Battle of Tafileh

The Battle of Tafileh was a series of engagements in January 1918 in which the Arab insurgents of Emir Faisal, supported by the British, took control of the hilly grain country south-east of the Dead Sea. They first captured the railway station of Jurf al-Darawish and the small town of Tafileh, and on 25 January they routed a Turkish column that had come to retake the town. It was one of the few, and according to some historians the only, engagements of the Arab Revolt fought by the Arabs as a classic pitched battle, with a reserve, an outflanking movement and an attack along the whole line. A few days later the Bedouin destroyed the Turkish grain flotilla on the Dead Sea. The British official history called the defence of Tafileh “a brilliant feat of arms”. Major T. E. Lawrence, who directed the battle as an adviser, nevertheless described it mockingly in “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” as a parody of textbook warfare.

Name and dates

The British official chronology of the war (Principal Events 1914–1918) lists these engagements as the “Actions for Et Tafile” and dates them nominally from 1 to 28 January 1918. According to Jordanian military studies, however, the first confirmed engagement, the capture of Jurf al-Darawish station, took place on 12 January, and Tafileh surrendered on 15 January. The British official history (Cyril Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, vol. II) says only that Sharif Nasir’s force set out on this expedition at the end of December 1917, and does not give the day the station was taken. We therefore take 12 January as the start. The main battle was fought on 25 January on the plateau north of the town. Lawrence named it after the nearby gorge as the battle of the Hesa. Turkish accounts, quoted by the official history, wrongly give 26 or even 19 January. The operations ended with the raid on the landing place of Al-Mazraa on the Dead Sea at dawn on 28 January, though some chronologies date it to 27 January.

Background

After Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem in December 1917 the British army in Palestine was exhausted. General Edmund Allenby wanted to take Jericho in February and push the Turks back across the Jordan. Faisal’s Arab Northern Army, based at Aqaba, was meanwhile to advance north along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea and join the British in the Jordan valley. On the way lay prosperous villages and small towns such as Shobak, Tafileh, Kerak and Madaba, from which the Turks drew grain. Lawrence wrote that Allenby set the Arabs three objectives: to reach the Dead Sea, to stop the carriage of food by boat across the lake to Jericho by mid-February, and to stand on the Jordan by the end of March.

The autumn of 1917 passed in minor engagements around Ma’an, the most important junction of the Hejaz Railway in the area. In October the Arabs repulsed the Turks at Petra, but could not take Ma’an itself. Faisal entrusted the expedition to Tafileh to his younger half-brother, Emir Zeid, the youngest son of Hussein, King of the Hejaz. Zeid’s military adviser was Ja’far al-Askari, commander of the Arab regular troops, and Lawrence was the British liaison officer. The plan provided for a simultaneous advance from three sides: from the east across the railway, from the south through the woods near Shobak, and from the west, from the mountains above the Wadi Araba.

Course of the battle

Jurf al-Darawish and the capture of Tafileh

Sharif Nasir, with Bedouin of the Bani Sakhr tribe, with Sheikh Auda abu Tayi and his Howeitat, and with several regular companies under Nuri al-Said, Ja’far’s chief of staff, crossed the line and camped on the plain near Al-Jafr, east of Ma’an. From there he attacked Jurf al-Darawish, a station about 50 km north of Ma’an. According to Lawrence, the Arabs occupied the ridge above the station by night, and at dawn Nuri’s mountain gun silenced the Turkish gun with its third shot. The Bani Sakhr charged on their camels before the machine guns had fallen silent, and the Turks fled into the station buildings and then surrendered. About 200 soldiers were taken prisoner. Jordanian studies also speak of 80 Turks killed. The Arabs destroyed two locomotives, the water tower and the points, but after three days frost and lack of food forced them to withdraw.

At the news from Jurf others set off. Arabs from around Petra crossed the snow-covered woods and took Shobak, with its old Crusader castle, and the terminus of the forest railway on which the Turks carried firewood for the locomotives. In one day and one night Nasir marched from Al-Jafr to Tafileh and at dawn stood above the gorge in which the town lies. According to Lawrence, the garrison numbered 180 Turks, supported by one of the local clans. When Auda abu Tayi rode up to the houses and shouted out his name, the defenders lost heart and surrendered after an hour. According to Jordanian studies this was on 15 January. A few days later Emir Zeid arrived with Ja’far and Lawrence, but because of the bad roads he brought only about a hundred regular soldiers and two mountain guns. The rest of his infantry was stuck near Petra for lack of food.

Tafileh was not an easy acquisition. The population was divided into feuding clans, among the horsemen of Nasir and of a second sharif, Mastur, were men of families bound by blood feud, and the inhabitants hid their grain and pack animals. The town also held, as Lawrence recorded, about a thousand Armenians, survivors of the deportations during the Armenian genocide of 1915. Zeid sent Auda back to the desert, dispatched some leaders of the hostile clan to Faisal’s camp and pacified the rest with gold.

