Enemy on the Euphrates (26 page)

Throughout the summer of 1919, as it had become increasingly apparent that, following Wilson’s plebiscite, the British had decided not only to stay in Iraq but also to run it along tight colonial lines,
incipient signs of a Shi‘i–Sunni alliance began to emerge with a political programme crystallising around the idea of a Sunni Hashemite emir responsible to a popular assembly in which – owing to their numerical preponderance in the population – the Shi‘is would have a powerful role. In Karbela’ this programme was supported by the new Grand Mujtahid, Taqi al-Shirazi and in Najaf, by Shirazi’s opposite number, Sheikh al-Shari‘a Isbahani, who had replaced the recently deceased Yazdi as the leading cleric in the city. With Shirazi’s blessing, a group of nationalist mujtahidin, urban notables and tribal sheikhs chose Muhammad Ridha al-Shabibi, a respected literary figure and a known supporter of al-‘Ahd, to travel to Mecca with a letter for Sharif Husayn – addressed to the ‘King of the Arabs’ – informing him that the civil commissioner had been informed ‘that there should be a constitutional government with one of the sons of Your Majesty as King of Iraq’.
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Husayn received Shabibi with due courtesy, but whereas he was no doubt delighted to be addressed by the title he had always coveted (but which his British allies had never conceded), he must have had very mixed feelings about the final part of the emissary’s letter. The end of the war had left him in full possession of only the stony wastes of the Hejaz and with a growing threat to his Hashemite state from the east emanating from Ibn Sa‘ud and his Wahhabis. Moreover, in the general atmosphere of financial parsimony predominating in London, the Treasury had recently proposed to reduce the subsidy which Husayn had been receiving during the war. The Sharif was now deeply concerned about British intentions and probably had no wish to antagonise London further by making any moves which might appear to challenge the status quo in Iraq. He was also increasingly suspicious that his sons seemed willing to make alliances with local nationalists to further their own interests – in Syria, and now, perhaps, in Iraq – alliances which might undermine his own claim to suzerainty over the Arab world. Consequently, when Sharif Husayn replied on 20 September 1919 – and he addressed his letter to Shirazi himself – it was in a missive replete with compliments, religious references and profuse expressions of sympathy but with little else of substance.
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Nevertheless, a campaign for a Muslim King of Iraq heading a constitutional assembly was now well underway and the Damascus Declaration of 22 January 1920 by the ‘Iraqi Congress’ gave the movement a further impetus. In these circumstances, the reticence of Sharif Husayn (and also, perhaps ‘Abdallah himself) could do nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the campaign’s adherents – as illustrated, for example, in a verse written by the Shi‘i poet, Muhammad Baqir al-Hilli, recited at public meetings in Najaf:

Long live ‘Abdallah for he is to our people

a king and his father the Sharif an Imam.
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Nevertheless, in spite of some earlier reservations about the mandate concept and the rising tide of complaint about the British Civil Administration, on 3 May 1920 it was a triumphant Wilson who issued a communiqué to the people of Baghdad informing them of the decisions taken at the San Remo conference and conveying his own perceptions of his – and their – future status.

It is the duty of the mandatory Power to act the part of a wise and farseeing guardian who makes provision for the training of his charge with a view to fitting him to take his place in the world of men … . And as the guardian rejoices over the growth of his ward into sane and independent manhood, so will the guardian Power see with satisfaction the development of political institutions which shall be sound and free.
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‘As the guardian rejoices over the growth of his ward …’ – Whether he intended it or not, the implications of Wilson’s chosen simile would not have been lost on those who read this extraordinarily insensitive declaration. The general tone of Wilson’s communiqué was all the more obtuse given that both he and Gertrude Bell had already spent some time trying to find a suitable Arabic translation of the word ‘mandate’.

