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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Malik Dahlan
Title: The Hijaz: The First Islamic State / Malik Dahlan. Description: Oxford [UK]; New York: Oxford University Press, [2018]
ISBN 9780190909727 (print)
ISBN 9780190934798 (updf)
ISBN 9780190935016 (epub)
To King Salman, who said:
‘If you read the history of a thousand years... you have the experience of a thousand years...’
CHRONOLOGY
Pre-Modern Chronology
570 The Prophet Mohammad is born into the tribe of the Quraysh in Makkah.
575 Mohammad is orphaned by the death of his parents.
594 Mohammad serves Lady Khadija as a caravan agent. The following year they are married, and eventually have six children, of whom four daughters survive.
610 Mohammad falls into a trance on Mount Hira and receives his first message from God, recited to him by the Angel Gabriel.
622 After being persecuted in Makkah, Mohammad and his followers flee to Yathrib, later called Medina, the City of the Prophet.
624 The battle of Badr is fought between Mohammad’s followers and a Makkan army. Mohammad’s forces are victorious.
628 Mohammad and 1,600 followers go on a pilgrimage to Makkah. They are impeded by the citizens of the town, which leads to the Pact of Hudaybiyya, which ends hostilities and establishes the right of pilgrimage to the city.
CHRONOLOGY
630 Mohammad marches to Makkah with 30,000 followers; the city surrenders and its citizens convert to Islam peacefully.
632 Death of Mohammad. Abu Bakr, his father-in-law, becomes the first successor, or caliph.
635 The Qur’an is compiled.
655 Islam spreads throughout the Maghreb.
661 Mu’awiya becomes caliph and establishes the Umayyad dynasty with its capital in Damascus.
680
Husayn and his followers revolt against the Umayyads, but are slain. The incident gives rise to the Shi’a schism.
710 Arab armies enter Spain.
750 Abu al-‘Abbas establishes the Abbasid dynasty.
762 Baghdad becomes its capital.
848 The Samarra Mosque is built in Iraq.
937 The Fatimid dynasty is established in Egypt with its capital in Cairo.
1055
The Seljuk Turkish army captures Baghdad and its leader becomes the sultan; the Seljuks take control of the Abbasid Empire.
1095 First Crusade.
1099
1147–49
1169
1174
Fall of Jerusalem, resulting in the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Outremer Crusader states.
The Second Crusade results in a Muslim victory in the Holy Land. The Crusaders take Iberia and the Baltic.
Saladin takes control of Egypt, makes himself sultan, and ends the Fatimid dynasty.
Saladin declares himself sultan of Egypt and Syria.
1187
CHRONOLOGY
The battle of Hittin; Saladin conquers the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
1189–92 Third Crusade; Crusaders capture Acre and Jaffa but fail to take Jerusalem from Saladin.
1258
1260
1291
Modern Chronology
1517
The Mongol army sacks Baghdad and ends the de facto rule of the Abbasid Empire.
The battle of Ain Jalut; Egyptian Mamluks defeat the Mongols in Palestine, thereby stopping Mongol expansion in the Middle East.
Fall of Acre, signalling the end of the Crusader states in the Middle East.
The Ottomans assume sovereignty over The Hijaz and Sultan Selim adopts the title of caliph.
1745 Pact between Abdul Wahhab and the House of Saud.
1745–1818
1802
1811
1824–1891
1871
First Saudi Islamic state.
Mohammad ibn Saud captures Makkah.
Mohammad ‘Ali Pasha recaptures The Hijaz in Ottoman–Saudi War.
Second Saudi Islamic state.
The Ottomans occupy Hasa and Asir.
Muhammad ibn Rashid captures Hasa from the Al Saud.
1889 Abdul Rahman ibn Faysal evicts Ibn Rashid from Riyadh.
1891
The Saudis are defeated by the forces of Muhammad ibn Rashid, bringing an end to the second Saudi state.
1902 Imam Abdulaziz ibn Saud launches a successful attack against Riyadh and initiates the third Islamic Saudi state.
CHRONOLOGY
1906
1908
1910
1912
1913
28 July 1914
October 1914
14 November 1914
July 1915–January 1916
December 1915
1916
May 1916
June 1916–October 1918
June 1916
November 1917
11 November 1918
January 1919
28 June 1919
January 1920
April 1920
10 August 1920
Ibn Saud conquers Qasim.
