Ottomans Expelled from Qatar, August 1915, Part III

Just a reminder: Postings will be sparse during my current two week vacation.

In Part I of this post, I explained the background of the fact that at the outbreak of World War I, the Ottomans still retained a small garrison at Doha, Qatar, and at the neighboring al-Bida‘ Fort. Part II described the dramatis personae on the British and Qatari sides, and the orders given to the key players, Major T.H. Keyes, British Political Agent in Bahrain, and Commander Viscount Kelburn of the HMS Pyramus. For the actual events at Doha, the best approach seems to be to quote extensively from Major Keyes' account of the affair sent to Percy Cox:

From Major T.H. Keyes, I.A. [Indian Army], Political Agent, BAHRAIN To the Hon'ble Lieut-Colonel Sir Percy Cox, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, BASRAH

Bushire 23rd August 1915

I have the honour to report that H.M.'s Ships "Pyramus: and "Dalhousie" arrived at Bahrain on the 18th instant, when your 1633-B of the 16th instant was delivered to me by the Commander of the "Pyramus" [Commander the Viscount Kelburn].

2. As there were no Tangsiri [= Tangistani] boats in Bahrain, I left the same afternoon in "Pyramus", arriving off Doha early on the 19th. Large numbers of boats were leaving Doha that morning, as the second fishing was just commencing. While "Pyramus" was negotiating the difficult entrance to Doha bay, I went away in an armed cutter and examined all boats that were under sail, but found no Tangsiri boats among them.

3. "Pyramus" having anchored within 2,000 yards of Doha Fort while "Dalhousie anchored out of range of the Turkish guns, I sent my interpreter ashore to fetch Shaikh Abdullah [‘Abdullah bin Jasim Al Thani, Ruler of Qatar].

The terminology of British Imperial officers at the height of the Empire is telling. Qatar still had an Ottoman garrison and would not be a British protectorate until 1916, yet Keyes sent to "fetch" the ruler. I am reasonably sure that when a foreign warship pus into Doha today, no once sends to "fetch" Sheikh ‘Abdullah's great-great-grandson, Sheikh Tamim. Keyes continues:

The shaikh arrived on board in the early afternoon, and assured us there were no Tangsiri boats in his port, and that none had been there for some time,  but said that he believed that some Turkish deserters had joined the Tangsiris with several rifles and large quantities of ammunition. He vehemently denies having sent Rais Ali any ammunition [See Part Two] and said that he only sent him 8 cloaks in exchange for the ten hawks Rais Ali had sent him. From independent enquiries which I instituted in Doha and Al Bida I am inclined to believe his version of the affair.

Doha about 1904 (Lorimer's Gazeteer)

Doha Fort Today

As we saw in Part Two, Cox had added an additional task (afterthought or perhaps the main motive all along?) to looking for Tangistani dhows: offering the Ruler an incentive if he could get the Ottoman garrison out of Doha and turn over its guns. He was authorized to pay 2,500 rupees per gun or, since there turned out to be two guns, 5000 rupees. (As near as I can tell, in 1915 the rupee under the raj was pegged at 480 silver rupees to one gold sovereign, but I may have this wrong.)


Keyes' report continues:

4. We then proceeded to discuss the question of the Turkish fort.  Shaikh Abdulla [sic, Abdullah elsewhere in the report] informed me that there were two officers and forty men with two guns and one mountain gun at the Fort.  Entrenchments could be sen around the Fort, the emplacement of the mountain gun could be easily distinguished, and also two objects which we took to be the emplacements for the field guns. All of these in the entrenched line.

I requested Shaikh Abdullah to place the following alternative before the Turkish Commandant:

(a) That he should surrender, when the officers would be allowed o retain their swords and be treated in the manner indicated in your letter sent by Abdul Jabbar Effendi.

(b) That he should vacate the fort leaving the guns intact in which case I would hand the Fort [inconsistent capitalization in original] over to Sheikh Abdullah, on the latter;s agreeing to look after the Turks, I insisted on an answer by 7 a.m. the next morning and Shaikh Abdullah agreed to settle the matter during the night, though he was very anxious to have ten days for the negotiations.

