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THE FALL OF JEDDAH AND MECCA

When the World War pulled Turkey into the maelstrom, with Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy pitted against her, it was the hour of opportunity for Arabia. Unable to obtain sufficient funds and ammunition, Shereef Hussein was compelled to let many months pass by without declaring himself. Then came the news of the surrender of Kut el Amara by General Townsend. This was a serious reverse for the Allies and an important victory for the Turks. Hussein could no longer hold his followers. He sent word to the British Government that he could not stand by and permit his people to remain subject to the Turks. He asked for assistance, but before receiving a reply, with all the pent-up fury and hatred of five hundred years of oppression and dishonor, the Arabs of the Hedjaz leaped at the throats of the Turks. From all parts of the desert came the swarthy, lean, picturesque sons of Ishmael to avenge and free themselves at last.

Hussein and his four sons had worked out all the details of their plan for the revolution, but kept them secret until a few weeks before they touched off the fuse. They did not even dare to trust their close associates, because in Turkish territory plots were usually discovered before they matured, and no man knew whom he could trust. Not only were there spies but innumerable spies on spies.

Early in 1916, when Lieutenant Lawrence was making a reputation for himself with the Secret Corps in Cairo, Grand Shereef Hussein sent word to all the tribes of Holy Arabia to be ready at a moment’s notice. Then, on June 9, he gave the signal. At the same instant he himself publicly denounced Enver, Talaat, Djemal, and their infamous Committee of Unity and Progress. Simultaneous attacks were launched against Mecca, Jeddah, the seaport to the holy city, and Medina, three of the least known and most interesting cities in the world. And before we continue to the point in the Arab Revolt where Lawrence made his entrance, let us stop and see these centers of life in the Hedjaz whence came so many of Lawrence’s associates.

When you land at Jeddah you blink your eyes and pinch yourself to see if you are awake. The Koran forbids the use of intoxicating liquors, but either the architects who designed this city were not faithful Mussulmans or most of the buildings were constructed before Mohammed introduced prohibition into Arabia. The streets of Jeddah are a bewildering maze of narrow zigzag canons between tall tottering houses, which look as though they had been joggled about by incessant earthquakes. Many of the houses are of five and six stories and are used only for the accommodation of pilgrims who pass through on their way to Mecca during Ramadan, a time when the population of the city increases from twenty thousand to perhaps one hundred thousand. The most fitting way I can think of describing this weird Arabian seaport is to say that it looks like any ordinary Oriental city might look to a man suffering from delirium tremens. The Leaning Tower of Pisa would be in an appropriate setting if it were transferred to Jeddah. Symmetry seems to be an unknown quantity in this part of the Near East. It is said that an Arab carpenter cannot draw a right angle, and an Arab waiter never puts a table-cloth on square. The sacred shrine of the Mohammedans in Mecca, known as the Kaaba, meaning “cube,” has none of its sides or angles equal. Arab streets are seldom parallel, and even “the street that is called straight” in Damascus is not straight! Jeddah, with its inebriated buildings, its crazy fragile balconies, its leaning minarets, its lazy Arab merchants squatting cross-legged on top of tables in front of chaotic shops, its fantastic arcaded bazaars covered in with patchwork roofs pieced together like the sails of a Chinese junk, is the nearest approach to a futurist paradise of any city in the world.

Arabia is indeed a topsyturvy land. Where we measure most of our liquids and weigh most of our solids, they weigh their liquids and measure their solids. Where we use knives and forks and spoons, they use their hands. Where we use tables and chairs they recline on the floor. Where we mount from the left, they mount their camels and horses from the right. We read from left to right, while they read from right to left. The desert-dweller keeps his head covered in the summer and winter alike, and his feet usually unprotected. Where we take off our hats in entering a friend’s house, they take off their shoes.

In addition to its Arab population, Jeddah is inhabited by the remnants of a thousand pilgrimages, descendants of pilgrims who had sufficient money to enable them to reach Mecca but not enough to enable them to leave Arabia after fulfilling their religious vows. Many of them are poverty-stricken and barely able to eke out a living at the odd jobs which they get during the short pilgrimage season each year. Among them are Javanese, Filipinos, Malays, representatives of a dozen different Indian races, Kurds, Turks, Egyptians, Sudanese, Abyssinians, Senegalese, tribesmen from the Sahara, Zanzibaris, Yemenites, Somalis, and numerous others.

