The siege of Medina (1916-1919) is one of the more significant events in the Near Eastern theatre in World War I. Fakhri Paşa (Fahrettin Türkkan, 1868-1948), the legendary figure of the siege, resisted several demands of the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn ʿAli, and the British to surrender and even ignored orders from Istanbul to hand over the city but was eventually forced to surrender. The events in Medina have not gone unnoticed by historiography, although a full appreciation has still to be given. Eye witness reports by officers of the Ottoman garrison in Medina have constituted the basis for the narrative of the siege of Medina. British documents have added to our knowledge. Other sources used are the partially unpublished papers of Fakhri Paşa and German material.
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Birken, Andreas, Die Provinzen des Osmanischen Reiches (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1976), pp. 252-3 (Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Reihe B, Geisteswissen‑schaften 13).
Hogarth, David, Hejaz before World War I: A Handbook (Cambridge: Oleander Press, 1978), pp. 51-2.
Kornrumpf, Hans-Jürgen, “Die osmanische Herrschaft auf der Arabischen Halbinsel im 19. Jahrhundert”, Saeculum 31 (1980), 399-408, here: pp. 402-3.
Ochsenwald, William, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1840-1908 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984).
Teitelbaum, Joshua, The Rise and Fall of the Hashimite Kingdom of Arabia (London: Hurst and Company, 2001), pp. 20-30.
Abu-Manneh, Butrus, “Sultan Abdülhamid II and the Sharifs of Mecca (1880-1900)”, Asian and African Studies 9 (Jerusalem 1973), 1-21.
Kayalı, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks. Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 159-60.
According to Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, pp. 148-9, his appointment by the sultan in 1908 was not controversial. Philby, however, states, without giving sources: “The second nail [in the coffin of the Hijaz, the first being the construction of the Hijaz Railway, MS] was driven into the coffin of the Hijaz in 1908, when the Young Turk Government selected Husain ibn Ali for the important post of Grand Sharif of Mecca. Sultan Abdul Hamid had already on a previous occasion flatly refused to appoint Husain to that post, and when he heard that he had been appointed by the Turkish Government he made a remark which was justified by the event within seven or eight years. ‘The Hijaz’, he exclaimed, ‘is as good as lost to Turkey’”, H. St.Philby, “The recent history of the Hejaz”, Journal of the Central Asian Society 12 (1925), 332-48, here: p. 336.
Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, pp. 159-60, pp. 167-168; Kayalı, Hasan, “A glimpse from the periphery: Medina in the Young Turk era”, in Elisabeth Özdalga et al. (eds.), Istanbul as Seen from a Distance. Centre and Provinces in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Svenska Forskningsinstitutet, 2011), pp. 139-54 (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Transactions vol. 20); Teitelbaum, The Rise and Fall, pp. 33-5.
Dawn, C. Ernest, From Ottomanism to Arabism. Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urbana-Chicago-London: University of İllinois Press, 1973), pp. 16-17; Teitelbaum, The Rise and Fall, p. 69; Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, pp. 182-4.
Musil, Alois, Zur Zeitgeschichte von Arabien (Leipzig-Wien: Hirzel, 1918), pp. 28-9. Although Musil had first-hand knowledge of the region and toured the interior and the east of Arabia in 1914 and 1915, he never visited Medina and Mecca; still, his depiction is full of details which he must have gotten from eye-witnesses. Musil puts the date of the visit as March 8 and 9. However, a report in Die Welt des Islam 4/1-2, 1916, pp. 73-4, and a dispatch from Cemal to Husayn ibn ‘Ali, sent from Medina on February 20 (Erden, Ali Fuad, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Suriye Hâtıraları, vol. I (Istanbul 1954), pp. 180-3), confirm the earlier date. Perhaps the later date (March) is due to problems in converting the financial year (mali) to the Christian date.
Erden, Birinci Dünya Harbinde, pp. 179-83. See also another chronicler of the trip, Falih Rıfkı Atay in his Zeytindağı (Istanbul: Bateş, 1981), pp. 53-8. Whereas Enver shed tears, Cemal’s face had frozen into a “mask”, and only after Enver had cried incessantly, did Cemal seem to shed tears as well.
Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p. 52. On the second day of his stay in Medina, Cemal sent a telegram to Husayn that the camel rider unit he had supplied was to be the guests of the Ottoman army in Medina as long as they had to wait for their transport by train to the Sinai; arming them was to take place in Jerusalem (and not in Medina as Musil reports). These cautionary measures show that Cemal did not trust Husayn. Therefore, his claim that he never expected that Husayn would risk a rupture with the government is hardly credible; rather, he seems deliberately to play down Husayn’s ambitions in order to magnify Husayn’s treason: Djemal Pasha [Cemal Paşa], Memories of a Turkish Statesman (1913-1919) (London: Hutchins0n, 1922), p. 212: “…it never struck me as possible that a man of Sherif Hussein’s experience, a greybeard with one foot in the grave, could be so egoistical and ambitious…”.