Since the institution had been first mooted, a number of different Arabic translations of the term had circulated throughout the Middle East. Bell herself had originally translated the term ‘mandate’ as
wisaya
,
roughly meaning ‘tutelage’ and implying a fundamentally paternalistic relationship.
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However, she soon realised that this had been a serious mistake:
wisaya
had a distinctly pejorative tone. As one pro-British Baghdad notable explained to her, ‘
Wisaya
implies too much. A man would not be able to alter the course of his canal without reference to the Mandatory Power.’
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So instead, Wilson and Bell now decided to adopt the much more neutral word
intidab
, meaning little more than ‘the government being selected’, for official references to the mandate.
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However, in spite of this semantic change, by explicitly using the analogy of ‘guardian and ward’ in his public declaration, Wilson made it abundantly clear that, whatever the term used officially, in reality it would be
wisaya
, not
intidab
, that characterised the relationship between Britain and Iraq under the mandate. So Wilson’s proclamation could not have been more insulting to the angry and determined men, some of whom, unbeknown to Wilson, were that very day gathering in the city of Karbela’ to confer with the Shi‘i mujtahidin and tribal leaders of the Euphrates to consider whether the time was now ripe for armed rebellion.
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While Wilson and his entourage were focusing their attention on the threat posed by al-‘Ahd ‘outside agitators’ based in Syria, in February 1919 a group of men, some of whom would emerge as the core of opposition to British rule in Baghdad, had been establishing a second party of resistance, calling themselves by the uncompromisingly militant name Haras al-Istiqlal – the Independence Guards.
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In their party’s constitution the second clause committed the organisation to strive for the complete independence of Iraqi territory while the third clause expressed support for one of the sons of King Husayn as ruler provided that the kingdom was ruled constitutionally and democratically.
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The founding committee of Haras al-Istiqlal was mainly composed of former Sunni officials and military men of Ottoman Iraq, men like ‘Ali al-Bazirgan, one of the founders of a new public school in Baghdad. However, there were others from different backgrounds, including another scion of the highly respected Shi‘i Al-Shabibi family from Najaf, Sheikh Baqir al-Shabibi,
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together with a number of young alumni from the school
founded by Bazirgan; and they were later to be joined by four other individuals who, together with Bazirgan, would eventually play a major role in the unfolding political struggle against the British in Baghdad.

The individual who was to become one of the leading nationalists in Baghdad we have already briefly met – Ja‘far Abu al-Timman. By now he was thirty-nine years old and since the death of his grandfather during the war he had become head of the family’s substantial trading business and one of the few wealthy Muslim merchants in a Baghdad where the large Jewish community dominated most commercial transactions.

As we have seen, General Maude’s declaration on entering Baghdad had initially led Ja‘far to believe that the British were genuinely offering the Arabs independence and this belief had naturally been strengthened by the Anglo-French Declaration the following year. This optimism about British intentions led him to accept an invitation to join a six-man ‘Educational Council’ of Baghdad notables to advise a newly established Education Department. Ja‘far’s qualifications for such a position rested partly on his prewar efforts to improve educational opportunities for young Shi‘is. In 1909 he had obtained a fatwa from a progressive Shi‘i cleric, the mujtahid Muhammad Sa‘id al-Hububi, authorising him to open the first secular educational establishment for Shi‘is in Baghdad to teach mathematics and French, a radical departure from the traditional Shi‘i education which had hitherto been entirely religious in orientation.
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The school was known as the Ja‘fariyya, and although initially a Shi‘i institution it later attracted support from some important Sunni notables including ‘Ali al-Bazirgan.
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However, the British-sponsored ‘Educational Council’ to which Ja‘far Abu al-Timman was appointed appears to have been little more than a talking shop with no influence over the decisions of the occupying power such as the proposal to impose a British curriculum on all Iraqi schools. It wasn’t long before Ja‘far resigned from it. A similar experience of being sidelined from effective decision making seems to have been the catalyst for his resignation from another ‘Arab’ façade for British diktat – a so-called ‘Baghdad City Council’ in which he was also briefly a member.

By May 1919 the British authorities in Baghdad had given up any hopes
of co-opting Abu al-Timman into their apparatus of control and he was being marked down by the police as ‘dangerous to the public’. Indeed, for a time he was compelled to move to Tehran after receiving a warning from a friend serving as an interpreter for the British that the authorities were considering arresting him. During his stay in Persia the British PO at Kermanshah was advised by his opposite number in Baghdad that Ja‘far’s activities should be closely monitored. ‘He is a hare-brained, fanatical and clever creature’, Baghdad advised, ‘and if Tehran could get any information about his political activities in Khurasan it might be of interest to us all.’
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However, Ja‘far was careful to concentrate only on his business activities in Persia and a few months later was back in Iraq, albeit now under close scrutiny by the police and their local spies.

