Desert Insurgency: Archaeology, T. E. Lawrence, and the Arab Revolt 0198722001, 9780198722007

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Maps and Figures
Notes
Maps
1 Introduction
2 Into the Ghost-land
3 Archaeology, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt War
4 The Hejaz Railway: Faith, Conflict, and Afterlife
5 Guerrillas and the ‘Sultan’s Mule’
6 Conflict on Jebel Sherra: Ma’an to the Blockhouse
7 ‘Belly of the Beast’: Abdullah’s Fort to Batn Al-ghoul
8 Forts, Stations, and Ancestors: Wadi Rutm to Tel Shahm
9 Concealment, Raiding, and Ambush: Tooth Hill to Hallat Ammar
10 Beyond the Railway: Conflict Landscapes of the Arab Revolt
Timeline of Major Events on the Hejaz Railway Between Ma’an and Mudawwara, 1900–2018
Gazetteer of Sites
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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Desert Insurgency

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Desert Insurgency Archaeology, T. E. Lawrence, and the Arab Revolt Nicholas J. Saunders

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Nicholas J. Saunders 2020 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934874 ISBN 978–0–19–872200–7 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cr0 4yy Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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For Milo

Damascene trench art German shell-case in Mamluk Revival style. A souvenir marking the Allied taking of Damascus in October 1918. (© James Brazier)

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ACK NOW LEDGEMENTS

M

any individuals in Jordan and around the world made the Great Arab Revolt Project possible, and I owe a great debt to all of them in this book. In Jordan: King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, Prince Hassan bin Talal, Prince Mired Bin Ra’ad Bin Zeid, and the staff of the Royal Court; Sheikh Khaled Suleiman al-Atoun (Mudawwara), Dr Fawwaz al-Khraisha, Dr Ziad al-Saad, Dr Monther Jamhawi, Jihad Haroun, Hani Falahat, Khalil Hamdan, Aktham Oweidi, and Saata Massadeh of the Department of Antiquities; Jihad Kafafi of the Jordan Museum, Amman; Engineer Hussein Krishan of the Aqaba Railway at Ma’an; Dr Fawzi Abudanh, Dr Mansour Shqiarat, Professor Zeyad al-Salameen, Dr Saad Twaissi and colleagues at the University of Al Hussein bin Talal in Ma’an and Wadi Mousa; Muhammad Twaissi and the staff of the Edom Hotel in Wadi Mousa, and Salah Hassanat and all our local drivers who ferried us along the highways and around the desert for nine years. Also, Professor Bill Finlayson, Nadja Qaisi, and the staff of the Council for British Research in the Levant (Amman); and Dr Robert Bewley and Professor David Kennedy for the use of their magnificent aerial photographs of southern Jordan archived at APAAME (Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East www.apaame.org), and Dr Robert Bewley and his staff at EAMENA (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East http://eamenadatabase.arch.ox.ac.uk) which holds the GARP site database (see Appendix: Gazetteer of Sites). To the core GARP team I owe a special debt: my co-director, colleague, and friend Dr Neil Faulkner, David Thorpe (site director), Ali Baldry (photographer), Susan Daniels (project administrator), John Winterburn (landscape archaeologist), Cat Edwards (site supervisor), Anna Gow (finds processor), Roger Ward (technical specialist and metal detectorist), Fizz Altinoluk (site supervisor), Angie and Dave Hibbitt (geophysicists), Odette Nelson (finds assistant), David Spencer, Duncan Ward (both site supervisors). Each year of GARP saw a varying group of volunteers, a wonderful mix of old hands and ‘newbies’, all of whom were also ‘garpies’. For nine years of fieldwork I would like to thank the following who participated once or on many occasions: Linah Ababneh, Suzanne Auckerman, John Austin, Fabrice de Backer, Mohammad Bataineh, Peter Besler, Len Blasiol, Esther Breithoff, David Brown, Martin Burgess, Susannah Chapman, Richard Clayton, Lisa Corti, Nick Dawson, Neil Dearberg, Karen Deighton, Chrissie Eaves-Walton, Charles Eilers, Jo Gilbert, Michael Gill, Andrew Green, Fred Hay, Ian Heritage, Owen Humphrys, Caroline Jennings, Guy Jillings, Tim Johnson, Nick Kelly, Alice Kilroy, Erica Kratz, David Long, Bill Loughner, Alistair MacLellan, Ian McKenzie, Heinrich Natho, Phillip Naylor, Yvonne Neville-Rolfe, Simone Paturel, Kelly Pool, Brian Powell, John Raiswell, Mike Relph, Jerry Revell, Rob Riddett, Vicky Roads, Harry Sanseverino, John Scott, David Shepherd, Paul Smith, James Stejskal, Bill Sutherland, Guy Taylor, Véronique

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Acknowled gements Thévoz, Dennis Thompson, David Thorpe, Barbara Wagner, Steve Walker, Roger Ward, Benjamin Wimmer, Jan Woolf, and Zheng Xu. Many other colleagues and friends contributed to the project and this book, though none are responsible for any errors: Paul Cornish of the Imperial War Museum, London, Nick Hopkins, Mike Relph, the late Mike Schofield, David Simonowitz at Pepperdine University, John F. Ansley, director of Archives and Special Collections, Marist College, Poughkeepsie, and Oliver House, superintendant of Special Collections at Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford. Rebecca Repper at APAAME greatly eased the process of acquiring aerial photographs, and James Stejskal kindly allowed me to see a proof copy of his book Masters of Mayhem (2018), and Philip Walker who kindly discussed his recent book Behind the Lawrence Legend (2018). John Winterburn and I spent hundreds of hours walking the desert wadis of south Jordan together, bound by a passion for landscape, and informed by John’s splendid research in many archives. A special thanks must go to Jeremy Wilson who passed away in the closing months of the writing of this book. Jeremy possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things to do with T. E. Lawrence and his advice then, and loss now, was keenly felt. Over and above their previous mentions, Susan Daniels has been invaluable concerning the project’s drawn record, and Anna Gow equally concerning GARP Archive queries. I would also like to thank the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust, and the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol which supported me fully during the project. At the National Civil War Centre at Newark Museum, I am especially grateful to Kevin Winter, Glyn Hughes, and Michael Constantine, all of whom made it possible to realize GARP’s aspiration to create an archaeology-led exhibition which was entitled Shifting Sands: Lawrence of Arabia—Celebrity, Anonymity, Legacy. And then there is Neil Faulkner, my co-director of the Great Arab Revolt Project, with whom I had endlessly insightful and productive discussions about the project and the writing of both our books. Neil is that rare talent, combining energy, quick thinking, intellectual precision, decades of fieldwork experience, and an intuitive touch in academic writing. It was a privilege to share GARP with him. His book, Lawrence of Arabia’s War, published in 2016, is a masterful achievement, and I can only hope that my effort is the complement that we both so earnestly planned more than a decade ago. Nicholas J. Saunders November 2018

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CONTENTS

List of Maps and Figuresxi Notesxvii Mapsxix



1. Introduction

1



2. Into the Ghost-land

8



3. Archaeology, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt

12



4. The Hejaz Railway: Faith, Conflict, and Afterlife

32



5. Guerrillas and the ‘Sultan’s Mule’

59



6. Conflict on Jebel Sherra: Ma’an to the Blockhouse

86



7. ‘Belly of the Beast’: Abdullah’s Fort to Batn al-Ghoul

118



8. Forts, Stations, and Ancestors: Wadi Rutm to Tel Shahm

151



9. Concealment, Raiding, and Ambush: Tooth Hill to Hallat Ammar

184

10. Beyond the Railway: Conflict Landscapes of the Arab Revolt

215

Timeline of Major Events on the Hejaz Railway between Ma’an and Mudawwara, 1900–2018245 Gazetteer of Sites249 Notes269 Bibliography339 Index357

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LIST OF M APS A ND FIGUR ES

P

hotographs from the James  A.  Cannavino Library, Archives & Special Collections, Marist College, United States, are indicated here as Marist College; those from the Imperial War Museum, London, are indicated as IWM, and those from the Edwards Metcalf Collection of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, are indicated by Metcalf Collection. Every attempt has been made to identify the copyright holders of a small number of unidentified photographs, and the publisher will be pleased to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Maps 1 The Ottoman Empire in 1914 xix 2 The Hejaz Railway and its main stations in 1908 xx 3 The Hejaz Railway stations in the GARP study area, from Ma’an to Mudawwaraxxi 4 The main archaeological sites in the GARP study area, Ma’an to Mudawwaraxxii Figures 1.1 Local schoolchildren visit the excavations on the Hill of the Birds, Ma’an Station, in 2006 1.2 Lunch in the desert 2.1 Between earth and sky 2.2 Prehistory and history; found together, arranged for photo 3.1 First World War trench-art shell-case vase from the Western Front 3.2 Excavated and reconstructed trenches on the Somme 3.3 Lawrence’s ‘archaeological’ camera 3.4 Lawrence’s rifle 3.5 Emir Feisal 3.6 Sherif Hussein 3.7 The Hejaz stamps designed by Lawrence 3.8 The Mudawwara Bugle 3.9 Lawrence’s gold jambiya in All Souls College, Oxford 3.10 The Iron Chair rail-sleeper connector souvenir 3.11 The Hejaz Railway nameplate

4 5 9 10 14 16 21 22 23 23 24 25 26 28 29

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List of Maps and Figures 3.12 3.13 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6

xii

Lawrence in robes in Jerusalem, February 1918 29 The gilt-bronze Presentation Wreath from Saladin’s tomb in Damascus 30 Turkish soldiers using a heliograph at Huj, near Gaza City, in 1917 35 Locomotive at Medinah 37 Hejaz Railway Medal 39 Turkish labourer battalions building the Hejaz Railway 39 Hejaz Railway rail inscribed with a dedication to Sultan Abdulhamid II 40 Designed-in loophole against Bedouin attack in a pre-Arab Revolt station building42 Hejaz Railway Station roof tiles from various French manufacturers at Qatrana Station 43 Ma’an Station, reconstructed Ottoman buildings in 2011 46 A 12-arch Hejaz Railway bridge crossing a large wadi on the Jebel Sherra 47 Eighteenth-century Ottoman fort at Mudawwara in 2011 50 Re-use of Hejaz Railway steel sleepers as gate-posts and (just visible) fence-posts52 Mahatta Station, Amman, in 2012 56 Ma’an Station, Abdullah’s Palace/Meissner’s House in 2011 57 C Flight/X Flight pilots at Aqaba 61 Major Herbert Garland 62 Sheikh Auda abu Tayi 64 Hejaz Railway bridge drainage-hole cavities used to plant explosives in 65 T. E. Lawrence, David Hogarth, and Alan Dawnay in Cairo 67 Jafar al-Askari 68 Hallat Ammar ambush site at Km 587 69 Turkish soldiers in their trenches 73 Siddons’ Bridge Fort in 2010 74 Nuri al-Said, front left, and Bedouin 75 The Hejaz Armoured Car Battery at Guweira in April 1918, with Lt. Gilman fourth from left in front car 78 Captain Frederick Peake 79 The Imperial Camel Corps, 1918, passing a British officer and an armoured car 80 Aftermath: captured Turkish soldiers after their defeat at Mudawwara Station in August 1918 81 The destruction of the water-tower at Mudawwara Station in August 1918 82 The Battle of Ma’an Station, 17 April 1918, and station defences 87 Sketch-map of Ma’an Station by Lt. R. J. Divers on 18 February 1918 89 Ma’an Station: Turkish trenches on the Hill of the Birds 90 Ma’an Station: Bewley’s Bluff, karakoll defence of northern approaches 92 Ma’an Station, typical finds from the Hill of the Birds: artillery shell fragments including a driving-band, shrapnel balls, impacted bullets, and cartridge93 Ma’an Station: the Northern Redoubt B and front-line Trench V on Hill of the Birds 94

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List of Maps and Figures 6.7 Ma’an Station: survey and excavation of the earlier communication trench truncated by the construction of Northern Redoubt B on the Hill of the Birds 95 6.8 Ma’an Station: cardboard envelopes from Northern Redoubt B 96 6.9 Ma’an Station: Turkish military cemetery 99 6.10 Ma’an Station: metal-detector finds on Hill of the Birds 100 6.11 Ghadir al Haj Karakoll North 1 103 6.12 Ghadir al Haj Station after its destruction 105 6.13 Ghadir al Haj Station plan 106 6.14 Ghadir al Haj Station excavation in 2011 107 6.15 (a) Hejaz Railway wagons at Bir Shedia Station in 2006; (b) tourist train parked at Bir Shedia Station in 2011 110 6.16 Birds Nest Camp 111 6.17 Birds Nest Camp: (a) blue ring; (b) seal matrix 112 6.18 The Blockhouse 113 6.19 The Blockhouse, plan 115 6.20 The Blockhouse, showing Royal Jordanian Airforce graffiti 116 7.1 Makins’ Fort 119 7.2 Makins’ Fort plan 120 7.3 Makins’ Fort, Western Complex: Room 3, loopholed southeastern wall overlooking the wadi and railway bridge 121 7.4 Saleh’s Fort plan 122 7.5 Saleh’s Fort in 2011, with excavation of Saleh’s Camp in the distance 123 7.6 Saleh’s Camp kidney-shaped tent-ring 123 7.7 Saleh’s Camp razor 124 7.8 The Round Fort, showing the railway, ‘wolf-pits’, and recent bulldozer damage in 2015 125 7.9 The Round Fort plan 127 7.10 The Round Fort, dark-stone pavement and path 128 7.11 Aqabat Hejazia Station plan 129 7.12 Aqabat Hejazia Station, excavation of Building 2 130 7.13 Aqabat Hejazia Station: Turkish hand grenade 130 7.14 Fassu’ah Ridge Sector and Batn al-Ghoul 133 7.15 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort plan 134 7.16 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort courtyard-blockhouse plan 135 7.17 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort courtyard-blockhouse paths 137 7.18 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort Blockhouse I 138 7.19 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort bread-oven 139 7.20 Fassuah Ridge Sector mule-trough 140 7.21 Batn al-Ghoul, North Camp tent-ring excavation 144 7.22 Batn al-Ghoul, North Camp: two padlocks 145 7.23 Batn al-Ghoul: cigarette papers from ‘Stamboul’ (Istanbul) 146 7.24 Batn al-Ghoul Loop-trench, with Ras an Naqb escarpment in the distance149 8.1 Wadi Rutm looking south 152

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List of Maps and Figures 8.2 Wadi Rutm, sketch-map by Lt. Junor, 22 April 1918 153 8.3 Wadi Rutm Station Building 1, showing large gold-digging pit in the foreground154 8.4 Wadi Rutm Station Building 1, plan 154 8.5 Wadi Rutm Station Building 2, showing cistern 156 8.6 Wadi Rutm Station Building 3, showing impromptu loopholes 156 8.7 Wadi Rutm Turkish Army Camp plan 157 8.8 Wadi Rutm Turkish Army Camp: excavation of stone-ring with a gold-diggers hole in the centre 159 8.9 Wadi Rutm Army Camp machine-gun position excavation plan 160 8.10 Midway Fort 161 8.11 Wadi Rutm Fort looking north-west over Wadi Rutm 162 8.12 Wadi Rutm Fort: Jordanian Army smoke canisters 164 8.13 Wadi Rutm caravan stop finds 165 8.14 Wadi Rutm caravan stop, Bedouin overnight camp in 2007 166 8.15 Wadi Rutm ‘old caravan road’ 167 8.16 Siddons’ Ridge Camp in 2010 168 8.17 Siddons’ Ridge Camp, plan of southernmost firing position 169 8.18 Siddons’ Bridge Fort, looking south 171 8.19 Tel Shahm Fort and Camp North 173 8.20 Fractured rails found between Tel Shahm Fort and Tel Shahm Station 174 8.21 Tel Shahm Camp North, excavation of tent-ring 175 8.22 Tel Shahm Camp North, excavation plan of Tent-ring XXI 176 8.23 Tel Shahm Fort plan 177 8.24 Tel Shahm Fort, view west from machine-gun position, with Tooth Hill in far right distance 178 8.25 Tel Shahm Fort South, looking west, showing unexcavated central feature and two semi-circular firing positions 180 8.26 Tel Shahm Fort South plan 180 8.27 Tel Shahm Fort South excavation of interior trench 181 8.28 Tel Shahm Fort South, central feature 182 8.29 Tel Shahm Station on 19 April 1918 183 9.1 Tooth Hill Camp (East) 1918, taken by Lt. Gilman 185 9.2 Tooth Hill Camp (East), as rediscovered on 6 November, 2012 186 9.3 Tooth Hill Camp (East): finds 187 9.4 Tooth Hill Camp (East), Campfire 1: (a) metal debris from boxes broken to feed the fire; (b) excavation plan 188 9.5 Tooth Hill Camp (West), Morton tin lid dated ‘11–17’ (November 1917), with site in the foreground and Tooth Hill in profile in the distance 190 9.6 Ramleh Station in 1918, from the west 193 9.7 Ramleh Station in 2013 194 9.8 North Ramleh Fort 1 195 9.9 North Ramleh Fort 1 plan 196 9.10 Ramleh Camp, Meerschaum pipe bowl 197 9.11 South Ramleh Fort, with Turkish defensive wall visible on the summit 197 9.12 Mudawwara Station building in 2011 199

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List of Maps and Figures 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17 9.18 9.19 9.20 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 10.14 10.15 10.16 10.17

Mudawwara Station and its defended landscape, Junor’s sketch-map made on 21 April 1918 200 Mudawwara, Northern Redoubt, excavation overlooking the station with modern circular fields in the distance 201 Mudawwara, Central Redoubt loop-holed wall, looking west 203 Mudawwara Southern Redoubt 204 Mudawwara, Southern Redoubt, excavation of extramural northern ‘bunker’205 Hallat Ammar ambush site, shattered steel sleeper and Redoubt R1AS in distance209 Hallat Ammar ambush: (a) plan of attack; (b) distribution of armaments 210 Hallat Ammar ambush site, surveying the post-ambush blockhouse 212 Wuheida East, Redoubt A, excavation of sunken structure II 220 Bedouin occupying a Turkish redoubt, likely at Wuheida East, 1918 221 Wuheida East, Redoubt A, sunken structure II plan 221 Feisal, Lowell Thomas, Auda, Nuri al Said, and Maulud Mukhlis standing on the front-line trench of Wuheida East looking at the Northern Army camp on the slopes of Wuheida West in April 1918 224 Wuheida West, view of Arab tent positions 225 Wuheida West, plan of Camp D 226 Wuheida West, tobacco/snuff-tin lid made by Edwards, Ringer & Bigg company, Bristol 227 Discussing photographs of Disi Advanced Landing Ground at Mudawwara in 2013 230 Disi (Decie) Advanced Landing Ground, showing distinctive topography and canvas hangars 230 Disi site of Advanced Landing Ground in 2013 231 Lt. Junor and his biplane on the Disi mudflats, April 1918 231 Rock-carved graffiti at Disi Advanced Landing Ground: random doodle or simple front-view of a biplane? 232 Lawrence (face down, crouching immediately to Feisal’s left) 234 Middle Palaeolithic hand-axe found in a Turkish campsite 236 The Shifting Sands exhibition at Newark, 2016–18 240 David Lean’s Aqaba site, near Almería in southern Spain in 2018 242 ‘The Peace to end all Peace’, Versailles July 1919 243

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NOTES

W

riting a book which confronts the transcription of foreign-language names as well as inevitably using some technical archaeological terms is a fine-line balancing act. I have attempted to steer a middle course, choosing what appears the most frequent and accessible spelling of Turkish names and have always used the same version, such as Sultan Abdulhamid II (not Abdülhamit), and Djemal Pasha (not Cemal). Equally challenging has been the issue of place-names, where Arabic toponyms, general British transcriptions of 1916–18, Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force identifiers, and names given by T. E. Lawrence can all be intermixed. My approach here has been to simplify as much as possible, using today’s most frequent English transcription with variants given as required. So, for example, Wadi Rutm (Wadi Rethm to the British in 1916–18), and our GARP ­designation Siddons’ Bridge Fort which is ‘P’ in an RAF sketch-map, and ‘Plain Post’ to T. E. Lawrence. In addition, sites discovered and investigated by GARP for which no other identifier is traceable have been named by us, so, for example, Makins’ Fort, Fassu’ah Ridge Sector, Tooth Hill Camp East. All sites have unique site numbers. I have used Constantinople when dealing with the First World War/Arab Revolt period, and Istanbul on a few occasions when referring to the post-1920 period. Given the references to money, particularly concerning the building of the Hejaz Railway, various sources give different amounts. It is helpful to know, nevertheless, that in 1914 one British pound (sterling) was equivalent to about US$3, one Ottoman/Turkish pound was worth 50 US cents, and a German mark about 25 US cents. The Ottoman/ Turkish pound is often denoted as TL, and was divided into 100 ‘kuruş’ (known to Europeans as piastres). One TL was worth about 0.9 of £1.

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M APS Dardanelles

Bosphorus

RUSSIAN

Constantinople

Ca

Hama Homs Eu

Jerusalem

Tehran

M ts .

Basra

Nefud

Kuwait

Hail

Najd

lf

Mts

Riyadh

Gu

Medina

n

jaz

ia rs Pe

He .

ANGLO EGYPTIAN SUDAN

Kerma

PERSIA

Kut al-Amara

Wejh

4

os

Baghdad

Jauf

Yenbo

Caspian Sea

2

Beersheba Ma’an

3

Wadi Halfa

s.

Mosul

Damascus

EGYPT

Mt

gr

Aqaba

us

Za

Port Said Cairo Ismailia

as

Nisibin

Tigris s te ra ph

Tripoli Beirut

Arish Gaza

Western Desert

Urfa Aleppo

Alexandretta

Alexandria

uc

TURKEY

1

Mediterranean Sea

Jeddah

ARABIA

Mecca

Taif

Muscat

Port Sudan

N il

Red Sea

e

N

Black Sea

Ankara

Smyrna

EMPIRE

Qunfidhah

OMAN

Asir

Khartoum

Mts.

ERITREA

Sana’a

Hodeidah

YEMEN Arabian Sea

ABYSSINIA

Aden

Blu e

FRENCH SOMALILAND

SOMALILAND

0

500km

0

300mi

Railways Ottoman Empire 1914 National borders

1 3

Trans-Anatolian Railway Hejaz Railway

2 Berlin-Baghdad Railway 4 Sudan Military Railway

xix

Map 1 The Ottoman Empire in 1914

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Maps Map 2

N

Mediterranean Sea

The Hejaz Railway and its main stations in 1908

Damascus Deraa Jerusalem

Gaza

Amman Qatrana

Beersheba

Suez

ARABIA

Uneiza Ma’an Batn al-Ghoul

Aqaba

Mudawwara Dhat al-Haj Jauf Tabuk

Hej az

Nefud

Muazzam

Mts .

Re d Sea

Wejh

Medain Salah Al Ula

Towaira Abu Na’am

Yenbo

Railway National borders

xx

Medina 0 0

200km 100mi

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Maps

N

to Damascus

The Hejaz Railway stations in the GARP study area, from Ma’an to Mudawwara

Ma’an Ghadir al Haj

Bir Shedia

Aqabat Hejazia Batn al-Ghoul Wadi Rutm

Tel Shahm

Ramleh

Mudawwara

to Medina Land above 900m Railway

Hallat Ammar 40km

0

Railway station 0

Map 3

20mi

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Maps

Map 4 The main archaeological sites in the GARP study area, Ma’an to Mudawwara

to Damascus

Jebel Semnah

N

Ma’an

Wuheida Ghadir al Haj North Karakoll 1

Ghadir al Haj

Bir Shedia

Stein Camps Birds Nest Camp Blockhouse Abdullah’s Fort Makins’ Fort Saleh’s Fort and Camp The Round Fort

Aqaba Hejazia

Fassu’ah Sector Disi RFC Airstrip

Batn al-Ghoul Wadi Rutm

Siddon’s Ridge Camp Siddon’s Bridge Fort Tooth Hill Camps Tel Shahm Fort

Tel Shahm

Tel Shahm Fort South North Ramleh Fort 1

Ramleh Ramleh South Fort Mudawwara Redoubts

1820

Hallat Ammar ambush

Mudawwara

to Medina

Hallat Ammar

xxii

40km

0

Land above 900 m

Site

Railway

Railway station 0

20mi

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1

Introduction

T

he hejaz railway snakes across the deserts and wadis of southern Jordan from the medieval town of Ma’an to the Bedouin settlement of Mudawwara near the border with Saudi Arabia. This 113km stretch of railroad is a microcosm of the extraordinary 1,320km construction built for Sultan Abdulhamid II from Damascus to Medina between 1900 and 1908. It was also the Great Arab Revolt Project’s (GARP) main study area, some 8.5 per cent of the total route (Maps 2 and 3), but with a geographical diversity as chal­len­ ging as it was informative of the relationship between landscape and railway, and between industrial war and traditional Bedouin raiding that would contribute to modern guerrilla warfare between 1916 and 1918. Squeezed into this short length of railway were nine stations, at least 118 bridges, and innumerable culverts, many of which became targets for the Arabs and their British allies from June 1917 onwards, when the Arab Revolt moved out of Arabia, north toward Damascus. The conflict archaeology of this area took nine years to investigate, but was mostly produced in less than 16 months of fighting, between August 1917 and November 1918. GARP was an interdisciplinary study of forgotten war places—the first archaeologicalanthropological investigation of a modern guerrilla landscape whose physical traces belonged to the First World War and the Arab Revolt, but also to the long tail of twentiethand twenty-first-century guerrilla warfare. It was an archaeology which had not been attempted before, and which took place against the background of the American-led Coalition which was occupying Iraq—a nation itself created in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, in which the Arab Revolt had played such a prominent role. The archaeology of the Arab Revolt sites reflects the apparent randomness of the surprise attacks launched on the railway by the Arabs and British. While some sites were created by such raids, more often they were a response to the threat of them. This was an investigation of what asymmetrical warfare looked like on the ground—the archaeology of a desert insurgency and of Ottoman Turkish counter-insurgency measures. Given these conditions, the most effective way of presenting the results here is to describe sites geographically, from Ma’an in the north to Mudawwara in the south, rather than adopt a chronological approach which would jump back and forth from one location to another according to patchy historical records of sporadic and opportunistic attacks on the railway. In this way, the aim is to give a coherent account of a hitherto untold story woven from a confusing and ambiguous archaeological record. There is historical reason­ ing too, as the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca also moves north to south through this area, today by coach and car, briefly before on the railway, and before that by camel, horse, and walking, back into medieval times. It is this route too that was taken by Western travellers

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Desert Insurgency before the twentieth century, and those who rode the railway in the years before the First World War.

The Great Arab Revolt Project Our original aim had been to investigate the abandoned and ruinous Hejaz Railway stations from Ma’an to Mudawwara. We calculated about three years for survey and limited excavation of these iconic remains of the Arab Revolt. But, this plan was quickly overtaken by events, and the realization that the railway was flanked by a vast hinterland militarized by the Turks, and about which there was but a ghost of a mention in the historical records. Many of the sites we would discover and investigate are not mentioned at all, and some were unknown to or ignored by the Arabs and the British. Those which are mentioned are done so fleetingly, and with impromptu and varied names that mostly gave few if any clues as to their geographical locations. This is hardly surprising when it is realized that in general the southern parts of the Hejaz Railway were ‘so ill known to us before the war that we could not even enumerate its stations south of el-Ala. . . . [and that from 1917] our chief solicitude has been to discover where the Hejaz Railway from Maan to Medina should be placed on the map.’1 Many sites belonged to the railway-building era, others to the Revolt itself, and some to both. And lying on top of these century-old layers of construction and conflict were others which spoke of more recent activities in the years after 1918. We considered that the hitherto unexplored landscape likely contained parts of the jigsaw of a conflict zone whose extent and character had been largely forgotten or overlooked for almost a century. As a result, GARP’s initial strategy was reconfigured, and divided between investigating the well-known stations as originally planned, and searching for other sites belonging to the Turkish counter-insurgency strategy. It is worth stating that the existence of most of these sites was unknown to archaeology before 2006, and came almost as much as a surprise to us as to our Jordanian colleagues, whose attention had always been focused on their nation’s extraordinary heritage from prehistory and classical antiquity. Virtually from the beginning, we regarded the whole study area as a contested landscape, composed of places which would not have been there without conflict, and, crucially, regardless of whether or not a particular site had seen actual fighting. The guiding aim was to investigate the footprint of conflict, not just the remains of battle. GARP’s agenda was challenging and ambitious, but, we believed, necessarily so. The aim was to carry out the first major research project along the interdisciplinary lines of the sub-discipline of modern conflict archaeology, adjusting our fieldwork strategy in light of observations and ideas. We would be exploring the social and cultural dimensions of the Arab Revolt of 1916–18 as well as the military history of events. We would investigate as many aspects as possible of the Hejaz Railway’s origins, defence, and destruction, its leg­ acies, and its ever-diminishing physical remains, rather than follow the more limited aims of traditional battlefield archaeology.2 The challenge was such that early on we decided to publish two separate books—one by my co-director Neil Faulkner on the military history and T. E. Lawrence, the other on the archaeology and anthropology by myself. While Neil’s book was published in 2016 titled Lawrence of Arabia’s War by Yale University Press, both books were conceived as a complementary pair. An integral part of our approach was to incorporate anthropology, and specifically the anthropology of material culture, whose focus is on the nature of objects and landscapes

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Introduction and the stories they tell over time. This was particulary appropriate in a landscape composed of various layers superimposed upon, and interleaving with each other, and whose objects were the debris of industrialized war preserved by desert conditions, from spent cartridges to rusty food tins, shrapnel to cigarette papers. While such items would widely be seen as war junk, for us they were as valuable as stone tools and pottery are for archaeologists of the prehistoric or Roman periods, but with the added value of more historical evidence available for their interpretation. All archaeology is to a degree about rubbish, of what is left behind, lost, or abandoned, yet ancient trash is traditionally more valued than modern. Nevertheless, recent debris carries as many stories and insights as older examples, and sometimes more. With the initial aims defined, albeit open to constant reconfiguration, the issue of how to organize and carry out the project had to be faced. We decided on a volunteer model rather than the more usual grant application route for several reasons. First, as an archaeological-anthropological investigation of the First World War and the Arab Revolt, previous experience had shown that there was little likelihood of attracting major or indeed any funding for this kind of research. This turned to our advantage when the nature of the project was refocused during our first fieldwork in 2006. A volunteer model saw a team of professional archaeologists and experienced diggers funded by paying volunteers who in turn were trained in archaeological procedures. Many returned year after year, and became expert diggers who then trained newcomers. One of the delights of the project was the rich interplay between volunteers and the core team, and the transition of the former to the latter. On average, the whole team numbered around thirty each year, with about twenty volunteers supporting a core group of ten. This approach also had the benefit usually enjoyed only by very large grant-funded projects, of repeated visits over many years for­ging close personal and professional relationships with Jordanian colleagues and the Bedouin. As the anthropologist Paul Stoller observed, anthropology ‘is a slow science based not so much on sophisticated analytical frameworks but more on the quality and depth of the social rela­ tionships that we have developed over long stretches of time. . . . [and that] foregrounds conversation in face-to-face encounters’.3 For GARP, from the beginning, archaeology and anthropology would work together. One consequence of our approach was that it enabled us to gain an intimate under­ standing of a cultural landscape which was the product of thousands of years of repeated use by different cultures, religions, and economic and military imperatives—each resulting in an archaeological layer which represented a distinctive social engagement with place. Recognizing, lifting, and understanding these layers revealed the long ancestry of some sites, as well as of the Arab Revolt, and of the time elapsed between 1918 and today. The present and the past dance together, often to unfamiliar rhythms. Excavating First World War Turkish trenches at Ma’an Station, for example, resonated strongly with the times, bringing different responses from the Jordanian Army, Ma’an’s security services, local ­people, and the railway authorities (Figure 1.1). Sometimes these were affected by the activities of Coalition forces in Baghdad, beyond Jordan’s eastern border. There was little doubt that doing conflict archaeology in a region still dominated by war was an anthropological endeavour. The methods adopted by the project were standard in many ways and innovative in ­others, reflecting the decades of experience in archaeological and anthropological research of the GARP team. The usual preparation of familiarization with the main sources on the

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Desert Insurgency Figure 1.1 Local schoolchildren visit the excavations on the Hill of the Birds, Ma’an Station, in 2006 (© author)

construction and defence of the railway was hampered by the inaccessibility of Turkish archives in Istanbul and Ankara, and the likely wartime destruction of archives held in Damascus.4 In one sense therefore, archaeology had a voice where these archives were silent. By contrast, in the United Kingdom, The National Archives (TNA) and the Imperial War Museum (IWM) provided significant research materials, as did the Bayerisches Hauptstaatarchiv (Bavarian State Archive) in Munich.5 Apart from this, there were m ­ ilitary history sources, research into documentary and photographic archives and (increasingly) in private collections spread around the world. There was a trove of historical and bio­ graphical knowledge concerning T. E. Lawrence, as well as his own Seven Pillars of Wisdom first published in 1922, anthropological knowledge of the Bedouin, and a unique archive of modern aerial photographs of Jordan and the region.6 In addition, there was the wealth of  experience of our Jordanian colleagues from al-Hussein bin Talal University and the Department of Antiquities at Ma’an, and the unique insights of the Bedouin we met in the field. Fieldwork strategy often developed organically, responding where possible to daily events, rather than being tied to a funding agency’s requirements. This gave considerable freedom to adapt and re-focus investigations, albeit within the pre-arranged schedule of work agreed for each year. Random encounters often led to stories about places, and opportunities to visit sites which in turn became targets for excavation. Standard daily practice involved extensive landscape walking with GPS, survey, targeted excavation of significant sites, photography, and exploratory and systematic metal detecting. As the project developed, the improving quality of satellite imagery made Google Earth an increasingly valuable tool, especially when used in conjunction with archive images and aerial photographs. At that time, in our study area, there was no access to drones, or sophisticated landscape analysis produced by LiDAR7 and digital terrain models (DTMs).

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Introduction Figure 1.2 Lunch in the desert (© John Winterburn)

Each day, accompanied by a Department of Antiquities representative, several teams would be involved with excavating sites, and a smaller team would undertake landscape walking either in the adjacent area, acting upon information received, or speculatively (Figure 1.2). The 113km of the railway route from Ma’an to Mudawwara was walked, as were many other areas, an undertaking which contributed to a close understanding of the landscape, discovered many new sites (of various ages), and allowed for an assessment of those sites associated with the Arab Revolt as candidates for more detailed investigation. When the opportunity arose, interviews with elders from Arab villages and Bedouin leaders were conducted through our Jordanian colleagues. These caffeine-heavy sessions yielded ethno­ graphic information on different views of the Arab Revolt, a diversity of attitudes towards T. E. Lawrence, clues about the location of sites, permission to investigate certain areas, and sometimes impromptu visits to far earlier sites unknown to anyone it seemed beyond the Bedouin themselves. Such storytelling of course was also a version of the past, whose value lay as much in what was remembered and how, as in its historical accuracy. The past was always present in such sessions, waiting behind a hill, or secreted in a turn of phrase. At the end of one particularly friendly and fruitful interview high up on an old Turkish redoubt, our interviewee’s smile dropped when he said ‘It’s all your fault’. When we looked nonplussed, he added ‘Sykes Picot! Because of this I cannot now visit the rest of my family over there’—he pointed towards the Saudi border. It was evident that for him the post-war carve-up of the Middle East and betrayal of the Arabs enshrined in the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was a living (and insulting) reality, not dead history.8 The challenge was greater still, as time did not begin in 1916 nor stop in 1918. Despite the often remote desert locations in which we worked, we were clearly not going to find a wonderfully preserved pristine conflict landscape last walked by Lawrence! Since the end

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Desert Insurgency of the First World War, sites in the region have changed, sometimes subtly, at other times dramatically, due to Jordan’s economic development, population pressure, regional devel­ opments, and the activities of the ever-present Bedouin whose ancestral lands these were and remain. In our attempts to peel away these accumulated layers, we encountered evidence from deep prehistory to medieval times, the more recent historical (Ottoman) era, the First World War/Arab Revolt, post-1918 quarrying and robbing, changes to the railway during the 1960s and 1970s, and more recent road and water-pipeline construction. In other words, many kinds of archaeology were present: prehistoric, classical antiquity, medieval Byzantine, Islamic, historical, industrial, modern conflict, and the contemporary. By virtue of exploring the Arab Revolt landscape of the recent past we ventured into archaeologically unknown areas and encountered significant sites of all periods. There was also the important issue that our research concerned the Ottoman Empire, whose archaeology attracted as little interest until recently as did that of modern conflict. The richness of Jordan’s prehistory and classical antiquity dominated and still dominates archaeological research, and Ottoman presence has often been seen as inherently less valuable and significant, as standing in the way of more important cultural levels that lie beneath, and this despite its potential in an increasingly interdisciplinary and globalized world.9 GARP’s focus on 1916–18 was a bringing together of several new and underacknowledged kinds of archaeology. The situation was further complicated by the official status of modern archaeological remains, where anything after ad 1750 was not protected by the stringent heritage laws which applied to earlier periods.10 If there was no legal sanction against taking or despoiling the remains of conflict, then it was a free for all. Even the iconic status of the Hejaz Railway didn’t protect its remains in our area. The search for gold especially, which had once been just a case of digging holes, had taken a new turn, a quicker and more complete devastation of a site in a few minutes with a bulldozer. This issue was entwined with the status of rubbish mentioned above. While for us the debris of war was the stuff of archae­ology, for others it was virtually invisible as modern junk. The idea that we were searching for such items was often incomprehensible, and so the truth had to be that we were digging for ‘Turkish gold’, and doubtless tapping into the widespread belief (sometimes realized) that the desert con­ tains buried gold of the ancients. Such attitudes were probably reinforced by true stories of the large amounts of gold paid to the Bedouin by the British and the Turks to buy their compliance during the Revolt. All this meant that much of our research had to be ‘preservation by record’, where the only chance for recording and understanding sites was by excavation, rather than leave them to almost certain oblivion. Already in 2006, it was clear that any future attempts to rebuild and operate the railway south of Ma’an would need to start from scratch as there would be virtually nothing left of the original 1900–8 construction, or much from an abandoned 1960s refurbishment project. Preservation by record for us meant ground level survey and excavation rather than today’s sophisticated high-resolution recording tech­ niques as mentioned above, though archive and aerial photographs often went a long way to offset this. Criticisms of preservation by record often focus on the accumulation of data for future analysis which may never happen. This was less of an issue for us as we interpreted sites as we went, each year bringing further insight and understanding to our investigations, and allowing new sites to be integrated into the wider analysis of the landscape. It was also

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Introduction the case that we were not confronted with the level of destruction and threat that was soon to become such a feature of Islamic State’s rampage of destruction across Syria and Iraq.11 A decade of research would suggest that our understanding of this sector of the railway landscape was as close to that of the Turks who built and then defended it in the early years of the twentieth century as it was to that of the Arabs and British who destroyed it between 1917 and 1918. T. E. Lawrence and his British army comrades spent less than 18 months in this area, and in fact often just a handful of days at a time of intense and dangerous actions. We had no such constraints and our quest to document and understand the entirety of the landscape uncovered ‘hidden’ places that Lawrence in all likelihood knew little or nothing about. These realities informed our investigations, and acknowledged that much of what we sought had likely disappeared during the past 100 years, and especially since the early 1960s. Like all archaeologists, we were looking at an incomplete record of multi-period and multi-use sites whose characteristics told different and overlapping stories. The landscape, in short, was a palimpsest, and at no time between 1900 and 1918 was it devoid of conflict. The archaeological challenge was to investigate the diversity of sites along the railway, identify and characterize the differences between construction-era and Arab Revolt sites, and to explore the conflict-zone hinterland and document and interpret the sites it contained.

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2

Into the Ghost-land

This landscape possessed, to the military attaché Colonel Maunsell, ‘a  ­fascination of scenery . . . unlike any other part of the world’. At once a nightmare and a dreamland, it was wreathed in ‘an atmosphere of unreality’. (satia 2008: 91)

A

s the late afternoon sun hits the western hills, the temperature drops, the light fades, and dusk arrives on the suddenly cold desert air. Shadows appear like djinn— spirit beings—emerging to haunt the derelict railway embankment and its ruinous buildings (Figure 2.1). Or so it seems in this enchanted land, caught betwixt-and-between, at the margins of the desert and the sown. Today, it appears that the places of the Arab Revolt exist in a numinous landscape, resisting incorporation into the material world.1 All archaeology is time travel, yet the more recent the events being investigated the more likely we are to encounter traces which appear within touching distance of the familiar, yet forever locked in an alien past. We, like Lawrence, were archaeologists, drawn to this region, as he was, to investigate the remnants of a war that changed the Middle East. Yet these were two very different conflicts, separated by almost a thousand years. Where he had searched out the remains of the Crusaders’ castles built against Muslims in the twelfth century for his studies at Oxford University, we were searching for more ephemeral traces of the First World War in the wadis and hills of southern Jordan. These were vestiges of the Arab Revolt of 1916–18, and Lawrence himself had helped create them. No plan survives first contact with reality. As our rickety bus pulled off the desert highway in November 2006, the remains of a shattered railway station loomed before us. It was a romance of ruins, set in a majestic wadi bounded by towering hills whose feet were windwhipped multi-coloured sand dunes—a sweeping landscape which would not have been out of place in David Lean’s 1962 Hollywood epic Lawrence of Arabia. As we left the bus, Neil corralled the eager group of volunteers and professionals and herded them towards what remained of the station buildings, while David Thorpe our field director and myself opted to go walkabout. As we followed the railway’s stony embankment north of the station known as Wadi Rutm (the track having long since disappeared), a low flat hill came into view, and we decided to take a look. Sometimes, a few seconds can become years, and so it was here. As we clambered to the top the view that met our eyes was a revelation. Laid out before us was a campsite, dominated by several rows of stone-lined tent-rings, and at its western edge,

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Into the Ghost-l and

Figure 2.1

overlooking the wadi, some roughly built stone structures which could have been observation Between earth and sky posts or possibly machine-gun positions. (© author) In these moments, it became obvious to both of us, and afterwards to Neil as well, that unless this was a solitary discovery, it represented an unknown landscape beyond the station, extending out into the desert in who knew which directions? How many of these campsites might there be? Where should we look for them? What was their purpose and who manned them, when, and for how long? What was their relationship with the larger campsites which we knew existed and that belonged to the labourers who built the railway? What other kinds of sites might there be out in the desert? This was first contact with a landscape which was a currently uncalibrated materialization of time.2 We stood in the centre of the campsite seeing with new eyes. What had appeared less than an hour before almost an imaginary film set, had become a vast landscape which might be hiding an unknown number of sites associated with the Turkish defence of the railway, but which, apart from passing mentions in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, were completely unknown, except of course to the Bedouin. I was reminded of a quote

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Desert Insurgency from Leslie Silko, a writer from the Native American Pueblo of Laguna, New Mexico, who memorably wrote, ‘ there are so many imposing geological elements . . . you cannot live in that land without asking or looking at or noticing a boulder or rock. And there’s always a story.’3 How many stories there were here in southern Jordan soon began to unfold. It was at this point that our three-year investigation of ruined railway stations became a quite different proposition, one dominated less by looking at buildings, than by exploring and investigating a landscape whose extent was unknown, and whose components too were a mystery. Although we could not have known it at the time, there was also an early indication of the intriguing challenges we would face when the two of us took a cursory look at some of the tent-rings. Inside one was a cluster of artefacts. A rusty padlock and two broken spoons lay next to a millennia-old prehistoric stone tool, and nearby a star-and-crescent Turkish uniform button. A bit further away was a Mauser cartridge (Figure 2.2). What were they doing together inside the tent-ring? Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps not. This question would be answered over the course of the project, which leapt from three years to four, then five, and ultimately saw us return eight times. There is an enchantment of the senses in finding traces of the world’s first global industrialized conflict alongside those of deep prehistory, churned together it seems by the advent of modern guerrilla warfare, where time is built into the relationship between metal and rust.4 Warfare is first about killing rather than spectral reflections, but sometimes the two collide. As the Turkish officer Rafael de Nogales recalled on the battlefield after the Second Battle of Gaza (17–19 April 1917), the night was ‘broken only by the wind rustling through dry shrubs, the weird howl of jackals, and the cries of the wounded which, vibrating mysteriously from rock to rock to die out in sighs, sent a shudder through us . . . and made us feel as if only ourselves and the Angel of Death were riding across those dark Wadis’.5 Figure 2.2 Prehistory and history; found together, arranged for photo (© author)

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Into the Ghost-l and The sand itself has been touched, blown, and sifted by history, from Nabatean spice traders to Hajj pilgrims, from Ottoman Turkish troops to the Bedouin. Each of these experienced the desert in their own way, and like others in distant parts of the world, brought their own magical thinking to bear on their surroundings.6 Byzantine villagers had feared the Devil, Hajj pilgrims feared the djinn, Turkish soldiers feared the Bedouin, and all were haunted by the desert’s aura of uncanniness. Such places encourage reflection on the present and the past, of time folding one era into another, of social worlds conjured from grains of sand, to borrow from William Blake. The empty desert is anything but, and the ruins of the Arab Revolt emerge from it as a unique heritage of the modern world.

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3

Archaeology, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt

W

ar changes everything. Ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour are the first victims, along with truth, followed by acceleration of the scale and sophistication in the technologies of killing and healing, and the changing relationship between people and the land. Human beings too are forever altered—psychologically, morally, and in their physical relationship with the world through maiming, loss, survival, or death. And then there is the long tail of conflict, the difficult, painful, and unpredictable consequences that can endure far longer than war itself. It is the material traces of all these issues which archaeologists and anthropologists are concerned with. Wars make the archaeology of conflict, but it is clear that what takes place on a battlefield is but one part of a larger picture. Conflict creates as well as destroys. It seeps into our minds, our societies, and our cultures in unforeseen (as well as obvious) ways. Its effects can lay dormant for generations then explode into life, ignited by changing political, economic, or religious circumstances in the world. These are the components of all wars throughout history, but modern conflicts—from the twentieth century onwards—are different. They are not simply ancient wars writ large. All conflicts produce dramatic shifts in human behaviour which can leave vivid archaeological traces, but it is the material and psychological intensity of industrialized conflict which embodies the extremes of our behaviours, civilian and military, and which we struggle to comprehend and control.1 Archaeology and conflict have an enduring and ambiguous relationship as both create in the very act of destroying. War is the transformation of matter through destruction, and the character of modern technological warfare is such that it creates and destroys more than any previous kind of conflict.2 Archaeology, too, destroys the places it excavates, yet with the aim of preserving, interpreting, and disseminating the evidence. Both activities create: conflict produces new landscapes, new attitudes, and new behaviours, while archaeology casts new light on the understanding of our many pasts, and thereby forges new engagements with the reshaped worlds it has created. One of these was Arabia, where the First World War opened the doors to a land previously unknown to non-Muslims. David Hogarth, archaeologist, intelligence officer, director of the Arab Bureau, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and mentor of Lawrence captured the spirit of this in his address to the Royal Geographical Society in March 1920: Four years of world-wide destruction do not suggest constructive activity, even in the domain of science. Nevertheless it is a fact that during the late war; science, although it

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt placed its resources at the service of destruction, has achieved, on several lines, much constructive progress . . . Up to 1914 our best knowledge of the peninsula of Arabia was every where sketchy, and of more than half its great area larger than peninsular India it scarcely amounted to anything worth mention. (Hogarth 1920: 422)

Every war is unique and complex, and the more complex a conflict the more robust should be its investigation. The archaeology of modern conflict must draw on a range of disciplines without overly privileging any. In other words, it should be a hybrid, where history, geography, and cultural heritage add insights to archaeology, anthropology, and a host of other specialisms. Diversity is strength not weakness, creating a powerful framework which incorporates many different kinds of evidence, and yields new analysis and understanding. Wars make their own distinctive kinds of archaeology. It was the realization in the late 1990s that modern conflict demanded more than just battlefield digging and survey that led to the anthropology of material culture being introduced into a subject hitherto dominated by military history. Battlefield Archaeology, as such activities were then called, lacked any theoretical framework or nuance, often possessed little interest in cultural issues, and was obsessed by individual battles not conflict. Focused mainly on pre-twentieth-century wars, it sought to confirm or deny historical accounts, and was often little more than a handmaiden to military history. Perhaps inevitably, it was largely ignored by professional military historians and archaeologists as peripheral and superficial, carried out too often by unqualified amateurs who sometimes appeared little more than looters.3 Such criticisms were unfair in many ways, yet with remarkably few exceptions, notably the investigation of the site of the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn by Richard Fox and Douglas Scott,4 such activities carried little intellectual heft, and could not meet the challenge of investigating complex modern wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A new kind of archaeology was needed.

The First World War as the Archaeology of Modern Conflict Modern Conflict Archaeology was the response, emerging as an interdisciplinary approach inspired by a powerful combination of archaeology and anthropology, military, cultural, and political history, sociology, cultural geography, literature, art, museums, environmental science, cultural heritage, and tourism studies. It focuses in particular on studies of the human body and its experience of war, and the nature of material culture and landscape. An early catalyst for this new approach was the reappraisal of ‘war things’—the artefacts of conflict—which took advantage of the insights gained by anthropologists of material culture from the mid-1990s.5 This revolution in the way in which the material world was understood saw objects as promiscuous, and, once made, able to endure in the world far longer than their makers. The journeys objects make, the meanings they acquire (then shed), and the roles they play in the lives of those with whom they collide are unpredictable, yet often intensely personal. Whatever their original purpose, their sensual, emotional, psychological, political, practical, and symbolic afterlives could be endlessly reshaped and re-valued according to new and previously unimaginable connections.6 Nowhere was this more intense than in objects created by conflict. All are artefacts, from a bullet to a tank, from a souvenir fragment of battlefield debris to an entire devastated

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Desert Insurgency

Figure 3.1 First World War trench-art shell-case vase from the Western Front (© author)

landscape and a maimed human body. And all are replete with volatile meanings, disturbing, tragic, vibrant, or uplifting. They occupy a dynamic point of interplay between animate and inanimate worlds, inviting us to consider the constantly shifting interactions between people and the material worlds they make.7 For archaeologists of modern war, such objects link the living and the dead in an everchanging relationship between past and present. These ideas began shaping what a new archaeology of modern conflict might look like. The objects for testing and refining these ideas belonged to a then-obscure category of items called ‘trench art’, and which was virtually unknown outside the world of collectors of military memorabilia (Figure 3.1). These are objects made by soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians, from war debris, or any other material, as long as makers and objects are associated in time and/or space with armed conflict or its consequences.8 In this sense, it was art which captured and transformed the spirit of industrialized war junk. The name came from the First World War, though it was soon realized to be a universal concept with roots in antiquity.9 From the two world wars to Korea, Vietnam, and the Bosnian conflict (1992–5), and from AK47 armchairs of Mozambique’s civil war (1976–92) to the metallic ‘roses’ forged from Hamas rockets fired into Israel more recently, trench art was a gateway, offering new avenues for exploring and understanding conflict.10 Unlike traditional war art, such as paintings, drawings, sculptures, and memorials, most trench art incorporated the agents of death, mutilation, and destruction directly—art not just from, but of the battlefield.11 As such, its tactile qualities had memory-evoking power.12 A startling First World War example illustrates the point. Not long after the conflict began, the Grand Duchess of Baden presented wounded German soldiers with the bullets taken from their bodies and which had been set in silver mountings. Almost immediately afterwards, similar items were being made commercially by German jewellers, so that anyone could buy and wear one for any reason. Soldiers’ life and death experiences were embodied in previously lethal objects which had been transformed into adornments for the body which, either as talismans, for patriotism, or simply for show, could remake the identity of the wearer.13 So powerful were these items that they could not be contained—they reached out to the war zone itself, a landscape littered with debris—snaring desperate men in dangerous and unbearably poignant situations. In 1916, French infantrymen crouched in the trenches at Verdun: Some continued months’-old work on delicately engraved bangles; bracelets for a wife made from the copper driving band of a shell; a ring for a fiancée made from the aluminium of its fuse-cap, perhaps inset with the button off a German tunic; or a pen-cap for a child, made out of a spent rifle cartridge . . . his trinkets were capable of indefinite elaboration, often terminated only by a sniper’s bullet. (Horne 1981: 67)

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt The social lives of these objects inspired a similar approach to the study of the war landscapes whence they had come. The Western Front, for example, ceased to be seen as just a hellish battlefield, but was regarded also as an industrialized slaughter house, a vast tomb for ‘The Missing’, a landscape of memorialization, a destination for bereaved inter-war pilgrims, a location for archaeological research, a place for cultural heritage, and an economic resource for tourism. Each battlefield was a microcosm of the war and its aftermath, with different realities experienced by those who had journeyed there.14 Death and destruction created new landscapes infused with new meanings, and their human cost was described day by day, sometimes hour by hour, in memoirs and regimental war diaries.15 As the French infantryman Louis Barthas recalled: ‘On both sides of the trench, uncovered by earth slides, appeared skulls, feet, leg bones, skeletal hands, all mixed with rags, shredded packs, and other shapeless debris.’16 And after an attack, the men who survived emerged into a different world where sight, smell, sound, and touch had been realigned by the assault on their senses and their near-death experiences.17 One soldier captured this change, writing that he had to acquire: an expert knowledge of all the strange sounds and smells of warfare, ignorance of which may mean death . . . My hearing was attuned to every kind of explosion . . . My nostrils were quick to detect a whiff of gas or to diagnose the menace of a corpse disinterred at an interval of months. (Paterson 1997: 339)

As the Yale historian Jay Winter memorably commented, these places were an ‘otherworldly landscape, [where] the bizarre mixture of putrefaction and ammunition, the presence of the dead among the living, literally holding up trench walls from Ypres to Verdun, suggested that the demonic and satanic realms were indeed here on earth’ (Figure 3.2).18 These same places, a century later, became the most exhaustively documented, ­personalized, and spiritualized areas ever to be subject to archaeological investigation. Even during the war, archaeological discoveries were made, as was the case with Captain Francis Buckley of the Northumberland Fusiliers, who collected Palaeolithic hand-axes from freshly-dug trenches on the Somme in 1918,19 and Ernest Gardner, curator of war finds in the impromptu ‘Salonika Museum’ in Thessaloniki in 1916–17.20 Such activities were to become a feature of twentieth-century conflict, where ancient places retained their strategic significance despite the passage of millennia. The Early Bronze Age site at Tell el-Hesi in southern Israel, for example, was captured and entrenched by Jewish forces in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, and was unsuccessfully attacked seven times by the Egyptians.21 It was the speed of post-war reconstruction during the 1920s, and along the Western Front especially, that preserved whole war landscapes intact—systems of trenches, dugouts, tunnels, craters, souvenirs, personal belongings, and human remains still lie just centimetres beneath the modern surface, and deeper. It is a deadly feature of such locations that objects and bodies from prehistory to Roman to medieval times and beyond can be mixed with volatile unexploded ordnance from 1914–18, making excavation a potentially lethal undertaking. Equally risky are investigations of the hidden world of underground tunnels, dugouts, and caverns mostly unknown to the public. In recent years, the study of

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Figure 3.2 Excavated and reconstructed trenches on the Somme

soldiers’ sensual and emotional responses to the unique conditions of a fighting life underground have added a new dimension of understanding to the war.22 Many of these challenges are rarely encountered in traditional archaeology. Apart from (© author) landowners, how many people now feel they too ‘own’ these First World War places? Whose memories, and of what version of the past should be given precedence in reconstruction efforts? After the war, French and Belgian farmers wanted to return as soon as possible to work the land, while military authorities, governments, ex-soldiers, bereaved families, and others often wished to retain some war-torn landscapes as a testament to German aggression, the sacrifice of so many men, and because many areas were still unsafe.23 For Ypres, in Belgium, the argument was whether to leave the town as a ruin or reconstruct it in its medieval glory.24 Which would be more authentic? The pressing needs of tourism, cultural heritage, and urban development also challenge what could or should be excavated and how? There were 50,000 visitors a year on the Western Front in the early 1970s, 250,000 in 1974, and over one million by 2014—a multi-million pound international commercial enterprise. As more visitors arrived, iconic locations were needed where tourists could ‘experience’ an ‘authentic’ battleground, usually a trench system. The ‘preserved trenches’ at Sanctuary Wood café-museum outside Ypres, and at the Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont Hamel on the Somme, deployed different

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt approaches to showing the war to this new generation of visitors. New and rejuvenated museums developed ever more sophisticated exhibitions to cater for and engage public attention, such as In Flanders Fields Museum at Ypres, L’Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne on the Somme, and the Museum of the Great War at Meaux, outside Paris. It was often museums which opened the door to what in effect were very anthropological concerns, such as the multi-cultural nature of the war, and, virtually unknown to the public at the time, the presence of the Chinese Labour Corps.25 Apart from these already impressive developments, giving back names to the formerly missing emerged as a key aspect of archaeological investigations.26 One of the bestdocumented examples was the excavation in 2008 of an Australian soldier who was commemorated as missing on the Menin Gate at Ypres. He was discovered as he had fallen on 8 June 1917 during the Battle of Messines, still clasping his Lee Enfield rifle, and surrounded by barbed wire, shrapnel balls, and German Mauser cartridges.27 He also seemed to be carrying a spiked German pickelhaube helmet, likely a souvenir, and an altered bullet possibly as a lucky charm. Painstaking detective work identified the remains as Private Alan Mather, a 37-year-old bachelor Australian, whose DNA was matched when relatives were traced to rural New South Wales. Three generations of the family attended his reburial on 22 July 2010 with full military honours.28 This was an archaeological investigation with an anthropological result—it concerned real people, living and dead, not treasure hunting, and Mather was reclaimed from the list of the ‘missing’ in Belgium. This concern with the human dimension of war, rather than just its military details, extended to investigating a typical communication trench behind the Ocean Villas tea room and guesthouse at Auchonvillers on the Somme.29 This was a rear area during the war, and its investigation identified levels representing its original construction in 1915 to initial investigations in 1996. Its location meant it possessed both commemorative and touristic aspects, and offered local employment in an area of shrinking rural population.30 A more political dimension to the war’s archaeology was evident in the 2005 decision by  the Flemish government in Belgium to cancel the A19 motorway extension after an archaeological evaluation of the projected route skirting Ypres reported that the area had extensive war remains and was an integral part of national heritage.31 A modern scientific archaeology of the First World War had arrived in Belgium. Arguably the most important development over the last twenty years was in attitudes and approaches to doing archaeology at all on First World War sites. New ideas about war objects, conflict landscapes, and legacies sparked the interest of a new generation of archaeologists. Abandoning old habits of battlefield digging for bones, buttons, and saleable memorabilia,32 younger archaeologists saw opportunities to apply modern scientific approaches to survey, excavation, and interpretation, aided by new technologies in forensics, geophysics, satellite imaging, and computer-based modelling of the earth’s surface known as Geographic Information System (GIS). These advances revolutionized the archaeology of modern conflict, albeit that most examples have so far belonged to the First World War—mainly on the Western Front, but increasingly too in central and eastern Europe.33 New technologies enabled fresh interpretations and included digitizing thousands of wartime aerial photographs which transformed our knowledge of the landscape. Together with the use of LiDAR, these revealed camouflaged bunkers and artillery positions, trenches, mines, barracks, listening posts, and forgotten battlefield cemeteries, as well as

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Desert Insurgency prehistoric remains lost to development since 1918. The study and visualization of these images and the high-resolution maps and 3-D representations they produced gave vivid new perspectives on places often forgotten since the war itself.34 In the early 1990s, the idea of a rigorous and credible scientific archaeology of the First World War was almost impossible to imagine, as was any serious consideration of an anthropological approach to its objects and landscapes. This was a war whose understanding had been dominated by military history for almost a century. Yet, by the late 2000s, the situation had dramatically changed—a vast interdisciplinary agenda had taken shape and was reaching out to equally groundbreaking research into the Second World War and beyond.35 The archaeology of modern conflict had come of age as a prime example of ‘the archaeologies of the contemporary past’.36

Archaeology, Anthropology, and the Arab Revolt This new approach to conflict was ideally suited to investigating the many aspects of the Arab Revolt of 1916–18. In southern Jordan this was essentially a fast-moving guerrilla war with few major battles, and no heavily-fought-over Western-Front-style battlefields to excavate. The stratigraphy was horizontal not vertical, and the traces of conflict were often ephemeral. A traditional battlefield archaeology approach would have been fruitless. It was obvious that many subject boundaries would be crossed. The role of the Hejaz Railway as an artery of modernity in a traditional peasant and Bedouin landscape, yet with geo-political and military significance, meant that any study would involve recent Middle Eastern history, historical (Ottoman) archaeology, and railway (industrial) archaeology, as well as studies of early twentieth-century imperialism and colonialism, and the archaeology, anthropology, and oral history of traditional Bedouin societies. More specifically, it involved the history of the Hajj route from Damascus to Medina, the late Ottoman motivations for building the railway, the military history of the Allied, Ottoman Turk, and German First World War operations in the Middle East, and of course the Arab Revolt itself. These events were inextricably tied to the post-war political and military history of the Middle East inasmuch as the political vacuum left by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was filled by the imperial reshaping of the region by Britain and France through the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, of which the creation of Iraq by Gertrude Bell and others is only the best-known example. The Great Arab Revolt Project would, uniquely, also have to grapple with the long shadow cast over events by T. E. Lawrence, a vast literature surrounding his activities, and his own influential and controversial Seven Pillars of Wisdom.37 This monumental book, whether regarded as historical truth or self-aggrandizing memory, had shaped popular views of the Revolt for almost a century. Furthermore, it had become entangled with the romanticized legend of Lawrence of Arabia in popular media—notably David Lean’s eponymous 1962 Hollywood epic. A double irony was also at work. Not only would we be investigating the conflict archaeology created by Lawrence and others between 1916 and 1918, but Lawrence himself had been an archaeologist before the First World War, an experience which colours some of his observations. His special interest, on which he had written his undergraduate thesis in 1910 at Jesus College, Oxford, had been on Crusader Castles38—fixed Christian defensive positions against a highly mobile Muslim enemy—the exact opposite of the situation which characterized his operations during the Arab Revolt.

