M1911 pistol, like the type that equipped the U.S. Army until the M9 Beretta, and which equipped a fair number of British officers, including T. E. Lawrence, through private purchase during World War One.
So what you ask?
Well, that is a location which, in 1917, the Hashemite Arab Revolt ambushed and destroyed a Turkish train. T. E. Lawrence wrote about it in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
So, some would say, what's the big deal. Wouldn't we expect bullets to be found at a place where combat had taken place?
Yes we would.
But almost as soon as the ink was dry on the Versailles Treaty people have begun to question T. E. Lawrence's role in the Arab Revolt.
And that's because his role loomed so large, the natural question was, was he the Arab Revolt?
The answer to that would be no, but frankly the Arab Revolt would have been a horribly muddled and inefficient affair, if not an outright disaster, without Lawrence. He didn't start the revolt, but he frankly did take a revolt that he found that wasn't doing well, reformed its nature, organized it, to include at least partially politically reorganizing it, and took it on to near success.
Col. T. E. Lawrence
I say near success, as to the extent it wasn't successful is that, the Hashamites, having won that part of the war, lost the peace in very real terms. Rather than uniting the Hajez with Jordon and Syria, the whole thing fell apart in very real terms as the French took Syria and the Saudis, in fairly short order, took the Hajez. The Hasmites continue on in Jordon, of course, and they received Iraq as a consulation prize, but Iraq is about he worst prize in the box of Middle Easter Cracker Jacks that a person could conceivably get.
Now, why wold anyone doubt Lawrence's role?
Well, there are a lot of reasons.
Lawrence himself contributed to this a bit.
Lawrence was an enigmatic man, to say the least. A lively archeologist before the war, he turned out to be a natural military genius, perhaps aided a bit by his extensive study of the Crusades. Warfare tends to be warfare, irrespective of the era.
But he wasn't comfortable with that role even during the war, and particularly after enduring an assault by a Turkish officer while briefly a prisoner. He developed what today we'd recognize as a titanic case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and he had a massive case of guilt on top of it. Lawrence came from very devout, if strangely non observant in one fashion, Anglican Anglo-Irish parents and he struggled both with PTSD and with the knowledge that he had, in part due to his own fascination with his goal, deceived both the Arabs and the British in his efforts. He never got over it.
And in not getting over it, while he wrote a brilliant account of it which turns out more and more to have been very accurate, he obfuscated some details that he could have been clearer on, on military details, and he spent all the rest of his life, after the peace negotiations, hiding, more or less.
But that's far from the only reason.
A second reason is that he was so stunningly successful, and the Arabs have had to live with that.
That may sound odd, but in the history of revolutions, there's rarely an example of where such an insular people have so successfully been lead by a foreigner to whom they own nearly all the success. During our revolution, for example, we had the aid of French, German and Polish military men, but they didn't lead our entire army. Lawrence basically did that for the Arabs. They were doing badly before he started that, and their success came under him, and is really attributable to him.
That's been a heavy burden for the Arabs ever since.
If the Arabs themselves can't really claim the mantle of success for their independence what does that do for their image? Are they even real countries?
Sayyid Hussein bin Ali, Sharif and Emir of Mecca, King of Hejaz, and self declared Caliph.
Clearly, the Arab nations are real countries, but the whole thing is highly related to British efforts and even the countries that came to exist did so due to what the British did, and didn't do. The King of Jordan today is the king as the British allowed a Hashemite to be king. Iraq is a country as the English, perhaps mistakenly, decided it would be. Syria is a nation as the British acquiesced to French control of Syria and French creation of Lebanon (with some indication that hte French might actually fight the British for both of those). Kuwait is a country as the British decided that their monarchical leaders ought to be, instead of being part of Iraq. Saudi Arabia is a state as it was a client, albeit not a good one, of India when India was part of the Empire, and the British decide not to back the Hajez against the House of Saud for some reason. Everyone in that scenario, except the House of Saud, owes a debt, therefore, to a war time colonel in the British army.
Prince Feisel, with aids, including Lawrence, at the peace talks. The black man in the back row is likely a slave, slavery still being practiced amongst the Arabs at that time. If not a slave, he's certainly a retainer of Feisel's. Feisel became the King of Iraq. He died ostensibly of a heart attack at age 48, but poisoning remains suspected.
And amongst the people whom gave birth to Islam, Lawrence provides a problematic reminder that the Arabs have often not really been all that observant of Muslims. Today, in no small part due to events since 1970, we tend to think of all Middle Eastern people as being devout Muslims, but this is far from true. Amongst the Muslims themselves, even the Arabs have tended not to exhibit the sort of fanatic singular devotion, all of the time, that we associate with groups like ISIL today. T. E. Lawrence was a Christian leading an Arab army whose seat of power was Mecca. That's a pretty stunning thought. The Arabs themselves were in rebellion against the Otttoman Turks, whose leader was theoretically a Caliph and who had declared the Turkish effort a jihad.
Mehmed V, who was the Caliph during World War One. He died in 1918 before the war ended, at age 73.
Abdulmecid II, the last Caliph of the Ottoman Empire. He's live in exile in France after his position was abolished by the Ottoman parliament.
And he lead them very well. And was not alone in being a singular English Arab advisor to the Arab forces. Indeed, the English would continue to play a role in Arab forces right up until the mid 1950s. English officers served with the Jordanian Arab Legion during the 1948 Arab Israeli War.
Well, history is what it is. And in spite of the embarrassment of some, and the wish that things might have been otherwise by others, we should take it as we find it.
And, perhaps fittingly, we re-find Lawrence the way he found Arabia. . . through archeology.
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