End of the operations at Tafileh

Under 28 January 1918 the British official chronology of the war closes the “operations at Et Tafile”, that is the Arab expedition to Tafileh, a small town on the plateau south-east of the Dead Sea. The final chord came at dawn that day, when the Bedouin of Abdullah al-Fair sank the Turkish grain flotilla in the harbour of Al-Mazraa. In less than three weeks, since the capture of Jurf al-Darawish station, the Arab Northern Army of Emir Faisal had taken Shobak and Tafileh, and on 25 January the troops of his brother, Emir Zeid, had routed on the plateau above the gorge of Wadi al-Hasa a Turkish column that had come from Karak to retake the town.

The balance was favourable to the Arabs. According to the British official history (Cyril Falls), in the battle of 25 January they took about 200 prisoners, two mountain howitzers and 16 machine guns, and the Turkish commander was killed. At Jurf al-Darawish about 200 Turks had been taken prisoner, and at Al-Mazraa 60. Falls called the defence of Tafileh “a brilliant feat of arms”, although he noted that the Turks had made their opponents’ task easier by failing to cover their flanks. On the Ottoman and German side, too, the situation was judged dangerous. The German author Steuber, quoted by Falls, wrote that by the middle of January the unrest in Transjordan had become “really dangerous” and was drawing close to the area of operations of the Fourth Army near Amman and Al-Salt.

Major T. E. Lawrence, who had directed the battle of 25 January as Zeid’s adviser, sent a report to British headquarters at Beersheba. On it Falls based his description in the official history, and Lawrence himself his accounts in “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” and “Revolt in the Desert”. At headquarters the report was much liked, and Lawrence received for the battle the Distinguished Service Order, gazetted in May. The author himself later called his text written “for effect” and the battle an unnecessary display. He wrote that the Arabs could have won without giving battle, and that they paid for it with 20–30 killed and about three times as many wounded.

The victory could not, however, be exploited. Lawrence wrote that after the battle they should have followed up the blow and gone past Karak while the Turks were frightened. Instead, snow fell for the following days, and at night the frost hardened the mud in the streets. The frozen bodies of Turkish soldiers lay on the plateau. Zeid’s men crowded into damp, lice-ridden stone houses, without fuel and with dwindling supplies. There was no barley for the camels, which had to be taken down to the shore of the Dead Sea. The tribes around Karak promised to join as soon as the Arabs moved forward, but it was impossible to move.

Zeid had already spent the first part of the money intended for Tafileh and the Dead Sea, on pay, supplies and rewards for the victors, so at the beginning of February Lawrence went to fetch more gold. Soon a sharp quarrel broke out between them over the spending. Disheartened, Lawrence went at the end of February to Allenby’s headquarters to ask for another posting, but he was sent back to Faisal. In March the Turks, this time well prepared, sent two columns against Tafileh, and on 6 March Zeid abandoned the town. The Arabs returned to it without a fight on 18 March, when the Turkish troops withdrew to Amman in the face of the British advance across the Jordan.