Sometime in early 1920 Ja‘far Abu al-Timman made a critical decision: although he had originally stood aside from Haras al-Istiqlal – at any rate he was not one of its founding members – he now decided to join the organisation.
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Whether this was before or after the announcement of the mandate is unclear, since his biographers do not specify the exact date. Not only did he join the organisation but shortly after his affiliation he also became a member of its eight-man executive committee and its secretary. Three other Baghdad notables who, like Abu Timman, were not among the original founding members of Haras al-Istiqlal also joined the organisation sometime in early 1920.

The first of these was Sayyid Muhammad al-Sadr. He was the thirty-three-year-old son of the mujtahid Sayyid Hasan al-Sadr, over whom he was said to have considerable influence. Although the al-Sadr family home was in Kadhimayn, another Shi‘i holy city a few miles north-west of Baghdad, Sayyid Muhammad had established a political base as one of the governors of a new public school in the capital, the Madrasa al-Ahliyya (the People’s School), opened in January 1920 largely due to the efforts of fellow Istiqlal member, ‘Ali Al-Bazirgan. The establishment of the Ahliyya secondary school had, at first, seemed a laudable enterprise by the British. The Ja‘fariyya secondary school, which Abu Timman had founded in 1909, had closed in 1917 and there were no other secondary schools in Baghdad.
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That a group of wealthy Baghdadis should wish to
pay for one, catering for sixty or seventy young men, seemed perfectly acceptable to the British authorities and permission was therefore granted; moreover, when its trustees applied for a grant from the Education Department this too was agreed.

However, it soon became clear to the British that the teaching staff was largely composed of ardent young nationalists whose primary function was to campaign against the continuing occupation. Like Abu al-Timman, although he was not a founder member of Haras al-Istiqlal, Muhammad al-Sadr soon became a member of its executive where he was appointed to the role of president.
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The third new member who rapidly became one of Istiqlal’s leading personalities was the sixty-six-year-old Yusuf al-Suwaydi, an elderly Sunni of noble (sharif) birth and a senior judge of the shari‘a courts, whose family claimed descent from the Prophet’s uncle ‘Abbas. He had already established his nationalist credentials by his prewar agitation for greater Arab autonomy which had led to his arrest on a trumped-up charge of planning the assassination of a Turkish general in 1913. Although he was later released for lack of evidence he had been exiled to Istanbul during the war, returning to Baghdad only in the summer of 1919. Although a strong opponent of the dictatorship of the Young Turk triumvirate, he had no desire to see that tyranny replaced by a more efficient colonial rule. Consequently, his outspoken opposition to British rule soon brought him to the attention of Wilson and Bell, but mistakenly they did not take him seriously: Yusuf Suwaydi was just ‘that old ass Suwaydi’, according to Gertrude Bell.
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Another Sunni notable, Sheikh Ahmad Daud, who, like Yusuf Suwaydi, had played a part in the prewar movement for greater Arab autonomy, joined Haras al-Istiqlal in 1919 and also soon became one of the key group of activists whom the British regarded as the leaders of the independence movement in Baghdad.

Finally, the thirty-two-year-old Sunni ‘Ali al-Bazirgan, whose family name suggests a Turkoman lineage and who had been one of the founders of Haras al-Istiqlal, also now became a member of its executive committee, occupying the role of
mudir idara
in the organisation – a
position primarily tasked with the role of maintaining communications between its membership.
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So, by the spring of 1920, these five individuals – Ja‘far Abu al-Timman, Sayyid Muhammad al-Sadr, Yusuf Suwaydi, Sheikh Ahmad Daud and ‘Ali al-Bazirgan – had become the core of the independence movement in Baghdad.
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Meanwhile, under the direction of al-Sadr and Bazirgan, the Ahliyya school was fast becoming the nerve centre of the independence movement with large protest meetings being held regularly on Monday and Thursday afternoons,
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while anti-British leaflets were secretly printed and distributed around the city by daring young school students. One such inflammatory missive stated: