Start of operations against Tafileh

On 12 January 1918, according to Jordanian military studies, the Arab rebels of Sharif Nasir took Jurf al-Darawish, a station on the Hejaz Railway about 50 km north of Ma’an. It was the first step of the expedition to Tafileh, a small town in grain-growing country south-east of the Dead Sea. The British official chronology of the war dates the “operations against Et Tafile” nominally from 1 January, but no fighting was recorded in the first days of the year. The British official history (Cyril Falls) says only that Nasir’s force set out at the end of December 1917 and camped on the plain near Al-Jafr, east of Ma’an, from where it struck at the station. It does not give the day of the attack.

The expedition followed from arrangements with the British after Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem. General Edmund Allenby wanted to take Jericho in February, and Emir Faisal’s Arab Northern Army was meanwhile to move north along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, take the rich villages from the Turks and cut the transport of grain by boat across the lake. Ma’an, in front of which the Arabs had repulsed the Turks near Petra in October, remained in Turkish hands, so it had to be bypassed. The plan provided for an advance on Tafileh from three sides: from the east across the railway, from the south through the woods near Shobek, and from the west, from the mountains above the Wadi Araba.

With Nasir went Bedouin of the Beni Sakhr tribe, Sheikh Auda abu Tayi with his Howeitat, and regular companies with a mountain gun and machine guns under Nuri al-Said, chief of staff to Ja’far al-Askari. The station consisted of three stone buildings with trenches, and behind it, on a fortified knoll, the Turks had placed two machine guns and a gun. Major T. E. Lawrence, who was waiting for news in the camp at Guweira, later described in Seven Pillars of Wisdom the account that reached him. During the night the Arabs occupied a ridge overlooking the station and cut the line on both sides of it. At dawn Nuri’s gun hit the Turkish gun squarely with its third shot. The Bedouin did not wait for the machine guns to fall silent and charged on their camels. The Turks abandoned their weapons and fled into the station buildings, and after a few rounds from their own captured gun they surrendered.

About 200 Turks were taken prisoner, according to Lawrence with seven officers. Jordanian studies also speak of 80 killed. According to Lawrence the Arabs lost two men. The Bedouin captured 25 mules and seven wagons of supplies for the officers’ canteens of the Medina garrison, including a whole wagon of tobacco. Sappers blew up two locomotives, the water tower and the points. During the night a train with reinforcements came up from the south, but, fired on too early by scouts, it turned back to Ma’an. The British official history says that Nasir damaged two trains and that after three days frost and lack of food forced him to abandon the station.

Snowstorms came immediately afterwards, but the news from Jurf al-Darawish stirred other bands into action. The Arabs from around Petra moved through the snow-covered woods on Shobek, and Nasir, back in camp, prepared for a rapid march on Tafileh itself. The town surrendered to him a few days later.