French occupy Beirut

On 7 October 1918 warships of the French Syrian naval division (division navale de Syrie) under Rear-Admiral Georges Varney entered the port of Beirut. According to French accounts, the admiral went ashore first, without an escort, and ordered grain to be distributed to the inhabitants. The British chronology of the war recorded the occupation of Beirut by French forces under this date. There were no longer any Turkish soldiers in the city, and the Arab flag had been flying over the government serail for several days. The occupation of Beirut was therefore above all a political race: the question was who would take over power from the Turks.

An Arab government in Beirut

Beirut, which before the war had about 190,000 inhabitants, mostly Christians, was the largest port of Syria and the seat of a vilayet. The war years brought a naval blockade, requisitions and famine, which hit the neighbouring mountain province of Lebanon hardest. When, after the defeat at Megiddo, the Turkish forces withdrew from the coast, the governor of Beirut, before leaving, handed power to the mayor, Omar al-Daouk. When a telegram arrived from Damascus about the capture of the city by the Arabs and the British, he proclaimed the formation of an Arab government and hoisted the flag of the Arab Revolt over the government serail. Soon General Shukri Pasha al-Ayyubi arrived from Damascus, sent by Emir Faisal to take over the government of Beirut and Lebanon. Sources differ on the day of his arrival, giving dates from 5 to 7 October.

For France this was a challenge. Under the Sykes–Picot Agreement the Syrian coast with Beirut belonged to the “blue” zone, in which France was to exercise direct control. Paris had long regarded Lebanon, with its Catholic Maronite community, as its sphere of influence. Yet the French had in Palestine only a few thousand men of Colonel Philpin de Piépape’s Palestine and Syria Detachment, while the whole burden of the campaign was borne by the British army.

Warships, armoured cars and infantry

French warships had been blockading the coast of Syria and Palestine since the beginning of the war. The cruiser Amiral Charner had been torpedoed and sunk not far from Beirut in 1916. Varney had commanded the Syrian division since 1917, and on 7 October his ships, including destroyers, entered the port before the arrival of land forces. That same day British armoured cars of the 5th Cavalry Division, which the day before had taken the railway junction of Rayak in the Beqaa Valley, reached Beirut across the mountains. According to Cyril Falls’s British official history, they found Beirut clear of Turks.

On the evening of 8 October the head of the 7th Indian Division, which had marched from Acre along the coast through Sidon, entered the city. The inhabitants gave it an enthusiastic welcome and handed over to it about six hundred Turkish soldiers who had stayed behind in the city. Lieutenant-General Edward Bulfin, commander of XXI Corps, set up his headquarters in Beirut’s best hotel, the German Deutscher Hof. Colonel de Piépape became military governor of the city, and the governors of Sidon and Tyre were also French officers. Small French detachments, brought by trawler from Haifa, took over the keeping of order, because there was unrest in the towns, fanned by Faisal’s supporters.

The end of the Arab flag

The French demanded the removal of the Arab administration from the coast. In response to their protest General Edmund Allenby ordered the Arab flag in Beirut to be lowered, Shukri Pasha to be recalled to Damascus and the Arab governments in Beirut, in Baabda, the seat of the Lebanese authorities, and in other coastal towns to be dissolved. The flag was taken down without ceremony within a few days of the arrival of the Allied troops. The Australian official historian Henry Gullett wrote that the news of Arab governments in Beirut and Tripoli took Allenby by surprise and did Faisal great harm, because it awakened French suspicion of his ambitions. The Arab governments on the coast lasted only a few days.

The episode foreshadowed a dispute that was to go on for years to come. On 23 October Allenby divided the occupied lands into occupation zones and placed the coast north of Acre as far as Alexandretta under the administration of Colonel de Piépape. Out of it grew, after the war, Greater Lebanon under French mandate.