Summary
The ten letters exchanged in Arabic between Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca from 14 July 1915 to 10 March 1916, printed in a revised English text by the British Government as the parliamentary paper Cmd. 5957 (Miscellaneous No. 3 (1939)) (Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, PDF p.1-2). In them Britain accepts, with the Mersina, Alexandretta and western-Syria exclusion, the Sherif’s proposed limits for Arab independence, and gives five assurances for the regions where it is free to act without detriment to France, while the questions of Aleppo and Beirut and of Bagdad’s administration are left expressly open (PDF p.8, 11-12).
Details
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The paper’s Explanatory Note states the correspondence was exchanged in Arabic, and that the printed English is a revised text: McMahon’s letters from their original English drafts, Hussein’s from contemporary English translations, modified where the English had been criticised against the Arabic, with the former readings given in footnotes and J. Heyworth-Dunne, “Senior Lecturer in Arabic at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London”, advising His Majesty’s Government (PDF p.2).
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The exchange runs: the Sherif’s six propositions (No. 1); McMahon’s deferral of the limits (No. 2); the Sherif’s insistence that the limits are his people’s minimum (No. 3); McMahon’s acceptance with modifications and the five assurances (No. 4); the Sherif’s concession of Mersina and Adana, holding of Aleppo and Beirut, and temporary-administration offer for Iraq (No. 5); McMahon’s deferral of Aleppo, Beirut and Bagdad, with the no-separate-peace assurance and £20,000 (No. 6); the Sherif’s acceptance of deferral with the Beirut claim recorded for after the war (No. 7); McMahon’s deferral of Bagdad to the peace settlement (No. 8); the Sherif’s operational plans and supply schedule (No. 9); and McMahon’s approval and despatch (No. 10) (PDF p.3-18).
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Palestine is not named in any letter; it appears only in the Contents description of the Appendix map of pre-war Turkish administrative districts comprised in Syria and Palestine, a map absent from the file as supplied (PDF p.2; source page, Open questions).
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The correspondence’s meaning was the subject of the 1939 committee report (Cmd. 5974): a joint Arab–United Kingdom committee at the Conferences on Palestine was unable to agree whether Palestine was included in the area of Arab independence, the United Kingdom representatives conceding that the Arab contentions on the district phrase “have greater force than has appeared hitherto” and that the language of exclusion “was not so specific and unmistakable as it was thought to be at the time”; the committee’s agreed translation corrections are those indicated in Cmd. 5957 (Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca, lines 153-190, 271-277).
Related pages
Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, Henry McMahon, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, Sykes–Picot agreement, Balfour Declaration, Britain, France