One afternoon, accompanied by Major Goldie, an officer attached to the British mission which had its headquarters there during the campaign, I rode out through the Mecca gate to the Abyssinian quarter. The dwellings of these primitive people are round huts with conical thatched roofs, surrounded by high kraal fences made of rusty petrol and preserved-meat tins. We pulled up our ponies in front of a hut where a negro woman was busy tanning a hide. The moment she saw us she began screaming: “Oh, why have you come to destroy my home? Oh, why are you going to carry away my child? Oh! Oh! Oh! What have I done that you should want to shoot me?” Although Goldie did his best to reassure her, she continued this wail until we rode out of hearing.

On either side of Jeddah, a few miles distant, are small ports which foreigners scrupulously avoid visiting. Tourists have never been welcome because these villages for many years have been slave-trading centers. Here negroes, smuggled across from the African coast, were sold to wealthy Arabs. The Turkish Government winked at this vicious commerce, but King Hussein is vigorously endeavoring to stamp it out. As a result of Hussein’s stand on the slavery question, the price of a well-built young negro has advanced from the pre-war quotation of £50 to £300 or even as high as £500. Although the trade may continue surreptitiously for a short time, the king and his sons are so bitterly opposed to it that it is only a question of months until they will have driven it out.

Beyond the north gate of the Jeddah wall Major Goldie took me to see what thousands of Mohammedans believe to be the tomb of the common ancestor of us all. There is a century-old tradition to the effect that it was here near Jeddah that the ark grounded after the Great Flood. According to one version of the story, on his six hundred and first birthday, not long after the waters had abated, Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were walking along the beach when they came to a depression in the sand. This depression seemed to resemble a human form. It was about three hundred feet long. Ham asked his father what he thought it could be, and the venerable patriarch replied, “Ham, my lad, that is the last resting-place of Mother Eve.” Of course there are many educated Mohammedans who laugh at this legend, but, nevertheless, a wall three hundred feet long has been built around the supposed depression, and within this inclosure is a white mosque where thousands of women worship every year. They believe Mother Eve was three hundred feet in height. Just think how the rest of us must have degenerated! But the city takes its name from this tomb, for the word “Jeddah” means grandmother or ancestress.

Since the time of Mohammed, no Jews, Christians, followers of Zoroaster, or other unbelievers, have been welcome anywhere in the Hedjaz except along the coast. None but the faithful are even allowed to go beyond the Jeddah wall through the east gate, which leads in the direction of Mecca. The British officers who were stationed in Jeddah from the outbreak of the revolution until the end of the war scrupulously observed this unwritten law. During the campaign no Allied representatives ever visited the forbidden capital of the king of the Hedjaz—at any rate not officially or for publication. King Hussein even went so far as to request the British authorities to instruct all officers piloting seaplanes attached to war-ships cruising in the Red Sea under no circumstances to profane the air by flying over either Mecca or Medina.

This very day millions of Moslems are turning their faces five times toward Mecca and declaring over and over again:

“La ilaha Allah wa Muhammad-ar-rasul Allah! There is but one God, Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet.”

Mecca and Medina, its sister metropolis of the desert, are the two most mysterious cities in the world. Any man in the vicinity of either who declared that Christ was the son of God would be torn to pieces.

Since the time of Mohammed, Mecca and Medina have been forbidden to all but Moslems. In fact, the fanatical followers of the founder of Islam would destroy any intruder whom they even suspected of being an unbeliever. For this reason all conferences between King Hussein and the representatives of the British and French Governments were held in Jeddah.

We have a record of only a dozen or so Christians who have visited Mecca during the past one thousand years—and lived to tell the tale. The most celebrated of these, of course, was Sir Richard Burton. Fewer still have visited Medina. At the end of the eighteenth century a puritanical and fanatical sect from Central Arabia called the Wahabis overran the Hedjaz and captured Mecca. They were driven out by an Egyptian army under Mohammed Ali, and for a time an adventurer and ex-sergeant in the Black Watch had the unique honor of acting as governor of Medina and guardian of the tomb of the Prophet.

Not only do all Mohammedans turn toward Mecca to pray, because it was the birthplace of their Prophet, but many of them build their houses, and even their outhouses, facing Mecca; and when they die they are buried facing Mecca.

