Enemy on the Euphrates (62 page)

3.
   Robert Graves states categorically that ‘Lawrence is not an Arabic scholar. He has never sat down to study it,
nor even learned its letters
…’ (Robert Graves,
Lawrence and the Arabs
, Jonathan Cape, London, 1927, p. 20).

4.
   N. N. E. Bray,
Shifting Sands: The True Story of the Arab Revolt
, Unicorn Press, London, 1934, p. 133.

5.
   Quoted in H. V. F. Winstone,
Leachman, O.C. Desert
, Quartet Books, London, 1982, p. 16. and photographs between pp. 118 and 119.

6.
   Quoted in N. N. E. Bray,
A Paladin of Arabia: The Biography of Brevet Lieut.-Colonel G. E. Leachman C.I.E., D.S.O
., Unicorn Press, London, 1936, pp. 295–6.

7.
   Ibid., pp. 297–8.

8.
   Quoted in Winstone,
Leachman
, p. 182.

9.
   al-Rawdan, vol. 2, p. 299.

10.
  Briton Cooper Busch,
Britain, India and the Arabs, 1914–1921
, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971, p. 140.

11.
  Quoted in Wilson,
Loyalties
, p. 238.

12.
  Ibid., p. 239.

13.
  al-Darraji, p. 51.

Chapter 13: Mosul and Oil

1.
   Malcolm Brown,
British Logistics on the Western Front, 1914–1919
, Praeger, Westport, 1998, p. 56.

2.
   R. W. Ferrier,
The History of the British Petroleum Company
, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 202.

3.
   This particular calculation was made by the Indian Army in 1919, see Brian Robson,
Crisis on the Frontier: The Third Afghan War and the Campaign in Waziristan, 1919–1920
, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2004.

4.
   Barker, p. 496.

5.
   Quoted in Daniel Yergin,
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power
, Simon & Schuster, London, 1991, p. 177.

6.
   Kent, pp. 133, and 185–8.

7.
   Mejcher,
Imperial Quest for Oil
, p. 32.

8.
   Quoted ibid., p. 33.

9.
   FO/800/221, The National Archive, London, Memorandum, Sykes to Hirtzel, 16 January 1918.

10.
  Quoted in Mejcher,
Imperial Quest for Oil
, p. 34. (The quotation is originally from the minutes of the Middle East Committee. I have changed the tense of the verbs from past to present.)

11.
  IO/L/PS/10/815, The British Library, London,
Geological Reports, Mesopotamia and Kurdistan
, Preliminary Report on the Prospects of Petroleum in the Baghdad Wilaya, Government Press, Baghdad, March 1918, p. 1.

12.
  Ibid., Civil Commissioner Baghdad to Foreign Office, repeated to Secretary of State, India Office and Sir Percy Cox, Aden, 13 March 1918.

13.
  Ibid., Report on the Prospects of Petroleum in the Baghdad Wilaya, Ahwaz, 10 August 1918, p. 16.

14.
  CAB/21/119, The National Archive, London, Admiral Edmond Slade, ‘Petroleum Situation in the British Empire’, 29 July 1918.

15.
  Quoted in Mejcher,
Imperial Quest for Oil
, p. 39.

16.
  Quoted ibid., p. 40.

17.
  Quoted in Roskill, vol. 1, p. 586.

18.
  Quoted in Mejcher,
Imperial Quest for Oil
, p. 41.

19.
  Commenting on this issue, Roskill observes, ‘Though Hankey’s views on post-war oil policy were without doubt as overtly “imperialist” as Balfour had stated, the British Government aims after the war did in fact follow closely the lines proposed by Hankey’; and with reference to the views of Geddes and Slade, ‘British policy did for many years take a shape which differed little from Geddes’s proposals of 1918.’ (vol. 1, p. 587).

20.
  Quoted in Mejcher,
Imperial Quest for Oil
, p. 41.

Chapter 14: ‘Complete liberation’

1.
   Lady Florence Bell (ed.),
The Letters of Gertrude Bell
, Ernest Benn, London, 1927, vol. 2, pp. 410–11.

2.
   Gertrude Bell,
The Arab of Mesopotamia
, Government Press, Basra, 1917, p. 1.

3.
   Nakash, p. 35.

4.
   al-Rawdan, vol. 1, p. 214.

5.
   See IO/L/PS/20/235, pp. 147–51.

6.
   Bell, ‘Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia’, p. 8.

7.
   Bell,
The Arab of Mesopotamia
, p. 5.

8.
   Nakash, p. 13.

9.
   There were two other, lesser important Shi‘i shrines, one at Kadhimayn, burial place of the seventh and ninth imams, and the other at Samarra, burial place of the tenth and eleventh imams.

