Coll 6/19 'Arabia: (Saudi Arabia) Hejaz-Nejd Annual Report.' [‎248v] (497/540)

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in all its details, as the question arose in 1930 only in forms not directly
concerning Ibn Sand, but, as it can hardly fail to come up again, the following
summary may be useful:—
70. The discussions since 1925 have ranged around the following points .
(a) Proposals for the reconditioning of the railway as a whole, and the^
redistribution of the rolling-stock and other material assets. W
(b) A general claim, affirmed by the international Moslem Conference, held
at Mecca under Ibn Sand’s auspices in 1926, and in various other
ways, that the railway, in virtue of its origin and purpose, is the
exclusive concern of the Moslem world.
(c) A particular claim, affirmed by the Moslem Conference, by Ibn Sand
separately and by other parties, that the railway is Wakf, that, as
such, it is governed by Moslem religious law, and, more particularly,
that the law precludes any partition, such as has resulted de facto
from the division among different States of the territory in which it
lies.
(d) A proposal strongly pressed by the Hejazi Government in 1928 and 1929,
that the general question of ownership and status of the railway
should be discussed de novo between the Ilritish, French and the
Hejazi Government.
71. It is important to keep these four elements distinct, as far as possible;
because the reconditioning of the line and distribution of assets are a practical
proposition, which might easily he dealt with apart, but which has not appeared
to appeal to Ibn Sand since 1928, although he had previously expressed anxiety
that the railway should be put into running order throughout; because the Wakf
character of the line can in no way be inferred from its admitted quasi-religious
character; and because there is no reason to suppose that Ibn Sand, whose
effective outlook on things has been increasingly that of a temporal monarch,
would welcome any arrangement whereby his own interest in the line was
subordinate to that of the Moslem world. In view of the special importance of
the contention that the railway is Wakf, it may be added that, so far as is known
in Jedda, no definite proof of this has ever been produced. Vague reference has
been made to deeds in the Sheikh-ul-Islam’s Department at Constantinople. The
only definite text quoted, however, is that of an Ottoman Law of the 1st August,
1914, which placed the railway under the control of the Ministry of Wakfs, but
did not purport to, and, in the present writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. 's opinion, could not of itself make
it a Wakf. If the railway had, in fact, been made a Wakf by the necessary
specific act of consecration, it would not thereby cease to be the legitimate concern
of territorial Governments, however much they might be bound by the recorded
wishes of the founder.
72. His Majesty’s Government and the French Government have a clear
position. They take their stand on the declaration made by their delegations at
Lausanne on the 27th January, 1923, in reply to a Turkish claim that the railway
was an appanage of the Caliphate, and on the contention that the ownership of
the railway passed from the Ottoman Empire to that of the succession States in
whose territories it now lies, a thesis which was affirmed in an arbitral award
given by the Swiss jurist, Professor Borel, on the 18th April, 1925, in connexion
with the distribution of the Ottoman Public Debt. They have questioned neither
the religious purpose of the line nor the desirability of reconditioning it with a
special view to the fulfilment of that purpose. It was at their instance that a
conference was held at Haifa in August 1928, to consider with this very object
various technical questions, viz., the work required to put the line in a state of
repair, estimates of the necessary expenditure, the method of covering the
expenditure, the organisation of train services, and the eventual allocation to
the Hejaz of a certain amount of rolling-stock.
73. Ibn Saud accepted this programme beforehand, but at the outset of
the Haifa Confeience his delegates made it impossible to proceed, by insisting
that the ownership of the line should be discussed, that the railway was Wakf,
and that the sections in Syiia, Palestine and Transjordan Used in three contexts: the geographical region to the east of the River Jordan (literally ‘across the River Jordan’); a British protectorate (1921-46); an independent political entity (1946-49) now known as Jordan should be handed over
to Ibn Saud to be administered by a special committee. The effective result of
this attitude wa& that the conference broke up, the question of reconditioning
the line thioughout was shelved, and a diplomatic correspondence ensued from
T