A History of the Middle East (21 page)

A new opportunity for the Ottoman Turks arose in 1865, when the long and peaceful reign of the Saudi emir Feisal bin Turki came to an end and a violent feud over the succession broke out between his two sons. Midhat Pasha accepted the offer of vassaldom from one of them in return for Ottoman support, and in 1871 a Turkish force was dispatched by sea to establish garrisons along the Gulf coast. However, the principal result was thoroughly to alarm the
British government. Britain did not at this stage interfere in the internal affairs of the Arab shaikhdoms, but it had come to regard the Gulf as a British lake, and the reappearance of the Turkish navy in however modest a form was a cause for concern. The British-controlled government of India, which was especially involved, wondered whether the local Arab chiefs or the Persians might be stimulated into acquiring their own naval force to challenge British supremacy. But there was little need to worry: the Turks confined their attention to the mainland, and Britain strengthened its treaty with the ruler of Bahrain to forestall both Turkish and Persian ambitions.

The status of the emirate of Kuwait, with its great natural harbour at the strategic head of the Gulf, was a cause for concern. Since its foundation by the Sabah family from Nejd in the mid eighteenth century, it had grown and prospered as a pearling and trading centre under a succession of able rulers and it was a strong focus of British interest. However, the Sabahs were able to remain virtually independent in return for a nominal acceptance of Turkish suzerainty. It was only in 1899 that Britain finally accepted the request for formal British protection from the Kuwaiti emir, Mubarak the Great (1895–1916), and this was not to repel the Turks but to forestall the German plan to extend the Berlin–Istanbul–Baghdad railway to Kuwait. Under the Anglo-Kuwaiti Treaty, Mubarak accepted, in terms similar to other agreements with Arab Gulf rulers, not to ‘cede, sell, lease, mortgage or give for occupation or any other purpose any portion of his territory to the government or subjects of any other power’.

The most prized of all the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire was the Hejaz in western Arabia. It was the least developed economically, but it contained the Holy Cities of Islam – Mecca and Medina. Here Turkish control was maintained after the expulsion of the Wahhabis in 1811–19 but it was far from secure, even after the opening of the Suez Canal made it easier to dispatch troops from Istanbul. The Ottoman
walis
shared power with the prestigious Arab Grand Sharifs of Mecca, who by long tradition
came from the Bani Hashem, the most noble of Arab clans, who traced their descent from the Prophet’s daughter. Public order was badly maintained, foreign consuls were frequently murdered and the unfortunate Muslim pilgrims had little defence against marauding bandits.

As we have seen, Sultan Abdul Hamid, after the loss of most of his Christian subjects in the Balkans and the better part of his North African empire, determined to assert his leadership over what was still the greatest Muslim power in the world. He was prepared to make use of the
Tanzimat
reforms where they served his purposes in improving the administration of the outlying provinces, but the concepts within these reforms of the rights of citizens and equality before the law were even more distasteful to him than to his predecessors. He aimed at unfettered autocracy, but he pursued his aims by skilful diplomacy, intrigue and manipulation rather than brute force.

The Ottoman sultans in the eighteenth century had revived the title of caliph, and although it had little of its original meaning – the Prophet’s successor and spiritual/political guide and leader of all Muslims – the world had generally acknowledged the title, as a form of diplomatic politeness. Abdul Hamid set out to assert himself as the sultan/caliph and world leader of Sunni Islam and to spread the doctrines of pan-Islam. This would serve the double purpose of strengthening his position within what was left of his empire and mobilizing its human resources against the increasing penetration by the Christian West. Unlike many of his predecessors, he was naturally pious and sober, and he emphasized these aspects of his court. He lavished money on mosques and Islamic foundations throughout the empire. He surrounded himself with the most learned Muslim scholars, and he established a missionary school to spread the news of Istanbul’s rejuvenated faith and piety throughout the Muslim world.

Abdul Hamid had little need to worry about the loyalty of the mass of Anatolian peasants to their sultan/caliph, but his suspicious nature caused him to doubt the wholehearted acceptance of his
leadership by his more numerous Arabic-speaking subjects. He became convinced that there was a movement to restore the Arab caliphate. There was little evidence for this. It was true that some non-Turkish Muslim thinkers in the empire blamed the last centuries of Ottoman domination for the current decadence of the Islamic world. Disciples of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, like the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh and the Syrians Rashid Rida and Abdul Rahman al-Kawakibi, were passionately concerned with the revival and reunification of the Muslim
umma
or nation as a means of resisting the domination of the West and its ideas. They felt that this regeneration could come only through the Arabs among which Islam originated. But although these men founded newspapers and published pamphlets in Paris or Cairo (where they were under British protection), they were intellectuals rather than political activists.

