Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
Excerpts: Lawrence von Arabien - Militärische Erfolge
Amidst military success and personal failure
[...] he frames apparently conflicting and irreconcilable narratives. Thus Lawrence failed in
his attempt to reconstruct, even in the fictional territory of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the
Western heroic ideal that provided his original vision of the Arab campaign. Instead, he created a text in which the purported triumph of the central action is undercut by an intensifying conviction of failure. In consequence, Lawrence regarded the book as an artistic failure in
recounting a military success. In actuality, it is an artistic success in documenting a personal
failure. Although Lawrence deplored its lack of unity, its decentered, discontinuous form
serves to criticize and ultimately to undermine the military and political enterprise that the
narrative purports to endorse.
Publication Information: Article Title: Conquest as Literature, Literature as Conquest: T. E. Lawrence's Artistic Campaign in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Contributors: Carola M. Kaplan - author. Journal Title: Texas Studies
in Literature and Language. Volume: 37. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 73.
WAR IN THE DESERT
Lawrence discovered that many Arab leaders wanted to be rid of the Turks but were unable
to accept significant casualties among their own followers. Nor could they observe the hallowed European military principle of concentration of force, because the various tribes could
not enter each other's territory. On the other hand, Lawrence estimated that to retain their
grip on the Arab lands the Turks would need a force of 600,000, an impossibly large number
to mobilize and maintain. Besides, with their undeveloped economic base, "things" meant
more to the Turks than men. Therefore, the best course for the insurgents would be to attack not troops but installations, bridges, and especially the railway that linked Damascus to
Medina. The clear course for Lawrence and his Arab allies was to wage a guerrilla war, which
they proceeded to do, mounted on camels and carrying light automatic weapons and explosives. British gold bought recruits for the rebellion against the Turkish Sultan. After Lawrence
and his guerrillas captured the little port of Aqaba ( July 1917), not only gold but also food
and ammunition flowed in to the rebels. (There were, however, no heavy weapons: the British were looking ahead toward the postwar situation.)
Publication Information: Book Title: Guerrilla Warfare: A Historical, Biographical, and Bibliographical Sourcebook. Contributors: Robin Higham - editor, Anthony James Joes - author. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of
Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1996. Page Number: iii
STRATEGY FULFILLED
WHEN Lawrence arrived back at Nebk, he found that Auda had been quarrelling with Nasir.
But the trouble was easily smoothed out and just before noon on June 19th the expedition
set out on the march to Aqaba that was to change, for a second time, the face of the Arab
war. The size of the expeditionary force, only five hundred strong, gave it an air of Gideon
that was both symbolically and geographically apt in the circumstances. The first bound was
westwards to Bair, a group of wells and historic ruins some sixty miles distant, and about
forty miles short of the Hejaz railway.
On the second day, as they approached Bair, Auda asked Lawrence to ride ahead with him.
His son, slain in a blood feud, had been buried there, and Auda, intending to pay the tribute
of a lament over the grave, was paying Lawrence the tribute of companionship in his grief.
But when they drew near Bair, they saw smoke rising from the wells and found that three
had been dynamited. Luckily they discovered that the smallest was intact and, managing to
repair one of the others, staved off the peril of being without water. The discovery, however,
aroused uneasiness lest the Turks might have destroyed the wells at El Jefer, their intended
next bound, just east of Ma'an.
So they decided to pause a week at Bair while they sent a reconnaissance to El Jefer, and
also took soundings among the local tribes whose support they needed. The plan they had
formed was to debouch suddenly from El Jefer, cross the railway south of Ma'an and capture
Seite 1 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
Abu el Lissal, a large spring at the head of the pass that ran down from the Ma'an plateau
towards Aqaba. The capture of Abu el Lissal was thus the key to the gate; it would enable
them to shut off from Ma'an the Turkish posts on the Aqaba road, which would then be likely
to collapse from hunger even if they were not overthrown by a tribal rising. In preparation
for the coup it was necessary to lull the Turks' suspicions. This seemed difficult, not only
because the desert was a place of echoes and every unfriendly Arab a potential Turkish informer, but because Aqaba was such an obvious objective.
June-July, 1917 - From the Sirhan Lawrence moves down on Aqaba--approaching from the
rear--As a preliminary distraction, he cuts the railway in the north, near Deraa--On July 1,
1917, the Arabs cross the line south of Ma'an--A Turkish force accidentally forestalls them at
Abu el Lissal--After a day-long fight the Turks are routed by a sudden charge at dusk--The
path thus cleared, Lawrence descends the Wadi Ithm, frontally impregnable, reaching Aqaba
and the Red Sea on July 6--This almost bloodless success has far-reaching strategic effects.
Publication Information: Book Title: Colonel Lawrence, the Man behind the Legend. Contributors: Liddell
Hart - author. Publisher: Dodd, Mead & Company. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1934. Page
Number: 154, 155.
