Arabs take Yanbu

On 27 July 1916 the Turkish garrison of Yanbu on the coast of the Red Sea surrendered to the insurgents of the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. This date is given consistently by the British chronology of the war and by the British official history of the campaign in Egypt and Palestine (MacMunn and Falls), which says briefly that on that day another Red Sea port, lying some 200 miles (320 kilometres) north-west of Jeddah, surrendered to the Sharif’s followers. The same date appears in a list of the captures of 1916 published by the Jordanian armed forces, which trace their tradition to the troops of the revolt. The available sources say very little about the surrender itself: they give neither the size of the garrison nor the name of the Arab commander to whom it surrendered.

The port of Medina

Yanbu stood on a coral reef, enclosed by walls with towers, on the edge of the flat coastal plain of the Tihama, at the mouth of the largest valley of the northern Hejaz, Wadi Yanbu. For centuries it was the port of Medina, to which a caravan road led from here across the mountains, more than 200 kilometres long. Pilgrims bound for the Prophet’s tomb landed here, as did ships with food. The port declined in importance when the Hejaz Railway from Damascus reached Medina in 1908. T. E. Lawrence, who came to Yanbu a few months later, wrote that since the opening of the railway the town had been half a dead town, with crumbling, empty streets. The surrounding valleys were inhabited by the Juhayna tribe, whose men were soon to make up a large part of the insurgent forces in the north.

Another port in the Sharif’s hands

After the surrender of Jeddah on 16 June the insurgents took the coast one place after another. According to the Lebanese historian George Antonius, while the Sharif’s son Abdullah was besieging Taif, another force moved north and took Rabigh and Yanbu. According to the British official history, there was only a handful of Turks in Rabigh, about 160 kilometres north of Jeddah. The Jordanian list records that Al Lith, south of Jeddah, fell on 23 June, and on 8 July Al Qunfudhah, which the Arabs took with the help of the British fleet. On 9 July the last Turkish strongpoint in Mecca surrendered. At Medina things went worse: on 3 July the Turks came out of the city and routed the forces of Emir Faisal, and the insurgents fell back into the mountains on the roads to Mecca. The fall of Yanbu meant that the strong garrison of Medina, commanded by Fahreddin Pasha, lost its nearest port and was now even more dependent on the railway from Damascus.

Germans in Yanbu

The port also had its small mystery. According to the British official history, when the armed Royal Indian Marine ship Dufferin lay off Yanbu in June, it was reported that several Germans, including a woman, were in the town. The British at first dismissed the report, because there were many such rumours. Later it turned out to be true. They were members of the mission of Major Baron Othmar von Stotzingen, who was to travel with a Turkish detachment to Yemen and set up a wireless station on the Red Sea for communication with the Germans in East Africa. He was accompanied, among others, by Karl Neufeld, a German adventurer who had for years been a prisoner of the Mahdists in the Sudan. As Christians, the Germans could not pass through Medina and Mecca together with the troops. Stotzingen therefore wanted to hire a sailing vessel at the port of Al Wajh, north of Yanbu, but the British blockade proved too tight and he had to travel overland. The revolt thwarted their plans. Stotzingen left Yanbu before the Arabs took it and returned to Damascus, and according to the British official history some of his companions were killed by Bedouin.

In the autumn Yanbu became the main base of Faisal’s army, to which the British brought arms and supplies by sea. In December, when the Turks from Medina routed the Arabs in the mountains and came right up to the town, it was defended jointly by the insurgents and by Royal Navy ships lying in the harbour. No attack came, and in January 1917 Faisal set out from Yanbu northwards against the port of Al Wajh.