Mohammed enjoined his followers to make pilgrimages to Mecca. He advocated this in order to satisfy the pagans of Arabia, who had been doing it for centuries. The city has no economic importance, but the pilgrims who go there each year during the month of Zu el Hajz are a source of income to its one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims visit Mecca annually, although for many who come from far-off lands two years are required to make the trip.

The region about Mecca is all holy. Pilgrims are not permitted to disturb the wild animals nor even to cut the thorns or desert herbs. The holy city of Islam is located in a narrow pocket between the hills where two valleys join. Three forts frown down upon Mecca from the heights and were occupied by Turkish troops until King Hussein’s followers drove them out.

In the center of Mecca is the Great Mosque, which was built as a place of pagan worship many centuries before the birth of Mohammed. It is known as the Mosque of the Kaaba or Masjid Al Haram, which means “the sacred temple.” Within the courtyard is a small cube-shaped building, the famous Kaaba. It is covered over with a gorgeous holy carpet of black silk with a wide border of gold lettering, texts from the Koran. The roof is supported by pillars of aloe wood. Around the edge is a spout of gold, which carries off rain-water. Embedded in one of the walls is the most sacred object in the world to more than two hundred millions of people. It is the black stone of meteoric origin which the Mohammedans believe was tossed down from heaven by the Angel Gabriel to Father Abraham. They say it was once whiter than milk but that it has been turned black by the sins of the people who have kissed it. Others say that it derived its color from Adam’s tears. It has been broken in seven pieces, and its parts are now held together by a background of cement surrounded by a silver band studded with silver nails.

The followers of the Prophet believe that this cube-shaped building rests directly underneath the throne of God. They say it was lowered down from heaven at the request of Adam and that it is an exact duplicate of one that he had seen in paradise before his expulsion, called Beit al Mamur, and frequented by angels. Very few people ever enter the Kaaba, but those who do keep their eyes down in an attitude of reverence and humble submission to divine power. If a pilgrim from Syria enters it, for the rest of his life he never goes barefoot, because he believes that his skin has touched holy ground and therefore must never be placed on profane earth again.

The holy carpet which covers the Kaaba is replaced each year by a new one. Formerly there were two sent each year, one of which came down from Damascus from the sultan of Turkey, while the other was made in Cairo and presented to the mosque by the sultan of Egypt. When a new one is put up, the old one is cut into bits by the pilgrims, who take the pieces home for souvenirs.

According to tradition, from the dawn of creation to judgment day at least one pilgrim is always supposed to be engaged in walking seven times around the Kaaba. But about every twenty years great floods come and fill all the streets of Mecca, including the mosque, and when these floods occur men are hired to swim around it day and night in order that the ceremony may never be interrupted.

The pilgrims kiss the black stone, run around the building seven times, take a drink from a holy well called Zem Zem, and kiss the stone again. Sir Richard Burton said that when he tried to kiss the black stone he found himself in a milling throng of religious devotees, each of whom was trying to force his way through the crowd in order that he might press his lips against the most sacred object in the world. He said that these religious enthusiasts were all calling out their prayers in loud voices, and between sentences of their prayers they would stop and curse the man who was elbowing them away from the black stone.

The most important well in Mecca is this well of Zem Zem in the courtyard of the mosque. The water in it is slightly brackish but is said to be delightful when one becomes accustomed to using it. The well is eight feet wide and quite deep. According to Moslem tradition one of the direct routes to heaven is through the bottom of this well. The pilgrims from India, who take such superstitions literally, frequently threw themselves into the well, making the water undrinkable for days. In fact, so many people tried the short cut to paradise that it became necessary to stretch a net over the bottom to break their fall.

There is an ancient tradition among Mohammedans that the approach of the day of resurrection will be indicated by the sun rising in the west and by the appearance of a monster which will rise out of the earth in the courtyard of the Masjid Al Haram. This beast is to be sixty cubits in height, just twice as high as the Lord commanded Noah to make the ark. It is to be a complex combination of eleven different animals, having the head of a bull, the eyes of a hog, the ears of an elephant, the horns of a stag, the neck of a giraffe, the breast of a lion, the color of a tiger, the back of a cat, the tail of a ram, the legs of a camel, and the voice of an ass. She is to bring with her the rod of Moses and the seal of Solomon. So swift will be this monster that none will escape. With the rod of Moses she will smite all true believers on the cheek, branding them with a mark which will indicate that they are of the faithful. Unbelievers will be stamped with the seal of King Solomon. It is also believed that this strange beast will speak Arabic. After the appearance of this mammoth creature all mortals who have inhabited the earth since the dawn of creation will be required to cross a valley on a hair, from which the iniquitous will tumble off into the fires of hell, while the pure in heart will cross safely into paradise. There are many different versions of this tradition which were believed in by the adherents of other religions long before the time of Mohammed.