10.
  Lady Anne Blunt,
The Bedouins of the Euphrates
, Harper & Bros, New York, 1879, p. 138n.

11.
  Kadhim,
Reclaiming Iraq
, pp. 120–21.

12.
  Bell,
The Arab of Mesopotamia
, p. 5.

13.
  See IO/L/PS/20/C151, The British Library, London,
Tribes of the Tigris
, Government of India for Arab Bureau, Calcutta, 1917; IO/L/PS/20/C152, The British Library, London,
Tribes around the Junction of the Euphrates and Tigris
, Government of India for Arab Bureau, Calcutta, 1917; IO/L/PS/20/63, The British Library, London,
The Muntafiq. Al Sa‘dun, Bani Malik, Ajwad, Bani Sa’id, Bani Huchaym
, Arab Bureau, Calcutta, 1917 and, for Bell, IO/L/PS/20/235.

14.
  Lady Bell, vol. 2, p. 447.

15.
  Abu Tabikh, p. 52.

16.
  Ibid., p. 56.

17.
  Quoted in Busch, p. 199, which contains the full text of the proclamation.

18.
  Wilson,
Mesopotamia, 1917–1920
, pp. 104–5.

19.
  Lady Bell, vol. 2, p. 421.

Chapter 15: Najaf 1918: First Uprising on the Euphrates

1.
   Bertram Thomas,
Alarms and Excursions in Arabia
, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1931, p. 78.

2.
   Luizard, p. 352.

3.
   Admiralty,
Iraq and the Persian Gulf
, B.R. 524 (restricted), Geographical Handbook Series, Naval Intelligence Division, London, 1944, p. 545.

4.
   Hanna Batatu,
The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq
, Saqi Books, London, 2004, pp. 18–20.

5.
   Bray,
Shifting Sands
, pp. 187–8; Lady Bell, vol. 2, p. 477.

6.
   J. S. Mann,
The Making of an Administrator, 1893–1920
, Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1921, p. 149.

7.
   Ibid., p. 168. However, for a totally different and much more favourable impression of Najaf see Candler,
The Long Road to Baghdad
, vol. 2, Cassell, London, 1919, p. 219.

8.
   al-Asadi, p. 90.

9.
   Atiyyah, p. 220.

10.
  Ibid. On the burden of taxation in the period 1918–20 see also Abbas Muhammad Kadhim,
Al-haraka al-Islamiyya fi al-‘Iraq (thaura al-‘ishrin)
(The Islamic Movement in Iraq ([Revolution of 1920]), n.p., 1984, p. 166, and Ireland, pp. 118–19 and 143–4.

11.
  According to Marlowe, at this time the British political officers ‘were largely engaged in the unpopular task of tax-collecting’. Marlowe, p. 128.

12.
  See Abu Tabikh, p. 61.

13.
  al-Asadi, p. 240.
Baqqal
is the Arabic word for ‘greengrocer’, or sometimes ‘grocer’.

14.
  Ibid., pp. 246–7.

15.
  Ibid., p. 261.

16.
  Abu Tabikh, p. 63.

17.
  al-Asadi, p. 300.

18.
  Gertrude Bell Project, University of Newcastle,
www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk
, Gertrude Bell to Hugh Bell, 24 April 1918.

19.
  Wilson,
Mesopotamia, 1917–1920
, p. 76.

20.
  According to Atiyyah, p. 231, ‘The punishment … created deep resentment at British cruelty and a wide gulf between the populace and the British authorities.’

Chapter 16: Britain’s New Colony

1.
   Mann, p. 182.

2.
   Ibid., p. 175.

3.
   Thomas Lyell,
The Ins and Outs of Mesopotamia
, A. M. Philpot, London, 1923, p. vii; second edition edited by Paul Rich and re-published as
Iraq and Imperialism: Thomas Lyell’s The Ins and Outs of Mesopotamia
, Authors Choice Press, San Jose, 2001.

4.
   Wilson,
Mesopotamia, 1917–1920
, pp. 110.

5.
   Memorandum 27190, Acting Civil Commissioner to Political Officers, Baghdad, 30 November 1918, quoted in Ireland, p. 162.

6.
   Ireland, p. 253.

7.
   The date of this fatwa is something of a mystery. Both al-Rahimi (p. 204) and Luizard (p. 373) state that the date according to the Islamic calendar was 20 Rabi‘ al-Awal 1337, which Luizard’s conversion to the Gregorian date is given as 23 January 1919. However, using the conversion algorithm in
http://www.oriold.uzh.ch/static/hegira.html
the correct Gregorian date would be 24 December 1918. That the December date seems correct is supported by Atiyyah,
Iraq: 1908–1921
, who states that the fatwa was issued in ‘December 1918’
(p. 330). However, it should be noted that unfortunately there are a number of different algorithms for converting the Islamic lunar system into the Gregorian calendar.

