Summary
Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi, whose discussions with the British High Commissioner in Cairo in the autumn of 1915, concurrent with parts of the McMahon–Hussein correspondence, are the source, in the United Kingdom case in Annex B of the 1939 committee report, of the district phrase in Henry McMahon’s letter of 24 October 1915 (Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca, lines 415-436).
Details
- Annex B states he may not have been an accredited representative of the Sharif or of the Damascus Arab nationalist leaders, who may not have been aware until later of the tenor of his discussions, and that he was not a plenipotentiary; but he was unquestionably well informed of the Arab leaders’ views and aspirations (lines 421-427).
- By Annex B, he put the Arab claims at their lowest in saying the Arabs would fight for “the districts of Aleppo, Hama and Homs and Damascus”, meaning the surroundings of those towns in the widest sense and the whole Mediterranean hinterland from the Cilician border to the Gulf of Aqaba; the phrase later used in McMahon’s letter was adapted from al-Faruqi’s own words (lines 421-427).
- He also expressed the opinion that the Arabs might accept a general reservation of the areas in which Britain was not free to act without detriment to her allies, a point His Majesty’s Government say they do not lay too much stress on (lines 421-430).
- Annex B gives his mention of Homs and Hama as the reason McMahon named them in the exclusion phrase (lines 429-436).
Related pages
Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca, Henry McMahon, McMahon–Hussein correspondence, Damascus, Aleppo