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt Our investigations would focus on the equally fixed positions built by the Turks to defend the Hejaz Railway against rapid-moving guerrilla groups of Bedouin warriors, Allied ­soldiers, and Lawrence himself. The project would face the challenge of conducting archaeological research on an epoch-making and historically recent conflict in a region which was still an active conflict zone and a legacy of the events whose origins we would be investigating. When we began in 2006, Coalition Forces still occupied Iraq, and when we finished in 2014, Syria had imploded and Islamic State had begun its own fast-moving guerrilla campaign. All sides involved in these actions—as well as those in Afghanistan, it was reported, had read Seven Pillars of Wisdom on how best to pursue and counter an insurgency. Indeed, Lawrence’s book and its abridged version, Revolt in the Desert (1927) had been at the top of a list of 100 titles chosen by US generals and intelligence experts in 2004 as they were becoming mired in Iraq.39 Finally, there were issues of Syrian, Jordanian, and Saudi Arabian cultural heritage and tourism to consider, not least in light of the centenary of the First World War and the Arab Revolt, and focused by the destruction wrought by Islamic State on the antiquities of Iraq and Syria. Given the absence of set-piece battles in southern Jordan, Arab Revolt-period heritage—in essence the origins of modern Jordan and its ruling Hashemite dynasty— focused on the Hejaz Railway’s key stations at Amman in the north, and Ma’an in the south, where King Abdullah I’s first palace was briefly established in the one of the station buildings.

Material Worlds of the Arab Revolt There was no archaeology of the Arab Revolt before 2006. Nevertheless, there were material worlds created by the event—composed of sometimes almost mystical artefacts carrying their own histories and legends. Circulating around the globe since 1918, these objects existed in private collections, museums, art galleries, boxed away in homes, sometimes appearing in auction houses, and occasionally picked up in the desert. On several occasions, a selection of these items together with later post-war paintings, sculptures, and manuscripts had been displayed in museum exhibitions focused on Lawrence: T. E. Lawrence: Lawrence of Arabia at the National Portrait Gallery, London (December 1988 to March 1989), Lawrence of Arabia—The Life, The Legend at the Imperial War Museum in London (October 2005 to March 2006), and Lawrence of Arabia and the Light Horse, at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra (December 2007 to May 2008).40 None of the wartime objects displayed had been brought into a broader framework where their often extraordinary social lives could be evaluated other than by reference to Lawrence. Our interest in the cultural biographies of all kinds of Arab Revolt material culture offered the opportunity to bring some of these objects together in a new way, to re-calibrate their place in history by setting them against the hitherto less-valued everyday ‘rubbish’ of war which came from archaeological excavation. Each item of these material worlds possessed its own significance, and each had t­ ravelled its own path through the last century. Many would have their historical importance rejuvenated by fitting into a narrative created by nine years of archaeological and anthropological research. These objects—the iconic and the mundane (but equally insightful)—would be vivified by the discovery and exploration of the conflict landscapes within which they had

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Desert Insurgency gained their historical importance. What follows is not an exhaustive account, nor is it focused solely on aesthetically pleasing examples, but is rather a selection of objects possessing the patina of history-in-the-making between 1916 and 1918 in the desert landscapes along the Hejaz Railway. The aim is to reveal their potency as they move through time and space, colliding with an ever-changing world which alternately praises, castigates, or ignores the Arab Revolt and its consequences. Each of these items was there—a material witness to events—and each in its own way played a part in the transmission, elaboration, or creation of the stories and personalities with whom they shared history. Many objects are inevitably associated with one individual, and are often referred to as Lawrence memorabilia, though they are connected too with others who played prominent roles in the Revolt. They include daggers, Arab robes and headdresses, a rifle, and a camera— all now possessing a commercial value inflated by association with Lawrence, and the burnishing of his legend in the years since his death in 1935.41 Similar items which belonged to those who fought alongside him have also seen their monetary value soar, and then there are the unexpected objects which seem ordinary, yet contain the extraordinary. It has often been the confusing web of collecting and valuation which has separated many of these items from their historical role, submerged beneath the celebrity of Lawrence of Arabia and the acquisitive passion of private collectors this has generated. Some of these objects are reconnected here with their origins by putting them alongside the many artefacts recovered from the same desert landscapes, and which reveal the power of material culture to create enduring associations and tell intriguing stories. Photographs taken by Lawrence with his own camera are some of the most famous images associated with the Arab Revolt, its places and personalities.42 Photographs are of course a distinctive kind of material culture in their own right—‘images and physical objects which exist in time and space and thus in social and cultural experience . . . enmeshed with subjective, embodied and sensuous interactions’,43 linked to the past, active in the present, and communicating with the future.44 And photographs need cameras. Lawrence had his first one stolen during his Syrian walking trip in 1909, but had a second built especially for him in 1910 by J. H. Dallmeyer in order to take high quality images of Crusader castles. Famous for its association rather than its technical specifications, this WrattenWainright (‘archaeological’) camera bears the marks of its owner’s activities during the Revolt, as well as being the object which captured some of the most famous images of the events as they happened (Figure 3.3).45 The mahogany box camera was typical of its time, and had five lenses including a wide-angle, a telephoto device, and an eye-piece magnifier. It all fitted into a leather carrying case inscribed ‘Property of T. E. Lawrence, Pole Hill, Chingford, Essex’, and this was how he carried it to join David Hogarth’s British Museum excavations at Carchemish in northern Syria in 1911. The camera proved its worth for the next four years as Lawrence was charged with photographing the site and its finds, including Carchemish’s famous three-thousand-year-old sculptures. He took some 200 photographs in 1911 alone,46 a paltry number in today’s digital age, but not at the time. Lawrence’s expertise in desert-archaeology photography was enhanced in 1913, when he and Leonard Woolley (with whom he now worked at Carchemish) were tasked with exploring the archaeological remains of an un-surveyed part of southern Palestine under Ottoman control. They were to be part of a team of military surveyors under the command of a British Army officer, Captain Stewart Francis Newcombe, whose orders were to take

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt photographs and produce a map of the region on behalf of a British government increasingly anxious about the security of the Suez Canal in the febrile political climate of the time.47 Their role, as Woolley and Lawrence realized, was an archaeological fig leaf for a British spying mission, camouflaged by the aegis of the Palestine Exploration Society in order to obtain Ottoman permission to enter the area. In this they were not alone—as many pre-war archaelogists with their specialist knowledge of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East ended up working for British wartime intelligence gathering, such as Gertrude Bell, David Hogarth, A.  G.  Wade, and for Germany, Lawrence’s equivalent, Max von Oppenheim.48 Oppenheim and Lawrence were both archaeologists, spoke Arabic, admired Oriental art and history, and met briefly when Lawrence was at Carchemish in 1912. Lawrence went so far as to call Oppenheim’s 1899 two-volume book From the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, ‘the best book on the area I know.’49 Woolley and Lawrence reached Gaza on 10 January 1914, and spent six weeks travelling in the Negev Desert and beyond to the Wadi Araba—a region known in the bible as the Wilderness of Zin. Lawrence took his Wratten-Wainwright camera, with which Woolley observed he was particularly good at taking photographs of buildings, such as the South Church at Esbeita.50 In just six weeks the two men traced their way across the area taking sixty-five photographs, though not all were taken by Lawrence as is often assumed,51 and which were subsequently published in The Wilderness of Zin (1915).52 The camera has become an iconic object—a piece of history which also recorded and created history—‘the camera as historian’ in Elizabeth Edwards’s memorable phrase.53 It is now in the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University.54 Lawrence returned to Syria after the Zin expedition by way of Petra then Ma’an, where he boarded the Hejaz Railway north to Damascus.55 He could have had no idea that within a few short years the destruction of this railroad would be the focus of a new life. Lawrence, Newcombe, and Woolley arrived in Cairo at the end of 1914, where Newcombe was soon tasked with setting up a military intelligence department. A year later, in January 1916, intelligence activities in the Middle East would be coordinated by the Arab Bureau in Cairo, with Lawrence responsible for initiating the famous Arab Bulletins—secret reports on developments in the region, and to which he was a frequent contributor.56 He took his interest in cameras and photography with him, and was soon given the job of liaising between military intelligence and the civilian Survey of Egypt responsible for cartography.57 For the first few months much of his time was spent copying maps of the Gallipoli peninsula for the Allied/British landing that would begin on 25 April 1915. A few weeks later, in May, the British captured a Turkish map of the Cape Helles area which was sent to Cairo for copying and amending by the Survey of Egypt. Lawrence appears to have played a

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Figure 3.3 Lawrence’s ‘archaeological’ camera (© author)

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Desert Insurgency major part not just in copying this and other captured maps, but also in deciding which ones should take precedence in being prepared and sent back to the military authorities. These maps were then used by the British on 25 April, but quickly recaptured by the Turks.58 Lawrence’s expertise in photography and map-making bore new fruit in the spring of 1915. He and Newcombe were both enthusiastic supporters of aerial photography trials for use in map-making, and the effectiveness and speed of this approach led to aerial photos for surveying being widely adopted in the Middle East.59 Lawrence appears to have provided liaison between the Royal Flying Corps and the Survey of Egypt,60 and this in turn led to his being recommended by Gertrude Bell to travel to Basra in Mesopotamia in March 1916, in order to train pilots in this new mapping technique.61 Maps, cameras, and photographs played a significant role as a physical legacy of Lawrence’s various activities in the Middle East war. As with all kinds of material culture, these objects became entwined with other quite dissimilar items. In particular, his early redrawn maps linked Gallipoli with an especially iconic object—one which announced the start of the Arab Revolt. It was a rifle ultimately owned by Lawrence but which had played a tragic and symbolic role in the British involvement in the Middle East, in the typically entangled way so characteristic of war objects. Following the Allied evacuation of Gallipoli in December 1915, victorious Turkish troops combed the battlefields. To cover their retreat, British soldiers had set up hundreds of rifles with makeshift timing mechanisms calculated to fire at random intervals. One of these, a British Lee Enfield rifle62 which had originally been issued to a soldier of the 1st Essex Regiment, was sent as a battle trophy to Constantinople, where it was inscribed (in fact, damascened) in golden Ottoman letters—‘Booty captured in the fighting at Chanak Kale’ (Figure 3.4).63 It soon became more than that. In May 1916, when Feisal (Figure 3.5) was in Damascus and still officially on the Turkish side, he was presented with the weapon by Djemal Pasha, minister of the navy, governor of Syria, and one of the three pashas who led the Ottoman Empire during the war.64 It was a triple-edged gift, a none-too-subtle reminder of Turkish victory over the British at Gallipoli, an encouragement to remain loyal, and a warning if he didn’t. Figure 3.4 Lawrence’s rifle (Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018)

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt The rifle took on another role within weeks. After leaving Damascus, Feisal journeyed to his palace in Mecca to join his father Sherif Hussein (Figure 3.6). On 10 June 1916, Hussein fired the first shot of the rebellion at the Turkish barracks, likely with the same rifle.65 A few months later, in December, while together near Yenbo, Feisal gave the rifle to Lawrence, who quickly personalized it by carving his initials and the date into its wooden stock— ‘T.E.L. 4-12-16’.66 Lawrence carried the rifle with him until October 1918 when he left Damascus after the city had been taken by General Sir Edmund Allenby’s army and Feisal’s Arab forces. During this time it had acquired darker inscriptions—five notches cut into the wood near the magazine said to represent Turkish soldiers he had killed.67 Eventually, Lawrence gifted the weapon to King George V, closing the circle from its original British soldier owner to the sovereign in whose name he had fought and died on Gallipoli.68 The rifle has an extraordinary biography—from British weapon to a symbol of retreat, from Turkish trophy to gift-as-veiled-threat, from symbol of Arab rebellion to a personalized British weapon, and from celebrity gift to royalty to museum exhibit. As the rifle was being handed to Feisal in Damascus, Lawrence was at Figure 3.5 work in Cairo creating what are perhaps the most unusual and least known Emir Feisal objects of the Arab Revolt, but which carry a unique and weighty significance. (© Harry Chase, Marist College) A set of postage stamps designed by Lawrence was issued in September 1916, just three months after the declaration of the Revolt and one month before his own first foray into the conflict zone of Arabia in October. They proclaimed the independence of the Hejaz to the world and were aimed at counteracting the fact that the Ottoman and German press had ignored Hussein’s raising of the Revolt. In order to publicize it as widely as possible, the Hejaz postage stamps were issued as a form of self-financing propaganda with global reach. In his 1937 memoir, Orientations, Colonel (later Sir) Ronald Storrs recalled that  his superiors quickly agreed to the idea of issuing the stamps and that he ‘wandered around with Lawrence round the Arab Museum in Cairo collecting suitable motifs in order that the design in wording, spirit and ornament, might be as far as possible representative and reminiscent of a purely Arab source of inspiration’.69 He further observed, ‘It was quickly apparent that Lawrence already possessed or had immediately assimilated a complete working technique of philatelic and three-colour reproduction, so that he was able to supervise the issue from start to finish’ (Figure 3.7).70 The stamps were said to have either strawberry-flavoured glue, or different flavours according to their value, so that they could be identified at night, and that would popularize their use. It seems that Lawrence had originally planned this unusual sensual dimension but that it proved impracticable.71 Nevertheless, the stamps served their purpose to spread the word of the Revolt. There was irony Figure 3.6 here also. The rebellion they publicized would lead to Lawrence’s active involve- Sherif Hussein ment in blowing up the Hejaz Railway, the construction of which had been (© Harry Chase, Marist College) funded in part by Sultan Abdulhamid II’s issue of revenue stamps and the sale of valuable historical Ottoman stamps at the start of the project.72

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Figure 3.7

In 1918, Lawrence’s Hejaz stamps were brought together and published in a limited edition book—A Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of (© Joe Berton) Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Mecca & King of the Hejaz.73 Today, the combination of their association with Lawrence, the Arab Revolt, and the world of philately has made the volume an expensive rarity.74 Apart from their philatelic value, these stamps are a unique kind of conflict-related material culture—testimony to Lawrence’s talents but more importantly as miniature memorials to the Arab Revolt. As Stephen Gertz eloquently observed:

The Hejaz stamps designed by Lawrence

These stamps remain a poignant reminder of a dream lost in highly politicized sand. An assertion of Arab independence and desire to be rid of foreign influence going postal, if you will, against the Ottomans . . . they remain a strong visual symbol of shortlived Arab unity, and of the subsequent betrayal by the British of their promise to respect the aspirations of the Arabs after the war was won. (Gertz 2010)

Equally unusual, and possessing a more visceral sensuality through sound, is the so-called Mudawwara Bugle, which has an intriguing biography stretching across the twentieth

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Figure 3.8

century. The bugle is decorated with an oval cartouche bearing the Ottoman arms, and The Mudawwara Bugle was  used by a Turkish soldier stationed at the isolated railway station of Mudawwara (© Joe Berton) (Figure 3.8). On the 8 August 1918, a well-planned British attack succeeded in taking the station (see chapter five). Second Lieutenant  W.  T.  Davies of the Royal West Surrey Regiment was attached to the main attacking force of the Imperial Camel Corps and played an important role in the operation. Davies’ group stormed the station blockhouse where he shot a Turkish soldier who was about to sound the alarm with his bugle, promptly acquiring it as a personal souvenir and taking it back to Britain. He was later decorated for his gallant leadership during the raid, and the bugle was sounded at the annual reunions of the Imperial Camel Corps up until the 1960s. The effect it had at these meetings must have been emotional—a sound which recalled the daredevil acts of youth in the Arabian Desert to a group of ageing men now half a world away. The bugle then passed from view only to resurface at auction in 2013 along with Davies’ medals and other papers.75 The material worlds of the Arab Revolt feature a roll call of unexpected and miscellaneous objects, one of which has recently been ‘rediscovered’ at the Bank of England. A key element of the success of the Revolt had been the willingness of the British to pay large amounts of gold to Feisal and his Bedouin sheikhs in order to buy either their active co-operation or neutrality. It was Lawrence who ferried around the gold sovereigns that greased the wheels of the rebellion. S. C. Rolls, who drove Lawrence around in a Rolls-Royce tender nicknamed ‘Blue Mist’, and who saw transactions at first hand, commented how the Bedouin seemed

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Desert Insurgency Figure 3.9 Lawrence’s gold jambiya in All Souls College, Oxford (© Joe Berton)

to be able to smell the presence of gold, and that ‘It is fortunate that he had plenty of gold to drug them with, or even he might not have been able to manipulate them to his will.’76 In 2014, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s saddlebag’ went on display at the Bank of England in London, in whose vaults it had resided for the best part of a century. A 1936 ledger described it as a ‘camel pack for carrying gold over deserts’. According to Bank of England legend, the battered zinc-lined leather case was lent to Lawrence to carry gold sovereigns to buy Arab loyalty. While the bag had a tattered label which reads ‘Captain Blair Imrie’, Jennifer Adam—the bank’s museum curator—went on record as saying she had found correspondence in the archives which suggests the bag did indeed belong to Lawrence.77 And it is certainly true that on two separate occasions, in 1928 and 1934–5, Lawrence was offered employment at the Bank of England, both of which he declined.78 Bankrolled by British gold (some of which came from Australia), guerrilla fighting against the Hejaz Railway initially drew on the tradition of Bedouin tribal raiding, against each other, villages and towns, and the annual Hajj caravan. Representing these warrior activities as symbols of Bedouin manhood, are Lawrence’s three elaborate Bedouin daggers (jambiyas), each one associated with a key Arab figure of the Revolt (Figure 3.9). The first was a silver dagger given to him in 1917 by Sherif Abdullah, Feisal’s elder brother, which he subsequently gifted to sheikhs of the Howeitat tribe in Wadi Sirhan, receiving in return their help in taking the Red Sea port of Aqaba in July 1917. Given that this event changed the course of the Revolt, this dagger is arguably the most militarily and historically significant of the three. It was, in essence, a small metal gift which translated into significant political and military support. Daggerless after Aqaba, Lawrence’s second blade was a smaller golden jambiya crafted to his own specifications in Mecca. Although this was Lawrence’s favourite dagger—he is seen

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt wearing it in the 1919 portrait by Augustus John79—he sold it to Lionel Curtis in 1923 for £125 to raise money for roof repairs to his Clouds Hill cottage in Dorset. Curtis later donated it to All Souls College, Oxford.80 While waiting several weeks in Aqaba for the gold dagger to be delivered, Lawrence briefly carried a third jambiya. This was an IndoPersian style silver-gilt blade presented to him by Sherif Nasir, but quickly discarded as too heavy when his new one arrived from Mecca. Each of these daggers uniquely intersected Lawrence’s life in Arabia, connecting him to leaders of the Revolt, symbolizing his status in Arab eyes, as well as his role in the events, and reinforcing his later romantic image in the popular press.81 It is in the nature of objects that they can change their importance and value in an instant. What was once unusual can become extraordinary—loaded with new and sometimes false significance. So it was with Lawrence’s third (silver-gilt) dagger. In February 2016, the British government put a temporary export ban on the dagger and several robes after they had been sold to foreign buyers at auction in 2015, the dagger for £122,500 and the robes for £12,500.82 The culture minister Ed Vaizey announced, ‘These robes and dagger are absolutely iconic and a key part of his enduring image. It is important that these classic objects remain in the UK.’83 This decision was based on a recommendation by an expert committee84 whose chairman, Sir Hayden Philips, said, ‘The robes and dagger together form a crucial part of the images of Lawrence in painting, sculpture and photographs; and they are therefore an integral part of his life and our history.’85 The wider historical and political truth escaped the minister and his advisors. Just weeks before Vaizey’s announcement, the European Community offered to shower Turkey with millions of euros to halt Syrian refugees fleeing to Greece across the Aegean. Now, a British minister was lauding a key figure in the defeat of the Turks in a war whose aftermath, shaped by the Sykes–Picot agreement and the Balfour Declaration, created the conditions for century-long ferment, and which in turn played a role in the Syrian exodus of 2015–16. This dagger was the least historically significant of the three, and almost certainly Lawrence’s least favourite as well. Visually less arresting, but more earthily resonant of the Arab Revolt are fragments of track said to be the shattered remains of the Hejaz Railway blown up by Lawrence and others in their attempts to destroy Turkish trains, track, bridges, and stations.86 Our investigations would yield a number of these smashed pieces of track, yet it is clear that other examples had been collected decades before. The Imperial War Museum in London has several examples acquired in Saudi Arabia during the 1960s and 1970s. One is a raw piece of history, a section of heavy iron rail with an embossed inscription ‘G.H.H. 1907’ (i.e. GuteHoffnung-Hütte), while another has been transformed into a souvenir as a grey-coloured piece of track with an L-shaped cross-section (also marked with ‘G.H.H. 1907’) mounted on a dark wooden plinth bearing a plaque which reads ‘HEJAZ RAILWAY AQABA-MEDINA’ (though the railway went nowhere near Aqaba at the time). A third example is a more elaborate souvenir—an ‘iron chair’—this time with the addition of a miniature railway engine and a modern metal covering decorated with a map of the Hejaz Railway in Saudi Arabia and inscribed ‘This Iron Chair held the railway line to the sleeper and was taken from a section of the line T.E. Lawrence had mined in Arabia. 1916–1917’87 (Figure 3.10). More recently, another example has come to light, and although its authenticity hasn’t been established, it is mounted on a wooden stand and has a metal plate whose inscription reads ‘A sectios [sic] of railroad track destroyed by Lawrence of Arabia to prevent Turkish

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Figure 3.10 The Iron Chair rail-sleeper connector souvenir (© IWM, EPH_009278_A)

forces from controlling the Arabian Peninsular [sic], 1917. Recovered by Boy Scouts of America, Red Sea Troop 1, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 1970’.88 Whether or not this is genuine is impossible to say, though as its owner observes, it would be time-consuming to fake. It certainly looks the part, and is almost identical to yet another example which was studied scientifically to ascertain the chemical composition of Hejaz Railway lines.89 Unexpectedly, as this book was being written, a quite different railway object appeared, this time with a seemingly peerless provenance from Lawrence himself. It was unknown to, and unseen by, the wider world for over eighty years. In 1933, Lawrence left a number of items for safekeeping with Evan Richards, brother of his long-time friend Vyvyan Richards. The items were never retrieved and Lawrence died two years later. The only object to have survived from this trove is a bronze locomotive nameplate measuring 23 × 42 cm and bearing an Ottoman Turkish inscription in Arabic script which translates as ‘iron road’, i.e. ‘Hejaz Railway’90 (Figure 3.11). Intriguingly, it also carries dateable markings of political significance inasmuch as the right side has been defaced by milling (and the border reworked) almost certainly to remove the adjective hamidiye (i.e. ‘belonging to Abdulhamid’) from the original inscription of ‘Hamid Hejaz Railway’—reflecting the Young Turks overthrow of Sultan Abdulhamid II in  1909.91 The family tradition is that it was a war trophy Lawrence had taken from a Hejaz Railway locomotive which he had attacked. The other items have been lost over time, with the possible exception of a smaller engine plate given directly to Vyvyan Richards by Lawrence.92 It is impossible to say which raid this locomotive nameplate might have come from, or indeed if it came from a raid at all, though an interesting possibility exists. Many of Lawrence’s attacks on the railway were aimed at stations, tracks, bridges, and culverts rather than directly at locomotives, and when these did occur there was usually little opportunity to safely linger to acquire souvenirs. The best documented example of such an opportunity is arguably the ambush at Hallat Ammar on 19 September 1917. Here the train was composed of two locomotives not one, and while the exploding mine destroyed the first, it only disabled the second which could have been retrieved and repaired. Lawrence took the time to place a gun-cotton charge to the second locomotive’s cylinder while all around him the Bedouin were ransacking the carriages—ample time perhaps to lever off a nameplate. Lawrence himself says, ‘The women saw me tolerably unemployed’, howled for

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt Figure 3.11 The Hejaz Railway nameplate (© author)

mercy, and that he took time to reassure them.93 Alternatively, the nameplate could have been blown off in the explosion which scattered parts of the locomotive to a radius of 300 yards (274m). While only speculation, it is true that this ambush was spectacularly successful, and it might have meant more to Lawrence than his other railway attacks, and so ‘merited’ a souvenir. All of these railway objects embody the Arab Revolt in the most direct way—recalling not only the historical Lawrence and the many combined Arab–Allied attacks on the Hejaz Railroad, but also the legend as epitomized by the famous scene of the Hallat Ammar ambush and the blowing up of the train in David Lean’s film starring Peter O’Toole. This event came to symbolize the Arab Revolt, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the beginnings of ­modern guerrilla warfare, and was the enduring image in its fictionalized cinematic reincarnation half a century later. Fragments of the Hejaz Railway have endured as potent and volatile objects carrying within their dull and weighty metal the real and make-believe worlds of the desert insurgency of 1916–18. Clothes fashion people as much as people make clothes,94 and there is little doubt that Lawrence’s various Arab robes and headgear were as much a part of his military and cultural Arabian persona in the desert as they were of his public image and later legend (Figure 3.12).95 They transmit an almost electric personal element, chosen, touched, and worn by Lawrence himself during sometimes momentous historical events, and as with the daggers, connected also to some of the Revolt’s key Arab figures. Indeed, it was Emir Feisal who in December 1916 recommended Lawrence adopt Arab dress because it would make him appear more like an Arab leader. As Lawrence himself wrote, he was fitted out ‘in splendid

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Figure 3.12 Lawrence in robes in Jerusalem, February 1918 (© James A. Cannavino Library, Archives & Special Collections, Marist College, United States)

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Figure 3.13 The gilt-bronze Presentation Wreath from Saladin’s tomb in Damascus (© IWM, EPH_004338)

white silk and golden-embroidered wedding garments which had been sent to Faisal lately (was it a hint?) by his great-aunt in Mecca.’96 Suitably attired in robes designed for Feisal himself, Lawrence would now have ready access to the Emir’s tent, a problematic issue when wearing British Army khaki which reminded the Bedouin of enemy Turkish officers. Lawrence himself noted, ‘If you can wear Arab kit when with the tribes, you will acquire their trust and intimacy to a degree impossible in uniform.’97 Clothing is identity, and Lawrence was now as close to ‘being’ Arab as he was ever to get. This history-laden item is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as are an embroidered white-silk shirt and a headdress of silk with gold thread.98 The latter had its own distinctive story as it had been bought by him in Aleppo in 1912 then given to his mother a year later and was used by her as a table-cloth until Lawrence asked her to send it back to him in  Arabia in 1916.99 And it was  not only Lawrence, as many of his British comrades affected Arab dress, particularly the keffiyeh headdress, showing how being in a foreign land, enmeshed in new surroundings, could change appearance.100 Adorning the body was not restricted to Lawrence dressing as an Arab, as a curious reverse traffic also occurred. His driver, Rolls, saw up close the typical First World War kind of artistic behaviour of making trench-art souvenirs, far more common on the Western and Eastern Fronts than in the Middle East.101 He recorded that, ‘Among other things, we had made excellent wedding-rings out of ordinary pennies, the lettering and date remaining intact inside. The outside was carefully filed in bevel form, and polished until it looked like burnished gold.’102 These appeared like nine carat gold wedding rings to the Bedouin, and were eagerly exchanged for a small bag of tobacco dust. Perhaps the single object that ties together these momentous events, the personalities involved, and past and future history, is the ornate gilt-bronze wreath given to Lawrence by Feisal when they entered Damascus on 1 October 1918 (Figure 3.13).103 Embossed in Arabic, it reads, ‘This crown was presented by His Majesty, the Emperor of Germany his presence Wilhelm the Second in memory of his pilgrimage to the tomb of his presence Salah el Din el Ajubi.’ When the Kaiser placed it on Saladin’s tomb in 1898 during his tour of the Middle East, it drew a connecting line between German imperial ambitions and the great twelfth-century Muslim military leader who became the first Sultan of Syria and Egypt, founded the Ayyubid dynasty, and was the scourge of European crusaders and their vaulting ambitions for what they called The Holy Land.104 By coincidence, Saladin had become sultan on entering Damascus on 23 November 1174, almost to the day of Lawrence’s own arrival some 744 years later.105 Few objects contain so much symbolism of these events: the fall of Germany, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dashed hopes of Feisal and Lawrence for Arab nationalism, and the victory of a Crusader spirit of entitlement which in its modern form would reshape

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Archaeol o gy, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt the Middle East at the cost of millions of lives and billions of dollars for another 100 years (and with no end in sight). For Lawrence personally, the wreath was perhaps a more ambiguous object. Apart from all its historical and geopolitical symbolism, it was a Western imperial gift honouring one of the medieval Muslim world’s greatest military leaders against whose attacks the Crusaders had built the castles which had so fascinated Lawrence and drawn him to the Middle East. When Lawrence donated the wreath to the Imperial War Museum on 11 November 1918, he attached a note to claim that he had personally removed it from the tomb ‘as Saladin no longer required it’. A throwaway remark perhaps or maybe a rueful reflection on the betrayals of history. * The timely development of an interdisciplinary archaeology of the First World War from the late 1990s offered a comprehensive and nuanced way of investigating the many interlocking military and cultural aspects of the Arab Revolt and its aftermath. Ephemeral archaeological traces in the sands of southern Jordan, it was hoped, would speak to the origins of modern guerrilla warfare which itself contributed to the shaping of the Middle East after 1918. The new approach showed the power of objects to create and transmit impressions and evaluations of the Revolt and its personalities—not least by the catalysing effects of finding similar items during excavations of the original landscapes whence all such objects derived their historical significance. The desert, so apparently empty of information and insight, would prove to be full of both. The key to deciphering its archaeological message lay in understanding the landscape, its layers, and its objects—a quest which began with the largest artefact of all, the Hejaz Railway.

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4

The Hejaz Railway Faith, Conflict, and Afterlife

Construction and Conflict 1900–16

T

he ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II dreamt of an Islamic railway from Damascus to Mecca. It would carry the faithful on the annual Hajj pilgrimage at a fraction of the time, cost, and danger than the centuries-old caravans of horses and camels. It would enhance his role as Caliph of the Islamic world—whose sacred duty it was to protect the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and it would tie his far-flung multi-ethnic empire closer to the political heart of Constantinople. In a deeper historical sense, it drew perhaps on Osman’s Dream, a fifteenth-century mythical story about Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, whose vision predicted the growth and prosperity of his empire.1 For Abdulhamid, it seemed a positive and strategic move. The railway would be a phys­ic­al manifestation of Pan-Islamism, a way to revitalize trade, create strategic lines of communication, and unite the non-Turkish population of his empire under Ottoman rule.2 It possessed a powerful symbolic meaning for the sultan and the faithful, and simultaneously represented a sacralization of modern technology.3 It would increase his reputation for piety amongst Muslims, and would allow more of the faithful to demonstrate their own by making the holy pilgrimage. It might also destabilize European colonial powers by mo­bil­iz­ing their Muslim populations and encouraging them to adopt pro-Ottoman foreign policies,4 and it would certainly go hand-in-hand with the modernization of the Ottoman military. The railway would be a unique and innovative solution to an ailing empire, whereby Western imperialism, nationalism, liberalism, and constitutionalism were rejected, but their technology embraced.5 Unforeseen, it appears, was that trains (along with ships) ‘were commercialized undoers of colonial boundaries . . . [and the Hajj would be] remade by industrialization as Muslim pilgrims found themselves mixing with an unparalleled array of different peoples’.6 The sultan’s dream was born of the nightmare of imperial defeat and decline, demonstrated by the Balkan uprisings in Herzegovina and Bulgaria, the humiliating peace treaty of the Serbo-Turkish War of 1876–8, and defeat during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8. Emerging from these reverses, the value of a military railway in rapidly deploying troops had been shown by later Ottoman success in using the Constantinople-Salonika railroad during the thirty-day Greco-Turkish War of 1897,7 and possibly, earlier also by the British experience of the Sudan Military Railway. And, if the proposed Hejaz Railway reached Mecca it could be extended towards the troublesome Ottoman province of Yemen. European powers also saw the railroad’s geopolitical potential.8 The British regarded it as a strategic threat, not only to the Suez Canal and their access to India, but because if the

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The Hejaz Railway railroad reached Mecca it could be extended to Jeddah on the Red Sea9—a short sea journey from Port Sudan, a gateway to Africa and a back door to Egypt. This threat was fuelled by their recent experiences of Jihad with the Dervish Revolts in Sudan (1884–98) and Somaliland (1900–20), and the Pathan Rising on the North West Frontier (1897–8), making them ever more sensitive to the 100 million Muslims inside the British Empire. For the Ottomans, the Hejaz Railway offered an attractive solution to controlling the volatile feuding Arab tribes of the south, where, as the late nineteenth-century English traveller Charles Doughty observed ‘the open desert [was] full of old debts for blood’ and to leave one’s camp ‘was to enter a contested space’.10 In addition too, of course, the Bedouin had for centuries harassed traders and Hajj pilgrims as easy prey. Ottoman troops were often no match, because even when mounted on camels they ‘were less used to the stratagems and tactics desert warfare demanded than their Bedouin opponents’.11 The railway would enable a swift response, offsetting the lack of mobility which had hindered the extension of Ottoman authority south of Damascus for centuries, and at a time when ‘The Wahhabis were stirring, imperilling Ottoman sovereignty over the Holy Cities.’12 During the nineteenth century, two social and cultural realities had surfaced on this domestic front. There was a decrease in the Bedouin population due to changes in climate,13 lack of water, inter-tribal feuding, and the arrival of Syrian and Palestinian immigrants.14 At the same time, the number of pilgrims journeying to Mecca had decreased, with only 1,000 leaving Damascus in 1890, and by 1899, only 30,000 pilgrims had come by the always more popular sea route to Jeddah.15 Conflict had been the deterrent, because in the years before the Hejaz Railway, there were many instances of robbery and murder when pilgrims travelled between towns, with local Bedouin strength frequently being greater than the overland caravans’ military escort.16 The Ottoman tactic of paying sub­sid­ies, the urban surra, to tribal sheikhs to act as amir al-hajj (protector and guide of the pilgrimage to Mecca) and thereby ensure safe passage, was not particularly successful.17 The military, religious, and political aspects of the railroad were entwined from the beginning, despite the propaganda value of emphasizing the spiritual dimension. In 1874, a decade after the idea of a Damascus-Medina railroad was first raised by Dr Charles Zimpel, an German-American civil engineer, an Ottoman Army officer suggested that such a project was necessary to secure Ottoman control in the remote Hejaz region. The idea lingered, but went nowhere until 1898, when the Imam Yahya’s revolt in the Yemen18 led to a renewed call for building a railway in the Hejaz by Izzat Pasha al Abid, the sultan’s secretary and advisor. Almost certainly too, Abdulhamid’s German chief military adviser, General Von der Goltz, who had guided Ottoman forces to victory in the Greco-Turkish War, would have left the sultan in no doubt about the strategic value of such a railroad. German influence on Ottoman railway development had begun in 1888, when a German company had won the concession to build the Constantinople to Ismid Railroad in Anatolia, and was to gain further momentum in 1902–3 with the proposition of extending this to Baghdad—a fact which further concerned the British who worried about German designs on Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf.19 As the idea of the railroad gained momentum, an earlier project to construct a telegraph line from Damascus to Medina was underway, following the pilgrimage trail. A special telegraph battalion under General Sadiq Pasha al Muyyad was responsible for the work whose successful completion proved not only that a railroad would be possible along this same route, but also that a unique funding and manpower strategy might be employed.

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Desert Insurgency Ottoman soldiers provided most of the labour for the telegraph, keeping it cheap and efficient, and donations were sought to provide money and wood for the telegraph poles, of which between 170,000 and 200,000 were needed for the entire route.20 As with the traditional caravans, the Ottomans paid protection money to local sheikhs not to attack and destroy the telegraph line (as they soon would do with the railway), but nevertheless provided an escort of two cavalry companies issued with Martini-Henry rifles.21 And protection was needed, as by 1902, a year after the telegraph’s inauguration, the Bedouin were already cutting the wires and knocking down the poles, the reasons for which were a mix of economic, political, and spiritual.22 The telegraph was a new technological addition to the infrastructure of Ottoman power, symbolizing and extending the sultan’s authority, used by his network of agents and officials, at the same time as exciting wonderment and suspicion amongst peasants and nomads through whose wilderness places its wires were strung.23 It seemed to achieve ‘the sufi notion of a spiritual existence in two places concurrently, as one could have a thought in Constantinople and transmit that same thought to a reader in Damascus at virtually the same moment’.24 This almost mystical regard was not restricted to the region’s rural inhabitants. Years later, during the Arab Revolt, S. C. Rolls was moved to comment on the telegraph wires in the desert, glistening in the moonlight and humming softly in the silence.25 Hejaz politics played a more powerful role however in fomenting Bedouin attacks against the wires of modernity. While the sultan and his supporters desired a partnership with the Bedouin to secure the telegraph and imperial Ottoman policies in the south, Ahmed Ratıb Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the Hejaz, and ʿAwn al-Rāfiq Pasha, the emir of Mecca, acted against it, to secure their own control over Mecca by portraying the Bedouin as superstitious and uncivilized.26 One example amongst many occurred in April 1901, when forty telegraph poles and twenty-five runs of telegraph wire were stolen north of Medina, and once repaired, were stolen again.27 From Constantinople it seemed the Bedouin were wrecking the line despite being paid their subsidies, whereas it appears that it was the two power-brokers in Mecca who had received the payments but not distributed them to the tribal sheikhs. Superstition played its part, but the perceived injustice by the Bedouin was more often the trigger. On 2 May 1900, Abdulhamid II issued the imperial order that the railroad would be built and that Muslims around the world should offer their support and financial backing, as no foreigners would participate. It would be called the Hamidiye Hijaz Railroad—the ‘praiseworthy railroad’,28 though was more commonly referred to either as ‘The Trail of Iron’29 or as jahshat al-sultan, ‘the sultan’s mule’30 by the Arabs. On 1 September 1900, on the 24th anniversary of Abdulhamid’s accession, construction officially began, though it was 1 May 1901 before work actually started.31 Every year on 1 September, this anniversary would see a new section of the railway officially opened. To assess the route, the Ottoman Army engineer Hadji Mukhtar Bey and Ali Rida al-Rikabi joined the 1900 Hajj.32 The aim, following the experience of Sadiq Pasha’s telegraph, was that the railway should generally follow the traditional caravan route due to the availability of water and the gradient of the land.33 In the event, there were several instances where the  railway diverged from the earlier route, and this in turn meant that ‘Army tele­ graphers who had worked with the Hejaz telegraph line helped construct the railroad’s own telegraphic system.’34 This was crucial, because as our investigations would show, there was no intervisibility between any of the railway stations from Ma’an to Mudawwara,

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The Hejaz Railway

though there was between some intermediate high points, and heliographs were used in such locations (Figure 4.1).35 The financing of the railroad was unique—or at least a more sophisticated scaling-up of that used for the telegraph line. The request for donations was presented to all Muslims as an act of religious charity. Their contributions would improve the Hajj, and protect and provide for the economic development of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina which depended greatly on pilgrim revenues. The remote Hejaz province had always been costly to run as no taxation or conscription was levied on the fractious Bedouin inhabitants.36 It was decided that the government would not own the railway, but classify it instead as a waqf—a self-perpetuating Islamic endowment institution for the administration of property which recognized the attachment and gratefulness of the world’s Muslims.37 In a prescient move, mineral rights within 20 kilometres of each side of the track were awarded to the railway.38 Donations, while voluntary from outside the empire—mainly Egypt and India—were less so within Ottoman borders.39 Inside the empire, donations were not only expected but enforced, with all national and local branches of government expected to contribute. A whole month’s salary was deducted from various Ottoman government departments.40 In the countryside, the police often collected money from small villages refusing to leave until it had been paid. The sale of skins from animals slain during the festival of Eid al-Adha also contributed to the railway’s

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Figure 4.1 Turkish soldiers using a heliograph at Huj, near Gaza City, in 1917 (Wikimedia Commons)

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Desert Insurgency coffers.41 However, the original aspiration of a wholly Muslim undertaking was soon abandoned in the quest for funds. Tax was levied on Christian employees of the government until 1902, while other Christian groups and individuals gave voluntarily, and English workers at the Ottoman Imperial Naval Dockyards in Constantinople also made contributions.42 Special Hejaz Railway stamps were issued, and these generated around 3,200,000 TL a year.43 Many other methods were employed to raise funds, including custom and stamp duties, taxes on the head of every Muslim family, the selling of Ottoman honorific titles, land and property sales, and even the selling of fancy cigarette cases.44 The archaeological past too was mobilized for railway construction, not least because of Abdulhamid II’s disinterest in the past and his willingness ‘to dispose of the material remains of ancient cultures in exchange for modern European technologies’.45 This re­cyc­ ling of old material culture for new took many forms. Since the nineteenth century, the sultan had used access to archaeological sites for excavation as a diplomatic tool in his relations with Germany, and with the advent of the Hejaz Railway his activities became more rapacious.46 There was the auctioning off of stamps of historical value through foreign missions, and of old artillery pieces and iron objects taken from castles at Acre, Jaffa, and Tripoli. Plundering cultural heritage went so far as selling off items retrieved from shipwrecks in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.47 Railway building was bound to discover archaeological sites and objects which could be variously acquired, looted, and sold by those involved in construction. During the building of the Hejaz Railway, such activities could be official or not as opportunities arose. In the remote places of Arabia, ‘foreign officials and various travelers working with the Hejaz Railway have, with the assistance of some locals, acquired antiquities near Mada’in as-Salih.’48 More spectacular was the case of the uncompleted winter palace of Qasr Al-Mshatta commissioned by the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid II (743–4), which lay in the path of the railway some 30km south of Amman. Kaiser Wilhelm II intervened with Abdulhamid asking to have it as an archaeological gift. This was granted in 1903, and the palace’s façade was taken to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum and today is on display in the Pergamon Museum.49 Such activities would continue into the First World War, manoeuvring heritage and history into ideological positions, mobilizing tradition for the war effort. The glory years of Ottoman military history were reinvented: Constantinople’s Military Museum was remodelled in 1916 with Jannisary50 mannequins prominently displayed among paintings of their famous actions, such as Sultan Murad II’s 1444 victory over Polish and Hungarian Crusader armies at Varna in Bulgaria.51 The present meshed with the past as the First World War progressed, and in 1917 the museum installed a diorama of the Turkish defence of the Dardanelles.52 The Turkish acquisition of the past extended to their multi-ethnic empire’s religious identity too. Holy relics from the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina (which had been converted into a munitions store) were taken by the Turks to Constantinople via the Hejaz Railway. The track was extended from Medina’s station to the mosque itself for this purpose, and an extraordinary photograph shows the locomotive adorned with a black-and-gold banner saying ‘Peace be Upon You, O Messenger of God’ heedlessly pushing through the ruins of medieval buildings demolished to make way for the train (Figure 4.2).53 At the same time as this conflict archaeology was being created, it is worth noting that traditional archaeology was also being conducted in the conflict zone by allied soldiers, notably on the Gallipoli Peninsula.54 There seems little reason to disagree with the view

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The Hejaz Railway Figure 4.2 Locomotive at Medinah (courtesy of E. Ekinci 2016)

that this volatile mix of activities provides ‘a vivid example of the symbolic meanings invested in archaeological activities during the heat of battle’.55 Beyond the empire, voluntary donations for the railway began rolling in from July 1900, though at 8 per cent of the total amount raised, such gifts were of more symbolic than financial value. The Muslim community in India was by far the biggest foreign donor. Abd al-Haqq, the imam of the Manarat Mosque in Bombay, was a fervent supporter, arguing that: Abdulhamid II was the commander of the faithful and the imam of all Muslims. [and that those who gave] . . . demonstrate the perfection of their faith [because] . . . to present gifts for the realization of the Hijaz Railroad is to demonstrate the love of God and His Prophet. [and, the railroad was] . . . the one way to protect the Hijaz from Christian threats. (Ochsenwald 1980: 69–70)

This anti-British sentiment from such a prominent Indian Muslim was telling, and only served to reinforce British hostility to the railroad. It was hardly surprising that British colonial authorities put barriers in the way of local Muslims wishing to contribute, and went so far as to ban the wearing of medallions awarded by Sultan Abdulhamid II to those who donated funds. When the Ottoman ambassador in London petitioned the British government to allow Indian subjects to wear these medallions he was refused on the basis

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Desert Insurgency that the railway posed a threat to the British in India and Egypt.56 Egyptians too supported Abdulhamid’s financial appeal to the faithful. Money and materials were given, and when the newspaper Al-Raid al-Misri wrote that ‘the Hejaz Railway would be as important for the Muslim world as the Suez Canal’,57 the British discouraged donations from their colonial Egyptian bureaucracy.58 To have their own imperial subjects helping to pay for a railroad which would be a strategic threat to prize imperial possessions was clearly a step too far. The financial call to the faithful was buttressed by propaganda aimed at the Empire’s Arab-speaking subjects. There was press coverage, and in August 1900 a multilingual Turkish-Arab-French book was published in Constantinople—Hicaz Şmendüferi—a Turkish rendition of the French Chemin de fer.59 A previously unpublished manuscript of this genre was The Increasing and Eternal Happiness—the Hejaz Railway, by Muhammad Arif.60 It was a hopelessly optimistic list of the benefits that would accrue to the Empire, and had several aims, including countering internal opposition to the project, fears of unemployment, and the loss of income to the Bedouin. Ārif countered fiercely conservative religious attitudes too, arguing that it was untrue that the Koran forbade making the Hajj by train, and that it should only be made on foot, as the prophet Mohammed had done, or riding grazing animals or beasts of burden.61 Gender too was an issue, as it was said to threaten the male pilgrim’s honour, with those undertaking the longer and more arduous camel journey calling the railway the ‘women’s route’. While it was acceptable for women and the infirm to travel by rail, real men should make a real pilgrimage by camel.62 Ārif played on the fear of Syria losing out economically, particularly in the movement and sale of grain from the fertile Hawran region,63 but also to the increasingly popular sea route to Jeddah for the Hajj. He trumpeted the advantages in education and the search for mineral wealth. He enthused on the many financial benefits to the Bedouin in selling their hides, wool, and dairy products—all of which would offset their initial loss of income from hiring camels to pilgrims, raiding, and the bribes disguised as gifts paid by the Ottomans for protecting the Hajj caravans.64 The effectiveness of such propaganda is unknown, though it seems not to have persuaded the Bedouin, despite Ārif ’s argument that the military aspect of the railway was aimed not at them but at an unnamed common enemy.65 Propaganda and the innovative nature of the railway’s financing produced a distinctive kind of material culture which injected Muslim identity, piety, and pride into objects. These were the medallions, mentioned above, that were authorized by the sultan to be given to those who donated to the railway project. They were of wearable and non-wearable kinds, and produced in gold, silver, and nickel alloy, depending on the amount given (Figure 4.3).66 There were several main issues of these items; most were dated 1318 (ce 1900) in the Muslim lunar calendar (Hegira), recording the start of the project, with a second issue four years later in 1322 (ce 1904) when the railroad reached Ma’an, a third in 1325 (ce 1907) when the Tabuk to Al Ula section was opened and where 2,500 medallions were given to railway workers67—and finally in 1326 (ce 1908) when the railway reached Medina.68 These medallions were accompanied by a berat—a multilingual Imperial Ottoman certificate recording the donation, and intended as an inheritable symbol of piety through contributing to the holy cause.69 Soldier-labourers who had completed their service on the railroad were awarded tezkeres, commemorative certificates of railway service.70 The railway was administered by two commissions. The General High Commission in Constantinople had Sultan Abdulhamid II as president,71 and the Local Commission, in  Damascus, run by Field Marshal Kazim Pasha as the general-director of the Hejaz

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The Hejaz Railway Railway.72 The multilingual German railway engineer Heinrich August Meissner, who was initially appointed on a three-year contract, soon proved to be the driving force behind the project.73 As the Bedouin through whose land the railroad passed were not considered good workers, and asked for high wages, the main labour force consisted of multi-ethnic Ottoman soldiers. These were, at least initially, mainly unskilled military conscripts—Turks, Syrians, and Iraqis.74 Specifically, these were 1st and 2nd Railway Battalions, the 2nd Battalion of 33rd Infantry, and 3rd and 4th Battalions of 39th Infantry Regiment of 5th Army, with a Pioneer company and a detachment of the Telegraph Company. By 1902, there were about 5,650 men of working on the railroad (Figure 4.4).75 These men created the earthworks and laid the tracks (between one and three kilometres a day), while foreign Christian contractors undertook specialist assignments such as building stations, tunnels, culverts, and bridges.76 There were about 600 non-Muslim workers altogether, and they included Italians, Austrians, Greeks, and Montenegrins,77 somewhat undermining the propaganda point that the railway was built (as well as financed) without European help.78 Artisans were hired for training the workforce, such as Italian stone­masons who, apart from being regarded as so highly skilled as to be virtually irreplaceable, also taught Ottoman soldiers how to construct small station buildings and culverts.79 The railway embankment was levelled off about a metre above the desert floor so to avoid flood damage80—hence the 1,960 culverts and bridges that were built in total.81 The non-commissioned officers and heads of construction gangs were those who could converse in both Turkish Figure 4.3 and Arabic. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s advisor to the railway, Kapp von Gülstein, commended Hejaz Railway Medal (© Joe Berton)

Figure 4.4 Turkish labourer battalions building the Hejaz Railway (© Library of Congress)

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Desert Insurgency the Ottoman use of soldiers for construction, saying, ‘Without the work of the disciplined Ottoman soldiers . . . the line wouldn’t be realized.’82 The railroad was narrow gauge, 1.05 m, which made it more affordable than the more common 1.435m standard gauge. From Damascus south to Zerqa, the sleepers were made of wood brought from Anatolia and Macedonia, and from Zerqa onwards they were of steel.83 All rails were the flat-bottomed Vignoles type, and most were made by Cockerill, a Belgian firm, with others supplied by Donawitz of Austria, and the American Steel Trust who marked theirs with ‘Maryland-USA’.84 Other rails were provided by a French-Belgian firm based in Russia who marked theirs ‘Providence-Russe 1906’, Dowlais of Wales, and a German company, Gute-Hoffnung-Hutte. The rails were 9m long with 14 sleepers to a rail, designed for trains travelling between 25–40 kph.85 The nature of the railway as more than just Western technology was signalled by some rails being inscribed with a dedication to Sultan Abdulhamid II including the term amir al-mu’minin (‘Commander of the Faithful’) (Figure 4.5).86 The ‘sacralized’ rails carried a sacred train. Religious texts, the Koran and hadith, were mobilized to presage modern technology as being acceptable—‘“He may create things [to ride] that you do not know”, predicts the appearance of unimagined modes of transport, including steam-powered vehicles and more.’87 This potent mix of medieval faith and modernity was displayed to powerful effect on the German-built Kraus and Hartmann locomotives, and the Belgian-made Haine St. Pierre carriages and wagons they pulled. These included low-sided wagons transporting vital water supplies between stations, each carrying two sizeable iron tanks whose contents were stored in subterranean barrels at stations and guard houses along the line.88 The tughra was the sultan’s calligraphic monogram—effectively his unique imperial signature—but which also embodied the sultan himself, as well as the state, and the empire. Figure 4.5 Hejaz Railway rail inscribed with a dedication to Sultan Abdulhamid II (© author)

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The Hejaz Railway It was attached most frequently to the locomotives and carriages of the Hejaz Railway,89 and often on the specially designed nameplates, one of which became Lawrence’s souvenir referred to in chapter 3. The trains thereby carried the essence and authority of the sultan into the desert lands of the Hejaz. Arguably the most intensely symbolic example of such ideas was a specially designed, though hardly used, mosque wagon made in the Naval Arsenal in Constantinople, and fitted with a collapsible minaret. This has been seen as a kind of mobile ritual space, strengthening the sultan’s legitimacy and authority in diverse ways,90 with the minaret itself underscoring ‘the religious significance the carriage was intended to confer on the railway’. The interior of the carriage bears an inscription in the monumental thuluth script91 which is almost identical to that in the Hagia Sophia mosque in Constantinople, drawing parallels to the largest and most symbolically charged space in the imperial capital. An interesting detail in Western eyes, but for the Ottomans, where calligraphy was a medium of power with supernatural attributes, and a ‘vehicle of transmission of sacred authority in Islam’ it was far more than this.92 In a sense, the mosque carriage stood in for the sultan himself. Apart from the technological challenges, the Hejaz Railroad was an exercise in crossing the physical and cultural landscapes from Damascus to Medina. Qadem station at Damascus became the centre for administration, construction, and maintenance.93 Moving south, the main stations were at Deraa, Amman, Qatrana, and Ma’an—all of which were built to the same design and of a distinctive high-quality hewn stone, taken from a variety of quarries, some local to the route through which the railway passed.94 The landscape therefore provided its own raw materials for the railroad’s masonry, culverts, and bridges, with lava, basalt, and flint readily available as ballast for the bedding.95 Constructing the railroad was methodical, with the work organized into three stages— reconnoitring, surveying, and construction. The first two stages required a large caravan of men and equipment, including food, water, fuel, technical equipment, and the tents in which the workforce slept. Ottoman cavalry was needed for protection against Bedouin attack, and these too had to be provisioned. Once the route had been surveyed the construction teams moved in, and again a tripartite work-plan was followed: rock cutting, levelling and constructing the earthwork embankment; building bridges, culverts, tunnels, stations, water towers, and blockhouses; and finally preparing the track-bed and laying the sleepers and rails by hand for the main line and the numerous sidings which enabled trains to move in both directions on the single-line track. The architecture at larger more prestigious stations followed that of traditional Turkish houses in Constantinople and the Balkans, and incorporated a carved plaque bearing a Turkish thuluth version of the local name of the station. Medium-sized and smaller stations were more standardized, built with finely dressed stone which varied in colour according to the local geology. It has been described as the Hejaz Railway House Style—a hybrid of Islamic decoration, European ideas, gable roofs, and cut basalt, quite alien to the local Arabian style, ‘archetypal examples of functional building, tailor made for a single purpose’.96 The smaller stations often had free-standing single-, and sometimes doublestorey structures with flat roofs. In the southernmost part of the railway especially, buildings could have two storeys and walls with designed-in loopholes for repelling Bedouin attack (Figure 4.6). Stand-alone fortified blockhouses were also built in the south where opposition to the railway was greatest.97 Where no natural water was available, stations had masonry cisterns

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Figure 4.6 Designed-in loophole against Bedouin attack in a pre-Arab Revolt station building (© author)

and wooden barrels buried in the ground, with each station having enough water to last for two weeks.98 While many buildings were flat-roofed, the larger ones had pitched roofs covered with elaborate terracotta roof tiles produced by several companies in Marseilles, the manufacturing centre of a new sophisticated style of interlocking tiles patented in 1874, and which quickly became an international vogue.99 Several companies supplied these tiles, notably Tuileries Romain Boyer-Marseille and Guichard Carvin et Cie, some of which remain in place today at the better-preserved stations, while many more lie broken and scattered around station buildings (Figure 4.7). This European-influenced design style differed from the two main termini stations at Damascus and Medina, both of which feature Ottoman and Mamluk Revival architectural elements of the mid-to-late nineteenth century.100 The living conditions of those who built these stations and the railway were basic, as our archaeological investigations were to discover. These soldier-labourers lived in tents—with a maximum of twelve per tent101—‘which were constantly being moved forward to keep up with the progress of the work’, with each company having a separate camp. ‘The bread was freshly baked in portable ovens’ and even, ‘In winter, the soldiers worked in their regular cloth uniforms.’102 The further south from Damascus the construction crews moved, the harder and more regimented life became. Occasional outbreaks of cholera caused panic and could lead to soldiers and contractors ‘deserting their posts in droves and causing long delays in the work’.103 By the end of August 1904, a base camp had been established at Ma’an, and on 1 September that year the Qatrana to Ma’an section was inaugurated.104 One year later, Mudawwara was  reached, and on 1 September 1905 the stretch between Ma’an and Mudawwara was opened.105 Two more years and it had reached the important oasis and trading town of Al Ula, and on 1 September 1907 celebrations were held there at the laying of the thousandth kilometre of rail.106 The same year saw the railway reach Medain Saleh, by which time there were about 7,500 Ottoman soldiers working on the main line, with a further 1,800 at Medina who had begun building northwards.107 No Europeans were allowed south of Ma’an except railway officials, and even Meissner was only allowed as far south as Al Ula. In all, over the entire 1,320 kilometre route, there were eighty-nine stations and crossing points built for the mainline Hejaz Railroad, with an average distance between them of 15km (9.3 miles).108 The completed railroad was officially inaugurated in September 1908 at Medina, and Abdulhamid II took full credit. Even before the grand opening, the railroad had proved its military worth. The railway’s Administrative Council was composed largely of military officers, and so was interested chiefly in the Ottoman Army’s strategic demands on the line. In the summer of 1905, the point was made when twenty-eight Ottoman Syrian battalions were rushed to suppress an uprising at Hodeidah in the Yemen. They took the train from Damascus to Ma’an, then marched overland to Aqaba where they boarded ships to the Yemen for five days—a total of ten to eleven days’ journeying compared to the two weeks it previously took for troops

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The Hejaz Railway Figure 4.7 Hejaz Railway Station roof tiles from various French manufacturers at Qatrana Station (© author)

who sailed via the Suez Canal.109 Sheer numbers of soldiers in transit were also impressive. In 1909, 8,480 of a total of 119,033 passengers were military, whereas a year later this had rocketed to 77,661, and between 1912 and 1913 it would reach 147,586.110 Outside the empire, the military aspects of the railway continued to raise concerns. The British were deeply suspicious of the Ottoman appointment of Germans to all levels of running the railroad. Between 1910 and 1917, Otto Zehringer and then Peter Dieckmann were consecutive directors general of the railway, and many Germans were hired for midlevel positions—such as traffic director, the head of the Damascus yards, and even foremen and carpenters.111 As the local population along its route was not accustomed to railways, cavalry detachments were quartered at some stations to patrol the line and serve as watchmen.112 During construction, as with the earlier telegraph, the Ottoman government paid annual subsidies to local sheikhs to protect the railroad. Bedouin opposition was especially strong south of Tabuk in present-day Saudi Arabia. The Medina Bedouin were particularly enraged by the imminent arrival of the railroad and the threat as they saw it posed by the ‘Devil’s Donkey’ to their income in the camel caravan trade113—and in May 1908, they attacked the holy city itself. The railway again proved its military worth, allowing the rapid deployment of eight Ottoman battalions into the area and the defeat of the Harb tribe of Bedouin in two battles north of the city.114 Nevertheless, hundreds of Ottoman soldiers had been killed and wounded over the summer.115 In November, angered by the non-payment of their imperial subsidies, the Bedouin again attacked Hajj pilgrims, the railway, and its guards, ripping up the steel sleepers and rails, but were stopped by 3,000 extra Ottoman troops who arrived

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Desert Insurgency by train.116 By the end of 1908, the number of soldiers protecting the railway was raised to 15,000, and the labour battalions themselves were equipped with rifles.117 Despite these precautions, Bedouin raids continued, and no less than 130 are recorded after 1908. In 1910, there was a rebellion by the inhabitants of Kerak between Amman and Ma’an, which the Beni Sakhr and Beni Atiyya tribes soon joined. Provoked by the nonpayment of TL 4,000 which they had been promised for guarding the railway, the Beni Sakhr robbed the train, killed railroad workers, destroyed sections of track, demolished Qatrana Station, and pulled up rails.118 The Beni Atiyya raided further south at Ma’an. In January 1912, local Bedouin attacked the remote Al Ula station, sacking and plundering the buildings and killing a soldier. One consequence of this unrest was the strengthening of station defences, observed at this critical time by Major Arthur John Byng Wavell, cousin of the later Field Marshal Earl Wavell. Disguised as an Arab, A. J. B. Wavell was the first European to travel on the completed railway as far as Medina—his train journey part of an illegal, blasphemous (he was a Christian), and highly risky sojourn to Mecca. From his Hejaz Railway carriage in late 1908, he observed that ‘All the stations south of Medain Salih are fortified with trenches and barbed wire, and the whole scene reminds one of South Africa at the time of the war.’119 This insight would prove crucial to our investigations a century later. Wavell, perhaps somewhat nervously, offered advice to potential travellers, ‘If you are attacked in the train, or with the caravan, by overwhelming numbers do not try to fight; give up your things quietly, and no harm will come to you.’120 A year later, in January 1909, conditions hadn’t improved, as the explorer and naturalist Douglas Carruthers managed to get as far as Tabuk but had to turn back to Damascus due to Bedouin hostility.121 In a lesson which would serve the Bedouin well, but the Ottomans less so, both sides realized that with imperial troops now mobile in large numbers, the railway could be attacked but not held. Conversely, Ottoman troops ‘were unable to maintain military su­per­ior­ity far beyond the railroad’s tracks’,122 though the tactical militarization of parts of the adjacent hinterland went some way to protecting it from surprise attacks. Superior numbers of Ottoman forces were constantly undermined by the cunning guerrilla tactics of the Bedouin.123 This realization, and the physical response it produced, would be a key factor in the Arab Revolt of 1916–18, when the natural advantages of Bedouin mobility over the fixed-position Turkish defences would become ever more pronounced. Building the railway created a new ‘industrialized’ conflict landscape between the Bedouin and the Turkish army, one which was embedded within an older pre-industrial terrain characterized by traditional Bedouin raiding of Hajj caravans. What neither side could foresee was the transformative effect of modern weaponry and technology, and the creation of a third conflict landscape belonging to the Arab Revolt.