The Allies enter Damascus - by Alex Barker
The defeat of the German and Turkish armies in Palestine and Syria by British and Colonial
forces in 1918 was made virtually complete when the capital of Turkish-occupied Syria fell
into British hands. A swift series of crushing defeats in Judea led to a disintegration of Ottoman rule, which culminated in the Turkish withdrawal from Damascus and the Arab takeover
of the city. For the leaders of the. Arab rebellion assisted by Colonel T.E. Lawrence, `of Arabia', this represented a final step towards their goal of the creation of a self-governing Arab
nation: a hope quickly extinguished. The battle of Megiddo on September 18-19th in the
Judean hills, and the rout of two Turkish armies, meant the beginning of the end for the Central Powers in the Middle East theatre. The British went on to capture Nazareth, Haifa and
Tiberius, which lay within easy reach of Damascus. The surviving Turkish army was forced to
retreat towards the city, harassed intermittently by Lawrence and his Arab forces.
On September 30th, Turkish rule ceased in the city itself, while the British destroyed the last
Turkish army on the road to Damascus. Australian troops, meanwhile, cut off the roads to
the north, preventing the escape of 10,000 Turkish soldiers still inside the town. That afternoon the Arab flag was raised over the Town Hall while the departing Turkish governor,
Jemal Pasha, appointed Mohammed Said, a local Arab noble, as his successor.
The first Allied troops into the city were elements of the 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigade
led by Major A.C.N. Olden, who entered at dawn on October 1st to a rapturous welcome from
the townsfolk. An hour later Lieutenant Colonel Bourchier led a detachment of cavalry into
Damascus and took the surrender of the exhausted, half-starved Turkish garrison; Major
General MacAndrew arrived shortly afterwards to take command of the city.
Colonel Lawrence and his Arabs were the third arrivals in Damascus on the morning of the
1st. As soon as they arrived they demanded the replacement of Said's council with a governor loyal to his Arab masters. But Lawrence's new administration, lacking local support,
ceased to function in a matter of days.
Despite these setbacks, and his minor role in the Palestine campaign, Lawrence managed to
ensure his fame as a desert warrior through his celebrated book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and an abridged version, Revolt in the Desert, first published in 1927. These offered a
subjective and grandiloquent account of the war in which Lawrence featured heroically and
far more prominently than he had in reality. In his own account of the campaign, Field Marshall Earl Wavell stated that Lawrence's Arab forces, who feature largely in the footnotes,
`were not...a formidable fighting force'.
Lawrence became disillusioned after the failure of his hopes for Arab independence. Plans for
native governments and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia backed by the British
tailed in the face of French insistence on the setting up of the League of Nations mandates of
Trans-Jordan and French Syria, in accordance with the Sykes-Picot agreement. The rule of
Lawrence's old comrade-in-arms Faisal Hussayn did not last and he was ejected from Syria
by the French in 1920. Although hostilities in Palestine were not formally ended until the
capture of Aleppo and the signing of the armistice by Turkey on October 31st, after the capture of Damascus a total of 47,000 Turkish, German and Austrian prisoners had been taken
Seite 2 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
since the commencement of hostilities in 1916, including almost 20,000 in the preceding six
days. An army of over 100,000 had been destroyed leaving the Middle East in Allied hands
and the Ottoman Empire teetering on the, brink of destruction.
Publication Information: Article Title: The Allies Enter Damascus. Contributors: Alex Barker - author. Magazine Title: History Today. Volume: 48. Issue: 10. Publication Date: October 1998. Page Number: 50. COPYRIGHT 1998 History Today Ltd.; COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
Fall of an Empire
Lawrence experienced no doubts or misgivings when confronted with the spectacle of the
Ottoman Empire in the last days of its existence. He could resolve the complexity of its fate
with a simple doctrine, and render judgment on it with categorical finality. ' Turkey was dying of overstrain,' he wrote at the beginning of Seven Pillars, 'of the attempt, with diminished
resources, to hold, on traditional terms, the whole Empire bequeathed to it;' ' Turkey was
1
decaying; and only the knife might keep health in her;' ' Turkey was rotten'. Such was his
summation, while taking stock at the close of his adventure, but also such exactly was his
premise at its start. 'Poor old Turkey is only hanging together. . . . Everything about her is
very sick, and almost I think it will be good to make an end of her, though it will be very
2
inconvenient to ourselves. . . '
1 Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1940 ed. (hereafter referred to as S.P.), pp. 54 and 56.
2 D. Garnett, ed., Letters of T. E. Lawrence, p. 197.
Publication Information: Book Title: England and the Middle East: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire,
1914-1921. Contributors: Elie Kedourie - author. Publisher: Mansell Press. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1987. Page Number: 89.