I promised him 5,000/- [Rupees] if he arranged the surrender of the Fort without a hitch and gave him to understand that if he failed the Fort could be taken by H.M.'s ships. I may add that the Shaikh was under the impression that "Dalhousie" was a trandport.

As noted in Part II, HMS Dalhousie had been a transport in the Indian Marine Service, but four guns had been added to her.

On the morning of the 20th I landed with Commander Viscount Kelburn. On learning from Shaikh Abdullah that the Turks had fled in the night, we proceeded to the Fort which was first occupied by a landing party and searched, and then formally handed over to Shaikh Abdullah.

Besides the three guns in the trenches there were 14 rifles, about 8,000 rounds of ammunition, 500 projectiles, some casks of black powder, tents, great coats, and odds and ends of stores in the Fort. Three old muzzle loaders had also been used for revetments. The cordite charges for the guns and the breech blocks had been removed At Shaikh Abdullah's request I gave him the rifles and unfortunately promised all the rifle ammunition. Shortly after this a blue-jacked discovered 105 cases of mauser ammunition in a magazine about 100 yards way. I handed this over to the Shaikh subject to your approval.

"Dalhousie" sailed for Charbar that afternoon and "Pyramus" for Bahrain ...

The remainder of the report deals with the question of the location of the Tangistani dhows. In subsequent correspondence, Cox asked for clarification as to whether the full 5,000 Rupees had been paid and whether it was possible to get the Sheikh to hand over the 105 boxes of Mauser ammunition. Keyes noted he had paid 3,000 Rupees and promised to send the other 2,000 from Bahrain, which was done along with a request for the 105 boxes, which seem to have been delivered.

Thus the Ottoman presence in Qatar came to an end.The following year Sheikh ‘Abdullah signed a Protectorate agreement with the British, handing over responsibility for foreign affairs and defense. The Protectorate lasted until independence in 1971.

Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Jasim

As for Sheikh ‘Abdullah, he ruled until 1940, when he abdicated in favor of his son. When the son died unexpectedly in 1948 he resumed the throne for a year and then abdicated again in 1949 in favor of another son. He witnessed the discovery of oil and lived until 1959.

Sir Terence Humphrey Keyes

As for Major Keyes, Terence Humphrey Keyes went on to serve in the  Western intervention in the Russian Civil War, serving in southern Russia. receiving British, Romanian, and (White) Russian decorations. Returning to Indian service in Baluchistan, served in Nepal and in various Indian administrative posts until retirement in 1932 with the honorary rank of Brigadier General He was knighted (Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire) in the New Year's Honours List of 1933. He died in 1939

Commander Viscount Kelburn

As for Viscount Kelburn, Commander of HMS Pyramus, as previously noted, he was the eldest son of the 7th Earl of Glasgow. Just a few months after the affair at Doha, in December 1915, he succeeded his father to become the 8th Earl. He too served in the intervention in the Russian Civil War, as a Naval officer at Vladivostok, and this made him a lifelong anti-Communist. In the 1920s and 1930s he became an open British Fascist supporting the British Union of Fascists. He died in 1963.

More on the South Arabian Language Soqotri

Last year I blogged about "The Endangered South Arabian Languages of Oman and Yemen." These languages are quite distinct from Arabic, belonging to a different branch of the Semitic subfamily of Afro-Asiatic, and are actually coser to the Ethiopian languages.

For more, see my earlier post. But here's a piece from Al Jazeera about one of them, Soqotri, (which the article spells Socotri), spoken on Yemen's island of Soqotra. Because of itsinsular loction, it is the most distinctive of the Modern South Arabian language, with little mutual intelligibility with the others.