The Young Turks seize power in the Ottoman Empire. Hussein ibn ‘Ali becomes the Sharif of the Two Holy Cities under Ottoman auspices. Factionalism begins to emerge between Ibn Saud and his cousins the Araif.
The British send Captain William Shakespear to initiate contact with Ibn Saud.
The Ikhwan (‘Brotherhood’) is established.
Saudi forces advance on Hofuf and disarm the Turkish garrison, expanding the Saudi state to the Gulf.
Outbreak of the First World War.
Lord Kitchener, the British Agent and Consul in Egypt, establishes contact with Emir Abdullah.
The Ottoman Empire declares jihad against the Allied powers.
The Hussein–McMahon Correspondence.
The Darin Pact between Great Britain and Imam Ibn Saud.
Ibn Saud defeats the Ajman tribesmen with British assistance.
The Sykes–Picot Agreement.
The Arab Revolt.
The Hijaz declares independence from the Ottoman Empire.
The Balfour Declaration.
End of the First World War.
The Paris Peace Conference starts.
The Treaty of Versailles.
The League of Nations founded.
The San Remo Conference.
The Treaty of Sèvres.
CHRONOLOGY
1970s Iranian Islamic Revolution; Capture of Makkah
1980s–1990s
2001
Decline of the pan-Arabist movement; rise of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan; increasing build-up of US bases throughout the Middle East; Islamic political discourse; fall of the Berlin Wall; end of the Cold War.
Al-Qaida’s 11 September (9/11) terrorist attacks in the USA.
2002 War in Afghanistan.
2003 War in Iraq.
2010 Arab Spring/Arab Uprisings in wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
2014 Rise and expansion of DA’ISH.
In music theory, The Hijaz Maqam or Scale is distinguished by its [clarity] and compassion.
It lends itself to melancholic passion…. It is a scale through which feelings of sorrow, of nostalgia, and a trove of sadness are expressed.
It is the enabler, par excellence, of delivering the expression of the long journey; the longing by the revelation of the vastness of its vocal reach … for the sense of distance …
It is the foundational scale of Arab Music, and indeed the only inclusive musical scale that is at once Eastern and Western.
This Scale is balanced, possessing a dignified temperament … in its folds there is reverence
Sometimes … it unearths a buried joy … and a happiness tainted by sorrow; or sorrow visited by celebration
It is sublime when expressing the desert and its limitless abundance…. The night and its enveloping darkness … and the ever scattering of scarred stars.
It is so very soulful…. So magnificent is its space of yearning for the lover. And finally, The Hijaz, for the weary … is the Oasis…
Amjad al-Attafi, Maestro of the Arab Music Orchestra, Cairo
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My sincerest gratitude goes out to the following people, without whom this book would not have been completed:
1. The following distinguished peers who took the time out of their very busy schedules to review earlier drafts of the manuscript: Professor Ahmad Atif Ahmad, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara; Dr Tom D. Grant, Senior Research Fellow, Wolfson College, and Associate, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL), University of Cambridge; Dr James Summer, Lecturer, Director of the Centre for International Law and Human Rights, Lancaster University; and, especially, Professor Marc Weller, Professor of International Law and International Constitutional Studies and Director of the LCIL.
2. The Lauterpacht Centre and its staff have been incredibly generous with their time and resources to make a comfortable intellectual home for me to write this book. Special thanks to Marc Weller (and his Havana Club), to Dr John Barker, the late Sir Eli Lauterpacht, LCIL’s founder, James Crawford for his invitation to the Centre, and, of course, Karen Fachechi for all her kind support.
3. Peterhouse College, for deepening my fellowship and association at the University of Cambridge. I especially thank my friend and first lecturer on English legal methods, Dr Roderick Munday, Fellow and Director of Studies in Law at Peterhouse, and the former Master, Professor Adrian Dixon. I also thank Professor Brendan Simms, Professor of the History of European International Relations, for his intellectual comradeship and continued support
as we pondered the history, and indeed the future, of a Middle East Westphalia.
4. The captain and crew of the M/V Lady Sarya, for making the Lady of the Sea a place of solitude in the midst of the sea of ideas at a critical stage in writing the book.
5. The Institution Quraysh (iQ) staff have been indispensable, both in driving this research and, in my absence, taking the burden of managing everything related to iQ. I am eternally grateful to Monde Marshall. The iQ Policy Manager, Pavlos Efthymiou, provided a Hellenic touch to The Hijaz and exceptional support during the finalization of the manuscript. The book also benefited greatly from the editorial services of Robert Verkaik and David Rodgers.