Political dissent within the empire at that stage scarcely followed national/racial lines. The Egyptian nationalist leader Mustafa Kamel in the 1890s looked to the sultan as the natural leader of the pan-Islamic movement which he espoused against the British. Arab resentment and hostility against the Turks was only beginning to stir; indeed, the term ‘Arab’ was still generally reserved for the semi-nomadic people of the Arabian peninsula. Men like Rashid Rida believed that it was in Arabia that the movement for the regeneration of Islam would have to start, and in fact the first practical effort to oust the Ottomans as unfit rulers of the Islamic homeland was made by the Saudi Wahhabi forces at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But they had been defeated, and their challenge was to be renewed only when the empire was on the point of collapse.

Sultan Abdul Hamid’s fears and suspicions of subversion among his non-Turkish subjects caused him to pursue a twin-headed policy. He promoted some to high positions in his government and lavished gifts and hospitality on visiting Arab dignitaries; at the same time, he constantly intrigued to prevent local political leaders from becoming too powerful. When necessary, he encouraged rivalry and antagonism between clans and tribes. He kept himself informed through his vast network of spies and the new telegraph system,
installed by French and British engineers, which reached the most distant provinces. Any potentially dangerous local leader or possible trouble-maker was eliminated, if necessary by force. One of these was Hussein Bin Ali, a member of the family of the Grand Sharifs of Mecca – that is, a Hashemite. Because of his eminence, he had to be treated politely. Accordingly, in 1893 Abdul Hamid issued him with an invitation which he could not refuse: to come to settle with his three small sons, Ali, Abdullah and Feisal, in Istanbul. Abdul Hamid’s instinct was correct, for Hussein and his sons would become one of the principal instruments for the downfall of the empire.

The most outstanding of the Arabs whom Abdul Hamid promoted was the Syrian Izzet Pasha. In the later years of the sultan’s reign he rose to a position of great power and influence in which he was the principal force behind the single most important instrument of Abdul Hamid’s pan-Islamic policy – the building of the Hejaz Railway. This ran from Damascus to Medina, but a planned extension to Mecca was never completed. Built by engineers from the sultan’s new ally Germany between 1901 and 1908, the railway cost some £3 million and, because it was presented as a supreme instrument of Muslim piety – to reduce the dangers and arduousness of the pilgrimage to Mecca – a third of the cost was raised by volunteer contributions from throughout the Muslim world, to which were added special taxes imposed in the empire. The project added immensely to the pious sultan/caliph’s prestige as the leader of Sunni Islam, but it had the important additional political/strategic advantage of bypassing the British-controlled Suez Canal and making it possible to send troops from Syria to the Hejaz within a few days.

Despite all Abdul Hamid’s efforts to secure the loyalty of the Muslim faithful, in the Arab provinces there were stirrings of opposition to Ottoman Turkish rule. Some local leaders or clans had specific cause for resentment when the sultan favoured their rivals, and there was more general dislike of his despotic and unprincipled methods of government. Among the Arab Christian communities centred on Maronite Lebanon there was especially powerful anti-Ottoman feeling, fostered by cultural and commercial contacts with
the West, the spread of literacy and education and the knowledge of French protection. But precisely because Arab Christians were a minority and their resentment arose from their sense of holding permanent second-class status in the empire, there was no question of their combining forces with their Muslim fellow-Arabs in a movement of rebellion. The concept of an Arab nation was confined to a few intellectuals, while that of a common Ottoman citizenship based on the principle of equal rights, which had originated in the
Tanzimat
reforms, had made little headway under Abdul Hamid’s pan-Islamic order. Religious loyalties were still much stronger than Western secularist ideas. Syrian Arabs did not think in terms of overthrowing the empire which had been the champion and protector of the Islamic
umma
for four centuries.