The article deals with the work of Russian linguists who began to study Soqotri during the era of Soviet influence in South Yemen. It adds some color to my earlier post, from which I take a map and a video of Soqotri poetry:

Wikipedia

‘Id Mubarak: The Feast of ‘Id al-‘Adha

‘Id Mubarak to my Muslim readers. ‘Id al-‘Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice or Greater ‘Id (also Qurban Bayram and many other names in many languages), begins today. The major festival of the Muslim year (the other major feast being the ‘Id that ends Ramadan), it coincides with the sacrifice carried out in Mecca in conjunction with the Hajj.

Last year, the ‘Id overlapped with the American Thanksgiving holiday, so my greetings were offered without much background. But since this blog is intended to educate as well as entertain, I'd like to take a little more time with it this year.

The Feast of Sacrifice is generally seen as the most important religious feast, hence the fact that it is often called the ‘Id al-Kabir or "Greater ‘Id," and it coincides with the central ritual of Islam, the fifth pillar of Islam, the hajj. Animals are sacrificed (the meat then distributed to the poor) in a ritual of great antiquity, one Muslims themselves say partially predates Islam itself.

What most non-Muslims probably do not know is the fact that, like the hajj itself, the ‘Id commemorates a story known to Jews and Christians as well: God's demand that Abraham sacrifice his son, only to relent and substitute an animal sacrifice when Abraham had demonstrated his obedience even in such a horrific task. The Qur'an and Islamic tradition say the son was Isma‘il (Ishmael in the Bible) rather than Isaac (Ishaq in the Qur'an) as in the Book of Genesis, but the story and its moral is virtually identical.

Now, these days Abraham, venerated by Judaism (Avraham), Christianity (Abraham), and Islam (Ibrahim) is often more of a source of conflict among the three faiths which claim him than a unifying factor, but he is a shared Patriarch of all three "Abrahamic" faiths: Our Father Abraham to Jews, the "first Muslim" and "friend of God" to Muslims, and a familiar patriarch to Christians, though he is not quite so central for them. Whether you consider Abraham a historical figure, a mythic culture hero, a Bronze Age myth or some combination of these, he is a potent symbol, and as I have noted, his tomb in Hebron is second only to the Temple Mount/Haram in Jerusalem as a disputed holy place.

The story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, whether Isaac or Ishmael, strikes most modern people as something incomprehensible, but his absolute obedience is central to the symbolic message of the story: his profound obedience is what led God to proclaim his covenant with Abraham.

The hajj itself is profoundly linked to the Abraham story: the running between Safa and Marwa, part of the ritual, reflects Hagar's search for water for the infant Isma‘il, rewarded by the discovery of the well Zamzam, the water of which is drunk by every hajji, and the sacrifice of an animal today represents the sacrifice of Abraham. The Ka‘aba itself is said to have been first built by Abraham.

Despite the profound divisions Abraham's legacy sometimes creates today, the Abrahamic core of this particular feast could potentially, in some alternate universe, make it a potential meeting place for the three "Abrahamic" faiths.

Interestingly, Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily whose readership includes not only Westerners but many South Asians, including non-Muslims, takes this sort of "ecumenical" tack in its editorial today, seeking to link the interfaith dialogue promoted by King ‘Abdullah with the Abrahamic common ground the feast invokes. If such sentiments could prevail year round and not just on holidays, the region might be a better place.

‘Id Mubarak wa Sa‘id.

Patriarchal Dynamite: The Hebron/Bethlehem Heritage Sites Issue

Father Abraham, Avraham Avinu, Ibrahim Khalil Allah, the kids are fighting over the will again.

There is probably no place in the highly explosive Israeli-Palestinian theater, other than the Haram al-Sharif/Har ha-Bayit (Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount) in Jerusalem itself, more potentially explosive than the massive Herodian tomb-structure (left) rising over Hebron known to Israelis as the Tombs of the Patriarchs (or, Biblically, as the Cave of Machphelah, Me'arat Machpelah) and to Muslims as the Haram al-Khalil or al-Haram al-Ibrahimi. (Khalil, meaning "friend" as in the Friend of God, is a Muslim sobriquet for Abraham, and also the name for the city of Hebron.) It is surely one of the few places on earth (the only one I can think of just now, but I may be forgetting something) where a synagogue and a mosque exist and function within the same very ancient site. In 1994 it was the site where Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein took an automatic weapon and killed 29 Muslims at prayer in the mosque. It's an enormous, amazing place, and perhaps even more than Jerusalem itself, a symbol of the fratricidal nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since Abraham is the founder of both peoples by their own testimony. But it, and another holy site in Bethlehem, Rachel's tomb, though both beyond the Green Line, have now been named Israeli Heritage Sites, at this difficult moment in the peace process, and the results are predictable.