The hero and history - T. E. LAWRENCE: THE PROBLEM OF HEROISM
[...] What he had done in Arabia--more important, what he had experienced --was epic in its
proportions, and even a glance at his life prompts one to speculate about the nature of heroism in our life. [...]
[...] It is possible that the innovations in military tactics claimed for Lawrence were neither
so revolutionary nor calculated as has been supposed--though by now only specialists and
old friends will have strong opinions about Lawrence as commander. It is possible that a
good many of his glamorous desert raids were of uncertain value--though in guerrilla warfare
bold acts can have consequences beyond their immediate military effects. It is possible that
without British gold Lawrence could not have held together the Arab chieftains--though the
crucial question is whether anyone else could have done it with twice as much gold. But one
thing seems certain: it was Lawrence who grasped the inner logic of the revolt as a moralpolitical act and it was Lawrence who breathed into it a vibrancy of intention it had not previously known. [...]
Publication Information: Book Title: A World More Attractive: A View of Modern Literature and Politics. Contributors: Irving Howe - author. Publisher: Horizon Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year:
1963. Page Number: 1, 14.
Dual Role of Lawrence
As a British intelligence officer already deeply involved in Arab affairs, T. E. Lawrence became chief liaison officer between British Headquarters in Cairo and the Arab forces. He had
begun the war as a civilian cartographer, spoke passable Arabic, and had considerable prior
experience in the Near East as an archaeologist. He proved to be sympathetic to the Arab
cause and soon became Sherif Feisal's--Hussein's third son and a field commander of the
Sherifian forces--confidant and military adviser. With substantial material support from Britain, Feisal reorganized the Arab army. Using guerrilla tactics, Lawrence harassed Turkish
lines of communication in Arabia, occupying a large portion of the Turkish forces whom the
British would otherwise have had to face directly. In the final drive to Damascus, the Arab
forces destroyed the Turkish 4th Army. Although the military value of the Arab Revolt has
been debated, the Arab forces served as the right flank of General Edmund Allenby's army in
Seite 3 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
Palestine. For two years Lawrence fought alongside the Arabs, traveling back and forth between Feisal and British Headquarters. It was a dual role that earned him steady promotion
and military honors from the British High Command as well as cautious appreciation from the
Arabs.
Publication Information: Book Title: Lawrence of Arabia and American Culture: The Making of a Transatlantic
Legend. Contributors: Joel C. Hodson - author. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT.
Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 4.
Allenby and Lawrence
Two days later, on December 11, Allenby made his official entry into Jerusalem. It was a
simple but impressive ceremony. He entered the Jaffa Gate on foot, with the French and
Italian representatives on either side of him, followed by some of his principal staff officers
and by Sir Philip Chetwode, the commander of the Twentieth Corps. Among those who
walked in the same procession, of twenty officers only, was Colonel (then Major) T. E. Lawrence, who had come to G.H.Q. to report on the progress of Feisal's operations shortly before
the fall of Jerusalem, after his gallant, though unsuccessful, attempt to interrupt the Turkish
communications by blowing up a railway bridge in the Yarmuk valley. 1 Guards, representative of the troops which had taken part in the campaign (English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Australian, New Zealand, French, and Italian 2 ), were drawn up at the Gate, and the streets
were lined by men of the 60th Division. A guard of Indian Mohammedan troops had been
established over the Haram-esh-Sherif ( Temple Area). 3 At the Citadel a short proclamation
was read in various languages, and the notables of the city were presented to Allenby. The
procession then returned to the Gate, and the ceremony ended. Israelite, Assyrian, Greek,
Roman, Jew, Arab, Crusader, Turk, had entered Jerusalem as conquerors before the British.
None of these nations can have been represented by one more impressive or worthier of his
race than was Allenby, physically or morally. After Feisal had left Lawrence said that he could
not consent to work with a French officer and asked for leave, which was granted. He left
Damascus next day. Into the last year he had crowded the effort, mental and physical, of
several years for any ordinary man; small wonder if he was overstrained in mind and body.
He was later to fight for the Arabs at the council table as vigorously as he had led them in
the desert. His name will always be connected with the Arab campaign, in which his
achievements were as remarkable as his character. It is a tribute to the greatness of Allenby
that Lawrence, who was no respecter of persons because they held high rank or place, always gave him implicit obedience. He wrote of him in Seven Pillars," Allenby never questioned our fulfilling what was ordered. Power lay in his calm assumption that he would receive as perfect obedience as he gave trust." Lawrence had great courage, versatility, and
quickness of mind, but Allenby was unquestionably the stronger and greater character of the
two outstanding figures in this campaign. Lawrence wrote of Allenby and himself later as
"lion and mouse friends."
Publication Information: Book Title: Allenby, a Study in Greatness: The Biography of Field-Marshal Viscount
Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, G.C.B., G.C.M.G. Contributors: Archibald Wavell - author. Publisher: Oxford
University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1941. Page Number: 230, 286.
