ABSTRACT
Major Hubert Young served on the staff of Emir Feisal's army in 1918 and took part in operations in the Dera'a-Damascus region. He spoke Arabic fluently. Nonetheless, he never, as far as evidence goes, came across the word wilaya used in the sense indicated by Toynbee. In Ottoman administrative usage, vilayet was used in a wider sense, covering Cis-Jordanian Palestine, whereas, in Arabic, wilaya meant "environs" or "banlieux. Moreover, Toynbee, when working on the terms of an armistice or peace with Turkey early in October 1918, sketched out the boundaries of "Six Vilayets," one of which was that of Damascus. On 21 December 1915, during a meeting at the Foreign Office, Picot referred to the Vilayet of Damascus; he specifically emphasized that "the whole of the Damascus vilayet … as defined by the Turks" must be included in the French sphere.