8.
   al-Rahimi, pp. 203–4.

9.
   Quoted in Ireland, p. 171.

10.
  Lady Bell, vol. 2, p. 464.

11.
  Wilson,
Mesopotamia, 1917–1920
, pp. 117–18.

Chapter 17: The Oil Agreements

1.
   Roskill, vol. 2, pp. 28–9.

2.
   William Stivers,
Supremacy and Oil: Iraq, Turkey and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918–30
, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1982, p. 26; see also Kent, p. 141, and David Gilmour,
Curzon
, John Murray, London, 1994, p. 519. However, it should be noted that according to Tardieu, the principal French source for this secret agreement (see H. W. V. Temperley,
History of the Peace Conference
, Oxford University Press, London, 1920–24, vol. 6, p. 182), what Lloyd George offered was the ‘mandate’ for Syria, if the mandate system were adopted. This is not the same thing as saying he offered to continue the Sykes–Picot Agreement with respect to Syria. Unfortunately, the whole incident is so obscure that it is impossible to know exactly what Lloyd George promised to Clemenceau. I have therefore adopted the most frequently repeated account.

3.
   Stivers, pp. 62–74.

4.
   See Salman Hadi Tu’ma,
Karbela’ fi thawra al-‘ishrin
(Karbela’ in the Revolution of 1920), Beirut, 2000, Appendix p. 30.

5.
   Quoted in al-Rahimi, appendix 12, pp. 303–4.

6.
   Quoted in Kent, p. 143.

7.
   Busch, p. 308.

8.
   Benjamin Schwadran,
The Middle East, Oil and the Great Powers
, Atlantic Press, London, 1956, p. 204n.

9.
   Kent, pp. 172–3; Wilson,
Mesopotamia, 1917–1920
, p. 125.

10.
  For a good example of the kind of anti-British propaganda emanating from these sources see Dr George-Samne,
La Syrie
, Editions Bossard, Paris, 1920.

11.
  My explanation of this episode is based largely on Stivers, but it is fair to say that the event is still clouded in mystery. Most recently, Sluglett, in the second edition of his classic
Britain in Iraq
, is himself reduced to stating, in relation to the oil agreements, that ‘the causes of the seemingly interminable wranglings and procrastinations are still not entirely clear’, asking (rhetorically), ‘Exactly what was the nature of the Anglo-French dispute over Mosul that the Berenger–Long agreement of 1919 did not resolve?’ See Sluglett, pp. 21–2.

12.
  IO/L/PS/10/815, Geological Report (Mesopotamia no. 1) District of Qaiyara, Government Press, Baghdad, 1919, p. 6.

13.
  Memorandum of Agreement between M. Philippe Berthelot … and Professor Sir John Cadman, 24 April 1920, attached to CAB/24/108, The National Archive, London, CP 1524: Memorandum by the Minister in Charge of Petroleum Affairs, 21 June 1920.

Chapter 18: The Independence Movement in Baghdad

1.
   Philby Papers, Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford, PH VI/3/37, copy of memorandum no. 11947, Civil Commissioner Baghdad to Judicial Secretary Baghdad, 11 April 1920, and copy of memorandum G-101/2, Judicial Secretary Baghdad to Civil Commissioner Baghdad, 21 June 1920.

2.
   Zeine, p. 139. Ireland, p. 255, gives the date of the announcement as 8 March (not 6th) as does Marlowe, p. 180.

3.
   Tauber, ‘The Role of Lieutenant Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi’, p. 49.

4.
   al-Rahimi, appendix 8, p. 299. However, according to Abbas Muhammad Kadhim, ‘it is noted that since from beginning of the popular movement and then the Islamic uprising until the end of the revolution none of the leadership of the revolt or the
‘ulama
or the masses called for an Emirate of the of one of the sons of the Sharif Husayn’. (Kadhim,
Al-haraka al-Islamiyya fi al-‘Iraq
, p. 262). This view appears to reflect the author’s strongly Shi‘i Islamist perspective, although it seems inconsistent with the correspondence related above.

5.
   See al-Rahimi, appendix 9, p. 300.

6.
   Quoted in Nakash, p. 68.

7.
   Wilson,
Mesopotamia, 1917–1920
, pp. 248–9.

8.
   
Wisaya
, cognate with the verb
wasa
, meaning to entrust. See J. M. Cowan (ed.),
The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Arabic
, Spoken Language Services, Inc., Ithaca, 1994, p. 1260, and Atiyyah, p. 315. However, it is also possible that the word ‘mandate’ was also being translated in the Arabic press as
amr
, equally offensive and meaning (among other things) ‘supreme power’, ‘authority’. See Wilson,
Mesopotamia, 1917–1920
, p. 248n. Shirazi translated it as
himaya
(protectorate).