The Arab revolt – an irrelevant sideshow?
The Arab campaign was essentially in three parts. From Jeddah to Wejh, after which a port
was secured for British supplies; from Wejh to Aqaba; and from there to Damascus. While
Lawrence's tactics remained basically the same post-Aqaba, he became more closely involved with Allenby's plans, who in turn relied increasingly on Faisal's irregulars to secure his
eastern flank during the final push on Damascus. The total number of irregulars who took
the field may have reached 100,000, though mustered strength never exceeded about
20,000 at any one time. Turkish tactics may have seemed stolid in comparison, vet the Turkish soldier was amazingly resilient in keeping the railway open. Lawrence's success can be
measured by the Turks having to employ 25,000 troops to guard it.
Seite 4 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
Had they not been thus deployed they would have been available on the Syrian front. Without Faisal's Arab uprising, supported by Lawrence, the Allies would have been operating in
hostile territory and Damascus would not have received them as friends. At it was, the Turks
were operating in adverse conditions. It would consequently be unfair to regard the Arab
revolt as an irrelevant sideshow. As one venerable Hejazi Sheikh put it, 'Anyone could see
that before Lawrence came the Ottomans were winning but after his arrival they lost'. A reviewer of David Garnet's The Essential T.E. Lawrence (1951) wrote, 'It is a long time since
the reading public have been reminded of Lawrence by any notable publication and perhaps
some now young will scarcely have heard of him'. David Lean's film and a buoyant Lawrence
industry have ensured this is not so. The Exhibition Lawrence of Arabia: the Life, the Legend
at the Imperial War Museum, will further render certain the Legend is kept alive.
Publication Information: Article Title: Lawrence in Arabia: Diplomat and Traveller Hugh Leach Draws on His
Experience of Working with Arab Tribes to Examine T.E. Lawrence's Strategy in the Arab Revolt, in Anticipation
of a New Exhibition at the IWM. Contributors: Hugh Leach - author. Magazine Title: History Today. Volume: 55.
Issue: 10. Publication Date: October 2005. Page Number: 4+. COPYRIGHT 2005 History Today Ltd.; COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
Excerpts taken from Seven Pillars of Wisdom (EBook version, published by University of Adelaide)
He pointed out the importance of Akaba, the only Turkish port left in the Red Sea, the nearest to the Suez Canal, the nearest to the Hejaz Railway, on the left flank of the Beersheba
army; suggesting its occupation by a composite brigade, which should advance up Wadi Itm
for a crushing blow at Maan. He began to enlarge on the nature of the ground. I told him
that I knew Akaba from before the war, and felt that his scheme was technically impossible.
We could take the beach of the gulf; but our forces there, as unfavourably placed as on a
Gallipoli beach, would be under observation and gun-fire from the coastal hills: and these
granite hills, thousands of feet high, were impracticable for heavy troops: the passes through
them being formidable defiles, very costly to assault or to cover. In my opinion, Akaba,
whose importance was all and more than he said, would be best taken by Arab irregulars
descending from the interior without naval help. Bremond did not tell me (but I knew) that
he wanted the landing at Akaba to head off the Arab movement, by getting a mixed force in
front of them (as at Rabegh), so that they might be confined to Arabia, and compelled to
waste their efforts against Medina. The Arabs still feared that the Sherif s alliance with us
was based on a secret agreement to sell them at the end, and such a Christian invasion
would have confirmed these fears and destroyed their cooperation. For my part, I did not tell
Bremond (but he knew) that I meant to defeat his efforts and to take the Arabs soon into
Damascus. It amused me, this childishly-conceived rivalry of vital aims, but he ended his talk
ominously by saying that, anyhow, he was going down to put the scheme to Feisal in Wejh.
(p.133 – Bremond versus Lawrences aims and plans)
Only by means of Auda abu Tayi could we swing the tribes from Maan to Akaba so violently
in our favour that they would help us take Akaba and its hills from their Turkish garrisons:
only with his active support could we venture to thrust out from Wejh on the long trek to
Maan. Since our Yenbo days we had been longing for him and trying to win him to our cause.
We made a great step forward at Wejh; ibn Zaal, his cousin and a war-leader of the abu
Tayi, arrived on the seventeenth of February, which was in all respects a fortunate day. At
dawn there came in five chief men of the Sherarat from the desert east of Tebuk, bringing a
present of eggs of the Arabian ostrich, plentiful in their little-frequented desert. After them,
the slaves showed in Dhaif-Allah, abu Tiyur, a cousin of Hamd ibn Jazi, paramount of the
central Howeitat of the Maan plateau. These were numerous and powerful; splendid fighters;
but blood enemies of their cousins, the nomad abu Tayi, because of an old-grounded quarrel
between Auda and Hamd. We were proud to see them coming thus far to greet us, yet not
content, for they were less fit than the abu Tayi for our purposed attack against Akaba.
