ABSTRACT
Taking the will of local inhabitants into consideration, and relating to the Arabs and to their demands, were also novel components in international agreements concerning the division of the world. The Sykes-Picot agreement had inventively recognized the religious and nationalist aspirations of the region’s inhabitants, which is different from following the official claims and ambitions of an existing state. Nevertheless, the Arabs had been involved in the occurrences that took place in the Middle East from the beginning of the war. The British government and its representatives had contacts with the most important Arab family in the Ottoman Empire – the family of the Sharif Hussein, who was in charge of the Muslim holy sites in Mecca and Medina, in the Arabian Peninsula. The British were seeking allies in their war against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, especially in the wake of the Ottoman attacks on Egypt and following their own failures in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. The British administrators in Egypt were trying to turn the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire and used the long-standing tension between the ruling Turks and the subject Arabs, in order to ignite a revolt. In exchange for a military force that would fight alongside Britain, Hussein demanded recognition of an Arab independent state that would stretch south of the Taurus mountains, on all of the Arab area that belonged to the Ottoman Empire.9 An extensive exchange of letters between the Sharif Hussein of Mecca and the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, took place during 1915. The Arab demands were discussed in these letters. McMahon agreed on behalf of the British government:
to recognize and to support an Arab state, on the area that the Arabs demanded excluding the Marsina and Alexandretta regions, and the parts of Syria that are situated west of the districts of Aleppo, Hamma, Homs and Damascus. These parts cannot be regarded as ‘purely Arab’, and they must be excluded from the area that was demanded . . . As far as the lands within this area, about which Great Britain has freedom to do as it wishes to, without harming the interest of its ally France . . . according to the mentioned correction, Great Britain is ready to recognize and support Arab independence in all the lands that are demanded by the Sharif of Mecca.10
