Sharif of Mecca becomes king of the Arabs

At the end of October 1916 the ulema, the notables of Mecca and Syrians staying in the Hejaz proclaimed the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, king. He took the title “King of the Arab Countries” (malik al-bilad al-arabiyya), and in Western dispatches and newspapers he was simply called the King of the Arabs. The British chronology of the war and some Arabic studies date the proclamation to 29 October. The ceremonial oath of allegiance to the new king took place a few days later: according to Arabic and some Western studies on 2 November (6 Muharram 1335 AH), according to Jordanian sources on 4 November, when the British chronology records a “coronation”. The British official history of the campaign in Egypt and Palestine simply gives October 1916.

A sharif without a sultan

Hussein had launched the revolt against the Turks in June and in a proclamation at the end of June declared the independence of the Hejaz. He still signed himself then as Sharif and Emir of Mecca. Constantinople responded on 2 July with a decree of the Sultan stripping him of the dignity of emir and appointing in his place a rival from another branch of the sharifian family, Ali Haidar. By the autumn, however, Hussein’s power in the Hejaz was a fact. Mecca, Jeddah and the Red Sea ports were in rebel hands, and on 22 September the Turkish garrison of Taif surrendered. Only the strong garrison of Medina held out. The state the sharif had begun to build needed a head, and Hussein himself had long been thinking of something more than the Hejaz.

Proclamation and oath

According to Arab accounts, on 29 October the ulema and notables of Mecca decided to establish an Arab state formally and to proclaim Hussein its king. In an appeal to the Islamic world they accused the Young Turks ruling in Constantinople of godlessness and of wrongs done to the Arabs, and of the sharif himself they wrote that they knew of no one among Muslim rulers more God-fearing than this descendant of the Prophet who had ascended the throne of the Arab lands. The Arabs, they added, had sworn allegiance to him as king because they saw in it the good of their faith and of the temporal world.

The ceremony took place in the sharif’s private reception hall near the Kaaba. According to the Lebanese historian George Antonius, religious and lay dignitaries gathered there in the morning, “no doubt at the sharif’s instigation”, and acclaimed him king, swearing the traditional Arab oath of allegiance (bay’a) to him. Arabic studies add details. The Hanafi mufti of Mecca, Sheikh Abdullah Siraj, handed the deed of allegiance to the Syrian poet and journalist Fuad al-Khatib, who read it out to the assembly, and then the mufti himself was the first to swear the oath. Hussein is said to have declared in a short speech that he swore by God that he had not sought this dignity and had not thought of it when he began the revolt, but that he accepted because the Arabs faced a great danger. Al-Khatib then swore allegiance on behalf of Syria, which was meant to show that the kingdom did not end at the Hejaz.

The next day Hussein formed a government whose members were called not ministers but wakils, that is, the king’s plenipotentiaries. At its head stood the sharif’s eldest son, Ali. Foreign affairs went to the second son, Abdullah, and internal affairs to the third, Faisal, for whom a brother deputised while he was fighting at the front. Abdullah at once sent telegrams to the governments of the Allied and neutral states asking for recognition of the new title.

A problem for the allies

The news surprised the British and the French. The British official history stresses that Hussein proclaimed himself king without consulting his British advisers. Antonius calls the step unfortunate and ill-considered. The title of King of the Arab Countries implied sovereignty over the whole Arab world, and this was unacceptable to the other rulers of the Arabian Peninsula with whom the British already had their own arrangements: Ibn Saud in Najd, with whom they had signed a treaty in December 1915, and Muhammad al-Idrisi in Asir. Both supported the revolt, but neither intended to become the sharif’s vassal. According to the official history, Ibn Saud, though very friendly to Britain, openly showed his dislike of Hussein’s ambitions. For London and Paris the title was awkward for another reason too. In the spring the two governments had divided between themselves spheres of influence in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, and France looked with particular suspicion on the sharif’s claims to Syria.

British officers were instructed to address Hussein as “His Lordship” and, if the royal title could not be avoided, to call him King of the Hejaz. This was the solution the Allies finally adopted. In December 1916 and early January 1917 Britain and France recognised Hussein, but only as King of the Hejaz. According to Antonius, the formal notification was conveyed to him in identical British and French notes on 3 January 1917. Hussein did not, however, give up the wider title and went on calling himself King of the Arab Countries to his neighbours and subjects. The dispute over what the Arab state promised to the sharif in his correspondence with the British High Commissioner in Cairo dragged on until the end of his reign.