(p.139 – importance of Auda abu Tayi)
Seite 5 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
We had heard much of Auda, and were banking to open Akaba with his help; and after a
moment I knew, from the force and directness of the man, that we would attain our end.
(p.180 - importance of Auda abu Tayi)
I was working out with Auda abu Tayi a march to the Howeitat in their spring pastures of the
Syrian desert. From them we might raise a mobile camel force, and rush Akaba from the
eastward without guns or machine-guns. The eastern was the unguarded side, the line of
least resistance, the easiest for us. Our march would be an extreme example of a turning
movement, since it involved a desert journey of six hundred miles to capture a trench within
gunfire of our ships: but there was no practicable alternative, and it was so entirely in the
spirit of my sick-bed ruminations that its issue might well be fortunate, and would surely be
instructive. Auda thought all things possible with dynamite and money, and that the smaller
clans about Akaba would join us. Feisal, who was already in touch with them, also believed
that they would help if we won a preliminary success up by Maan and then moved in force
against the port. The Navy raided it while we were thinking, and their captured Turks gave
us such useful information that I became eager to go off at once. The desert route to Akaba
was so long and so difficult that we could take neither guns nor machine-guns, nor stores
nor regular soldiers. Accordingly the element I would withdraw from the railway scheme
was only my single self; and, in the circumstances, this amount was negligible, since I felt so
strongly against it that my help there would have been half-hearted. So I decided to go my
own way, with or without orders. I wrote a letter full of apologies to Clayton, telling him that
my intentions were of the best: and went. (p.184 – ...his own decision)
The port of Akaba was naturally so strong that it could be taken only by surprise from inland:
but the opportune adherence to Feisal of Auda abu Tayi made us hope to enrol enough
tribesmen in the eastern desert for such a descent upon the coast. Nasir, Auda, and I set off
together on the long ride. Hitherto Feisal had been the public leader: but his remaining in
Wejh threw the ungrateful load of this northern expedition upon myself. I accepted it and its
dishonest implication as our only means of victory. We tricked the Turks and entered Akaba
with good fortune. (p.185 - ...his own decision)
In the heady atmosphere of first enthusiasm they ignored Akaba, and despised the plain
purpose which had led us here. Nesib knew the Shaalans and the Druses. His mind
enrolled them, not the Howeitat; struck at Deraa, not Maan: occupied Damascus, not Akaba.
He pointed out that the Turks were all unready: that we were sure to gain our first objective,
by sheer surprise: that therefore our objective should be the highest. Damascus was indicated by the finger of inevitable fate.[...] Akaba’s special value to the Turks was that, when
they pleased, it might be constituted a threat to the right flank of the British army. At the
end of 1914 their higher command had thought to make it their main route to the Canal: but
they found the food and water difficulties great, and adopted the Beersheba route. Now,
however, the British had left the Canal positions and had thrust forward to Gaza and Beersheba. (p.223 – relevance of Akaba within the whole campaign)
Akaba was also of greater geographical value than of old, since it now lay behind the
British right, and a small force operating from it would threaten either El Arish or Suez effectively. The Arabs needed Akaba: firstly, to extend their front, which was their tactical princi
ple; and, secondly, to link up with the British. If they took it the act gave them Sinai, and
made positive junction between them and Sir Archibald Murray. Thus having become really
useful, they would obtain material help. The human frailty of Murray’s Staff was such that
nothing but physical contact with our success could persuade them of our importance. Murray was friendly: but if we became his right wing he would equip us properly, almost without
the asking. Accordingly, for the Arabs, Akaba spelt plenty in food, money, guns, advisers. I
wanted contact with the British; to act as the right wing of the Allies in the
conquest of Palestine and Syria; and to assert the Arabic-speaking peoples’ desire or desert
of freedom and self-government. In my view, if the revolt did not reach the main battlefield
against Turkey it would have to confess failure, and remain a side-show of a side-show. I
had preached to Feisal, from our first meeting, that freedom was taken, not given. Both Nasir and Auda fortunately answered to my whispers; and, after recriminations, Nesib left us,
and rode with Zeki to the Druse Mountain, there to do the preliminary work necessary to the
launching of his great Damascus scheme. I knew his incapacity to create; but it was not in
my mind to permit even a half-baked rising there, to spoil our future material.
Seite 6 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
So I was careful to draw his teeth before he started, by taking from him most of the money
Feisal had shared out to him. The fool made this easy for me, as he knew he had not enough
for all he wanted; and, measuring the morality of England by his own pettiness, came to me
for the promise of more if he raised a Syrian movement independent of Feisal, under his own
leadership. I had no fear of so untoward a miracle; and, instead of calling him rat, gave my
ready promise for future help, if he would for the present give me his balance, to get us to
Akaba, where I would make funds available for the general need. He yielded to my condition
with a bad grace; and Nasir was delighted to get two bags of money unexpectedly. Yet the
optimism of Nesib had its effect upon (p.224 – Lawrence instrumentalized Auda...)
