Battle of Mecca

The Battle of Mecca was the first great success of the Arab Revolt. Before dawn on 10 June 1916 the men of Sharif Hussein bin Ali attacked the Turkish garrison of Mecca, weakened by the departure of most of the troops to the mountains for the summer. Within three days they took the posts in the city and the government building, but the main barracks and the fort on the hill above the city, which had artillery, held out for almost a month. The rebels had no guns with which to take them. The issue was decided only by Egyptian mountain guns, sent from the Sudan by the British. On 4 July the Ajyad fort fell, and on the evening of 9 July the Jirwal barracks surrendered. The holiest city of Islam was in the hands of the Sharif, who in the autumn proclaimed himself king.

Name and dates

In English literature the engagement is called the Battle of Mecca; in Turkish literature, the defence or the fall of Mecca. The main source for this page is the history of the Arab national movement by the Lebanese historian George Antonius (The Arab Awakening, 1938), who translated and published the account of “Al-Qibla”, a newspaper published by the Sharif in Mecca from August 1916. It was the rebels’ version, but the most detailed one known.

The dates differ in the sources. Antonius and “Al-Qibla” state that the fighting began at half past three in the morning on 10 June, that is, on the 9th day of the month of Sha’ban 1334 AH. The British official history of the campaign in Egypt and Palestine (MacMunn and Falls) dates the first open fighting to 9 June. The British chronology of the war records the surrender of the Mecca garrison under 10 June, but on that day the fighting had only just begun. According to “Al-Qibla”, the Ajyad fort fell on 4 July and the Jirwal barracks on 9 July. The Turkish historian Mustafa Bostancı writes that the rebels entered Mecca on 7 July, while the English Wikipedia and some studies end the battle on 4 July, assigning that day to the barracks. The British official history presents the whole as a quick victory: according to it, the barracks were set on fire on 12 June, and the next day the rest of the garrison was taken prisoner, except for the garrisons of two small forts, which surrendered only under the fire of Egyptian guns. We adopt the dates 10 June – 9 July 1916, from the first attack to the surrender of the last Turkish strongpoint.

Background

From 1915 Sharif Hussein had been conducting secret talks with the British. In his correspondence with Sir Henry McMahon he obtained a promise of support for Arab independence, and in the spring of 1916 he received his first weapons from them, while at his request their ships blockaded the ports of the Hejaz. On 5 June 1916 his sons Ali and Faisal proclaimed Arab independence outside Medina, and the next day attacked the city without success. On 9 June the tribes attacked Jeddah, the main port of the Hejaz. The Sharif decided to attack Mecca himself.

Mecca lies in a narrow, rocky valley, several dozen kilometres from the sea. It was not only the holy city but also the seat of the Sharif, who lived here in his palace. For the summer the Turkish governor-general of the Hejaz, Ghalib Pasha, moved with most of the troops to the cooler Taif in the mountains, about 110 kilometres to the south-east. So it was in 1916 as well. According to the British official history about 1,000 soldiers remained in the city, according to Antonius about 1,400, and according to Bostancı 1,200 under the command of Derviş Bey. The names of the commanders on the Turkish side appear rarely in the sources. Antonius writes only that the government building was defended by the deputy governor-general, himself an officer.

The garrison held several points. The largest were the Jirwal barracks on the western edge of the city, by the roads to Jeddah and Medina. On the hill above the southern part of Mecca, right above the Great Mosque, stood the Ajyad fort, built in the 18th century, from which guns could hit any quarter. In 2002 the Saudi authorities demolished it, and on its site today stands the Abraj Al Bait hotel complex. The main guardhouse stood by the south-eastern corner of the mosque, near the hill of Al-Safa, and the provincial offices were housed in the Hamidiya building. The rebels, the Sharif’s men and Bedouin from the surrounding tribes, had numerical superiority, but only rifles, and not all of them had those. They had neither artillery nor machine guns.

Course

The first days

At half past three in the morning on 10 June the rebels simultaneously opened fire on the barracks, the posts and the Hamidiya building and surrounded all the Turkish strongpoints. The guns of the Ajyad fort replied by shelling the Bedouin positions and houses in the city, above all the Sharif’s palace. At about nine in the morning officers from the Jirwal barracks telephoned the palace and asked for the fighting to stop. This conversation gave rise to a famous anecdote. According to the British official history, the Turkish commander said: “The Bedouin have revolted against the Government. Find a way out”, and the Sharif replied: “Of course we shall.” An official sent by the Sharif informed the Turks that the country had declared independence and that the fighting would end when they left the barracks and handed over their weapons. The officers refused and the fighting went on until dusk. According to “Al-Qibla”, the Turks lost about 150 killed and wounded that day and the Arabs eight.

