In Wisdom's House: T. E. Lawrence in the Near East Author(s): Linda J. Tarver Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Jul., 1978), pp. 585-608 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260210 . Accessed: 21/12/2011 08:26 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Contemporary History. http://www.jstor.org LindaJ. Tarver In Wisdom's House: T.E. Lawrence in the Near East During his short career in the army, T.E. Lawrence wrote at length on the Middle East, from a variety of perspectives. His post-war notoriety has generated even more material about him from other authors. In 1976 alone, three new books about him were published: Peter Brent's T.E. Lawrence, John Mack's A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence, and Stanley and Rodelle Weintraub's Lawrence of Arabia: The Literary Impulse. Although each is largely successful in its circumscribedgoals, none of the three attempts what most earlier works about Lawrence set out to do - to recount the facts of Lawrence's political and military activities in the Middle East and to evaluate his influence there. This task has not yet been done successfully, as earlier authors have been restricted by specific biases and limited perspectives. The following discussion of Lawrence's role in and effect on Middle Eastern affairs during the world war and its aftermath is based on available primary sources, published and unpublished. Its purpose is to separate established fact from conjecture and the fantasy of the Lawrence image through examination of Lawrence's own writings. Contemporary newspaper articles concerning different aspects of the war are early testimony to the impression a description of the war in the Middle East must have made on a public inured to the hardships and casualties of the Western Front. In the West, the Clausewitzian strategy of direct confrontation prevailed, and faulty applications of ideas borrowed from leading military theorists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries condemned to death millions on both sides. In Palestine, however, General Edmund Allenby, pre- viously unsuccessful in France, consolidated a few pieced-together regiments to wage textbook examples of mechanized warfare Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills), Vol 13 (1978), 585-608 586 Journal of Contemporary History against the Ottoman Empire and its German allies, and sustained limited losses.' The astounding success of the Palestine Campaigns and of the British-supported Arab Revolt earned their participants considerable acclaim. This was especially true for T.E. Lawrence, who rose from 2nd Lieutenant to Colonel during his service with the Egyptian Expedi- tionary Force. He was recognized first by the American journalist Lowell Thomas, who in 1919, after several weeks' stay in the Middle East during the war, compiled an illustrated lecture on Allenby's vic- tories. When the public evinced interest in the British officer dressed in Arab robes, working seemingly alone and independently among the Bedouin in the desert, Thomas created for Colonel Lawrence the image of a 'Paladin of Arabia' and 'Prince of Mecca.' Lawrence's complicity in the transformation, born both of a tormented ego and a desire to aid the Arab political cause at Ver- sailles, tended to sustain and amplify its effect. He provided not only Lowell Thomas, but also his biographer Robert Graves,2with infor- mation about his experiences, and aroused widespread curiosity over the private publication of his own book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. With the appearance of Revolt in the Desert, which, as a popular abridgement of Seven Pillars, was in effect a distortion of an admit- tedly one-sided view of the war, the Lawrence legend was complete. Nevertheless, when the British public began to recoil from mention of the war, Lawrence came to be regarded as a posturing actor in a sideshow to the major conflict. Myth-makers like Thomas found useful material in the background to Lawrence's involvement in the Middle East. Lawrence was influenced greatly by his mentor, the archaeologist David G. Hogarth.3 While a student at Oxford, Lawrence's interests, tastes, and political views were moulded by Hogarth, and Lawrence entered on an archaeological career under Hogarth's wing at the Hit- tite dig Carchemish, near Aleppo. When war broke out in in 1914, thorough knowledge of the Middle East earned Hogarth consider- able influence. He obtained for Lawrence a position in the car- tographic section of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, where Lawrence's knowledge of Sinai geography was useful. Lawrence, ambitious for higher-level duties, secured transfers first to army in- telligence and then to the overall military intelligence unit for most of the Middle East, M17. When the political intelligence unit known as the Arab Bureau was established in 1917 alongside M17 under Brig.