"ملف 61/11 V (D 95) مسائل متنوعة خاصة بالحجاز ونجد" [ظ‎‎٢‎١‎٥] (٥٣٠/٤٤٧)

5 22 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS [JULY
subjects of his had crossed the Transjordan frontier and had
come into the Hejaz with the object of making trouble for him.
On June 20th a telegram arrived from the High Commissioner
for Transjordan saying that about 400 or 450 of the Billi tribes
men (a tribe in the north-west of the Hejaz) had crossed to the
Transjordan frontier on the narrow neck of land which runs
between the north of the Gulf of 'Aqabah and the Sinai Peninsula;
they had come along on Egyptian territory, not through Trans
jordan, but it was admitted that there were between 400 and 450
of them in Hejaz territory. Ibn Sa'ud was faced with difficulties
m several respects. In the first place, he had been having
trouble in Asir; he had also been having trouble with the Imam
Yahya; then the tribes about Ta'if were restive; and on top of
that this number of men were coming down into the north of
the Hejaz, where the financial position was very bad owing to
lack of ram. Ibn Sa ud's spy service was exceptionally good
and it was a strange matter, in view of what I shall mention
later, that these 450 men had swoUen in three weeks to 1250
men, who could only have come from Transjordan, because the
Admiralty had sent H.M.S. Penzance and H.M.S. Hastings to the
north of the Gulf of 'Aqabah in order to help Ibn Sa'ud. It
id not suit our book at all that there should be a successful
rebellion in which it was suggested the rebels had come over
soil of which Great Britain had accepted the mandate. The
rebel force was quite an unknown quantity, inasmuch as Ibn
^a ud did not know to what numbers it would eventually grow.
He did nothing hurriedly. He collected the Akhwan from the
nearest settlements; he collected ten thousand at Ta'if and six
t ousand at a place called A1 Ula on the old Hejaz railway from
Damascus to Medina, which Colonel Lawrence blew up. For a
distance of some ten to fifteen miles inland along the east side
o t e Gulf of Aqabah there are some high hills which are quite
impracticable for men in any numbers. The rebels had got in
t e hills half-way between Muwaila and 'Aqabah itself. Ibn
au despatched the six thousand Akhwan gathered at A1 Ula
to haba, a place a little north of Muwaila, and they swept up
rom there to the Transjordan frontier and exterminated Ibn
Kifada and all his followers. Only a few escaped into Trans
jordan. As a lesson to any others, the head of Ibn Rifada was
cut off and used as a football by the boys of Dhaba.
It is difficult to interpret the psychology of the double number
o t e Mecca newspaper, the Umm-al-Qurd, which was published
m onour of the defeat of Ibn Rifada. The Umm-al-Qurd is the