6. The invaluable iQ researchers, Kinda Dahlan, Aleksandra Anna Bardon, Birju Mujahid Dattani, Maciej Zenkiewicz, Murshad Habib, and Mustafa Khedewi, without whom none of the research or drafting of this manuscript would have been possible. They each brought very distinct experiences, cultures, and knowledge to this project.
7. I thank Michael Dwyer, Publisher and Managing Director of C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. He not only appreciated the importance of The Hijaz at this important historical ‘Westphalian moment’, but was also firm about comprehensively establishing this work’s future intellectual value. My gratitude goes to the whole team at Hurst Publishers for their diligent efforts.
8. I wish to thank my family: my mother for her undying support; my forefathers, grandfather, and father for their wisdom and guidance; my siblings; my sons Sayyid Fihr, Sayyid Ahmad Zayni, and Sayyid Hamza, and my darling daughter Sirr al-Nada for their love.
9. Lastly, I wish to thank my beloved wife, Sarah, and the women of The Hijaz—the real last standing Hijazis. They have endured so much and, like most mothers, are the real heroines—they leave us with only the scales of an ancient song, forgotten but forever true.
PREFACE
Up until the first part of the last century, our house in Mecca (Makkah, for accuracy, henceforth) was adjacent to the palace of the Grand Sharif.1 The women in the family would take it in turn to pass my grandfather, a toddler then, from across the roshan to the young Turkish wife of the Sharif, Umm Zayd. The roshan is a unique Hijazi architectural structure, a bay-window balcony-like feature composed of mangour or teak wood artistically assembled in crossing forty-five degree angles to make up geometric shapes akin to a beehive. Indeed, like the word Hijaz itself, which, if taken literally, would mean barrier, the roshan has a unique feature: veiling the inside but allowing access to the light and breeze from the outside—a sort of breathing light.
My grandfather told me that he saw the Sharif once. He recounted how frightened he was as a child of three at the sight of the Sharif entering the room. Though not a large man, the Grand Sharif had a magnificent white beard, an imposing turban, and a black robe. He would describe to me his piercing gaze. He did not believe the Sharif was mortal until he took off his turban and asked his wife who the child was.
Many years after that first and last encounter with the Sharif, my grandfather wrote a long history on the Arab Revolt of 1916–18. Before he passed away, almost a decade ago, he entrusted me with the three-volume handwritten manuscript to publish after his death. For some reason—and I am not one to lose such things—it was lost. With a great sense of both shame and loss, I have attempted to recall the detailed accounts of the Sharif of Makkah, palace intrigue, the competing Hashemites, the war campaign, and, more poignantly, the promise
of that era of change. Not much came back to my busy mind except the following single, lucid piece of history that he narrated numerous times throughout my childhood, youth, and adulthood. I am still both convinced and surprised that he somehow believed that it contained the moral or the code for the Arab Revolt:
On a very hot late Thursday morning in June 1916 in Makkah, almost a century ago, days before the Arab Revolt, Sharif Hussein of Makkah was sitting down in his roshan at al-Ghazzah Palace. As he sipped a small glass of tea and looked down at the illustrious souk, he could not help but drift into thinking about the large events that were about to unfold, the British, the Jews, the Wahhabis, his friend the Ottoman Sultan, Jerusalem, and the Revolt!
He then spotted a young Hadrami rug merchant. Observing the skilful south Arabian youth, industrious in his efforts to sell one particular rug, the ageing white-bearded man, soon to be proclaimed King of Hijaz and Ruler of Arabia, was struck by the boy’s efforts to sell that one rug. So magnificent in its splendour, glorious in its allure, this rug, a tapestry of colours, radiated awe and grace. Impressed by the rug, but more so by the youthful roaming merchant, the Sharif summoned the lad and inquired about the price of the rug. The young man told him that he could not know for certain. Sharif Hussein, in an attempt to be equitable, ordered him to search for the highest price for that particular article and return to his wazir, at which point he would procure it for double the price. So excited was the merchant that he ran out, only to be startled by the loud call of his newly found patron and the grip of the large bailiff: ‘Ya walad!’ (Young man!) called the soon-to-be-King of Arabia. ‘Labeyk, ya sidi,’ (I am here, my lord) replied the startled young man. The Sharif paused for a moment, adjusted his beautiful white Makkan turban, and gazed with his cold yet fiery eyes at the Hadrami walad, and ordered him, ‘La tibi’ rakhis’ (do not sell cheap). The boy answered with swift wit, ‘La tuwasi haris’ (advise not the assiduous).