I undertook this long, dangerous ride, in which to see the more important of Feisal’s
secret friends, and to study key-positions of our future campaigns: but the results were incommensurate with the risks, and the act artistically unjustifiable, like the motive. I had
whispered to myself ‘Let me chance it, now, before we begin’, seeing truly that this was the
last chance, and that after a successful capture of Akaba I would never again possess
myself freely, without association, in the security lurking for the obscure in their protective
shadow. (p.226)
Auda laughed the loudest and longest, for he loved a jest upon himself; and the fatuousness
of my epic had shown him his own sure mastery of descriptive action. He embraced Mohammed, and confessed the invention of the necklace. In gratitude Mohammed invited the
camp to breakfast with him in his regained tent on the morrow, an hour before we started
for the swoop on Akaba. We should have a sucking camel-calf boiled in sour milk by his
wives: famous cooks, and a legendary dish! (p.228)
We started an hour before noon. Nasir led us, riding his Ghazala—a camel vaulted and hugeribbed as an antique ship; towering a good foot above the next of our animals, and yet perfectly proportioned, with a stride like an ostrich’s—a lyrical beast, noblest and best bred of
the Howeitat camels, a female of nine remembered dams. Auda was beside him, and I skirmished about their gravities on Naama, ‘the hen-ostrich’, a racing camel and my last purchase. Behind me rode my Ageyl, with Mohammed, the clumsy. Mohammed was now companioned by Ahmed, another peasant, who had been for six years living among the Howeitat
by force of his thews and wits—a knowing eager ruffian. Sixty feet of a rise took us out of
Sirhan to the first terrace of the Ard el Suwan—a country of black flints upon marly limestone; not very solid, but hard enough in the tracks which the feet of passing centuries of
camels had worn an inch or two into the surface. Our aim was Bair, a historic group of
Ghassanid wells and ruins in the desert thirty or forty miles east of the Hejaz Railway. It lay
some sixty miles ahead, and there we would camp a few days, while our scouts brought us
flour from the hill villages above the Dead Sea. Our food from Wejh was nearly finished (except that Nasir still had some of the precious rice for great occasions), and we could not yet
certainly forecast the date of our arrival in Akaba. (p.230 – desert ride, wells,...)
And then he spoke of money, and distracted their minds till they all buzzed at once. Afterwards he whispered to me that I must get him a worthy gift from Feisal when he won Akaba.
(p.231 – selfish aims of Aouda,...importance of money,...)
So we soon had two fit wells, and a clear profit of thirty pounds of enemy gelignite. We determined to stay a week in this fortunate Bair. A third object—to discover the condition of the
Jefer wells—was now added to our needs for food, and for news of the state of mind of the
tribes between Maan and Akaba. We sent a man to Jefer. We prepared a little caravan of
pack-camels with Howeitat brands and sent them across the line to Tafileh with three or four
obscure clansmen-people who would never be suspected of association with us. They would
buy all the flour they could and bring it back to us in five or six days’ time. As for the tribes
about the Akaba road, we wanted their active help against the Turks to carry out the provisional plan we had made at Wejh. Our idea was to advance suddenly from El Jefer, to cross
the railway-line and to crown the great pass—Nagb el Shtar—down which the road dipped
from the Maan plateau to the red Guweira plain. To hold this pass we should have to capture
Aba el Lissan, the large spring at its head, about sixteen miles from Maan; but the garrison
was small, and we hoped to overrun it with a rush. (p.232 – preliminary efforts,...)
Seite 7 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
Crux of our plan was the attack on Aba el Lissan, lest the force in Maan have time to sally
out, relieve it, and drive us off the head of Shtar. If, as at present, they were only a battalion, they would hardly dare move; and should they let it fall while waiting for reinforcements
to arrive, Akaba would surrender to us, and we should be based on the sea and have the
advantageous gorge of Itm between us and the enemy. So our insurance for success was to
keep Maan careless and weak, not suspecting our malevolent presence in the neighbourhood. (p.233 – pretence and strategic thinking...)
He guessed five or six, and then I decided to do nothing, to let them pass. We had one objective only, the capture of Akaba, and had come up here solely to make that easier by leading the Turks off on the false scent of thinking that we were at Azrak. To lose five or six
men in such a demonstration, however profitable it proved financially, would be fatuous, or
worse, because we might want our last rifle to take Akaba, the possession of which was vital
to us. After Akaba had fallen we might waste men, if we felt callous; but not before. (p.237
– small numbers of men,...)
