'Report on Najd Mission 1917-1918' [‎18v] (36/60)

Khurma holds its own, as there seems good reason to believe it will, there is-
little danger of a far-reaching extension of Wahhabi activities, but I am con
vinced that the defeat of Khalid Ibn Luwai will be a signal for the storm.
15. The Khurma Episode.
f When I passed through the little village of Khurma, situated in the lower-
reaches of the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Subai, in December, 1917, on my way to Taif, 1 became
aware of the existence of trouble, but the manoeuvrings of the Subai and
Buqum tribes had little in them to indicate that a storm was brewing in that
quarter which was destined to form, as it were, the Leit-motyv of Central
Arabian politics. The circumstances that the Buqum were acting under the
command of the Amir of Turaba, official representative of the King of the
Hijaz, alone differentiated the operations I saw from the eternal outridings.
of Ataiba, Harb and Qahtan in the vast steppe country of the west.
According to such information as I was able to collect in Central Arabia,
Khurma, having, like the rest of Arabia, formed part of the great Wahhabi
Empire and having received from Sand himself dispensation from the obliga
tion to pay taxes to the Central treasury, had settled down under its Ashraf
headmen, who exercised a time-honoured overlordship over the Subai owners
and negro cultivators of the palm groves of the village, to the enjoyment of
practical autonomy under the vague suzerainty of Najd. At a later period,
it passed under the similarly vague suzerainty of Turkey, and Ottoman author
ity was, doubtless, exercised, on behalf of the Sultan, by his representative,
the Sharif of Mecca. During the last decades of the 19th Century, however,
when the whole of Najd acknowledged the sway of Ibn Eashid, there appears,
to be reason for believing that Muhammad Ibn Rashid extorted from the Turk
ish authorities a substantial recognition of his authority and the acceptance of
the line of Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Aqiq as the boundary between his own territories and the
area of elective Turkish domination, namely, the Hijaz. By this arrangement
Khurma must have been included by implication in the territories of Ibn
Rashid, on whose expulsion from Najd, at the beginning of the present cen
tury, Ibn Sand resumed sway over the territories of his ancestors.
The important facts of the case are, firstly, that, so far as I have been
able to ascertain, Khurma was always in the past too insignificant, either to
form a bone of contention between the authorities concerned or to be men
tioned specifically in any public agreement; secondly, that it always remained
in enjoyment of virtual autonomy and independence; and, lastly, that it was,,
if anything, naturally dependent on Najd in virtue of its allegiance to the
Wahhabi faith. With that allegiance no attempt appears ever to have been
made to interfere, and I see no reason for questioning the correctness of Ibn
Sand's statement that Shara Law has always been administered at Khurma
for the benefit of its inhabitants by ecclesiastical officials of the Wahhabi
persuasion, of whom the Qadhi, actually in office at the present time, suc
ceeded his father, who, in turn, owed his appointment to Faisal Ibn Sand at
least 50 years ago.
The fans et orign mali —and this we have on the authority of certain letters .
written by Sharif Abdulla himself to the tribal leaders of the Subai—was an
attempt on the part of the Sharif in the Summer of 1917 to impose an orthodox
Qadhi on the people of Khurma in place of the Wahhabi official, who had
ministered to them for so long or, in other words, to interfere with the religious
liberty of the community. This attempt was strongly resented and
stoutly opposed by the people of Khurma, led by Sharif Khalid Ibn
Luwai, their Amir; the newly appointed Qadhi was refused admission to his
See and ihe forces of the Sharif were set in motion to enforce submission to his
orders by the rebellious community.
The Sharif, imputing to Ibn Sand certain unspecified and certainly
imaginary activities calculated to undermine his authority in the Khurma
area, announced to the British Authorities his intention of sending troops to
reduce the Subai and the drama began on or about the 1st June, 1918, with an
attack on the Subai encampment, which resulted in the defeat of the Sharifian
forces with the loss of two guns and two automatic rifles.
Ibn Luwai announced his victory to Ibn Saud in the customary Badawin
way and I, at Riyadh, was in an excellent position to appreciate the effect of
the ostentatious announcement of the victory of the true faith over the infidel
on the dour spirits of the fanatical Wahhabis, seared by the painful rigours
of a mid-summer Ramdhan.
The messengers from Khurma had passed, on their way, through the
important Wahhabi settlement of Ghat Ghat, whose inhabitants responded
without delay to the call ^or assistance by despatching a strong contingent
towards the scene of action. Riyadh clamoured for war with the Sharif and,
so far as I was in a position to judge, its clamour secured the important
advocacy of the Imam Abdul Rahman himself and of the Wahhabi high priest;
but Ibn Saud, making no secret of the seriousness of the situation in his con
versations with me, resisted the pressure brought to bear on him, recalled the