McMahon's letter to the Sharif of Mecca

On 24 October 1915 the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, signed in Cairo a letter to Hussein bin Ali, Sharif and Emir of Mecca. It was the fourth of ten letters exchanged between them in 1915–1916, and by far the most important. In it Britain agreed for the first time to discuss the borders of a future Arab state and promised to “recognise and support the independence of the Arabs”, albeit with several reservations. The Lebanese historian George Antonius, who was the first to publish the whole correspondence, called this letter the most important in the entire correspondence and perhaps the most important international document in the history of the Arab national movement.

Why McMahon changed his mind

As late as 30 August McMahon had replied evasively to the Sharif that it was too early to discuss borders. In his reply of 9 September Hussein insisted that further talks depended solely on whether the British accepted his borders or rejected them. In the autumn a new interlocutor also appeared in Cairo. Lieutenant Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi, an Ottoman army officer from Mosul, had gone over to the British on 20 August on the Gallipoli front. He presented himself as the representative of Arab officers organised in secret societies, above all al-Ahd. He claimed that they were ready to rise, and warned that delay might push the Sharif into the arms of Germany and Turkey. He added, however, that the Arabs would accept certain changes to the borders in the north-west, provided France did not occupy Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo. Historians believe that part of his story was true and part invented, but in Cairo it was taken very seriously. This was at a time when the Dardanelles expedition had stalled and the British were looking for a way to weaken Turkey from within.

On 18 October McMahon asked the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, by telegram for instructions. He proposed accepting the Sharif’s borders “in so far as Britain can act without detriment to the interests of her allies”. Grey authorised him to make such a promise.

What McMahon promised

The most important part of the letter read roughly as follows: “The districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded.” This meant the areas around Mersin and Alexandretta and the coast of present-day Syria and Lebanon, on which France had set its sights. With this modification, and without prejudice to Britain’s existing treaties with Arab chiefs, McMahon accepted the Sharif’s borders. But only in those territories where Britain could act “without detriment to the interests of her ally, France”.

On these conditions Britain was prepared to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs within the borders the Sharif demanded. It promised to guarantee the holy places of Islam against external aggression and to recognise their inviolability. When circumstances permitted, it would give the Arabs advice and assistance in establishing their own governments, on the understanding that the European advisers and officials the Arabs needed would be British. In the vilayets of Baghdad and Basra, where Indian troops had been fighting since the autumn of 1914, Britain reserved for itself “special administrative arrangements” that would protect its interests. In return the British hoped that the Arabs would rise against the Turks.

Ambiguous words

The letter was written in English and translated into Arabic. According to the memoirs of Ronald Storrs, the Oriental Secretary at the British Residency, the translations were prepared by his assistant Husayn Ruhi and checked by Storrs. The imprecise wording quickly became a source of misunderstanding. The Sharif replied on 5 November that while he renounced the areas around Mersina and Adana, he could not give up the vilayets of Aleppo and Beirut, because these were purely Arab lands. The dispute over Syria and Lebanon dragged on through the following letters until March 1916.

Even stronger feelings were aroused after the war by the question of whether the promise covered Palestine. The letter does not mention it by name. The Arabs argued that since it lay south of Damascus, not west of it, it could not have been excluded. From 1920 the British government maintained that the word “districts” meant whole Ottoman provinces, so Palestine, lying west of the province of Damascus, was out of the question. The dispute was still going on in the 1930s, and the government in London published the full text of the correspondence only in 1939. The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who studied these documents for the Foreign Office at the end of the war, wrote years later that the letter was not so much dishonest as “hopelessly obscure”.

In the autumn of 1915, however, Cairo saw the letter above all as an instrument of war. A few weeks later McMahon wrote privately that he did not take seriously the idea of a strong, united Arab state, and that his main aim was to draw the Arabs away from the Turks. Less than seven months later Britain and France divided the Middle East into spheres of influence in the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, and in June 1916 Hussein launched the Arab Revolt.