Lawrence of Arabia.. Saudi Arabia celebrates the British intelligence officer who led a campaign against the Ottomans
King Faisal is shown behind him, first from right, Tahseen Qadri, Thomas Edward Lawrence, known as “Lawrence of Arabia”, then Nouri al-Saeed and Rustom Haider (Wiki Commons)
In a move that mixed the historical with the political, the Saudi Ministry of Tourism announced that the house in which Lawrence of Arabia stayed on the eve of his famous campaign in the desert is being prepared to become a landmark that attracts tourism.
The British newspaper The Telegraph reported in its coverage of the Saudi decision that Lieutenant Colonel T.E. Lawrence briefly stayed in the Red Sea port of Yanbu during what was known as the “Great Arab Revolt” in 1916 when the port became an important supply base for British and Arab forces fighting the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
Despite calls from historians to protect the site, Lawrence's two-story home lies in ruins, with residents rumouring the abandoned house is haunted.
Yanbu Mayor Ahmed Al-Mahtout said that by the end of this year, the house could be ready for tourists to visit as part of a broader campaign by the kingdom to attract more foreign visitors despite travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the British newspaper.
“We have just finished the first phase of restoration,” Al-Mahout continued, considering that many foreign tourists would want to visit the home of the British intelligence officer.
The restored historic house in Yanbu where Lawrence of Arabia resided intermittently between 1915-1916 (Getty Images)
During the Arab Revolt, Lawrence was sent to help local Bedouin tribesmen overthrow their Turkish rulers, who were allied with Germany against the British and French in World War I.
In his autobiography, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” Lawrence noted that the Ottomans’ failure to seize Yanbu in December 1916 was crucial to the success of the entire Middle East campaign, and wrote, “On that night, I believe, the Turks lost their war.”
The British intelligence officer led attacks on the Ottoman Hejaz Railway and a campaign to capture the city of Aqaba, and Philip Neal, president of the T.E. Lawrence Society, said Lawrence probably spent only days at the Yanbu house, as he was "constantly on the move."
He added that other archaeological sites could also be developed in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. “There are still remains of trains dumped in the desert that Lawrence blew up.”
In Britain, Lawrence is commemorated in a crypt in St Paul's Cathedral, with blue plaques on his former homes in Oxford and London, and at sites in Dorset (southwest England), where he died in a motorbike accident at the age of 46.
British Orientalists
In his book “British Orientalists in the Twentieth Century,” the British researcher and Arabist Leslie McLoughlin, Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter, reviews examples of British Arabists, whom he defines as those groups of researchers, academics, travelers, diplomats, spies, and historians who were interested in the Arab region over the centuries, traveled there, learned Arabic there, lived with its people, wrote about them, and practically established the sciences of history and studies specific to the region in the West.
Among the most prominent of these was Lawrence of Arabia, who arrived in Damascus in 1917 with the British army. The first thing he did was visit the tomb of Saladin and remove an admiring necklace that had been placed on the grave by the German Emperor William II during his visit to the tomb. He took it with him to Britain and it remains to this day in its possession. The British Military Museum, along with a written note from Lawrence saying, “Saladin no longer needs it.”
Lawrence had studied Arabic at Oxford at the hands of another famous Arabist, David George Hogarth, who is considered one of the most famous Arabist spies. He then moved to Lebanon and studied Arabic at the hands of a Lebanese Christian teacher, Mrs. Farida Akl, but many continued to doubt the extent of his mastery of Arabic. He responded to some Arabic letters to Prince Faisal in French.
There is controversy over the true role Lawrence played in “guiding” the revolution against the Turks. Historians believe that this role was exaggerated, and his assessments and consultations with the then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were not characterized by accuracy and depth. For example, he had indicated to Churchill in lengthy recommendations that he submitted to him that Britain should pay great attention to what was happening in Yemen, and he explained this by saying, “Because where Yemen goes, the Arab world goes.”
The Great Deception
Recently published by Atlantic Publications in 2020, the book “How did the West steal democracy from the Arabs? The Syrian Arab Conference of 1920 and the Destruction of the Historical Liberal-Islamic Alliance” by American author and academic Elizabeth Thompson.
The author told the story of what was known as the Great Arab Revolt, and presented what happened in October 1918 when Prince Faisal, the British intelligence officer Lawrence, and Arab leaders entered Damascus, where they declared a constitutional government in an independent Greater Syria.
American historian Elizabeth Thompson considers the West responsible for the failure of democracy in the Arab world (social media)
The following year, at the Paris Peace Conference, Faisal gained the support of US President Wilson, who sent an American commission to Syria to investigate the political aspirations of its people. However, other Allied leaders at Paris - and later the San Remo Conference - criticized Arab democracy, seeing it as a threat to their colonial rule.
On March 8, 1920, the Syrian Arab Congress declared independence and crowned Faisal as king with a “representative monarchy.” The Islamic cleric and thinker Rashid Rida supported this choice, and led the Constituent Assembly to achieve equality among all citizens—including non-Muslims—under full legitimacy of rights, according to the author.
But France and Britain refused to recognize the Damascus government, and instead imposed a mandate system on the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire defeated in the war, arguing that the Arabs were not yet ready for self-rule.
Under this mandate, the French invaded Syria in April 1920 and crushed the Arab government, sending the leaders of the General Syrian Congress into exile, and destroying the fragile coalition of “secular modernists and Islamic reformists” who might have established the first democracy in the Arab world, in his words. the book.
Source : Al Jazeera + British press