From Ma’an to Mudawwara 1904–1905/6 Ma’an lies at the ancient crossroads of southern Jordan, on the boundary of civilization, where settlement meets sand, and the desert confronts the sown. Perched on the banks of a wadi which runs through the old town, the crumbling medieval ruins would still be familiar to those who built the railway more than a century ago. Today, these remains are enveloped by modern urban sprawl. By 1900, Ma’an had a population of 3,000, and fully one third was Christian.124 In 1904, when the railway arrived, Ma’an was a settlement of

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The Hejaz Railway two parts—Ma’an Misrie had some 500 mud houses, and just to the north, Ma’an al-Shamie had 200 similar buildings.125 Ma’an had only been brought under direct Ottoman rule in 1894, at which point a district governor had been appointed,126 and it now housed an imperial garrison, and, importantly, had its own water source in local springs.127 It was water which had made this place a southern hub of the annual Hajj pilgrimage from Damascus to Mecca along the route known as the Darb al-Hajj al-Shami. Caravans stayed for a day or two, their travellers stocking up on provisions provided by the area’s grapes, figs, and pomegranates, at specially convened markets.128 Ma’an was also the first op­por­tun­ity for pilgrims to write and send letters back to Damascus, and as always at such major Hajj stops, new pilgrims and traders joined the caravan. From at least Nabatean and Roman times, life for town dwellers in this region had been characterized by tension with the nomadic desert tribes who raided the trade and spice caravans, and later harassed and robbed pilgrims making the Hajj.129 During the Mamluk Sultanate (ce 1250–1517), there had been no fortifications or special facilities along the route, and travellers and pilgrims simply camped alongside nearby settlements. The sixteenthcentury Ottoman conquest of Syria changed this when Sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520–66) shifted a section of the traditional Hajj route eastwards—an act which required the construction of a security chain of specially built forts which penetrated deep into the Hejaz region, at Qatrana, Uneiza, Ma’an, Dhat al-Hajj, and further south towards Mecca, all supplied with cisterns and garrisoned by Janisseries.130 An early warning of what was to come with the building of the telegraph and then the railway was when more forts were built during the eighteenth century at Fassu’ah, Mudawwara, and elsewhere in response to an increase in Bedouin attacks on the Hajj caravans.131 This was in part the result of the Bedouin acquiring hand-held firearms and thus becoming an even more formidable enemy, and was reflected architecturally by a string of new forts designed around the use of these more deadly weapons.132 Portable firearms made the Bedouin more effective guerrillas, a fact known to the Ottomans and capitalized on much later by Lawrence in the Arab Revolt. Relations between villagers and Bedouin remained tense despite the new Ottoman forts. In 1854, during time spent at Ma’an, George Augustus Wallin observed that the Howeitat Bedouin levied a so-called brother tax on villages in the area and travellers who passed through it, on the basis that this was their ancestral land.133 Essentially a protection tax, the brotherly relationship was easily bestowed by the Bedouin who, despite their antipathy towards village dwellers and suspiciousness of strangers, were always keen to trade camels, sheep, wool, butter, and milk for gunpowder, weapons, coffee, and sugar.134 In this, of course, they reflected the age-old dichotomy between nomads and settled peoples, and the symbiotic relationship that had always sustained both. Conflict might still flare, however, and pilgrim caravans always offered rich pickings, as Charles Doughty observed when, heavily disguised, he accompanied a Hajj during the 1870s, ‘Great is all townsmen’s dread of the Beduw, as if they were the demons of this wild waste earth, ever ready to assail the Haj passengers.’135 The Bedouin were canny warriors, and played by their own rules. Some were employed by the Damascus Hajj masters as water carriers and escorts, while others plotted attacks on the pilgrims. Sometimes, doubtless, these were the same. In Doughty’s time, the caravan travelled three or four camels abreast across a width of around 100 metres, strung out in a line over three kilometres long—a common sight would have been around six thousand

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Figure 4.8 Ma’an Station, reconstructed Ottoman buildings in 2011 (© author)

people flanked by perhaps ten thousand animals. And every night, security was paramount, with the caravan encampment surrounded by ‘The small military tents of the Haj escort of troopers and armed dromedary riders, Ageyl’.136 Where Bedouin raiders could appear and disappear seemingly in an instant, the caravan moved at the pace of the slowest. From Ma’an to Fassu’ah Fort, a distance of some 55km, it took about eight hours, and from there to Mudawwara another fourteen hours.137 Due to the heat, much travelling was done by night or in the cool pre-dawn hours, as Doughty observed, ‘At three hours past midnight we were again riding’, and, on another day, ‘At half past five o’clock was the warning shot for the second journey. The night sky was dark and showery when we moved.’138 Ma’an was the obvious choice for the southern hub of the Hejaz Railroad, and Meissner built a large station 3.5km to the south-east of the town, with workshops, a locomotive turntable, water towers, various passenger buildings, and a house for himself (Figure 4.8). By August 1904, the Qatrana to Ma’an section of the railway was completed, and on 1  September a grand inauguration was held at Ma’an.139 By 1906, many of the town’s residents were making a good living from pilgrims who gathered to take the train south. The railway south of Ma’an would be used mainly during the Hajj season, for religious holidays, and special occasions.140 Ma’an retains its relationship with the Hajj today, at least in part, as the modern auto park in the town centre is where pilgrims gather for the long coach journey down the highway which shadows the old Hejaz Railway for much its route.141

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The Hejaz Railway

Moving south from Ma’an, Meissner and his labourers found themselves in a different world—quite unlike the one they had encountered during the previous four years. A sense of this otherness was still apparent several years later when Lt Col Frederick R. Maunsell travelling on the train commented on leaving Ma’an that ‘the line enters a spirit world without towns or even inhabitants. The stages south of Ma’an, the old pilgrim route, were the most desolate of all, and the way was always strewn by dead and dying camels.’142 This was Jebel Sherra—a high plateau of dry desert limestone, slate and flint, with no natural water sources, but whose hard land made a good base for railway foundations.143 It was an ancient landscape of human activity too, as Doughty observed for its southern part—‘The Arabs call all this region Ard Suwwan, the Flint-Ground; . . . I have found in it such wrought flint instruments as we have from some river and lake gravels and loams of Europe.’144 On leaving Ma’an, the railway initially followed the well-worn caravan trail of the Ottoman Hajj, a fact recorded in British government correspondence for 1907.145 This traditional route, chosen for camels and horses, and followed by the 1902 telegraph line, moved along an open desert path, an easy gradient directly south which Meissner was happy to follow. It avoided high points in favour of a generally flatter more navigable area dominated by the wider mouths of innumerable wadis, which nevertheless had to be crossed by bridges (Figure 4.9). However, Meissner’s route diverged a little further on, just south of Bir Shedia Station. At this point, the Ottoman route followed a path westwards into an area of broken hills, while

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Figure 4.9 A 12-arch Hejaz Railway bridge crossing a large wadi on the Jebel Sherra (© author)

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Desert Insurgency the railway forged a new route directly south, the two paths joining again just south of the mid-eighteenth-century Ottoman Hajj fort known as Qal’at al-Fassu’a which had two large cisterns146 and the place called Aqabat Hejazia (the latter variously rendered as Aqabat al-Hijazi, Aqabat al-Suwwan, and Aqabat Shamia), where Meissner would build a station of the same name.147 As the telegraph line had followed the original Ottoman route in its entirety, a second one was now built by Turkish army telegraphers for the ‘divergent’ stretch of railway line, and its poles now flanked the embankment from Ma’an to Aqabat Hejazia.148 The original westerly stretch of the Ottoman route was now bypassed, and seems to have fallen into disuse by pilgrims from this point. So hostile was the Jebel Sherra environment that all construction teams working south of Ma’an were paid a bonus of 150 piastres a month.149 They ‘camped in tents on both sides of the railroad and moved along with the progress of construction . . . Each battalion and company camped separately, ate their meals, prepared by their army cooks, together, and baked their bread in portable camp ovens.’150 Security too was an issue, as the Bedouin remained a mobile threat. This was reflected in the architecture of the stations south of Ma’an, which were massively constructed, often with flat cement roofs, and were provided with high walls with rifle loopholes. The first station after Ma’an was Ghadir al-Hajj at Km 475,151 which had several buildings, two tents, and a 1143m (1,250yd) siding, though no natural water supply.152 Twelve kilometres further on was the already-mentioned Bir Shedia Station at Km 487, which also had several buildings and a siding, as well as seven water barrels sunk into the ground. The railroad gradually ascended in height until it reached Aqabat Hejazia where the third station south of Ma’an was built at Km 514.153 In Doughty’s time, and today, ‘Akaba’ meant ‘a going up’, in the sense that it was the highest point on the route in this region before the steep descent which followed.154 It had two stone buildings, subterranean cisterns with a capacity of 12,000 cubic litres, and a 238m-long siding. It was at this place, in pre-railway times, that pilgrims steeled themselves for the imminent descent of 100 metres from the plateau through a narrow defile to the sandy wadi below, where many were robbed or worse. In full knowledge of this, during the nineteenth century, pilgrims offered up the following prayer: ‘May the Almighty God be merciful to them who descend into the belly of the dragon.’155 By November 1905, the railway had reached this much-feared place, where the plateau ended at the precipitous limestone escarpment of Ras en Naqb, an area known then and now as Batn al-Ghoul—the ‘Belly of the Beast’—as rich in folklore as in good quality stone and clay.156 As with many indigenous views of landscape, this was a place where geology meshed with human experience, and myths were woven between them. The ghoul is a shape-shifting Arabic jinn or spirit, which appears before desert travellers, leading them astray before despatching them.157 Doughty was told that at Batn al-Ghoul the creature had ‘a cyclops’ eye set in the midst of her human-like head, long beak of jaws, in the ends one or two great sharp fingers . . . a foot as the ass’ hoof, a foot as an ostrich’, and that it had been seen by many, and was invulnerable to bullets.158 Like all such creatures, it embodies dangerous ambiguity—a liminal state of being betwixt-and-between, perfectly mirrored by  Batn al-Ghoul’s dramatic change of scenery from the barren, colourless but familiar highland plateau to the dazzling chromatics of the unknown low-lying sprawling sands beyond. The ghoul personifies the terror of perishing in the desert, and at Batn al-Ghoul it is easy to see why.

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The Hejaz Railway The medieval Islamic traveller Ibn Battuta had called this defile Aqabat al-Suwwan, the Flint Pass, and the nineteenth-century Venetian traveller Ludivivo di Varthema referred to ‘the steps of “Aqaba” ’.159 The steep decline posed no problems for the camels, horses, and people who, across the millennia, had simply made their way down a sloping path which meandered through an opening in the rock wall. Charles Doughty had commented in the 1870s that this edge of the Jebel Sherra was called the Masharîf es-Shem or ‘The brow of Syria or the North’. He further observed that the narrow descent required that those riding camels, horses, or donkeys dismounted and walked through, down onto the flatness of Wadi Rutm: ‘The Beduins name this going-down Batn el-Ghrôl, “belly (hollow ground) of the Ogre” or else “strangling place,” ’ fen yughrulûn ez-zillamy; a sink of desolation amongst these rusty ruins of sandstone droughty mountains, full of eternal silence and where we see not anything that bears life.’160 Batn al-Ghoul posed a more serious challenge to the railroad. To overcome it, Meissner engineered a series of tight hairpin curves with 100m radius and with a gradient of 18/1,000.161 It took 400 of his labourers five months to cut away some 80,000 cubic metres of cliff face in order to achieve the descent.162 It was an extraordinary feat of engineering, and at a point just before where the first curve began, Batn al-Ghoul station was built at Km 520, with two stone buildings, a siding, and six buried water barrels. Maunsell commented on the stark beauty of the descent once the railway was completed: Some 50 miles south of Maan comes the most remarkable change in the landscape, and the veritable gate of Arabia and the home of the genie is at last reached. The line arrives quite suddenly at the edge of the curious escarpment known as the Batn-el-Ghrul, or the Hollow of the Genie. . . . The view from the summit is extremely striking . . . glowing throughout in the most brilliant and striking colours. The prevailing note is bright red and yellow, changing to violet, purple, and black, so that every tint, except green, seems to be supplied. The escarpment is of sandstone, which seems to have worn away in some places to sand drifts of all colours, but principally red and yellow. (Maunsell 1908: 575–6)

The railway made its way along the foot of the escarpment before making a tight southerly loop to follow the old caravan trail down through Wadi Rutm just a few hundred metres east of the old Ottoman route. In this otherworldly landscape, Meissner built a station at Km 530, some 10km from Batn al-Ghoul. Wadi Rutm Station had three stone buildings and one siding, and as it had no natural water it was equipped with a cistern and six subterranean water barrels.163 Several kilometres further south, the railroad emerged from the wadi out into a wide open plain that stretched southwards, and was referred to by Doughty as Debîbat es-Shem, Ard Jiddàr.164 Some 16km south of Wadi Rutm Station was Tel Shahm Station at Km 545, which had one station building, one siding, and six sunken water barrels, as did Ramleh Station at Km 554. The railroad continued a further 17 kilometres to Mudawwara, where a station was built at Km 572 in early 1906165—the last of Meissner’s constructions in what is now Jordan. It was the largest station yet built south of Ma’an, mainly due to the area holding plentiful artesian water, which was tapped by a 24-metre-deep well to which was attached a windmill extractor, with two 50-cubic-metre iron water-storage tanks mounted on a stone-built tower. The station had two stone buildings, an engine shed for two locomotives, and two 201m-long sidings. Maunsell had observed that ‘At Kalaat-i-Mudeverre, the first water

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Desert Insurgency Figure 4.10 Eighteenth-century Ottoman fort at Mudawwara in 2011 (© author)

since Ma’an is obtainable from a station well with a wind-pump, and another well near the old castle on the pilgrim route about 2 miles to the west. There is little trouble on the line from sand drifts, as a hard surface can easily be found, and rocky ground is seldom far distant below the surface.’166 The water and the rocky ground here would play important roles in the Arab Revolt. Due to its aquifer, Mudawwara had since the ninth century been a principal stopping point on the original Hajj route which lay several kilometres west of the railway. During the sixteenth century, it had been called Kudrat Jugayman, possibly after a local Bedouin chief who had harassed the Hajj pilgrims, and in the eighteenth century the Ottoman fort known as Qal’at Mudawwara (along with two cisterns) was built on the order of the governor of Damascus, Aydinili Abdullah Pasha (Figure 4.10).167 The ruins of a nearby village may date to the same period. Later repurposed for the Arab Legion, the fort continued in use until the 1950s, and is now in a ruinous state. Mudawwara’s station buildings are the only ones south of Ma’an which are still in a good state of preservation today (in Jordan), and are occupied by several Bedouin families. Travelling across some of the most stark and waterless regions of the entire Hajj route, the railway between Ma’an and Mudawwara had nine named stations and several guardhouses and many bridges over its 113 kilometres. While the railway and its buildings were in plain view to all before the First World War, this changed with the Arab Revolt. Another landscape would soon flank both sides of the railroad, and would not be rediscovered for almost a century.

Afterlife, 1918–2018 Abdulhamid II’s religious, political, and military aims were realized in spectacular fashion with his inauguration of the railroad at Medina in September 1908. Yet, as one dream was

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The Hejaz Railway fulfilled, another came crashing down. The Young Turk revolution had begun in April the same year, and on 24 July Abdulhamid had capitulated, agreeing to the restoration of the 1876 constitution which he had suspended in 1878. As he presided over the Medina celebrations, the political tide was turning, and just six months later, on 27 April 1909, he was deposed. His desert legacy, however, the ‘praiseworthy railroad’, flourished. The Hejaz Railway was a financial and technical success before 1914, and one of the least expensive railroads ever built. One estimate by Meissner put the total cost at TL 3 million by 1908, and TL 4.5 million by 1916. An average of 5,000 men had completed it in only eight years.168 The 1,320 kilometres (820 miles) from Damascus to Medina which had taken the traditional overland caravan forty days or more to traverse, now took only two to three days, and by 1909, travel costs for pilgrims had decreased by fifty per cent.169 In 1911, the railway carried 13,102 pilgrims, just 13.5 per cent of all those making the Hajj that year.170 In 1912, four years after inauguration, the railway carried 30,000 pilgrims, and two years later some 300,000 travellers of all kinds took the train.171 In general, while pilgrims accounted for 70 per cent of the profit, they contributed only one-sixth of the total number of travellers.172 The much-vaunted railway of faith was more often being used for secular purposes than religious ones. Pilgrims didn’t travel for free, though often tried to, and an interim arrangement allowed for 3 per cent of them to ride at no cost.173 And there were oddities too, where tradition confronted modernity, as in 1908, when Bedouins on the Hajj complained about their thirdclass wagons and were allowed to set up their tents on the railway’s flatcars.174 Sometimes tradition had to adapt, as when the Islamic method of measuring time from sunset was changed to the European one so as to align itself with the railroad’s timetable.175 In the years after the First World War, many Hejaz Railway buildings south of Ma’an remained ruinous from their war damage or fell into disrepair, and large stretches of railtrack and sleepers were uplifted and sold off.176 In what might be seen as an ‘ironic return’ to those who had contributed animal skins and other items for the original purchase of rails and sleepers, these materials were acquired and re-used by locals as beams to reinforce their house roofs and to serve as fence posts demarcating their gardens and land. These can still be seen in Wadi Mousa and at various locations along the railway’s route (Figure 4.11). This new local vernacular architecture was a direct result of recycling the original railroad infrastructure in the aftermath of war.177 In January 1919, an inspection of the war-damaged railway was undertaken by Major D. Heslop who found serious damage south of Qatrana which became so extensive that only 5 kilometres beyond Ma’an the expedition was abandoned.178 The following year, the railway again became entangled with conflict when in November 1920, Sherif Abdullah, a coterie of notables and 500 men arrived in Ma’an declaring that he had come to raise a revolt against the French annexation of Syria, a situation only eased when Winston Churchill announced at the Cairo Conference in March 1921 that Transjordan would be added to the British Mandate of Palestine with Abdullah as its first ruler.179 Nevertheless, running repairs were made, and as Lawrence commented, the wrecked railway ‘lay derelict till Feisal’s government rebuilt it after the Armistice’.180 The first postwar through-train from Damascus to Medina ran in June 1923, but the journey took twelve days not three, as repairs to the line had to be carried out en route.181 In March of the following year, 1924, the Ma’an to Mudawwara section was handed over by the British Representative in Transjordan, H. St J. Philby, to Prince Ali bin Hussein, King Hussein’s

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Desert Insurgency Figure 4.11 Re-use of Hejaz Railway steel sleepers as gate-posts and (just visible) fence-posts (© author)

eldest son, who in October that year briefly replaced his father as King of the Hejaz. In June 1925, his younger brother Abdullah, now King Abdullah I bin al-Hussein of Transjordan, annexed the district of Ma’an and took control of the Hejaz Railway as far south as Mudawwara.182 The last through-trains appear to have run in October 1925 when, with the emerging power of Abdulaziz ibn Saud (the future king of Saudi Arabia) besieging Medina, they brought in supplies just weeks before the city surrendered in December. Heavy rain storms later that winter damaged the railroad in this southernmost section of the route, and it was never rebuilt.183 October 1925 thus marks the end of the Hejaz Railway as a route from Damascus to Medina for all travellers as well as Hajj pilgrims. North of Mudawwara, the railroad became part of the Hejaz Railway in Transjordan operated by Palestinian Railways under a Divisional Superintendent in Amman.184 No trains now ran between Mudawwara and Ma’an, and by the late 1920s just one train a week operated between Ma’an and Amman. During the Second World War, the railway south of Ma’an again became embroiled in conflict. In 1941, British and Australian troops began constructing a new spur line to connect Ma’an to the port of Aqaba. Sourcing the rail track was easy—they simply pulled up some 60km of rails south of Ma’an abandoned since 1925, and relaid them as the new 42km line from Ma’an to Naqb Ashtar (en route to Aqaba) a year later. When the fortunes of war changed in the Allies favour the projected extension was abandoned. This latest war-related extension was short-lived—it opened in March 1942 and closed in August 1943.185 A tangled afterlife for the railway began in 1948, when Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan formed a committee to investigate the feasibility of re­habili­tat­ing the railroad. In 1955 they signed an agreement to contribute equally to the reconstruction.186 The following year a report was commissioned from the International Resources Engineering and Exploration Group concerning the Ma’an to Medina stretch of

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The Hejaz Railway the railway, part of which—from Ma’an to Mudawwara—had suffered the most damage by war, sand drifts, flooding, and corrosion, although it was observed that most of the culverts had survived.187 Despite negotiations with several international companies, including Bin Laden of Saudi Arabia, nothing came of this initiative. Eight years later, in 1963, a German engineering consultant submitted a report on the feasibility of reconstructing the Ma’an to Medina section of the railroad, and later that year the project was awarded to a consortium of mainly British companies called The Hejaz Construction Company.188 Even this reconstuction had a relationship with archaeology. John Dayton, a civil engineer and managing director of one of these companies, Alderton Construction, spent much time on the desert line and became fascinated with the region’s archaeology. He participated in a survey of north-west Arabia in 1968, a venture which proved critical to establishing archaeological research in the region.189 It was estimated that reconstruction would take three years, and cost £10 million, and would be financed by Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The 925km (575 miles) of track between Ma’an and Medina were surveyed again in 1964, and 85 per cent of the track was found to be damaged—48km (30 miles) of embankment washed away, 258km (160 miles) of track covered by wind-blown sand, 64km (40 miles) of track removed during the Second World War, and many stations in disrepair.190 The report concluded that some 300km of the line was potentially usable but that a vast amount of infrastructure was required.191 The line was scheduled for completion by 1968, with the civil engineering works to be finished by 1971, and the modern diesel trains that were to be used would take about half the time of the old steam locomotives. Optimistic projections saw five trains a day operating during normal times,192 and up to twelve trains carrying a total of 15,000 passengers a day would run during the peak Hajj season.193 The journey would take thirty-six hours, and a possible spur line might link up to Aqaba on the Red Sea. Following this assessment the most sustained attempt to rebuild the railroad began. Construction of the Ma’an to Medina section started in 1966, with the embankment, bridges and culverts being reapired and rebuilt throughout southern Jordan and almost to the station at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia, with 23,000 tonnes of rails supplied from Britain, and sleepers from Australia.194 By 1967, the embankment and some 2,000 bridges had been completed, 30km of track laid, and the replacement sleepers and rails stockpiled at Ma’an Station. Despite significant progress, however, time had run out. Spiralling costs, the construction of a new highway from Ma’an to Medina, and competition from cheap air travel intervened, though a political scapegoat was at hand. As Dayton recalls, the 1967 Arab-Israeli ‘Six-Day’ War ‘was simply an excuse to stop the work—the Saudis didn’t want the railway, and the Syrians had no money. So the Jordanians continued the contract as far as Batna el Ghul and down the escarpment, and then [a new section] along Wadi Rum to Aqaba.’195 The 1916–18 wreckage of Abdulhamid’s dream still haunted the embankments of the remote desert wadis during the mid-1960s. Eric Grieg, chief engineer of the Hejaz Construction Company, observed during this rebuilding that ‘In some of the stations we came across bones and skulls. There have been shells and ammunition, and we dug unexploded bricks of guncotton from some bridges . . . And three months ago, an entire station blew up from some buried explosive while we were working there. It wrecked one of our trucks.’ Debris was everywhere. At one point, Grieg and his team found eighteen stone graves nearby the site of an attack described by Lawrence, and at another location more

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Desert Insurgency Turkish graves were found adjacent to the ‘wreck of a locomotive perfectly preserved in the dry desert air’.196 At the same time as the decision to abandon the reconstruction project was made, a more northerly section of the railway was being brought back into regular service. In 1972, a new five-kilometre branch line was built to connect a nearby phosphate mine to the main Hejaz Railway line at Al Hasa Station. The section of main line south of Al Hasa was then refurbished to take the new heavier trains south to Ma’an and beyond to Batn al-Ghoul from where 116km of new embankment and track were laid to the port of Aqaba. This new service began in October 1975 under the auspices of the Aqaba Railway Corporation, and soon began transporting phosphate from new mines at Al-Abyadh and Shidyia. At the foot of the Batn al-Ghoul escarpment, today’s phosphate trains pass by the abandoned embankment of the original Hejaz Railway (which curves away to the south) and continues instead westwards along the new route to Aqaba.197 While the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company is officially the sole customer of the Aqaba Railway Corporation, echoes of the old Hejaz Railway are still heard in the remote region south of Ma’an. A curious mix of the modern and the legendary can be seen today in several tourist developments. Fictional conflict is re-enacted by the Jordan Heritage Revival Company,198 where, as part of a wider programme of re-enactments from Jordan’s past, ‘The Great Arab Revolt Show’ recreates a 1916 Bedouin attack on a train which takes place on part of the 1972–5 phosphate railway at Wadi Rum. The carriages are assaulted by Bedouin mounted on horses and camels and harmless explosives are detonated.199 No railway existed here before the 1970s, and so the event is a historical fiction. Nevertheless, the locomotive and its carriages, together with the new specially built station building, demonstrates the tenacious hold which Abdulhamid II’s sacred railway still has on the public imagination.200 While make-believe fighting is staged on specially arranged trains at Wadi Rum, further north, the real conflict in Syria put an end to the twice weekly trains which ran from Amman to Damascus. Tourism offers a way of preserving sections of the Hejaz Railway through the re-enactment of the Arab Revolt’s momentous events. In tandem, the railroad has also acquired a new parallel life as linear cultural heritage—as defined by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in their ‘International Charter for Cultural Routes’.201 The railway is recognized as a cultural route because it is ‘a continuum of space, places and areas that share [a] common theme’,202 and ‘because with its links to the old trade routes and overland pilgrimage routes it has been conducive to the “communication” of ideas and exchanges for centuries’.203 An important aspect of this designation is that during its construction, the railway’s distinctive station architectures were ‘the earliest models of industrial architecture in the Holy Land of Arabia [and] are definitely worth preserving if only for that reason’.204 Today, the Hejaz Railway is regarded by some as equally important for Arab and Turkish history, ‘as it marked the beginning of Arab autonomy in this region and the end of the Ottoman Empire. Its rapid deterioration requires that immediate steps be taken to document and preserve these valuable historical structures.’205 Such proclamations acknowledge the importance of the railroad’s national and regional heritage value yet sit uneasily with reality. Where heritage and tourism investment has been made it is occasionally impressive, though rarely escapes the region’s instability. In Damascus, for example, there are two stations, Qadem and Kanawat, the former established in 1900, the latter in 1906.206 Qadem, on the city’s outskirts, was the first Hejaz Railway station, and was

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The Hejaz Railway referred to at the time as ‘Qadem, the honoured’.207 It was in­aug­ur­ated on 1 September 1903. Until the civil war of 2011, some of the machinery was repurposed by engineers to keep a small number of locomotives and carriages in working order, but today it is their graveyard. Officially, there are several museums here, including one for rolling stock, one a workshop, another for Hejaz Railway paraphernalia, and one planned as a documentary centre. In a tragic turn of events for the Muslim railway of faith, the civil war wrought havoc at the station in 2013, with Syrian government troops fighting insurgents among the ruins. Kanawat, built on an extension line from Qadem into Damascus’s centre, is the grand main station where Abdulhamid II’s elegant private carriage is now a café bar. In 2004, the railway tracks here were pulled up in advance of redevelopment, which was planned to include both narrow and standard gauge rails along with an impressive new terminal building and a twelve-storey shopping mall.208 Until 2011, there were two trains a week running between Damascus and Amman mainly for tourists. James Nicholson, the author of The Hejaz Railway (2005), took this journey in 2002, and was surprised to meet two Turkish pilgrims returning to Istanbul from the Hajj, and quite unaware of their long-dead sultan’s role in building the railway.209 Today, after nine years of bitter conflict, the station’s portico is scarred by shrapnel, and its rare visitors see only plaques listing the names of railway workers killed, injured, and kidnapped, alongside an exhibition of photographs documenting the destruction of the country’s stations and rolling stock.210 In Saudi Arabia, Hejaz Railway stations fit neatly into a wider perspective of interpreting the country’s Islamic and pre-Islamic cultural heritage: ‘Today the remnants of the railway line, its stations and forts provide opportunities for the development of a small but specialist tourist services that could attract a range of audiences and help deliver economic growth and employment opportunities’,211 particularly since the momentous changes in the country’s attitudes to its economic future ushered in by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman since 2017. At Medina, the imposing Ottoman station was restored by the Saudi Arabian Deputy Ministry for Antiquities and Museums, and opened in January 2006 as the Hejaz Railway Museum. An Islamic Museum of Medina’s history was established inside the building, and outside an open air display of the railway’s rusting rolling stock stands together with restored locomotives and carriages inside the renovated workshop. Other buildings have also been restored, including the station master’s house, the passenger rest-house, and the water tower.212 Medain Salih was an important stopover on the traditional Hajj route, in part because of its water supply, surviving today as a pool and several wells, though the area was occupied at least by Nabatean times. During the eighteenth century, an Ottoman fort was built there,213 and consequently it became a major railway station, and today has sixteen railway buildings in the traditional Hejaz Railway architectural style. These include a passenger rest area, a workshop and parts of one of the original trains as well as a small museum. Some 220km north is the railway station at Tabuk, situated now in the centre of the modern town, and whose railway buildings and water tower have been renovated several times over recent decades. The railway shed contains several restored German-built locomotives of 1907 vintage, and there is a nearby marshalling yard.214 In Amman, Jordan, the main Hejaz Railway station is Mahattah, which was until 2011 a  functioning station from which mainly tourist trains ran north to Damascus, and, occasionally, south to Ma’an (Figure 4.12).

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Desert Insurgency Figure 4.12 Mahatta Station, Amman, in 2012 (© author)

Today, almost no trains are running, but the workshops maintain a number of locomotives, and carriages are renovated. The station buildings themselves house a small museum of memorabilia, maps, and miscellaneous railroad equipment. For the moment, Mahatta seems to exist in a time warp, an extraordinary heritage resource, currently orphaned, but with a likely bright future. Between 2014 and 2018, as a way of cementing relationships between Jordan and Turkey, an agreement was reached between the Jordan Hejaz Railway and the Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Coordination (TIKA) on a programme of restoration of Mahatta’s historic station buildings and the construction of a new Hejaz Railway Museum alongside.215 Apart from Amman, the only official Hejaz Railway heritage site in Jordan is at Ma’an. As at Damascus, regional conflict (ultimately deriving from the post-First World War shaping of the Middle East) reverberates through its streets, ancient and modern, making heritage projects problematical. During the late twentieth century, civil unrest in Ma’an was fuelled by unemployment, the feeling that lying so far south of the capital Amman, it had been forgotten, and its historical role in the founding of modern Jordan ignored. So near to the border with Saudi Arabia, travellers and families come and go, especially during the Hajj, some bringing ideas influenced by their Wahhabi neighbours. In 1998, a large demonstration took place after the American invasion of Iraq, and this quickly turned into a miniature uprising. Saudi flags were flown in the town, Jordanian Special Forces were deployed, the town put under curfew, and the phone lines cut. Sensitive to these issues, King Hussein visited Ma’an and met with the army and local tribal leaders, stressing the town’s importance to Jordan’s foundation, and referring to it as ‘Ma’an the origin’ and ‘Ma’an

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The Hejaz Railway the history.’ Further clashes between the Jordanian army and Islamic groups occurred in 2002, and several times during our 2006–14 fieldwork we found our cross-town route blocked by burning tyres placed across the main roads.216 Heritage initiatives have occurred however. At Ma’an station, August Meissner’s Hejaz Railway-style house became the first royal dwelling in what was to become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 1920, the then Prince Abdullah (later Emir of Transjordan, then King Abdullah I bin Al Hussein), used the building as his headquarters and home during his time as deputy for his brother King Feisal I of Syria.217 It was called the National Defence Centre, and it was from here that he planned the future state of Jordan before moving north to establish himself in Amman in February 1921. After his departure, the building briefly became a hotel, then left empty or used for occasional storage until the mid-1990s when it opened as a museum, telling the story of Jordan’s history from the Arab Revolt to the founding of the modern state.218 In November 2006, during our first year’s investigation, the museum was still open, dominated by the first Jordanian flag dating to 1918, cracked-glass display cases full of miscellaneous railway objects, and photographs of Abdullah and his family on walls which still preserved traces of their original Ottoman frescoes (Figure 4.13). By coincidence, this was the last year the old museum was open. In 2007, a renovation project began under the direction of a Royal Panel led by the Department of Antiquities, whose remit was to preserve the building and adjacent structures as ‘one of the most important historical sites in the Kingdom’.219 A dispute with the contractor not meeting the required standards led to the project being halted in 2010, and the museum has not been reopened as of the time of writing.220 Apart from the problematical heritage of the King Abdullah Museum, Ma’an Station today is the headquarters of the Aqaba Railway Corporation, where the phosphate trains are maintained and prepared for the journey south to Aqaba. Figure 4.13 Ma’an Station, Abdullah’s Palace/Meissner’s House in 2011 (© author)

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Desert Insurgency Ma’an is the last heritage outpost of the Hejaz Railway in Jordan, despite the unique potential of that part of the southern line now used by the phosphate trains, and the remnant track bed which lies abandoned from Batn al-Ghoul as it weaves its way south to Mudawwara. Worthy statements of heritage intent have not yet translated onto actions along this 113km stretch of railway. By 2006, most of the stations south of Ma’an had been partially destroyed, and at Batn al-Ghoul had disappeared completely. Gold-digging holes were everywhere—an occupational hazard at many Middle Eastern archaeological excavations—but here the result of a long and commonly held belief that retreating Turkish soldiers buried gold around the railway stations. Not only this, but that the railway tracks themselves were made of gold, and that even the Jordanian Army’s military constructions at Ajloun in northern Jordan in 2014 were really a cover for gold-hunting.221 Each year of our investigations witnessed the destruction of ever more traces of already ruinous station buildings, ancillary structures, and occasionally some of the remoter sites as well. Many of these places survive only in our photographs, survey drawings, and excavation reports, the preservation by record referred to in the Introduction. Declarations of the importance of Hejaz Railway landscapes and buildings are welcome, but it seems that by 2020 no amount of heritage industry symposia have had any effect on the ground, at least in the desert spaces of our study area.222 * The Hejaz Railway is a unique archaeological and anthropological object, created for different reasons by various financial means from across the Muslim world, from faith-based donations and taxation, to the selling of archaeological heritage, and from the manufacture of stamps and honours to the acquisition of sheepskins. These resources were transmuted, in a sense recycled into rail tracks, embankments, bridges, station buildings, and rolling stock—all underwritten by imperial-military, regional, and geo-political realities cloaked in religious intent. Even the route was hybrid, a palimpsest belonging, variously, to prehistoric, Nabatean, Roman, and Byzantine trade pathways, Ottoman Hajj roads, and railway modernity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, as the railroad moved through this millennia-old landscape, it became a catalyst for conflict, embedded in a war which changed the region and the world.

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5

Guerrillas and the ‘Sultan’s Mule’ The Hejaz confounds ordinary tactics. Learn the Bedu principles of war. T. E. Lawrence, Twenty-Seven Articles in The Arab Bulletin, 20 August 1917. article 22.

T

he first world war revitalized the Hejaz Railway, but not always as the new Turkish government, their German allies, or the British could have foreseen. No one could have predicted the role the faithful railroad would play in the coming conflict, its momentous consequences, or its galvanizing role in creating modern guerrilla warfare. And nobody, let alone the recently volunteered intelligence officer 2nd Lieutenant T. E. Lawrence, could have recognized that Abdulhamid II’s dream railway would be a catalyst for the modern legend of Lawrence of Arabia. * The railroad had been a strategic artery since its inception. Despite Ottoman emphasis on its religious role, and its economic and cultural effects along its route, there had always been a geopolitical dimension, as it bypassed the Suez Canal and threatened British India and the Far East. Yet there was nothing inevitable about a war fought along its length. The railroad was to be an unexpected proving ground for a new form of conflict with global reach based on a modern adaptation of traditional Bedouin raiding, itself honed by centuries of attacking Hajj caravans. The Hejaz Railway was born in conflict. Centuries of violence and banditry along the Darb al-Hajj al-Shami pilgrimage route had been reinforced when the Bedouin gained firearms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Modernity accelerated the process when the newly built telegraph line from Damascus to Medina was attacked by the Bedouin who pulled down the poles and stole the wire. Soon, they did the same with the railway. As railway construction pushed south of Amman, and especially south from Ma’an, Meissner and his engineers adapted the architecture of station buildings to counter the Bedouin threat. Some buildings had built-in loopholes for their defenders’ rifles, construction camps saw basic defensive measures being taken, and blockhouses were built at strategic points along the line. The threat was not a sustained Bedouin offensive, as the tribes had neither the manpower nor weaponry to inflict industrial-scale destruction, but rather damage by opportunistic lightning-strike raids. By 1908, the railway was completed and in operation, and Bedouin opposition was stiffening. The Ottoman response included reinforcing stations and crossing points, as well as probably some vulnerable bridges, as Major  A.  J.  B.  Wavell had observed first hand.

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Desert Insurgency From an archaeological perspective, this speedy enhancement of existing low-level railroad defences added a new layer of landscape along the route between Ma’an and Medina. Turkish militarization of the railway accelerated after the fall of Aqaba to Arab forces in July 1917, when more trenches were dug, more barbed wire entanglements built, impromptu loopholes pushed through station walls, and a chain of small hill-top fortifications known as karakolls thrown up at strategic and often remote locations. The German Lieutenant Thalacker, commandant of the Hejaz Railway station in Amman in 1918, commented that north of Ma’an the railway was ‘protected on our side by “karakolls” (fortified small camps with a Turkish occupying force of around 20–100 men each) around 25–40 kilometres apart. [this] “karakoll” protection line continued from Katrane [Qatrana] in a northerly direction via Amman to Dera.’1 These fortifications were effective, prompting S. C. Rolls to comment that the British armoured cars took great care in driving around the desert due to ‘the many Turkish hill top posts which were dotted about’.2 Today, archaeologists are confronted with the often superimposed remains of these different episodes of militarizing the railway—overlaying, intercut, and recycled with one another in complex and intriguing ways, rather than the oft-imagined pristine remains solely of the 1916–18 Arab Revolt. What unites these different episodes is the military reality of the Turks being tied to the railway, its stations, and occasional strong-points, versus the Bedouin (and later their British and French Allies) who could roam at will, appear and disappear without warning. Lawrence’s thoughts on this style of fighting were specific to his experiences with the Bedouin in the Hejaz, and as such were theorized and codified in his despatch entitled ‘Twenty-Seven Articles’ for the Arab Bulletin of August 1917, and described more generally in Seven Pillars of Wisdom.3 Fifteen core principles of guerrilla fighting can be drawn from Lawrence’s later publications on the subject which were informed by his own experiences:4 Strive above all to win hearts and minds Establish an unassailable base Remain strategically dispersed Make maximum use of mobility Operate in small local groups Remain largely detached from the enemy Do not attempt to hold ground Operate in depth rather than en face Aim for perfect intelligence about the enemy Concentrate only for momentary tactical superiority Strike only when the enemy can be taken by surprise Never engage in sustained combat Always have lines of retreat open Make war on matériel rather than on men Make a virtue of the individuality, irregularity, and unpredictability of guerillas The feint and scattered traces of this new kind of fighting are quite different from the metal-drenched battlefields of the Western and Eastern Fronts, and required precisely the kind of interdisciplinary research outlined in chapter 4. In purely military terms, it is significant that Allenby, the commander of the British forces in Palestine, admitted to Sir Henry Wilson that if Prince Feisal’s Arab raiders were defeated then his (Allenby’s) ‘right flank would be turned and position would be “untenable” ’.5 In other words, the

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ railway war played a critical not a peripheral role in the Allied victory over the Ottoman Empire in 1918. * The Sultan’s Mule became the focus of attention for the British and the Arabs after the capture of the Red Sea port of Wejh in January 1917. As the Turks were pinned to the earth along the railway’s isolated desert route, it seemed to the Arabs and the British that surprise raids could inflict debilitating damage necessitating constant repairs rather than total destruction. They were right. Even by the beginning of 1917, not enough supply trains were getting through to Medina, and civilians had to be evacuated to Damascus. Medina was soon little more than a garrison town.6 The idea of such attacks seems to have originated with Aziz al-Masri, briefly Feisal’s chief of staff, several months before Wejh was taken. At a meeting with Feisal, the British and the French at Rabegh on 16 November 1916, al-Masri had proposed that reinforcing a regular Arab army should be ‘a fast-moving column equipped with light weapons with the task of operating behind Turkish lines in Arabia, right up to Syria. This column was intended to terrify the Turks, disrupt their communications and paralyse their movements. . . . Emir Feisal liked the idea.’7 On the same day, the Royal Flying Corps ‘Arabian Detachment’, C  Flight No. 14 Squadron, arrived in Rabegh with a mission to monitor Turkish troop movements. After Wejh was captured, they too shifted their attention to the railway, flying reconnaissance and bombing missions from small forward landing strips out in the desert. As Captain Thomas Henderson recorded, ‘We now aimed at the Hejaz Railway, the enemy’s sole line of communication, along which he was very busy bringing in supplies of food and ammunition and at the same time evacuating the civilian population.’8 In October 1917, C Flight became Special Duty Flight, and, a month later, X Flight (Figure 5.1).9 Figure 5.1 C Flight/X Flight pilots at Aqaba (© The Siddons Family) Note: Front row, left to right, Sefi, Junor, Siddons, Davies; back row, left to right, Oldfield, Divers, Grant, Latham, Hawley, Nowel, Murphy.

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Desert Insurgency The railway war—more accurately a relentless series of pin-prick raids—began in early February 1917, when Major Herbert ‘Bimbashi’ Garland and fifty-two Bedouin trekked in darkness into the interior. Garland had arrived in the Hejaz the previous September to help train the Bedouin in the use of explosives (Figure 5.2).10 They dug charges into the sand at various points on the track between the Hejaz stations of Towaira and Wayban, some 60 kilometres south of Al Ula. Despite being surprised by the approach of a troop train and laying only some of their explosives, the results were dramatic. The locomotive detonated the charge then tumbled down the embankment, proving that even a small explosion could derail a  train—a lesson that shaped the attackers’ tactics from then on. Indeed, Garland’s several explosive inventions were in effect improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—a melding of western technology and Bedouin raiding culture—perfectly suited to such situations from the Arab Revolt to the next century’s American occupation of Iraq. Garland had been the first European to be allowed into the Hejaz, and it was no mean feat, as David Hogarth commented after the war—‘It was a plucky action, since the temper of Bedawins at sight of a Christian was still uncertain at that epoch, and Garland had not been in Arabia before.’11 While Garland was busy with this attack, fellow officer Lt Col Stewart Newcombe of the Royal Engineers was accompanying Sherif Nasir of Medina with a larger party of Bedouin against the major Figure 5.2 Hejaz station at Medain Saleh.12 On 21 February, they split into three groups with Major Herbert Garland Newcombe destroying about 100 rail tracks south of the station, while to the north the (© Joe Berton) second party under Shawish Azil demolished 150 rail tracks and fifteen telegraph poles.13 Before returning to Wejh, the reunited group destroyed more rail tracks and damaged a train just north of Kashim Sana’a Station. Inspired by these successes, in which he had played no part, Lawrence eagerly launched his own raid on Aba el Naam Station. Alongside Sherif Fauzan al Harthi, the French Captain Raho, and twenty-five Otaibi and Juhanni Bedouin, he observed the station from a nearby hill at sunset on 28 March. Behind the heavily entrenched Turkish perimeter, he saw several stone buildings, a water tower, innumerable bell tents, and when the Turks assembled for their evening parade, he calculated around 390 soldiers. Just to the north was a large twenty-arch bridge spanning Wadi Hamdh, and on a nearby knoll, ‘a dozen white tents, with Turkish officers lounging in chairs’.14 Sherif Shakir arrived at the raiders’ camp with 300 more Bedouin, and the next day the force divided into two raiding parties. One group trained by Garland went north to demolish track, while Lawrence rode south, cutting the telegraph line and laying a 20lb gelignite mine. The train which blew it was damaged and derailed, but the Turks levered it back into position and made their escape. Lawrence’s artillery opened fire on the station, the Bedouin attacked, and the Turks fell back on their trenches whereupon the attack was broken off. The raiders returned with thirty prisoners, left behind about seventy Turkish dead and wounded, and a line which took three days to repair. Lawrence commented laconically ‘So we did not wholly fail.’15

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ Buoyed up by his first taste of action, Lawrence set off again the following month with forty Juhanni Bedouin and a machine-gun crew for the station at Mudarraj.16 In the biting cold and dark of 5 April, he spent four hours burying a Garland mine at Km 1121, 5 kilometres south of the station, leaving this literary account of a deadly pursuit: Laying a Garland mine was shaky work, but scrabbling in pitch darkness up and down a hundred yards of railway, feeling for a hair-trigger buried in the ballast, seemed, at the time, an almost uninsurable occupation. The two charges connected with it were so powerful that they would have rooted out seventy yards of track; and I saw visions of suddenly blowing up, not only myself, but my whole force, every moment. To be sure, such a feat would have properly completed the bewilderment of the Turk! (Lawrence 2003: 215)

While his efforts were rewarded when Turkish patrols failed to spot the mine the next morning, they were ultimately wasted as the mine was faulty and failed to detonate when a train full of women and children evacuees from Medina passed over it. Lawrence retrieved, repaired, and replaced the mine that evening, and the party then demolished 200 rail tracks and a four-arched bridge. Next morning, they heard a distant blast from their overnight camp in Wadi Ais, and later discovered that, as the Turks were repairing the damaged bridge, the mine had exploded under a train carrying labourers and spare rails from Hedia station. For Lawrence it was a triumph. Feisal was impressed by these raids, and on 14 April authorized Garland and Newcombe to accompany 1,000 Bedouin to attack Medain Saleh again, where they demolished more railway tracks before attacking the old Hajj fort at Muazzam and its adjacent station. This time the Turks had the upper hand, some 200 stoutly resisting from their trenches and a nearby machine-gun nest. While the raiders had to retreat, they took some solace from blowing up more rails and telegraph poles near the station at Disa’ad. It was becoming clear to Lawrence, as al-Masri had argued, that hit-and-run tactics in the desert were more effective and less risky than an assault on Medina, hitherto the default British aim. Raids destroyed and damaged tracks, telegraph poles, buildings, and rolling stock, bleeding away Turkish manpower and resources precisely by not closing the railway down. It kept thousands of Turkish troops locked up in Medina, rather than abandoning the holy city and reinforcing their comrades on the main Palestine front. It also played to the strengths of Bedouin talents for raiding combined with expertly laid high explosives to cause serious if short-lived disruption. Death by a thousand cuts and containment were the watchwords. Contrary views were also expressed, and are evident in military analyses of the events. The main counter argument was that while the Germans wanted their Turkish allies to abandon Medina as it was a serious drain on their resources, the Turks could not afford to lose this holy city as well as Mecca.17 Otto Liman von Sanders, the German commander of Turkish forces in Syria-Palestine from March 1918, made several attempts to have Medina evacuated but wrote that he was ‘invariably met with an inflexible resistance’.18 The Ottoman claim to the Caliphate was dependent in large part on possessing, protecting, and facilitating the Hajj to both sacred places. The loss of Mecca the previous year, and Baghdad in March of 1917, had been a blow to Turkish prestige—and defeat at Medina (through battle or abandonment) would have damaged their political, ideological, and spiritual legitimacy still further. It would also have sent the wrong message to Bedouin

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Desert Insurgency tribes sitting on the fence, waiting to see who had the upper hand, and thus whether or not to join the Revolt. In this view, the Turks, and especially Fakhri Pasha, their tough and intransigent commander at Medina, were in no rush to leave the city—which did not surrender until January 1919. Far from being a brilliant military strategy, it has been argued that the guerrilla raids on the Hejaz Railway were militarily insignificant, not least because most damaged tracks were repaired within twenty-four hours. They revealed the inability of Feisal’s Arab forces to cut the railway line permanently, just as they were unable to take Medina by frontal assault. Lawrence’s opinion that such raids kept the Turks locked up in Medina was simply making a virtue of necessity it has been argued. Some Turks saw a different truth in hindsight, attempting perhaps to downplay the heroic notoriety that Lawrence achieved after the war. Ali Fuat Erden, commander of the Turkish 4th Army, observed ‘We were the ones who made Lawrence famous. Our strategies and policies, our perseverance not to surrender Medina and the Hejaz Railway turned Lawrence into a “fairy tale hero”, a title undeserved.’19 Early May 1917 was a key moment for Feisal’s aspirations to move the Figure 5.3 Revolt north to Damascus, for the railway war, and for Lawrence. Discussions at Wejh Sheikh Auda abu Tayi between Feisal, Lawrence, and others as to the next move were joined by the legendary (© Library of Congress) Bedouin Sheikh Auda abu Tayi (Figure 5.3). It was agreed that Aqaba must be taken, and Auda argued forcefully that he could do it. The plan was to take Aqaba from behind via Wadi Yutm rather than a frontal attack from the sea as had previously been discussed. To achieve this, an Arab force would pass through Turkish lines and loop north-east through the desert to the area around Ma’an, raise Bedouin support, and carry out diversionary attacks to deflect Turkish attention from the real objective. This was al-Misri’s strategy writ large. While Lt Col Cyril Wilson20 seems to have been told of the plan in outline by Auda (including Lawrence’s participation), both he and his superiors in Cairo seem not to have realized that Aqaba was the ultimate goal rather than wishful thinking on behalf of the Arabs21—and Lawrence didn’t enlighten them. It was agreed that Sherif Nasir and Auda would lead the expedition, supported by Nasib al-Bakri as political officer, and a regular Arab army officer Major Zaki al-Drubi. It was a fateful decision, and the origin of a century-long dispute. Lawrence’s view was that it was his idea albeit that only someone of Auda’s fearsome warrior status could carry it off.22 In Seven Pillars, Lawrence recorded, somewhat ambiguously, that it was during his discussions with Auda that the plan crystallized in his mind, and that they both decided on it.23 As he memorably wrote, ‘It would be an extreme example of a turning movement, since it would involve us in a desert march of perhaps six hundred miles to capture a trench within sight of our ships.’24 A contrary Arab perspective was that it was Auda’s initiative,25 perhaps influenced by al-Masri’s earlier suggestion at Rabegh. While it seems that Feisal, Auda, and Lawrence agreed on the idea, the Arab view was that Lawrence was not involved in the planning, and indeed, had to request he be allowed to accompany the force as a mining expert, though this downplaying of Lawrence’s role had its own reasons.26 Nevertheless, it was Lawrence’s version that became the standard historical assessment.

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ This bold manoeuvre to take Aqaba would have profound consequences for the war along the railway and the archaeological traces it left behind. It began on 9 May with Sherif Nasir, Auda, al-Bakri, al-Drubi, and Lawrence accompanied by thirty-five Ageyl Bedouin. Nasir had £20,000 in British gold to pay for the operation and to ease the forging of tribal alliances for Feisal’s cause. Leaving Wejh, they arrived ten days later at Disa’ad Station, blew up some track and pulled down telegraph poles—the noise and destruction astounding Auda who had never seen the effects of high explosive. So impressed was the veteran Bedouin leader that by the middle of June he had recruited 500 warriors to the cause.27 The enterprise depended on secrecy and surprise, and so as a diversion, Auda sent his nephew Zaal Abu Tayi and 100 Bedouin together with Lawrence north to Zerqa Station and then further still to Minifir between Samra and Mafraq stations, where they were passed in the dark of 22 June by a Turkish train. The following night, Lawrence placed a large mine by a culvert at Minifir, but was unable to wait for a passing train. He recorded how instead they: laid some thirty charges of gelignite against the most curved rails, and fired them leisurely. The curved rails were the best, for the Turks would have to bring down new ones from Damascus. Actually this took them three days and then their construction team stepped on our Garland mine . . . and hurt its locomotive, and they held up traffic for three other days while the line was picked over for fresh traps. (Lawrence 2003: 312)

Figure 5.4 Hejaz Railway bridge drainage-hole cavities used to plant explosives in (© author)

On their way back, the raiders took advantage of the small station at Suwaqa (Suaka)28 17km north of Qatrana on 27 June. South of the station a railway bridge spans a small wadi, and while Lawrence watched from a vantage point, Zaal and his men crept down into the dry bed, followed it toward the station and shot one of the breakfasting Turkish officers.29 In the full Bedouin charge which followed, the Turks rushed into one of the station’s two stone buildings, bolted its metal door behind them and began firing from it steel-shuttered windows. It was a stand-off, but the Bedouin ransacked the second building and captured a flock of Turkish sheep. They then ambushed an approaching four-man trolley loaded with copper wire to repair the telegraph line, which they used to blow gelignite charges and destroy a culvert, track, and telegraph.30 Archaeology made a curious appearance in Lawrence’s mind during the post-raid feast of captured Turkish mutton. He recorded how, being short of steel knives, the Bedouin ‘had recourse to flints to cut them up [and that] if steel had been constantly rare we would have chipped our tools skilfully as paleoliths’.31 The diversion succeeded, and the raiders now returned south, skirting Ma’an, destroying track and blowing bridges by planting a few pounds of gelignite in the drainage holes designed into the arches (Figure 5.4). The cavities were ideal mine chambers and the effects were dramatic. Lawrence observed that the explosives ‘brought down

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Desert Insurgency the arch, shattered the pier, and stripped the side walls, in no more than six minutes’ work’.32 When the small garrison at Ghadir al Hajj Station nearby sallied forth from their trenches, they were quickly driven off. Under cover of darkness they moved west to the village of Abu Lissan, and encountered a more substantial battle-ready Turkish force encamped around the town’s well. At dusk on 2 July, enraged by Lawrence’s remarks about the ineffectiveness of his Howeitat warriors, Auda led a charge of 400 camels and fifty horses which left 300 Turks dead and 160 captured for the loss of two men.33 Lawrence accidentally shot his own camel during the attack, and stunned by the fall, lay on the ground for the rest of the battle. Auda’s success yielded tempting intelligence from Lawrence’s interrogation of Turkish prisoners who informed him that Ma’an Station was only lightly defended. Strategic imperatives overruled the tactical advantage, as Lawrence realized that even if Ma’an was taken it would be impossible to hold with his force’s depleted resources of men, armaments, and gold.34 Aqaba beckoned. The force advanced across the Guweira plain towards the mouth of Wadi Yutm. Precipitous, riddled with defendable ravines, and only 100 metres wide, the 40-kilometrelong defile was regarded by the Turks as virtually impregnable. It was defended by one mixed garrison of gendarmes, Turkish soldiers, and loyal Bedouin, supported by a camel corps of 130 men.35 But a bulwark it wasn’t. Guweira Fort was surrendered by its Turkish commandant on 4 July, then, during a lunar eclipse, the outpost of Kithara with its 140 men and three officers was taken by Husayn ibn Najad and his Howeitat, quickly followed by the surrender of another outpost at Khadra and its 300 Turkish soldiers.36 A headlong race through a sandstorm ended with Aqaba being taken without a fight on 6 July. The port was little more than a stone-built sixteenth-century Ottoman fort surrounded by mud and rubble houses. As the victors surveyed their arduously won prize, Lawrence observed that ‘Akaba was all a ruin. Repeated naval bombardments had degraded the place to its original rubbish . . . Akaba was dirty and contemptible, and the wind howled miserably across it.’37 Racing his camel across the Sinai desert the next day, Lawrence covered the 257 kilometres to Suez in just forty-nine hours and then journeyed to Cairo by train on 10 July.38 He briefed General Sir Gilbert Clayton, chief political officer of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), who immediately sent £16,000 in gold to Aqaba for Sherif Nasir to honour his promises to pay for Bedouin support. Lawrence was at first forthright in his account of the meeting—‘Akaba had been taken on my plan by my own effort. The cost of it had fallen on my brains and nerves.’39 Yet, several months later, in a letter to Major W. F. Stirling, he appeared more circumspect, ‘I think people are prone to ascribe to me what the Arabs do (very efficiently, if oddly) on their own.’40 Whoever had come up with the bold tactic, the truth was that it had been a wholly Arab affair made possible by Auda,41 and whose success may have owed less to Lawrence’s presence than his report to Clayton suggested (Figure 5.5).42 Sir Reginald Wingate, commander of British military operations in the Hejaz and high commissioner in Egypt, also welcomed the news and contacted the chief of imperial general staff, Sir William Robertson, in London, informing him of Aqaba’s capture and the attacks on the railway. Two days later, Lawrence briefed General Sir Edmund Allenby, the new commander of the British forces in Palestine. Coming after the two dismal and costly failures of the British Army in Gaza under his predecessor, General Sir Archibald Murray,43

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ Figure 5.5 T. E. Lawrence, David Hogarth, and Alan Dawnay in Cairo (© Harry Chase, Marist College)

it was clear to Allenby that Feisal’s Arab forces could play a valuable role on the British right flank. Lawrence’s report on Aqaba confirmed his view. One response to this success was Feisal’s sanctioning of more raids on the railway in what today is southern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. On 11 and 12 July, the RFC dropped thirty bombs on Al Ula Station and army encampment, and again a few days later on 16 July when further devastation included destroying the station’s water tower. At dawn on 27 July, Lt Col Pierce Joyce44 and Sherif al Harthi along with 300 Bedouin dug in 700 gun-cotton charges beneath the lines connecting Mudarraj and Hedia stations despite being under shrapnel fire from Turkish artillery. Joyce noticed evidence of Lawrence’s earlier raid on Km 1121 in April, in the repairs that had been carried out. A few days later, on 2 August, the same party reinforced by 500 Arabs, some French troops, and Syrian officers used 1,450 blocks of gun-cotton to demolish six kilometres of rail and telegraph lines and seven culverts near Towaira Station. These raids stretched the Turks to the limit despite their skill at repairing the line, as later intelligence reported that Medina’s store of spare tracks from the abandoned extension to Mecca had been exhausted.45 Around the same time, Newcombe and Captain Henry Hornby together with thirty Egyptians and four machine guns had established a new base in the old Hajj fort at Zumurrud Station. On returning from a scouting mission, they discovered the Turks waiting in ambush atop a nearby hill with a deadly field of fire. Determined not to be diverted from attacking the railway, Newcombe set off at dawn on 31 July but soon heard that Sherif Sharraf had taken Sahl al Matran Station. He moved quickly to help, arriving at the station and burning a water tank wagon, telegraph poles, and blowing up the railway points, 600 rails and damaging 200 more. When he returned to Zumurrud the Turks had already

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Desert Insurgency

Figure 5.6 Jafar al-Askari (© Harry Chase, Marist College)

been routed by Jafar al-Askari, commander of the Hashemite regular forces of Feisal’s Northern Army (Figure 5.6).46 Although unsuccessful, the Turkish attack on Zumurrud showed they could track and engage Arab-British forces. In truth, there were simply not enough instances of such aggression. The raids continued apace. On 7 August, Garland set off with Sherif Nasir, thirty-six Arab dynamiters and 200 Bedouin to attack the railway between Istabal Antar Station and a nearby fortified hilltop. They knew the Turks had intelligence of their approach and had organized railway patrols, again suggesting they had good local sources of information. Garland demolished 100 rails, but was discovered by the Turks and moved to the stretch of railroad between Jed’a and Abu Na’am Stations. Here, on 11 August, he laid 900 charges which destroyed 800 rail tracks and pulled down more telegraph poles, and a few days later blew up a four-arched bridge and 700 more rails between Jeda’a and Hedia stations. The Turks again acquitted themselves well, almost getting the better of him. Despite stationing Bedouin warriors on his flanks, Garland was ambushed by thirty Turks hiding behind the bridge and initially had to retreat. Although the Bedouin eventually drove them off so that he could return, it was a close call, and Garland considered that the Turks had opened fire on him just a little too soon—otherwise it could have been a disaster.47 Throughout August, the RFC was attacking the railway, focusing on Ma’an which had recently been reinforced and now had 6,000 infantry, a cavalry regiment, and sixteen artillery pieces. On 28 August, flying at low altitude from the pot-holed forward airfield at Quntilla, two RFC planes bombed the station’s engine shed and barracks as well as the adjacent aerodrome, inflicting serious damage to the rolling stock and killing thirty-five men and wounding fifty.48 Despite being badly scarred with Turkish shrapnel due to their pilots’ daredevil low flying, both planes survived and repeated their success by bombing the Turks at Abu Lissan over the coming days. Further north, in September, Maulud Mukhlis and Sherif Abdul Muin led a mixed force of Arab regulars and Bedouins against the spur line (the ‘Forest Railway’) which the Ottomans had built in 1915 to overcome the shortage of locomotive coal by using wood instead.49 So desperate was the need for wood that at Medina the Turks had begun stripping wooden fittings and furniture from the town’s houses.50 The Forest Railway ran 40 kilometres west from Uneiza Station to the al-Hiyysheh Forest at Ras Al-Hadid near the Crusader castle at Shawbak. The station had been built next to an Ottoman fort and cistern (Qal’at ‘Unaiza), partly of re-used material from a second-century Roman caravanserai. It was surrounded by a trench, and protected by a heavily entrenched dormant volcano 2 kilometres to the west.51 Maulud’s raid demolished 300 rails—a job finished a few months later in January 1918 when the whole line was destroyed. Our investigations in 2007 and 2008 revealed a strong oral tradition of these Turkish activities as well as physical remains of Arab Revolt-period structures.52 Lawrence meanwhile was busy south of Ma’an with 100 Bedouin under Zaal. On 17 September 1917, he lay in the sand at dusk to spy on Mudawwara Station. Turkish dogs didn’t catch their scent, and a soldier lighting a cigarette also failed to notice them. They calculated the station’s garrison of between 200 and 300 men was too strong to risk an attack, and moved south the next day searching for a suitable weakspot, finding it at Km 587, a small isolated bridge between Mudawwara and Hallat Ammar stations. It was

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’

Figure 5.7

perfect for ambush—a sweeping curve of track overlooked by a nearby embankment ideal Hallat Ammar ambush for machine guns. Today, it lies in the demilitarized zone between Jordan and Saudi site at Km 587 (© author) Arabia (Figure 5.7). Five hours spent laying a 50lb gelignite charge set the trap. Next morning, a small Turkish patrol of eight soldiers and a corporal walked up the line from the south, but passed by the raiders and over the mine without noticing anything.53 An hour later, at midday, 100 Turks from Mudawwara Station began slowly walking south towards the ambush position, scouring the line as they came. Lawrence and Zaal readied to escape, but then noticed a telltale plume of black smoke approaching from the south—a twin-engined train leaving Hallat Ammar station. It was an intimidating sight—Lawrence wrote that ‘the engines, looking very big, rocked whistling into view round the bend, travelling their fastest. Behind them were ten box-wagons, all crowded, and rifle muzzles were sticking out of the windows and doors, and there were little sandbag nests on the flat roofs in which Turks held on precariously while they shot at us.’54 The train sped towards Lawrence’s waiting men and he gave the order to Salem, Feisal’s slave, who plunged the firing handle

