ABSTRACT
The centennial of the Great War has produced an extraordinary number of new studies of the Middle Eastern front’s impact on the people, militaries, and governments of all the participants and the victims, not just on the great powers and Europe. While the history of the Ottomans in World War I was long organized around the Armenian genocide and sensational campaign moments such as Gallipoli and the Dardanelles in 1915. While the Ottomans had the advantage of surprise and a confused Russian command, they failed to capitalize on their momentary advantage because of poor communications between the divisions, continuous daily assaults with too few soldiers, inadequately clothed and shod, too few rations and brutal weather, conditions that were all too reminiscent of the war years 1876–1878. In March 1920, the brief moment of a possible larger Ottoman Muslim multi-ethnic state was overtaken by the Syrian national congress in Damascus, declaring Faysal the undisputed king of the Arab Kingdom of Syria.
