File 705/1916 Pt 2 'Arab revolt: Arab reports; Sir M Sykes' reports' [‎183r] (363/450)

No. 3, could not have reached Constantinople yet, I telegraphed that a merchant had
proposed to me, giving full assurance of my safety, a route El Ula to Taif, which would
skirt the region forbidden for religious reasons. I hoped to succeed in moving G[emal]
P[asha], through the War Office at Constantinople, to grant permission, seeing that
only a short stretch would be covered from El Ula to the latitude of Medina within the
region under his control.
^ •• •• # ,
On the chance of the effort to obtain this permission seeming likely to prove
abortive. I fixed May 1 as the day of my departure.
On May 1, a telegram came to hand from the Acting Military] A[ttachb] from which
I thought I could gather that to use any further Constantinople influence, was futile.
Further demarches with G[emal] P[ashaJ seemed quite hopeless, because he was trying
to delay, if not to prevent, the expedition by all sorts of pretexts : first came religious
reasons ; then danger to our safety; finally considerations of internal politics were
pleaded; and the use of roads, which had been unhesitatingly permitted before the
war, and even in part during the war (e.g., to the merchants from Massawa), was refused.
G[emal] P[asha] seemed to be influenced by his Chief of General Staff, Fuad Bey, whose
sympathies are well known to lean towards France.*
The War Ministry at Constantinople] contrary to the promise it had previously
communicated to me, bowed to G[emal] P[asha’s] will as regards the expedition, not
merely in his district but further on to the south of Medina.
When I reported myself on leaving, F[uad] B[ey] declared that the stretch
between Kunfuda. and Loheia must be covered by sea : but G[emal] P[asha] gave us
free choice of going by road from Kunfuda with the Turkish detachment, or going
by sea.
On May 2, I started on my journey accompanied, on G[emal] P[asha’s] order, by a
secret police agent, detailed to look after our “ safety,” and I arrived here on the
evening of the 4th. In spite of the promise of F[uad] B[ey] to order the necessary
camels and escort of gendarmes here by telegram, we have to wait, on arrival here, three
or four days for our escort and baggage-animals. The detachment is bringing the
apparatus and telegraph station and the surplus money. TEN. obtained permission a
few days ago to continue his journey, and had begun it : here we joined forces again. It
had seemed expedient that we should make the journey separately, because the possibility
that one of us two could reach Yemen [would be] greater, and H.N.’s linguistic facility
might always serve henceforward to get us over difficulties.
It is questionable whether N. can get through with the money allowed him, since
he [had] imoortant private expenses (not solvent) at Damascus, which he could only meet
by expending the sum allowed him for his mission. Before his departure he married in
Moslem fashion a Kurdish girl of only 18 years of age, whom he took with him on his
journey.
It is reported here that the Turkish Government has not allowed any trains with
foodstuffs for North Arabia to pass for a month, and that consequently a lively trade
has developed in the towns of the Bed Sea coast between British merchant-vessels and
the Arabs.
Note by Arab Bureau, ’Cairo .—The general interest of this document has been
already emphasised. It remains to call attention to certain points of detail and certain
inferences :—
1. Jemal Pasha’s authority is not limited to the southern boundary of the Damascus
vilayet, but extends south of Ma’an all down the Hejaz Bailway to Medina.
2. There is a possible trade route from El-Ala, which passes east of Medina to
Es-Seil and Taif. Probably in the latter part of its course, it coincides with the Dark
es-Sharqi from Medina to Es-Seil and Mecca.
3. Jemal Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. had reason last April to be nervous about the Arab attitude
towards Germans, and probably some foreknowledge of the coming revolt in Hejaz,
which was not imparted to Yon Stotzingen.
4. Fuad Bey is a former Military Attache at Paris, known to have been Jemal
Pasha’s alter ego and right-hand man ever since the latter’s arrival in Syria.
5. Enver acts independently of Jemal, but is unwilling or unable to coerce him in
his proper province. ' . . , . ,
6. The Turks in April and May were virtually blockading Hejaz as strictly by land,,
as we were by sea.
* Follows erased unfinished sentence. It is incomprehensible how G[emal] P[asha] has come to take',
views not only .... tt
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