The battle of 25 January

The Turks decided to retake the town, which mattered to them as a granary. According to the British official history, on 23 January three weak infantry battalions, a hundred cavalrymen and two mountain howitzers set out from Kerak. Lawrence gave about 900 infantrymen and 27 machine guns, and named the commander of the expedition as General Hamid Fakhri, commander of the 48th Division. Lieutenant-Colonel Hüseyin Hüsnü, author of a Turkish history of the Yıldırım Army Group, quoted by the official history, wrote of a detachment of 600 men under Lieutenant-Colonel Hamid of the 48th Division. On the evening of 24 January the Turks drove the Arab outposts out of the deep gorge of the Wadi al-Hasa, about 15 km north-east of the town. Ja’far al-Askari advised giving up the town and defending the hills on its southern side. At midnight Zeid ordered a withdrawal, which caused panic in the town, as the inhabitants concluded that the Arabs were fleeing.

Lawrence believed that abandoning the town would cost the Arabs the support of its inhabitants, who were sturdy and fit to fight. On the morning of 25 January he persuaded Zeid to send forward two light machine guns. Supported by them, peasants and horsemen of the local tribe chased the Turkish cavalry across a triangular plain about three kilometres on each side, right to the edge of the descent into the Wadi al-Hasa. There, however, they ran into the main Turkish force, which was just breaking camp and opened heavy artillery and machine-gun fire on them. Lawrence went up to the front line. He found that one machine gun had been destroyed and that the Turks were outflanking the Arabs from the east. He therefore pulled the men back to a low ridge on the south-western edge of the plain, above the valley of Tafileh, and demanded all the men and machine guns from Zeid. The Turks occupied the abandoned ridge and set up more than a dozen machine guns on it in open, stony ground, which Lawrence called madness.

At about 3 p.m. Zeid arrived with the main force. According to the official history, the Arabs now had, together with the peasants, several hundred men, 13 machine guns and light machine guns and one mountain gun of the Egyptian Army. Lawrence wrote of about 600 men on the Arab side. The Arabs attacked from three sides. The regular officer Rasim, with all the horsemen and five light machine guns, went round the eastern ridge and struck the Turkish left flank. About a hundred peasants from the nearby village of Aima, who knew every stone there, crept with three Hotchkiss guns to within 200 metres of the Turkish machine guns on the right flank and wiped out the crews with a sudden volley. When both Turkish flanks broke at sunset, the whole Arab centre, led by a red banner, advanced across the plain. The Turks fled in disorder to the Wadi al-Hasa, abandoning their howitzers. The exhausted and hungry victors did not pursue them far, but the Bedouin from around Kerak spent the whole night finishing off the fugitives in the ravines. The Turkish commander was killed. In the evening snow fell, and the Turkish wounded, whom no one had gathered, died of cold by morning.

The raid on Al-Mazraa

After the battle Lawrence sent a message to Abdullah el Feir, who was camped in a warm valley at the southern end of the Dead Sea, proposing a raid on the Turkish landing place. Through it the Turks carried grain by boat from around Kerak to the northern end of the lake, for the troops holding out against the British near Jericho. About 70 horsemen went by night along a narrow path between the mountains of Moab and the lake shore and at dawn on 28 January burst into the landing place of Al-Mazraa on the eastern shore. The surprised crews, sailors of the Ottoman Navy, were asleep on the beach and in huts. According to the official history, the Arabs sank a motor launch and six sailing boats and took 60 prisoners and about 10 tonnes of grain. Lawrence wrote that they did not lose a single man, and that they had stopped shipping on the Dead Sea two weeks ahead of the date promised to Allenby.

Losses

The true Turkish losses, as the official history admits, cannot be established. According to it, on 25 January the Arabs took about 200 prisoners, two howitzers, 16 machine guns and light machine guns and the whole transport and tents. Lawrence wrote of 250 prisoners, 27 machine guns and 200 horses and mules, and claimed that only about 50 Turks got back to the railway. The only Turkish account says that 21 officers and 420 men returned to Kerak, which the official history considers improbable, since a German source called the defeat a serious one. Lawrence put the Arab losses at 20–30 killed and about three times as many wounded, or about a sixth of the force. According to him two Arabs were killed at Jurf al-Darawish and none at Al-Mazraa.

Significance

The Battle of Tafileh was the greatest victory of the Arab Northern Army before the spring of 1918 and earned Lawrence the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), gazetted in May, and promotion to lieutenant-colonel. The official history admitted that the Turks had played into their opponents’ hands by failing to cover their flanks, but judged the defence of the town a brilliant feat of arms. Lawrence himself judged it harshly. He wrote that the Arabs could have won without fighting, by simple manoeuvre, and that out of wounded pride he had given the enemy a textbook battle and lost men who could not be replaced. He later said the report he sent to headquarters in Palestine had been written “for effect”. From then on, he claimed, the Arabs never again sought battle in the field.

The victory did not bring the expected benefits. Blizzards trapped the Arabs in the town for a long time, there was no barley for the camels, and the march on Kerak and towards the Jordan stalled. Zeid spent the money intended for further operations on pay and rewards, and in February he and Lawrence had a sharp quarrel over further funds. When the weather improved, Erich von Falkenhayn, commander of the Yıldırım Army Group, sent two columns against Tafileh, which were brought up by rail and approached from two sides. On 6 March Zeid left the town. The Turks soon withdrew to Amman, however, threatened by the British advance across the Jordan, and on 18 March the Arabs returned to Tafileh without a fight. The Arabs did not accomplish the task set by Allenby, as they did not take Ma’an, and the British did not hold on beyond the Jordan. Even so, the operations begun at Tafileh carried the revolt to the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, and the Arab campaign of spring 1918, as the official history says, completely cut off the Turkish garrison in Medina from the army in Palestine and Transjordan.