Before noon on 11 June the rebels stormed the main guardhouse by the mosque and took its garrison prisoner. On 12 June the heaviest fighting took place around the Hamidiya building. According to “Al-Qibla”, the deputy governor fired from there on passers-by and worshippers in the mosque until a detachment of the Sharif took the building. The deputy governor and his officers were escorted with military honours to the palace. Once he learned the reasons for the revolt, at the Sharif’s request he wrote to the commanders of the barracks and the fort, asking them to surrender. They, however, refused. Within three days the rebels thus controlled the city, but not the main fortifications.

The shelling of the holy city

The barracks garrison played for time, and the Ajyad fort shelled the city, the houses and the Great Mosque. Prayers in the mosque ceased, and it was hard for the faithful to approach it. Two shells fell by the Kaaba, near the Black Stone, and set its covering on fire. Thousands of people rushed under fire to put out the blaze. A third shell struck the Maqam Ibrahim, the stone by the Kaaba on which, according to tradition, Abraham stood while building the shrine. Some historians believe the Turks hit the shrine by accident, but the Sharif made this one of the main charges in his proclamation to the Muslims of the world. It was a powerful propaganda tool against a government which in 1914 had called on all Muslims to holy war.

For three weeks nothing changed. Without artillery the Arabs could not take the fortifications, and the Turks did not dare to come out of them. On 2 July the government in Constantinople announced that Hussein was stripped of his dignity, and appointed his rival, Sharif Ali Haidar, as the new Emir of Mecca. In Mecca itself this no longer mattered.

The Egyptian guns

Help came from across the Red Sea. When the Sharif asked for mountain artillery with Muslim crews, the Governor-General of the Sudan and commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army, Sir Reginald Wingate, without hesitation sent two Egyptian mountain batteries with their own Muslim officers and a battery of six machine guns under a senior Egyptian officer whom the British official history calls Sayad Bey Ali. On 27 June three ships carrying the guns, 3,000 rifles, ammunition, and barley, flour, rice and coffee sailed from Port Sudan and the next day reached Jeddah, which had already been taken. Two guns were sent at once to Mecca.

The Egyptian gunners shelled the Ajyad fort and breached one of its walls. The Arabs burst in through the breach and took the fort on the morning of 4 July. According to “Al-Qibla”, two Turkish officers and one soldier were killed, while the attackers had only one wounded. In the fort five guns and about 8,000 rifles were captured, along with a great deal of ammunition. The Egyptian guns were then moved to the Jirwal barracks. The Turks several times hoisted the white flag to gain time, but in the end they really did surrender. On the evening of 9 July a group of officers with a white flag came to the rebel camp. The garrison laid down its arms, and the soldiers were allowed to keep their money, their baggage and even their horses.

Losses

There are no exact figures. “Al-Qibla” reported that the Turks lost about 150 killed and wounded on the first day and 21 killed and 76 wounded during the siege of the barracks, and that 30 officers and 1,120 soldiers from the barracks alone were taken prisoner. To this must be added the prisoners from the guardhouse, the government building and the fort. The rebels’ losses, according to the same newspaper, were very small, but these are the figures of one side. It is not known how many inhabitants of Mecca were killed by the shelling.

Significance

The capture of Mecca gave the revolt a capital and great prestige. The Sharif now ruled the holiest city of Islam, to which pilgrims from the whole Muslim world travelled every year, and the Sultan’s call to holy war against the Entente lost credibility in the eyes of many Muslims. According to Antonius, the autumn pilgrimage (the Hajj) in 1916 brought a good number of the faithful from Egypt, and in Cairo the revolt came to be regarded as the most serious blow yet dealt to Turkey. In the autumn of 1916 Hussein proclaimed himself king, and later the Kingdom of Hejaz came into being.

The battle also showed the weakness of the rebels. Without artillery they could not take even weakly manned fortifications, and they won only thanks to the Egyptian guns and British supplies. It was the same at Taif, which the Sharif’s second son, Abdullah, had been besieging since June. The Egyptian artillery opened fire there on 16 July, and the garrison with the governor-general Ghalib Pasha surrendered only on 22 September. Medina, linked by rail to Damascus, the rebels did not take before the end of the war.