Murphy, David, The Arab Revolt. Lawrence sets Arabia Ablaze (Oxford-New York: Osprey, 2008), p. 27.
On Tunisi see Heine, Peter, “Sâlih ash-Sharîf at-Tûnisî, a North African nationalist in Berlin during the first world war”, Revue de l’Occident musulman and de la Méditerranée 33 (1982), pp. 89-95.
According to Murphy, The Arab Revolt, pp. 33-4, the garrison in Mecca surrendered on 9 July 1916; Rogan, Eugene, The Arabs. A History (London: Allen Lane, 2009), p. 152, has June 12.
Kıcıman, Medine Müdâfaası, pp. 120-121. Badr, al-Tarikh al-shamil, III, p. 48.
Esin, Emel, Mekka und Medina (Frankfurt: Umschau, 1964), pp. 192-3. See also: Lord Kinross: Atatürk. The Rebirth of a Nation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. 103. Tezer, Şükrü, Atatürk’ün Hatıra Defteri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1972) (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, XVI/16), pp. 101, 105.
TNA, FO 882/7, 29 December 1918. In his papers Fakhri writes: “We could have held Medina until August [1919, MS], because we had procured our needs for another six months. Even if our perseverance in Medina did not result in any gains at the negotiating table, our weapons would not fall into the hands of the enemy…and we would not have to accept the degradation of walking like a herd of geese to the prisoners camp in Egypt. Furthermore, I could not accept that the weapons we had protected with our sacrifices would have to be laid down at the feet of barelegged bedouins and a captain [Garland, MS] who had insulted our honour. Based on my belief that you [Fakhri’s men, MS] would trust me and would support me I have written the following letter [not contained in the papers] to Abdullah Pasha…” “I told Ziya to relate the following verbally to Abdullah Paşa: …It is true that due to illness and the climate the soldiers have been worn down… Neither razing the fortifications of Çanakkale nor even the occupying allied powers turning Istanbul upside down will change my sacred decision. I add that none of us here have in any way been carried away or involved in political movements or displayed any party preference. I will not accept the surrender and evacuation of Medina without an irade from the sultan. I will not obey any other orders. If, against my determination, the allies and the rebels will use force against us, we will respond with gratitude and conviction…”.
Kıcıman, Medine Müdâfaası p. 432. Fakhri later officially assigned command to Ali Necib.
Musil, Zur Zeitgeschichte von Arabien, pp. 35-6. Medina was evacuated from the civil population in spring 1917. Kıcıman, Medine Müdâfaası, pp. 108-9, pp. 119-20, states that in 1917 the population had decreased from 70,000 to approx. 2,000-3,000. According to Fakhri, the population of Medina amounted to 40,000 before the war, but had already decreased to 20,000 at the time when he took command of the city, The Arab Bulletin 110, 30 April 1919, p. 46. One of the members of the above-mentioned Young Turk delegation to Medina (October-November 1916) put the number of inhabitants at 30,000 to 35,000; according to his account, soldiers were not very visible in the city; the visit took place during a campaign of Fakhri with the paşa being absent, Feldmann, Reise, pp. 69-78. When the Sharifian forces entered the city in mid-January 1919, they counted 600 civilians: The Arab Bulletin 110, 30 April 1919, p. 46. Badr, al-Tarikh al-shamil, III, p. 82, counts only 41 souls towards the end of the siege.
Kıcıman, Medine Müdâfaası, p. 138, suggests that cats and dogs had disappeared from the streets because even they did not find enough food to survive.
Kandemir, Peygamberimizin Gölgesinde, pp. 259-61. These people did not know that Fakhri did not hold Bedouins in high esteem, as evidenced in his papers where he speaks about “bare-legged” Bedouins suggesting they had a low level of civilization. Sources imply that Fakhri held Arabs in general “in supreme contempt”, The Arab Bulletin 109, 6 February 1919, p. 18. On the other hand, when Fakhri was congratulated by a Bedouin for his valiant defense of Medina, he told ‘Abdallah that he considered this a “great honour”, Graves, Memoirs of King Abdullah, p. 178.
Tibawi, A.L., “The last knight of the last caliphs”, Arabic and Islamic Themes. Historical, Educational and Literary Studies (London: Luzac, 1976), pp. 154-8.
Kıcıman, Medine Müdâfaası, pp. 479-80 with footnotes 24 and 25.
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The siege of Medina (1916-1919) is one of the more significant events in the Near Eastern theatre in World War I. Fakhri Paşa (Fahrettin Türkkan, 1868-1948), the legendary figure of the siege, resisted several demands of the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn ʿAli, and the British to surrender and even ignored orders from Istanbul to hand over the city but was eventually forced to surrender. The events in Medina have not gone unnoticed by historiography, although a full appreciation has still to be given. Eye witness reports by officers of the Ottoman garrison in Medina have constituted the basis for the narrative of the siege of Medina. British documents have added to our knowledge. Other sources used are the partially unpublished papers of Fakhri Paşa and German material.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 995 | 179 | 21 |
Full Text Views | 292 | 3 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 95 | 7 | 0 |