Since both Judaism and Islam claim Abraham as their founder, in today's context conflict is inevitable. Since ancient tradition insists this is the site of the burial places of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah, buried in the Cave of Machphelah (and indeed, there are caves beneath the monuments), this is a holy place to all three Abrahamic religions, though relatively few Christian pilgrims visit it. (Some Muslims say Joseph is buried here too, though Jewish tradition venerates his tomb near Nablus.) In other words, patriarchically speaking, pretty much a straight flush. The big six.

On the other hand, it's Leah who's buried with Jacob in Hebron, and generally speaking Rachel is considered the matriarch of record for Jacob, who had two wives, since she's the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, and thus of the main line of Jewish tradition (though Leah bore the patriarchs of the other ten tribes). Biblical tradition placed her tomb a couple of places, but one of the most visited and revered was on the northwestern edge of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, like Hebron, is of course in the West Bank, in territory Israel only occupied in 1967. And Bethlehem and its neighboring towns and the big refugee camp nearby make that area one of the more populous in the West Bank. Rachel's Tomb (pictured) was originally on the Palestinian side of the Separation Wall, but lately an adjacent house has been annexed and walled off and the separation wall has been extended to include the tomb.

Beyond the fact that the Separation Wall itself raises a great many issues, I think it worth just looking at this GoogleEarth picture on the right (copyright by Google fully acknowledged please don't come after me) and noting that the wall actually goes down either side of a road to enclose the tomb in a sort of enclave (below left center of the picture) that really makes its artificiality obvious. You used to go right by it driving into Bethlehem.

And since these patriarchs play a major role in Islam as well — Ibrahim (Abraham), Ishaq (Isaac), and Ya‘qub (Jacob) are common Muslim names still — the tombs of the patriarchs/Haram al-Khalil and the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem are two flashpoints which have troubled Jewish/Muslim and Israeli/Palestinian relations since 1967. (But of course all these names belong to all three monotheistic traditions. My mother and my daughter were both named Sarah.)

So why, nearly 43 years after the 1967 war, did Israel wait until this past Sunday to declare these two explosive holy places Israeli National Heritage Sites? Netanyahu said he did it at the persuasion of the religious party Shas. Not surprisingly, Palestinians are protesting and throwing stones in Hebron and elsewhere; the UN's against it, and there's talk of a new restoration plan for the sites. PA officials are protesting, Jordan is protesting — but this happens whenever there is a change in the status quo of religious sites. The question is why was this done now?

Given recent actions by the Netanyahu government it really is getting hard to assume that this is all just poor judgment or ideological purity (why not sooner?), and to assume that there is actually an intention to provoke. I'm trying to find an explanation in my own mind for why this was done now. It seems to have set off a Palestinian reaction — both officially and in the streets where stones are being thrown again — and almost makes me wonder, does Netanyahu want a third intifada? Netanyahu could have done this years ago if it was purely a commitment to ideology: everyone understands the sanctity of these two sites to both Muslims and Jews, and for that reason efforts to change the status quo have been few since the creation of the synagogue inside the mosque.

I fully recognize the veneration both Jews and Muslims have for these sites (especially Hebron), but doing this right now, more than 40 years after the six day war, has a feel of provocation rather than affirmation.

Abraham, that wandering Aramaean as the Bible itself calls him, would, I trust, prefer not to be fought over quite in this way. But this particular time I have to say the Israelis seem to be the provocateurs. And I'm not sure why at this time. They control the sites, and long have. Why change the status now?