- Gen. G.F. Clayton, Hogarth served as its Acting Director.4 Hogarth Tarver: T.E. Lawrence in the Near East 587 drew Lawrence into Bureau work, and the pair initiated production of its newsletter, the Arab Bulletin. Soon after the declaration, on 5 June 1916, of an Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire by Sharif Husain, the Amir of Mecca, Lawrence was appointed liaison officer and adviser to Husain's son Faisal and his forces in the Hijaz. He became one of a score of British officers working with Arab leaders, who both taught the Arabs demolition techniques useful in their raids on the Ottoman- operated Hijaz Railway, and also relayed pertinent intelligence to the British at Cairo. Here Lawrence was in his element, and he remained in action with the Arabs until shortly before the Armistice. Lawrence's published writings include seventeen separate instances of action against the Turkish forces, in which he participated be- tween January 1917 and October 1918. The total is brought to twenty-three when a list of operations conducted with Sharif Ab- dullah's Bedouin, included in a report by the then Captain Lawrence to Col. C.E. Wilson, British representativeat Jidda, is taken into ac- count. These actions took the form of a push up the Hijaz, from the region around Jidda, north to Aqaba, wherein the Arab irregular and regular forces were the principal agents. This was followed by operations in Palestine and Syria under General Allenby, in which the Arabs, under Sharif Faisal, became a flank force protecting Allenby's rear. The campaigns culminated in the occupation of Damascus by the Arabs and the establishment of Faisal's administra- tion in the area. The details of Lawrence's military actions are as follows: 1. On 3 and 4 January 1917, in the area between Mubarak and Jabal Dhifran, Lawrence participated in a raid with 35 Muhamid Bedouin. Three Turkish patrol tents were attacked and their oc- cupants killed. Lawrence's account appears in the Arab Bulletin of 15 February 1917 (all issues referred to here are printed in Secret Despatches from Arabia [London ca. 1940]). 2. On 24 March 1917, at Buair, Lawrence and a raiding party of Abdullah's Bedouin dynamited 60 rails and cut a telegraph line. 3. On 25 March 1917, at Abu al Naam, Lawrence and the same or a similar party dynamited 25 rails, damaged a water tower and two station buildings, set fire to several box-cars, a wood store and some tents, cut a telegraph line and damaged the engine and bogie of a train. 588 Journal of Contemporary History 4. On 27 March 1917, at Istabl Antar, Lawrence and a raiding party of Abdullah's Bedouin dynamited 15 rails and cut a telegraph line. 5. Two of Lawrence's accounts differ on the action of 29 March 1917. His list to Col. Wilson reads 'March 29th. Jeddah. 10 rails dynamited, telegraph cut, 5 Turks killed.' His record in the Arab Bulletin of 13 May 1917, compiled at greater leisure and so perhaps with greater accuracy, states that on that date, at Abu al-Naam, Lawrence accompanied 300 Bedouin and four gunners under Sharif Shakir in a raid on a Turkish garrison comprised of 390 infantry. The action was successful, and resulted in the demolition of the nor- thern end of the railroad station held by the Turks, and the tem- porary derailment of a passing train. 6. On 31 March 1917, at Buair (Lawrence wrote 'Buier'), Lawrence and a raiding party of Abdullah's Bedouin dynamited five rails and cut a telegraph line. 7. On 3 April 1917, at Hediah, Lawrence and a raiding party of Abdullah's Bedouin dynamited 11 rails and cut a telegraph line. 8. On 4 and 5 April 1917, in the area of Wadi Dhaiji (between Km 1121 and al-Farshah), Lawrence and a party including the Bedouin chiefs Dakhilallah, Sultan, and Mohammad al Gadhi made a raid on the railway. A mine laid on the first day failed to explode despite the passage of two trains over it, but the party relaid and detonated it the following day, thereby blowing up the rails. They left after cutting down the nearby telegraph wire and 5 poles. Lawrence's description of this raid and that of 6 April also appears in the Arab Bulletin of 13 May 1917.