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Desert Insurgency down as the second engine passed over the mine. Lawrence described the hellish scene that ensued: there followed a terrific roar, and the line vanished from sight behind a jetted column of black dust and smoke a hundred feet high and wide. Out of the darkness came ­shattering crashes and long, loud metallic clangings of ripped steel, while many lumps of iron and plate, with one entire wheel of a locomotive, whirled up suddenly black out of the cloud against the sky, and sailed musically over our heads to fall slowly and heavily into the desert behind. (Lawrence 2003: 407)

As the leading wagon careered into the gap of the shattered bridge, and others tumbled off both sides of the track, Lawrence’s machine guns raked the panic-stricken Turkish troops— the Bedouin fired down from a nearby spur, and the Stokes mortar joined in. The Turks jumped from the carriages, taking cover behind the railway embankment, returning fire through the wheels.55 Soon, the incoming fire was too much, and the Turks abandoned their rifles and ran off into the desert, where they were caught in the open by the Lewis gun at terrible cost. The Bedouin immediately raced to plunder the tumbled carriages. The attackers suffered one killed and a handful wounded, while the Turks lost about seventy dead, thirty wounded, and eighty taken prisoner in a scene of carnage which had lasted less than ten minutes. Despite this bloody coup, the mission wasn’t complete in Lawrence’s mind because the first locomotive remained salvageable despite lying on its side. Rushing to finish the job, he detonated a charge of gun-cotton by the engine’s cylinder, while all around the Bedouin were heaving loot onto their camels. This signalled the end of the operation, as military discipline evaporated into the dry desert air. Five Egyptian soldiers who had been captured by the Turks were freed and given the job of taking away their former captors. The ambush had been a great success, likely exceeding Lawrence’s expectations. It destroyed two locomotives and their wagons, but equally important, the experience gave them knowledge of the ground and demonstrated the practicability of using armoured cars in the area, as well as revealing that Mudawwara Station would have to be attacked by a large force if it was to be taken.56 Two days later, more damage was inflicted further south with 650 rails destroyed when the Beni Atiyya Bedouin captured a Turkish post north of Wadi Ithil Station south of Tabuk. After repulsing a Turkish counter attack by Circassian cavalry,57 the raiders moved north towards Tabuk, capturing seventy Turks en route then attacking other Turkish forces as they advanced on Mudawwara, but an armoured train and machine guns halted their advance.58 The Hallat Ammar ambush emboldened Lawrence to attack near Bir Shedia Station at Km 487 south of Ma’an in early October. Together with French artillery commanded by the Corsican Captain Rosario Pisani59 and 150 Bedouin, he set out across the barren Jebel Sherra plateau only to find the target area heavily defended by Turkish guard posts manned by between fifteen and twenty-five soldiers each, and decided instead to attack three vulnerable bridges a few kilometres further south. What followed was a typical raid, small but effective. When an automatic mine failed to explode under a passing water train, Lawrence replaced it with an electric one which destroyed a twelve-wagon train steaming south from Ma’an on 6 October.60 Lawrence recalled being enveloped in blackness and dust from the

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ explosion, and the ‘green-yellow sickly smoke of lyddite hung sluggishly about the wreck’.61 Bedouin looting inevitably followed, but as they loaded their camels with seventy tons of food, Turkish troops were seen advancing only a few hundred metres away. Lawrence and his force retreated without loss. This was another propaganda coup. It played well with other Bedouin groups, who on one occasion at least confused Lawrence with the mines he laid—‘Send us a lurens and we will blow up trains with it’ the Beni Atiyeh told Feisal afterwards.62

A Strategic Shift Lawrence travelled to British Headquarters to discuss tactics with Allenby in advance of the British offensive on the Gaza-Beersheba front planned for 31 October 1917. This would become the Third Battle of Gaza, fought on the 2/3 November—a signal victory for the British, opening the way to the capture of Jerusalem on 9 December. The Arabs would now become the right wing of Allenby’s main force, co-ordinating raids to disrupt Turkish communications with Palestine. Lawrence’s earlier foray north into Syria had convinced him the railway was especially vulnerable along the bridges which spanned the Yarmouk Valley, and he and Allenby agreed that he would blow up Yarmouk Valley Bridge No. 14 at Tel Shehab near Deraa, with the aim of cutting the Turkish line of communication and supply to Damascus. Meanwhile, on 12 October, Joyce and Maulud Mukhlis raided north of Ma’an around the imposing medieval Crusader castle at Shawbak. They took the castle then demolished parts of the spur line to the al-Hiyysheh Forest damaged the previous month. Further south, on 18 October, 400 Bedouin besieged then overran ‘Hill Post 4’, a Turkish strongpoint between the stations of Dhat al Hajj and Bir ibn Hermas. Half the Turkish garrison was either killed or taken prisoner and an approaching relief train derailed. This success, again small, was nevertheless pointed. The railway was out of action for three days and the Turks had to send a battalion of troops from north of Ma’an to strengthen the defences. On 21  October, a Turkish attack from Ma’an northwards on Arab positions at Wadi Mousa ended in disaster when, according to al-Askari’s eye-witness account ‘we managed to inflict such a severe defeat on them that we were unable either to bury their dead or move the injured from the battlefield’. Jafar had based himself in one of the red sandstone caves among the ruins of the Nabatean city of Petra, and amidst the chaos of war, ‘used to gaze in wonder at the marvellous carving, especially of the column capitals and formal entrances— a match for the finest sculpture anywhere’.63 After meeting Allenby in Cairo, Lawrence returned to Aqaba and on 24 October set out for the Yarmouk Valley travelling via Wadi Yutm. His raiding party linked up with Auda at Jefer east of Ma’an, then moved north to attack the Tel Shehab bridge on 6 November, but failed when they were discovered.64 On the way back to his base in the thirteenth-century Muslim castle at Azraq,65 Lawrence decided to demolish a culvert at Km 172 near Minifir, which he had successfully mined with Zaal in June. On 9 November, the first locomotive to pass failed to detonate the mine, but a second—a twin-engined train hauling twelve wagons—was caught by the charge, with the first locomotive toppling off the rails down the embankment, and the second falling into the yawning gap of the culvert. Lawrence recalled that ‘the explosion was terrific. The air became full of whirling black things, and I was knocked over violently. I sat up with my shirt torn to my shoulder and the blood dripping

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Desert Insurgency down me from long ragged scratches on my left arm.’66 He also suffered five bullet wounds, a broken toe, and his clothes were in shreds. The Turks counter-attacked but to no avail, and Lawrence’s party made their escape. This was an even greater success than was realized as it was later discovered that the train was carrying the Turkish commander Djemal Mersinli, better known as Mohammed Djemal Pasha Kuchuk, to Jerusalem to bolster defences against Allenby’s imminent attack. Actions continued in true guerrilla style further south. Boosted by recent successes, a large force of 1,750 Bedouin, four companies of Arab regulars and six French Mountain guns attacked Buwat Station on 11 November 1917. Only after repairing damaged rails were two Turkish troop trains accompanied by machine guns and artillery able to relieve the station and force the Arab forces to withdraw. Just a few days before, on 6/7 November, Turkish opposition on the Gaza-Beersheba front had collapsed. Allenby’s victorious forces took over some of the Turkish railway lines (but not the Hejaz Railway) and converted them to standard gauge, and by December were in possession of a functioning railway all the way from Egypt to southern Palestine. On 9 December, the Allies entered Jerusalem and Lawrence was there, famously caught in the background of a newsreel film, but as yet unknown to the world. Three days later, on 12 December, a small group of Bedouin derailed another train south of al-Akhdar whose station was adjacent to an old Hajj fort. The passengers included two Bedouin chiefs loyal to the Turks, and sent from Damascus to encourage local support. The attackers killed the sixty-man escort, and looted 300 rifles and TL 24,000 in gold.67 1917 had seen a relentless wave of attacks against the Hejaz Railway, and while opportunistic pinpricks were not great military victories, they were strategically important, draining the Turks of manpower and resources, and likely undermining their prestige in the eyes of those Bedouin who remained loyal. The effects were probably greater than has been admitted, not least because many Arab raids went unreported in detail as the Bedouin did not write official military accounts. Hogarth admitted as much when he said that Feisal himself ‘used to inform us of skirmishes and advances at spots no one of which we could place’.68 The wearing down of Turkish confidence and matériel along the railway was reckoned by Lawrence to have destroyed seventeen locomotives in the autumn of 1917 alone. The Arab Bulletin for October reported thirty raids between July and September which destroyed 7,500 rails, and these were mainly carried out by Arab forces under Prince Abdullah’s commanders Sherif Sharraf and Sherif Shakir.69 The constant threat of attack forced the Turks to commit valuable troops from elsewhere, and by the end of 1917 there were around 7,000 soldiers protecting the railway between Ma’an and Medina. The Turkish commander, Mohammed Djemal Pasha Kuchuk, had 5,000 troops stationed at Tabuk, to which were added another 7,000 based at Ma’an, and whose duties carried them as far north as Deraa just over the modern border between Jordan and Syria. Altogether, including the Medina garrison, around 25,000 Ottoman troops were tied down along the Hejaz Railway. The effect of these raids has often been underestimated in military histories of the campaign, and so has the extraordinary capacity of the Turks to endure the onslaught. The ordinary Turkish soldier—Mehmetchick (‘Little Mehmet’)—often underfed, unpaid, poorly clothed, and cast adrift in hostile territory, showed great resolve and tenacity in facing up to the unpredictable attacks of the Bedouin and their British and French allies. Anchored to the railway and under perpetual threat, these men could feel ‘lost in the immensity of a

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ Figure 5.8 Turkish soldiers in their trenches (public domain)

silent death-like solitude of infinitely sinister aspect’.70 Yet, as Colonel (later Field Marshal Earl) Wavell wrote in his The Palestine Campaigns, the Turk ‘is a fine soldier . . . with extraordinary powers of endurance, great patience under hardships and privations . . . and stolid courage in battle’.71 As for protecting the railway, Wavell’s further observations on Turkish soldiers are insightful: ‘On the defensive, his eye for ground, his skill in planning and entrenching a position, and his stubbornness in holding it made him a really formidable adversary to engage.’72 Much of our research would uncover the archaeological truth of Wavell’s statement (Figure 5.8). The war against the railway accelerated in 1918, by which time the Turks had put a TL 20,000 price on Lawrence’s head if captured alive, and half that if not. The early groundwork for the later birth of the Lawrence of Arabia legend was also laid when the American journalist and film-maker Lowell Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase met Lawrence in Jerusalem in February, and subsequently filmed him talking to Feisal at Aqaba. Ronald Storrs, the military governor of Jerusalem, introduced Lawrence as the ‘Uncrowned King of Arabia’, and Lawrence announced himself by saying ‘I’m a dynamiter.’73 This was the beginning of a fraught relationship which would lead to global fame for Lawrence, and undoubtedly added to his deteriorating psychological condition after the war. The New Year also saw a pivotal development of modern guerrilla tactics, and one in which Feisal’s Arab forces played no part. It had begun with a reconnaissance by Lawrence and Joyce in two Rolls-Royce tenders at the end of 1917.74 They had left their base at Guweira and raced across the mud flats near Wadi Rum with the aim of testing the ground for a motorized attack on Mudawwara Station. They overnighted in the desert then drove the route south almost to Mudawwara itself. Judging the area suitable for their vehicles, they returned to Guweira to assemble a full raiding party. In this they followed the early lessons learnt by the successful British deployment of armoured cars during the Senussi Campaign

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Figure 5.9 Siddons’ Bridge Fort in 2010 (© author)

in Libya which had begun in November 1915, though which itself had been prefigured by the Italians three years earlier during the Italo-Ottoman War of 1911–12.75 At the end of December, a squadron of eight vehicles—Rolls-Royce armoured cars, tenders, and several Talbots armed with 10-pounder artillery—left Guweira under Joyce’s command, spending the night nearby Mudawwara. Failing to find an easy way through to the railway the next day they returned north, arriving to overnight at the same campsite Lawrence had recently used. Abandoning the original plan of mining the railway due to the openness of the well-defended approaches to the line, it was decided instead to attack a small fortification protecting a bridge north of Tel Shahm Station. It was called ‘Plain Post’ by Lawrence, and would be renamed Siddons’ Bridge Fort during our investigations. On New Year’s Day 1918, Joyce and Lawrence were dropped off at a vantage point to watch the action through binoculars. The Talbots’ 10-pounder guns started the assault quickly followed by the armoured cars firing machine guns as they circled the earthwork (Figure 5.9). The Turks returned a ragged rifle fire to little effect as their bullets bounced off the armour plating. Having made their point, Joyce broke off the attack and the column raced south to Tel Shahm Station itself. The Talbots’ 10-pounders again opened the attack with a bombardment that destroyed wagons, damaged the station building, and forced the Turks to retreat to a nearby hilltop strongpoint. The armoured cars moved in, spraying the station with machine gun fire. But with no infantry support, the station could not be captured or held and they drove off,

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ returning once more to their overnight campsite. No great advantage was won during these attacks, but it was history in the making. Traditional Arab raiding had been formative in these guerrilla tactics, but camels and horses could now be replaced, at least on occasion, by faster and deadlier armoured cars. In less than a day, the idea of the highly mobile Long Range Desert Group—so influential in the North Africa campaign in the Second World War—was born. Joyce quickly grasped the potential. He wrote to the Arab Bureau in Cairo requesting more vehicles—‘it has now been proved that armoured cars can be utilised against the Hejaz Railway line.’76 Lawrence commented more vividly, ‘A Rolls in the desert was above rubies.’77 On 12 January 1918, a mixed force of Arab regular troops and Howeitat and Beni Sakhr Bedouin led by Nuri al-Said78 (Figure 5.10) and Sherif Nasir assaulted the strategic station at Jerouf al Darawish some 62 kilometres north of Ma’an.79 The station was heavily defended by two Turkish battalions, and protected too by an outlying karakoll one kilometre to the south-east in which the Turks had several machine guns and a mountain gun.80 Storming the karakoll decided the fate of the station, because when the Turks abandoned it Nuri turned their mountain gun around and blasted the station buildings into surrender. The attack was brief and bloody, with 200 Turkish defenders killed or taken prisoner, and trucks, sidings, two locomotives, and the water tower destroyed. Jerouf offered rich pickings for Nuri’s Bedouin—seven wagons of supplies intended for the Turkish officers at Medina, including one crammed with cigarettes.81 Nuri’s party rode west and on 15 January took the small village of Tafilah, a strategic location in the Arab-British attempts to control Allenby’s right flank, and from which to advance on the larger northern towns of Kerak and Madaba. Neither the Arab commanders nor Lawrence foresaw that the Turks would bother trying to retake such an isolated spot. They did. On 26 January, the hard-fought and confused battle for Tafilah left 200 Turkish Figure 5.10 Nuri al-Said, front left, and Bedouin (© Harry Chase, Marist College)

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Desert Insurgency troops dead and 250 captured, while twenty-five Arabs died and forty were wounded. It was a curious victory in that it was a set-piece battle, rather than a raid, and precisely the kind of action that Lawrence had always argued against. It was a major victory nonetheless. While the Tafilah affair was playing out, Sherif Abdullah demolished 8 kilometres of rail and nineteen culverts further south at Wagga between Hedia and Jeda’a stations on 20 January. Here, the weakness of Bedouin tactics was revealed when Abdullah retreated under fire from a Turkish field gun and a large contingent of reinforcements. However, the damaged track had still not been repaired ten days later, and the Bedouin lingered in the hills to ambush the repair teams. The 22 January saw a second unsuccessful attempt on Mudawwara Station. Lawrence and Joyce had found a route south to the station through the low sandstone hills, and brought a large force to within sight of several fortified redoubts which the Turks had built to protect the vulnerable western approaches. Although there were over a thousand Bedouin warriors, Rolls-Royce armoured cars, Talbots, Brodie’s and Pisani’s artillery, and a detachment of Arab regulars under Feisal’s command, as well as RFC support, the attack ultimately failed due to inter-tribal disputes.82 Nevertheless, on 31 January, further south, a French force destroyed two locomotives and three wagons carrying spare rails and wood between Abu Na’am and Istabal Antar stations. Allenby’s spring offensive to take Amman began in March 1918, and while the River Jordan was crossed without trouble, the iron road of the railway caused problems. The main British attack of 28 March failed to take Amman or its Hejaz Railway station. Yet, while conventional warfare did not deliver, guerrilla tactics in the south proved more successful, and Ma’an was receiving only one train a week as a result.83 Despite their flea-bite nature, the incessant raids on the railway were paying military dividends for the Allies and forcing changes on the Turkish High Command who now decided to abandon Medina and evacuate their forces north. As part of a plan hatched by Feisal, Joyce, and Lawrence to forestall the Turkish retreat, further raids aimed at isolating Ma’an. As it turned out, the last through-train from Damascus to Medina ran in early April 1918. Almost immediately afterwards, at dawn on 12 April, Nuri al-Said led a party of Arab regulars, Howeitat Bedouin under Auda, and Pisani’s mountain guns on a raid against Ghadir al Hajj Station just 16 kilometres south of Ma’an, wrecking buildings, bridges, and 1,000 rails.84 At the same time, Jafar struck Jerdun Station 18 kilometres north of Ma’an. Despite heavy Turkish resistance, Jafar’s men took the station when the mortally wounded Turkish commander surrendered and his men left their trenches. Jafar captured 200 soldiers, destroyed 3,000 rails, and looted the Turkish military supplies.85 A Turkish armoured train then appeared from Uneiza, the next station north, but retreated under fire from Jafar’s artillery. The desired effect had been achieved—Ma’an was now cut off north and south, and the railway was shut down for the duration. The assault on Ma’an began the next day, when Maulud Mukhlis swept over Jebel Semnah—a strategically sited ridge overlooking the station from the west. Pursuing the fleeing Turks with more bravura than sense (they outnumbered him ten to one), Mukhlis was seriously wounded and had to be carried from the battlefield.86 Nevertheless, the noose was tightening around Ma’an Station. The attack was pressed over the next three days, and on 17 April, the three Arab columns came together under Nuri and attacked the station, which was manned by about 4,000

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ Turkish troops. Jafar records that the Arab forces occupied all the surrounding high points, and bombarded a long entrenched ridge that protected the station’s western approaches. Nuri led a mixed force of mounted regular troops and Howeitat towards the station and occupied the locomotive shed, but had to withdraw under heavy Turkish fire. Serious Arab casualties—which included the loss of over half the officers—and an eventual retreat on 18 April was blamed in part on Pisani’s artillery barrage having faltered after only an hour: in his defence Pisani said he had warned Nuri not to attack as he knew his ammunition was virtually exhausted (Figure 6.1).87 The Bedouin had abandoned the battlefield before the Arab regulars and the dramatically won ridge of Jebel Semnah too was now deserted, with its Arab occupiers withdrawing to Feisal’s headquarters at Wuheida, 15 kilometres west. The Battle of Ma’an was the only time the Arab forces had fought a major pitched battle with the Turks at this site, and it had been a tactical disaster,88 albeit that the Arab forces had acquitted themselves well. It highlighted the wisdom of not launching a frontal assault on even more strongly defended Medina and focusing instead on lightning raids upon the railway. Ma’an remained in Ottoman hands, but the surrounding desert was less secure, as harrying the line south continued. Lawrence left Feisal’s royal camp at Wuheida and drove down to the armoured car headquarters at Guweira, then onwards, to join Lt Col Alan Dawnay’s89 force camped behind a range of low hills out of view of Tel Shahm Station, arriving at midnight to offer his services as interpreter (Figure 5.11). At dawn on 19 April, Lawrence, Sherif Hazaa, and his Bedouin advanced across the 5 kilometres of stony desert that separated their camp from Tel Shahm Station. The outer defensive trenches were easily taken from the sleeping Turks who stumbled from their trenches with hands up. Hornby blew a nearby bridge, and the armoured cars sprayed machine-gun fire over a redoubt called by Lawrence ‘ “Rock Post”, a circle of thick stone walls . . . on a knoll too steep for wheels’.90 The attack on the station itself began with two RAF planes bombing the area91 followed by a rapid advance of the armoured cars, whereupon the defenders surrendered. Souvenir hunting, a common practise on the Western Front, was not unknown here, and indeed, can be seen as part of the wider history of souvenirs and the Hajj.92 Lawrence rushed to claim the Damascus-made brass station-bell, someone else took the ticket punch, and a third person the office stamp ‘while the bewildered Turks, hungry for notice, stared at us, not understanding that their importance was secondary’.93 A scene of great looting followed as the station was full of weapons, ammunition, and rations—so much that laden down with their booty most Bedouin left and rode off into the desert.94 Ramleh Station, just 9 kilometres further south was next. When the raiders arrived, the Turks had already fled. After demolishing much of the track—two weeks worth of damage Lawrence reckoned—they drove south towards Mudawwara with a much-depleted force. When they arrived, they fell prey to a Turkish deception which could have killed Dawnay, Captain Frederick Gerard Peake,95 and Lawrence, and the story of which has only recently come to light in the unpublished diary of Lt Leofric Gilman who was in charge of the armoured cars.96 Initially, the Turks fired at them with an out-of-range gun, but when they approached nearer and were discussing the situation the Turks opened up with a long range Austrian howitzer. Beating a hasty retreat, Gilman in his armoured car saw a Turkish shell land in front of the Rolls-Royce tender carrying Lawrence and the others and speeding at 70 miles per hour. It was a fateful moment as the shell failed to explode and Gilman

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Figure 5.11

saw it sticking in the sand as he drove past. If it hadn’t been a dud, everyone in the tender would have been killed, and Gilman later mused on how many subsequently famous historical events would never have happened. Escaping out of range, they made a long looping dash south to just north of Hallat Ammar Station where they demolished a bridge then returned north, taking out their frustrations by blasting more track and bridges near Ramleh. Lawrence left them there, and drove back to report to Feisal.97 (© Harry Chase, Marist Dawnay pushed on northwards, and attacked the isolated Wadi Rutm Station on College) 22  April. After a hard fight during which the station buildings were wrecked by armoured-car machine guns and 10-pounder artillery fire—and remain so to this day— they eventually forced the Turkish defenders to retreat up the nearby slopes to the fort built at its summit. The destruction of this vital central section of the Hejaz Railway was added to by Sheikh Mohammed al Dheilan and his Tawaiha Bedouin, who attacked the stations at Ghadir al Hajj, Bir Shedia, Aqabat Hejazia, and Batn al-Ghoul, demolishing the tracks as they went. Lawrence commented that Captains Peake and Henry Hornby added to the destruction of these remote stations time and again over the following months (Figure 5.12).

The Hejaz Armoured Car Battery at Guweira in April 1918, with Lt. Gilman fourth from left in front car

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ Peake recalled that on 9 May he and Hornby finally destroyed Batn al-Ghoul Station, demolished its painstakingly laid curved rails, and then blew in a cutting through which the railway descended.98 Altogether, these actions put at least seven railway stations and 125km of track out of use, effectively closing the railway between Ma’an and Mudawwara and ending the active defence of Medina99 which was now left to its own devices. In a letter to his mother, Lawrence spoke plainly—‘from Maan southward for 100 kilometres there are no Turks, and the 8 stations and all the rails and bridges have been smashed to atoms by us’.100 So completely had the Turks been ejected from this stretch of railway that it was possible for Captain Bamford of the Field Survey Section of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force to drive by armoured car as far south as Tel Shahm in order to fix the position of the railway with his field-wireless to receive time-signals.101 There was still a price to pay however, as when the German Squadron 305 moved first to Deraa and then Amman, and launched aerial attacks on Feisal’s Arab camps at Shawbak, Tafileh, and west of Ma’an, culminating in a bombing raid on Aqaba on 26 August 1918.102 The railway raids were closing down the Turks’ military options as Feisal, Joyce, and Lawrence had planned by isolating Ma’an and preventing the evacuation of the sizeable Medina garrison. These raids were confirming Allenby’s 1917 view that such actions benefited the British and might destroy the main Turkish artery of communication between northern Syria, Palestine, and the Hejaz fronts.103 And the effect on Turkish morale was telling. In August too there was an unsuccessful plot by some of Ma’an’s Turkish officers to contact Feisal.104 Overall, it seems, that a similar number of Turkish troops were deployed along the railway from Ma’an to Medina as confronted Allenby’s regular British army in Palestine—somewhat more than a sideshow to a sideshow as Lawrence himself and many later military historians believed. Ma’an was cut off from Medina, but not yet from Amman and Damascus, and ArabBritish attention shifted to the railway stations in the north. Thirtieth of April saw Allenby launch a precipitate assault on Es Salt in the mountain approaches west of Amman. His forces were depleted by two divisions of around 30,000 men recently recalled to France to counter the German spring offensive of the Kaiserschlacht. Consequently, Allenby was increasingly reliant on Feisal’s Arab forces east of the River Jordan to secure his right flank. The Es Salt attack failed when the Turks launched a fierce counter attack and the Beni Sakhr Bedouin failed to show in support of Allenby. On 4 May, the British retreated back across the Jordan having suffered 1,500 casualties for no gain. Despite this setback, Arab forces continued to pressure the railway in the south. On 8 May, Sherif Nasir attacked Qatrana Station and did so several times over the next five days, wreaking havoc, capturing a Turkish company though not taking the station itself. A few days later, on 11 May, the RAF joined another successful assault on Jerdun Station by Nuri al-Said, killing thirty Turks and capturing 150 as well as destroying the reservoirs, though the Turks reoccupied it as soon as they left. On 23 May, a combined force of Howeitat and Beni Sakhr Bedouin under Sherif Nasir, along with Hornby and Peake, took Al Hasa Station. After demolishing buildings, bridges, and 6 kilometres of track, they moved north to destroy the stations at Faraifra and Jerouf, and damage the crossing point at Sultani. This whirlwind of activity destroyed more than twenty-five bridges and shut down any Turkish reinforcement of Ma’an from Amman. Allenby failed at Es Salt, but

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Figure 5.12 Captain Frederick Peake (From Arab Command: The Biography of Lieutenant-Colonel F. W. Peake Pasha by Jarvis, C. S (Major) published by Hutchinson & Co. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. © 1942)

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Desert Insurgency Feisal’s guerrilla raids made good some of the damage, and RAF bombing of Amman Station took its toll on Turkish morale. Nuri returned to Jerouf al Darawish on 10 June to take the station and provide the Allies more freedom of movement in their railway attacks north of Ma’an. His Bedouin and regular soldiers didn’t gel, and the attack descended into an artillery duel which Nuri soon abandoned. At the same time, trouble was brewing in the Arab camp. Auda argued with Mohammed al Dheilan, the other Howeitat sheikh, and the Howeitat themselves seemed unwilling to risk the wealth that Lawrence’s payments of gold had brought. And it was true that ‘The tribes had never known such wealth as Lawrence brought them.’ ‘He was the man with the gold’ and it transformed their tribal allegiances.105 Auda now saw himself as a Sherif, and had an appropriately symbolic new residence at Jefer—a mud-brick palace built by Turkish prisoners of war whose roof incorporated recycled poles from the telegraph lines which he had done so much to destroy.106 Further south, on 28 June, a group of Beni Atiyya Bedouin attacked Hallat Ammar Station, destroying the water tank and nearby culverts, taking sixty prisoners, and wrecking a locomotive which still lies on its side outside the station. The cumulative effect of these constant, if not always successful attacks, was paying dividends. In late summer of 1918, it was decided that a final attempt would be made to take the station at Mudawwara and destroy its deep well. A suggestion that two companies of the Imperial Camel Corps (ICC) under Major Robert (‘Robin’) Buxton might trek 260 kilometres across the Sinai desert to Aqaba and then play a central role in the assault was accepted (Figure 5.13). A column of 300 ICC troops arrived there on 31 July where Lawrence briefed them, though he took no part in the attack itself.107 This was not a Bedouin raid, and had no Arab component. It was a purely British affair, but one with a curious mix of tradition (camels) and modernity (aircraft). Figure 5.13 The Imperial Camel Corps, 1918, passing a British officer and an armoured car (© Metcalf Collection)

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ Two days before the attack, on 6 August, Buxton, Brodie, and Marshall moved forward undetected to within a few hundred metres of ‘3 formidable redoubts—North, Middle and South, west of the station’ and were even able count the number of Turkish tents in each.108 They had aerial photographs to hand, and planned their action in detail. The next morning, the RAF bombed the station and one of the redoubts, and the British prepared for the next day’s assault. Captain Lyall was to attack the Southern Redoubt, Lt Davies ordered to take the station, Captain Bell-Irving the Central Redoubt, and ultimately Lt Rowan the Northern Redoubt. In a first-hand account by Lawrence Moore, a signaller with the ICC, the action unfolded in the following way.109 Before dawn on 8 August, having left their camels behind and advancing on foot, one party stormed the station buildings while others took the Southern and Central redoubts— catching the Turkish defenders asleep and taking the positions by bayonet charge. The Northern Redoubt was a deadlier proposition as its defenders had a small field gun and several machine guns. In what may have been history’s first ground-to-air controlled attack, Moore co-ordinated a bombing run on the redoubt by two RAF planes. Lacking radio, the pilots sent Morse-code messages with their klaxons and Moore replied by forming letters on the ground with white strips to a prearranged code. In repeated fly overs, the RAF dropped several dozen 20lb bombs. A ground-attack party under Lt Rowan assaulted from the north, Lt Davies’ men, who had taken the station with hand grenades and bayonets110 joined in, scrambling up the redoubt’s eastern slope. It was all too much for the Turks, who surrendered, streaming ‘out waving anything that looked like a white flag’.111 By 07.00, it was all over, and Mudawwara had been taken. The British suffered either six dead and seven wounded or four dead and ten wounded (sources vary) the latter treated at a first aid post established by Marshall in the nearby Hajj fort of Mudawwara, mistaken for a Roman temple by the British troops. The Turks had lost twenty-one killed and 151 captured (Figure 5.14).112 Figure 5.14 Aftermath: captured Turkish soldiers after their defeat at Mudawwara Station in August 1918 (Photo © IWM Q 105580; The rights holder)

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Desert Insurgency Figure 5.15 The destruction of the water-tower at Mudawwara Station in August 1918 (Photo © IWM Q 105583; Metcalf Collection)

Buxton ordered the station’s major installations blown up, captured weapons, ammunition, and rail tracks thrown down the well,113 and along with telegraph poles downed, some 2,000 metres of track were pulled up. The huge explosion which destroyed the water-tower at dusk was captured in a dramatic photograph (Figure 5.15).114 The ICC’s Lewis gunners quickly manned a Turkish machine gun mounted on the roof of one of the station buildings and successfully repulsed a Turkish patrol that approached the station from the south.115

The Final Push to Damascus Attacks on the railway shifted north again in September 1918, in support of Allenby’s push for Damascus. His first move would be a speedy Allied advance northwards along the poorly defended Mediterranean coast, surprising, outflanking, and then destroying the Turkish 4th and 7th Armies. Feisal’s Arab forces together with the British unit under Joyce and Lawrence were Allenby’s right flank, responsible for isolating the strategic junction of Deraa Station and thereby preventing the railway’s use to reinforce the main Turkish front or to facilitate the withdrawal of their troops from Ma’an. An attempt to cut the line at Mafraq was made by Peake on 13 September but was abandoned in the face of local tribal hostility, though his aim was achieved the following night when he blew up a bridge. Making doubly certain, Joyce and Lawrence partially destroyed the 80-foot-long bridge between Mafraq and Nessib on 16 September, after having captured the Turkish garrison and their blockhouse. Deraa was now cut off from Amman to the south. The next day, forty-eight hours before Allenby launched his coastal offensive, and employing the ingenious ‘Tulip’ technique, Peake demolished 600 pairs of rail tracks north of Deraa thereby cutting off the railway junction completely. The Tulip method was dreamt up by Lawrence and Peake for this occasion and involved placing the explosive charge

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ underneath the central steel sleeper. This blew the track upward into a tulip-like shape which in turn seriously distorted two more rails, ruined several other sleepers to which they were attached, and created a two-foot-wide gap in the embankment. A single charge thus produced a far more devastating result than simply blowing the easily repaired rails themselves, and as Lawrence observed, ‘The triple distortion put them beyond repair.’116 Attention moved to the branch line which led from Deraa west to Haifa via the Yarmouk Valley. The Turkish troops at Muzerib Station surrendered to Nuri al-Said and Sherif Nasir after Pisani’s artillery blasted its buildings, cut the telegraph, and set the station on fire. The bridge at Tel Shebab was next, but the attack was abandoned when a trainload of Turkish and German reinforcements appeared unexpectedly. The raiding party moved on towards Nessib where Lawrence demolished a large bridge with 800lbs of gun-cotton. Meanwhile, Allenby’s offensive had begun, and his forces were soon moving rapidly up along the Nablus branch line, capturing Afule Station along with ten locomotives and fifty wagons, and then advancing east along the Haifa branch line towards Deraa to take the now abandoned station at Jisr al Mejami on 21 September. The speed and success of Allenby’s advance and the Arab-British raids was demonstrated the very next day when Liman von Sanders was forced to leave his train from Deraa to Damascus and walk along the damaged railway track, as did three thousand Turkish troops the following day while retreating northwards from Amman.117 The Turkish situation became critical on 25 September. Along the Haifa-Deraa branch line Allenby took Samakh Station, then the first Yarmouk Valley bridge—though several others were destroyed by the Turks and Germans as they fell back on Deraa. On the same day, to the south, Major-General Edward Chaytor took Amman with his ANZAC troops, cutting off the northward retreat of the 5,000-strong Ma’an garrison. The next day, the Turks repaired the Damascus-Deraa line, but Lawrence responded by destroying another 3 kilometres, Sheikh Tallal took Ezra Station, and Auda captured Ghazala Station along with 200 Turks, a train, and many guns. Zerqa Station fell the same day, and Mafraq Station two days later. Deraa itself was finally taken by Terad Shaalan and his Ruwalla Bedouin on 27 September, along with 500 Turkish prisoners, several new Hartmann 2-8-2 locomotives, and two fully loaded trains. Two days later, Feisal arrived and established his headquarters in the town, and the Turks retreating from Ma’an surrendered to the British when Jiza Station was captured. The last days of September saw the exhausted Turks falling back on Damascus, harried by Auda who ruthlessly attacked and pillaged a force of about four thousand Turkish troops, and as Lawrence says: ‘In that night of his last battle the old man killed and killed, plundered and captured, till dawn showed him the end.’118 The Hejaz Railway, so long the Turkish artery of communication and control was now the avenue of Allied triumph. A famous photograph shows camel-borne Bedouin warriors riding into Damascus along the railway tracks while Turkish prisoners are being escorted the other way.119 On 1 October, the Arab forces led by Sherif Nasir were greeted by a tumultuous crowd of Damascus’s inhabitants. On 3 October, Feisal made his own equally triumphant entry into the city. The railway war was not over. As Turkish forces exited Damascus and retreated northwards they destroyed the telegraph centre, demolished their supply stores (including their artillery dump), and set alight Qadem Station—the pride of the railway, while in the deep south, attacks continued. On 20 October, three weeks after Allenby took Damascus, Arab

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Desert Insurgency forces captured the important station at Tabuk along with 200 Turks. This panicked other garrisons who abandoned their posts and escaped northwards pursued by the Bedouin. Medain Saleh Station was captured by Sheikh Sultan al Faqir’ whose forces killed thirtythree Turkish soldiers and took twenty-one prisoners. Abu Na’am Station fell soon after along with thirty Turks. The last known assault on the railway seems to have been around 11 November 1918, when, unaware of the Armistice of Mudros signed between the Allies and the Turks on 30 October, an Arab raiding party destroyed Wayban Station and captured 154 Turks, after having derailed a locomotive. The railway conflict had one last splutter. Fakhri Pasha refused to surrender Medina, along with its tomb of the Prophet, and the last station under Turkish control. It was several months later, on 10 January 1919 that his hand was forced by mutinous senior officers and he officially gave up the town to his erstwhile enemy, Prince Abdullah. The war along the iron road was finally over. * The Arab-British raids on the Hejaz Railway have often been dismissed as militarily insignificant, yet no less a regional expert than Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha) appreciated the value of such asymmetrical warfare.120 He wrote retrospectively in 1959 that ‘the whole Arab campaign provides remarkable illustration of the extraordinary results which can be achieved by mobile guerrilla tactics. For the Arabs detained tens of thousands of regular Turkish troops with a force scarcely capable of engaging a brigade of infantry in a pitched battle.’121 In this view he followed the advice of the great nineteenthcentury Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who recognized that guerrilla forces ‘should be nebulous and elusive’ so as not to give the enemy the opportunity for a knock-out blow, and, likening them to a fog, should be able to ‘thicken and form a dark and menacing cloud out of which a bolt of lightning may strike at any time’.122 This view accorded with al-Masri’s thoughts, and Lawrence’s more closely considered formulations on how to conduct guerrilla warfare in the Hejaz. Indeed, Clausewitz’s own words could have inspired Lawrence’s famous statement—‘suppose we were (as we might be) an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed.’123 Lawrence clearly articulated in stylish prose exactly what was happening on the ground. The German Lieutenant Thalacker was on the receiving end of these lightning raids and noted in his diary, ‘These nomadic Bedouin troops were not only in front of us, but also between and behind the “karakoll” positions, invariably close to railway tracks.’124 Speed, surprise, and an ability to bring maximum force to bear on a small area for a short time were key elements of traditional Bedouin raiding, and became ever more deadly when combined with modern weaponry—from high explosives to machine guns, aeroplanes, and armoured cars. In this, the Arab-British raids, for all their guerrilla-style characteristics, were following the advice of the British Army’s own Field Service Regulations which ­stipulated that: ‘Mobility implies the power to manoeuvre and act with rapidity, and is the chief means of effecting surprise.’125 And, as Wavell observed, ‘For absolute mobility— intangibility, in fact—the Arab raiding forces under Lawrence were unsurpassable.’126 What emerges from the railway war is that the true value of guerrilla raids was an economy of force whereby a relatively small number of Arab-British raiders were able to tie

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Guerrill as and the ‘ Sultan ’ s Mule ’ down much larger Turkish numbers.127 It was economical financially too ‘for the relatively small outlay of £200,000 per month in British gold, plus some equipment and specialist liaison personnel, it was money well spent’. Wingate made this point to the British Foreign Office at the time, writing that ‘A review of the total expenditure involved in connection with our whole Arab policy in comparison with the political and military results attained will amply justify a moderate outlay in order to achieve complete success.’128 In his analysis of the relative strengths of the protagonists, Faulkner lays bare the reality. Feisal’s Arab forces numbered in total around five thousand regular soldiers and a fluctuating number of irregulars, up to 20,000. Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force numbered 340,000 in total with a front-line strength of around 69,000 men. The Turkish strength totalled around 40,000 plus a reserve of 3,000. Putting this in context: For, while 69,000 British faced 17,000 Turks west of the Jordan [river], 3,000–8,000 Arabs faced 14,000 Turks in Syria, while up to 25,000 Arabs faced 21,000 Turks in Syria and Arabia combined. Put simply, there were more Turks fighting 25,000 Arabs (at the most) than there were fighting 340,000 British; more precisely, the economy of force of the Arab campaign overall, measured in terms of manpower deployment, was at least 17 times higher than that of the British, while that of Prince Feisal’s Northern Army, even assuming a maximum strength of 8,000, was a staggering 35 times higher. Faulkner (2016: 312), based on Wavell’s late 1918 figures

The contribution of the Arab-British attacks on the Hejaz Railway to Allenby’s final victory over the Turks remains contested, but there is one indisputable fact. The events of 1916 to 1918 along the faithful railroad left archaeological traces in southern Jordan that were extraordinarily well preserved in 2006. It may be that djinn still haunt the abandoned embankments and lonely desert places in the romantic imagination, but the archaeology was often so vivid that it seemed as if Lawrence, Dawnay, Joyce, Peake, Auda, al-Askari and others had departed just days before rather than a century ago.

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6

Conflict on Jebel Sherra Ma’an to the Blockhouse

Ma’an Station

M

a’an, the time-dusted Gateway to Arabia, had been the strategic gathering place for the Hajj for centuries. The town’s abundant wells, life-giving for pilgrims and camels alike, caught Heinrich Meissner’s attention, and by early 1904 he had bypassed the town and built a station 3.5km to the south-east. Ma’an was the last major settlement and water source before the railway moved south, at first shadowing the traditional Hajj route (and the telegraph line which followed it) on its western side. At Km 494, some 35km south of Ma’an, the railway (and its new dedicated telegraph line) diverged to the east of the pilgrim way seeking an easier gradient across the dry stony plateau of Jebel Sherra, while the Ottoman Hajj route continued on into the broken hills and wadis to the west. The archaeology of the Arab Revolt on this limestone plain proved distinctive, due to the availability of easily quarried building stone, the many wadis whose susceptibility to flash floods required bridges and culverts to cross them, and the strategic importance of lowlying hills for defence and observation in an otherwise featureless and waterless region. Ma’an was the largest and most sophisticated conflict landscape of the Arab Revolt in our study area, and the site of the largest set-piece battle of the campaign east of the Jordan River, where 4,000 Ottoman troops faced 3,000 Arabs in a fierce five-day struggle. In this respect it was an anomaly—a true battle in an otherwise mainly guerrilla campaign. Ma’an Station and its hinterland was an archaeological challenge as well. The station itself was surrounded by extensive Turkish earthwork defences—crenellated trench systems interspersed with karakoll hilltop defences—sitting within what is still an active training ground for the Jordanian Army (Figure 6.1). Our investigations began at a time of high regional tension, where local responses to our presence fluctuated sometimes daily between friendly, indifferent, and antagonistic, depending on the news from Baghdad and the American-led Coalition’s actions in Iraq. Here, we confronted the realities of doing conflict archaeology in an area still flaring with the century-long fall-out from the war whose remains we were investigating. It was not always comfortable, and nearby Ma’an town’s conservative Islamic elements made the situation more tense and made meetings with the governor and various security services inevitable. *

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra North Semnah

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to Amman 1200

Ma’an town Northern Ridge

Ma’an Railway Station

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Ma’an West Redoubt

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Bewley’s Bluff

Turkish cemetery

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Northern Redoubt A, Site SO69

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Redoubt Central, Site SO670

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Northern Redoubt B, Site SO68

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Redoubt South, Site SO671

Figure 6.1 The Battle of Ma’an

Ma’an Station1 was a key base for the Turkish army defending the railway during the Arab Station, 17 April 1918, Revolt, providing accommodation, provisions, and matériel, and enabling rapid troop and station defences movement north-south along the railway. Its ring of defended natural hills was tactical— (© Anne Leaver/GARP) strong points providing overlapping fields of fire against any attackers. Yet, it had not been like this when Sherif Hussein signalled the start of the Revolt at Mecca in June 1916. Ma’an Station’s conflict landscape had been a work in progress at that time. In 1904, when the railway reached the newly built station, defence seems to have been on Ottoman minds. The station buildings were 600m east of a low limestone ridge known today as ‘The Hill of the Birds’ (Jabal Abu at-Tyour), which required the track to make two 90-degree bends within one kilometre, something usually avoided due to the need for expensive curved rails and the additional stress placed on them. The modern phosphate railway route bypasses these bends proving a direct route is possible, and it seems likely that in 1904 it was thought advisable to establish the station in the lee of this defendable ridge,2 though at the time the only threat came from the Bedouin. When the Arab Revolt began, Ma’an Station was lightly defended, with loopholes in the water tower being sufficient against desert raiders, as were the small towers built to defend the two villages which formed nearby Ma’an town. When the British agent Frederick

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Desert Insurgency Maunsell visited in 1907 he had climbed a nearby hill to take a photograph but made no mention of a fortified landscape in his report—an unlikely error if such defences had been there given his intelligence-gathering mission and previous experience.3 David Hogarth’s similarly pre-1917 and more comprehensive description of railway infrastructure also says nothing about station defences though does mention a small army barracks for 500 men.4 Prior to 1917, no reports suggest militarization of the station’s hinterland, and even in August of that year when two RFC aeroplanes dropped thirty-two bombs in a surprise attack on the station killing thirty-five Turks, their reports say nothing about landscape defences despite describing the damage inflicted on the station’s military buildings.5 The stunning victory by the Arabs at Aqaba on 6 July 1917 soon changed Turkish attitudes towards defending Ma’an. The taking of Aqaba was as unwelcome news for the Turks as it was a surprise for the British. It changed the strategic game in the south, and highlighted a new vulnerability for Ma’an and the Hejaz Railway further north. Lawrence wrote that after Aqaba, Ma’an was made a special command under ‘Behjet, the old G.O.C. Sinai’,6 who was given a significant increase in manpower—some 6,000 infantry, a regiment of cavalry, another of mounted infantry, sixteen artillery pieces, as well as creating large supply dumps and bringing in the Turkish 3rd Air Squadron under Commander Fazil Bey based at an impromptu airfield just east of the station.7 Lawrence’s Behjet was likely the Turkish Lieutenant Colonel Behçet Bey, commander of the 23rd Division who had been in the Sinai campaign in 1915, and whose official biography lists him as commander of the Ma’an Zone.8 This was a fateful appointment for the Hejaz Railway and for our investigations. In August, the German General Erich Von Falkenhayn arrived in Ma’an from his base in Jerusalem to discuss how best to reinforce and defend the station.9 A master of trench warfare, Falkenhayn had arrived in Turkey on 7 May with a German military-political mission of 100 officers, and was to remain in charge of the newly formed Yildirim (‘Lightning’) Army Group until February 1918. The two men must have agreed that defence in depth was the answer, and that the railway hub should be ringed by fortifications. Behçet’s soldiers were quickly put to work, and Lawrence records how Falkenhayn had rapidly ‘entrenched Maan till it was impregnable according to the standard of manoeuvre war’.10 This timeline is crucial to understand the archaeology and military history of what happened next at Ma’an Station. Lawrence recorded that the Turks made good use of the six-week lull in military activities after the fall of Aqaba,11 a period which takes us to around the third week of August. It was around this time that Turkish troops in the nearby village of Abu el Lissan were caught in the open by an RFC bombing raid and suffered dozens of casualties. One consequence back at Ma’an was that ‘Behjet Pasha set his men to digging shelters.’12 The station was now being protected by a much more sophisticated use of landscape as is clear from Lawrence’s further comment that ‘Falkenhayn has been down to advise them and it has put new intelligence into their doings and made them much worthier of our new work.’13 For the Turks, the loss of Aqaba had forced a strategic rethink at Ma’an. Important archaeological questions emerge from this historical detail. How extensive were these defences? Was there any physical indication of when they were built? Would survey and excavation confirm, deny, or refine the historical accounts of the battle? What was their relationship, if any, to similar defensive structures flanking the railway southwards? A combination of archaeology and history would begin to throw light on these issues.

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra The pilots of the RFC offered a bird’s eye view. The frequency of their reconnaissance and bombing missions had increased significantly once they were able to fly from Aqaba as well as from Quntilla in the eastern Sinai. In fact, Ma’an Station would be the most heavily bombed location in our area with no less than fifty-four bombing missions launched against it between October 1917 and September 1918.14 On 18 February 1918, X Flight RFC pilot 2nd Lt R.  J.  Divers flew over Ma’an and made a sketchmap showing a complex system of trenches and redoubts surrounding the station (Figure 6.2).15 Divers’ map is schematic and shows a long firing-line trench on The Hill of the Birds and probably one redoubt, and so suggests a possible phasing of defences, where the main firing trench and one redoubt were built in just a few months, from late August to September/October 1917, while other earthwork refinements and several more redoubts can be dated to February–March/April 1918. Many of these trenches and redoubts are still visible today in modern aerial photographs,16 and satellite imagery, and can still be traced on the ground. It was a photograph of the well-preserved defences on The Hill of the Birds taken in 2000 by Robert Bewley that determined Ma’an Station should be an early focus of our 2006 investigations (Figure 6.3). In this year alone we recorded 3.8km of trench systems in an area of 1.5km radius from the station, most of which were still visible in 2014. By the end of 1917, Ma’an Station was no longer open to the desert, but sat in the middle of an elaborately militarized landscape, surrounded by a ring of hilltop karakolls and trenches. Given the urgency and speed of their planning and construction, it was a sophisticated use of the desert terrain. This protective envelope had several key components divided into outer and inner defensive rings. In the outer ring, the ‘Jebel Semnah’ group was located seven kilometres west of the station and composed of trench systems and army tents extending along a north-south ridge. Further west still was a large hilltop redoubt 300m north of the point where today the main Ma’an to Aqaba road cuts through the ridge. Nearer to the station, but still a kilometre away, the ‘Western Hillock’ group of trench pos­ itions and small hilltop redoubts was tactically placed in the low plain leading from Semnah to The Hill of the Birds. To the north, the station was protected by the ‘Northern Ridge’ group 1.4km away, and formed of a 500m-long linear firing trench and four redoubts. To the south-west, the ‘Southern Ridge’ group was anchored by a 400m-long linear trench one kilometre from the station. The inner ring’s main element was The Hill of the Birds immediately west of the station, and included firing-trenches, redoubts, and artillery emplacements. It was supported by a Turkish army camp half-way between the hill and the station. In all likelihood, other defences protected the station in 1917–18, but have since been destroyed by Ma’an’s late twentieth-century urban sprawl, modern quarrying, and industrial development.

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Figure 6.2 Sketch-map of Ma’an Station by Lt. R. J. Divers on 18 February 1918 (Photo © John Winterburn)

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Figure 6.3 Ma’an Station: Turkish trenches on the Hill of the Birds (© R Bewley)

The outer ring of Ma’an Station’s defences was not a Western Front-like continuous  line of linear trenches, but rather a series of earthwork strong-points occupying local high ground, and occasionally near to isolated short sections of crenellated firing trenches. Falkenhayn’s hand is evident, as their purpose was defence in depth, distributing their machine-gun firebases, and providing deadly cross-fire over open terrain. Most of these places we surveyed rather than excavated due to time and resources, though the results are the first ground-level assessment since Falkenhayn and Behçet agreed on their construction, possibly by walking the same ground. The Western Hillock group’s three sites lay between The Hill of the Birds and the  Jebel Semnah group further west. Though small and individually isolated, they form a defensive triangle offering three overlapping fields of fire against any enemy taking the most ac­cess­ible western route to the station across a low-lying flat plain. The small hilltop redoubt of ‘Ma’an Knoll’17 is the most prominent feature, lying 600m west of The Hill of the Birds, and with a deep trench running up its north-east side. Five hundred metres north, a 65m-long crenellated trench aligned north-south offers an effective field of fire in that direction,18 while a kilometre west of Ma’an Knoll is another hilltop position, ‘Ma’an West Redoubt’,19 located 90m south of the modern ring road which skirts the southern edge of Ma’an town. Further west, the Jebel Semnah group forms the strongest outermost defensive position due to its trenches occupying a series of low limestone hills that rise 50m above the surrounding plain. There are in fact two groups of defences, ‘Jebel Semnah North’ and ‘South’, and Lawrence and al-Askari observed that the southernmost was occupied by Turkish forces in the Spring of 1918. It was successfully attacked by the 1st Division of the Arab army led by Maulud Mukhlis at the beginning of the Battle of Ma’an on 13 April. Satellite imagery and ground survey discovered six sites along the southern stretch of Jebel Semnah, giving an insight into Turkish defensive thinking balanced by the need for

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra speedy construction. From south to north: a semi-circular trench system was placed on a small rise20 and connected by an 80m-long shallow communication trench to a group of tent-rings;21 some 70m to the north-west a 95m-long crenellated firing trench was aligned north-south to protect the position from westerly attack;22 the land dips lower to the north for almost a kilometre before rising again at a point where the Turks dug another firing trench, whose crenellations ran for 40m along the top of the north-south hill.23 These two entrenched high points were simply constructed but well sited, and would have protected the wadi approach that lay between them. A further 575m north along a narrow ridge is the northernmost site of the Jebel Semnah South group,24 set in a commanding position above the old road (now a motorway) from Ma’an to Abu el Lissan (and hence Aqaba). Its five short breastwork trenches surround a centrally placed machine-gun position, whose field of fire would have overlapped with that of an oval-shaped karakoll some 580m away on the other side of the road.25 The land then dips again to the north into a wadi for two kilometres before rising once more to a 50m-high ridge which runs for 1.5km and on whose highest points the rough and ready defences of Jebel Semnah North were built. Five short and seemingly unconnected trenches and breastworks26 were constructed at irregular distances from one another, and have the sense of an afterthought rather than an effective defence. If they had any real military value at all, it was likely to defend Ma’an town only five kilometres to the southeast, rather than the more distant station. The ‘Northern Ridge’ group27 lies just a kilometre away from the station, and protects this approach in an area now heavily disturbed by bulldozing and industry. The main surviving feature between 2006 and 2014 was an impressive 500m-long north-west-facing trench, part of which was ‘wavy’, and part crenellated, and which had ‘closed’ ends at each extremity along with evidence of machine-gun (and possibly artillery) positions within. Another karakoll, ‘Bewley’s Bluff ’,28 with its distinctive ‘human footprint’ shape lay a kilometre to the south-east, and had 125m of well-preserved crenellated firing trenches and a central machine-gun position (Figure 6.4). Especially revealing is the ‘Southern Ridge Group’, lying 1.4km south-west of the station. It has three distinct features—a 135m-long dog-leg trench with a small redoubt at its northern end,29 a 115m-long crenellated trench at its southern end, and remarkably, an 85m-long stretch of ghost-trench whose crenellated course was outlined on the surface but never cut. Visible only at ground level, this distinctive earthwork ‘plan’ was the only ex­ample of an unfinished trench that we discovered. While it is tempting to interpret this as ongoing trench construction interrupted by the Battle of Ma’an, it may simply have been abandoned. About 1.5km south-east of the station is a south-facing firing trench some 220m long.30 The militarization Ma’an Station’s landscape had two opposing characteristics. It threw a ring of defences around the previously vulnerable railway hub in such a way that it never fell to Arab and Allied attack. Yet its outer ring failed because its many positions were too isolated to support each other effectively and were picked off piecemeal mainly by Feisal’s forces in the lead up to the Battle of Ma’an. But, as along the Western Front, the forward positions could be sacrificed to protect those behind. The inner defences were concentrated along The Hill of the Birds,31 just 600m west of the station up a gently rising slope. This kilometre-long limestone ridge is covered with sand, chert, and gravel, and a main road from the station to Ma’an town passed through its northern defences in 1917 according to Divers’ RFC sketch-map. The ridge was the focus of

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Figure 6.4

our investigations due to the outstanding preservation of its firing trenches and redoubts, and because of the threat from bulldozing and gold-digging. While the hill’s strategic importance seems to have been recognized by the station’s builders, it appears not to have been entrenched before Falkenhayn’s and Behçet’s decision of August-September 1917. (© APPAAME_20081008_ The Hill of the Birds is superbly positioned to repel attack from the west and south-west, FFR-0420) with two long crenellated firing-trenches, one west-facing and stretching 725m along the north-south ridge, and the other connecting with it and following a south-easterly ridge for 500m. Anchoring these two front lines and connecting them by communication trenches were four redoubts—‘Northern A’ (largely destroyed),32 ‘Northern ‘B’,33 ‘Central’,34 and ‘Southern’35—of which Northern B, with its nearby row of four closely spaced artillery emplacements, was the best preserved in 2006. Investigations revealed physical evidence of the Battle of Ma’an in April 1918 hitherto known only from historical sources (Figure 6.5). That the Arab-Allied assault failed was due in large part to the effectiveness of this fortified ridge, and because a head-on clash between mobile Arabs and entrenched Turks favoured the well-attested tenacity of the latter rather than the spirited élan of the former. It is possible that The Hill of the Birds was militarized twice and possibly in rapid succession. Evidence for a first phase was the construction of the main firing trench, called Trench V, whose distinctive crenellations ran along the entire west-facing ridge, and was served by several communication trenches.36 Its regular fire-bays and traverses were

Ma’an Station: Bewley’s Bluff, karakoll defence of northern approaches

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra Figure 6.5 Ma’an Station, typical finds from the Hill of the Birds: artillery shell fragments including a driving-band, shrapnel balls, impacted bullets, and cartridge (© author)

protected by a now eroded parapet likely reinforced with sandbags, though few traces of these survived. Trench V, however, was roughly dug and shallow, with a depth of only 50cm, and had no sign of a fire-step.37 It is possible that it was never finished to a truly effective depth—something hinted at by the laid-out but uncut trench on the Southern Ridge mentioned above. If true, then the second phase of defence may have quickly overtaken an uncompleted first stage. A rethinking or at least refinement of The Hill of the Birds’ defence may be present in a possible second phase marked by constructing four earthwork karakoll redoubts at elevated positions along the ridge, which gave the defenders superior visual command of the western approaches than that available from the lower levels of Trench  V.  For example, Northern Redoubt A, although virtually destroyed today, lies immediately in front of higher ground which offers wide views to the north as well as west and south. Northern Redoubt B, the focus of our investigations, was also of a different magnitude to what had gone before (Figure 6.6).38 It dominates this part of the ridge, and is more imposing and threatening than the long trench which runs below it. Deeply cut and heavily banked up, the redoubt measures 40m north-south and 45m east-west, and incorporates a fire-step. Machine guns mounted here could strafe the low-lying western approaches to deadly effect. The stratigraphy clearly reveals the sequence of construction here as earlier features were superseded by later ones—though whether this represents weeks or months is impossible to say. Building the redoubt truncated a trench39 which had led to the main front line of Trench V, blocking it with a mud-brick wall sitting on a course of carefully laid large stones, and thereby rendering it useless as a communication trench (Figure 6.7).

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Figure 6.6

A new firing line was then dug at right angles to it, and excavation revealed the remains of a mud-brick parapet running atop its whole length.40 Investigating two fire-bays and an intervening traverse showed the trench to have been 1.35m deep with its fire-step cut into limestone bedrock. Both fire-bays had solidly built front walls and parapets of sand, mud(© author) brick, flint, and stone blocks, with one preserving a fragment of sandbag. It was evident that this trench was deeper and better constructed and thus far more effective than its predecessor had been and was likely reinforced by sandbags along its length. Northern Redoubt B was a formidable construction. Its high-banked circular walls protected a rectangular central bunker cut a metre down into the limestone.41 When we arrived in 2006, it was filled with modern rubbish and scarred by gold-diggers’ holes. Clearance and excavation revealed its lower masonry walls were bound together with sand, limestone, and gravel, and above this, dry-stone walling survived up to 0.8m high in places. Entrance to the bunker was through a one-metre-wide gap on the eastern side, with a recess for a guard or messenger positioned just inside. Traces of clay plaster still clung to the recesses’ dry-stone wall, and roughly cut steps in the bedrock led down into the main area. Despite a century’s passing, and countless looting activities, the bunker yielded valuable insights into its wartime use. One of the most intriguing discoveries was a cache of

Ma’an Station: the Northern Redoubt B and front-line Trench V on Hill of the Birds

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra Figure 6.7 Ma’an Station: survey and excavation of the earlier communication trench truncated by the construction of Northern Redoubt B on the Hill of the Birds (© author) Note: Site supervisor Cat Edwards is standing on the blocking stones.

forty-three fragments of brown cardboard envelopes (Figure 6.8) embedded in the debris of a collapsed wall. Each had steel studs punched through the two top corners, and several had traces of a triangular white decorated label.42 Altogether the remains indicate at least eleven envelopes in a document wallet. Apart from pieces of Turkish army uniform and fragments of sandbags, the redoubt’s outer embankment yielded a short length of finely worked wood with an iron tip, which could be part of a heliograph tripod (the first of several found during the project)—and which might suggest the elevated position served to relay messages from the station below to the otherwise invisible outer defences further west.43 Traces of a fire-fight came from the same embankment—four spent Mauser cartridges and four pieces of shrapnel. Similar evidence came from a solidly built communication trench44 which entered the redoubt at a depth of 1.80m from the sheltered eastern side, its mix of masonry and dry-stone walling possibly having originally been roofed over.45 Shrapnel fragments, another Mauser cartridge, and a British .303 bullet were found alongside sandbag pieces and remains of more cardboard document wallets.46 Further south along the ridge were the likely later additions of the Central and Southern Redoubts. Investigations again explored the character of these two positions and the relationships between their respective communication trenches and the long firing line of Trench V. On the summit of the Central Redoubt there was a large two-metre-wide firing trench47 parallel to and behind Trench V, and with a well-preserved parapet which still stood 0.80m high. This redoubt also had signs of fighting, with spent cartridges, shrapnel, and the remains of exploded artillery shells. The Southern Redoubt also had a 0.80m-deep trench48 running parallel to Trench V and which could have had a dual purpose as both a communication and firing trench. The most interesting feature, however, was a large pit

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Desert Insurgency Figure 6.8 Ma’an Station: cardboard envelopes from Northern Redoubt B (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

dug into bedrock which had been filled in at some point, and within which the corroded remains of an artillery shell cone were recovered.49 The pit’s northern wall had its access to Trench XI blocked by stone and gravel, and may have originally have been a machine-gun position. While signs of fighting were clear at both redoubts, there was little evidence of different construction phases as found at Northern Redoubt B, though it was clear that each of these two strong-points had west-facing firing trenches that were integrated with the long crenellated line of Trench  V.  This may be due to the fact that while Northern Redoubt B was an earlier part of the original Trench V line and had to be adapted, the Central and Southern redoubts were later new builds on previously untouched terrain. Investigations on The Hill of the Birds suggest the ridge preserves some traces of two distinct defensive schemes—an earlier shallow and low-lying firing trench running northsouth along the west-facing slope incorporating Northern Redoubt B, and a possibly later series of three redoubts built on higher ground. Despite the difficulty of discriminating between the construction dates of these two activities, the evidence indicates that both were eventually integrated rather than one totally replacing the other, and possibly that the redoubts were built immediately following Trench V and before it had been dug to its full depth. Whatever the precise chronology, it seems likely that the redoubts represent a refinement of defensive tactics, away from relying solely on linear firing trenches and towards incorporating separate fire-bases with superior viewsheds and communications as well as interlocking fields of fire. The combination of archaeology and history provides new evidence concerning the defences along The Hill of the Birds. It can be argued that the construction of elevated strong-points was a response to Falkenhayn’s suggestions and Behçet’s newly available

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra manpower from August–September 1917, though refinements likely continued into 1918 as evidenced from Divers’ sketch-map of 18 February 1918 mentioned previously. Particularly noteworthy is that the crenellated form of Trench V (and others in the station’s defensive ring) is typically found in German positions on the Western Front and was designed to protect against modern weapons and tactics. The distinctive fire-bay and tra­verse structure protected trenches from penetration by the enemy, and denied them the possibility of enfilading the defenders. Previously unknown along the Hejaz Railway, it is precisely this design which reflects Falkenhayn’s intervention, a possibility which reinforces the view that even if Trench V was earlier than the karakoll redoubts it was not by much. Survey revealed quantities of bullets, cartridges, and artillery-shell fragments associated with the redoubts, notably Northern Redoubt B, indicating that these structures were probably in place before the battle for the station in April 1918. To all intents and purposes, the crenellated firing trenches and redoubts protecting Ma’an Station were built from scratch between August/September 1917 and March/April 1918, with the majority constructed before the end of 1917. The archaeology suggests too that Turkish soldiers manning the ridge-top trenches were not living in them. Sparse occupation debris was found, and food tins, sherds of glass, fabric, and animal bones were few compared to other places we investigated. Accommodation was almost certainly a Turkish camp, traces of which were investigated halfway down the eastern slope from the ridge to the station.50 A series of low earthworks represented sizeable rectangular buildings of standard size (30m by 10m) in regular alignment, and with internal dividing walls at 10-metre intervals—almost certainly the remains of a barracks.51 Close by was a group of eleven tent-rings (the footprint of Turkish army bell-tents). A contemporary photograph confirms this interpretation for the right time— between 1916 and 1918.