The melodic exchange enchanted al-Hussein bin ‘Ali: his newly found iambic pentameter, ‘la tibi’ rakhis, la tuwasi haris’, ‘la tibi’ rakhis, la tuwasi haris’, ‘la tibi’ rakhis, la tuwasi haris’, hummed and hummed in his head until two days later. … Until that very first bullet that he shot above the sky of the Holy Mosque announcing the Arab Revolt; defining the modern history of the Arabs forever!
This memory left him with something empty inside. This emptiness that he described was not merely about the cruelty of a certain reli-
gious tendency or a nationalist plight. It is a nostalgic feeling towards what seemed like the promise of a glorious future. It is at once the irony of witnessing the inception of a powerful dream of self-determination and paying the heavy price of understanding its existential failure. What is more ironic, my grandfather would have been heartened to know that I unearthed archival documents written by and addressed to his father, my great-grandfather, Sayyid Abdullah Dahlan, the last representative of the Institution of the Grand Mosque from Singapore, where he was exiled for his pro-Ottoman position.2
The most powerful aspect of the history written by my grandfather was not necessarily the narrative account of the Revolt itself, but rather the fact that it was a narrative recited by one of Saudi Arabia’s leading legislators. As a lawyer, I sought to study the legal aspects of the Revolt for Arab self-determination in The Hijaz, to utilize resources and information that were unavailable to my grandfather. I am aware both of the political sensitivities and unexamined biases, but, equally, of the importance of academic integrity. I believe that it is important to now begin such a scholarly project situated within the discipline of international law by describing with precision the geopolitical history that defines much of the Middle East today. Over the course of the years that it took me to write and research this book I have come to recognize that, like everything else in life, no one truth is absolute. If our intention behind investigating history, painful and dark as it may be, is to heal the future, we must not look for heroes or villains, or we will remain trapped by the follies of the past.3
This is a book written as we reflect on the centenary of the 1916 Arab Revolt. It is a new take on the critical untold legal and political history of Arabia after the First World War and the Arab Revolt for self-determination. The Hijaz, the western territory of the Arabian Peninsula (in present-day Saudi Arabia), home to the Two Holy Cities of Makkah and Medina, and host to millions of Muslim pilgrims annually, was the political driver of this movement—and was indeed the first modern Arab state—yet there is no legal history or modern political text on it. This book was encouraged by Oxford University Press on the occasion of completing the online resource, Oxford Historical Treaties. The
PREFACE
Hijaz was noted on the online resource as a signatory to several treaties, but the editors had minimal information on its character, history, and significance.
The bulk of the book was researched and developed during a sabbatical at the University of Cambridge Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (2014–15), where I would draw upon resources on international law methodologies and Middle East studies, as well as primary sources on doctrinal Islamic legal concepts.
It relied on archival research at the British Foreign Offices in India and Cairo, the UK National Archives (Kew), the al-Azhar Archives in Cairo, and the Ottoman Correspondence Registry in Istanbul. Many documents unearthed led to critical findings regarding The Hijaz and my understanding of the making of the modern Middle East.
During my research, I did not find any modern books on the state of Hijaz. The books written in the last century on the topic have often been influenced by the larger events that dictated Arab politics rather than the state of Hijaz itself. Colonial accounts of the British Arab Bureau in Cairo, the main Arab intelligence at the time, reaffirm the lack of information on The Hijaz itself, including the Arab Bulletin , which was later compiled by its chief, D. G. Hogarth, in Hejaz before World War I: A Handbook , Volume 7 of the Arabia Past and Present series. Equally, the Arab nationalist movements pushed forth their narrative primarily in the 1939 book The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement by George Antonius. The book was later challenged in Western academia based on claims that were supported by Sharif Hussein’s personal papers after the breakdown of The Hijaz liberation movement.
The study will be the first international, legal-historical treatment of The Hijaz, and, as far as we know, of Saudi Arabia as well. It provides a rare Islamic understanding which is crucial for international lawyers in order to analyse current legal and public security challenges— including those presented by Islamic militant groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or Islamic State (IS), although we refer to the group in this book by the Arabic acronym DA’ISH. It addresses the complicated doctrinal aspects of Islamic statehood and places competing notions of the Caliphate in a historic context while proposing a new