Among other signs believed by some to be indications of the approach of the day of resurrection are a war with the Turks; the advancement of the meanest to positions of dignity and power; the coming of Antichrist from Khorasan, mounted on an ass and followed by seventy thousand Jews; the return of Jesus, who certain Mohammedans believe will embrace the Mohammedan religion, marry a wife, slay Antichrist, and rule the earth in peace and security; and the bestowal of the power of speech on all animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, and inanimate things.

Until recently Mecca was, perhaps, the most evil and licentious city in the world. “The holier the city, the wickeder its people,” runs the Arab proverb. A block away from the Holy Kaaba stands the slave-market, which was closed not long ago by Hussein. There were in the city of Mecca until recently, and perhaps still are, many women who are legally married and divorced almost monthly, and sometimes semi-monthly. A pilgrim arriving at Mecca, before King Hussein’s puritanical régime, could be legally married during the time he was a resident and performing his religious rites. He could then have his marriage legally dissolved when he left the city. The people of Mecca do not share those fine primitive virtues and simplicity of tastes which have made the Bedouins famous. Since olden times those born there have been distinguished from other Arabians by three scars on the cheek—a trade-mark of viciousness, say visitors to Mecca. The language of the Meccans is the most salacious to be found anywhere in the dissolute East. The city is filled with unspeakable diseases and practices. Travelers have described scenes occurring in the Great Mosque as licentious as any reported to have occurred in the most dissolute days of ancient times.

But to get back to our story of the capture of the holy cities by the Arabs, the aged Grand Shereef supervised the attack on Mecca, while Feisal and Ali were in command of the force directed against Medina. The Grand Shereef was successful at Mecca. The forts on the three hills overlooking that forbidden and sacred city were garrisoned by the sultan’s most faithful Circassian mercenaries and by picked Turkish troops. On the day of the attack the Arabs swept through the gates and captured the main bazaar, the residential section, the administration buildings, and the sacred mosque of the Holy Kaaba. For a fortnight the battle raged around the two smaller forts, which were finally taken. During all this fighting the aged shereef remained in his palace directing operations in spite of scores of Turkish three-inch shells that riddled his residence.

The Turks might have been able to hang on for many months had it not been for their own folly. The Ottoman seems to be a Mohammedan in theory only, occasionally adhering to the ritual, and even less frequently adhering to the spirit of the Koran. Heedless of the deep-set religious feelings of their enemies and coreligionists, they suddenly began to bombard the mosque of the Kaaba, the most sacred shrine of all Islam. One shell actually struck the black stone, burning a hole in the holy carpet and killing nine Arabs who were kneeling in prayer. Hussein’s followers were so enraged by this impious act that they swarmed over the walls of the great fort and captured it after desperate hand-to-hand fighting with knives and daggers.

Both Mecca and the near-by seaport of Jeddah were captured during the first month’s fighting. Jeddah was taken in five days as a result of the coöperation of five small British merchantmen under Captain Boyle, a daring red-headed Irishman, who was second in command to Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, then admiral of the Near Eastern Fleet.

More than a thousand Turkish and German prisoners were taken at Jeddah. The bombardment of this port of entry to the holy city of Mecca nearly started a revolution in India. The eighty million Mohammedans living in India are the most fanatical of all Islam in many respects. They erroneously charged the British with having bombarded one of their holy places. As a matter of fact, Jeddah, being merely the port to Mecca, has never been regarded as a holy city by the Arabs themselves and is the one city in the Hedjaz to which unbelievers have always been admitted.