Nasir had done great work. A week’s flour for us had come from Tafileh, to restore our freedom of movement. We might well take Akaba before we starved again. He had good letters
from the Dhumaniyeh, the Darausha, and the Dhiabat, three Howeitat clans on Nagb el
Shtar, the first difficult pass of the Maan-Akaba road. They were willing to help us, and if
they struck soon and strongly at Aba el Lissan the great factor of surprise would probably
mean success to their effort. (p.242 – importance of Aba el Lissan)
We rode all night, and when dawn came were dismounting on the crest of the hills between
Batra and Aba el Lissan, with a wonderful view westwards over the green and gold Guweira
plain, and beyond it to the ruddy mountains hiding Akaba and the sea. Gasim abu Dumeik,
head of the Dhumaniyeh, was waiting anxiously for us, surrounded by his hard-bitten
tribesmen, their grey strained faces flecked with the blood of the fighting yesterday. There
was a deep greeting for Auda and Nasir. We made hurried plans, and scattered to the work,
knowing we could not go forward to Akaba with this battalion in possession of the pass. Unless we dislodged it, our two months’ hazard and effort would fail before yielding even firstfruits. Fortunately the poor handling of the enemy gave us an unearned advantage. They
slept on, in the valley, while we crowned the hills in wide circle about them unobserved. We
began to snipe them steadily in their positions under the slopes and rock-faces by the water,
hoping to
provoke them out and up the hill in a charge against us. Meanwhile, Zaal rode away with our
horsemen and cut the Maan telegraph and telephone in the plain. (p.246 – snipe attack)
Today was the fourth of July. Time pressed us, for we were hungry, and Akaba was still far
ahead behind two defences. The nearer post, Kethira, stubbornly refused parley with our
flags. Their cliff commanded the valley—a strong place which it might be costly to take. We
assigned the honour, in irony, to ibn Jad and his unwearied men, advising him to try
it after dark. He shrank, made difficulties, pleaded the full moon: but we cut hardly into this
excuse, promising that to-night for a while there should be no moon. By my diary there was
an eclipse. Duly it came, and the Arabs forced the post without loss, while the superstitious
soldiers were firing rifles and clanging copper pots to rescue the threatened satellite. The
narrows of Wadi Itm increased in intricate ruggedness as we penetrated deeper. Below
Kethira we found Turkish post after Turkish post, empty. Their men had been drawn in to
Khadra, the entrenched position (at the mouth of Itm), which covered Akaba so well against
a landing from the sea. Unfortunately for them the enemy had never imagined attack from
the interior, and of ahl their great works not one trench or post faced inland. Our advance
from so new a direction threw them into panic. (p.253 – withdrawal to entrenched positions, but those were meant to defend from a seaside attack)
The loss of his belongings he took philosophically, but was sorry for the well, which a little
work would have finished as his monument. He showed me where it was, with the pump only
half-built. By pulling on the sludge bucket we drew enough delicious clear water to quench
our thirsts. Then we raced through a driving sandstorm down to Akaba, four miles further,
and splashed into the sea on July the sixth, just two months after our setting out from Wejh.
(p.255 – a sandstorm was the only real opponent)
Seite 8 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
Our capture of Akaba closed the Hejaz war, and gave us the task of helping the British invade Syria. The Arabs working from Akaba became virtual right wing of Allenby's army in
Sinai. To mark the changed relation Feisal, with his Army, was transferred to Allenby's command. Allenby now became responsible for his operations and equipment. Meanwhile we
organized the Akaba area as an unassailable base, from which to hinder the Hejaz Railway.
(p.256 – description of turning point and further strategic importance of Aqaba)
By November, 1917, Allenby was ready to open a general attack against the Turks along his
whole front. The Arabs should have done the same in their sector: but I was afraid to put
everything on a throw, and designed instead the specious operation of cutting the Yarmuk
Valley Railway, to throw into disorder the expected Turkish retreat. This half-measure met
with the failure it deserved. (p.318 – admits wrong decision and failure !!!)
Later came urgent orders for me to go up at once to Palestine by air. Croil flew me to Suez.
Thence I went up to Allenby’s headquarters beyond Gaza. He was so full of victories that my
short statement that we had failed to carry a Yarmuk bridge was sufficient, and the miserable details of failure could remain concealed.
While I was still with him, word came from Chetwode that Jerusalem had fallen; and Allenby
made ready to enter in the official manner which the catholic imagination of Mark Sykes had
devised. He was good enough, although I had done nothing for the success, to let Clayton
take me along as his staff officer for the day. The personal Staff tricked me out in their spare
clothes till I looked like a major in the British Army. Dalmeny lent me red tabs, Evans his
brass hat; so that I had the gauds of my appointment in the ceremony of the Jaffa gate,
which for me was the supreme moment of the war. (p.379 – Supreme moment !!!)
After the capture of Jerusalem, Allenby, to relieve his right, assigned us a limited objective.
