Miscellaneous correspondence, reports, maps and other papers concerning the Middle East [‎84r] (168/220)

29
prima facie to present precisely similar difficulties. Ibn Rasliid, for all the
efforts of the Sharif and his sons to placate him during the last few months,
I regard as more likely to join Ibn Saud for mutual protection against the
ambitions of the Sharif than to accept the latter’s overlordship; Maskat,
Bahrain and the States of the Trucial Coast A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. are little likely of their own
volition to merge their independence in an United Arabia; the Idrisi and the
Imam have nothing to gain by adherence to the Sharif;—to go further afield,
there is, as far as my personal experience goes, little ground for supposing
that the people of Mesopotamia would submit to Sharifian overlordship except
by force and with extreme reluctance.
I am fully aware of the fact that my criticisms are purely of a destructive
nature and contain no germ of a constructive policy. I can only say that the
interests of the various Arab States, which go to the composition o'f the Arab
w T orld, are as diverse as those of the various provinces and divisions of India
and are as incapable as they of being welded into a homogeneous political
entity, except under the infiuence of a strong foreign domination, capable,
at least, of keeping the public peace between jarring sects and diverse
interests.
Arabian unity, as an ideal, in the broadest sense of the term, is doomed
to perish of inanition; our prestige and infiuence in Central Arabia have
suffered serious, though not irrevocable, diminution through our attempts to
give it life. I can see no reasonable solution of the problem before us, short
of the recognition of such Arab States, as we find to be in enjoyment of
political independence, and I can conceive no role in tbe future, more honour
able and satisfying to British aspirations, than that of controlling the desti
nies of the independent States of Arabia under a loose political hegemony,
responsible—if we except the moral responsibility to ourselves and the states
themselves to develop their resources—only to localise conflicts and keep the
peace, wdiere the interests of the majority are jeopardised.
His Majesty’s Government have, during the past few years, grown accus
tomed to regard the Sharif as the strongest pow T er in Arabia and have, perhaps
of their unconscious modesty, tended to minimise the part played in the
Sharif’s actual military operations by the forces and resources, to say nothing
of the services of the British Officers, placed at his disposal. It is not there
fore entirely unnecessary to call attention to the growdng power of Najd,
based on the unifying influence of a stern fanatical creed and consolidated,
after years of patient work, by a monarch, who fills to-day in Arab estimation
the place occupied but yesterday by Muhammad Ibn Rashid. It is, at any
rate, incumbent on H.M.’s Government to avoid provoking that powder to
action, and one cannot but hope that the adoption of such a policy will not
prove altogether incompatible wdth the recognition of the great part played
by the Sharif during these years of war.
14. The Wahhabi Revival.
Colonel Hamilton, on his journey to Riyadh in October, 1917, had occa
sion to pass within a day’s journey of Artawiya, one of the centres of the new
Wahhabi movement associated with the name of the Akhwan brotherhood.
He was impressed w r ith wffiat he heard regarding the tenets of this fanatical
sect and, without enquiry, accepted as probably correct a local estimate, which
gave the towm a population of 35,000 souls. A little reflection would, I am
convinced, have deterred Colonel Hamilton from reporting what he had heard
without further investigation, and it is not improbable that he did not expect
his report to be taken seriously. In the first place it v’as prima facie improb
able that a town, twdee as big as the biggest towm in Central Arabia, could have
sprung up in the space of a few years; in the second place—and this point is to
my mind conclusive—native estimates of population are notoriously unreliable.
Doughty’s plan of reducing all such estimates by 90 per cent, might have been
usefully resorted to in this case. I saw the town, from a safe distance, in
October, 1918, and I am satisfied that iffs population cannot exceed from 10,000
to 12,000 souls.
Be that as it may, I found, on my arrival at Jidda and Cairo, that
Colonel Hamilton’s report had obtained official publicity and a disturbing
amount of credence, causing no little alarm and predisposing the authorities,
in charge of Arab affairs to attach more importance, than was perhaps war
ranted by the facts, to reports emanating from prejudiced sources regarding
the growth and objects of the Wahhabi revival. A report, written by Lieut.-
Colonel T. E. Lawrence and purporting to give the views of Sharif Faisal,
appeared in the Arab Bulletin (No. 74 of 1917); Sharif Abdulla’s views, in due
course, received prominence in the same vehicle, and I felt that the issue was
being—if it had not already been—prejudged on totally insufficient data. I
deprecated the attaching of too much importance to the views of obviously
prejudiced individuals and did my best to discount the serious view that was
being taken of the situation in high quarters, but Sharifian circles made the
most of the imaginary menace and represented the Wahhabi revival as
immediately threatening the peace and security of Arabia.