Capture of Muslimiya

On 28 October 1918, two days after the capture of Aleppo, the Arab troops of Emir Faisal took Muslimiya station, about 20 kilometres north of the city. It was the last Allied gain of the Palestine campaign. The British chronology of the war attributes it to British cavalry, but both Preston, the historian of the Desert Mounted Corps, and Cyril Falls’s British official history write that the station was taken by the Sharif’s Arabs, that is, soldiers of the Arab Revolt. The sources also differ on the day: Preston gives 28 October, Falls 29 October.

A Baghdad Railway junction

Muslimiya was one of the most important points of the Turkish railway network. At this small station the Syrian railway, running from Damascus through Homs, Hama and Aleppo, joined the Baghdad Railway, which the Germans and Turks had been building since the beginning of the century from Anatolia through Syria and Mesopotamia towards the Persian Gulf. From Muslimiya one line ran west, through the Amanus and Taurus mountains to Anatolia and Constantinople, and the other east, towards the Euphrates and on through Upper Mesopotamia towards Nusaybin. Reinforcements and supplies for the Turkish Sixth Army in Mesopotamia passed this way. After the loss of Muslimiya the Turks no longer had a rail link between the capital and their troops on the Tigris.

The last clash

After the skirmish at Haritan on 26 October the troops of Mustafa Kemal fell back a dozen or so kilometres north of Aleppo. On 28 October British armoured cars reported that the Turkish rearguard had withdrawn a further eight kilometres, to Deir Jemal. The Arabs then advanced on Muslimiya and drove out a small Turkish detachment. The station was wrecked, but some of the rolling stock survived. Preston called this clash an “inglorious little skirmish” that ended the war for Turkey.

The Turkish line north of Aleppo was not attacked again. The British 5th Cavalry Division was too weak for that and was waiting for reinforcements, and at noon on 31 October the Armistice of Mudros came into force. The line on which the armistice found the Turkish troops later acquired political significance: Turkish nationalists regarded the lands that remained in Turkish hands at the moment of the armistice as an inviolable part of the state, and today’s Turkish–Syrian border runs a few dozen kilometres north of Aleppo.