At Medina the Bedouins, under Shereefs Feisal and Ali, were less successful. The tribesmen in northern Hedjaz, who had rallied round the Shereefian flag, swept out of the desert mists early on the same morning in June on which the attack was launched against Mecca. Occupying all the palm-groves which extend for miles around the outskirts, they drove the Turkish outposts from the gardens of the Medina palaces, fabled for their sparkling fountains, apricot, banana, and pomegranate orchards. The troops of the garrison withdrew inside the city walls. There they knew they had the additional protection afforded by the Tomb of Mohammed, the tomb which causes Medina to be regarded as the second holiest city of Islam. Although Feisal and Ali could have brought up cannon from Jeddah and perhaps taken the city by storm after a bombardment, Hussein refused to permit this for fear of causing the destruction of the Prophet’s tomb, a catastrophe which would have incurred the anger of every one of the two hundred and fifty million Mohammedans in the world.

Medina is the city to which Mohammed made his hegira or flight from Mecca in July, 622 a. d., to save himself from the daggers of assassins hired by his religious enemies. All Mohammedans count time not from the birth of Christ but from the date of that flight. Mohammed was buried in Medina, and on one side of him rests his favorite daughter, Fatima, and on the other side the second of the great Arabian rulers, Calif Omar. But between the graves of Mohammed and Omar a space was left, so the Moslem’s say, that Christ upon His second coming and death may be buried by the side of the Prophet. So Medina, in addition to being a city of considerable commercial importance, is a great pilgrimage center.

Shortly after the war, the Turks, in order to facilitate the movement of troops to quell possible uprisings in Arabia, but ostensibly to make it easier for pilgrims to reach Medina from the north, built a single-track railway line all the way down from Damascus. One of the first acts that the attacking Bedouin hordes committed when they approached Medina was to tear up several miles of rails with their bare hands, in order to isolate the garrison. After surrounding the town the Arabs sat down to await its surrender; but the Turks, encouraged by their inactivity, slipped out of the gates at dawn, surprised some of the Arabs who were camping in the suburb of Awali, and set fire to all the houses. Large numbers of women and children were shot down by machine-guns, and scores of others were burned alive in their homes. This so enraged the Bedouins and the thousands of Arab townsmen who came out of Medina to join Feisal and Ali that they immediately assaulted the great Turkish fort just outside the walls of the city. But the Turks opened fire with their heavy artillery and mowed great gaps in the tightly packed whirling mass of frenzied Arabians. Never having encountered artillery fire before in their lives, the frenzy soon turned to panic, and the mob fled to the shelter of a near-by hill. Seeing this, the Turkish commander sent out a force of picked men to cut them to pieces. Shereef Feisal saw the plight of his men and dashed up on his horse, utterly regardless of the bursting shrapnel and machine-gun fire from the fort which raked the intervening open ground. The Bedouins whom he had brought up to help him rescue the broken and panic-stricken forces that had made the original attack on the fort held back, reluctant to face the enemy fire that formed such a deadly barrage between them and their comrades. But Feisal laughed and rode on alone. To give his followers confidence he even made his horse walk across the open space. Unwilling to be put to shame by their fearless commander, the relieving force gave a wild desert cry and charged, the name of Allah on the lips of every warrior. The two forces then combined and made a second attempt to storm the fort. Their ammunition was nearly exhausted. Night, which comes in Arabia with a suddenness suggestive of an electrician switching off the sun’s light, dropped down like a black curtain just in time to save them from annihilation. On the morrow, Feisal and Ali called all the tribal chieftains to a conference at their pavilion, and it was agreed that for the present it was futile to continue the attack; so they retired into the hills fifty miles to the south and camped astride the pilgrim road to prevent any Turkish forces from attempting to retake Mecca. The Turks at once repaired the railway line connecting them with Damascus, drove the thirty thousand civilian Arabs living in Medina out into the desert, brought down reinforcements from Syria, and fortified the city to resist all future attacks. After the war refugees from Medina were found all over the Turkish Empire, in Jerusalem, Konia, Damascus, Aleppo, and Constantinople.

The Arabs, however, were still in undisputed possession of Mecca; and with the possible exception of the capture of Jerusalem and, later on, the combined capture of Damascus, Beyrouth, and Aleppo by Allenby’s army and the Arabs, the fall of Mecca is sure to rank in history as one of the greatest disasters ever suffered by the descendants of Othman. To her control of the holy city of Mecca Turkey largely owed her leadership of the Mohammedan peoples of the world.

Then came a long pause. The Arabs were unable to go on with their revolution because they had expended all their ammunition. Shereef Hussein again appealed to the Allies, and the British responded. At that critical moment young Lawrence appeared on the Arabian stage.