The Hashemite saga and the tragedies of Arab history

THE twentieth century was not kind to the Sharifian branch of the Hashemite clan, descendants of the Prophet of Islam and hereditary amirs of Makkah in unbroken succession for a thousand years.

After Sharif Hussain bin Ali fell out with the Young Turks who deposed Sultan Abdel Hamid in Constantinople, he began negotiations with the British and the French. When the Turks joined World War I on Kaiser Willhelm’s side, the Hashemites used their ancient tribal networks and blood ties to the Bedouin tribes of the Hijaz to spark the Arab revolt that was to liberate Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula from Turkish rule.

The Arab revolt was a strategic sideshow while the mass slaughter continued in Somme and Gallipoli. Yet its emergence was to result in the Arab world’s bitterest betrayal since the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. Sharif Hussein hoped the victorious French and British would make him the king of a united Arab state from Aleppo to Yemen, from Jerusalem to the Arabian Gulf.

But the Royal Navy had just switched from coal to oil, black gold had just gushed out of the ancient soil of Mosul and Basra and Lord Balfour had issued his fateful declaration to the Jews. Besides, France had no intention to abandon its fabled "reve du Orient" on the Levant. So two men, Picot and Sykes, literally drew lines in the sand and destroyed the Hashemite dream of a united Arab kingdom forever. Britain placed Palestine under a League Mandate, the Quai d’ Orsay sent French troops to drive the Hashemite prince, Amir Faisal bin Hussein out of Damascus. The King of the Arabs was demoted to the King of the Hijaz. The British betrayal of the Arabs was so deep that even Lawrence, the MI6 agent who masterminded the destruction of the Hijaz Railway, left the service of the Crown in disgust.

Yet fate and British gold continued to conspire against Sharif Hussein. The King of the Hijaz was defeated and driven out of the Holy Cities where the clan of Bani Hashem (great-grandfather of the Prophet) had had a continuous presence for two thousand years since the Quraish tribe first emerged in history on the ancient frankincense trade routes from Yemen to Byblos. There was a new power in Arabia, the Nejdi desert warrior Abdel Aziz Al Saud, the then Sultan of the Nejd. Ibn Saud’s fighters drove Sharif Hussein out of the Hijaz and the father of the Arab revolt died in bitter exile in British Cyprus.

Tragedy and betrayal continued to haunt the Hashemite, as it did in the first century Hijrah when the Ummayed caliphs assassinated dozens of Sharifs (descendants of Imam Hassan bin Ali) in order to protect their empire. King Faisal’s son Ghazi died in a car accident after he voiced anti-British sentiments, in his palace radio station, succeeded by his young son Faisal II, who was butchered along with his uncle the Regent Prince in the 1958 Iraqi military coup. The Hashemite kingdom of Iraq vanished into history amid a hail of bullets and the massacre of the king.