An Archaeology of Attack, the Battle of Ma’an Evidence from the outer and inner rings of defence, and particularly from The Hill of the Birds, yielded new insights into the Battle of Ma’an between 13 and 18 April 1918—the fierce engagement hitherto known only from historical accounts. Dry desert preservation, no previous archaeological intervention, and the fact that no other major battles were fought here, combined to give a unique glimpse of how the Arab Revolt’s often successful guerrilla style of warfare failed when confronted by well-armed and well-entrenched Turkish forces. As Nuri al-Said’s forces converged on Ma’an Station in the days leading up to the attack, Behçet Bey’s Turkish troops sat firmly atop their new earthwork defences (Figure  6.1). Despite occupying high points in the landscape which enabled them to sweep the open plain and wadi approaches with artillery, machine-gun, and rifle fire, the outer ring of defences were simply too isolated, too weakly manned, and too easily outflanked by the fastmoving Arab forces. Maulud Mukhlis led Feisal’s 1st Division to victory at Jebel Semnah on 13 April, and Saleh ibn Shefia ‘advanced down the great valley between the Semnas and took a little work [i.e. position] [along] with a machine gun and twenty prisoners. These gains gave us liberty of movement round three sides of Maan.’52 This Turkish position was either Ma’an Knoll, or the short stretch of trench 500m north.53 The Arab forces moved rapidly forward, and on 16 April, under close covering fire, Nuri led the 2nd Division around the southern edge of The Hill of the Birds, and towards the station. By the end of the next day, al-Askari records that the Arabs had pushed the Turks

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Desert Insurgency off their perches and occupied all these high points. Feisal’s forces had successfully turned their enemy’s outer positions, as well as advancing to within 500 and sometimes 200 yards (i.e. 457m and 183m respectively) of the Turks’ inner defences.54 The outer ring had fallen to a classic outflanking manoeuvre. Jafar al-Askari massed his artillery on the captured southern ridge according to Lawrence and bombarded the hill which protected the station’s western approaches: ‘The Arab guns sprayed this rise from the south-west and the French guns from the south-east.’55 There is little doubt from the geography that the target was the inner defence line of The Hill of the Birds. The following evening, a mixed Arab force of cavalry, infantry regulars, and tribesmen, swept in through the low-lying gap between the sheer cliff of the southernmost part of The Hill of the Birds and the Southern Ridge opposite, and captured the station’s engine shed. But the French artillery ceased firing when Captain Pisani’s ammunition gave out and the Bedouin failed to mount a planned attack from the eastern flank.56 The men in the engine shed were isolated under intense fire: The siege dragged on for four days and nights during which our forces suffered heavily, losing an estimated quarter of their strength. Indeed the feebleness of our artillery and the retirement of the French guns . . . left the 2nd Division effectively without any artillery at all. The two field guns with the 1st Division were hardly sufficient to support that Division alone and to combat the enemy’s firepower. (al-Askari 2003: 143)

Contributing to this disaster was the fact that Nuri’s infantry had been unable to storm the trenches south and west of the station. The trenches and redoubts of The Hill of the Birds had held fast, and as al-Askari himself recorded after the attack faltered and the Arabs fell back, it was ‘a withdrawal made all the more necessary by our infantry having failed to penetrate the enemy’s defensive line around the station from the south and west’.57 The inner ring of fortifications had proved its worth, and continued to do so as the station remained in Turkish hands until late September 1918 when, cut off north and south, the garrison finally surrendered. The ability to the Ma’an garrison to withstand attack was bought at a cost in dead and wounded, and the station had its own cemetery which may contain between 100 and 150  bodies (Figure  6.9). Two of the larger tombstones, inscribed in Ottoman script, belonged to before the Arab Revolt: one was dated to 1914–15 for ‘The son of Hassan of Aleppo, from Damascus’, and the other to 1905, ‘Martyr Officer Muhammed Khaled Efendi, the son of Abdallah’. The latter appears to have been a casualty of the railway construction era, and it is unknown how many of those buried here died as a result of the battle.58 The archaeological imprint fits the historical accounts of the battle, adding telling physical evidence in the substantial quantities of spent munitions recovered on The Hill of the Birds. A metal-detector sweep of 500m of the firing line of Trench V surveyed the trench and 30m of down-sloping ground in front where the west-facing and south-east-facing scarp slopes converged, showing this area had seen intense action (Figure 6.10). The survey results match the sketch of the battle preserved in al-Askari’s memoir,59 correlating the density of metal artefacts with the location where the main Arab attack (and retreat) passed by, as well as being the nearest part of The Hill of the Birds to be on the receiving end of al-Askari’s artillery bombardment.

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Figure 6.9

The remains of small-arms fire include 171 spent 7.65mm Mauser cartridges and seventeen Ma’an Station: Turkish Mauser cartridge clips representing Turkish outgoing, and 231 fired .303 bullets and twenty- military cemetery one large-bore Martini-Henry lead bullets being the Arab incoming. The incoming artil- (© author) lery bombardment is represented by 412 10mm lead shrapnel balls, sixty-four artillery shell fragments, twelve nose-cone pieces and eight drive bands.60 Archaeologists seek meaningful patterns in their data, and the distribution of these munitions reveals that the intensity and character of fighting varied along the front line of Trench V, with the fall of shot indicating the positions of the attackers. One hundred years after the event, it is impossible to identify which bullets were fired on what day of an engagement which lasted from 13 to the 18 April, though in quantity and distribution they correspond to the written accounts. In the northern and central sectors of the hill the exchange of fire between Turkish defenders and Arab attackers was dom­in­ ated by small arms, while in the southern sector the evidence points to intense outgoing small-arms fire and heavy incoming artillery. In the event, as al-Askari observed, the ridge was never taken. The large-scale assault on Ma’an Station was the only time Arab forces fought a major set-piece battle and it was a costly failure, especially after the raiding successes which had preceded it. The question perhaps is if the Arabs had taken Ma’an would they have been able to hold it? The defeat highlighted the wisdom of Lawrence’s view that the Arabs should avoid pitched battles, and in particular that there should be no

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Desert Insurgency Figure 6.10 Ma’an Station: metaldetector finds on Hill of the Birds (© John Winterburn)

frontal assault on the more strongly defended Hejaz Railway terminus at Medina. The key to success was launching surprise attacks along the line. This had paid off before, and would do so again.

The Railway South Investigating the defences of Ma’an Station provided unexpected clues to understanding the chronology and character of Turkish militarization of the railway south to Mudawwara. The station had been only lightly defended before August 1917. If such a strategic railway hub had not been fortified by modern crenellated firing trenches and high-point karakoll

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra redoubts until August-September 1917, then it is unlikely that small stations and bridges out in the desert would have been. Hitherto, the Bedouin threat had not included modern rifles, machine guns, grenades, artillery, or high explosive, nor aerial bombardment, and so modern fortifications developed on the Western Front precisely to defend against such weapons were unnecessary up to this point.61 A convincing case can be made for Falkenhayn’s and Behçet’s new defences around Ma’an Station being extended south (and north) along the railway, most often located to protect vulnerable bridges rather than solely the stations.62 Behçet Bey must have possessed a detailed map of the railway south, probably including the location of construction-era camps, and his sizeable manpower made it feasible to construct at least twelve new defensive sites (earthwork karakolls and stone-built redoubts) to protect the most vul­ner­able places.63 Labour gangs of Turkish troops could move easily up and down the line, construct defences and return to Ma’an in short order.64 Timing was critical. Before and after the Battle of Ma’an, the railway was temporarily then permanently cut by Arab-British attacks on stations and infrastructure in the south, at Ghadir al Haj, Wadi Rutm, Tel Shahm, and Ramleh. After April 1918, there was little or no opportunity for the Turks to build new defences along this stretch of line, and so the most likely time for their construction was between August-September 1917 and probably into early 1918. Ma’an Station’s new defences were part of a vision for defence in depth of the railway hub, but some of its individual defensive features were adopted to fortify the communication line of the railway in the desert against guerrilla attack. Intriguingly, this strategy may have been more Behçet’s than Falkenhayn’s, for while the latter was keen to defend Ma’an, German military advice to the Turks was to abandon the railway south, including Medina, and evacuate the thousands of defending troops north. The Turks dis­ agreed, valuing ‘Medina as the last remnant of Turkish sovereignty in the Holy places, this surviving claim upon the Caliphate’.65 This view prevailed, buttressed by Fakhri Pasha, the redoubtable Turkish commander known as the ‘Tiger of Medina’, and the militarization of the railway began. While Behçet had the manpower to build, he may not have had a sufficiency to per­man­ ent­ly man all these new defences. This may explain why RFC pilots flying reconnaissance missions along the railway sometimes made little or no mention of such locations, either because such places blended into the landscape, or because there were no tell-tale white Turkish army bell-tents to be seen, and thus there was no military threat.66 Lost in the landscape for a hundred years, it was these sites that reappeared as we surveyed on foot the 113km between Ma’an and Mudawwara. Only when these often-undocumented sites were added to the map of known stations does the scale of Turkish railway fortification become clear, a vast militarized landscape most likely planned and built within a few months of August 1917. This had implications too for the many construction-era camps that we discovered. When the railway was fully functioning, and troops moving freely along the line, Turkish soldiers would only occasionally have needed to build new tented campsites. Often, they could simply re-occupy parts of the long-abandoned construction camps. Even before excavation evidence was considered, it seemed likely that the vast majority of campsites which we were encountering belonged to the construction period 1904–1905/6 in this area. These sites were the traces of the railway builders who as we have seen built new campsites sequentially, following the progress of construction, each battalion and company arranged in their own camps.67

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Desert Insurgency Our approach, as explained above, was to regard all sites as part of a conflict landscape, more accurately two landscapes, where the Arab Revolt layer was nested within the earlier anti-Bedouin one. Several reasons influenced this decision. First, the railway, its construction campsites, and its stations, were built in a low-intensity conflict landscape which saw raiding Bedouin armed with little more than antiquated rifles and a hatred of the railway. These attacks did not focus on bridges and culverts as the raiders possessed no high explosives. Second, stations were refortified and new karakolls and trenches built during the Arab Revolt, and some of the construction campsites were probably briefly re-used at this time, thereby integrating them into the new conflict layer. Third, the railway builders were specially raised Ottoman Army railway battalions not civilian labourers, and so the regimented appearance of the construction camps was military in nature, and potentially indistinguishable from Arab Revolt-era army campsites, except where evidence of fire-fights was discovered. Even the diameter of labour battalion tent-rings was the same as those belonging to the army as both used standard issue white bell tents.68 The entire landscape flanking the railway between Ma’an and Mudawwara was a palimpsest, a complex mix of sites dating to between 1900 and 1918 (and subsequently altered throughout the twentieth century). At no point during this eighteen-year period was the region devoid of conflict, and so the archaeological challenge was to discriminate between conflict places that could appear identical, or at least similar, yet might have very different stories to tell.

Ghadir al Haj Station and its Karakolls Leaving Ma’an and moving south onto the barren limestone plateau of Jebel Sherra was a risky business for the Turks after the fall of Aqaba in July 1917. There was a window of opportunity between August 1917 and possibly as late as March 1918 to build new defences, with bridge protection a priority. The first site after Ma’an testifies to the threat posed by guerrilla attacks, and epitomizes Behçet’s measures taken to counteract it. Halfway towards the first Hejaz Railway station at Ghadir al Haj is a hilltop karakoll built in the style of those found at Ma’an Station (Figure 6.11). Constructed on a rise 125m south-west of the railway, it has commanding views of the area, and, crucially, overlooks a one-kilometre stretch of railway which has no less than eight bridges.69 This site, Ghadir al Haj North 1,70 may have been one of the so-called enemy blockhouses that deterred an attack by Lawrence, Pisani, and the Dhumaniyeh Bedouin on Ghadir al Haj Station on 3 October 1917—thereby proving its worth. It seems not to have been noticed, or at least not considered worth recording, in RFC reconnaissance reports for 13 March 1918 in this area, but might be the one recorded by pilot Lt Victor Donald Siddons on 14 April 1918.71 Invisible in satellite imagery until 2011,72 with no known contemporary aerial photographs, and no unambiguous mention in the his­tor­ic­al sources, the site was remarkably well preserved when first explored in 2008. It is a fine example of a railway karakoll, its 22m-diameter circular shape has a high outer bank with distinctive crenellations of fire-bays and intervening traverses surrounding an inner circular embankment within which a central position most likely housed a machine gun. It also conceals a feature barely discernible in satellite imagery, easily missed at ground level, and really evident only in low-altitude aerial photographs taken in raking light. This is a series of three concentric circles of ‘wolf-pits’73 beyond the outer embankment, which has been interpreted either as depressions for concealing caltrops against cavalry, or shallow

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra

postholes for wooden stakes and their hastily arranged barbed-wire entanglements. The historical evidence is equivocal, though it seems likely that both methods were used. The Australian Light Horse Brigade mentions caltrops surrounding Turkish redoubts further north in Palestine at Weli Sheikh Nuran, where these defences were ‘double lines of circular holes some five feet deep and four feet in diameter . . . [and were] quite impossible to ride over’,74 while barbed-wire defences are recorded further south in Arabia before the Revolt as a response to the upsurge in Bedouin attacks on the railway, though there is no mention of caltrops.75 At Ghadir al Haj North 1, however, they are part of the integrated design of the karakoll, and thus contemporary with it. This was our first encounter with such a defence, but similar features were discovered at other isolated locations further south where more evidence of their true nature would emerge. Just 80m east of the karakoll lay the well-preserved remains of fourteen tent-rings arranged in two parallel rows76 which could have been occupied by troops manning the redoubt. As subsequent experience showed, however, this was most likely a constructionera camp, possibly re-occupied between August 1917 and March-April 1918. This view is

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Figure 6.11 Ghadir al Haj Karakoll North 1 (© Isfir Redoubt 1_ APAAME_20151006 _RHB-0179) Note the proximity to the construction-era tent-ring camp and the railway.

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Desert Insurgency supported by the fact that this number of tents could have housed around 160 men, far beyond the manpower needs or capacity of the karakoll, but ideally suited for a labour gang in 1904–1905/6.77 Given the speed with which these railway defences were built, they seem to have been restricted to especially vulnerable locations where large bridges, or clusters of bridges, were concentrated. A karakoll’s small garrison, when present at all, would have been expected to advance out into the desert to repel an attack, and not just sit behind embankments waiting for a direct assault.78 In one instance, a bridge was blown up in broad daylight by a group of 500 Bedouins and two armoured cars, in-between and in plain view of two karakolls, whose soldiers ‘simply observed the activity without lifting a finger’ only firing on the enemy once the damage was done and they were retreating.79 Less than two kilometres south of this redoubt, a group of eleven tent-rings80 had been constructed just 175m south of a bridge spanning a small wadi. The size and configuration of the campsite and the absence of any contemporary fortifications indicates that it was a construction camp, occupied only as long as it took to build the bridge. An almost identical third campsite lies another 1.5km further on,81 and is just 135m west of another railway bridge spanning yet another small wadi. A second karakoll, Ghadir al Haj North 2,82 was built almost 400m further south at a point where the railway begins to cross a large 1.8km-wide wadi. In 2008–9, the remains of this small defensive site (more accurately a half-karakoll) were much eroded but preserved embankments and a trench on its north, west, and south sides, and open to the east and the railway. The outer earthen walls surrounded a circular inner embankment protecting a central and likely machine-gun position. Built only 18m west of the railway, it was well sited to oversee the series of bridges which span the wadi, the nearest of which was only 36m away. This may be another of Lawrence’s ‘enemy blockhouses’ that forestalled the same October 1917 attack on Ghadir al Haj Station only four kilometres further south. The density of bridges in this remote area made an obvious target, and required two redoubts only about four kilometres apart, suggesting that here if not elsewhere the patrolling range of the northerly karakoll’s garrison was about two kilometres.83 As with the other karakolls, this one could easily have been built in a day or so with an army labour gang trained down from Ma’an Station, and its defenders housed in an old construction camp some 360m to the north. The karakoll strong-points protected railway stations as well as the bridges and culverts which spanned the wadis in-between. Ghadir al Haj North 1 and 2 served the small station of Ghadir al Haj which lies 16km south-east of Ma’an at Km 475.84 It sits in the middle of the dry stony desert, and when built had just one rectangular structure on the western side of the line. This was in ruins in 2011, and it was impossible to know if its original form had anti-Bedouin loopholes designed into its walls. Ghadir al Haj Station appears several times in the histories of the Arab Revolt, providing further insights into the dating and character of railway militarization. The first documented attack was on 1 July 1917, just five days before the taking of Aqaba, when Lawrence and a large Bedouin force rampaged through the area almost unopposed, blowing up bridges by placing explosives in the drainage holes of the arches. Delighted with this success, Lawrence wrote that each of these holes ‘held from three to five pounds of gelignite each, were fired by short fuses . . . So quickly and cheaply we ruined ten bridges and many rails, and finished our explosive.’85 He mentions too that the small station garrison was repulsed

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra when it left the trenches to attack the raiders. It is clear that neither the station nor the bridges were effectively protected at this time. Drastic defensive changes soon occurred, causing a second attack on the station on 3 October to be abandoned due to the strength of nearby ‘enemy blockhouses’, of which two must surely have been the karakolls north of Ghadir al Haj Station.86 This identification is strengthened by Lawrence’s report in the Arab Bulletin in which he uses the term ‘guard posts’ not blockhouses.87 While the half-karakoll of Ghadir al Haj 2 protected the large bridge at the beginning of a wadi, in fact the entire 4.3km from this position south to the station was extremely vulnerable, having no less than fourteen bridges spanning several wadis. Lawrence’s two attacks coincidentally framed the period of railway militarization, and thus provide critical insight. The two Ghadir al Haj karakolls could not have existed in July 1917, they were obviously there by October 1917, and it was impossible for them to have been built after April 1918. The evidence supports the view that there was a two-to-three-month window for their construction between August-September and October 1917 as part of Behçet’s railway defence programme. Several important points arise from this. It took a much larger combined force of Feisal’s regular army, Howeitat Bedouin, and Pisani’s French mountain guns to eventually take Ghadir al Haj station on 12 April 1918, wrecking the building, blowing up five bridges, and destroying a thousand rails—the devastating aftermath of which was captured in a dramatic photograph (Figure 6.12).88 Yet the similarity of this image to the physical condition of the station in 2011 is deceptive. We know the railway was repaired and re-used albeit briefly during the 1920s (see chapter 4), that the stations were repaired and rebuilt during the 1960s refurbishment, that since the 1970s railway infrastructure hereabouts has been repurposed for the heavier and more powerful phosphate trains, and that probably from the 1990s at least, isolated stations have been robbed for building materials and have suffered the depredations of golddiggers (often using bulldozers). Despite the seductiveness of the idea, the wrecked station we investigated in November 2011 at Ghadir al Haj was mainly not that left by the Arab Figure 6.12 Ghadir al Haj Station after its destruction (photo © IWM Q 104083; the rights holder)

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Figure 6.13

Revolt, but by the decades of activity since. Yet, even after a hundred years, there were

Ghadir al Haj Station undeniable traces of the Revolt hidden in the sand and rubble. plan The archaeology of Ghadir al Haj Station proved a template for all the stations in our (© A. Gow, S. Daniels, O. Nelson/GARP)

area—a challenging mix of construction, destruction, rebuilding, repurposing, and robbing over the best part of a century (Figure  6.13). The station’s original cut-stone blocks, for example, likely disappeared only within the last forty years or so, ripped from the 1960s refurbishment rather than salvaged from the destruction of 1918. By 2011, all that remained visible was a small section of the building’s exterior wall and part of the interior floor. The surviving southern foundations were cut and dressed rectangular stone blocks, and clearing the debris exposed the full length of a wall with cement ­foundations. An original corner to the north-west showed remnants of white-wash as at other station buildings, though a blackened section may be evidence of burning as a trace of the April 1918 attack. Some of the finely cut stone floor had been carefully removed, as had materials from the north-eastern wall, where fragments of curved ­concrete were found. These may be traces of a domed structure, possibly a cistern as at other stations further south (Figure 6.14). A time capsule of the Arab Revolt lay 25m west of the ruined building. A well-defined curvilinear breastwork trench yielded twenty-three Mauser cartridges with a spread indicating they had been fired against an enemy advancing from the open desert to the west.89 The simple uncrenellated trench and the direction of attack suggest this could be a remnant of Lawrence’s first assault on 1 July 1917, and whose exposed position had been too easily

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra Figure 6.14 Ghadir al Haj Station excavation in 2011 (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

outflanked. Six more Mauser cartridges came from the ruined station building, and evidence of artillery bombardment was found in a number of shrapnel balls found by metal-detecting. The station was likely strengthened soon after the July attack as part of Behçet’s defencebuilding, traces of which perhaps are a rectangular area outlined by a faintly visible trench around the station, mirrored on the eastern side of the track. Divers’ RFC reconnaissance report of 18 February 1918 contains a sketch-map that seems to capture some of these reinforcements in several lines of trenches and a machine-gun position to the immediate west of the station, none of which are now discernable at ground level though can be seen in satellite imagery.90 Leaving Ghadir al Haj Station, and travelling some two kilometres south, the railway is confronted by a 630m-wide convergence of two wadis, crossed by three bridges. Defending these from the southern ridge of the southernmost wadi, a small karakoll was constructed on a rise 75m east of the line with a panoramic view of both wadis.91 Its rectangular earthen embankment protects an inner trench surrounding a central (possibly machine-gun) pos­ition, and suggests a late 1917 construction, and which could have been yet another of the ‘blockhouses’ or guard-posts referred to by Lawrence. The men who built these bridges between 1904 and 1905/6 lived in a construction camp just 335m to the south-west of the later karakoll, on the other side of the railway.92 This large encampment of sixteen tent-rings was arranged in two parallel rows and included a southerly outlier probably belonging to an officer. The camp was placed midway between two wadis, the two converging northern ones just mentioned, and an even larger one to the south which required no less than six bridges to span its one-kilometre-width. The campsite was only about 300m west of the first of these six bridges, and its labour battalion workers were likely in everyday contact with comrades who occupied another large camp on the

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Desert Insurgency other southern side of the wadi, whose twenty-five tent-rings could easily have housed around 250 men.93 The sheer physical effort and logistics needed to construct six bridges probably required the combined manpower of both these large camps. This vulnerable location offers another intriguing insight into the ways in which the Turks used and re-used the desert landscape. As Behçet Bey examined his railway maps to plan the new defences, some construction-era campsites must have seemed ideally located for his purposes. The area of the second large campsite may have been one of these. It was strategically sited overlooking the vulnerable six bridges, but was just a little too far away for truly effective defence. The solution it seems was to build a second position much nearer to the railway and virtually on the scarp slope of the wadi. This interpretation arises from the presence of an unusually tightly configured campsite of thirteen tent-rings whose disciplined regularity and depth of living floors speaks to the possibility that it was constructed and occupied by regular Turkish soldiers engaged in conflict rather than the railway labour battalions constructing the embankment and bridges.94 Part of the same position, and just 60m south, is a group of circular and square earthen features on an area of rising ground.95 One of these has a trench connecting to a structure with a circular embankment—a perfect location for a machine gun which could rake the entire area around the bridges. Protecting these valuable assets was a priority, and the absence of a karakoll could be explained by the construction of what in effect was a defensive equivalent—a high-point machine-gun position in its own small circular defensive embankment surrounded by a small garrison of forward-line troops. The considerable manpower needed to build the many bridges and culverts in this area has left its archaeological traces in the density of construction-era sites, including a nearby stone quarry whose blocks could have been transported by train or more likely a handoperated rail push trolley.96 Some campsites remain impressive. Just south of the quarry the railway crosses a 360m-wide wadi, at which point some thirty tent-rings were built in two parallel rows with accompanying outliers for officers or NCOs.97 The size of this camp is such that its population of 300+ labourers may also have been involved in helping construct the six bridges to the north. The numbers of men indicated by the size and density of these campsites far outstripped the availability of Turkish troops to protect this same area during the Arab Revolt, a fact which reinforces their identification as (undefended) construction camps. Their value to Behçet would have been as pre-existing overnight camps for shuffling small numbers of troops up and down the line, possibly as mule-borne patrols. As the railway approaches the next station of Bir Shedia, several other smaller construction camps are still visible, and as it crosses a narrow wadi, which nevertheless still required three bridges, a small karakoll was built overlooking and protecting this weak spot.98 In this now much disturbed area, sites are difficult to identify and on the verge of disappearing altogether.

Bir Shedia Station The station of Bir Shedia99 at Km 487 lies 12km south of Ghadir al Haj and is one of the bleakest locations on the Jebel Sherra. It appears briefly in historical accounts, notably when Lawrence described the abortive attack on Ghadir al Haj Station in early October 1917. The presence of the Turkish blockhouses convinced him that he needed to find an easier target which proved to be three bridges crossing a wadi just beyond Km 489, and south of Bir Shedia. A few months later, on 18 February 1918, during the same reconnaissance

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra flight which produced the sketch-plan of Ma’an’s new defences, RFC pilot Divers also made a small cursory sketch of Bir Shedia Station which shows a short crescent-shape trench and what appears to be a small karakoll (marked as ‘Fort’) to the west of the station.100 Perhaps using this intelligence, Zaal Abu Tayi and Mohammed al Dheilan captured the station and its guards in April 1918.101 Between 2006 and 2014, the station had a cluster of buildings dating to the 1960s and 1970s, some of which may have originated during the refurbishment project, others probably associated with the phosphate trains. The surrounding area was so heavily damaged by bulldozing that no evidence was found of the original station building or any of the outer western defences reported by Divers in 1918, though traces of an eroded construction camp with fourteen tent-rings lies 279m to the south-west.102 The station did, however, serve as occasional parking for several original Hejaz Railway wagons and sometimes one of the tourist trains that occasionally come this far (Figures 6.15a and 6.15b). South of the station, as Lawrence discovered, was an area of dense railway infrastructure, as the line approached a 1.7km-wide wadi. This was traversed by several bridges, and was undoubtedly the location attacked in October 1917, and referred to by him as Km 500.4.103 As the new defences were in place by this time it is unusual that such a vulnerable position has no karakoll to defend it, though this may have been due to lack of manpower. It is possible that defences existed in late 1917 and that they have since been bulldozed away, though Lawrence’s successful blowing of its three bridges suggests otherwise.104 As the railway leaves this broad wadi, it passes a group of tent-rings belonging to a large construction camp split into several parts. Named after Aurel Stein who took the first aerial photograph of it in 1939,105 Stein Camp A, the northernmost, is 3.5km south of Bir Shedia Station, 180m west of the railway, and has two parallel rows of eight tent-rings each, with an outlier to the east.106 One hundred and fifty metres away to the south-west, is the more eroded Stein Camp B of about sixteen tent-rings107 and in between these two are what could be two small defensive earthworks.108 Two hundred metres south is Stein Camp C109 some 90m west of the railway, which has two rows of ten tent-rings each, and a short row of five more just to the north, making a total of twenty-five. A spread of coal discovered nearby could have been come from one of the pre-war Hejaz locomotives (due to the wartime use of wood as a subsititute).110 This possibility is perhaps strengthened by the discovery on Stein’s photograph of a 150m-long siding on the eastern side of the line opposite Stein Camp A. The photograph is clear enough to show the sleepers still in place at that time, though the siding is hardly visible on satellite imagery today. These three groups of tent-rings were likely one integrated camp with a grand total of about forty tent-rings representing somewhere between 400 and 500 railway labourers who probably made good use of a stone quarry 350m further south and conveniently right next to the line.111

Birds Nest Camp The many construction-era camps along this stretch of railway are typified by Birds Nest Camp112 which lies on a broad plateau two kilometres south of Stein Camp C, and is intervisible with Bir Shedia Station to the north and Aqabat Hejazia Station further south. It was named in 2009 after a local Bedouin term for the distinctive large-stone tent-rings. Built 50m west of the railway embankment, and 300m north-east of a bridge, it has twenty-eight large tent-rings arranged in two parallel north-south rows (Figure 6.16).113

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Desert Insurgency Figure 6.15 (a) Hejaz Railway wagons at Bir Shedia Station in 2006; (b) tourist train parked at Bir Shedia Station in 2011 (© author)

While the diameter of the rings is within the average for such structures,114 they are notable for their almost ‘megalithic’ appearance, resulting from the easy availability of such material in the area. This in turn might suggest the camp was less temporary than others, perhaps serving some administrative function. The available stone allowed for a more sophisticated architectural style, with some tent-rings having two courses of angular stones

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Figure 6.16

and well-defined entrances. The monumental construction style together with the isolated Birds Nest Camp location have contributed to the exceptional preservation of the site, with many tent-rings (© Ali Baldry/GARP) retaining upstanding outer ‘walls’. The excavation of eleven tent-rings produced a rich diversity of finds, all of which indicate a construction camp, reinforced by the absence of munitions and artillery shell fragments.115 Apart from miscellaneous metal items such as tacks, wire, and pieces of a lampwick mount, it was the social dimension of the camp which came to life. There were several cut-throat razor blades found within the tent-rings, padlock fragments, dozens of pieces of cream-coloured ceramics and glass (including soot-stained lamp glass), similar quantities of cigarette-paper fragments, and textile pieces, half of which probably came from uniforms. No fewer than ninety-six Turkish buttons were found, of which sixty-two were star-and-crescent design—a motif also found on a broken spoon.116 A possible insight into some labourers’ beliefs was the discovery of small clusters of quartz (rock crystals) set into the embankments of several tent-rings. In Arabic folklore, this mineral offers protection against envy and the evil eye, and a large outcrop is found 27 kilometres to the south along the Ras an Naqb escarpment.117 Padlocks and quartz crystals may have served a common purpose. One of the insights of Birds Nest Camp concerned tent-rings which were outliers to the parallel rows and which characterized all construction camps. The investigation of one of

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Figure 6.17 Birds Nest Camp: (a) blue ring; (b) seal matrix (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

these, tent-ring XXV, provided archaeological evidence for the intuitive view that such structures belonged to officers or NCOs, where spatial separation indicated rank. Two finds were notable—a personal seal matrix whose inscription reads ‘Said bin Salim 1323’, which is either 1905–6 or 1907–8, and a broken finger-ring made of copper alloy with a blue-glass ‘stone’ (Figure 6.17).118 Seal matrices, of which many were found in our investigations, may have served in part to overcome limitations in communication between Turkish officers and Arab labourers.119 The same tent-ring also yielded nine lead-alloy bag seals stamped ‘S. Romain Boyer Marseille’ belonging to sacks of cement, which supported a construction-era date by hinting at administrative record-keeping of imported and expensive raw materials.120 The connection was stronger still, as the French industrialist Etienne Boyer had invested the profits from his cement factory in 1898 in a new venture at La Coudoulière near Marseilles— the production of interlocking roof tiles for export. It was his tiles, along with those from other associated manufacturers, which the Ottomans had decided would adorn the roofs of their Hejaz Railway stations. Boyer, it seems, helped construct station buildings and infrastructure, then added the finishing touch with his decorative but functional terracotta roof tiles.121 The bag seals were likely all that survived of the record-keeping of valuable cement imports, maintained it seems by an officer in tent-ring XXV. Bird’s Nest was a construction camp whose size (around 300 men) and construction style may indicate a more important administrative function, reinforced perhaps by its location as an intervening point of visibility and communication between the otherwise ‘invisible’ stations of Bir Shedia and Aqabat Hejazia. This view may be supported by a single shallow east-west defensive trench dug 90m to the south of the tent-rings.122 Its linear rather than crenellated shape indicates a pre-Arab Revolt date, when defence against Bedouin camel or horse attack was the only threat. The size of the tent-rings made them more defensible than the norm, and although there was no trace, the camp would have been an obvious choice for re-use by Turkish railway patrols between 1917 and 1918. The area around the camp preserved signs of the contested history of the railway. The remains of a heavily damaged stone and mud-brick building lay 95m to the south, and could have been contemporary with it. The nearest railway bridge, some 300m further south, may have been built

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra (or repaired) with stone from a nearby quarry.123 This source was probably used during the 1960s refurbishment, traces of whose reconstruction can still be seen on the bridge, and a view supported by one of the civil engineers engaged in this work who commented that the ‘Bridges had to be rebuilt [with] stones found locally in the desert.’124 Despite considerable damage to this area by bulldozing, the surviving density of campsites can be misleading as to the numbers of men employed in building the railway.125 It is worth remembering that these camps represent southward movement across the landscape of a large but defined number of men who built new camps as and when the local topography demanded bridges and culverts.

The Blockhouse Clear archaeological evidence was emerging for the relationship between sparse antiBedouin railway defences of the construction era and the more numerous examples of the Arab Revolt. Contributing to this was the investigation of the Blockhouse at Km 495 (Figure 6.18),126 two kilometres south of Bird’s Nest Camp, and the only true blockhouse in our section of the line.127 It was a masonry-built defence in typical Hejaz Railway style, just a few metres west of the railway. Invaluable proof that it was contemporary with railway construction and intended as defence against Bedouin attack, was its mention by Maunsell in 1908,128 though it was repurposed during the Arab Revolt. In October 1917, Lawrence referred to it ‘as the first great blockhouse below Shedia, with which we had had an affair when blowing up our second train’.129 This infers the existence of others in our area, of which no trace was found, and Lawrence and others clearly used the term to describe a variety of military strongpoints such as the earth-banked karakolls. The Blockhouse has a clear view of the railway north and south, though several trenches marked on Divers’ sketch-map from his flyover of 18 February 1918 have left no visible trace.130 Figure 6.18 The Blockhouse (© author)

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Desert Insurgency The Blockhouse was a particularly insightful encounter with the layered history of Hejaz Railway buildings. A 2010 survey revealed several phases of construction and repair, a palimpsest of original railway construction, later modification, and damage during the Arab Revolt, what appears to be significant 1960s refurbishment (in fact a 50–75 per cent rebuild), and subsequent post-1960s damage (Figure 6.19).131 Formidably built of dressed stone and mortared rubble, the building has designed-in loopholes on its north, east, and south sides. Each of its three rooms has either a window or a doorway, and its partition walls all retain traces of plaster likely to be of 1960s date. The eastern wall’s central doorway faces the railway, and has four loopholes, two on the ground floor and two more at what would have been upper level. The northern wall has a single window which originally held metal bars, and four more loopholes similarly arranged. The south side has a central window also with recesses for metal bars, and four loopholes. The western wall was too heavily damaged to ascertain its original form. All the loopholes are too small for machine guns, but ideal for rifles, and were likely used this way in construction era times and during the Arab Revolt, although a machine gun could have been set up on the roof. It is likely that the windows and loopholes were rebuilt in the original style and position during the 1960s, though it is impossible to be certain. The Blockhouse’s roof had almost disappeared when we arrived, though what survived suggested wooden cross beams, a concrete mix, and an east-west pitch. A one-metre high parapet wall surrounded the entire roof, and it was into this which the upper loopholes had been integrated. There can be little doubt that this upper section and a large part of the western wall were rebuilt during the 1960s so it is unknown how accurately what we saw in 2010 reflected the c.1905 original, though it casts some light on the nature of the refurbishment.132 The ruins maintain a contemporary military dimension in Jordanian Air Force graffiti (roundels and insignia) and representations of fighter jets on the inside walls (Figure 6.20). The surrounding landscape also preserves traces of the relationship between construction camps and bridges. One kilometre south of the Blockhouse, a campsite of twenty-two tent-rings plus seven or eight outliers lies nearby a large twelve-span bridge which crosses a 330m-wide wadi.133 On the southern side of this wadi as the railway leaves this vul­ner­able location is an eroded fortification which may be the remains of another karakoll.134 The challenges facing Meissner’s engineers and labour gangs are revealed over the next 2.5km where there is arguably the greatest surviving density and variety of constructionperiod activity along the whole 113km length of the line from Ma’an to Mudawwara. Along the western side of the line and mostly packed into just 1.4km are no less than eleven structures of various kinds most likely dating to 1904–5 and called the Great Camp.135 Altogether there are four tent-ring campsites, with a total of at least eighty-four tent-rings which could represent between 800 and 1,000 men depending on occupancy. Given their proximity to each other, often just minutes in walking time, it seems likely that all were occupied at the same time. Supporting this view is the presence of a nearby stone quarry used for the bridges and culverts. There is also a probable bread oven positioned on the nearby wadi ridge possibly to catch the wind, and used to supply the large number of labourers.136 This densely occupied area includes at least one location cleared of desert stones and identified as mule- or horse-tethering lines on the northern edge of a wadi, possibly also to catch the breeze for the animals. These could have served for local communication and transportation between all the sites in this area. Equally possible, is that this tethering

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra Figure 6.19

Window

The Blockhouse, plan

Railway Blockhouse

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(© C. Edwards, S. Daniels/GARP)

Ground plan

Firing apertures

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Arched window

Arched doorway

Entrance

Middle room Location of stairs to the roof

Entrance

Window

Arched doorway

South room

Firing apertures

0

4m

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Desert Insurgency Figure 6.20 The Blockhouse, showing Royal Jordanian Airforce graffiti (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

station (and possibly another on the opposite side of the wadi) could belong to the Arab Revolt period, and represent a partial re-occupation of some of the tent-rings by mule- or horse-borne railway patrols moving up and down the line. Overlooking this busy area is a possible observation post built on a rise some 225m south-west of where the railway crosses the wadi and only 110m from the second possible tethering post.137 This may be associated with the building of the railway and re-used during the Arab Revolt, or perhaps belong solely to the Revolt itself. Some 300m further south are the remains of another heavily damaged construction camp and a seasonal cistern138 which would have been equally important for men, animals, and railway locomotives. As the railway moves on, it confronts another wadi some 500m away and here a large campsite of fifteen tent-rings has an adjacent area similar to the mule- or horse-tethering places to the north.139 * The first 44km of the railway south of Ma’an were a revelation. They showed a pattern of construction which continued for another 16km to where the Jebel Sherra plateau ends abruptly at the Ras an Naqb escarpment. Their investigation allowed for a deeper understanding of the relationship between construction, destruction, and reconstruction in an isolated and contested landscape, where the environment could be as unforgiving as any human enemy. The archaeology was fleshing out the hints of the historical record, namely that there existed only sparse evidence of railway defence in the desolate spaces and wadis in-between stations during railway building. This was because bridges and culverts were not greatly threatened by the Bedouin. These same concentrations of infrastructure however did see

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C onflict on Jebel Sherra intensive occupation by Ottoman labour battalions in their tent-ring campsites at this time. Each wadi required at least one if not several bridges to allow the railway to pass over, and the majority of large construction camps were established within easy reach. A decade later it was these same isolated places which were most vulnerable to high explosives, and such tempting targets for Arab-British attacks. The archaeological record thus preserves an important fact in that those areas which saw the greatest density of camps and men between 1905 and 1906 were almost devoid of defences, yet during the Revolt weapons technology so changed the military equation that these same locations became focal points of Behçet Bey’s new Ma’an-style fortifications from August 1917. Communication too was a factor. The increased security concerns which led to these new defences placed an even higher premium on line-of-sight between karakolls and redoubts and the stations, presumably by heliograph. This overcame the problem inherited from the railway’s construction when stations were built at locations where there was no intervisibility between them. By late summer 1917 the situation had changed dramatically, and railway defences were placed to overcome this. Contributing to this may have been the increased destruction of the railway’s telegraph-line poles as evidenced by numerous attacks. Karakoll siting may have served several purposes. The evidence was mounting that the defence of the railway was a very late affair, that it could be dated to within a few months, and that it had an instructive relationship with the earlier defences of the construction era.

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7

‘Belly of the Beast’ Abdullah’s Fort to Batn al-Ghoul

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onflict and the desert brought a dramatic change to railway defences south of the Blockhouse. While the Jebel Sherra’s desolate and waterless terrain did not end there, local geology showed a subtle change with an increase in workable stone. Earthen karakolls gave way to small stone-built redoubts or forts, epitomized by Abdullah’s Fort, 15km south of Bir Shedia Station.1 This is the first of three ‘Ornamental Forts’ (the other two being Saleh’s Fort, and the Round Fort), so-called due to the presence of seemingly more decorative than functional aspects, such as low perimeter walls, and curious ‘pavements’ of dark stones/gravel. The position, size, and proximity to each other of these three sites might suggest a shared pre-Arab Revolt origin, albeit reinforced during Behçet’s strengthening of railway defences. Another shared if more dramatic feature is the presence of parallel lines of the wolf-pits first seen further north, and which intriguingly reappear in three of the first four sites south of the Blockhouse, hinting perhaps that they might be contemporary additions to railway defences in 1917. Abdullah’s Fort announces the change in construction style with its shallow trench perimeter surrounding a small three-room blockhouse with loopholed walls and a ‘blast wall’ protecting the entrance. Such a feature, unnecessary against Bedouin attack, is more typical of the Arab Revolt era. Abdullah’s Fort could originally have been a construction-era building, with the defensive features being added after August 1917.2

Makins’ Fort Distinctive and impressive is Makins’ Fort just 2.4km further south. Perched on a cliff overlooking a large ten-span Hejaz Railway bridge crossing a broad wadi, the rectangular stone-built fortification is surrounded by a trench beyond which are three parallel lines of wolf-pits (Figure 7.1).3 The location would make a mounted Bedouin charge a risky venture and it seems probable the pits were for barbed wire rather than caltrops. The position of the fort, protecting the bridge, and the absence of any nearby construction camps—the nearest is five kilometres north—suggest that it too could be the result of later railway militarization, with the labour force being brought in by train. Communication was also a feature, as there is a good line-of-sight north to Abdullah’s Fort, and beyond to the Blockhouse some 10km away.4 The site was named after 2nd Lt Arthur Dayer Makins, an RFC X Flight pilot who first recorded it in a sketch-map in 1918, though strangely, given its strong defensive position, there are no clear references to it in the historical accounts. The railway line divides the site into two parts, the Western and Eastern Complexes (Figure 7.2).5

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The west side is larger and more interesting, and investigations focused on its main building, the surrounding perimeter wall which survives up to one metre high in places, and the two-metre-wide outer bank with the wolf-pits beyond.6 A stone-lined path passes through each of two eroded perimeter-wall entrances, a northerly one leading to a ruined sentry post, and an easterly one crossing the railway to the Eastern part of the site. Inside the perimeter defences, the main 25m x 10m dry-stone structure has four rooms, and its south-eastern loopholed wall overlooks the wadi and bridge (Figure 7.3), in effect making it a blockhouse. In 2009, the walls were still impressive, half a metre thick, surviving to 1.65m in height,7 and immediately beyond were remains of a protective bank on the steep south slope that fell away to the wadi, and on which were the ruins of several circular dry-stone structures which could have been observation or machine-gun posts.8 It may be that the large four-room structure was built in several stages, perhaps a small original which was subsequently enlarged and reinforced during the Arab Revolt. The easternmost room was the best preserved, with thirteen loopholes set into a curving wall.9 Discovered in the overlying debris and on the original floor surface beneath were just a few buttons and scraps of paper possibly dating to the Arab Revolt.10 Interestingly, fourteen Turkish buttons all of the same dimple variety were found alongside six tarpaulin eyelets which might indicate a temporary canvas-covered occupation at some point.11 A few metres away were the eroded remains of three tent-rings, presumably accommodation for

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Figure 7.1 Makins’ Fort (© Makin’s Fort_ APAAME_20151006_ RHB-0132) Note ‘wolf-pits’ lower left.

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Figure 7.2 a small garrison of between perhaps twenty and thirty men, and which yielded only a Makins’ Fort plan button and a belt buckle, though nearby an iron-pointed wooden instrument leg was (© N. Faulkner, S. Daniels/ GARP)

found, possibly part of another heliograph tripod. More enigmatic were the nearby broken remains of a grey volcanic grinding stone.12 There was little firm evidence of fighting here, with no artillery shell fragments, and only three Mauser cartridges which could easily have been from random firing. The eastern part of the site lies 275m east on the other side of the railway line and is dominated by a single stone-built structure, with an entrance and a single loophole on its eastern side. Its upper part had collapsed by 2009, though excavation inside revealed three layers—an original surface covered by grey ash, itself overlain by a level of animal waste, and with windblown sand above. Only nails were found within the ash level and are possibly the remains of wooden boxes for burning (as at other sites), and the animal waste could be from more recent Bedouin re-use. West of the building was a ruined circular dry-stone structure of unknown use, and a ditch and wall which appear to have been part of a hydraulic system linked to a culvert beneath the railway and to a nearby cistern. One of the more intriguing features of Makins’ Fort was discovered here. It was the remains of a second railway embankment still visible a few metres east of today’s route, along with the mortared foundations of another bridge.13 The explanation is unclear. The current bridge appears of original Ottoman construction (though repaired during the 1960s, and undoubtedly strengthened during the 1970s for the phosphate trains).

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.3 Makins’ Fort, Western Complex: Room 3, loopholed southeastern wall overlooking the wadi and railway bridge (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

The ‘ghost’ embankment could be an earlier route later replaced, or perhaps a temporary route to keep trains running while the main bridge was being built or repaired after flood or war damage. Equally possible, it could be the remains of an auxiliary route for supplying water to the constructions teams.14 Whatever the explanation, this embankment leaves the current main line and continues south for 430m, crossing the wadi then rejoins the main line at a point where the line crosses another smaller wadi. The railway leaves Makins’ Fort and moves south past a small round stone structure a  kilometre away.15 Its location suggests a railway connection, and it could be another construction-era building re-used during the Revolt. A possible clue is that it might be the so-called guardhouse mentioned by Maunsell in 1907 as lying at Km 507, one kilometre south of where, ‘The line crossed over a large valley by a bridge that was supported by six, 20-foot stone arches,’ and at which time was nothing more than two tents and some water barrels.16 Maunsell, interestingly, makes no mention of Makins’ Fort adjacent to the multispan bridge, nor the circular building here, which suggests that both are of a later date, sometime between 1907 and March 1918, and therefore possibly part of the post-Aqaba militarization of the railway.17 The area between the possible guardhouse and the next major site of Saleh’s Fort is heavily bulldozed on both sides of the railway, so several defensive sites may simply have disappeared.

Saleh’s Fort and Camp The second of the Ornamentals is Saleh’s Fort, only three kilometres south of Makins’, and as with Abdullah’s Fort, it is a dry-stone blockhouse, but here surrounded by a ‘pavement’ of small dark stones and gravel (Figure 7.4).18 The purpose of this unusual feature is unclear and gathering up then pressing small dark stones into the desert sand must have been a

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Desert Insurgency Figure 7.4 Saleh’s Fort plan (© C. Edwards, A. Gow, O. Nelson/GARP)

laborious task, the end result of which appears more decorative than functional. Beyond is a low perimeter wall of stone and gravel, a shallow trench, and an embankment19. Immediately beyond the perimeter wall are several rings of wolf-pits, the excavation of three of which revealed they had been cut 0.14m directly into bedrock—too shallow for vertical posts but deep enough perhaps for wedging in 45-degree angled posts of mutually supporting tripods holding barbed wire.20 The walls of the blockhouse survived to 0.80m in height (though had certainly been higher), and a 0.70m-wide doorway connected its two rooms. The main access to the building was a second identical entrance on the east side and covered by a ‘blast wall’ as at Abdullah’s Fort.21 Only a few fragments of textiles were found inside, suggesting minimal occupation, a view which might be explained by an unusual feature nearby.22 Saleh’s Fort is notable due to the presence of a unique kind of campsite 170m to the north-west. Saleh’s Camp23 has eight tent-rings arranged in two parallel rows aligned eastwest, and with two larger tent-rectangles lying amidst a heavily disturbed area (Figure 7.5). Unlike all other campsites encountered between 2006 and 2014, where tent-rings were constructed of natural stones, those at Saleh’s Camp had been created by clearing the natural gravel to leave a kidney-shaped area either side of a central strip of original stony surface which served as an entryway (Figure 7.6).

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.5 Saleh’s Fort in 2011, with excavation of Saleh’s Camp in the distance (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

Figure 7.6 Saleh’s Camp kidney-shaped tent-ring (© author)

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Desert Insurgency Figure 7.7 Saleh’s Camp razor (© author)

Nine of these unusual features were excavated and one planned, but very little was found,24 other than in situ wooden stakes (likely tent pegs), a few items of glass, metal, paper, and wood, and notably a well-preserved and intact cut-throat razor (Figure 7.7).25 The sparse remains from these structures and their proximity to the fort suggests that Saleh’s Camp may have been a short-lived or sporadically occupied military camp, perhaps little more than an overnight stop belonging to a mule-mounted railway patrol or a very temporary garrison for the fort, with which it appears to be contemporary, and which might explain the almost total lack of finds at that location. One possibility is that these distinctive tent-constructions belonged to the Estar-Alai, a Turkish infantry regiment mounted on mules, and based at Ma’an specifically to counter Bedouin attacks on the railway.26 If so, the numerous finds of mule shoes at sites along the line may have belonged to the same unit. At Saleh’s Fort and Camp, once again, there were no signs of fighting.

The Round Fort The last of the unusual fortifications south of the Blockhouse is the Round Fort, four ­kilometres south of Saleh’s, and in clear line-of-sight with it and with Aqabat Hejazia Station two kilometres away to the south.27 The single possible historical mention is significant for several reasons. In April 1918, Siddons recorded in his flight reconnaissance report that one mile north of Fassoah (i.e. Fassu’ah Fort) was ‘A post with barbed wire and 2 M.G. posts or observation posts W. of it.’28 Given the correspondence between Siddons’ estimate and the actual distance of almost exactly one mile (1.85km), it seems likely that he is referring to the Round Fort. If so, then all four sites with wolf-pits may have been surrounded by barbed wire entanglements as a quick-and-easy part of Behçet’s defence, and could be contemporary.

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Siddons’ observation together with our investigations offers a possible solution to the identification of the wolf-pits (Figure 7.8). At Saleh’s Fort and the Round Fort, the wolf-pits were only between 0.14 and 0.25m (5–9 inches) deep, 0.7m (2ft 3 inches) in diameter, and were spaced 0.4m (1ft 3 inches) apart. At the previously mentioned site of Weli Sheikh Nuran, where anti-cavalry caltrops were definitely used, these pits were between 1.52m and 1.82m (5ft–6ft) deep, 1.2m (4ft) in diameter, and with almost no space between them. As the Australian Light Horse cavalrymen rightly observed, these pits were impassable, and the depth alone would have broken the horses’ legs. By contrast, the shallowness and spacing of the wolf-pits at Makins’ Fort, Saleh’s Fort, and the Round Fort would have been nowhere near as formidable an obstacle against horses and camels. While the proximity of the pits to the forts’ trenches may have reduced their effectiveness as caltrops, it would have increased the effectiveness of barbed-wire entanglements. It seems likely that the Turks deployed such features for two distinct purposes—larger and deeper ones as anti-cavalry caltrop pits, and smaller and shallower versions as pits for securing barbed-wire tripods. It is notable

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Figure 7.8 The Round Fort, showing the railway, ‘wolf-pits’, and recent bulldozer damage in 2015 (© Fassu’ah Karakoll 1_ APAAME_20151006_ RHB-0114)

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Desert Insurgency that that not a single construction camp of the dozens investigated had any trace of these distinctive defensive features. The Round Fort is rather grandly named (Figure 7.9). It is a single-room circular dry-stone blockhouse with an eastern entrance facing the railway, a compressed ‘pavement’ of small dark stones and gravel as at Saleh’s Fort (Figure 7:10), a shallow circular trench and low perimeter wall, with the circular belt of about 100 wolf-pits just beyond.29 The blockhouse’s construction of large stones on the outer face and small packing stones in the interior is identical to Saleh’s Fort, and may be further evidence of contemporaneity.30 The wall is half a metre thick and appears to have been built as one continuous line surviving to a maximum height of 1.40m. The absence of loopholes may be due to the collapsed higher parts of the wall or may never have existed. Inside, excavation of a fireplace formed of four flat stones revealed only a barren layer of ash. Skirting the blockhouse, the black stone/gravel ‘pavement’ again seems like a decorative flourish. Two paths lead away from the blockhouse, one following an aesthetic curving arc around the southern perimeter cutting through the ‘pavement’ and edged with stones whose lighter colour contrasts with the black stones, enhancing its appearance. The second and more poorly preserved pathway looked altogether more functional, edged with rougher stones and leading east towards the railway and a probable halt. The Ornamental Forts are intriguing, and together with Makins’ Fort make an unusual group. The Ornamentals’ exposed locations, small size, low perimeter walls, and shallow trenches, together with two instances of dark stone/gravel ‘pavements’ suggest perhaps a high-ranking construction-era design of unknown purpose. Once the Arab Revolt began, their vulnerability was countered by converting their central buildings into impromptu blockhouses with loopholes and blast-walls and surrounding their vulnerable low perimeter walls with swathes of barbed wire. Given the urgency of the railway’s 1917 militarization, it seems unlikely that time and effort would have been spent on creating the ‘pavements’ at this time. Whatever their original purpose, all three sites are notable for an almost total lack of finds, indicative of brief occupation by a small number of soldiers and with no evidence of any fighting.31

Aqabat Hejazia Station Across two kilometres of stony desert to the south, and within sight of the Round Fort,  lie the ruins of Aqabat Hejazia Station at Km 514, the last station on the Jebel Sherra plateau.32 Swathed today in the white dust of phosphate, the station makes a few tantalizing appearances in the history of the Arab Revolt. It was the highest-status station between Ma’an and Mudawwara, as evidenced by an RFC reconnaissance report of 11 February 1918 which records that the buildings were (painted?) white and one had a ‘red roof ’—indicating perhaps that its pitched roof was covered with the red-buff-coloured tiles imported from Marseilles33 (see chapter  4). Prestigious high visibility was likely considered more important than defence when it was built. While the RFC report failed to mention any defensive lines, another flight just a week later on 18 February by Divers recorded ‘one large building south of the railway with trenches’,34 possibly mistaking two structures for one. A month later, on 13 March, a sketch-map by Makins showed two stone buildings surrounded by trenches.35 Unless these trenches were built in the week between the first two flights (not impossible) it seems most likely that the first

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.9 The Round Fort plan (© A. Gow, K. Pool, S. Daniels/GARP)

pilot simply failed to see them. In April, Sheikh Mohammed al Dheilan and his Tawaiha  Bedouin, attacked the station, and in May, Peake and Hornby added to the destruction.36 In 2007, the station had two heavily damaged buildings with subterranean cisterns, a 238m-long siding, and associated breastworks (Figure  7.11). Today, these remains are

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Desert Insurgency Figure 7.10 The Round Fort, dark-stone pavement and path (© author)

a­ djacent to a phosphate trans-shipment area (also called Aqabat Hejazia), a proximity which threatens their survival. Investigations revealed the southernmost building (Building 1) had the station’s only remaining complete wall, along with two stubs of adjoining side wall, in the typical style of Ottoman station architecture. Two windows and a doorway survived, and interestingly, four impromptu loopholes had been hacked through the walls—suggesting an Arab Revolt date. The concrete floor was painted blue, the interior walls whitewashed, and there was probably an oven/heater in the northern wall.37 A ruinous mud-brick wall survives on the eastern side of the building, and there is evidence of two columns which may have supported an original station verandah.38 Building 2 lies immediately north, and survives only as foundations and floors covered with rubble and wind-blown sand (Figure 7.12). A deep rectangular basement with a central-arched support wall and plastered ­surfaces are the remains of the station cistern with its capacity of some 12,000 cubic metres,39 replenished from two seasonal open-air cisterns at the nearby Hajj fort of Fassu’ah. Investigation of the remains of the eastern mud-brick wall proved unexpectedly hazardous, as fragments of spherical Turkish hand grenades and an intact fuse were found (Figure 7:13).40 Metal detection then located three complete grenades and indications of six more buried in debris—all later collected and detonated by the Jordanian Army. The caching of these grenades by a loopholed mud-brick wall indicated military action, as did the discovery of a scatter of artillery-shell fragments, Mauser cartridges, and .303 bullets.41 The remains at Aqabat Hejazia are indicative of a Hejaz Railway Station converted into a small fortified counter-insurgency position during the Arab Revolt. The buildings were protected by additions of mud-brick walls with improvised loopholes, and linked together

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.11 Aqabat Hejazia Station plan (© D. Thorpe, S. Daniels/ GARP)

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Desert Insurgency Figure 7.12 Aqabat Hejazia Station, excavation of Building 2 (© author)

Figure 7.13 Aqabat Hejazia Station: Turkish hand grenade (© author)

by breastworks, creating two strong blockhouses. Mud-brick walls, sometimes surviving in  parts, but more often totally disappeared, would prove to be a notable feature of the impromptu defence of the stations further south. Extensive modern damage to the area surrounding Aqabat Hejazia probably explains why there was no trace of the trenches observed by Divers and Makins.

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Fassu’ah Fort The conflict landscape of Aqabat Hejazia Station extended to the re-purposed eighteenthcentury Ottoman Hajj fort of Qal’at al-Fassu’a 1.7km to the north-west.42 Built in the base of a wadi, it has two large cisterns replenished by rain water, originally for pilgrims and their animals, but later for the equally thirsty locomotives of the railway. It was here, where there was water and protection, that pre-railway pilgrims had gathered to prepare for the descent from the plateau to Batn al-Ghoul and the sandy wastes beyond, where many were robbed and killed (see chapter 4). They had followed the original Ottoman Hajj route after leaving Ma’an which lay to the east then west of the more direct southerly path preferred by Meissner’s railway engineers. Locked in memory and practice, this traditional place and its water supply was the reason Aqabat Hejazia Station had been built close by, and it was just south of here, at the entrance to a defile, that the two routes joined up again. Fassu’ah Fort appears fleetingly in documents of the Arab Revolt under the name ‘Fasoa’. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence mentions it in his account of a raid on the nearby railway on 5 October 1917: In the night we sent all our camels along with part of our men, to go to Fasoa for water from the old pilgrim tank. It lay under the rifles of the Turkish post, but in the darkness they could see nothing . . . they drew [water] for the animals, and drank and filled the common water-skins for us. (Lawrence 2003: 421)

On 1 March 1918, Siddons made a sketch-map of Mudawwara Station further south, and as a result of his observations, an attack on that station was postponed, and Fassu’ah Fort was targeted instead.43 A few days later, on 13 March, his RFC comrade Makins flew the line from Ma’an south to Wadi Rutm, and the pencil-drawn sketch-map that accompanies his report mentions trenches at Fassu’ah Fort as well as at Aqabat Hejazia Station.44 Between 7 and 13 April 1918, more damage was done to Fassu’ah Fort (and to Batn al-Ghoul Station), and a few weeks later Sheikh Dheilan and his Tawaiha Bedouin, attacked and took Fassu’ah Fort. The Turkish upgrading of the fort during the Arab Revolt is evident not only from Lawrence’s testimony and pilots’ sketch-maps, but also from archaeological evidence on the surrounding heights.45 Two small circular dry-stone wall structures that might have been observation or sentry-posts for one or two men were recorded 415m away on the eastern ridge.46 While they could have been used later as animal pens, their commanding position suggests a military origin—a view supported by three short lengths of firing trench nearby. Two of these trenches face north, one west overlooking the fort and the wadi, and all were positioned to protect the fort and perhaps the important path known as  the Darb al-Bighal, or ‘Horses’ Route’ just 150m away which connected the fort and the station.47 Fassu’ah Fort’s high walls form a square 21m across enclosing a courtyard with rooms on two storeys. There are arrow-slits in the walls, which in some cases appear to have been converted to loopholes for rifles,48 and, interestingly, a single Arisaka cartridge was found beneath one of the external walls.49 The first-floor rooms are likely additions of Late Ottoman date, and there is a local tradition (supporting the historical accounts) that water from the cisterns supplied the railway during the Arab Revolt, and that at some point the

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Desert Insurgency fort was attacked. Investigations uncovered the remains of water-skins from inside the fort (recalling those mentioned by Lawrence), and a more typical Revolt artefact—a mule-shoe on the track between the fort and the station. A small Bedouin cemetery lies adjacent to its western wall, and was possibly used by several tribes judging by the range of tribal markings on some of the stones.50 Undated tumbled remains of dry-stone and mud-brick structures lay a short distance east of the fort within the wadi—their purpose unknown. The continuing if reconfigured military value of  the fort was dramatically shown when our investigations were halted due to a joint Jordanian-British army training exercise in and around the fort which included rifle fire and smoke bombs. There seems little doubt that Fassu’ah Fort and Aqabat Hejazia Station worked as a unit throughout the operational life of the Hejaz Railway due to the seasonal presence of water in the former’s cisterns. This relationship was rejuvenated during the Arab Revolt, with the fort strengthened, the station reinforced, and the landscape inbetween fortified by small strong-points and trenches. However, a more potent guarantor of security was just a few kilometres away to the south.

