Summary
Beirut is, with Aleppo, one of the two vilayets at the centre of the unresolved territorial question in the McMahon–Hussein correspondence: the Sherif Hussein of Mecca holds the vilayets of Aleppo and Beirut and their sea coasts to be purely Arab and refuses to concede them, Henry McMahon defers them because French interests are involved, and Hussein accepts the wartime deferral while recording that after the war the Arabs will ask for what they now leave to France in Beirut and its coasts (Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, PDF p.9, 11-13).
Details
- No. 5 (5 November 1915): Hussein renounces Mersina and Adana but states that the two vilayets of Aleppo and Beirut and their sea coasts are purely Arab vilayets, in which there is no difference between a Moslem and a Christian Arab (PDF p.9).
- No. 6 (14 December 1915): McMahon records that Britain has fully understood and taken careful note of Hussein’s observations on Aleppo and Beirut, but, French interests being involved in them both, the question requires careful consideration and a further communication in due course (PDF p.11-12).
- No. 7 (1 January 1916): Hussein writes that the Arabs avert their eyes today from what they leave to France in Beirut and its coasts, will ask for it at the first opportunity after the war, that Beirut’s citizens will never accept such dismemberment, and that it is impossible to allow any derogation giving France or any other Power a span of land in those regions (PDF p.13).
Related pages
Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, Aleppo, Syria, France, Sherif Hussein of Mecca