In February 1914, while Lawrence and Woolley had been wandering about the Negev, Sharif ‘Abdallah, second son of Hussain, Emir of Mecca, had arrived in Cairo for a visit to the Egyptian Sultan. He was no longer the inexperienced youth who had landed from the Tanta at Jeddah in 1908, but had spent his adolescent years hardening himself to the saddle, riding with Hussain’s Bedu levies, and, with his brothers ‘Ali and Feisal, carrying out punitive raids against recalcitrant tribes, and fighting in the ‘Assir in the name of the Turks. Highly astute, popular among the Arabs, Sharif ‘Abdallah was reckoned by many to be the true power in the Hejaz. Now, he was on his way to Istanbul to complain to officials of the Ottoman Government, who had just announced a new system of local administration. Known as the Vilayet system, it was intended to cut out traditional Arab leaders like his father, Hussain, who since 1908 had steadily been gathering power among the Bedu tribes. To install this new system, the Porte was determined to extend the Hejaz railway from its present terminus at Medina to the Emir’s seat at Mecca, and a hardline governor named Vehib Bey had already been dispatched from Istanbul with seven battalions of infantry and a regiment of artillery to help carry the job out. If the railway was completed, ‘Abdallah knew, it would mean the end of his family’s power in the Hejaz for ever.

The Hejaz railway had reached Medina in 1908, the year in which the Hashemites had returned to Mecca, but at that time Sharif Hussain had preferred to travel by ship, partly because Medina had then been under siege by certain Bedu tribes. It was, nevertheless, a triumph of Ottoman imperial vision and German precision engineering, crossing 800 miles of deserts and arid hills which for millennia had lain silent but for the tread of men and pack animals – a steel road, symmetrical, shining and alien. Designed by Meissner Pasha – a German engineer of insuperable drive and genius – it had been laid by a force of almost 6,000 Turkish soldiers, whose blood stained almost every mile of the track. With dogged fortitude, the Turks had swung their hammers, advancing slowly, suffering heat, thirst, hunger, flies and disease. There were great natural problems to contend with – vast wadis which had to be spanned by twenty-arched bridges: sandstone hogsbacks which had to be cut and blasted through. The track was in need of constant maintenance: the ballast of the embankments would subside and leave holes under the rails; drifting sand would block the culverts; floodwaters would fill them with detritus and wash the banks away; Bedu raiders would damage the tracks. The labourers worked in troops of twenty to fifty together, always armed, always with sentries posted in high places to warn them of the approach of Bedu parties. No Bedui was permitted to come near a station without permission upon threat of being shot down, and in the Hejaz almost every station was protected by a stone fort, each with its underground water-cistern, equipped with loopholes and steel shutters, and entangled by barbed wire. If the sentries spotted raiders approaching, they would give a signal to the working parties, who would jump aboard their trolleys and rush to the station. Sometimes they were attacked by the marauders before they could reach safety and cut down man by man: frequently they were obliged to hold out for several days. The Bedu were uncontrollable. They trusted no one and were constantly in arms against the government and against each other, yet they were united in their hatred for the railway, which had reduced the carrying trade, and enabled the Turks to strengthen their control in the Hejaz.

In January 1914, with the new Governor and his eight battalions on the way, Hussain had played his Bedu card swiftly. He mustered the Sheikhs of the tribes and informed them of Vehib’s arrival and his objectives. ‘The railway will ruin you completely,’ he told them. ‘… Once the Turks can rush troops from one part of the Hejaz to the other, they will no longer need to pay gold to the Bedu.’¹² The tribes saw where their interests lay, and gave the Emir their assurance of support. When Vehib arrived he found chaos: the telephone wires had been cut by Bedu tribesmen and the towns were starving; raiders were plundering shops in Jeddah and attacking caravans; his chief of police had disappeared, kidnapped by Bedu tribesmen on the Pilgrim road. The Governor dispatched a desperate message to Istanbul, and for a moment it looked as if the Turks might send a punitive expedition by ship from Smyrna. In the event, though, they backed down and offered ‘Abdallah 250,000 gold sovereigns to persuade his father to end the insurrection, promising in addition half the revenues of the railway once extended to Mecca. ‘Abdallah realized astutely that once the railway had been completed such promises would be as solid as the wind.