The Fassu’ah Ridge Sector Fassu’ah Fort and Aqabat Hejazia Station lie at the northern edge of what during the Revolt was a well-defended area which extended south to encompass the last stretch of the Jebel Sherra plateau before the railway descended to Batn al-Ghoul Station. This Fassu’ah Ridge Sector is a miniature fortified landscape, the first evidence for which lies a kilometre south of Aqabat Hejazia Station, to the east of the line, atop a ridge overlooking the railway as it enters the defile (Figure 7.14). In 2008, several structures were found—a short firing trench with a small circular structure at its southern end (possibly a machine-gun position), and nearby several eroded tent-rings and a rectangular cleared area interpreted elsewhere as mule- or horse-tethering stations, and which, as if in confirmation, yielded two mule shoes.51 This was another indication that mule-borne Turkish patrols moved between rough and ready defensive positions. Such sites followed a now familiar pattern, enabling a small number of Turkish soldiers to occupy strategic high points which protected the railway, and were often in line-of-sight communication with each other. The focus of the Fassu’ah Ridge Sector lay several kilometres south-west of the line, where the plateau ends precipitously at the Ras an Naqb escarpment. This south-facing cliff edge overlooks the railway as it curves round in a looping arc on its way down to the wadis below, for part of which it passes directly beneath the scarp edge. It was at this point that the Turks built (or more likely reinforced and enlarged an earlier medieval fortification called) Fassu’ah Ridge Fort. This became the defensive pivot for the sector’s four other main components scattered around the curving escarpment and connected to it by a network of stone-lined paths. These are a tented railway halt, a group of structures designated Fassu’ah Central, a tent-ring campsite called Fassu’ah Ridge Camp West, and a small single-row of tent-rings plus machine-gun emplacement known as Fassu’ah Ridge Camp North. The placing of these sites around some 52 hectares of the flat central part of the ridge shows how the Turks transformed the natural landscape into a defended zone covering the northern, western, and southern approaches in quick time and with few resources.

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ N

to Aqabat Hejazia Station

Fassu’ah Ridge Sector and Batn al-Ghoul

Fassu’ah Ridge Camp north

SO30

(© Anne Leaver/GARP)

116 64 1164

di wa

Fassu’ah Ridge Camp west

i wad 1160

1043 cliff

Figure 7.14

Fassu’ah Ridge Central 1170

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Fassu’ah Ridge Fort He

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Ra ilw ay

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Fassu’ah Ridge Fort The defensive anchor of the sector was Fassu’ah Ridge Fort, the heavily defended strong point on the escarpment.52 Impressive even today, its 180m-long by 50m-wide oval enclosure is perched on the east-west scarp edge, and bordered by a metre-high dry-stone perimeter wall incorporating a breastwork trench, observation posts, and several entrances The position is dominated by a large blockhouse surrounded by a loopholed

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Path leading to bread oven and tented railway halt

to Fassu’ah Central Eastern entrance and path to Batn al-Ghoul station

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Figure 7.15 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort plan (© V. Roads, G. Taylor, C. Jennings, J. Winterburn, S. Chapman, K. Pool, I. McKenzie/GARP)

10

50m

outer wall, within which several rooms open onto a central courtyard criss-crossed by stone-lined pathways—hence its designation as the courtyard-blockhouse. A single communication trench links this structure to a small stand-alone sunken blockhouse a few metres away to the north-west (Figure 7.15). The perimeter wall was almost certainly a Turkish construction, and revealed telling signs of modern defensive features. It followed the top of a steep slope, taking advantage of local topography as a natural defence. Manning these defences could have been wearisome for the garrison and intimate glimpses of sentry duty were found along the northern wall in fragments of rolled-up printed paper with a red and green pattern preserving the brand name ‘Constantinople’ and likely the remains of discarded cigarettes.53 Four semi-circular observation posts were built into the wall, and extended out from it, each having an excellent view of the ridge and of several entrances to the wadi below.54 The excavation of one of these structures revealed its one-metre-high walling was contemporary with the perimeter wall, though yielded few artefacts.55 Dominating the enclosed area was the courtyard-blockhouse, strategically sited in the western part of the fort overlooking the scarp slope and the railway that passed directly below. The building could be an extensive Turkish remodelling and re-use of an earlier structure as suggested by the discovery of nine corroded fourteenth-century Mamluk coins, a thirteenth-fourteenth century Venetian silver Grosso, and forty-nine Ottoman coins.56 Doubtless its defensive position nearby the narrow route down to Batn al-Ghoul, and its commanding views were as strategic for pre-twentieth-century caravans of traders and Hajj pilgrims as for the later railway. The square-shaped complex had seven rooms, all of which opened onto the courtyard (Figure 7:16).57 The remains were ruinous, heavily damaged since 1918, with walls partly

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.16 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort courtyard-blockhouse plan (© J. Scott, S. Daniels/ GARP)

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Desert Insurgency demolished, rooms inaccessible due to collapse, and all the roofs gone. One advantage of this was that the remaining walls revealed the typical Turkish construction technique encountered elsewhere along the railway, with two thin walls of cut rectangular stones packed with loose stones and sand in-between. The south-facing wall survived to over a metre in height, had five integrated loopholes, and a stepped entrance with a path leading to an observation post.58 The east-facing wall had only a single loophole despite being 21m long, and a small doorway, from which two paths led to a rectangular blockhouse and the perimeter wall.59 The north wall was also 21m long though its heavily damaged state preserved no loopholes. A sign of impromptu defence was a blocked doorway in the centre of the wall associated with two breastwork spurs, one each on the inside and outside of the wall.60 The west-facing wall, some 22.70m long, had three surviving loopholes, a cut-stone doorway which led into small corridor created by the walls of two internal rooms, and which outside led into a defensive trench.61 The loopholes are significant as they reverse the logic employed so far in dating such defensive measures. Only a few structures have designed-in loopholes dating to the railwaybuilding era, most are impromptu responses to the Arab Revolt. The courtyard-blockhouse had no obvious purpose for the pre-war railway and so is almost certainly of Arab Revolt date, rapidly built with loopholes included. The rooms built around the courtyard afforded glimpses of everyday life. One had the only fireplaces discovered in the fort, two stone-slab affairs one each side of a doorway.62 Excavation of its floor uncovered a layer of ash, wood, charred brushwood, and some dark red sand containing charcoal, corroded metal, green and blue glass, and fragments of black textile. A second room, in the north-east corner had been disturbed by gold digging, but a doorway survived, as did a single loophole, and a trove of small items were found on its original floor surface.63 Here were fragments of cigarette papers, a Mauser cartridge and several Mauser clips, glass, fruit stones, and no less than thirty-four textile fragments, mainly cotton twill and wool, and probably the remains of army uniforms.64 At the south-east end of the courtyard, a third room was cleared of sand and gold-digging debris to reveal a doorway65 and a thin layer of straw matting which might have provided comfort and insulation for the occupants, and which was also found in a badly collapsed room on the south side of the courtyard.66 On the west side, a square room with a narrow doorway had a south wall forming part of an east-west corridor leading to a defensive trench.67 The most interesting room had an unusual semi-circular frontage attached to a square structure as part of a single-build.68 The front wall survived to a height of about a metre and had its own doorway.69 A second doorway70 led into the featureless square room. Speculation as to its function included a small mosque, or a waiting room outside an officer’s accommodation. The latter view may be supported by the discovery of a metal lid-and-spray mechanism from what appears to have been a (possibly expensive) brand of eau-de-cologne stamped with the German manufacturer’s name ‘F.  Wolff & Sohne Karlsruhe’—a rare glimpse perhaps of the refinements of a senior Turkish commander, or perhaps indicating the presence of a German or Austro-Hungarian officer.71 The courtyard’s most distinctive feature was an array of stone-lined paths running room to room, and from an off-centre position towards several of the exits (Figure 7.17). These were extremely well preserved given the passage of time, and the amount of gold digging and collapse, and stood out against the yellow and brown sandy ground. This visual effect would have been more striking when built, and may have had an aesthetic dimension

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.17 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort courtyard-blockhouse paths (© author)

not dissimilar to the black-stone pavements at the Ornamental Forts.72 A gold-digger’s pit had been hacked out of the central point of convergence, destroying any evidence as to its original purpose, though it may have held a flag pole.73 Some paths continued beyond the courtyard-blockhouse, leading towards gaps in the perimeter wall and beyond. The overall impression was of a highly regimented military space. Nearby were two stand-alone blockhouses, reinforcing the integrated defensive nature of this area. At the end of a 10m-stretch of trench to the north-west was Blockhouse I, with a distinctive rectangular shape and curved corners, and was basically a sunken room cut deeply into the bedrock (Figure 7.18).74 Its military purpose was clear from twelve loopholes, four in each of the long north-south walls, and two each in the shorter east-west sides. They were well sited for firing on attackers breaching the perimeter wall to the west and north, and doubtless provided welcome ventilation. The building had attracted the attention of gold diggers, whose depredations damaged the walls and created a large pit in the floor. Excavation yielded green textile, green cardboard, a metal can, purple-stained textile, a buckle, metal sheet, cartridge clip, as well as numerous pieces of wood, which might have been the remains of floor matting or roof covering.75 A second more heavily damaged blockhouse lay 50m north-east of the courtyard-blockhouse, and was also a single rectangular room.76 Its gravel floor was overlain by straw matting, and metal and charcoal fragments, pieces of uniform, and two spent Mauser cartridges.77 Its ruinous state precluded any firm identification of purpose, though it may have had more of a domestic or storage function than the overtly military character of Blockhouse I. Two trenched enclosures, to the east and west, may also have

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Desert Insurgency Figure 7.18 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort Blockhouse I (© author)

served to protect the courtyard-blockhouse, and both yielded similar finds including Mauser cartridges.78 Beyond the northern perimeter wall, the most interesting of several stone-built ­constructions79 was a partly demolished domed building some 32m away. Its stonework was fixed by a pale sandy mortar, and it was 4.20m in diameter and 1.57m tall.80 The base was a well-built two-coursed stone wall, on top of which the arch of the domed roof had been constructed, and inside a 0.80m-broad ledge had been cut into bedrock. A clue to its purpose, apart from the shape, were signs of intense heat and burning on the inside, suggestive of heavy use, and interpreted as a Turkish bread-oven for those manning the fort (Figure 7.19). An unexpected discovery was of a well-defined path that led from the entrance gap in the perimeter wall opposite the bread oven and meandered some 240m north-east over a low ridge before descending to the railway. At this point it divided, one branch turning south to follow the line for about 80m before disappearing, while the other continued north for 55m to a flat area with the tumbled remains of a robbed-out building and several tent-rings.81 This is likely a tented railway halt where the fort’s officers, men, and supplies could have boarded and alighted from a train, thereby avoiding journeying on to Batn al-Ghoul station then making their way upslope for a kilometre to the fort’s main eastern entrance. If Fassu’ah Ridge Fort had pre-railway origins associated with the traditional Hajj, this path served no obvious purpose. The same is probably true for the period 1900–16, as Fassu’ah Ridge Fort (as we investigated it) likely did not exist. In both these cases, the fort’s main entrance route down to the Batn al-Ghoul plateau and station would have sufficed. In Arab Revolt times however, with an ever-threatening desert,

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.19 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort bread-oven (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

a short route connecting the enlarged and heavily defended fort to a secure railway halt would be convincing. Fassu’ah Ridge Fort is the largest single military base that we investigated. While heavily disturbed by gold digging and collapse, many of its structures survived. The location, architecture, organized space, defensive features, and finds strongly suggest a high-ranking Turkish military presence and a potentially sizeable garrison. It was certainly the commandand-control centre for the Fassu’ah Ridge Sector, and probably also for a wider area which included Aqabat Hejazia and Batn al-Ghoul stations. It may have served as the regimental command-and-control centre for the entire area from Ma’an to Mudawwara, with perhaps 600 men in total distributed along this part of the line.82 Curiously, the fort makes only the briefest appearance in the Arab Revolt sources—an unexplained gap between its size and sophistication and the absence of historical evidence for military action. One ambiguous mention by Peake concerns the aftermath of demolition at Batn al-Ghoul and Aqabat Hejazia stations on 9 May 1918. The raiding party spent the night in what Peake describes as an ancient watchtower while Hornby regaled them with his favourite songs.83 While there are no watchtowers at either site, there are the tumbled remains of two structures nearby Fassu’ah Fort which were probably beacons for guiding Hajj pilgrims to the fort.84 Alternatively, Peake may be referring to the far more prominent courtyard-blockhouse inside Fassu’ah Ridge Fort. Yet, while history is silent, archaeology has a voice. No less than thirty-five spent Mauser cartridges were found across the site, nine of which were excavated inside defensive structures, as well as three Mauser clips, two .303 bullets, a Martini-Henry bullet, and several lead balls.85 At some point, there was an exchange of small-arms fire at Fassu’ah Ridge Fort, but it has gone unrecorded in history.

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The Fassu’ah Ridge Sector Sites Paths radiate out from the fort’s western entrance, connecting a scatter of sites which lie spread around the north-curving scarp face, guarding the southern, western, and northern approaches. The most impressive of these is Fassu’ah Ridge Central,86 a group of distinct yet associated structures some 500m from the fort. There are four tent-rings, four larger stone-rings, a rectangular building, and two parallel stone rows with a crescent of compacted sand to the east.87 The discovery of five mule shoes lying on this sandy surface prompted a full investigation. The two eight-metre-long stone rows, separated by half a metre, are in fact a single feature.88 Excavation yielded seeds, a canvas fragment, and two more mule shoes. More revealing was the distinctive crescent alongside which was noticeably clear of the sharp stones characteristic of the area, and whose excavation produced another mule shoe, textiles fragments, wood, and string.89 Arguably most telling was a spread of manure 0.05m below the surface, which suggested this was for mules or horses standing by a feeding/drinking trough and that this was a tethering station for between ten and fifteen animals,90 possibly belonging to the Estar-Alai Regiment (Figure 7.20). These would have been used for patrolling the sector, and supplying water from the Fassu’ah Fort’s cisterns to the area’s various sites, including the stations at Aqabat Hejazia and Batn al-Ghoul. In desert warfare, after all, water was the priority for men, beasts, and machines. Figure 7.20 None of the tent-rings were excavated, though they could have housed the muleteers as Fassuah Ridge Sector the trough was nearby. Everyday life was evidenced by finding dozens of star-and-crescent mule-trough buttons, spoons, lampwick mounts, and a seal matrix.91 Just a few metres away were four (© author)

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ larger structures, one of which had metre-thick walls and a diameter just short of six metres.92 Despite their size, there were no finds, and their purpose is unknown.93 Each large stone-ring had an easterly entrance connecting it to a footpath which linked them all and meandered south for a 100m ending at a rectangular building perched on the southfacing cliff face, overlooking the railway’s double curve as it descended to the wadi floor. Although heavily damaged, it was clear that it had been a two-room structure with a floor cut into bedrock, and was surrounded by the remains of a low wall.94 From here there were uninterrupted views down the wadi towards Wadi Rutm Station, which suggests that it was a strategically sited observation post, ideal for communication by heliograph. Some 40m east was a second rectangular dry-stone structure, with an empty central area, two semicircular curved walls—one at either end—and entirely surrounded by a one-metre-thick earthen bank. This had the appearance of a machine-gun position.95 Following a path for 700m to the north-west led to Fassu’ah Ridge Camp West, located 100m away from the now west-facing scarp edge.96 Its layout recalls the many constructionera campsites along the railway line, with two parallel rows of seven tent-rings each. There is ambiguity, however, as it lies 670m away from the railway at its nearest point, and 2.6km from Batn al-Ghoul Station (which has its own large concentration of construction-period campsites) and which makes this an unnecessarily distant and dangerously isolated location for a labourers’ camp.97 However, as a Turkish army encampment during the Arab Revolt it is perfectly sited to accommodate a large number of soldiers to protect the western approaches to the ridge, and possibly for deployment across the whole sector. Set into the west-facing scarp slope nearby are the remains of a collapsed semi-domed stone structure which had the general appearance of a bread-oven, but with no traces of burning it might instead have been a well-hidden observation post or machine-gun position.98 A further 260m north-east along the still-curving escarpment is Fassu’ah Ridge Camp North, a single line of six tent-rings with a collapsed circular stone structure at its eastern end, and which may have contained a machine gun.99 The position is well-sited, overlooking a short stretch of railway 435m to the north-east that briefly becomes visible from this location. Line-of-sight communication is also good, as Aqabat Hejazia Station is clearly visible, as is the Fassu’ah Ridge Central group. Today, the modern phosphate trains can be seen from here on their southerly approach to the defile, and during the Arab Revolt the billowing black-smoke of Hejaz Railway locomotives would have been even more striking. * The militarization of the Fassu’ah Ridge Sector likely had several purposes: to guard the approaches to the railway during its descent through the defile to Batn al-Ghoul Station, to oversee the station itself and its vulnerable railway loop and cutting, to protect the strong point of Fassu’ah Ridge Fort, and to safeguard access from the south to the cisterns at Fassu’ah Fort and the path to Aqabat Hejazia Station. The character of these defences connected by mule paths suggests rapid and simple construction, typical of Behçet Bey’s railway reinforcement programme. While the architecture of these structures was often basic, the overall impression is of the creative use of a harsh and barren geography to produce viewsheds for line-of-sight communication, and overlapping fields of rifle and machine-gun fire. Fassu’ah Ridge Fort itself would have been a powerful symbol of Turkish presence, a dominant all-seeing defensive position with a sizeable garrison, and an ideal command-and-control centre for the wider landscape.

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Desert Insurgency The Fassu’ah Ridge Sector is probably the best preserved example of a small-scale militarized landscape between Ma’an and Mudawwara: well thought out, rapidly constructed with minimal resources and limited manpower, and due to the remote and dispersed nature of its parts, leaving a distinctive archaeological footprint which, beyond the fort, has been largely untouched for a hundred years.

Batn al-Ghoul Station Lying in the protective shadow of Fassu’ah Ridge Fort, Batn al-Ghoul Station100 was built at Km 520 on a flat area half-way down between the higher Jebel Sherra plateau and the low sandy wadis of Batn al-Ghoul and Wadi Rutm.101 The location was likely chosen for two reasons—first as we have seen because it was the only place for a distance of 48km where a feasible descent could be made,102 and second, because since medieval times at least, and for the same reason, it had been a meeting point for caravans, first for the spice trade and then the Hajj.103 As described in chapter 4, the railway achieves this difficult 152m (500 ft) descent partly through a wide double loop of the line at a militarily vulnerable location. Batn al-Ghoul Station had two stone-built houses, one siding, and six water barrels sunk into the ground.104 It also had a sharply curving railway line as it left the station, with no bridges and only a few stone culverts. Antonin Jaussen, the French priest who visited the area before 1914, observed that ‘it would be relatively easy to cause serious damage to this descent.’105 Jaussen’s comment was prescient, as it was these difficult-to-replace curved rails that made Batn al-Ghoul such a tempting target for Arab and British attacks, and the station features prominently in historical accounts as a result. On 13 March 1918, Makins flew over the area and recorded the station but not Fassu’ah Ridge Fort, and on 14 April Siddons’ flight over ‘Fasoa’ noted little activity but a large building surrounded by a square trench—though whether this was Fassu’ah Ridge Fort or Aqabat Hejazia Station is unclear. On 27 April, Divers’ reconnaissance of Batn al-Ghoul and Fassu’ah Fort produced a sketch-map of the station, labelling it as ‘Akaba El Hejazia’ (i.e. Aqabat Hejazia), showing only one white building, and placing Fassu’ah Ridge Fort on the wrong side of the railway.106 A Hejaz Operations demolition party was sent to Fassu’ah Fort and Batn al-Ghoul between 7 and 13 April 1918 and probably damaged the station buildings and rails. On 9 May 1918, Peake and Hornby led a raid on Batn al-Ghoul, and the event is recorded in their two surviving contemporary accounts. The raiding party set out from Abu Al-Lissan on 7 May and comprised thirty-five men and sixty-eight camels of the Egyptian Camel Corps, carrying ten days’ rations and 2,000lbs of explosives, and was guided by a local sherif and five Bedouin. The raid destroyed a stretch of Batn al-Ghoul’s curving track, blew in the nine-metre-deep cutting, and demolished the station buildings.107 The archaeology of Batn al-Ghoul reflects these events as a revealing example of horizontal stratigraphy, where occupation is spread across the landscape rather than down into it. In an area heavily disturbed since 1918, five locations were identified and investigated. The first was the station itself, though by 2006 almost no trace of its buildings remained, likely dismantled as a source of building material when the embankment and track here were re-laid in the early 1970s for the phosphate trains running to Aqaba. Ruined parts of a single wall amidst heaps of bulldozed rubble are all that remain. The second, third, and fourth locations were all

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ large tent-ring campsites: the Northern Camp lying inside the loop of the line, the Southern Camp outside the loop to the south, and the North-West Camp several hundred metres away towards the Ras an Naqb escarpment. The fifth area, the ‘Batn al-Ghoul Loop Trench’, is a single defensive feature located on a strategic curve of the railway at the foot of the escarpment almost directly below Fassu’ah Ridge Fort. Some sixty-five tent-structures were identified in the three Batn al-Ghoul camps, and these could have accommodated between 700 and 800 labourers.108 The numbers are eloquent. There is no evidence for anything like this count of men at the station between 1916 and 1918, and so it was evident that Batn al-Ghoul was a vast construction-era site, albeit that some of its tent-rings had likely been re-occupied by Turkish railway patrols during the Revolt, and others by the Bedouin since 1918. The camps’ builders constructed three kinds of stone-lined tent structures:109 Type 1 was a tent-ring with a sunken-floor,110 Type 2 a surface tent-ring with no sunken floor,111 and Type 3 a tent-square.112 All had earthen banks around the perimeter to secure the canvas, and many had wide shallow ‘drip-gullies’ around the perimeter.113 The regularity of size, form, and layout of these tentrings and squares implies a degree of military discipline expected of the Ottoman Army labour battalions involved, and is thus noticeably different from Bedouin campsites.114 The first two types were clearly for the labourers, and differences may reflect a distinction between long-stay and short-stay occupation, while the third type suggests storage and cooking, as seen in contemporary photographs. The Northern Camp The Northern Camp115 lies within the arc of the railway, and has twenty-one mainly circular tent-rings. When surveyed and excavated, they yielded numerous and varied well-preserved finds, including paper, cardboard, canvas, wood, uniform fragments, buttons, and organic remains. A preliminary inspection in 2007 discovered a badly preserved Turkish army tunic buried beneath the perimeter stones of a tent-ring, yet still with Turkish cigarette papers in a breast pocket.116 The excavation of eight tent-rings in 2008 yielded valuable insights into camp construction and daily use by revealing features which reflected the varied social make-up of the labour battalions. Tent-ring 1 proved to be typical for the Batn al-Ghoul plateau in many respects. Its perimeter stones were set into the sand and gravel surface, its internal diameter was 3.90m and external 4.45m,117 and access was through a 1.30m-wide entrance on the south side, which, more unusually, had a step formed by two large stones. The living floor was of compacted red orange sand and gravel flecked with charcoal, and from the sunbaked level just above came 200 small seed pods, four iron nails, a piece of fabric, and a single pottery sherd. A recurring feature was a layer of windblown sand overlying the living floor, and from which in Tent-ring 1 came a single Turkish star-and-crescent button, a metal disk (50mm), more seeds, animal bone, fruit stones, metal wire, more than 200 miscellaneous metal fragments, wood, charcoal, leather, and glass (Figure 7.21).118 As more tent-rings were excavated, it became clear that these windblown layers yielded an interesting mix of objects from the construction period, the Arab Revolt, and 100 years of later sporadic Bedouin visits. It was also assumed that some Arab Revolt items (and occasionally prehistoric ones too) were found by the Bedouin, mused over, and abandoned in the same place, as well as sometimes perhaps being taken away. Tent-ring 1, belonging to Type 1, was a particularly sturdy construction, and would have been

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Desert Insurgency Figure 7.21 Batn al-Ghoul, North Camp tent-ring excavation (© author)

favoured for that reason by the Bedouin, its electic mix of objects probably belonging mainly to the years after 1918. Each tent-ring added something different to the picture of Batn al-Ghoul while sharing many of the basic features. Tent-ring 2, an example of Type 2, for instance, had a more ephemeral character marked by small stones on the surface and a larger two-metre-wide entrance to the south-east. The floor contained a great number of paper fragments including pieces of a playing card, fruit stones, seeds, textile fragments, and seventy-two pieces of glass, several of which appear to be soot-stained lamp glass, and five wooden stakes driven into the ground.119 Tent-rings 3120 and 4121 were similar again, though tent-ring 5 was a variation,122 whose overlying levels revealed a razor blade, a bottle cork, a hobnail boot fragment, a star-and-crescent button, and metal tacks. A testament to the preservation of usually ephemeral items was the discovery here of a pen nib and clumps of sand covered in blue ink, suggesting perhaps that this tent had been occupied by an officer or NCO and perhaps used as an ‘office’. More unusual was tent-ring 6, whose perimeter was not just a ring of stones but also a bank inset with stones, and yet had no entrance.123 This noticeably more substantial structure had an impressive trove of objects—seventy-eight individually numbered and plotted finds and ninety-one more from sieving.124 Among the more distinctive items were a metal spoon, a railway washer, scissor handles, a star-and-crescent button, a matchbox, and cigarette filter, thread and uniform fabric, a fragment of woollen sock, a tent-peg with rope attached, and an Allen key.125 It is likely that this miscellany of artefacts spans the entire twentieth century, from railway construction to modern times, albeit perhaps with a preponderance of Turkish material. Tent-ring 7 gave a glimpse of the micro-structure of tent-ring construction, as it had been cut through in more recent times. Its profile showed

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ Figure 7.22 Batn al-Ghoul, North Camp: two padlocks (© author)

that at least some tent-rings were cut vertically into the natural surface to create a sunken base, and that compacted and sun-baked deposits were made from several thinner layers.126 It  might be speculated that this time-consuming technique could be more typical of construction-era campsites where there was significantly more manpower available and perhaps heavier daily use than of the smaller Turkish army camps rapidly built by a smaller number of men and likely inhabited on an occasional basis. We returned to Batn al-Ghoul’s Northern Camp in 2013 to find more of the same kind of objects, but also uncover fresh insights into camp life.127 In addition to another fifty-eight Turkish buttons and many paper fragments,128 two padlocks, three seal matrices, a decorative pendant, and a possible item of trench art were recovered (Figure 7.22),129 speaking perhaps to ideas of ownership, authority, and identity. Construction techniques became ever clearer, with Tent-ring 32130 preserving ten in situ wooden tent pegs in positions indicating their use for securing tent sides and guy ropes. Further glimpses came from Tent-ring 33131 whose investigation uncovered an almost complete internal revetting wall and the remains of a ledge with an arrangement of stones to weigh down the tent. Inside was a central post-hole, and a stone-ringed hearth whose depth of charcoal and ash implied prolonged or frequent use, and whose absence of any signs of Bedouin occupation supported a construction-era date. Quite the opposite was Tent-ring 45 whose heavily damaged remains were likely caused by repeated Bedouin re-use as evidenced by several hearths.132 The excavation of two tent-squares, of Type 3, reinforced the distinction between them and tent-rings identified earlier by virtue of being poor in personal items of everyday life.133

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Desert Insurgency Figure 7.23 Batn al-Ghoul: cigarette papers from ‘Stamboul’ (Istanbul) (© author)

The Northern Camp yielded plentiful evidence of social activity among the large number of men who had once occupied it, not least innumerable textile remains,134 and 182 paper fragments of which most are evidence of tobacco smoking. Preservation was often good enough to identify cigarette rolling paper made by Athanassoula Freres of Smyrna (modern Izmir) and dateable to the early twentieth century, and cigarette packets labelled ‘Regie Co-interessée’, a tobacco consortium with French, German, and Ottoman partners. Two fragments contained the words ‘Ottoman’ and ‘soldat’, possibly indicating that some cigarettes were manufactured specifically for the Turkish Ottoman Army at that time (Figure 7.23).135 Yet, while such activities are typical construction camp behaviour, there was little evidence of fighting. Only two spent Mauser cartridges were found, and no .303 bullets,

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’ though a large number of lead balls were located.136 Despite sparse small-arms evidence, three artillery-shell fragments were discovered near to where the station had once stood and may be the trace of various attacks which destroyed it.137 Overall, the Northern Camp showed evidence of intensive Turkish occupation during the construction period, indications of some later, possibly Arab Revolt adaptation, and much later and repeated Bedouin re-use. The Southern Camp Beyond the curving sweep of the embankment to the south the remains of the Southern Camp138 included twenty-three tent-structures, mostly circular with a few squares. The camp was dominated by a wide avenue with a line of tents on either side, designated the western and eastern rows. In 2009, the site was metal-detected and nine well-defined tent-rings with stone perimeters excavated.139 Intriguingly, six more had no stone perimeters, and were only recognizable by their centrally raised area or the remains of a shallow drip-gully.140 There was a sense of less dense occupation here, reinforced by the far fewer number of finds than its northern counterpart. Typifying this was the large-stone structure of Tent-ring 9 on the western row, which had a two-metre-wide entrance to the north-west.141 Excavation revealed the usual base of compacted red-orange sand covered by windblown sand, but yielded nothing other than a fragment of wood and a piece of blue-and-white ceramic. This item, together with a pile of stones in the centre, suggested an original construction-era date whose substantial construction had attracted later Bedouin re-use. A richer if ambiguous group of finds came from the adjacent Tent-ring 10142 and included 218 fragments of glass (some possibly lantern), textile, wooden toggles, wire, nails, nut shells, and twenty pieces of probable cigarette rolling papers and a single much-eroded ancient coin, possibly Roman.143 While some items belonged to the construction era, nothing suggested Arab-Revolt-period re-use, though Bedouin re-occupation seemed likely. The coin of course would not have been out of place along this ancient trade routeway, but finding it inside a twentieth-century tent-ring suggests it was picked up nearby by a labourer or Bedouin and left or lost here. The eastern row added more information about the nature of the camp. Tent-ring 13 was another substantial large-stone construction which unusually had two entrances on its northern and western sides.144 Besides preserving four in situ tent-pegs, it was particularly rich in finds, which included belt buckles, a large railway bolt, metal fragments, possibly modern buttons, animal bone, fruit stones, glass, metal nails, a metal boot-heel reinforcer, numerous fragments of textile, cigarette paper, pottery, and a star-and-crescent Turkish button. Tent-rings 14, 15, and 17 were similar to 13.145 More unusual was the ‘banjo’ shape of Tent-ring 18, defined only by its drip-gully and a small bank, but with a protruding linear feature that ran north-east–south-west.146 Again however, despite its interesting shape it was empty of finds. The well-defined Tent-ring 19 yielded similar items to the previous ones such as glass, nails, and pottery fragments,147 and adjacent to its north the poorly preserved Tent-ring 20 was virtually barren.148 Tent-squares were also investigated, and while one had the same kinds of items as the tent-rings, another was somewhat richer,149 with glass, charcoal, star-and-crescent Turkish buttons, paper, animal bone, fruit stones, metal nails and tacks, clothing hooks, a coin, pottery, and animal bone, as well as numerous pieces of textile and a large iron spike—most of which had been left around the perimeter edges. While the tent-structures and finds from the Southern Camp are similar if less numerous than those of the Northern Camp, what they share is a lack of munitions, and hence possess likely origins in the construction period.

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Desert Insurgency The North-west Camp This camp of twenty-two tented-structures is located on a raised terrace between the Northern Camp and the steep rise of the Ras an Naqb escarpment immediately north.150 Unsurprisingly, its finds are similar to the other two camps, including a variety of Turkish buttons,151 and everyday items such as a penknife, a boot-heel plate, playing card fragments, several padlocks, and a preponderance of railway-related metal artefacts. It is easy to imagine the labourers relaxing, smoking, and playing cards, not least as the remains of these activities were also present.152 Four sunken-floored tent-rings153 were excavated, their shapes defined by a perimeter bank of earth and rubble and a drip-gully. Tent-ring 51 had no obvious entrance and few Turkish finds, but displayed evidence of later Bedouin re-use. Tent-ring 58 had no fewer than thirty-one metal items related to railway construction,154 while Tent-ring 61 although heavily disturbed, yielded unidentifiable pottery sherds, and a penknife was retrieved from Tent-ring 65. Small-arms munitions were non-existent, but artillery remains were relatively abundant with ten shrapnel balls and a single fragment of artillery shell. The Batn al-Ghoul Loop Trench The Batn al-Ghoul plateau had been much disturbed by levelling and embankment and camp construction during the Hejaz Railway building period, and subsequently down to the 1970s. These activities not only eradicated traces of the last two millennia, but also of the more ephemeral features of the Arab Revolt, such as the defensive trench which once existed inside the railway arc, of which no trace survived in 2006. The only Arab Revolt defence structure to have survived was an isolated position at the bottom of the slope. The ‘Batn al-Ghoul Loop Trench’155 was constructed on a vulnerable curve of the railway at the foot of the escarpment almost directly below Fassu’ah Ridge Fort, and at the beginning of the railway’s change of direction from west to east before its final turn south down to the Wadi Batn al-Ghoul and then to Wadi Rutm (Figure 7.24).156 It is a single trench some 18 metres long with two small circular features at its northern and southern ends. All but invisible on satellite imagery and easily missed at ground level, the trench does not appear in the historical sources, and could only have been manned by a few soldiers—perhaps 10 riflemen and a machine-gun crew at most. Its isolated position would have made it vulnerable to attack from any direction and easily overrun. * Batn al-Ghoul is a complex site, in all probability spanning the prehistoric to modern periods due to its strategic location half-way between the high plateau and low-lying sandy wadis. This position was liminal for pre-modern societies as we have seen in the discussion of the myths and superstitions it attracted for Muslim pilgrims on the Hajj, who regarded it as the Belly of the Beast. Its choice for the railway descent around 1900 was pragmatic, offering the only feasible place where tracks could be laid, albeit in a wide curving arc and with huge preparatory efforts in re-shaping the local geography. The three campsites belong to the construction era, though some re-use during the Arab Revolt is probable, and Bedouin re-use throughout the twentieth century is certain. The archaeological evidence indicates that Bedouin favour the more substantial tent-rings for their brief re-occupations. The Northern Camp’s tent-rings, like all other construction camps, were laid out in rows, cut into the natural levels, and sometimes filled with sand as

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‘ Belly of the Beast ’

a soft base. No less than 2,854 finds came from the camp, a fact which suggests either a long occupation (unlikely given the pace of railway building) or a short intensive one. While there was no obvious patterning for most finds, the occasional concentration of items around the tent-rings’ circular perimeters might be due to the removal of internal matting for cleaning on departure. The Southern Camp’s organization was almost identical, and its tent-structures shared a  similar construction, although there were more square/rectangular examples. While excavation yielded similar finds to those from the Northern Camp they are less numerous, which raises several issues concerning the relationship between the two camps. It could be that both campsites were originally a single entity—one large site required by an equally large number of men needed to construct the difficult navigation of the railway’s descent as well as build the station. Perhaps the Northern Camp housed more  construction personnel for longer, while the Southern Camp perhaps contained more stores and was used for a shorter time. The railway embankment might simply have cut through the middle of this one large sprawling encampment creating a division today which did not exist at the time. Alternatively, the Northern Camp may have been earlier and the Southern Camp merely a subsequent and shorter-lived extension. It is possible that the two campsites were contemporary but always separate, with the northern one built inside the railway loop and regarded as more easily defended by the embankment

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Figure 7.24 Batn al-Ghoul Loop-trench, with Ras an Naqb escarpment in the distance (© author)

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Desert Insurgency (at the time against the Bedouin). For the same reason, any smaller scale Arab Revolt-period re-use may have focused on the Northern Camp as suggested by the now disappeared defensive trench. Batn al-Ghoul’s extensive camps were built by Ottoman Army labour battalions whose clothing, equipment, and camp layout were similar (if perhaps more substantial) to those of fighting units, and thus not diagnostically different in terms of their archaeology. Yet differences exist, as there were few munitions, implying that no significant combat took place here at any time during the railway’s life. The station, some 200m away from the campsites, was however a different matter, as was the deep cutting through which the railway descended—both were attacked and destroyed during the Revolt, yet the post-1918 history of the plateau has swept away any traces of war. Batn al-Ghoul cannot be considered in isolation, as it was an important part of a wider conflict landscape. Despite its vulnerable location during the construction era and the Arab Revolt, there was no observable trace of defensive positions on the plateau, perhaps because the location was protected by Fassu’ah Ridge Fort, and what was probably the defensive architecture of the vanished station. The now disappeared trench was likely of Arab Revolt date and so quite short-lived. The only clearly defensive feature was the Batn al-Ghoul Loop Trench which at 1.5km away to the west and 37m lower down, was of little defensive value to the main site. Despite this, the loop trench is an example in miniature of Turkish efforts to protect the railway from guerrilla attack, a strategy which becomes spectacularly clearer in the following pages.

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8

Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Wadi Rutm to Tel Shahm

Wadi Rutm Station and its Conflict Landscape

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n a different desert, set amid spectacular scenery, lie the iconic ruins of Wadi Rutm Station. Built 10km south of Batn al-Ghoul, at Km 530, it is just a few kilometres north of where the landscape opens into a broad desert stretching down to the border with Saudi Arabia. From here, the Hejaz Railway travelled due south, as does the modern highway, only to diverge again near Ramleh Station from the original Hajj route which followed a parallel path several kilometres to the west. Wheels are faster than camels, but not as adaptable.1 Wadi Rutm is more than a station, it is a microcosm of the wider conflict landscape of the Arab Revolt, the hub of a local militarized terrain whose components appear carefully chosen to provide line-of-sight communication north and south (Figure 8.1). An observation post/machine-gun position lies 350m north-west of the station, a defended Turkish army campsite occupies a low rise one kilometre further north-west, a small stone-built redoubt called Midway Fort guards the railway 2.7km further north-west still, and a large dry-stone fort sits atop a 1,000+m-high escarpment to the east with commanding views to the west, south, and east. This militarization of the wadi kept the railway under observation from the Fassu’ah Ridge Sector on the Ras an Naqb in the north, to Wadi Rutm Station itself, and beyond towards Tel Shahm, making best use of the limited manpower available. The station appears briefly in the pre-war historical record. When Maunsell journeyed through here by train in 1907, he did not mention any of the defensive features we investigated (except the station buildings), which suggests either he didn’t see them, or that they did not exist at the time. Hogarth similarly says nothing other than that the station had two stone houses, a siding, an empty cistern, and water kept underground in six barrels.2 Wadi Rutm nevertheless played a prominent role in accounts of the Arab Revolt. On 9 March 1918, X Flight pilots Siddons and 2nd Lt H. R. Junor bombed the area in their Martinsyde biplanes, dropping two 100lb bombs on the fort and eight 20lb bombs in the station area.3 On 22 April, the station and its surroundings were sketch-mapped for the first time by Junor and annotated as ‘Wadi Retham Station & Fortified Hills’, and showing three station buildings, a small observation post/machine-gun position,4 several nearby trench systems, and footpaths leading eastwards up to Wadi Rutm Fort (Figure 8.2).5 Soon afterwards, in the aftermath of a Rolls-Royce armoured-car raid on Tel Shahm Station, Dawnay drove north to attack Wadi Rutm Station. He wrecked buildings, destroyed track,

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Figure 8.1 Wadi Rutm looking and occupied the station, forcing the Turkish garrison to retreat up slopes just east of the south station and take refuge in Wadi Rutm Fort at the summit. (© author)

Peake was an eye witness to these events, and his account of the action is preserved in a biography written by the Arabist Claude Jarvis.6 After the Tel Shahm raid, ‘the force moved north again to Wadi Retham, a station which was defended by a small fort on the top of a very steep hill. Captain S. H. (Sam) Brodie was ordered to shell it with his guns while Peake advanced on foot with his men, but this attack failed. The armoured cars then went in and captured the station, finding it full of stores.’7

The Station The Ottoman decision to build a station8 in the middle of the wadi may have been influenced by a much older and undocumented tradition of stopping or over-nighting at this location as we were to discover. In 2006, however, all that was visible were three ruined and roofless Ottoman buildings which had been partially reconstructed during the 1960s, a new 1960s building, and the 727m-long embankment of the original siding. Of the three surviving Ottoman structures, one was fairly well preserved, a second was largely demolished, and the third had just a single standing wall. All three, intriguingly, had evidence of improvised fortifications. Their ruined state, including the recent demolition of walls, and a huge bulldozer-pit, was likely the result of gold digging and/or stone robbing as the buildings

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors are just a few metres from the main highway. The 1960s building, to the west of these structures, had an intact roof, and its obviously recent date presumably saved it from the gold-diggers’ attention. Between 2006 and 2014, this building underwent several unexplained changes, from abandonment to refurbishment, occupation, and back to empty neglect. The original railway tracks had long since been pulled up, though the embankment itself survived, albeit repaired during the 1960s. A  small exploratory excavation revealed a cross-section of the embankment, composed of compacted sand, rubble, and large stones—but it was impossible to distinguish between the two periods of construction/ reconstruction.9 Around the site, a miscellany of sixty-four railway objects was uncovered, including wooden and steel sleepers, fishplates, spikes, and rail clamps and bolts— some dating to the original 1904–1905/6 construction,10 others to the 1960s tidying and reconstruction of the station.11 Dense scatters of modern debris spoke to continuing if sporadic Bedouin interest in the area. Such was the general modern disturbance around the station that there was no trace of the Turkish trenches observed during the RFC reconnaissance flight. The best preserved and most elaborate of the three original Ottoman structures was Building 1, which had survived as a four-room rectangular building12 with a veranda running its length, and the roof supported on five cut-stone columns (Figure 8.3). Investigation gave insights into both the original construction techniques from 1905/6 and those of the 1960s reconstruction, and proved a valuable experience for understanding less-well-preserved buildings along the railway (Figure 8.4). In typical Hejaz Railway station architectural style, the outside walls were faced with well-cut regularly laid ashlar blocks, and doors and windows framed with long thin rect­ angu­lar stones. Inside walls were concrete and still stood almost four metres high above ground level.13 In places, a low single-course revetment wall survived around the tops of the main walls, projecting above the level of the former roof which was accessed by iron rings on the inside wall of Room 2. The concrete floor14 had traces of blue plaster, and the interior walls were also plastered, and had been covered with modern graffiti. The two

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Figure 8.2 Wadi Rutm, sketch-map by Lt. Junor, 22 April 1918 (photo © John Winterburn)

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.3 Wadi Rutm Station Building 1, showing large gold-digging pit in the foreground (© author)

Figure 8.4 Wadi Rutm Station Building 1, plan (© W. Sutherland, I. McKenzie/GARP)

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors windows were particularly informative in that both faced west across the wadi and both preserved evidence of tiled ledges and probable window bars. Significant too were five impromptu loopholes pushed through the main walls, appearing from the outside as ir­regu­lar horizontal or vertical slits.15 Internally, cutting the loopholes had produced large irregular scars, with one loophole either side of each window. These were clearly not designed-in as part of the original building, as at the Blockhouse further north, but rather a make-do Turkish response to the Arab Revolt. The threat of unexpected attack likely explains other modifications, such as the blocking of an opening in the veranda by a mortared wall of re-used stone blocks which had a small square opening possibly as an improvised firing position. A mud-brick extension in­corp­or­ ated part of the veranda but extended beyond the north-east limit of the original building, and had three or four entrances, and blue-plastered concrete floors. This extension had several small rooms and recesses and traces of burning and ash which suggests a stove, though this could be traces of more recent Bedouin activity. Each room in this extension probably had a heater/boiler/oven fixed into the wall, as suggested by pipes leading to three rooftop chimneys, all of which had been robbed out by 2006. An Arab Revolt date for this extension seems likely, not least because the improvised loopholes which otherwise extend around all four sides of the main building are absent from the wall behind the extension, where they would have been redundant once the latter had been constructed.16 By contrast, Building 2 was highly ruinous, with the roof, all internal and external walls, and even the floors collapsed. Originally a square building,17 it was constructed of pol­yg­ on­al stones with ashlar blocks at the corners, and once again with long thin rectangular stones framing the windows. This occasional use of ashlars suggests it had a lower status than Building 1. It had at least two ground-floor rooms, and a single-roomed cellar partially subdivided by a three-arched, non-load-bearing wall, and its floor coated with concrete and plaster,18 which indicated it was the station’s cistern similar to that at Aqabat Hejazia Station (Figure  8.5).19 It is possible that this is the ‘unused water tank’ referred to by Maunsell in 1907. A single surviving window faced north-west and was framed by six thin rectangular dressed-stone blocks with a keystone arch. Also badly damaged, inside and out, was Building 3, whose walls and floor had collapsed.20 It appears to have had three or four ground-floor rooms, a north-east facing veranda, a multi-roomed cellar, two main doorways with recycled railway lines as lintels, and windows in the north-west and south-east walls, framed once again by long thin rect­angu­lar blocks of dressed stone. The cellar which may originally have had six interconnecting rooms, had plastered walls and a subterranean chute which appeared to connect the central ones. The main structure had a doorway and a window with an impromptu loophole on either side surviving in the north-west wall, and along the roof-line were the remains of another improvised parapet (Figure 8.6). At the north-west end of the veranda there were traces of a low mud-brick wall, likely an Arab Revolt-period extension as in Building 1. Overall, it seems likely that the impromptu loopholes, blocking walls, mud-brick additions, re-used railway components, and the rubble parapets belonged to the Arab Revolt. Wadi Rutm’s station buildings, like many others we investigated, appeared multi-period rather than the pristine ruins of 1916–18. Just 300m to the north-west, between the station and the Turkish army camp, is the first indication of Wadi Rutm’s wider militarized landscape. On a small but prominent natural hillock are the remains of what could have been a defended observation post and which

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.5 Wadi Rutm Station Building 2, showing cistern (© author)

Figure 8.6 Wadi Rutm Station Building 3, showing impromptu loopholes (© author)

may also have housed a machine-gun nest.21 It was first mentioned in Junor’s sketch-map of 22 April 1918 where it was labelled ‘Small Post on Mound’, though wrongly sited in relation to the station.22 While most of the hillock’s foundations have been quarried away, possibly for embankment gravel during the 1960s reconstruction, the built feature itself retains integrity, and appears to have been deliberately respected during quarrying.

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The Turkish Army Camp On a low flat-topped rise one kilometre north-west of the station the remains of a Turkish army camp were discovered23 (as described in chapter 2). The site is 180m long by 70m wide, and has commanding 360-degree views, dominating the adjacent railway to the north-east and the ‘old pilgrim road’ which runs down the middle of the wadi to the south-west (Figure 8.7). Figure 8.7 Wadi Rutm Turkish Army Camp plan (© S. Daniels/GARP)

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Desert Insurgency The height and position of the site is its own defence, and there is no evidence of trench lines. The camp was well preserved in 2006, and its archaeology correspondingly rich.24 There were firing dugouts with stone parapets at either end of the hill, twenty-four tent-rings scattered across the plateau, numerous domestic and military artefacts, an oven pit, a possible latrine, and a ‘parade ground’ clearing. Inevitably, there were signs of gold digging and Bedouin camping. Nevertheless, given that the camp is less than 200m from the modern highway, it is a site which has been almost invisible in plain view for a hundred years. The initial identification of the site as an army camp rather than another construction camp was confirmed less by its layout, which followed the familiar military arrangement of  rows of tent-rings, than by its strategic and fortified location and comparison with an  undoubted construction camp of eight tent-rings in a vulnerable location just 350m away to the north-east.25 Metal-detector surveys retrieved forty star-and-crescent buttons, though it was impossible to determine whether all twenty-four tents had been occupied simultaneously, for how long, or by how many men. Excavation suggested all had been occupied at some point, as vacant rings would have been re-used by later occupants, who would not have troubled to build new ones unnecessarily. Standard Turkish practice was to allocate 100 tents to a battalion, allowing one for every twelve men. The eighteen circular and six rectangular tents could have housed an infantry company. It seems likely that the camp’s occupants belonged to the garrison which defended the station, patrolled the railway line down the wadi, and manned the hilltop fort to the east. The likely size of the garrison corresponds to occasional references by Lawrence concerning the numbers of Turkish soldiers encountered during attacks on railway stations. He says ‘about 200’ for Mudawwara Station in September 1917, though such a ‘great water-station in the desert’,26 likely had a stronger garrison than a minor waterless location such as Wadi Rutm. The army camp itself would have been manned (perhaps intermittently) by only a part of the force available at the station. Investigations revealed tent-pegs, crushed tin cans, coloured-glass fragments, and an Ottoman-style pipe bowl,27 but significantly few signs of close-quarters combat, with just two Mauser cartridges, a Mauser clip, one .303 bullet, several Martini-Henry lead bullets, and six (probably artillery-) shell fragments.28 This was a military site which saw little exchange of fire and only slightly more evidence of bombardment. Given a recorded attack on the station on 22 April 1918, it is possible that despite its strategic position the camp was either empty or only partly occupied at the time. As with so many other Arab Revoltperiod Turkish sites we investigated, this one is invisible in the historical sources. Altogether, twenty-three tent-structures were surveyed between 2006 and 2007, most of  which were circular, and all with stone perimeters.29 As elsewhere, the rectangular constructions likely served for storage, cooking, and perhaps officer and/or NCO accommodation. Preservation varied, better to the west and north-east, with Bedouin re-use dominating in the centre. The best-preserved had recognizable entrances,30 and all had the typical internal floors of hard-baked natural red sand—possibly deliberately compacted into living floors, and four had central post-holes for support.31 The excavation of four tent-rings32 and one fire-pit yielded a variety of objects—star-and-crescent buttons, glass, discarded tin cans, tent pegs, hessian fragments, paper, fruit seeds, and animal bone. Tent-rings I and III characterized the site particularly well. The first had an internal diameter of 4m, with a one-metre wide entrance to the south-east.33 Excavation revealed a flint-packed, oval-shaped post-hole at the centre,34 fragments of wood and yellow glass, six

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors tin-cans (three firmly embedded in the floor surface), and an 8cm-long section of a wooden tent-peg close by. In plan, it is the footprint of a medium-sized bell-tent with a central pole and sides held down by wooden pegs and large stones.35 The food tins, especially those apparently in situ, might be from the last meal of the men quartered here. Tent-ring III was more substantial with closely packed stone blocks forming a regular circle36 and also had a  central flint-packed posthole.37 Excavation yielded wood, a star-and-crescent button, pieces of burnt coarse Hessian-type material (possibly sandbag), shards of glass, and more than sixty fragments of paper, some with remains of a small white label bearing a scroll design, and others from an Arabic-script newspaper. Superior construction and the finds might indicate an officer’s tent.38 A quite different structure was a large-stone ring on the south-western edge of the plat­eau, distinctive due to the size of its stones and their setting into a deep bank of sand (Figure 8.8).39 Its two-course walls appear to have been rendered on the inside, a possible natural clay, the source for which lay nearby. The interior was a hard, compacted, grey surface, possibly of crushed limestone, and the wind-blown sandy layer above yielded fragments of metal, paper, cotton, fruit pips, and a copper-alloy fragment. Its size and construction had attracted more recent attention as a large oval gold-digger’s pit had been hacked out of the floor. It is unclear whether this is a Turkish military structure or perhaps a prehistoric or medieval feature re-used by Turkish troops, though its size and proximity to the wadi’s ancient routeway suggests it may have a long multi-period history. Separated from the tent-rings in the south-west of the plateau was what appears to have been a rectangular cooking pit due to its stone base overlaid by grey ash within which were scorched stones, and fragments of charcoal and charred wood.40 It could easily have held a Turkish army stew-pot which is typically ‘two feet in diameter and one foot deep’.41 At the other end of the process was a deep circular hole cut into the bedrock and at the opposite Figure 8.8 Wadi Rutm Turkish Army Camp: excavation of stone-ring with a gold-diggers hole in the centre (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

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Figure 8.9 Wadi Rutm Army Camp machine-gun position excavation plan (© S. Daniels/GARP)

(north-eastern) end of the plateau and whose staining implied a possible latrine.42 A small retaining wall along its edge may have supported a wooden ledge or seat, and surrounding stones could have anchored a canvas cover for privacy. The campsite was well defended by four rifle or machine-gun emplacements placed on the north, west, and south sides of the plateau two of which were wedge-shaped large-stone structures surrounded by a 0.70m-high sand and stone bank. The other two were smaller circular constructions and perhaps served as sentry posts.43 By far the largest and most impressive of these four defensive positions was CGE I defending the south-western approaches from the wadi to the campsite (Figure  8.9). Its parapet of flint-and-clay topped by large-stones was still 1.20m high in 2007, and retained traces of chalky mortar.44 Its view-shed took in the entire wadi, making it ideal for a machine gun, though no expended munitions were found. The  most intriguing feature was a large sub-circular construction on the eastern side of the plateau measuring 13.30m by 10.60m, with edges defined by twelve clusters of three to four large stones, spaced at twometre intervals.45 A large central post-hole had been cut into the compacted red-and-orange sand surface46 and may have held a flagpole. The archaeology of the Turkish army camp is ­distinctive in style, location, and features, and quite different from the construction camps. The differences are marked compared to the typical construction camps of Batn al-Ghoul, where tent-rings were deeply cut into the bedrock, had sand embankments, were often substantially built and contained many varied finds, including railway construction items. While this supports the view that such places were intensively occupied for many weeks by hundreds of labourers, Wadi Rutm’s Army Camp tent-rings are shallower, have no embankments, are far less substantial, and yielded far fewer and less diverse objects, suggesting a lighter more transient occupation by a small number of men. The difference between these two sites is instructive. While both were constructed by Turkish soldiers who wore tunics fastened by the same ubiquitous star-and-crescent buttons, it was the railway labour battalions who were the real experts at building substantial desert campsites one after the other down the entire route of the railway for almost eight years. Much smaller fighting units of the Turkish army had neither the time, manpower, experience, or need to replicate these pre-war examples in the two years of the Arab Revolt. Yet, while the camps at Batn al-Ghoul and Wadi Rutm are different in many ways, they share several important characteristics.

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Neither location yielded substantial evidence of fighting. Batn al-Ghoul’s camps had few expended munitions, and Wadi Rutm’s Army Camp, despite its overtly military nature, yielded but a handful of munitions and artillery-shell fragments. The archaeological signature of the Army Camp suggests a small contingent of troops occupying the site for a single brief, or perhaps a series of brief periods—possibly between August 1917 and March 1918—and thus represents the everyday life of Turkish soldiers at a remote desert outpost under constant threat of guerrilla attack. Wadi Rutm’s campsite also yielded occasional prehistoric flint tools, suggesting that soldiers picked up and moved such objects before leaving them behind. This produced a distinctive archaeology of mixed ancient and Turkish objects that was repeated at other remote locations further south (Figure 2.2).

Midway Fort A revealing glimpse of the Turkish re-use of the Wadi Rutm landscape is provided by the location of Midway Fort—a small fortified knoll just east of the railway embankment some 2.7km north of the Army Camp (Figure 8.10).47 This position may have been chosen to overcome the interrupted line-of-sight between Fassua’ah Ridge Fort on the Ras an Naqb escarpment and Wadi Rutm Station caused by a westerly projecting spur from the east. Its intermediate position allowed communication between the command-and-control centre of the courtyard-blockhouse at Fassu’ah Ridge Fort and Wadi Rutm Station.48 It may be that the site is of more ancient prehistoric origin, as survey located flint blades and debitage, and several unidentified (possibly prehistoric) hut-circles and enclosures 100m to the east. Whatever its origins, unambiguous Turkish alteration of the site is revealed by loopholes in its low walls which face the wadi to the north and west, and two adjacent typically Turkish tent-rings, sufficient only for a small detachment Figure 8.10 Midway Fort (© author)

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Desert Insurgency of troops. As with the Army Camp, there is a construction-era camp nearby,49 whose ­vulnerable location presumably made it unsafe for re-occupation during the Revolt.

Wadi Rutm Fort

Figure 8.11 Wadi Rutm Fort looking north-west over Wadi Rutm (© author)

Overlooking the station from atop a high flat plateau a kilometre to the north-east is Wadi Rutm Fort at an elevation of 1,132m.50 Undoubtedly a Turkish redoubt, it may have earlier origins given its superb views to the south, east, and west, with line-of-sight to all stations south to Mudawwara as well as to several redoubts/forts as well.51 As with other Turkish defences, it is a group of associated sites rather than a single structure, comprising the ovalshaped fort itself, outworks of trenches and breastworks, a tented settlement with stonelined pathways, possible machine-gun and observation posts, and mule tracks descending westwards to the wadi floor which halfway down are defended by several short and seemingly rapidly dug north-west-facing trenches (Figure 8.11).52 The fort itself appears notably in Siddons’ and Junors’ bombing reports of 9 March 1918, Junor’s 22 April sketch-map, and Brodie’s artillery bombardment and Peake’s subsequent abortive assault. There is no evidence that any British soldiers ever entered the fort though it must be assumed at some point after the fall of the station that Bedouin tribesmen scoured it for discarded equipment and stores. There is also no mention of the camp ­outside the fort’s walls, though two tents are shown inside the fort on Junor’s map.

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors The fort’s dry-stone perimeter wall remains impressive today, surviving to a height of 1.20m at some points, beyond which is an earthen bank, and inside is a shallow gully.53 Two loopholes five metres apart are set into the wall’s northern section. The site was rich in finds, including no less than thirty-eight leather fragments from shoes or strapping, food tins, a spoon, part of a Primus stove, cigarette-paper fragments, lamp glass, and several items of uniform.54 The fort’s main northern entrance is a metre wide and guarded by a projecting L-shaped blast wall, and the secondary southern entrance, also one metre wide, leads to a mule track running downslope towards the station. Within the walls are two circular stone rings and a path, and just inside the southern entrance the remains of a sunken circular stone structure some 4.70m in diameter which had at some point been filled in—possibly in pre-Arab Revolt (possibly prehistoric or medieval) times, as it would otherwise have blocked the southern entrance. Perhaps supporting this view was the discovery in the fill of several munitions-related items including a Turkish ball-grenade fuse. A second ring of stones lay immediately to the north and from it a stone-edged path led towards the northern perimeter wall. A firefight appears to have been the most significant event at the fort between 1916 and 1918. There were 159 munitions-related items, including forty-six Mauser cartridges and twenty-five Mauser clips, five .303 bullets, seventy-one artillery related items including forty-six shrapnel balls, fourteen shell fragments, five Turkish hand-grenade pieces, and three fragments of driving band.55 The majority of these finds, representing incoming and outgoing fire, were found inside and just beyond the fort walls on the southern and western sides, overlooking the station. A few incoming items were found outside the walls to the north-west but no outgoing might suggest the outside defences were unmanned. Despite the military importance of the fort, arguably more interesting were the remains of a camp outside the walls and composed of stone-lined tent foundations and stone structures linked by a series of pathways branching off the main 1.50m-wide path connecting the area to the fort.56 To the west of this path, some 24m from the fort, are the remains of a probable machine-gun emplacement57 whose entrance yielded metal-ball fragments, probably the remains of the incoming artillery fire or aerial bombardment. A second path branches off eastwards to a ‘domestic’ area, and the footings of a large rectangular tent-structure with smaller rectangles attached to three of its four sides.58 This path continues to another smaller but similar structure formed of a central rectangular stone lined area flanked by two smaller areas, with a small circular structure nearby which could have served as a gun emplacement protecting the northern flat-land approaches to the fort. Four more squarish structures are close by, and on the western edge of this group are two likely observation posts both of which had tumbled walls59 and shared a wide viewshed covering the full length of the wadi below. A clue to the different uses of the fort and its tented camp was given by the discovery at the latter of most of the non-munitions metal debris.60 Structures II and III had about eighty items each of construction-related objects mainly nails and tacks, and twenty-three metal packing-case straps,61 though why these would have been kept so far away from the station itself is unclear. Wadi Rutm Fort was ideally placed for observation of the railway station below and its approaches north and south. The precise history of its various structures is difficult to reconstruct, but evidence suggests a sizeable administrative, communication, and stores function for the extramural camp, whose occupants could take refuge in the fort when

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.12 Wadi Rutm Fort: Jordanian Army smoke canisters (© author)

threatened. The location can only be (easily) approached from the north along its own barren plateau which, at almost a kilometre long and narrowing to just 80m wide, provided defenders with a deadly field of fire, and would have been almost suicidal to attackers. An assault directly up the steep south-western escarpment along narrow mule paths was equally risky, as shown by Peake’s failed attempt. Evidently, the British had fired their artillery and rifles, the Turks returned small-arms fire and threw a few grenades, and almost all the action focused in this south-west area. In 2012, modern smoke canisters and empty ration packaging indicated the fort had recently been used for modern military training (Figure 8.12).

