Summary
The Sherif of Mecca, the Arab correspondent in the McMahon–Hussein correspondence of July 1915–March 1916 (Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, PDF p.1). His five letters (No. 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9) propose the limits of the independent Arab countries and an Arab Khalifate, insist the limits are his people’s united minimum rather than a personal demand, concede Mersina and Adana while holding Aleppo and Beirut, accept wartime deferral of the Beirut claim while recording it for after the war, and finally set out the movement’s military plans and the money, provisions and rifles he asks Britain to deposit at Port Sudan (PDF p.3-4, 5-7, 9-11, 12-14, 15-17).
Details
-
His opening letter (No. 1, 14 July 1915) is, by the paper’s footnote (1), undated and unsigned, enclosed in an unsigned personal letter of the same date from the Sherif to Mr. Storrs; it asks Britain to answer his six propositions, positive or negative, within thirty days, and states that the Sherif’s family will otherwise consider itself free from its previous declaration made through Ali Effendi (Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, PDF p.3-4).
-
He presents his demands throughout as the Arab nation’s, not his own: the limits demanded “are not those of one person whom we should satisfy” after the war, and in No. 7 he tells McMahon that he and his family are only transmitters and executants of their peoples’ decisions (PDF p.5-6, 13).
-
In No. 5 (5 November 1915) he renounces Mersina and Adana, holds the vilayets of Aleppo and Beirut and their coasts as purely Arab, cites Omar ibn Khattab’s precepts for Muslim–Christian civic equality, and offers Britain a temporary, compensated administration of the Iraqi districts its troops occupy, without prejudice to Arab rights (PDF p.9-11).
-
In No. 7 (1 January 1916) he leaves Iraq’s compensation amount to Britain’s wisdom and justice, and records that after the war the Arabs will ask for what they now leave to France in Beirut and its coasts; it is, he writes, impossible to allow any derogation giving France or any other Power a span of land in those regions (PDF p.13-14).
-
In No. 9 (18 February 1916) he reports his sons’ deployments — one commanding in Syria, the eldest to go to Medina — and asks for £50,000 in gold monthly, provisions including 20,000 sacks of rice, and “5,000 rifles of the modern pattern and the necessary ammunition”, all deposited at Port Sudan under secret arrangements (PDF p.15-17).
-
In the 1939 committee report, the United Kingdom representatives agree he had included Palestine in the area claimed in his letter of 14 July 1915, so that unless Palestine was excluded later it must be regarded as included in the area of Arab independence; the Arab side adds his notes of 5 November 1915 and 1 January 1916 confining the reservations to the northern coastal regions, and his immediate protest on the Balfour Declaration (Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca, lines 271-277, 355-365).
Related pages
Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, McMahon–Hussein correspondence, Henry McMahon, Mecca, Arab Khalifate, Beirut, Aleppo