Britain recognises Hussein as King of the Hejaz

The British official chronology of the war records under 15 December 1916 that the British government had recognised the “King of the Arabs” as King of the Hejaz. This was the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, who at the end of October had had himself proclaimed king of the Arab lands and asked the Allies to recognise the new title. London and Paris answered a month and a half later with a compromise formula. They recognised Hussein as the lawful, independent ruler of the Hejaz and agreed to address him as king, but only as King of the Hejaz. None of the Allies recognised the broader title, which implied sovereignty over the whole Arab world.

Which date?

Sources give different dates, because the recognition proceeded in stages. A memorandum of the Arab Bureau in Cairo of 24 October 1917, quoted in the US State Department publication Mandate for Palestine (1931), says that after some discussion the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Russia agreed to recognise the Sharif as the lawful independent ruler of the Hejaz and to use the title “King of the Hejaz” in correspondence with him, and that a note to this effect was handed to him on 10 December 1916. The British chronology gives 15 December, and the Australian official history (Gullett) writes that Britain and France formally recognised Hussein as King of the Hejaz on 26 December. The Lebanese historian George Antonius, author of the classic history of the Arab awakening, states in turn that formal notification was sent to Hussein in identical British and French notes on 3 January 1917. Most probably, then, the Allies agreed on the formula in December and informed the Sharif of it, and the formal notes were delivered at the beginning of the new year.

A title that offends no one

Hussein had proclaimed himself king without consulting his British advisers, which in Cairo and London was regarded as an unfortunate step. The British official history of the campaign in Egypt and Palestine explains that the title of king of the Arab nation would not have been recognised by any of the great rulers of the Arabian Peninsula, and Ibn Saud, although very friendly to Britain, openly showed his dislike of the Sharif’s ambitions. British officers were therefore instructed, in the interests of Hussein himself and of the common cause, to address him as “His Lordship” and, if a title could not be avoided, as King of the Hejaz, since that could not offend other Arab rulers. This formula now became the official position of the Allies. For France it had one further advantage: it gave the Sharif no basis for claims to Syria, which in the spring Paris and London had designated a French sphere of influence in the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

A king at a difficult moment

The recognition came at a time when the revolt was in crisis. At the beginning of December the Turks from Medina resumed their advance. According to a report by Captain T.E. Lawrence, quoted in the British official history, a Turkish mounted patrol passed along an unguarded road into the rear of the Arabs in Wadi Safra, and the Bedouin in the front line rushed off to save their families and belongings in the threatened villages. Emir Faisal, Hussein’s son, had to fall back to the port of Yanbu, and the Turks halted in the mountains halfway between Medina and Rabigh. In London and Cairo there was renewed argument over whether to send a British brigade to Rabigh. General Archibald Murray and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, William Robertson, were against it. In the end, around the turn of the year, the matter was settled by a proposal from Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Wilson, the British representative with the Sharif: the troops would go only if Hussein asked for them in writing and took responsibility for the appearance of Christian troops in the Hejaz. Hussein was not prepared to do so.

The recognition gave the Sharif what he needed in dealing with his subjects and neighbours: confirmation that the great powers treated the Kingdom of Hejaz as an independent state and not as a rebellious province of the Ottoman Empire. Hussein did not, however, give up the broader title and continued to call himself king of the Arab lands. The dispute over what the Arab state promised to him in his correspondence with the British High Commissioner in Cairo went on throughout the war and long after it.