A Temporary Caravan Stop Where history is silent, archaeology sometimes speaks, particularly where landscapes of modern conflict are interleaved with earlier levels of human activity. In Wadi Rutm, the relationship between recent and more distant pasts was thrown into sharp relief by a discovery in the middle of the wadi, some 450m south-west of the station.62 Metal-detector survey identified a collection of medieval and recent historical coins and a miscellany of small metal artefacts63—including bronze finger-rings, pieces of harness decoration, and camel or goat bells (Figure  8.13).64 Most coins were bronze, belonging to the Islamic period—18 Ayyubid/Mamluk, 37 Mamluk, and 36 Ottoman.65 This group of diverse objects is what might be expected to be lost when a caravan dismounted and settled for the night and then remounted and set off the next day. The predominance of Islamic coins supports the view that this was a temporary, ­perhaps overnight, Hajj caravan stop, whose preponderance of coins from the Ayyubid dynasty (ce 1171–1341) onwards suggested brief and sporadic occupation for at least 800  years. The fourteenth-century ‘spike’ in coinage argued for especially heavy use

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors during the well-documented commercial and population boom of the Mamluk ‘Golden Age’ (ce 1250–1517),66 whose sultans encouraged markets and trade, and paid particular attention to the caravan and Hajj routes to promote lucrative long-distance trade in luxury commodities from China and India via Southern Arabia.67 The finding of Mamluk coins here echoes those discovered at Fassu’ah Ridge Fort and Batn al-Ghoul.68 This small and hitherto undocumented site is indicative of the vitality of Mamluk commerce, and the revitalization of trade links and the Hajj during Ottoman times, demonstrating the relationship between the local and the global. Equally important, it highlights the possibility of developing the archaeology of such isolated and transient sites along this and other ancient desert highways.69 Given the antiquity of the route through Wadi Rutm, and the finding of several much earlier coins of possible Nabatean/Roman date,70 it is possible that it had been used by  nomads, traders, and pilgrims—pagan, Christian, and Muslim—for two thousand years. Its origins may stretch back to a time when this routeway was part of a Nabatean, then Roman, then Byzantine trade route south to Yemen for frankincense and myrrh, as well as gold, silver, spices, semi-precious stones, and slaves. Intriguingly, this barren spot, while totally ‘invisible’ to Western eyes (though not technology), seems embedded in Bedouin memory and tradition. In the early afternoon of 7 November 2007, a small group of Bedouin in three vehicles accompanied by a mix of about 150 sheep and camels descended the Batn al-Ghoul plateau and made their way down the wadi to stop at this place; they were joined several hours later by a herd of about 100 camels.71 The animals belonged to a Bedouin family who camped for the night less than 200m from the temporary caravan stop (Figure 8.14). A visit by us, punctuated by the traditional welcome of tea, showed that even at this most transient of camps there were distinct areas for men and women (perhaps emphasized due to our presence) and a feeding place for the animals. These fleeting ethnographic impressions were confirmed and refined by an arch­aeo­logic­al survey of the site carried out the next morning, after the Bedouin had left. A number of traces were recorded, including vehicle tracks, the remains of a fire with a scatter of brushwood and tea leaves, fragments of cloth, a child’s scrape in the ground (as revealed by small footprints), a cigarette butt, and camel tracks.72 These most ephemeral of markers would have been obscured by a strong wind within twenty-four hours, and the only clue would have been any metal items left behind or lost. This was the archaeology of yesterday, demonstrating the transient nature of desert nomadism, the fragility of horizontal ­stratigraphy, and the elusiveness of temporary Bedouin sites today as well as during the

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Figure 8.13 Wadi Rutm caravan stop finds (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.14 Wadi Rutm caravan stop, Bedouin overnight camp in 2007 (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

Arab Revolt. More broadly, it reveals the relationship between ethnographic anthropology, ­historical archaeology, and contemporary archaeology, and their contribution to the archaeology of modern conflict. It is tempting to see our serendipitous involvement in this event and its feint vestiges as but a recent manifestation of continuity of wadi use over several millennia. Whether or not the Bedouin were aware of the temporary caravan stop which lay beneath the shuffling feet of their sheep and camels can only be guessed at. One final aspect of this place deserves mention, and concerns its post-1918 role in what today is understood as the archaeology of the contemporary past.73 The site spreads across the ‘Old Pilgrim Road’, a term given to the main route which winds along the centre of the wadi. Today, it is a remnant and heavily worn stone-paved road that runs roughly parallel to the railway embankment to the east. This road, which may have its origins in Ottoman times,74 was in use until the modern desert highway was built during the late 1960s/early 1970s, and several stretches retain traces of asphalt on top of the stony base (Figure 8.15). It is likely that some of this stone-paving was re-laid after 1918 to accommodate early motorized vehicles, as it offers few advantages to horse and camel traffic which would have spread out beyond its narrow confines.75 Wadi Rutm Station was the focal point of the Hejaz Railway in the wadi from its 1905/6 construction until the end of the First World War and Arab Revolt in late 1918. While its original location may have been influenced by its proximity to the nearby and centuriesold caravan stop, it seems likely that the surrounding area was not militarized until 1917–18, when the newly fortified station buildings became the pivot of the local conflict landscape. Some low-level anti-Bedouin defences may have existed during the pre-war era, but the extensive militarization investigated between 2006 and 2014 was likely part of Behçet Bey’s response to the desert insurgency.

Siddons’ Ridge Camp Beyond the shelter of Wadi Rutm’s fortified landscape, the Hejaz Railway moved south, out into more exposed open spaces. For the Turks during the Arab Revolt, this increased

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Figure 8.15 Wadi Rutm ‘old caravan road’ (© author)

vulnerability demanded careful planning of how best to defend the weak spots of bridges and culverts. The result was a chain of remote defensive positions lost in the desert until re­located between 2006 and 2014. Siddons’ Ridge Camp was one these places, discovered in November 2009, excavated in 2011, and named after X Flight pilot Victor Siddons who first marked it as ‘WC’ (Point C, West of the railway) on a sketch-map following his reconnaissance flight on 14 April 1918, drawing a distinctive curve and circular strong-point which accurately depicts its true shape.76 The site is small but well positioned, stretching along a low ridge some 700m west of the railway and several vulnerable culverts,77 six kilometres south of Wadi Rutm Station, and ten kilometres north of Tel Shahm Station (Figure 8.16). Despite being only five metres above the surrounding plain, it has excellent views today, and doubtless also in the lusher prehistoric past, as evidenced by Neolithic/Bronze Age artefacts found here and in the surrounding area. Geography rules this long narrow site, whose most distinctive feature is a shallow zigzag trench snaking 150m along the highest part of the ridge, with a small dry-stone gun emplacement located at each end. Just 10m beyond the southern machine-gun/rifle position on a slightly flatter and broader part of the ridge is a group of some twenty tent-rings which could have housed around 200 men— far more than would have been needed to man the defences, and so almost certainly ori­gin­at­ing as a construction camp. A stone path leads from here to a small U-shaped earthwork, beyond which is a smaller separate ridge some 70m away to the south-west. There is an unusual feature some two kilometres east of the site on the other side of the railway. This is a small triangular fort78 with low dry-stone walls set on a small rise which includes an outcrop of granite which shows signs of quarrying. As the fort has none of the features of later karakolls, and quarrying granite blocks (some still in situ) was probably beyond a small temporary army garrison, it is likely that fort and quarry

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Figure 8.16

belong to the construction era—some of the stone being used for several railway culverts

Siddons’ Ridge Camp just a kilometre away. in 2010 (© author)

Investigations suggested three periods of occupation for Siddons’ Ridge Camp, and another intriguing relationship between the activities of twentieth-century Turkish soldiers and those of unknown prehistoric people. The first phase had Neolithic/Bronze Age traces in a group of well-defined large-stone hut-circles on the smaller unnamed ridge to the south-west, whose architecture differed markedly from the Turkish tent-rings on the main ridge. Some of these prehistoric hut circles may have seen brief re-occupation during the Arab Revolt but no evidence was found. Siddons’ Ridge itself likely also had prehistoric occupation as revealed by miscellaneous finds but anything more substantial had been erased by the two phases of more recent Turkish occupation and remodelling. The second phase was the initial Ottoman railway-building occupation, which revealed buttons, glass, munitions, and metal spread across the site, and two personal seal matrices,79 one of which was inscribed with the name ‘Husayn bin Rabbi 1319’ which in the Gregorian calendar is either 1901/2 or 1903/4.80 The main feature of this phase was a tent-ring campsite

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors arranged in two parallel rows with several outliers at the southern end, and along which the majority of the seventy-two star-and-crescent buttons was found.81 Two tent-rings were excavated,82 and both revealed a compacted-sand floor, eco remains, glass, munitions, and metal. Phase three was the long zigzag trench83 which, by truncating six of the tent-rings, indicates it was a later construction, and most likely hastily built during the Arab Revolt. The machine-gun/rifle position at the northern end of the zigzag trench was damaged by modern bulldozing, but enough remained to show that it was a flat platform with the typical compacted red sand and gravel floor, surrounded by a dry-stone breastwork wall almost a metre high,84 incorporating seven loopholes.85 The clear view of the western, northern, and eastern approaches meant that it could have served as an observation post and/or a rifle or machine-gun position, and a concentration of incoming bullet fragments and lead balls was found just south and south-west of the position. Running south from here, the 0.6m-wide zigzag trench was revealed in cross-section to have been cut into the same red-sand-and-gravel base, over which there was a probable occupation layer of grey sand itself covered by wind-blown sand.86 Upcast spoil from trench construction formed a bank 1.20m wide and 0.25m high, though originally this may have been heightened by sandbags. Several items belonging to a lamp were found.87 At the southern end of the trench was a second circular machine-gun/rifle position, smaller but better preserved than its northern counterpart88 and with a short breastwork wall, internal platform, a lower floor, and a three-metre-wide north-facing entrance direct from the trench. The tent-ring camp beyond would have obscured this position’s field of fire southwards which implies that at least part of the camp had gone out of use by this stage, and supports the view that only some of the earlier construction camp had been re-occupied during Arab Revolt times. Inside the emplacement’s south-facing wall was a firing ledge, cut out of natural bedrock, and resting on it beneath the windblown sand89 were twelve spent Mauser cartridges apparently in situ, and suggesting that the position was abandoned shortly after their firing (Figure 8.17).90 Two paths lead south from the tent-ring camp, one to a possible cookhouse evidenced by a thick layer of ash,91 the other to a threesided rectangular corral-like structure open to the north-east and with evidence of animal manure.92 Both structures appear heavily used, possibly during phase three, though later

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Figure 8.17 Siddons’ Ridge Camp, plan of southernmost firing position (© K. Pool, V. Roads, S. Daniels/GARP)

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Desert Insurgency Bedouin re-use is possible. Two eroded small circular stone structures with compacted red sand and gravel floors were recorded within the slopes of the plateau and may have been small tent-rings,93 and on the slope of the northern part of the hill the discovery of faeces suggested a latrine. Siddons’ Ridge Camp is significant for several reasons, as it appears to be multi-period with origins in prehistory. Hitherto unknown to archaeology, its importance is based on its locally strategic geography rising above the surrounding area characterized by in­nu­mer­ able circular features of unknown age, and which by their sheer number could be ‘dew ponds’, or transient threshing floors.94 The historically more recent occupation began with a railway construction camp which saw later defensive remodelling during the Arab Revolt. This interpretation is based on the appearance and layout of the campsite, and the number of tent-rings which, as elsewhere, would have housed a far greater number of men than could have effectively manned the zigzag trench but which would have been a standard labour gang for railway building. The defensive works clearly interfere with and overlay part of the tent-ring area, which suggests they are later. The amount of spent munitions and particularly the concentration inside the southern gun emplacement were intriguing and initially thought to belong to an undocumented military encounter. Archive research proved otherwise. There is no mention of or allusion to this site in Seven Pillars, probably because Lawrence was not present at the action which took place there. At 04.00 on 19 April 1918, he accompanied Dawnay on the dawn attack on Tel Shahm with a combined force of armoured cars, Bedouin, and the Egyptian Camel Corps some 9km further south (described in chapter 5, and later in this chapter) While the main force was engaged in this action, the Hejaz Armoured Car Section War Diary records ‘6 am: 2 armoured cars supported by Arabs attacked and captured post 6 miles north of HQ. Tenders proceed to railway near the post and demolish culverts.’95 These two short sentences in the middle of a long list of actions relating to the famous Tel Shahm raid likely explain the presence of the Mauser cartridges and the incoming bullet fragments, and the destruction of the culverts built with stone from the quarry a kilometre further east. The fact that Siddons’ Ridge Camp lies exactly 6 miles (9km) north of Tel Shahm strengthens this identification. Especially intriguing, archaeologically and anthropologically, is evidence for a phenomenon hinted at in other sites. In 2009, there was a comparative wealth of easily discernable prehistoric objects scattered across both ridges from Palaeolithic to Neolithic/Bronze Age.96 It is reasonable to suggest that a century ago the frequency could have been greater still. It seems implausible that several hundred railway labourers and perhaps fifteen to thirty later Turkish troops did not encounter these artefacts as they cleared, levelled, dug, and then inhabited the site. As several objects were notable by their size and striking appearance, it is likely that what was found in 2009 and 2011 had previously been dis­ covered, handled, and moved around the ridge between 1905 and 1918, and then abandoned. How these objects were viewed at this time is beyond reach, but it is unlikely that the locations at which we found them precisely matched those of their original deposition, where they had presumably lain undisturbed for millennia. The railway line diverges from the old Hajj route for short stretches in this area though for the main part shadows it closely. The best-preserved trace of the original pilgrim route hereabouts is a ruined caravanserai (khan) 1.4km south-east of Siddon’s Ridge

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Camp. Called Hisn Tiswani97 by the Bedouin, it lies 165m east of the remnant railway embankment, with the Hajj path alongside to its east, and as satellite imagery reveals, it has seen considerable bulldozer damage since 2009, at which time its original shape as an 18m long by 7m wide rectangular building was still evident.98 Although difficult to date without survey and excavation, it probably belongs either to the Mamluk fourteenth century which saw caravanserais being built along the Hajj routes,99 or the subsequent Ottoman period where forts and other structures were built to protect pilgrims from increased Bedouin attacks. In any event, the passengers on the Hejaz Railway before the First World War could have viewed their predecessors’ stopping place from a time when the Hajj was a more arduous and risky undertaking.

Siddons’ Bridge Fort Siddons’ Bridge Fort was constructed 4.7km south of Siddons’ Ridge Camp, 240m west of  the railway and halfway between Wadi Rutm and Tel Shahm stations.100 It featured prom­in­ent­ly in the Arab Revolt in this area, but like so many of these places known to history its location was a mystery. The site was discovered during the same reconnaissance in November 2009 as the camp to the north, and was named for the same reason that it first appears on Siddons’ sketch-map of 14 April 1918, marked as ‘P’, as being ‘occupied’, and depicted as a miniature rectangle with two circles inside, exactly as it appears today.101 This earthwork fort was positioned to defend a large twelve-span Hejaz Railway bridge (named Siddons’ Bridge) 260m to the east, and which was particularly vulnerable due to its isolated location (Figure 8.18). As such an impressive bridge would have been unthreatened by Bedouin before 1917 it seems likely that this fortification was also part of Behçet’s Figure 8.18 Siddons’ Bridge Fort, looking south (© author) Note: This remote earthwork-defence was attacked by armoured cars on New Year’s Day 1918

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Desert Insurgency post-Aqaba railway defences. A stone-lined path still connects fort and bridge, and while the latter was reconstructed during the 1960s, it was heavily damaged by 2009. The site is almost certainly that called ‘Plain Post’ by Lawrence, who describes it in Seven Pillars of Wisdom as ‘the little entrenched work across the valley opposite our hiding place’.102 It became the target of an armoured car raid on New Year’s Day 1918, when an original plan to lay mines along the railway had to be abandoned because of the dangerously open terrain. Instead, with Lawrence watching from a nearby hill through binoculars, Brodie’s ten-pounder guns carried on Talbot cars began firing on the fort, ‘while three [Rolls-Royce] armoured cars moved forward, and crawled about the flanks of the Turkish earthwork like great dogs nosing out a trail’.103 The armoured cars poured machine-gun fire into the defences, and safe behind their steel plating were oblivious to the Turks’ return fire. Lawrence famously quipped that this was ‘fighting de luxe’.104 Siddons’ Bridge Fort is a distinctive rectangular earthwork measuring 41m x 24m, with an outer ditch, a sand and gravel bank, and a retaining wall with two internal circular features (Figure 5.9). It is in reality halfway between a karakoll and a sangar, the latter being a temporary fortified position where firing trenches were impractable. Survey and  excavation in 2012 revealed the greatest quantity of finds to be munitions—likely originating in the military action just described.105 A total of 114 munitions-related items were found, representing half of the total finds for the site. There were fifty Mauser cartridges, one unfired Mauser round, nineteen Mauser clips, forty British .303 bullets with one .303 clip,106 and a single artillery-shell fragment. These were spread along a sweeping curve from a point north-east of the fort, directly opposite the railway bridge, south-west towards and into the northern end of the fort itself, where they were found in three of the excavated trenches.107 Halfway along this arc part of a fuse from a Turkish ball grenade was found. A miscellany of forty-one other mainly domestic metal finds was discovered, including three lighter-flint wheels, a brooch, a button, a winding key, a kettle spout, and a mangled lead seal. One unusual item was a short metal tube stuffed with what appeared to be fabric wadding, and possibly related to demolition activity carried out on the railway.108The archaeology of Siddons’ Bridge Fort reinforces the view that its purpose was to defend the nearby railway bridge during the Arab Revolt. A lack of personal items suggests the fort’s defenders were not camped there, though a few food tins and a kettle spout indicate some daily activity. The garrison was probably small and transient, perhaps posted here for a few days at a time from the nearby station at Tel Shahm five kilometres further south. Six damaged tent-rings to the south-east on the other side of the railway were probably too far away to belong to the defenders and likely belong to the construction era. The most telling evidence from Siddons’ Bridge Fort site was the quantity of Turkish and British munitions which point to the fort being vigorously assaulted and defended. The direction and spread of incoming and outgoing munitions suggest the attack came from the north, caught a number of Turkish troops in the open, and chased them back inside the fort with a continuous exchange of fire. As no other military activity is known at this location, these munitions are likely the physical traces of Joyce’s attack immortalized by Lawrence.109 Militarily, the event was a milestone as it showed beyond doubt that this kind of terrain was perfectly suited for armoured-car operations, and so added to the lessons of the Senussi Campaign as a contribution to the development of highly mobile raiding tactics in modern war.

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Tel Shahm Station and Landscape Tel Shahm Station110 and its surrounding landscape is one of the crucibles of modern guerrilla warfare. As elsewhere, what first appeared to be another ruinous station was revealed as a significant group of sites associated with the railway, some of which had intriguing relationships with far older archaeological traces. Tel Shahm has seven distinct elements: the Hejaz Railway Station itself at Km 545, an unusual tent-ring camp (Tel Shahm Camp North), an adjacent set of low foundation remains of stone-built structures, the re-purposed (probably medieval) hilltop site (Tel Shahm Fort), its base surrounded by several large irregular and probably prehistoric stone rings, rock art figures on stony outcrops, a second tent-ring campsite (Tel Shahm Camp South), and the earth-and-stone karakoll of Tel Shahm Fort South (Figure 8.19). The station was an early target for the innovation of armoured-car raiding parties which left feint but discernible archaeological traces beyond the station buildings. On 1 January 1918, after the skirmish at Siddons’ Bridge Fort, the armoured-car group harassed the Turkish garrison at Tel Shahm Station when Brodie fired his ten-pounder guns into the station yard, forcing the defenders to retreat to ‘a blockhouse on a knoll a few hundred yards beyond the line’.111 A second more substantial and successful assault occurred a few months later when Dawnay commanded a mixed British, Egyptian, and Bedouin force which camped overnight under cover of nearby hills before attacking the station on the morning of 19 April.112 After easily taking the outer defensive trenches, Hornby over-detonated several bridges so spectacularly that Lawrence and Dawnay were almost blown out of their car.113 Meanwhile, the machine guns in the other armoured cars fired on the thickly walled hill called ‘Rock Figure 8.19 Tel Shahm Fort and Camp North (© John Winterburn)

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.20 Fractured rails found between Tel Shahm Fort and Tel Shahm Station (© author)

Post’ by Lawrence, ‘EB’ by RAF pilots, and Tel Shahm Fort by us, though its flanks were too steep for the cars to drive up. This hilltop eyrie was eventually overrun by Hazaa and his Bedouin. At some point in the morning, RAF Captain F. H. Furness-Williams, commanding officer of X Flight, flew over Tel Shahm and recorded—‘Some camels and men hidden behind “EB” number about 50, Whether hostile or friendly not known.’114 This was likely Hazaa’s Bedouin, though whether before or after they had stormed Tel Shahm Fort is not clear. Hornby and Lawrence drove up and down the line with two tons of guncotton, exploding bridges and sending rails up into the blue morning sky, activity which Lawrence again described as ‘fighting de luxe, and demolition de luxe’.115 These rail fragments lay scattered where they landed for almost a hundred years (Figure 8.20). The next target was a karakoll known as ‘South Post’ to Lawrence and called Tel Shahm Fort South by us, and was taken by an impetuous Bedouin camel-charge again led by Hazaa.116

Tel Shahm Camp North Lying in the northern shadow of Tel Shahm Fort, the remains of Tel Shahm Camp North are mainly a single avenue of two parallel lines of tent-rings, twenty in all, with three out­ liers.117 Their neat arrangement suggests a construction camp possibly later re-used by Turkish troops between 1917 and 1918. These tent-rings are ambiguous, however, being made of large cut stones laid upright and pressed into the natural bedrock, giving the appearance of prehistoric hut circles (Figure 8.21). While their dimensions repeat those of construction camps, their ‘megalithic’ appearance and some of the finds raise the possibility that they might have a Bronze Age or Iron Age origin. It seems unlikely, though not impossible, that Ottoman labour battalions or front-line troops would have had the time, inclination, or need to construct a temporary camp site in such a time-consuming fashion. This impression is reinforced by the discovery

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Figure 8.21 Tel Shahm Camp North, excavation of tent-ring (© author)

around the base of the adjacent hill of over forty previously unrecorded rock art figures, perhaps dating to between the fourth century bce and the first century ce.118 It is an intriguing thought that prehistoric circular ‘houses’ may have been occupied several millennia later by the builders or defenders of the Hejaz Railway. The tent-rings measured on average 4.20m by 4.20m diameter. Excavation revealed bedrock covered by sand, within which ceramics, glass, paper, star-and-crescent buttons, items of clothing, an Ottoman-style pipe stem and partial pipe bowl, munitions, and lamp glass fragments all indicated Turkish occupation (Figure 8.22).119 A preponderance of artillery-shell fragments is unexplained as it indicates British bombardment of the campsite for which no direct historical evidence survives—other than perhaps as overshoots from Brodie’s attack on the adjacent hilltop site of Tel Shahm Fort. Three (possibly Neolithic) flint chippings were found in Tent-ring XVI, though whether they belonged there or, as at Siddons’ Ridge Camp, had been collected and then left there by curious Turks is unknown.120 One tent-ring outlier lay several metres west of the av­enue—a position which made it the only such structure in direct line-of-sight southwards to the station—the rest of the campsite’s view being obscured by the fortified hill. Some 200m south-east of the camp, at the foot of Tel Shahm’s fortified hill, lies an irregular group of low stone-built foundations with a discernable path running through the middle.121 Its protected position, proximity to the fort, and the nearby campsite suggests an association with the construction era—perhaps as a storage area—though no definitive objects were found.

Tel Shahm Fort The fort lies atop the summit of a steep-sided rock-strewn hill about 180m south of the northern tent-ring campsite.122 It commands a clear view of the wide open plain to the

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.22 Tel Shahm Camp North, excavation plan of Tent-ring XXI (© C. Edwards, S. Daniels/GARP)

north, west, and south—including the Tel Shahm tent-ring camp, and the station several kilometres south. The prominent hill is so well sited overlooking the original Hajj route that there was almost certainly medieval construction there, though Turkish militarization erased any obvious traces. The advantage of this location was recognized by Meissner and his Turkish staff too, as the railway follows the original Hajj route at this point. In 2010, two paths snaked their way up to the crest, one with two eroded parallel rows of stones, and the other a more clearly defined route with cut-stone steps (Figure 8.23). At the highest point, near the northern perimeter wall, a rectangular blockhouse was built on a flattened platform123 in at least two phases. The first saw foundations cut one metre into the bedrock, above which eight or nine courses of cement-mortared stones formed a wall which survives to a height of 1.35 metres, and retains traces of whitewash on the interior. Overall, the structure has a haphazard appearance, with a 1.60m-wide entrance

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Figure 8.23 Tel Shahm Fort plan (© C. Edwards, S. Daniels/ GARP)

in the north-western corner, a window in its north-eastern wall,124 plain window frames, and an eroded southern wall with a surrounding bank of earth and stone. Perhaps a trace of its defensive purpose against Brodie’s artillery, a likely ‘blast-wall’ was cemented onto the left side of the entrance—an unnecessary feature before 1917,125 and which preserved pickaxe marks on the stones and cut out sections. Its later date is clear from its positioning against the entrance, and a hasty construction is implied by the fact no mortar bound its

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Figure 8.24 Tel Shahm Fort, view west from machine-gun position, with Tooth Hill in far right distance

stones unlike the rest of the walling. Surrounding the blockhouse are three platforms cut into bedrock each at different levels and separated by slopes, the lowest of which was surrounded by a dry-stone perimeter breastwork wall with four observation posts/firing pos­itions.126 There were two entrances, a damaged northern one, and a more intact southern one which was marked by two large upstanding stones.127 Tel Shahm Fort was an obvious strong-point for the defence of the railway during the Arab Revolt, and it seems certain to be the Rock Post referred to by Lawrence. Its natural advantage of height and inaccessibility was reinforced at some point by the siting of four observation posts which could also have been machine-gun positions. The first of these is a three-sided rectangular recess on the south-eastern corner of the perimeter wall, with a perfect view south, overlooking the railway and Tel Shahm Station.128 The flat-stone floor preserved evidence of some modern activity, though it was the spent Mauser cartridges and .303 bullets in the lower levels that indicated an Arab Revolt firefight. The second pos­ ition was a sub-circular construction in the western perimeter wall and was clearly built into the wall rather than added to it later (Figure 8.24).129 Its floor was also of flat stone, but investigation yielded only miscellaneous fragments of glass, metal, and a piece of webbing. The third location was a D-shaped structure in the north-western corner130 where the architectural evidence—different stone sizes and less careful construction—indicated a hastily built wall added to the main perimeter one.

(© Ali Baldri/GARP)

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Excavation yielded several Mauser cartridges and twelve magazine clips, as well as railway track plates and forged-iron rail spikes. The fourth position was on the eastern side,131 and its flat-stone floor also produced traces of fighting in several Mauser cartridges, clips, and uniform textile fragments. It is tempting to see these munitions as traces of the successful Arab-British action of 19 April 1918, when the fortifications succumbed to direct hits from Brodie’s ten-pounder guns and Bedouin attack, with the defenders surrendering soon after. The enduring military value of this location, as with Wadi Rutm Fort, was apparent in the discovery of dated items left behind from military exercises during the early 1990s.

Tel Shahm Camp South One campsite lies 445m south of the fortified hill and has a typical construction-era appearance.132 The nineteen tent-rings are arranged in familiar parallel rows, each with a perimeter of small stones, a low sandy bank, and occasional drip-gullies.133 It was investigated in 2010, and its tent-rings are strikingly different from the large-stone constructions of Tel Shahm Camp North. A possible mule-tethering station was identified, though no mule shoes were found.134 Excavation yielded star-and-crescent buttons and mis­cel­lan­eous domestic and personal paraphernalia, including two lamp wicks and a padlock, with a few spent munitions and artillery-shell fragments,135 which could indicate some re-occupation during the Arab Revolt. Survey of the two kilometres between the camp and the station found nineteen fragments of explosively fractured railway track. It is tempting to see these as the result of the armoured car attack on 19 April 1918 described above, during which Lawrence described how his men had to take cover ‘when stones or iron fragments came over sailing musically through the smoky air’.136

Tel Shahm Fort South One of the more imposing and better-preserved of the Turkish railway defences is the karakoll of Tel Shahm Fort South which lies 3.7km south of the station.137 It is strategically sited on rising ground 300m east of the railway embankment with a 360-degree view of the area, and is intervisible with the stations of Tel Shahm to the north, and Ramleh five kilometres to the south, thus providing a base for heliographic communication. The karakoll protects the railway’s eastern flank across an intervening wadi and is characteristically located opposite a now ruinous three-span bridge, to which it was connected by a three-metre-wide stone-lined path which was still traceable for half its length in 2010 (Figure 8.25).138 The square structure has a large circular feature at its centre, and its still-standing stone walls retain their stone capping.139 These walls face west towards the railway, while sand banks (perhaps originally reinforced with sand bags) confront the open desert to the east. This hybrid construction may reflect both the reality of military threat as well as the need for hasty construction after August 1917. All walls speak to the danger of attack by offering 360-degree cover for rifle and machine-gun fire. To the west they have several courses of locally available flat slate-like stone containing numerous loopholes, and these also appear in the sand embankment to the east (Figure 8.26). Several small tumbled circular structures lie 20m or so beyond the eastern wall, and 100m south-west is a line of six tent-rings on the edge of a heavily disturbed area and which likely was a construction camp. Investigations revealed the west-facing perimeter breastwork as stone and upcast, with tabular sandstone creating eleven well-built loopholes close to the level of the exterior

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.25 Tel Shahm Fort South, looking west, showing unexcavated central feature and two semi-circular firing positions (© author)

Figure 8.26  Tel Shahm Fort South plan (© C. Edwards, S. Daniels/ GARP)

ground-surface.140 The inside trench was at least 1.5m deeper than the loopholes indicating that the defenders could have stood to deliver rifle fire.141 Two dry-stone projections interpreted as firing bays survived to a height of about 0.80m, and their foundations had been built into hard-baked natural surface.142 Linking these two structures was a two-metre-wide and 0.5m-high bank of sand covered with stone within which were eight more loopholes. Investigation of a wellpreserved section of the interior trench system143 (Figure 8.27) revealed an original width of 1.5m and a depth of 0.80m from the main fort floor, and 1.5m below the height of the wall, which again would have offered protection for standing troops. There were two building phases here as the loopholed breastwork was constructed only after the trench behind it had been filled in. Dominating the interior is an impressive circular bank, likely an inner breastwork-trench, inside of which a circular un-mortared stone-walled structure was laid onto bedrock with a south-east entrance.144 Its purpose is unclear, though the discovery of a spent Mauser cartridge and the fact that it is elevated enough for defenders to have fired over the heads of those manning the outer perimeter indicate it could have been an inner redoubt. Nevertheless, fragments of cigarette papers and of a

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors

Figure 8.27 Tel Shahm Fort South

cooking platter suggest it was also (perhaps mainly) used for accommodation and storage, excavation of interior and may originally have had a canvas canopy (Figure 8.28). trench Although the southern edge of the fort was heavily damaged by bulldozing, (© author) three recognizably circular stone structures, possibly observation posts, lay beyond its ­southern and eastern perimeters.145 The southernmost was excavated,146 and was built of local stone whose base layer had been cut into the bedrock, and which had a halfmetre-wide entrance on the north-west side. A stone-capped sandy bank lay around beyond the walling, but nothing was found. One of the eastern positions was surveyed and found to have a continuous circular wall still standing about half a metre tall, but with no loopholes.147 It had a one-metre-wide south-eastern entrance, and interestingly blocks the defensive line-of-sight by obscuring the view from the fort’s loopholed firing positions. Tel Shahm Fort South was likely Lawrence’s ‘South Post’ taken on 19 April 1918 by Hazaa and his Bedouin as mentioned above, not least because there is no other defensive structure in the area to which this event can refer. It was observed by Lawrence, who recorded that after lunch ‘we went off to see the fall of “South Post”, at zero seven hours forty-five . . . Hazaa and his Amran . . . thought it was a steeplechase, and did a camelcharge up the mound and over into the breastworks and trenches. The Turks gave up in disgust.’148

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Desert Insurgency Figure 8.28 Tel Shahm Fort South, central feature (© author)

Tel Shahm Station So much for the hinterland, what of the station itself? The 19 April assault had begun with Brodie’s artillery and two RFC aeroplanes bombarding the trenches. Furness-Williams and Siddons bombed together at 06.40, and Divers and Lt Oldfield repeated the action at 16.00. It was all too much for the defenders, and an hour later thirty-one surrendered to the armoured cars. The attackers rushed the station with Lawrence grabbing the station bell and others taking their own souvenirs before the Bedouin arrived and began looting ‘two hundred rifles, eighty thousand rounds of ammunition, many bombs, much food, and clothes’149 before an unlucky camel detonated a Turkish trip-mine which blew it into the air. Further confused looting of a storehouse followed and by the next morning only Hazaa and a few of his men remained from the main Bedouin force which, laden with booty, had disappeared into the night.150 A photograph taken on the day of its capture shows the intact building with designedin loopholes in the walls and roof rampart from the construction era reinforced by newer loopholed mud-brick walls surrounding it, and a similarly recent mud-brick heightening of the roof rampart (Figure  8.29).151 Today, the station is a single and much damaged building on the eastern side of the railway which has the appearance of an original station building albeit heavily restored during the 1960s. The original trenches which surrounded the building are only faintly traceable on the ground, though are marginally better seen on satellite images.152 *

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Forts, Stations, and Ancestors Figure 8.29 Tel Shahm Station on 19 April 1918 (© Lt. George Pascoe, courtesy John Winterburn) Note designed-in loopholes and new impromptu mud-brick defensive walls

Tel Shahm Fort’s commanding views north, west, and south, would have been as impressive in prehistoric and medieval times as they were when the railway was built, and indeed remain today. Prehistoric activity around the base of the fortified hill suggests the summit originally had ancient occupation though no trace was found. The fort’s strategic location blocks direct southward movement from Wadi Rutm and required the railway to skirt its flanks to the south-west before returning to its southerly course. Managing this engineering challenge may partly explain why the area saw so much construction camp activity.153 The location was ideal for line-of-sight communication via heliograph north and south. Tel Shahm Station and its landscape is characterized by several types of militarization— tent-ring campsites, a fortified hilltop and blockhouse, shadowy remains of defensive trenches around the station, and a karakoll strong-point further south. It is possible that the anomalous northernmost tent-ring campsite is a mix of prehistoric, railway construction-era, and Arab Revolt period occupation, and that the southern construction camp saw later re-occupation between 1917 and 1918. The hilltop blockhouse, its perimeter wall, and the observation posts are clear examples of Turkish militarization, reinforced by the munitions found at those posts facing the railway, indicative of outgoing Turkish rifle or machine-gun fire. Together with the shattered railway tracks down on the desert it is likely that much of the archaeology of this multi-component site belongs to the Arab Revolt.

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9

Concealment, Raiding, and Ambush Tooth Hill to Hallat Ammar

Tooth Hill and its Camps

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olls-Royce armoured-car attacks on the Hejaz Railway in 1918 ushered in a new phase of the conflict—modern and technological, but deployed with Bedouin knowledge and guerrilla cunning. They were a step-change for the Arab Revolt in southern Jordan. One consequence of these raids at Siddons’ Bridge Fort and Tel Shahm Station was that the boundaries of the conflict landscape were dramatically redrawn. The speed and mobility of motorized assault meant that raiders could hide in well-concealed desert camps before launching a surprise attack. Such ephemeral campsites could be located kilometres away from the railway targets, out of sight behind hills and ridges, and beyond the ability of Turkish ­railway defenders to observe or take counter measures. These camps were transient places— the archaeological footprint of modern guerrilla presence—and none had ever been found.

Tooth Hill Camp Discovering a century-old campsite which had been deliberately chosen for its invisibility from the enemy was always going to be a challenge. Success was due mainly to the interdisciplinary approach we had adopted, and the indefatigable efforts of John Winterburn, our landscape specialist. Years of familiarity with this area of desert, the combing of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, satellite imagery, and John’s research in public and private archives and photographic collections all played a role.1 Nevertheless, the first clue had been open to all for almost a century, and was given by Lawrence for 18 April 1918—‘Meanwhile I took car from Waheida, and went down to Guweira, to join Dawnay in our old camp behind the toothed hill facing Tell Shahm station.’2 This was the mystery to solve—where was ‘the toothed hill’ and would there be anything left to identify of little more than an overnight stop after 100 years? The search took John to The National Archives in London where he examined the War Diaries of X Flight RAF,3, which included various reconnaissance reports produced by pilots in 1918. Attached to some of these, as we have seen, was an unsuspected trove of sketch-maps. One in particular caught his eye. It was appended to a report dated 14 April 1918, and showed the landscape north and north-west of Tel Shahm Station within which a feature had been marked as ‘Tooth Hill’.4 The hope was that this toponym referred to the same feature mentioned by Lawrence. The next step relied on knowledge and serendipity. At a T.  E.  Lawrence Society Symposium at Oxford in September 2012, John was shown a photograph by Joe Berton, a

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.1 Tooth Hill Camp (East) 1918, taken by Lt. Gilman (© Lt. George Pascoe, courtesy of John Winterburn)

knowledgeable and respected collector of Lawrence memorabilia, of a group of RollsRoyce armoured cars parked in front of a hill. Joe asked John if he knew where it was. The distinctive tooth-shaped hill instantly recalled Lawrence’s comment and the scribbled name on the RAF sketch-map. The image was labelled ‘Lt. L. H. Gilman, Hejaz Armoured Car Company’, and came from The Gilman Collection at the Huntington Library in California (Figure 9.1). The orderly arrangement of the vehicles recalled Lawrence’s driver S. C. Rolls’ comment that: The armoured cars were arranged in a single squadron, dressed by the left, and all with their guns pointing forward at exactly the same angle. Behind these the three RollsRoyce tenders were drawn up in a line as a supporting unit . . . each carried a machine gun. Then came the ten-pounder guns, mounted on Talbot cars, and lastly the transport, mainly consisting of Ford tenders.5

The photograph was a revelation, and led to the discovery of others showing similar scenes.6 At Wadi Mousa on the evening of 5 November 2012, we experimented with Google Earth’s 3-D facility attempting to match up a modern perspective of the suspected site area with that of the 1918 photograph. Eventually we found it. The next day, John, Neil, and myself were guided initially by GPS but then by our own eyes, to the exact position from where Gilman had taken his photograph (Figure 9.2). It was an eery yet momentous feeling standing on the same spot with an identical view in living colour before us while holding the monochrome photograph from a century before. All that was missing it seemed were

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Desert Insurgency Figure 9.2 Tooth Hill Camp (East), as rediscovered on 6 November, 2012 (© author)

the armoured cars. John’s research had led us to the right location, and that might have been an end to it—but a bigger surprise was to come. We walked slowly towards where the photograph showed the armoured cars and tenders to have been so carefully arranged. A glint of cream and brown ceramic caught our eyes, and there before us were smashed fragments of a British rum jar, one with the tell-tale initials SRD (‘Supply Reserve Depot’) emblazoned on it. Adjacent lay the remains of a camp fire, and scattered around were squashed and rusted tins, more fragments of rum jar, pieces of glass, .303 cartridges, and what looked like an early twentieth-century spark plug. By the standards of the desert, this was a Tutankhamun moment, and it felt as if Lawrence’s raiding party had left only a few days before (Figure 9.3). The excitement was palpable, but soon gave way to a systematic survey of the area which revealed a scatter of occupation debris together with a large cache of discarded spent .303 cartridges dumped where Gilman’s photograph had shown the Rolls-Royces and Talbots had parked for the night. A full investigation was needed, and it would have to aim at total recovery of all finds—partly due to the uniqueness of the site, but also because a location so intimately associated with Lawrence would eventually be stripped bare by souvenir-hunters. It was a clear case for preservation by record.7 Investigations between 7 and 11 November 2012 had two main elements: a field-walking survey to recover all artefacts and record their locations, and excavation of what had become two campfires not one.8 Survey revealed items scattered over a wide area extending 150m by 120m, with several concentrations interspersed with less dense areas and single artefacts. This was truly a site of horizontal stratigraphy, reflecting a brief occupation of just a few hours before the armoured car raiders moved on. Although the site had been open to the elements for nearly 100 years, the finds were extraordinary, and while they suggested very little had been removed by the Bedouin during that time, we cannot know what has disappeared since 1918.

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.3 Tooth Hill Camp (East) (© John Winterburn) Note: Top row: rum-jar sherds, cartridge cases (.303); middle row: campfire, gin-bottle sherds, spark-plug; bottom row: cigarette tin, rum-jar sherds, artillery friction fuse, ration tin.

The remains included: twenty-nine ration tins (including six meat-and-vegetable ex­amples dated 11/17), their opener-keys, rum-jar sherds,9 glass fragments from a Gordon’s Gin bottle, and an Eno Salts bottle,10 eighty-one spent .303 cartridges (and no Mauser rounds),11 several spark-plug insulator fragments,12 a trigger mechanism for a Talbot-mounted ten-pounder gun,13 a hawser plate, and numerous nails, screws, and metal strapping likely from wooden boxes.14 Some of the scatters likely represented single events. The broken rum jars were particularly evocative of social nights in the desert. As Rolls had observed at an earlier rum-drinking session around a campfire at Guweira, ‘The grog that night was made pretty stiff, the dixy  filled to the brim with liquor.’15 Most evocative perhaps was the emptying (before reloading) of a car-mounted machine gun, represented by a cache of seventy spent Mark  VII .303 cartridges—the preferred type for use in Vickers machine guns. Rolls described just such an event in his war memoir Steel Chariots in the Desert when, minutes before setting off to attack Tel Shahm Station, ‘we loaded our weapons afresh.’16 Excavations focused on the two campfires as they had the greatest quantity of finds. Campfire 1 lay just north-west of the centre of the main artefact spread, and had a thin layer of windblown sand covering stones and artefacts, beneath which was a level of sun-baked sand and below this areas of orange oxidization and grey charcoal staining, and a scatter of nails and screws (Figure 9.4 a and b). The shallow central fire-pit17 revealed spade-cuts which created a sheltered depression for the fire. Burning was confirmed by blotches of grey charcoal ash and an area of discoloured burnt sand.18 Around the pit was a ring of stones19 whose ragged appearance might suggest later disturbance. The nails, screws, and tacks in the northern part of the fire-pit spread out beyond it, indicating perhaps that boxes had

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Desert Insurgency Figure 9.4 Tooth Hill Camp (East), Campfire 1: (a) metal debris from boxes broken to feed the fire; (b) excavation plan (© A. Gow, K. Pool, S. Daniels/GARP)

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush been broken up to feed the fire from that direction.20 The finding of nails beneath stones inside the fire-pit might indicate two separate events, perhaps re-use on different visits. Campfire 2 on the south-western edge of the main artefact spread was less well preserved.21 While it lacked the richness of objects found in Campfire 1, it had a similar character.22 The fire-pit23 had an orange-grey burnt deposit near its base but no finds, which may indicate no re-use, but the upper levels yielded abundant nails and screws and occasional fragments of metal strapping and wood, as well as carbonized brushwood possibly used as kindling. The base of the fire-pit was long and irregular, broken by several vertical marks indicating a rough and rapid hacking out with a spade or entrenching tool. Around the fire-pit were found a length of metal strapping, a bully-beef tin, and a probable condensed-milk tin. Imagination works wonders in the desert, and a flat stone on the south-eastern edge of the fire-pit was dubbed ‘the kettle stone’, since it would have been ideal for that purpose. The overall impression was that this campfire was only used once. The exceptional preservation at Tooth Hill Camp provided intimate glimpses of this new kind of warfare. Here was the first indication that British automobile technology could out-manoeuvre and out-perform the technology of the railway. Combining a traditional Bedouin use of landscape with motorized guerrilla tactics had conjured a new albeit elusive kind of archaeological site. Tooth Hill characterized this surface archaeology of transience that was also a social archaeology, where overnight campfires, food tins, broken gin bottles and fragments of rum jars sat alongside cast-off vehicle parts and .303 cartridges in a desert scattered with prehistoric remains dating back millennia. Yet there was a problem. While the archaeology and the historical sources offered a good fit, it was not perfect, and the local geography too raised questions. There had been two armoured-car raids on the railway in this area—one in December 1917/January 1918, and the other in April 1918. The first saw Lawrence and Joyce’s armoured cars overnighting at a place referred to as Tooth Hill before attacking Siddons’ Bridge Fort, skirmishing at Tel Shahm Station, then returning to camp for the night. The second was a full-scale raid on Tel Shahm Station in April, involving three armoured cars and three tenders of the Hejaz Armoured Car Company and several Talbot cars carrying the mountain-guns of the ten-pounder Motor Section RFA (Royal Field Artillery), and accompanied by seventy-five men of the Egyptian Camel Corps commanded by Peake, around 200 Bedouin under Sherif Hazaa, and air support from RAF X Flight based at Wadi Rum.24 Dawnay was in overall charge, Gilman commanded the armoured cars, Brodie the artillery, and Lawrence tagged along as interpreter. On each of these occasions, Tooth Hill Camp was likely used at least twice—before and after the military operations. Here was the conundrum. The raid of December 1917/ January 1918 could not have used the Tooth Hill campsite we had discovered because it was in direct line-of-sight to Tel Shahm Fort only four kilometres due east; camp fires and  smoke, if not the sounds of the raiders would have been spotted by a keen-eyed Turkish sentry in one of the observation posts atop the fortified hill. The campsite (and its archaeological traces) was also too small for Dawnay’s large multi-component force of April 1918. The clinching objects were seven tins which had once held meat-and-vegetable stew. These had been made by C & E Morton Ltd of Lowestoft in Britain, one date-stamped 10/17 (October 1917), the other six 11/17 (November 1917)25—a fact which made it impossible that they had travelled first to Egypt then to Aqaba then Guweira and carried to Tooth Hill in time to be discarded just a few weeks later in December the same year. They had to belong to a later raid.

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Desert Insurgency The evidence pointed one way. There was another Tooth Hill campsite nearby which was invisible from Tel Shahm Fort, and large enough to conceal around eight vehicles and  several hundred men. The Tooth Hill campsite discovered in 2012 and Gilman’s photograph of it had to belong to a time after Tel Shahm Station had been overrun on 19 April 1918, when its visibility from Tel Shahm Fort no longer mattered. While no clue was offered by the historical sources that simply referred to Tooth Hill, the archaeology would prove incontrovertible.

Tooth Hill Camp West Initially so exciting and satisfying, the discovery of Tooth Hill Camp soon raised more questions than it answered. Too vulnerable and too small to belong to Dawnay’s force in the days and nights prior to the April 1918 raid, it begged the question—was there another larger camp, and where could that be? Only one direction made topographical sense, and once again a contemporary photo­ graph provided by Joe Berton proved crucial. It showed a Talbot wagon and several British soldiers near to what was clearly a different site, yet it had ‘Tooth Hill’ written on the back. As before, we took the image into the field and eventually matched it with a location in 2013. Here was a second and far more extensive and heavily used campsite concealed from the railway by rising ground and low broken hills just 1.5km south-west of the original Tooth Hill campsite. It too lies in the shadow of Lawrence’s ‘tooth-shaped hill’, though this time due south not east. The two campsites are connected by a stone-lined path whose origins while unclear, could have been built or at least refurbished by the raiders. The discovery of a second Tooth Hill camp required a change of names, with the original becoming Tooth Hill Camp East, and the new one Tooth Hill Camp West (Figure 9.5).26 Figure 9.5 Tooth Hill Camp (West), Morton tin lid dated ‘11–17’ (November 1917), with site in the foreground and Tooth Hill in profile in the distance (© author)

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Tooth Hill Camp West was more heavily disturbed than its eastern counterpart, by Bedouin camping, vehicle tracks, and winter flash-flooding.27 Only one area preserved alignments of stones and concentrations of artefacts that were clear traces of the Arab Revolt. Assuming a much wider spread to the original camp than is traceable today, the location is an obvious choice for Dawnay’s camp as described by Lawrence.28 Most of the finds came from a band some 150m wide which stretched 300m along the stonelined path which cut through the centre of the camp.29 In fact, as The Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) War Diary records,30 Tooth Hill Camp had been designated an advance dump for operations against the railway, and it was likely heavily robbed by the Bedouin of useful materials left behind after the war, which may account for its heavy disturbance. Tell-tale signs of Dawnay’s raiding party had survived nevertheless. Intensive use on multiple occasions left traces, for some of which we have remarkably detailed evidence in the EEF war diary. Dawnay’s force arrived here at 3.30pm on 18 April 2018, with Lawrence joining them at 10.00pm the same day. After the attack on Tel Shahm Station on the 19 April, the Rolls-Royce tenders returned to Tooth Hill for the night. At 1.00pm the next day, they moved on to Ramleh Station south of Tel Shahm, leaving behind a small contingent to protect the dump. After the Ramleh raid the force returned to Tooth Hill at 6.00pm that evening, and on the 21 April came the close shave for Lawrence and others during the unsuccessful raid on Mudawwara, after which Lawrence drove north to see Feisal. On 22 April, Dawnay launched the attack on Wadi Rutm Station, and that night some of the ­raiders stayed in the overrun station buildings, while others returned again to Tooth Hill.31 The western camp was clearly a rich palimpsest—a landscape which had seen many different events during its short existence, and had been well picked over for the best part of a century. Several tent-rings, tent-squares, and three campfire hearths were investigated and yielded a remarkable range and quantity of objects of the kind that multiple overnight stays would have produced.32 Among many fragments of ceramics were thirty-four smashed remains of SRD rum jars, eighty-two pieces of glass, and a host of miscellaneous metal items ranging from an Oxo tin to a boot-heel plate, various cigarette-tin lids, several tyrevalve caps, and thirteen C & E Morton meat-and-vegetable-stew tin lids with the same dates as those found at the eastern camp.33 However, it was the munitions-related finds which told the most intriguing, if unverified story. Apart from the expected .303 items—two live rounds, nineteen spent cartridges, and five clips—there were twenty spent Mauser cartridges, sixteen Mauser clips, and one complete and one partial German stick grenades.34 As there was no fighting at the site, these items must have been souvenirs brought back from the various raids on the railway, as with Lawrence’s taking of the Tel Shahm Station bell. It seems unlikely that the British, Egyptians, and Bedouin would carry back spent Mauser cartridges just to leave them here, so it can be speculated that captured Turkish rifles were used to fire off the rounds—the rifles being taken when the camp was abandoned. Just north of the main living area was a spread of dumped metal scrap.35 Almost a kilo­ metre further west were two areas of large irregular stones on an otherwise smooth sandy surface, and which might have been the Bedouin campsite. This physical separation may have been due to the antipathy between the Bedouin and the Egyptians, and which Lawrence refers to by noting that the Arabs were ‘put in a tactical place behind a hill, where

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Desert Insurgency they were in support but out of sight and hearing of the line’.36 The site we found was ­concealed behind a small hill which hid it from view of the main camp. * The two campsites in the shadow of Tooth Hill were extraordinary discoveries, whose evidence added flesh to the bones of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and archive documents. Making sense of geography and chronology, Tooth Hill Camp East would only have been safe after the fall of Tel Shahm Station, which might explain the relaxed attitude of the men in Gilman’s original photographs. The archaeology suggests this small but well-preserved campsite was used only on one or two occasions. Tooth Hill Camp West was different, seeing multiple occupations by large and small groups, beginning with Lawrence’s reconnaissance mission to Mudawwara in December 1917, his almost immediate return with Joyce’s force to attack Siddons’ Bridge Fort on 1 January 1918, and then again as an advance dump for Dawnay’s multi-component party of April 1918. As the war moved south towards Mudawwara, the dump at Tooth Hill’s western camp fell out of use and history until November 2013. The Tooth Hill campsites were a grail of modern conflict archaeology, as they preserved the faintest traces of military activity in a vast and hostile desert, and others probably lay undiscovered in-between Tel Shahm and Mudawwara. They are the rare imprint of the origins of modern mobile guerrilla warfare which shaped so many military actions across the twentieth century, and into the present, as Islamic State’s lightning advances across northern Syria and Iraq in four-wheel-drive trucks showed to such devastating effect in 2014. The discoveries showed how archaeology could yield information and insight by discriminating between several places which appear as one in the historical record. Neither the official histories nor the archives gave any clue that there were two campsites at a place called Tooth Hill. The investigations also pinpointed for the first time exactly where Lawrence’s famous account of sitting around a campfire took place. In Seven Pillars he recalls how ‘We slept there that chilly night, happy with bully-beef and tea and biscuit, with English talk and laughter round the fire, golden with its shower of sparks from the fierce brushwood.’37 The date is 27 December 1917, a time before Tel Shahm Station was overrun, and so Lawrence and his comrades must have been at Tooth Hill’s western camp.

Ramleh Station Cast adrift in the seemingly featureless desert to the south of Tel Shahm is Ramleh Station at Km 554.38 The station was also the focal point of a local conflict landscape, with four distinct components: the station, and three strong-points or karakolls, designated North Ramleh Forts 1 and 2, and South Ramleh Fort. At the half-way point between Ramleh Station and Tel Shahm Station is an isolated railway siding some 780m long to the east of the line. The vulnerability of one or several locomotives stranded in this open place during the Arab Revolt favours a contruction-era date, as does the proximity of a small construction camp just 200m west.39 In 2010, the station’s single surviving building lay on the western side of the line as a rendered concrete construction, likely built during the 1960s to replace the original structure. When the railway was being laid here around 1905, there appears to have been a single building, a view supported by Maunsell from his 1907 journey.40 At some point after this

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.6 Ramleh Station in 1918, from the west (© Private Collection)

several other buildings seem to have been added. An RAF aerial photograph of 1918 shows another substantial building on the eastern side of which all trace has disappeared due to extensive trashing. It appears as a much-damaged two-room structure, along with several other buildings arranged on either side of the railway, of which also nothing remains (Figure 9.6).41 Traces survive of a semicircular perimeter trench around the now disappeared eastern building, some 160m long and lying 80m east of where the structure once stood. While visible on satellite imagery, it is only just traceable on the ground. On the west side, protecting the station buildings, the same 1918 photograph clearly shows another semi-circular trench as well as part of an inner trench immediately in front of the buildings. It is likely that the 1960s refurbishment erased most ground-level evidence of these defensive earthworks (Figure 9.7). Ramleh Station is briefly mentioned in the pre-1914 historical sources,42 but features prominently in accounts of the Arab Revolt, being observed on no less than ten RFC reconnaissance flights. The station, and by implication some of the surrounding defensive positions are mentioned by Lawrence, and in passing in Jarvis’ biography of Peake.43 The EEF war diary for 20 April 1918 records that Dawnay’s raiders left their Tooth Hill camps and attacked Ramleh Station just five kilometres south of Tel Shahm Fort South. This proximity had evidently allowed the Turks at Ramleh Station to observe the chaos wrought on their compatriots the day before, and during that night of the 19 April they had hastily abandoned the station. Dawnay and Lawrence were oblivious to this as they sent two armoured cars down to scout the station, then blow open the station building with machine-gun fire only to find it empty.44 The Turkish garrison had buried its weapons before escaping. Peake commented that the Bedouin who had disappeared the previous night came rushing back to the station attracted by the prospect of even more loot but found the

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Desert Insurgency Figure 9.7 Ramleh Station in 2013 (© author) Note the remains of the impromptu mud-brick parapet on the roof.

station stores guarded by the armoured cars.45 With no one to fight, Dawnay’s force spent the day wrecking kilometres of railway track and demolishing bridges—one explosion almost lifting Lawrence and Rolls out of their seats, showering them with iron, sand, and rubble.46 The station has been much damaged during the last 100 years, and its conflict landscape has remained virtually unnoticed since the raid of April 1918. Investigations in 2014 at North Ramleh Fort 1 revealed a rectangular earthwork on a low rise, 550m north-north-east of the station,47 with earthen parapets and stone-wall revetments, surviving to a height of 1.5m and 1m wide (Figure 9.8). Investigations revealed little other than a few spent Mauser cartridges and .303 bullets mainly on the western wide facing the railway and likely representing a brief exchange of fire (Figure 9.9). A weathered stone-lined path leads south from the karakoll towards the station, passing by a damaged campsite which had sixteen traceable tent-rings.48 The arrangement and location of the campsite indicated a construction-era date, not least because it was about 170m beyond the fort on open ground, safe at that time, but dangerously exposed during the Arab Revolt. Some of the tent-rings may have been occupied on several occasions, perhaps being partly re-used during the Revolt. Few finds came from the camp, though a seal matrix, fragments of an oil lamp, and an intriguing clay pipe bowl were retrieved (Figure 9.10).49 North Ramleh Fort 2 had been more substantial, though was almost obliterated by bulldozing, and was only briefly surveyed. It lies 2.6km north of the station and 95m north-east of the railway. Immediately south are the eroded remains of six tent-rings which could equally be construction era or Arab Revolt.

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush

Figure 9.8

While Ramleh Station’s two northern forts are earth-and-stone karakolls almost certainly North Ramleh Fort 1 belonging to the Arab Revolt, Ramleh South Fort is startlingly different in form, composition, (© author) and location.50 It is a large heavily fortified inselberg, measuring 70m east-west, and 31m north-south, and rising some six metres above the wide plain that stretches from the mouth of Wadi Rutm in the north to the Saudi border beyond Mudawwara in the south (Figure 9.11).51 Its strategic location and visual prominence argues for some medieval if not prehistoric occupation, though the quantity of tumbled stones from later Ottoman times made it impossible to assess this. The summit is surrounded by a much-damaged perimeter wall, whose frequent loopholes at different heights (for kneeling and standing firing) indicate an Arab Revolt date.52 No obvious references to the site appear in any pre-war or wartime sources, despite its commanding position. Its value to the builders and defenders of the  railway, however, is indicated not just by its strategic location, but also by a large construction-era campsite of twenty tent-rings just 76m to the east, lying between the fort and the railway.53 Strangely, pre-twentieth-century sources appear not to have mentioned it either. The railway had followed the Ottoman Hajj route south of Tel Shahm Station, but two kilo­ metres south of Ramleh Station the two separated, the railway forging a straight line south, diverging from the original pilgrim path which progressed several kilometres to the

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Desert Insurgency Figure 9.9 North Ramleh Fort 1 plan (© O. Nelson, A. Gow, S. Daniels/GARP)

south-west, following a more circuitous route behind broken hills and across wadis to eventually emerge in the well-watered artesian area at the site of the eighteenth-century Ottoman Mudawwara Fort. Whether this was a Hajj-era innovation or merely a following of the earlier pre-Islamic trade route is currently guesswork, though the fact that Mudawwara Fort had two large cisterns, a nearby medieval village, and a 500m-stretch of paved road54 indicates that this was the original Ottoman route, not the one that leads directly south from Ramleh Station to where Mudawwara Station was built some three kilometres further east. This is further supported by Frederick Maunsell’s comment that while Mudawwara’s Ottoman Fort is not visible from the station, ‘It has a fair well, and the pilgrim route and telegraph pass that way.’55

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.10 Ramleh Camp, Meerschaum pipe bowl (© Roger Ward)

Figure 9.11 South Ramleh Fort, with Turkish defensive wall visible on the summit (© author)

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Desert Insurgency

Mudawwara and its Conflict Landscape Mudawwara Station56 at Km 572 was built over a large aquifer water source, a fact which had determined the area an important stop-over for the original Hajj caravans, probably pre-Islamic traders, and today is marked by circular irrigated agricultural fields.57 The station lies just over three kilometres east of Mudawwara Fort and a nearby medieval village, and is mentioned in the construction era sources (see chapter 4). Its infrastructure, which made it such an obvious target for Arab and British raids during the Revolt, included an engine shed and two 201m-long sidings, a windmill-driven water pump, two large water-storage tanks, and several buildings of typical railway architecture. From mid-1917, Mudawwara ceased to be just the largest railway station between Ma’an and the nearby modern border with Saudi Arabia, and became the centre of a post-Aqaba conflict landscape. The station appears frequently in Arab Revolt sources, due to three abortive attacks before the success of 8 August 1918. The first had been around 17 September 1917, the occasion when a Turkish sentry had failed to see the raiders as he was lighting his cig­ ar­ette.58 Judging the station too heavily defended Lawrence withdrew, and arguably threw away the best opportunity to take it by surprise. The second attempt on 22 January 1918 by a large force of armoured cars, artillery, over a thousand Bedouin, and a regular army detachment under Feisal failed when inter-tribal disputes stopped the Bedouin clans from joining in.59 A third and arguably more speculative attempt on 21 April was abandoned when Lawrence’s and Dawnay’s force found itself outgunned by Turkish long-range artillery.60 Mudawwara Station today is all but lost within a large Bedouin settlement—a curious mix of traditional long tents and cement houses cut through by the modern highway to the border post with Saudi Arabia. Running in parallel to the east is the ghost of former glory, the trackless embankment of the Hejaz Railway. Several original station buildings remain well preserved by virtue of housing Bedouin families (Figure 9.12), but there is otherwise little trace of original infrastructure and none of the trenches that once protected the ­station’s eastern flank.61 No mud-brick walls have survived around the station, though a photo­graph taken just after its capture by the British shows Turkish prisoners gathered around one of the buildings whose extra shield of mud-brick walls is visible in the background (Figure 5.14). The conflict archaeology at Mudawwara is focused less on the station than on three fortified positions to the west, the Northern, Central, and Southern redoubts, built atop low sandstone hills, each with excellent views and fields of fire as recorded by Lt H. R. Junor on 21 April 1918 (Figure 9.13). All defended the western approaches, but do not seem to have been there in August 1917, when Lawrence was told by the local Bedouin that the station was ‘weak and vulnerable’.62 Yet, just a month later, during the first unsuccessful attack of 17 September, and in the middle of Behçet Bey’s railway militarization programme, Lawrence described ‘a place where the Turks had dug trenches, and built up with stones an elaborate outpost of engrailed sangars’ though it was desolate and clearly unmanned. The station itself he noted appeared to have no defensive trenches at this point.63 Before any assault on Mudawwara took place, the station was apparently already part of the reinforcement initiative emanating from Ma’an, and particularly so because Aqaba, now in ArabBritish hands, was only 100  kilometres away to the west. Just two days after this failed

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.12 Mudawwara Station building in 2011 (© author)

attack, the railway’s v­ ulnerability in this area was highlighted in dramatic fashion with the ambush at Hallat Ammar a few kilometres to the south (described later in this chapter ). At some point after September 1917, further defences were built in Mudawwara’s western approaches, recalling the outer fortified ring at Ma’an, albeit on a less ambitious scale. The sequence of construction is problematical however, as archive documents and historical accounts of the battle suggest different views on the identification and building of Mudawwara’s three redoubts. What would the archaeology reveal?

