Lawrence of Arabia: Enticed by the British With a Promise of an Arab Homeland, Arabs Join WWI Against the Ottoman Empire
On the basis of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, exchanged between Henry McMahon of the United Kingdom and Hussein bin Ali of the Kingdom of Hejaz, the rebellion against the ruling Turks was officially initiated at Mecca on 10 June 1916.
The primary goal of the Arabs was to establish an independent and unified Arab state stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in the Arabian Peninsula, all of which had been promised them by the British, including what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, parts of Turkey, parts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, parts of Yemen..
The Sharifian Army, led by Hussein and the Hashemites with backing from the British military’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force (Lawrence of Arabia), successfully fought and expelled the Ottoman military presence from much of the Hejaz and Transjordan.
By 1918, the rebels had captured Damascus and proclaimed the Arab Kingdom of Syria, a short-lived monarchy that was led by Hussein’s son Faisal I.
Photo by T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia)