Lion of Jordan Read Online Free Page B

continuation of the handsome subsidy paid annually to Hussein since 1917. But the old man, embittered by what he regarded as British bad faith andbetrayal, refused to sign and angrily rejected the conditions stating that he should recognize the mandate system and condone the Balfour Declaration.
    The subsequent ending of the British subsidy and the removal of British protection left the king of the Hijaz exposed to the mercies of his great rival, Sultan Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud of the Najd in Eastern Arabia. Only British diplomatic pressure and the payment of a subsidy to Ibn Saud had kept the rivalry between the two Arabian rulers dormant during the First World War. After the war an inevitable trial of strength developed between the king, who assumed that his sponsorship of the Arab Revolt entitled him to political authority over his neighbours, and the chieftain, whose determination revived the Wahhabi movement. The Wahhabiyya, named after Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, was an ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim movement that arose in the Arabian Peninsula in the second half of the eighteenth century. Ibn Saud turned the Wahhabi movement into an effective military force.
    The first serious clash occurred on 21 May 1919 in Turaba, on the eastern border of the Hijaz, when Ibn Saud’s forces almost totally obliterated a large Hashemite army commanded by Abdullah. The wild Wahhabi warriors, the Ikhwan, crept up at night on Abdullah’s unguarded camp and killed many of the men in their beds. Thirty-five of his personal guard died fighting at the door of his tent. Abdullah himself escaped in his night clothes with the taunts of
shurayif
(‘little sharif’) ringing in his ears, wounded in body and pride. Moreover, as his biographer has observed:
    The battle at Turaba was a turning point in Abdullah’s life and in the history of Arabia. From that time on, Husayn and his sons were on the defensive while Ibn Saud grew inexorably more powerful… Abdullah’s Arabian ambitions died at Turaba as well. The reverberations of the dreadful rout echoed throughout Arabia, diminishing his stature and his family’s prestige. In a single night his dreams of an Arabian empire had turned to nightmares. 20
    More defeats were to follow. In March 1924, after the Turkish National Assembly abolished the caliphate, Hussein proclaimed himself caliph. Characteristically, this was a unilateral move for which he had not obtained the agreement of any other Islamic leaders. It was also a misjudgement of his own power and position. For Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers, it was the last straw. The decisive battle began inSeptember 1924, when the Ikhwan mounted an offensive that Hussein could not withstand. After they captured Taif, Hussein abdicated in favour of his eldest son, Ali, hoping to save the Kingdom of the Hijaz for his family. But Ali too was overthrown and banished from the Hijaz a year later. In October 1924, Ibn Saud captured Mecca, and Hussein escaped to Aqaba. From Aqaba, Hussein was taken by a British naval vessel to Cyprus, where he lived in exile until his death in 1931.
    The Hijaz became part of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud inflicted on Hussein and his eldest son the crowning humiliation of seeing him assume the administration of the holy places in Mecca and Medina. Thus, with the loss of the two most sacred sites of Islam, the Hashemite claim to leadership of the Muslim world disintegrated, as did the dream of a mighty Hashemite empire. And, by a cruel historic irony, it was in its own ancestral home that the Hashemite dynasty sustained the most monumental and shattering of defeats.
    Hussein’s eclipse gave a dramatic illustration of the immense power wielded by Britain in shaping the fortunes of the Arab nations and their rulers. The political shape of the region did not evolve naturally but was largely the product of British design tailored to fit Britain’s own imperial needs. It was not the Syrians who expelled