Whether he had come to Cairo that February specifically in order to sound out the British attitude to Turkey is uncertain. He had already had in mind the prospect of fomenting a rebellion among Arab units in the Ottoman army in Syria and Mesopotamia and, with British diplomatic help, of securing first the independence of the Hejaz and then, perhaps, of a wider Arab state. It may or may not have been fortuitous that, at an official reception, ‘Abdallah bumped into Lord Kitchener, British Agent, but de facto ruler of Egypt, whose concern in the Hejaz was with the safety of Indian pilgrims performing the Haj – the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. At their first meeting it was this subject which they discussed. The following day, though, ‘Abdallah visited Kitchener and inquired tentatively what the attitude of Britain would be if a conflict should develop between the Hashemites and the Turks. Kitchener was circumspect. He himself already considered Turkey a prospective enemy which would threaten the crucial Suez Canal in the event of war: this was, in fact, why he, an Englishman, was the effective power in Egypt – a country still technically a part of the Ottoman Empire. Officially, however, his hands were tied. He explained to ‘Abdallah that Turkey was a friendly country which Britain had fought a war in the Crimea to protect. Britain was thus unlikely to intervene in any conflict between the Hejaz and the Sublime Porte.

In Istanbul, ‘Abdallah’s protests to the Committee of Union and Progress fell on deaf ears, and he returned to Cairo in April 1914 fuming at his reception. By now, however, the Porte’s spies had got wind of his manoeuvres with the British and had dissuaded Kitchener from meeting him. Instead, ‘Abdallah spoke to Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary to the British Agency, from whom he requested a consignment of machine guns for ‘defence’ against the Turks. Storrs replied that ‘in principle’ the British Empire’s only interest in the Hejaz was the welfare of its pilgrims and repeated that Britain could not intervene. Secretly, though, Storrs was sympathetic, and by carefully chosen words intimated that Britain’s answer was not in fact so final as it seemed. The two men liked each other: Storrs, the traditional British Orientalist – suave, vain, sophisticated, perhaps bisexual, a lover of fine art and music: ‘Abdallah, the Arabian prince – worldly-wise, cultivated, truculent, highly popular, an incessant quoter of Arabic verse and lover of young boys. It was perhaps as these two highly intelligent representatives of their nations faced each other in the Abdin Palace that, in scarcely perceptible signs, hints and attitudes, the Arab Revolt was born.

It was not until that autumn, when Turkey’s entry to the war seemed inevitable, that Kitchener was able to come out into the open. On 24 September he sent a cable from London, instructing Storrs to dispatch a secret and highly trustworthy messenger to ‘Abdallah in the Hejaz to find out whether the Hashemites would be with or against the British in the event of war. Storrs commissioned a veteran Persian agent named ‘Ali Asghar – known to posterity as ‘Messenger X’ – to go to Mecca disguised as a pilgrim. ‘Ali left Suez on 5 October, reached Jeddah three days later, hired a donkey for Ј2 and, having ridden all night, arrived in the Holy City the following morning. After several days’ wait, he managed to contact ‘Abdallah. He arrived back in Cairo before the end of the month, with a message conveying a response Kitchener had not anticipated. He would have been happy had the Arabs merely agreed to stay out of the war. Instead, to his surprise, ‘Abdallah promised to remain neutral for the time being, but, with sufficient diplomatic support, ‘to lead his immediate followers into armed revolt’.¹³ The text was cabled to London on 29 October: the Ottoman Empire declared war formally on Britain two days later. By early December, Lawrence, Woolley and Newcombe had been posted to Cairo’s General Staff.