We began well; but when we reached the Dead Sea, bad weather, bad temper and division
of purpose blunted our offensive spirit and broke up our force.
I had a misunderstanding with Zeid, threw in my hand, and returned to Palestine reporting
that we had failed, and asking the favour of other employment. Allenby was in the hopeful
midst of a great scheme for the coming spring. He sent me back at once to Feisal with new
powers and duties. (p. 380 – second failure after Aqaba !!!)
DAMASCUS
The last obligation was to restore Feisal’s supremacy. To attempt anything serious between
Deraa and Damascus without him would be vain. We could put in the attack on Deraa, which
was what Allenby expected from us; but the capture of Damascus—which was what I
expected from the Arabs, the reason why I had joined with them in the field, taken ten thousand pains, and spent my wit and strength—that depended on Feisal’s being present with us
in the fighting line, undistracted by military duties, but ready to take over and exploit the
political value of what our bodies conquered for him. Eventually he offered to come up under
my orders. As for the apology from Mecca, Allenby and Wilson were doing their best, engrossing the cables. If they failed, my course would be to promise Feisal the direct support of
the British Government, and drive him into Damascus as sovereign prince. It was possible:
but I wanted to avoid it except as a last necessity. The Arabs hitherto in their revolt had
made clean history, and I did not wish our adventure to come to the pitiable state of scission
before the common victory and its peace. (p.490 - the British used Feisal as an instrument of legitimisation,...)
Damascus meant the end of this war in the East, and, I believed, the end of the general war,
too; because the Central Powers being interdependent, the breaking of their weakest
link—Turkey—would swing the whole cluster loose. Therefore, for every sensible reason,
strategical, tactical, political, even moral, we were going on. (p.529)
Our war was ended. Even though we slept that night in Kiswe, for the Arabs told us the
roads were dangerous, and we had no wish to die stupidly in the dark at the gate of Damascus. The sporting Australians saw the campaign as a point-to-point, with Damascus the post;
but in reality we were all under Allenby, now, and the victory had been the logical fruit solely
Seite 9 von 10
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
und Professur für Islamische Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie
Hauptseminar: Lawrence of Arabia
Dozenten: Prof. Dr. Christoph Houswitschka, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Korn
Referent: Peter Baumann
19.06.2006
of his genius, and Bartholomew’s pains. Their tactical scheme properly put the Australians
north and west of Damascus, across its railways, before the southern column might enter it:
and we, the Arab leaders, had waited for the slower British partly because Allenby never
questioned our fulfilling what was ordered. Power lay in his calm assumption that he would
receive as perfect obedience as he gave trust.
He hoped we would be present at the entry, partly because he knew how much more than a
mere trophy Damascus was to the Arabs: partly for prudential reasons. Feisal’s movement
made the enemy country friendly to the Allies as they advanced, enabling convoys to go up
without escort, towns to be administered without garrison. In their envelopment of Damascus the Australians might be forced, despite orders, to enter the town. If anyone resisted
them it would spoil the future. One night was
given us to make the Damascenes receive the British Army as their allies.
I dissuaded Nasir from going in. This would be a night of confusion, and it would better serve
his dignity if he entered serenely at dawn. He and Nuri Shaalan intercepted the second body
of Rualla camel men, who had started out with me from Deraa this morning; and sent them
all forward into Damascus, to support the Rualla sheikhs. So by midnight, when we went to
rest, we had four thousand of our armed men in the town. (p.546 - There he showed
more loyalty to Allenby than to the Arabs !!!,...)
EPILOGUE - Damascus had not seemed a sheath for my sword, when I landed in Arabia:
but its capture disclosed the exhaustion of my main springs of action. The strongest motive
throughout had been a personal one, not mentioned here, but present to me, I think, every
hour of these two years. Active pains and joys might fling up, like towers, among my days:
but, refluent as air, this hidden urge re-formed, to be the persisting element of life, till near
the end. It was dead, before we reached Damascus.
Next in force had been a pugnacious wish to win the war: yoked to the conviction that without Arab help England could not pay the price of winning its Turkish sector. When Damascus
fell, the Eastern war—probably the whole war—drew to an end. Then I was moved by curiosity. 'Super flumina Babylonis', read as a boy, had left me longing to feel myself the node of
a national movement. We took Damascus, and I feared. More than three arbitrary days
would
have quickened in me a root of authority. There remained historical ambition, insubstantial
as a motive by itself. I had dreamed, at the City School in Oxford, of hustling into form,
while I lived, the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing upon us.
Mecca was to lead to Damascus; Damascus to Anatolia, and afterwards to Bagdad; and then
there was Yemen. Fantasies, these will seem, to such as are able to call my beginning an
ordinary effort. (p.563 - a childrens fantasy and reality, megalomania, no idealism
but cold politics...)
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