypt, where the reigning khedive, Abbas Hilmi, was his personal friend; and most Arabs with Egyptian connections were convinced that if a war did take place, Britain would be the winner, and the Ottoman empire would be defeated, along with Austria and Germany. From such estimates, it was easy for Abdullah to draw his conclusions. If the Arabs, by sharifian initiative, broke with the Ottomans in time to join the British side in the war, the chances were that they would emerge on the winning side, and so gain their independence under sharifian leadership.
On his third trip to Istanbul as a member of parliament in February 1914, Abdullah stopped in Cairo, as usual, to visit his friend, the khedive. This time the British agent in the Egyptian capital, Lord Kitchener, paid him a courtesy call, which he returned. On the second occasion, Abdullah broached the subject of a possible Arab revolt against the Ottomans, and what the British attitude was likely to be in the event of this, but the response he got from Kitchener was evasive. The contact, however, was established, and Abdullah managed to keep the channels of communication open. When the war broke out in Europe later that year, and Turkey entered on the German side, Abdullah pursued the dialogue with the British authorities in Cairo, and Sharif Hussein was finally persuaded to take over the Anglo-sharifian negotiations in person. In the meantime, Feisal pressed for caution, suggesting alternatives for a compromise solution with the Turks, until the point of no return was reached in the spring of 1916. Little wonder that Abdullah was generally considered the chief engineer of the Arab revolt and the political brain behind it on the sharifian side.” [78-9]
* Sharif Hussein vs the British
The British were allies not only of Sharif Hussein but of his chief rival, Abdul-Aziz Al Saud of Riyadh, whose Wahhabi forces were closing in on his territories. In 1919, despite the warnings of everyone around him, the sharif sent his son Abdullah with an army to capture the oasis of Turaba from the Saudi forces, but they were slaughtered and Abdullah was barely able to escape alive with 150 survivors. “For the sharifian kingdom of the Hijaz, this was the beginning of the end.” [80]
“Returning to Taif, Abdullah found his father adamant about pursuing the war against Abdul-Aziz and the Wahhabis. For this purpose, he entered into secret alliance with the Rashidis of Hail and the Al Sabah rulers of Kuwait. He also made approaches to Imam Yahya, the newly independent Zeidi ruler of the Yemen. Abdullah, with his intimage knowledge of the inner workings of Arabian politics, could not allow himself to subscribe to his father’s politics, which stood no chance of success, but he was unsuccessful in moderating them. Hussein’s alliance with the Rashidis was particularly ominous. During the war, the emirs of Hail had taken the Turkish and German side against the Saudis and the British, and they now stood doomed.
His Arabian policies apart, the king was also beginning to collide with the British on other counts. When he was proclaimed King of the Arab Countries in October 1916, the British government had recognized him only as King of the Hijaz; and after the war, it became clear to him that they did not intend to go any further than this. Their wartime promises to him about Arab independence had been studiously vague. He had trusted their good intentions, but these now seemed to be vanishing rapidly. The Arab lands were being divided between Britain and France, and there was every indication that Britain intended to honour the Balfour declaration and give Palestine to the Jews. His son Feisal, whom he had delegated to represent him at the Paris peace talks, had remonstrated against all this, but to no effect….The king would have none of this, and he let the British know it. Now that his wartime alliance with them was over, he would not agree to enter into any treaty relations with them to secure his continued rule in the Hijaz, unless they went back on the Balfour declaration and committed themselves to helping him regain independence for the Arab countries of which he considered himself the rightful king. Repeated please made to him by his British friends to accept some compromise, in his own interest, went unheeded, even when sincerely meant. By his proud intransigence on questions of principle, the man was clearly bent on his own destruction.” [80-1]
In 1920, Abdullah left Mecca with his family and an army of 2000 men and arrived in the city of Maan in Transjordan. He laid claim to the entire territory which had been viewed as ungovernable and no one wanted it. The British, who did not know what they were going to do with this territory under the Palestinian mandate – with a vague idea of maybe putting all the Palestinians who refused to live along with the Jews in it - decided to cede it to him. As Winston Churchill put it, they saw it as a way for them to “repair the injuries done to the Arabs and the house of the Sharif of Mecca.” [87]
As Sharif Abdullah wrote in his memoirs:
When I was in Maan, I received a letter from Mazhar Raslan, the governor of Salt… saying: “the national government has received note that you intend to visit Transjordan. If this visit is merely for leisure, the country will receive you with welcome. If it is for political motives, the government will take all necessary measures to prevent your visit.” I answered: “My visit to Transjordan will be a visit of occupation…Know, therefore, that your duty is to accept orders from Maan. Otherwise, I shall appoint someone else in your place.”
Thus did the Sharif Abdullah seize control of the territory of Transjordan, which he would later transform into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 1928 he was invited to Jerusalem to meet the British high commissioner of the mandated territory, and he pressed for the unification of Palestine and Transjordan. But “he was told quite plainly that Britian had other plans for Palestine, which took Jewish national aspirations into account. Realizing that he had no power to alter matters as they stood, Abdullah conceded.” [88]
In 1924, King Hussein came to Transjordan and stopped for a while at the city of Aqaba. He made his son encamp outside the city for two days, waiting to be allowed to meet his father.
“When the king finally agreed to receive his son, in the presence of of the mayor and the town notables, he had nothing for him but harsh words, admonishing him in particular for acceding to the terms of the British mandate concerning the Palestinian territory. A copy of the Anglo-Jordanian treaty had earlier been sent to him for ratification, and this he now took out of his pocket, unratified, and practically threw in his son’s face. The king next set up camp in the Jordan valley, where he held court and proceeded to take over the directions of the affairs of Transjordan, heedless of the authority of Abdullah and his British advisers. For a while, the British feared that the emir, in filial obedience, might actually step down in favour of his father and hand the country over to him.
While King Hussein remained in Transjordan, Abdullah continued to do his bidding. Meanwhile, on 3 March 1924, the office of the Ottoman caliph in Istanbul was abolished, and King Hussein immediately made it known that he intended to assume the vacant office. He was actually proclaimed caliph in Jidda two days later, against a wave of political indignation from countries such as Egypt and India. In Arabia, the Wahhabis pounced on the issue to resume their offensive against the Hijaz with increased vigor…
Eager to assume his functions as caliph, King Hussein finally left Transjordan to return home before the end of the month, after repeated hints from the British that his continued presence in his son’s territory was no longer desirable. Back in Mecca, however, he found his kingdom already collapsing before the Wahhabi onslaughts directed by his old foe, Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. In October of that same year, Hussein was compelled to abdicate the throne of the Hijaz in favour of his eldest son, Ali, and shortly after retired to Aqaba; but the British would not agree to his stay there, and it was arranged for him to be taken into exile on the island of Cyprus instead. When his health later broke down, he asked for permission to die in an Arab country, and was allowed to return to Amman, where he died in 1931. His son Abdullah, who remained by his side in his last years, arranged for his burial with due royal honours in the Aqsa mosque of Jerusalem – the third holiest place in Islam after the Kaaba of Mecca and the Prophet’s mosque and tomb in Medina….
Unable to carry on with his resistance any further, Ali handed over power in Jidda on 20 December 1925 to a provisional goverment, which subsequently arranged for the peaceful transfer of this last Hijazi outpost to the Saudis. Leaving the Hijaz directly after his abdication, Ali spent the remaining years of his life in Iraq.” [89-90]
والحمد لله رب العالمين على نعمه كلها
اللهم صلّ وسلم وبارك على سيدنا ومولانا محمد خير البرية
وعلى آله في كل لمحة ونفس عدد ما وسعه علم الله
nuruddinzangi