Turks enter the Aden Protectorate

On 2 February 1915, according to the British chronology of the war, Ottoman troops entered the territory of the Aden Protectorate in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. That day Turkish units from Yemen attacked the sultanate of Al-Bayda (Bayda), situated in the mountains north-east of Aden. Formally it was not part of the Aden Protectorate, but according to studies based on British documents it lay in the British sphere of influence, and its sultan had for years sought British protection.

Two Yemens

Aden, a port at the entrance to the Red Sea, had belonged to the British since 1839 and was an important stop on the route from the Suez Canal to India. It came under the government of British India, and in 1914 its garrison consisted of a mere two infantry battalions, one British and one Indian, and a small cavalry detachment. Inland the British had concluded treaties with many sultanates, emirates and sheikhdoms, to which they paid regular stipends in return for loyalty and the protection of trade routes. The most important of them was the Sultanate of Lahej, directly adjoining Aden.

North of these lands lay Ottoman Yemen. The VII Corps of the Ottoman army was stationed there, and the Turks could count on the Zaydi imam Yahya, who had been their ally since 1911. The border between the two zones had been drawn at the beginning of the twentieth century and confirmed in an Anglo-Ottoman agreement of 1914. After Turkey entered the war the British destroyed the Turkish fort at Sheikh Said on the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, but they had no intention of venturing inland.

The attack on Al-Bayda

The Turks had been preparing for operations against Aden since the beginning of the war. The command of VII Corps entrusted them to the 39th Division at Taiz, commanded by Ali Said Pasha. The last Ottoman governor of Yemen, Mahmud Nedim, recalled that together with Ali Said he reached Dhala, removed the local ruler, installed his brother in his place and then had the boundary markers removed. The exact date of this expedition, however, is not certain.

The attack on Al-Bayda began, according to studies based on the reports of the British Resident in Aden, precisely on 2 February. The sultan of Al-Bayda did not surrender. Warriors of the neighbouring Haushabi sultanate came to his aid, and by 13 February together they had driven out the attackers, capturing their tents and ammunition. A few days later the Turks returned and plundered outlying villages, but about a thousand of the sultan’s men forced them to retreat. The sultan declared that he would defend his country to the end and asked the British for help. He received ammunition from them.

Prelude to a larger war

The clashes in Al-Bayda were small in scale, and we know their details mainly from the weekly reports of the Aden Residency. They showed, however, that the Turks did not intend to respect the border, and that the British, busy defending Egypt, had no forces in Aden for anything more than sending arms and money to their allies. At the same time British agents were seeking the support of other Arab rulers, among them Muhammad al-Idrisi in Asir.

The real threat to Aden was to come a few months later. In summer 1915 stronger Ottoman forces, supported by some of the local tribes, advanced towards Lahej, and fighting in the hinterland of Aden went on from then until the end of the war.