The real rebellion against Abdul Hamid came from a wholly different source, which lay much closer to Istanbul. The most genuine and effective body of reforms which Abdul Hamid had taken over from his predecessors was the improvement and expansion of civil and military education. This had produced a substantial new educated middle class. The Young Ottomans who wished to end the sultan’s despotism were effectively scattered and suppressed in the first years of his reign, but their ideals survived and re-emerged towards the end of the century in a revolutionary movement known as the Young Turks. This spread rapidly among the students in the military, medical and law colleges in the capital and the provinces. Talaat Bey, a law student who was also chief clerk at the Salonika post office, and Rahmi Bey, a local notable, together with a few associates, founded a secret society which they called the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to emphasize the ideal of the unity and equality of all races and creeds within the empire. This ideal attracted the support of Freemasons and Jews, who came to play a leading role in the movement. Links were established with the Turkish exiles in Paris.

Although the Young Turks staged an abortive coup in 1896, this was easily suppressed. The sultan had little idea of the danger that threatened, and his spy network seems to have been less effective
close to home. The revolutionaries were appalled by the sultan’s mishandling of the affairs of Macedonia, the last substantial Ottoman province in Europe, and outraged by the empire’s abject weakness in relation to the powers of Europe. In 1908, provoked by reports that Edward VII of England and Tsar Nicholas of Russia were planning the partition of Turkey at their meeting in Tallinn, army officers such as Enver Bey, Jemal Pasha and Mustafa Kemal (the future Kemal Atatürk) joined the new movement, bringing to it the command of military units in the Macedonian army. It was in the spirit of saving the fatherland that in 1908 the Young Turks raised the standard of revolt in Salonika, the Macedonian capital, which had become the headquarters of the CUP. The rebellion spread rapidly, even to the Albanian units which Abdul Hamid had regarded as securely loyal.

The Young Turks, led by Major Enver Bey, demanded the restoration of constitutional rule. Discovering that both the Shaikh ul-Islam – the senior religious authority – and a majority of his own ministers sympathized with the revolutionaries, Abdul Hamid was forced to give way. The short-lived constitution he had abolished forty years previously was restored.

On behalf of the Young Turks, Enver Bey proclaimed the end of arbitrary government and the principles of the new order: ‘Henceforth we are all brothers. There are no longer Bulgars, Greeks, Romanians, Jews, Muslims; under the same blue sky we are all equal, we glory in being Ottomans.’

The announcement was received with wild popular rejoicing in Istanbul. The wily Abdul Hamid did not lack resource. Affecting enthusiasm for the liberal constitutionalism he had so speedily discarded after his accession, he reopened the parliament which had been closed for forty-one years. The crowds lining the streets cried ‘Long live the constitution’, but they also chanted ‘Long live the sultan.’

The Arabs in Istanbul and the notables in the Arab provinces also welcomed the new era. They hoped that the declared spirit of racial equality would mean the end of Turkish domination and of the
imposition of Turkish language and culture on the Arabs in the empire.

A brief Turco-Arab honeymoon ensued, but for several reasons it could not last. In the first place the spirit of Ottomanism enshrined in Midhat Pasha’s constitution took no account of racial equality among Muslims. Enver Bey in his declaration had referred to ‘Muslims’ rather than Arabs or Turks. The electoral system ensured the massive predominance of Turks in parliament – where they numbered 150 out of a total of 243, compared with 60 Arabs – despite the fact that Arabic-speaking Ottoman citizens almost certainly outnumbered the Turks in the empire. Secondly, the army officers who had taken over the leadership of the Young Turks were no liberal democrats. Their professions of faith in unity and equality as the spirit of Ottomanism were not hypocritical, but they did not go deep. They detested Abdul Hamid’s rule for its corruption and inefficiency rather than its despotism. Faced with his appalling legacy of misgovernment – the empty treasury, the relentless pressure of the European powers in the Balkans and later the Italian invasion of Libya, the last Ottoman province in Africa – the Young Turks had little time to apply the principles of constitutional freedom. Moreover, unlike the Young Ottoman intellectuals, they had no interest in political theories – their approach to government was practical and empirical and their overriding aim was to strengthen the empire’s defences. If they paid tribute to the ideals of the French Revolution, it was because they believed that the slogans of ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ had welded the people of France into the potent force which overwhelmed the Revolution’s enemies. The citizens of the Ottoman Empire would no doubt behave similarly.