File 756/1917 Pt 2-3 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 66-114’ [‎172v] (353/834)

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small arms, ammunition, money and food supplies for his
personal use. Abdul Hamid Bey, the delegate of the Fourth
Army, stayed with the Emir to look after and watch him on
behalf of Ahmed Jemal Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , and the O.C., 58th Division, had
to see to the wants of the Emir’s camp, which contained a
considerable and, according to deserters’ reports, truculent and
unruly following of mujahidin, brought down, in August, 1917,
from Hail. i'hey had been about a thousand strong, but there
is reason to believe that they had already diminished in number,
chiefly because the Emir failed to pay them for doing nothing
whatever. He had had, and would have again, passages of arms
with the Turkish military authorities about their pay ; but he
never succeeded in inducing even his best friend, Jemal Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. ,
to find cash for the purpose, the Turks having no confidence
whatever that they would get any return for their money.
Thanks to this question, the Emir’s relations with Abdul Hamid
Bey were strained. Nor were they better with the O.C., 58th
Division, who, after grumbling at having to pass on to Ibn
Rashid scamp during three months special supplies of better
quality than he and his troops received, now found himself
ordered to draw on his own commissariat for the Hail men.
Shortly afterward, the Emir, pleading fear of air-craft and
raiding parties, moved his camp to a point among the Heir rocks
some distance east of Medain Salih station, and was presently
aware of hostile Anazeh tribesmen of the Fuqara and Aida
tribes, with whom he was at blood feud, hovering on his desert
Hanks and maintaining a loose blockade of the Hail roads. In
the hope of relieving his situation Abdul Hamid Bey asked for
the release of the Hiqara chief, Shehab, from Damascus. That
situation, however, continued unrelieved for a good three months,
and before long the O.C. made of it an excuse to picket the
? a,lip h lri ° rde r ^t only to confine the unruly mujahidin
t .1 bounds, but also to control communications which he
suspected were passing between the Emir and his blockaders.
from Hn 11 ' COmpl T e f’i: UK °- C - ^ 0t a rap knuckles
from Damascus ; but he had good reason, as we know, for his
suspicions, since Sherds Ali and Abdullah had both tried to
tamper with Ibn Rashid, through Sheikhs Aqab el-Ajil and
redlT 6 Th^V 6 ^^-J elj ’ an . d 1 had received temporising verbal
replies. The Emir did not wish to break with the Turks while
there remained any hope of a successful issue of his ao-ent’s
mission to Constantinople ; and if that, in the end should fail
did ^ ^ - ** - the
tor„ ,l„ Emii- to commit l,i,„„lt. Ho' cnmo ,?1„ ,S
The h ’assumDtfoP° ‘r p 8 '!"' cam l> <md inspected the mujahidin.
Uie assumption, which Fakhn appears then to have made
evident, that these men were under his own supreme command