File 705/1916 Pt 2 'Arab revolt: Arab reports; Sir M Sykes' reports' [‎130r] (257/450)

existence ; with their tents and household goods borne on donkeys, they will drive their
flocks out in to distant grazing grounds, where they will remain until the grass has
wit leieo and the water pools are exhausted. Hospitality in turn is extended by them
to their neighbours in the wilderness, who in the height of summer come in to the
^permanent waters and to the comparative sufficiency of pasturage near the rivers.
But the dependence of the desert upon the cultivated lands implies much more
than a summer visitation from the outlying tribes. The desert does not produce so
much as the necessities of existence; not even the oases of Central Arabia are self-
supporting, and nowhere are there any industries for the manufacture of the elementary
utensils which the Bedouin require, the clothes they wear, or the arms with which they
defend themselves from their enemies. For all these essentials they must come to the
inland towns and to the seaports and they must, therefore, remain on good terms with
the people who inhabit them and with the Government which can forbid them access to
the markets. Thus it is that not only can remote parts of Arabia be controlled from
without, but the rulers of the settled countries must inevitably find themselves thrown
into economic and political relations with the independent Sheikhs whose wants they
only can supplv.
Before the occupation of Busreh, the British Government had already come into
contact with the Chiefs of Eastern Arabia, but except for a treaty with I bn Saoud in
f 86'j we had confined our dealings strictly to those whose territories bordered the sea.
With the Sultan of Muscat, the Sheikhs of the Trucial Coast A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. , and the Sheikhs of
Bahrein and Koweit. we had long had agreements, some of which dated back as early as
1820, our main objects in every case being the preservation of commercial security in
the Gulf and the suppression of traffic in slaves and in arms. Our interests were
brought more sharply into line with those of the Sheikh of Koweit at the northern end
of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. when, in 1899, certain foreign Powers seemed to be turning their
attention to Koweit as a possible terminus of a Mediterranean-Baghdad line. The
Sheikh saw in that suggestion a fatal end to the position of virtual independence which
he had succeeded in maintaining; the British Government saw in it the ominous
beginning of a Teutonised Turkish supremacy over waters which, for more than a
century, we had policed and lighted, and where our trade was still of greater value than
that of any other country. We cut short years of dalliance with Ottoman suscepti
bilities, during which the Sheikh had never felt certain whether as a last resource we
would or would not support him in his efforts to checkmate the pretensions of
Constantinople, threw our influence into his scale, and extended to him such protection
as the nominal subject of another Power could enjoy.
A year and a-half before the outbreak of war with Turkey, another potentate, who
for years past had been seeking for an opportunity for closer relations with Great
Britain, forced himself into our line of political vision. Ibn Saoud, ruler of Nejd, that
is to say, of the, oases and deserts of Eastern Arabia, overran the province of Hasa,
which had formerly been in the possession of his house, and pushed down to the shores
of the Gulf, ejecting the three small garrisons which upheld the rule of the Sultan.
Abdul Aziz Ibn Saoud, perhaps the most striking figure in recent Arabian history,
has known every vicissitude of fortune, though he is not yet past middle age. He and
his father were turned out of Biyadh, their capital, by their northern rival, the Amir of
Jebel Shammar, Mohammed Ibn Rashid, who was the dominating personality of his day
in Northern and Central Arabia. For several years Ibn Saoud wandered in exile,
seeking refuge for a time in the Syrian desert, in the tents of the great Anazak tribe,
with whom he claimed kinship, while his father found hospitality with the Sheikh of
Koweit. But when, in 1897, Mohammed el Rashid died, leaving no man of his own
remarkable quality to succeed him, Abdul Aziz was not slow to seize an^ opportunity.
Aided by the Sheikh of Koweit, he rode into Riyadh with a small picked band of
followers, and, by a master stroke of daring, recovered the town. The tale of his entry
at the dead of night, of the swift overthrow of Ibn Rashid’s vice-regent, and of the
subsequent years of contest with the Sbammar, which ended in the re-establishment of
his supremacy over Central Arabia, has already grown into an epic on the lips of
Bedouin storytellers and songmakers, and when this hero of many battles swept
over the Hasa the Ottoman Government was not a little perturbed. The Turks had
lavished gifts on Mohammed Ibn Rashid and his successors and studiously cultivated
their friendship, hoping through them to maintain some measure of influence in Central
Arabia. Ibn Saoud’s success was not only a direct hit at their claims to sovereignty,
but also the extension of his authority to the Gulf presented the signal danger of
opening the deserts to the dreaded influence of that watcher of coasts, Great Britain.
Whether we should have been able to preserve our policy of non-interference with