The Northern Redoubt Strategically positioned atop the northernmost fortified hill, the Northern Redoubt64 played a key role in the 8 August fighting for Mudawwara Station just a kilometre away (Figure 9.14). Three main elements are visible today: an impressive dry-stone wall enclosing the site in all but the south-western quarter,65 a series of exterior breastwork defences, and an inner zone on the highest part of hill which includes circular stone-walled structures. The entire site is characterized by conflict, with abundant incoming and outgoing smallarms munitions as well as grenade shrapnel and shrapnel balls. There is clear evidence too for high-explosive damage to the wall, most likely the result of artillery and aerial bombardment during the August 1918 attack.66 The wall is mainly rectangular blocks of local stone lying on bedrock, and in 2012–13 it survived to a height of around one metre, with an average width of 0.75m. Such a high feature running uphill is unique in our investigations, its Arab Revolt-period date reinforced by the integrated loopholes.67 At the summit, evidence of fighting in ten spent Mauser cartridges and four clips were uncovered in the north-western area,68 and a curving spur

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Desert Insurgency Figure 9.13 Mudawwara Station and its defended landscape, Junor’s sketch-map made on 21 April 1918 (Photo © John Winterburn, TNA Air1/1667/204/100/3)

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Figure 9.14

wall led from the perimeter creating two intercutting circular features.69 Although no obvious purpose could be established, the circle furthest from the perimeter wall70 lay open on its western edge where it linked directly to the other circle.71 It was clear that this second circle saw intense outgoing fire due to the thirty-five spent Mauser cartridges and eight clips discovered here.72 Nearby, a metre-wide entrance pierced the perimeter wall, leading into the interior from the remains of an exterior zigzag trench,73 and to the east of this gap was part of a wall74 protected by an outer bank of earth beyond.75 This may have been a secondary firing pos­ ition, perhaps covering the main occupation behind it, a view supported by the presence of more incoming and outgoing munitions.76 An unusual object incorporated in the wall was a section of rail lying on bedrock, which may have added structural integrity or perhaps was a quick repair after an attack. The summit’s flat open ground preserved traces of Turkish occupation and British assault. There were remains of seven circular stone structures, one of which77 had a wall of at least seven courses, though the lack of artefacts meant that its purpose is unknown. Four craters nearby were further dramatic evidence of conflict, the result either of incoming artillery or aerial bombardment, as both are well documented. By 04.30 on 8 August, Brodie’s artillery shelled the redoubt with high explosive and shrapnel shells, and the British who had taken the Southern Redoubt by this time fired Pom-Pom guns at it as

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Mudawwara, Northern Redoubt, excavation overlooking the station with modern circular fields in the distance (© author)

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Desert Insurgency well.78 Over the next two hours, the RAF bombed the site, and at 05.00 Siddons flew over, saw that the Southern Redoubt had been taken, and that the British attack on the Central Ridge was being shelled by Turkish guns on the Northern Redoubt.79 He dropped ten 20lb Coopers bombs, fired eighty rounds into the Turkish positions, and was followed soon after by three more aircraft flown by Makins, and Lts  C.  R.  Sefi and D.  R.  Grant, who dropped twenty-five more 20lb bombs and fired 485 rounds against it.80 In all, the entire site yielded sixty-seven artillery-related items, including a British eighteen-pounder shell carrier base, and eight Turkish grenade parts.81 What the Turks lacked in manpower, technology, and time, they offset by a creative use of landscape, as evidenced elsewhere. Two breastworks were built as outer defences beyond the perimeter wall to the west, protecting the north-western and south-western approaches.82 From here, a narrow path runs west for some 530m along a ridge to where the Turks had built a low 55m-long west-facing loopholed wall83 overlooking the wadis and hills to the north and west. It would have been past this position that Lt Rowan’s party would begin the final assault on the redoubt. Totally bypassed would have been a curious earthwork located 255m south-west from the redoubt on the other side of the wadi, a 10m long east-west trench ending in a circular sand-and-stone feature.84 Both isolated constructions are little more than rough and ready defended observation posts rather than truly defensive positions, and could have been rapidly built, and just as easily outflanked. Their main purpose perhaps was extending the strategic view of the Northern Redoubt out into the western desert. The Northern Redoubt was not a complex site, but rather a rapid response to defending the station, and whose robustness probably contributed to its garrison’s tenacious defence and the fact that it was the last position to fall. Despite being part of a three-redoubt system, organized as independent firebases offering mutually supporting crossfire against attackers, the Northern Redoubt was taken by a mix of aerial and artillery bombardment and finally stormed from several directions. The lack of available Turkish manpower played a key role here, and at the other two Mudawwara redoubts.

The Central Redoubt An impressive 240m-long loopholed wall dominates the north-south ridge of the Central Redoubt,85 strategically situated between its northern and southern counterparts (Figure 9.15). Facing west, the wall begins at the northernmost tip of the ridge and ends in small eastcurving angle in the south. From this point to the ridge’s southern extremity precipitous slopes offer a natural defence.86 The southernmost part of the ridge guards the narrow approach to the station, opposite the Southern Redoubt which lies 420m away on the other side of the wadi. At least twelve circular depressions of various sizes pockmark the area behind the defensive wall, some of which are likely the result of artillery or aerial bombardment, including Turkish fire from the Northern Redoubt once the position had been overrun by a British bayonet charge. On the summit, several large tent-rings are still identifiable, along with a small square-shaped feature at the location where Junor’ sketch-map of 21 April marked a gun flash position.87 The redoubt was taken by Captain Bell-Irving’s three officers and ninety-five men who surprised the sleeping Turkish defenders just twenty minutes after the fall of the station.

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.15 Mudawwara, Central Redoubt loop-holed wall, looking west (© author)

The Southern Redoubt Standing in the way of the British advance of 8 August was the Southern Redoubt,88 which blocked the easiest western approach. A fortified hill only a kilometre west of the station, in 2013 its remains included a loopholed perimeter wall, sections of breastwork, extra­mural bunkers, and several circular structures (Figure 9.16). The site’s short but violent life was reflected in the small amount of occupation debris89 but large quantities of incoming British .303 and outgoing Mauser munitions in distribution patterns which matched only some of the contemporary accounts of the action. These tell how the position was taken by stealth, and the position turned to become the British headquarters and firebase for op­er­ations against the Northern Redoubt. Investigations showed the well-preserved perimeter wall still stood 1.60m high, was almost a metre thick, and followed the north-south alignment around the hill’s contours, enclosing a flat central area.90 Its construction recalls that of Fassu’ah Ridge Fort above Batn al-Ghoul, with large to medium-sized stones on the outside and smaller packing stones in the interior, with loopholes 1.80m apart, and at an average height of a metre above ground level.91 Three long sections of breastwork reinforced the wall on the southern, northern, and eastern sides. The southernmost skirts the forward edge of a narrow terrace beyond and below the perimeter wall, forming a semi-circle curving around the narrow end of the hill. While it is largely ruinous, with only a few courses of large angular stones standing half a metre in height,92 at least eight loopholes survive,93 one of which yielded eleven spent Mauser cartridges.94 The northern counterpart occupies a comparable position on the opposite side of the hill, again beyond and below the perimeter wall. Its loopholed wall95 is  backed by a trench dug into bedrock, and curves to form a rough semi-circle which descends on its east side to meet a bunker-like structure. Metal-detecting and excavation yielded only a few munitions.96 The eastern breastwork is an impressive 40m-long ­freestanding loopholed wall aligned east-west along a spur. It guards the main access path

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Figure 9.16 Mudawwara Southern to the redoubt with twenty-two south-facing capstoned loopholes, though there were Redoubt prob­ably more originally.97 These were spaced just over one metre apart, and their height (© Mudawwara Southern Redoubt APAAME_20171002_RHB0082)

above ground, between 0.40m and 0.70m, implies they were used in a kneeling position. At least two loopholes had evidently seen action, one yielding a dozen spent Mauser cartridges. Five bunker-like structures of various sizes had been built at different elevations around the hill, all beneath the level of the perimeter wall, though none had loopholes or evidence which could identify their original purpose and several may be unfinished.98 The northwestern one had an arrowhead form enclosing several internal walls which created two distinct cells with a larger L-shaped cell wrapped around it to the rear (Figure 9.17), and its soil floor had been carefully levelled and rammed. The remains of four large tent-rings were discovered on the middle terrace of the northeastern slope of the hill, with three more on the lower terrace.99 All had deep sunken floors cut into bedrock, and large blocks forming small walls. Their exposed location and lack of domestic items suggests they may have been firing positions, particularly one located on the lower terrace100 which had excellent enfilade across the eastern and western slopes. Alternatively, they could represent higher-ranking officers’ accomodation,101 the evidence was inconclusive.102

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.17 Mudawwara, Southern Redoubt, excavation of extramural northern ‘bunker’ (© author)

The redoubt’s main structure was a three-level construction built into the hillside from the lower terrace, whose intermediate level had two ‘alcoves’ opposite a central access.103 Excavation104 revealed floors paved with flat slabs of rock, and a one-metre-wide stepped-entrance in the front wall. It appears to have been a two-tier, two-roomed structure, with storage space between. Lower down the outside slope were three small square constructions ideally located to be forward firing positions but lacking evidence of this they might have been ancillary domestic structures.105 No evidence was found of the reported British observation post at the southern end of the site, and three ring-shaped structures within the perimeter wall had no obvious function.106 * The Southern Redoubt played a key role in the defence and battle of Mudawwara, but de­cipher­ing and indeed correlating the historical and archaeological evidence is problematical as well as revealing. The account of military action seems clear enough. The redoubt took the brunt of the attack on 8 August, when Captain Lyall, three officers, and fifty men of the ICC dismounted their camels, removed their boots, and advanced in stealth on the pos­ition at 03.45. The first of many Mills bombs (hand grenades) were thrown inside at 04.00, and as they exploded, the attackers stormed the position with bayonets to find the Turks still in their tents. There was no contest, and the Southern Redoubt was the first fortified hilltop position to fall, its capture marked by the firing of a red Verey Light. The spent .303 cartridges represent outgoing British fire aimed east towards the station, and belong to the immediate aftermath of the capture, and evidence the turning of the pos­ition.107 The archaeology, however, presents a conundrum. This is because despite the fact that the Turks were overrun without firing a shot, there is clear archaeological evidence for a dramatic fire-fight as the site as a whole yielded 181 munitions-related finds.108 Outgoing

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Desert Insurgency Turkish fire occurred at various points around the site, but mainly on the western side as shown by a concentration of twenty-four spent Mauser cartridges at a single loophole.109 The archaeological question has a historical answer. These cartridges cannot date to the 8 August, but they could (and most likely do) belong to the only other documented occasion of fighting at Mudawwara, the second failed assault on 22 January 1918. On this occasion, both Siddons and Joyce referred to a ‘single hilltop fortification overlooking the station’,110 an observation supported by an RFC report of 22–23 January which recorded the bombing of the ‘railway station and fortified hill’.111 Further historical evidence is provided by Lawrence who, despite not being present, reported that this assault failed even ‘after a first Turkish outpost had fallen to a bold rush’.112 Joyce’s official report for 22 January is also supportive—‘The Turkish position west of the station is strongly held and the Arabs were unable to take it yesterday. They will probably have a try to-day.’113 Given that the Southern Redoubt is the only one which lies west of the station (the others being north-west) the circumstantial evidence strongly indicates that it was the first built, and that the Mauser munitions are traces of vigorous Turkish defence against the ultimately unsuccessful second Arab-British attack. While archaeology and history work together on this issue, the historical evidence is ambivalent on related matters. In his same report of 22 January, Joyce also says that Feisal ‘would like the fortified hill top just west of the station well bombed. There is also another position about 500 or 700 yards North of this hill which should be bombed.’114 This indicates that by January 1918 there were two redoubts in existence, and the distance between them only fits that between the Southern Redoubt and the Central Redoubt, suggesting that the Northern Redoubt was the last to be built. While this fragment of historical information provides insight into a possible building sequence for these Turkish defensive positions, it appears to be contradicted by a sketchmap made by Siddons just a week later on 1 March. This shows only the Northern and Southern Redoubts, with the intervening central hill marked as having no defences. The map evidence indicates the Central Redoubt was the last to be constructed. A possible explanation is that the distances given are significant underestimates, and that Joyce’s comment about ‘another position’ to be bombed referred to the Northern Redoubt rather than the non-existent Central Redoubt, and that the true distance between them should have been around 1,200 yards, not 500 to 700 yards. Siddons’ sketch-map had to be geographically precise as it was intended as a guide for RAF bombing, and it therefore seems likely that the Southern and Northern Redoubts preceded the Central Redoubt. However, there is no indication in these various accounts, or in our archaeological research, as to whether the Northern Redoubt or the Southern Redoubt was built first, if indeed they were not more or less contemporary. Lawrence adds to this complicated picture by his ambiguous comment concerning the very first unsuccessful attack in September 1917, when he observed an ‘elaborate outpost of engrailed sangars’ (Lawrence 2003: 400). This appears to describe the first and only redoubt in existence at that time, but whether the Southern or Northern is debatable.115 In any event, by 21 April 1918, the sketch-map produced after Junor’s reconnaissance flight shows all three redoubts (Figure 9.13), the most recent central one clearly built in the seven weeks since Siddons’ 1 March map showed only two.116 The archaeological evidence at the Southern Redoubt is sufficiently detailed in terms of the distribution of munitions to

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush permit discrimination between separate actions recorded in the historical accounts, whereas that from the Northern Redoubt is not.

Ambush at Hallat Ammar, Km 587 Guerrilla warfare against the Hejaz Railway achieved arguably its most spectacular success not against a station but in what would later be regarded as a classic ambush. On 19 September 1917, just two days after the first failed attempt on Mudawwara Station, Auda’s nephew Zaal had told Lawrence that he knew a good area for a train ambush between Mudawwara and the next station south at Hallat Ammar. So visually stunning and devastating was this attack and its immortalization by Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom that it became the iconic scene in David Lean’s 1962 film, with Peter O’Toole rushing down a sandy slope robes billowing and pistol held high.117 But what was the truth? How have history, literature, Hollywood, and popular memory served this event, and what insight has archaeology brought to our understanding of what really happened at Km 587? Today, the Hallat Ammar ambush site118 lies in no-mans-land between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Access to this sensitive demilitarized zone was gained through local connections and on condition of an accompanying military escort of the Royal Jordanian Army. The site of the ambush lies by a bridge on a curve of the railroad some 15km south of Mudawwara Station and three and half kilometres north of Hallat Ammar Station (now just across the border in Saudi Arabia). As the ambush site did not exist before September 1917, it does not appear in the pre-war accounts of the railway construction era, and there are no RFC reports or sketch-maps relating to it before or after the event. However, the site was visited and worked on during the 1960s by the engineers and labourers of the railway refurbishment project. Despite a century of change, reconnaissance in 2012 revealed the local geography closely matched Lawrence’s description. To the south, the ground rises to a series of broken high ridges and recalls Lawrence’s report that at sunset on the evening before the ambush some of the Bedouin sat silhouetted against the horizon, and were plainly visible to Turkish soldiers manning Hallat Ammar station. So alarmed was the garrison that they opened fire on the Bedouin from a small karakoll nearby before night set in.119 A century later, we too were warned not make ourselves skyline targets for the Saudi border guards. The ridges overlook the railway which, travelling north to south crosses a two-arch bridge then veers south-east for a kilometre before turning south towards Hallat Ammar Station. Rocky shelves extend northwards from the ridges, one of which lies 200m from the bridge and just 100m from the railway embankment as it curves to the south-east. This conspiracy of nature and culture convinced Lawrence that Zaal had been right. The bridge was perfect for laying an explosive charge, and the ledge for positioning machine guns and Stokes mortars. Together they offered a deadly ‘enfilade because . . . the curve would be masterful whether the train was going up or down the line’.120 GPS survey, satellite imagery, Lawrence’s account, and the evidence of our own eyes left little doubt that this was the right location. Any lingering doubts were dispelled by heaps of rusting railway debris littering the area. By 2013, negotiations had made it possible for the whole team to enter the demilitarized zone, though the working day was to be cut short by vacating the site at 3pm prior to a routine security sweep by Jordanian border guards. This was the first time the ambush site had been studied archaeologically. It was also another evaluation of the accuracy of

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Desert Insurgency Lawrence’s account in Seven Pillars, hitherto the main published record of events. Here was the archaeology of ten minutes on 19 September 1917—an event which became a symbol of modern guerrilla warfare, and an enduring image in cinema history. Despite its isolation, the archaeology of the ambush site could not be the pristine remains of the Arab Revolt, but rather, as elsewhere, a layering of the intervening century’s ac­tiv­ ities, disturbing, overlaying, and obscuring some of the events of the attack. These included post-ambush rebuilding of the bridge by the Turks, their replacement of blown track, and fortifying of the area with defensive constructions between September 1917 and MarchApril 1918. After the First World War, there were military activities in the area from the 1920s onwards following the establishment of Saudi Arabia and the fixing of the border with what was then Transjordan. The 1960s railway renovation saw further clearance and moving of debris, a second rebuild of the bridge, and a reconfiguration of the embankment on a partially new alignment along the western bend, immediately east of the original which was still visible in 2012. Bulldozing and gravel-laying associated with these activities destroyed any trace of Turkish positions on the inner curve of the bend, along with any possible line of spent cartridges representing their outgoing fire. This had important implications for the archaeology, as the site’s integrity was clearly only partial. Investigations would reveal just seven Mauser munitions but thirty-eight .303 examples, contrasting the damaged Turkish positions with the comparatively undamaged Arab-British ones.121

Archaeology of an Ambush The Hallat Ammar ambush was about metal—trains, track, mines, and munitions—and so metal-detector survey was invaluable. No identifiable trace of the looting of the train was found, though the large quantity of railway debris had doubtless been sifted, robbed, and moved around in the intervening years. The first pile was created by the Turks in the aftermath of the ambush as they were unable to repair the locomotives and broke them up.122 The present dump is likely the result of the 1960s clearance and reconstruction.123 It includes twisted and heavily corroded tracks and sleepers, some of which had been cut in situ, though some had fractures and torsion likely caused by an explosion (Figure 9.18).124 Gaining insights into the ambush was a key aim of the investigation, and the most significant development in this respect was the discovery of two clusters of spent munitions (Figure 9.19 a and b). The first was identified along the low rocky shelf south-west of the railway, identified as the Bedouin riflemen’s firing position. As Lawrence observed, ‘The Arabs posted themselves in a long line behind the spur . . . [from where] they would fire directly into derailed carriages from the flank at less than one hundred and fifty yards.’125 A tightly spread group of twelve spent .303 cartridges and a more dispersed group of five more were discovered here as outgoing fire targeting the train. At the eastern end of this cluster, part of a Stokes mortar was recovered, which may pinpoint the position of the weapon as it matches where Lawrence implies it (and the Lewis guns) was located. A single incoming Mauser bullet was likely fired either from the train itself or the embankment, the latter position yielding another solitary Mauser cartridge due to post-war activities mentioned above. One .303 cartridge was retrieved from the area between the ledge and the railway. North-east of the railway embankment, in an area of open ground, a second cluster of munitions was found. This scatter of sixteen .303 bullets was likely mostly fired from the Lewis guns as from rifles, with one .303 bullet further away, and two 8mm French Lebel bullets nearby. Amid the cluster of .303 bullets there was an unusual single bullet from a

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush Figure 9.18 Hallat Ammar ambush site, shattered steel sleeper and Redoubt R1AS in distance (© author) The ambush site lies along the line of the embankment seen in the foreground.

hand-gun126 and a fragment of a Stokes mortar bomb. A total of twenty bullets represented incoming fire, the location and nature of which match Lawrence’s description of the final phase of the attack, when Turkish soldiers fled the cover of the embankment and were cut down as they escaped northwards. As Lawrence wrote, ‘This was the opportunity of the Lewis gunners. The sergeant grimly traversed with drum after drum, till the open sand was littered with bodies.’127 That some of these soldiers offered token resistance in these final minutes is indicated by the finding of four Mauser cartridges in the vicinity. Lawrence clearly states that seventy Turkish troops were killed during the ambush, mainly by the Stokes mortar or the Lewis machine guns, while another thirty were wounded and ninety taken prisoner.128 The desert was littered with objects which became the treasured loot of the Bedouin. While the attack has been described in chapter 5, it is worth describing the last chaotic phase in Lawrence’s own words: The valley was a weird sight. The Arabs had gone raving mad, and were rushing about at top speed bare-headed and half-naked, screaming, shooting in the air, clawing one another nail and fist, while they burst into trucks and staggered back and forward with immense bales of goods. . . . The booty was enormous. The Arabs ripped open the bundles and tossed the contents over the ground . . . There were sixty carpets . . . dozens of mattresses and flowered quilts . . . clothes for men and women in all variety, clocks, cooking pots, food, ornaments and weapons. To one side stood thirty or forty hys­ter­ ic­ al women, unveiled, tearing their clothes and hair, shrieking themselves distracted . . . Camels had become common property. Each man frantically loaded the nearest with what it could carry, and then shooed it off westward into the void. (Lawrence 2003: 409–10)

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While the looters were busy loading their camels, it may have been an opportunity for Lawrence to lever off the bronze Hejaz Railway nameplate from one of the locomotives (chapter 3) though he makes no mention of it. Burying the dead would have been a priority for the Turks who arrived shortly after the raiders had sped off westwards. In 2013, our military escort pointed out the remains of a possible battlefield cemetery—a long low mound of sun-baked grey-green clay, with traces of what may originally have been boundary stones.129 While no in situ burials were seen, fragments of human bone lay scattered around and the partial remains of at least two individuals and associated textile fragments were located nearby.130 The Jordanian Department of Antiquities undertook the recording and re-interment of the visible remains nearby. It is likely that these remains at such an isolated place belonged to the ambush, a view supported by local tradition and the finding of two star-and-crescent buttons and textile fragments.131 Traces of what may be a single burial were found on a small mound a short distance south of the railway. Two human bones, a femur and a scapula, lay on the surface at either end of the mound along with two corroded military-type buttons from the top of the mound.132 If this is a military burial then it likely relates to the ambush, though could be an unexplained fatality from a later time. Stories relating to Turkish graves in this area made by Eric Grieg during the 1960s refurbishment are ambiguous, and could refer to the ambush site or the area of Hallat Ammar Station with its toppled Hartmann locomotive.133 The lessons of the ambush were quickly learnt by the Turks, though in all likelihood too late. The archaeology of their response to 19 September is itself intriguing and sheds light

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on the events that followed. Three structures lie south of the railway near the ambush site and all seem to tell the same story. None could have been there before the ambush. If they had been, Lawrence’s mission would have been suicidal. Overlooking the railway here are two stone-built redoubts built in exposed ridge-top positions, out of bounds to us as highly visible to Saudi border guards.134 Neither Lawrence nor anybody else mentions them before or on 19 September, and their presence would have meant that the raiders had their

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Figure 9.19  Continued (b) distribution of armaments

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Desert Insurgency backs to Turkish soldiers. The western redoubt protected the western approaches to the railway (as always, the direction of expected maximum threat), and lay just 900m southwest of the bridge targeted by Lawrence.135 The eastern redoubt was only 250m south-west of the railway, and directly overlooked a structure we called the blockhouse.136 Both redoubts it seems were built after the ambush. The blockhouse appears contemporary with the redoubts, and lies next to the railway skirting the northern edge of the ridges (Figure 9.20). It lay almost directly beneath the eastern redoubt. Built of roughly coursed stone and gritty grey cement mortar,137 it had four small square structures immediately to the south.138 Given its proximity to the railway, just 35m away, the position was likely a halt. In its northern section, each of the six rooms had one or more doorways and windows,139 and there was an unfinished annex on the south side. The latter may have been a second phase on the evidence of butt joints. The building was constructed on a level platform cut into the sloping bedrock140 with traces of a concrete floor laid on top, and indications of a low-pitched slanting gable roof. This northern section may be a first phase of construction, with the butt joints in the walling indicating that a second was added later to the south side. If the blockhouse was a post-ambush construction then it may be uncompleted, a possibility suggested by a rear wall running just over halfway along its length, and which excavation showed to have a cut terrace and foundation stones in place for the wall’s planned but unfinished continuation. Immediately south are four small ancillary buildings, possibly including a cookhouse and a latrine.141 While it is possible that somewhere nearby lies a tent-ring campsite, it is more likely that Turkish soldiers would have been trained in, either from Hallat Ammar or Mudawwara stations. The blockhouse, as with the redoubts, could not have existed before the ambush and for the same reasons, and so it too appears to be a response to that event. The archaeology Figure 9.20 Hallat Ammar ambush site, surveying the post-ambush blockhouse (© author)

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C oncealment, Raiding, and Ambush hints that it might be unfinished and perhaps never occupied due to the speed at which the railway here was rendered unusable by British and Arab attacks. As the line south of Ma’an was cut in April 1918, there would have been no reason to finish or occupy the blockhouse, nor indeed to man the redoubts. This view is supported by the lack of any finds in the blockhouse except a single coin.142 The evidence points to a date for the blockhouse’s construction sometime between September 1917 and March 1918. The blockhouse and redoubts seem to represent the archaeology of a brief post-ambush period in this area, invisible to history, unmentioned by Lawrence and military sources. The September 1917 to March 1918 time-frame, the final months of the railway’s life, saw the Turks militarizing locations whose vulnerability had been revealed by the ambush. Redoubt and blockhouse construction would have been a priority, but the strategy was also extended out into the desert, incorporating places which shared a similar combination of vulnerable isolation, bridges, and bends in the railway which required trains to slow down and hence become easier targets. One such location lies six kilometres north of the ambush site, and mirrors the latter’s geography as the railway bends to the north-west, crosses a multi-span bridge then travels over a second smaller bridge before making its way north to Mudawwara Station some eight kilometres away. This is even more isolated than the ambush site which was four kilometres from Hallat Ammar Station. For the Turks, there would seem little point in militarizing the ambush site only to push vulnerability northwards to a similar and un­defend­ed location. The archaeological evidence is a well-preserved sangar exactly at this weak point143 which has stone-walling along the four sides of a raised sand-and-earth mound which stands around a metre above the low-lying plain. Two paths connect it to the railway. One leads some 390m south-east to the large multi-span bridge which crosses a wadi, and the better-preserved second path leads 310m north-east to the smaller bridge. The sangar appears to serve the same defensive purpose here as do the two more substantial redoubts overlooking the ambush site. Its remoteness, simple structure, and proximity to the bridges are hallmarks of a rapidly built defence as at Siddons’ Ridge Camp and Siddons’ Bridge Fort, rather than belonging to the railway construction era. As at Siddons’ Ridge Camp, horizontal stratigraphy reinforces this in­ter­pret­ ation. Just a few metres north-east of the sangar is a typical construction-era campsite of twenty tent-rings,144 through at least three of which the north-easterly path cuts a straight line to the railway. The path was later, and the sangar it seems was likely a post-ambush construction. The timing of such defence-building is instructive for another reason. The Hallat Ammar ambush falls exactly within the time-frame of Behçet Bey’s militarization of the railway, coming just weeks after Falkenhayn’s arrival at Ma’an Station. The loss of Aqaba highlighted the weakness of the railway as well as Ma’an, and Lawrence’s ambush rammed the point home. It can be argued that the post-ambush defences of this remote southern area were the result not only of the ambush, but also of the general fortifying of such remote locations. The blockhouse, the two prominent redoubts, and the sangar, are nowhere mentioned in the historical accounts, probably because they were virtually redundant before they were built. After the ambush, Arab-British priorities focused less on launching another opportunistic desert attack in this remote area, and more on raiding the stations south of Ma’an and taking the large and well-defended station at Mudawwara. The post-ambush

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Desert Insurgency archae­ology tells of a reconfigured conflict landscape in a locality which never again saw  any fighting—and which to all intents and purposes was a fossilization of Turkish responses to a threat which no longer existed. The Hallat Ammar ambush had been a spectacular success in late 1917, but militarily it was a pinprick. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, bigger prizes were to be won. The Arab Revolt had moved on.

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10

Beyond the Railway Conflict Landscapes of the Arab Revolt

A

conflict landscape hidden in plain view for more than a century was the most significant discovery of the Great Arab Revolt Project. Glimpsed in the historical sources, yet only truly known to the Bedouin, this landscape characterized by defensive constructions was mainly created in the months following the fall of Aqaba in July 1917, and by military operations between then and September 1918, after which it was quickly forgotten. It was invisible to us until the encounter with the Turkish army camp at Wadi Rutm in 2006—a sign to an unknown conflict zone beyond the railway. Lawrence called the strategy of raiding the Hejaz Railway a war of detachment, and so it proved—sometimes very detached indeed from the line which ran the 113 kilometres south from Ma’an to Mudawwara. It had quickly become clear that this twentieth-century conflict landscape was embedded in earlier (sometimes far earlier) and later human activities, and that efforts to investigate and understand it involved deciphering a complex palimpsest of superimposed and interleaving layers. The challenge was marked by the sheer number of these layers, each a trace of the social world which produced it. At the very least, in our study area, we can identify the following: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Faint traces of prehistoric occupation Faint traces of pre-Islamic trade routes Substantial remains of the traditional Ottoman Hajj route Construction of the Hejaz Railway between 1905 and 1906 Construction of post-Aqaba railway defences between, at most, August 1917 and March 1918 Arab-British raids mainly from August 1917 to September 1918 Turkish repairs to embankment, bridges, and railway in the wake of Arab-British attacks Final ad hoc Turkish defences, most likely post-Hallat Ammar ambush (at Hallat Ammar Ambush site and Mudawwara) Short-lived repair and and re-use of the railway between 1919 and the mid-1920s Abandonment and robbing from the late 1920s to the early 1960s Occasional re-use of Turkish campsites by the Bedouin from 1930s to the present A vernacular architecture composed of the re-use of railway sleepers and rails in houses (and at least one boutique hotel) and as fence-posts, probably from the 1930s to the present Abortive refurbishment of railway infrastructure of the mid-to-late 1960s

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Desert Insurgency • Partial rebuilding and strengthening of railway embankment and line during the 1970s to carry phosphate trains • Bulldozing and robbing of Hejaz Railway sites from the 1970s to the present • Various examples of modern industrial infrastructure and consequent trashing/ disturbance, such as the 1970s desert highway, and the construction of the ‘Disi Water Conveyance Project’ (DWCP) in 2009–13 A decade in the desert revealed the anthropological archaeology of the Arab Revolt of 1916–18 to be more than the excavation of historically recent places or the survey of ruinous station buildings. It was rather an interdisciplinary study of the railway’s heritage from 1900 to the present, its role as a catalyst in creating a unique conflict landscape, and its intriguing relationships with earlier Hajj routes. Some bare facts are insightful. The majority of tent-ring campsites in our area belong to just over two years of railway construction (1905–6), and most railway fortifications were built in less than eight months (August 1917–March 1918, and likely between August and October 1917). The railway was also entangled with the beginnings of modern guerrilla warfare, the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and a complex and sometimes volatile mix of traditional Bedouin culture, modernity, religion, and local and national politics. Furthermore, the Revolt itself was embedded in the wider regional and geo-political framework of the First World War and its many aftermaths: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of the modern Middle East, the rise of Arab Nationalism, the Second World War, the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the destructive legacy of the Islamic State’s short-lived Caliphate announced in 2014, and Syria’s descent into a tortuous and tragic civil war. One future aftermath may be the opening up of Saudi Arabia, and the study of the railway’s conflict and wider cultural heritage in an area sealed from the wider world since the 1920s. Guerrilla warfare has always been asymmetrical conflict, pitting the few against the many, taking advantage of local knowledge and speed of movement to counteract the enemy’s superior numbers. While this had been the essence of Bedouin raids against the Ottoman Hajj caravans for centuries, the arrival of modern weaponry in the Arab Revolt had augmented the eighteenth-century revolution which had seen the Bedouin acquire hand-held firearms. These weapons had refined their raiding behaviour to pose an even greater threat to the Hajj, to combat which the Ottomans had built a series of forts along the Darb al-Hajj al-Shami pilgrimage route. The karakolls, redoubts, and other fortified locations we investigated were the 1917–18 equivalents of these historical forts, protecting the new Hajj route of the railway less from the traditional Bedouin foe, than from the new hybrid threat of which they were a part, and which incorporated the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries’ technological revolution in weaponry. The railway had focused the Ottomans on late nineteenth-century Western transportation technology, and this in turn framed and shaped their way of war. They struggled to contain the threat of the desert, and our research was the archaeology of that struggle. While the railway and its station buildings suffered a century of destruction, repair, modification, rebuilding, and abandonment, the security cordon of these post-Aqaba karakolls and redoubts remained remarkably intact in our area in 2006, due in part to the fact they were largely unrecognized as part of a wider conflict landscape. Many of their locations were either unknown to or disregarded by the British and their Arab allies during

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Beyond the Railway the Revolt, as aerial reconnaissance revealed no sign of Turkish occupation, and thus they posed no threat to attacks on the line. As a consequence, most have little or no historical presence, and are only occasionally glimpsed in the written record (and with different names), such as Ghadir al Haj North 1, Siddons’ Bridge Fort, and Tel Shahm Fort South. The karakoll and redoubt defences could be effective, but, for various reasons ultimately failed to counter the threat of high explosives delivered by armoured car and aircraft. Many of our investigations illustrated this point, from the blasted ruins of Aqabat Hejazia Station, to the fragments of shattered railway track at Tel Shahm, the virtually intact armoured-car camp of Tooth Hill East, and traces of the devastation wrought at Mudawwara. The karakoll at Ghadir al Haj North 1, and Makins’ Fort perched on a wadi edge, were two of several sites which preserved wolf-pits as likely traces of hastily erected belts of barbed-wire. While these would have caused problems for the mounted Bedouin forces active in the area, they were useless against machine guns, artillery, armoured cars, and aerial bombing. Behçet Bey’s railway defence was a creative and sometimes effective response to the post-Aqaba threat, but his lack of manpower and resources and the consequent absence of Turkish search-and-destroy missions contributed to its undoing. The karakolls, guarding vulnerable bridges and culverts, together with the refortification of stations with blast walls, loopholes, mud-brick walls, and trenches, are joined by more ephemeral traces of the conflict beyond the railway, such as the two armoured-car camps at Tooth Hill, and other sites even further afield (see later in this chapter). This expansion of the conflict landscape into a zone invisible from the railway was made possible by modern technology increasing the range and impact of a surprise attack. Lawrence seemed to grasp what many others did not, that technology alone should not drive strategy—as on the Western Front (most notably and disastrously in 1916, on the Somme and at Verdun)— but that here it should be harnessed to and meshed with age-old raiding practices which played to the strengths of the Bedouin, albeit catalysed by large payments of gold. Even where the Bedouin didn’t participate in an operation, as on the final assault on Mudawwara Station in August 1918, the spirit of the traditional Arab razzia hung in the air. The archaeological remains of these usually short-lived but intense confrontations are traces of the weaponization of the materiality of landscape, made possible by the hybrid force of the British and their Arab (Bedouin) allies. This new force played to the strengths of traditional knowledge of space, how to move between places, how to magnify the impact of small numbers of men by bringing them to bear unexpectedly in different places with maximum economy of force. This age-old guerrilla tactic was transformed by Western technological developments in the speed of movement, and the quantity and rapidity of offensive fire—from modern rifles to machine guns, artillery to mines.1 More broadly, it seems that space became ‘charged and responsive to the movements of time and history and the enduring character of a people’.2 This weaponization of the physical spaces in-between natural and cultural features of the desert created a radically different and more dangerous world, where things were not what they had been before. Now, a bridge or culvert was no longer just a piece of railway architecture, but rather an empty repository waiting for high explosive, where the area beneath railway sleepers became a magnifying chamber for ‘tulip’ demolition, where a vast underground aquifer made Mudawwara Station a prize target for British-Arab attacks, where an isolated hillock became a fire-base, a centuries-old mudflat became a runway for aerial bombing missions, where a railway embankment became an impromptu

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Desert Insurgency breastwork, a ridge became a fire-trench, and low hills became a screen for a motorized armoured-car column. In this way, such features revealed their previously latent ­qualities—what James Gibson called ‘affordances’.3 War changed human perception of the environment—natural features became artefacts of conflict, as did previously civilian elements of railway infrastructure. In the Arab Revolt, the space between places became an ever more lethal dimension. For millennia, the physical distance between different locations had provided a degree of security in that the calculation of time-and-distance was constant, and could not exceed the speed of a horse. First used by the Assyrians in the ninth century bc, cavalry had revolutonized the time it took to move from one place to another, but this advantage had remained static for millennia, and had long been factored in for war.4 The advent of locomotives had recalibrated this equation (and its cultural perceptions) during the nineteenth century, but had two serious drawbacks—railways required a huge investment in time and money to create their infrastructure, and their direction of travel was linear. For the Hejaz Railway, movement was north-south, whereas the British use of motorized vehicles (and aircraft) meant that rapid attacks could be launched from any direction,5 and with virtually no infrastructure.6 Motorized vehicles demolished the ­age-old calculation of time-space between places, reshaping the tactical advantages bestowed by topography, and leaving a distinctive if often ephemeral debris field in their wake. Epitomizing these issues was the transformation of space between the Tooth Hill Camps and Tel Shahm Station in the armoured-car raid of April 1918, evidenced by Lawrence and others who observed that such was the speed and surprise of attack that the Turks were still asleep in their trenches. And yet, it could have been so different. In one of Lawrence’s most perceptive but underacknowledged comments on motorized warfare, he wrote to Wavell in a post-war letter: ‘If the Turks had put machine guns on three or four of their touring cars, & driven them on weekly patrol over the admirable going of the desert E. of Amman & Maan they would have put an absolute stop to our camel-parties, & so to our rebellion. . . . [Instead] They scraped up cavalry & armoured trains and camel corps & block-houses against us: because they didn’t think hard enough.’7 One consequence of these events was a material trace of the by-product of the industrialization which brought Western technology into being. Before the nineteenth-century’s Industrial Revolution, weapons were often expensive and time consuming to make, and were retrieved from the battlefield wherever possible. By the early twentieth century at least, industrialized weapons manufacture could produce millions of such items, many of which, once used, were abandoned on the battlefield and became the remains of conflict. Even ephemeral confrontations in the desert could be traced in the tell-tale spread of Mauser and .303 cartridges, and artillery-shell fragments—the debris of modern war, the rubbish of industrialization, and a unique layer of the archaeology of ­modern conflict. These distinct yet connected elements of the Arab Revolt’s conflict landscape contributed to the origins of modern guerrilla warfare as deployed and theorized by Lawrence, with guerrilla forces in his memorable phrase ‘drifting about like a gas’, ‘a vapour’, appearing from nowhere, attacking, and then disappearing back into the desert. This was a conflict which was simultaneously of and beyond the railway, and which manifested itself in a diversity of archaeological sites that possessed multiple characteristics. Two short-lived

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Beyond the Railway examples illustrate this particularly well: Wuheida, a multi-component site whose political significance transcended its military importance, and Disi, a temporary desert aerodrome used by the RAF to bomb the railway.

Wuheida Wuheida was a small settlement and watering place which gave its name to a nearby wadi and flanking hills some 16km west of Ma’an on the road to Aqaba.8 So far away from the railway during its construction, Wuheida does not feature in the pre-1914 historical accounts. Its importance was a consequence of the Arab Revolt’s successful progress northwards after the taking of Aqaba in July 1917, when it was evidently regarded by the Turks as crucial to a revitalized defence of Ma’an. Nevertheless, this strategic location likely had some Turkish defences before this, as Lawrence comments in June 1917 that Wuheida was ‘the first large spring and blockhouse’9 on the road from Ma’an to Aqaba. It seems likely too that some of Wuheida’s extensive Turkish hilltop fortifications were either built or reinforced between August and November 1917, at the same time as Behçet’s railway defence programme. Wuheida played a critical if somewhat under-documented role in the Arab Revolt.10 While Lawrence remarks that the Arabs took it in July 1917 he soon contradicts himself by stating the Turks still held it a few weeks later in August. He reinforces this by recounting how Maulud Mukhlis forced the Turks to withdraw from the village of Abu Lissan and fall back on their positions at Wuheida in November-December 1917, where the Arabs attacked them again in January 1918, forcing another retreat to the fortified Semnah Hills a few kilometres from Ma’an.11 The presence of Turkish troops at Wuheida between August and December 1917, and their final withdrawal from the site in January 1918 is supported by al-Askari and others.12 British reports too confirm this as reconnaissance by the RFC’s Special Operations Flight (soon to become X Flight) led to the first sketch-maps of Wuheida’s fortifications in October 1917,13 a pointless exercise if the position had already been taken by the Arabs. As with many other places named in the historical sources, the precise location of the archaeological site of Wuheida had seemingly been lost over the past century, though its village location and general importance was known to Arab historians. It was identified by  John Winterburn’s archive and satellite imagery research, and confirmed by field reconnaissance, though what was discovered surpassed all expectations. The site is defined geographically by three major ridges and two large wadis, designated by us as the Eastern Hill, Northern Hill, Western Hill, the Central Wadi, and the Northern Wadi. Archaeologically, the site was divided into Wuheida East and Wuheida West, each of which possessed dramatically different archaeological footprints.

Wuheida East, a Turkish Strong-point In an area heavily damaged by quarrying, Wuheida East is dominated by the remains of three large Turkish hilltop redoubts atop the Eastern Hill, and a series of Turkish breastworktrenches on the Northern Hill on the opposite side of the wadi.14 The three redoubts form a triangle of mutually supporting fire-bases at the northern end of the Eastern Hill, and the area appears as a well-integrated defensive complex manned by a significant number of troops.

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Desert Insurgency Figure 10.1 Wuheida East, Redoubt A, excavation of sunken structure II (© Ali Baldry/GARP)

Located on the brow of high ground, with clear views across the wadi, Redoubt A,15 the only one excavated, is protected on its north-western approaches by a still impressive 100m-long firing trench (Figure 10.1).16 The redoubt itself is enclosed by a poorly preserved four-course dry-stone perimeter wall which in its better-preserved areas stood 0.75m high in 2009.17 Inside the perimeter were ten small, square or sub-rectangular sunken-floored structures partly cut into bedrock, and partly built up with dry-stone walling, with each containing a small hearth. A single large square structure dominates the centre, around which most of the other structures are arranged, and was probably officers’ accommodation and perhaps the command-and-control centre for the whole ridge. Beyond the enclosure wall there were three outside structures (Figure 10.2).18 Four of the inside structures were excavated, the first being Structure One,19 a four-sided squarish construction of at least nine courses with a northern entrance of poorly preserved steps cut into bedrock, and a cut-stone hearth recessed into the south wall.20 Four levels were identified, the lowest yielding nails, paper, and a metal buckle, overlain by a layer of ash and charcoal, then a thick layer of sandy silt and finally the uppermost level of rubble and modern detritus. Structure Two21 was the main central construction which had a sunken room cut into the bedrock lined with four dry-stone walls each of about fourteen courses (Figure 10.3).22 A 1.70m-wide sand-and-stone bank surrounded the structure with an eastern entrance of six steps, and an integrated hearth in the western wall.23 This had traces of repair to its base, and a chimney-pipe opening which rose to the surface, though the absence of soot and burning

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Beyond the Railway Figure 10.2 Bedouin occupying a Turkish redoubt, likely at Wuheida East, 1918 (© Harry Chase, Marist College)

Figure 10.3 Wuheida East, Redoubt A, sunken structure II plan (© G. Jillings, J. Gilbert, N. Dearberg, D. Long, S. Daniels/GARP)

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Desert Insurgency suggests it may originally have housed a stove. In the southern corner a compacted layer of crushed limestone, sand, and organic remains24 likely formed the occupation floor as it yielded an unfired .303 bullet and a spent .303 cartridge, sealed by a modern layer of sand and rubble above. On the western side of the site, Structure Three25 is part of a two-room construction with foundations cut into bedrock and four poorly preserved walls.26 Quarrying and robbing meant that only the lower courses remained intact. The east wall was cut into the bedrock creating a shelf onto which stones were laid, while the south wall served as an internal division between the two rooms. A small sloping bank by a gap in the west wall may have been the main entrance, and next to it were the remains of a probable hearth.27 As before, the absence of burning suggests a stove rather than an open fire. There were three layers, the lowest of crushed bedrock and silt, above which was a layer of organic silt containing textile fragments, a .303 cartridge, a key-opener from a can, and a piece of white ceramic surrounding a cable, possibly an insulator for communication wires running between different structures.28 The uppermost level was mainly stone tumble, with a fragment of leather and intriguingly a round from an AK-47 rifle. Also square-shaped was Structure Four,29 but it was so badly damaged that no walls were left standing, their only traces being steps and shelves cut into the bedrock defining the original edges. The only upstanding remains were those of a hearth in the south wall made of four courses of rectangular stones30 with no signs of burning. As with many structures at Wuheida and elsewhere, it is unclear whether such poor physical remains indicate a structure that was incomplete or simply robbed later for building material, though the latter seems most likely. Overall, Redoubt A yielded a variety of objects which told an interesting story of the site’s origin as a Turkish position taken by the Arabs and evidently with some British presence.31 Apart from several Mauser cartridges and an unidentified artillery-shell fragment, there were thirteen British .303 items, three cartridges, two bullets, and eight clips.32 A similar variety was evident with the seven buttons found here, two of which are Turkish, and five British.33 Along with two Turkish mule shoes, there was also a German canteen date-stamped 1916.34 Two other redoubts, B and C lay north and east respectively of Redoubt A. Both had standing walled structures, breastwork walls, and trenches.35 Redoubt B36 was surrounded by a breastwork-trench, though was heavily damaged by modern activity. Redoubt C37 was better preserved, though its northern part had seen extensive gold-digging. It had an outer trench with firing bays and traverses on the west side, and a breastwork-trench around the entire perimeter. Inside its curving-edged rectangular-shaped perimeter were several ruinous structures built onto the wall, and two substantial free-standing buildings. These may be the remains of small blockhouses, and the evidence of ash and charcoal in one of these suggests the presence of a hearth. Each of the two main entrances was guarded by a sentrypost, and thirty-two Mauser cartridges were found nearby. Fifteen of these had been fired, but seventeen were unfired and had their bullets detached.38 Several .303 cartridges were also retrieved and were stamped ‘KF’ and ‘1916’.39 Six coins were found in a single hole, all of which were Mamluk, and may represent a soldier’s lost souvenirs.40 One intriguing feature, and the only time it was encountered in our investigations, was a cut into bedrock forming an opening into an underground complex, covered with a steel door concreted into place and whose purpose can only be guessed at.

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Beyond the Railway To the north, on the opposite side of the wadi, but still in the eastern sector of the site, rises the flat-topped Northern Hill, dominated by numerous short lines of breastwork-trenches facing in different directions,41 observation posts, stone pathways, badly eroded tent-rings, and a possible horse/mule-tethering station.42 Possibly indicating a July 1917 date is the fact that none of these trenches are of the modern crenellated form, but rather are simply dug straight and curving lines with occasional small strong-points. Wuheida East is a group of three hilltop redoubts capable of mutual fire support covering the main route between Ma’an and Aqaba. Any force wishing to approach Ma’an from this direction would have been compelled to take these redoubts before advancing further in order to secure their rear and communications. The redoubts are of a common pattern, with dry-stone walled perimeters following high ground with clear fields of fire, with the well-built internal structures perhaps indicating a long period of military occupation.

Wuheida West, a Royal Camp An extraordinary discovery lay on the slopes of Wuheida’s Western Hill. Here were the unexpected remains of a unique series of encampments stretching for 1.5km, and quite unlike any of the Turkish sites we investigated.43 This was the footprint of a large tribal camp—the remains of Feisal’s multi-component force consisting of the Hashemite Northern Army,44 various Bedouin tribes, as well as some British presence—a total perhaps of two thousand men.45 The encampment was to be Feisal’s headquarters from at least April to September 1918, after which he moved north to support Allenby’s assault on Damascus. During this time, this unprepossessing desert place became the focus of political power. It was up the stony wadi slope on which Feisal’s royal tent was pitched that Chaim Weizmann made his way on 4 June 1918.46 Weizmann, president of the British Zionist Federation, had come to discuss co-operation between Arabs and Jews concerning Palestine. In a letter to his wife afterwards, he wrote ‘[Feisal was] the first real Arab Nationalist I have met. He is a leader! He is quite intelligent and a very honest man, handsome as a picture. He is not interested in Palestine, but on the other hand he wants Damascus and the whole of northern Syria.’47 This historic first meeting between the two men lasted just forty-five minutes, and according to Joyce who was present to record the event, ‘Feisal personally accepted the possibility of future Jewish claims to territory in Palestine.’48 Feisal was especially happy when Weizmann mentioned that the influence of Jews in the United States and elsewhere might support the Arab movement and the formation of an Arab Kingdom—an aim which would be strengthened by the establishment of a Jewish Palestine.49 Feisal had other visitors too. Lowell Thomas’s photographer, Harry Chase, took a historic photograph showing Feisal, Thomas, and others standing by a Turkish trench on the edge of a wide wadi, gazing across at the assembled Northern Army and Bedouin camps on the slopes of the opposite ridge (Figure 10.4).50 Lawrence visited Feisal at Wuheida several times in-between his desert raids, and left a typically literary account of one encounter in April 1918. Feisal was standing on the edge of the wadi as he approached. ‘The low sun threw a shadow down it, in which we climbed till near the top, where stood Feisal on the very edge, black against the sun, whose light threw a queer haze about his slender figure, and suffused his hair with gold through the floss-silk of his headcloth.’ And the next month again, ‘I walked up in the dark to Feisal’s tent at

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Desert Insurgency

Figure 10.4 Waheida, arriving about four in the morning, and crouched down outside it, feeling the Feisal, Lowell Thomas, shiver of the mountain dawn strongly upon me, waiting for the first light when he would Auda, Nuri al Said, and be stirring.’51 Maulud Mukhlis Almost a century later, rows and circles of stones still lay where they had been standing on the ­abandoned in the autumn of 1918 (Figure 10.5). It was a remarkable sight, and interestingly, front-line trench of quite unlike the famous cinematic version of Feisal’s royal camp in Lawrence of Arabia.52 Wuheida East looking Altogether, there were ten large camps identified as variously shaped enclosures, pathways, at the Northern tent-rings, possible hearths, and unidentifiable features. Each camp had a distinctive Army camp on the ­layout likely representing individual Bedouin tribes, whose spatial separation indicated slopes of Wuheida West in April 1918 perhaps a liminal space—stone-marker boundaries reflecting the need to keep the frac(© Harry Chase, Marist College)

tious tribes apart. There was also evidence for more carefully aligned and regular tent-rings which may mark the location of Feisal’s Northern Army using standard-sized British Army tents. The identification of the site was confirmed by survey and excavation that recovered a variety of multi-national objects (Figure 10.6). Several camps were investigated in 2009 and 2012.53 Camp A54 had stone-lined pathways and stone-rings, Camp B55 had stone boundary markers at its east and north-east limits and was approached by a long pathway on its southern side. The remains of four stonerings were found inside this perimeter and another four outside, though the only find

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Beyond the Railway Figure 10.5 Wuheida West, view of Arab tent positions (© John Winterburn)

was a single unfired .303 round. The largest tent-ring here may indicate high status, though no archaeological evidence supports it, and the finding of three lead alloy cement-bag seals is ambiguous. Camp C56 was the largest of all, and had a more formal appearance, with a central pathway and a row of seven large and well-preserved stone-rings in its southern part. Its central area had been cleared of stones for occupation, and the whole camp was surrounded by stone markers which identified its boundary. Camp D57 had a similar mix of pathways, at least five stone-rings, and two terraced enclosures, and it too was encircled by stones demarcating its outer limits. The most notable find here was part of a watch-case bearing traces of an Arabic engraving whose central panel depicted a window looking out onto slopes of high ground through the centre of which ran a river or canal. The interior carried evidence of gilding.58 Camp J, like Camp C, was more formal in shape, with lines of stones placed either side of two rows of stone-rings.59 Camp F60 also featured stone paths, but had the remains of three unusual horseshoeshaped tent-rings, one of which was excavated.61 One of three aligned in a row, it had a 1.50m-wide path leading into it from a longer pathway which ran the length of the row.62 The site yielded twenty-two fragments of British Army standard rum jar,63 five .303 bullets and twenty-three .303 cartridges as well as fifteen British buttons. While the rum jar and some of the buttons and cartridges undoubtedly spoke to British presence, it was also the case that Feisal’s regular forces were equipped with British munitions and wore British uniforms.64 The Western Hill’s sprawling site yielded a view of life strikingly different from the Turkish sites, and showed a clear distinction between the historical sources and the archaeological evidence. Despite many references to Wuheida as Feisal’s Arab encampment, the majority of the 167 munitions-related finds (almost one third of all recovered artefacts) came from

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Desert Insurgency Figure 10.6 Wuheida West, plan of Camp D (© K. Pool, I. Heritage, H. Natho, S. Daniels/ GARP)

British small arms.65 The site’s nature as a palimpsest was also hinted at by the finding of Mauser bullets and cartridges,66 three artillery-related items—a fragment of shell, an impacted shrapnel ball, and a shell carrier/fuse protector, as well as part of a Turkish hand grenade, a possible flechette, and a detonator tube.67 The presence of Turkish and ArabBritish munitions suggests that one or both of the two documented battles for Wuheida in November-December 1917 and January 1918 had ranged across the entire wadi and Western Hill as well as the fortified Eastern Hill. Oral tradition supports this view as local interviews

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Beyond the Railway record that the Turks had at one point been present on the Western Hill.68 The close relationship between the allies was recorded in a photograph showing British and Feisal’s Northern Army officers posing in Wuheida in 1918.69 The most frequently found items in Wuheida West were domestic.70 These included bully-beef tins, sardine tins, milk cans, several of which had identifiable name stamps,71 a British mess tin, and an interesting makeshift mess tin crafted from a bully-beef tin to which a handle had been attached.72 Especially noteworthy was a part of a highly decorated cigarette or card case, parts of a Hurricane lamp, and a spoon.73 Most personal items were found in 2009, of which the most notable were two tobacco- or snuff-tin lids collected as  random surface finds and whose marking were clearly visible as ‘WD & HO WILLS *BRISTOL & LONDON*’ and ‘EDWARDS, RINGER & BIGG *BRISTOL*’ (Figure 10.7). A food container lid stamped ‘GILLARD & Co M&V Rations 3’ was also recovered along with miscellaneous items of uniform, such as belt hooks and buckles and parts of webbing, as well as several coins.74 The presence of British troops was yet more apparent in that all fifty-five buttons found there were British types,75 and of the thirty ceramic fragments found across the site, twenty-two were as we have seen the smashed remains of a British rum jar.76 Both of these kinds of objects were unlikely to have belonged to the Arabs. Fitting in with this, and found among 108 glass fragments was a piece from an Eno Salts bottle77 similar to that found at Tooth Hill, and several others as surface finds from a Yorkshire Relish jar manufactured by Goodall & Co. Leeds.78 Such diagnostically British items contrasted with the much scarcer Figure 10.7 Wuheida West, tobacco/ snuff-tin lid made by Edwards, Ringer & Bigg company, Bristol (© author)

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Desert Insurgency evidence of arguably earlier Turkish presence marked by three lead alloy bag seals, a mule shoe, and the bezel of a copper alloy seal matrix.79 The location of this large encampment along the edge of the wadi appears as classic Bedouin practice, out of the wind, hidden from immediate view, and with clear vantage points. Local knowledge and mounted sentries rendered the need for built defences redundant, other than some repurposing of the Turkish redoubts taken in January 1918, and the wadi itself possessed good grazing for horses and camels. The majority of finds across the site do not reveal any discernible pattern, apart perhaps from an abundance of British objects. One curious finding was that many of the Mauser cartridges were unfired yet missing their bullets, and a few live rounds appear to have had the bullet cut off, and some bullets with the collar sections of the cartridge were found together in situ. This may be evidence for live enemy rounds being dismantled to extract the cordite filling for other uses, particularly if there were no captured Turkish rifles available.80 The investigation of Feisal’s camp provided an instructive comparison with the original Turkish fortified site of Wuheida East, though both had evidence of British presence. The sharpest difference was architectural, where Turkish stone-built redoubts with sunken rooms and breastwork-trenches sitting atop high points contrasted with the ephemeral stone alignments of the sprawling Arab encampment sitting on the surface of the western slopes of the wadi. The material culture also told different stories, where construction-related finds ­predominated at Turkish Wuheida East, while Arab Wuheida West was characterized by domestic items. This difference was especially marked by the presence of eco finds such as seeds at the Turkish site, yet their almost complete absence at the Arab encampment. These small and fragile remains were preserved in the deeply dug defensive structures imposed on the landscape by the Turks, whereas anything similar would have long since been blown away from the transient living floors of the Arab camps. Even seeds tell the story of the asymmetrical war waged at Wuheida and beyond. In general, the Arab campsites were often sterile, a result perhaps of the Bedouin practice of laying mats inside their tents and rolling these up when they depart and thereby leaving very little behind. Certainly, also, a century of exposure on the wadi surface would have led to many stray items being picked up by local people. Feisal’s camp left a very different archaeological imprint than the typical Turkish army camps which as we have seen were full of items left or lost by their occupants. Wuheida West was a unique discovery, its archaeology capturing a moment of historical transition. Not only was it the first archaeological investigation of an Arab army and multi-tribe encampment, but that fact meant that in one sense it was also the place-of-origin for what would eventually become the Kingdom of Jordan. The western slopes of Wuheida were where desert warriors became a unified military force, where Jewish and Arab leaders had their first meeting, and where a royal dynasty began to crystallize. It remains today an almost unacknowledged heritage site embodying early traces of Jordanian national identity.

Disi Advanced Landing Ground The meshing of Western technology and Bedouin raiding was seen at several sites beyond the railway and which initially were thought to be too transient to have any hope of discovery.

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Beyond the Railway While the most dramatic example was the revelation of the two Tooth Hill campsites discussed above, there was another equally short-lived site. This place belonged to the other technology newly arrived in the desert war—aircraft—and the advanced landing grounds (ALGs) they required in order to conduct reconnaissance flights as a precursor to bombing missions against the railway.81 One of these ALGs was established in early 1918 at a place called Disi,82 nearby Wadi Rum, and only about 40 kilometres west of the railway. Although not politically significant like Wuheida, it represented the new technology of flying, and its location and purpose was dedicated to attacking the railway’s defences. As Lawrence commented in May 1918, he journeyed from Aqaba to Guweira in a RAF car full of rations ‘for the detachment which Siddons, our incomparable flight commander, had put on Disi mud-flat by Rum, to bomb Maan and Mudowwara at ease’.83 The discovery of Disi’s location was a long-drawn-out affair, and another example of the long-term nature of the project enabling the forging of close relationships with the Bedouin. It also evidenced the value of different kinds of issues and technologies, bringing together physical geography, First World War aircraft and their technological deficiencies, archive photographs, mobile phones, and Bedouin tribal memory. As at Tooth Hill, John Winterburn’s archive research led to important discoveries of contemporary photographs, this time an album of photographs taken by Lt George Pascoe in which a page captioned ‘The Aerodrome at Disi’ contained four images of canvas hangars, aeroplanes, and one with distinctive rock formations in the background. Another page had photographs of a ‘Bivouac at Disi’ and further images of aircraft set against a mountainous panorama.84 At a meeting with Sheikh Khaled Suleiman Al-Atoun and his advisors at Mudawwara, copies of wartime photographs showing RAF aircraft in their canvas hangars were examined and discussed (Figure 10.8). As with the discovery of Tooth Hill, the background scenery showed an unusual geological formation, a distinctive ribbed conical rock formation. Unlike Tooth Hill, however, there was no further clue other than the name ‘Decie’ written on the back of one of the photographs. While Decie was clearly Disi, and in the general area of that modern village, there was little indication as to its exact location. Enveloped by traditional Bedouin hospitality of tea and coffee drinking, these discussions were interspersed with frequent mobile-phone calls until finally a possible location was identified. It proved fruitless, but the next year, guided by further discussions, we stood in a wooded and marshy area that bore no resemblance to the desert landscape which fronted the canvas hangars almost a century before, but which through the now lush tree growth could be seen the same rock formation (Figures 10.9 and 10.10). Subsequent survey of the area revealed an ideal location for an ALG, with a carved-rock cistern (originally a pool) fed by a fresh-water spring, the nearby Gaa of Disi mudflats whose compacted surface was perfect for take-offs and landings, and which matched a contemporary photograph taken in April 1918 of Lt Junor and his aeroplane against the distinctive backdrop of jagged-edged mountains (Figure 10.11).85 And there was archaeology. Despite its changed appearance, this was almost certainly the Disi landing strip, the first time such a site had been discovered and investigated archaeologically in the region. The archaeological evidence was intriguing in detail, though small in quantity, likely the result of much of the area having been cleared and developed as an agricultural station, irrigated by a development of the natural water supply.86 Metal-detecting found two unidentified buttons, seventeen munitions-related items (mainly .303 cartridges), and sixteen

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Desert Insurgency Figure 10.8 Discussing photographs of Disi Advanced Landing Ground at Mudawwara in 2013 (© author)

Figure 10.9 Disi (Decie) Advanced Landing Ground, showing distinctive topography and canvas hangars (Photo © IWM Q 105644; Lt. George Pascoe)

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Beyond the Railway Figure 10.10 Disi site of Advanced Landing Ground in 2013 (© author)

Figure 10.11 Lt. Junor and his biplane on the Disi mudflats, April 1918 (© Metcalf Collection)

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Desert Insurgency Figure 10.12 Rock-carved graffiti at Disi Advanced Landing Ground: random doodle or simple front-view of a biplane? (© author)

miscellaneous metal items including the base of an oil lamp.87 Surface survey also revealed evidence of several hearths and adjacent spreads of thin nails, similar to those found at the Tooth Hill sites and elsewhere, and interpreted as the remains of wooden boxes broken up for firewood. The .303 cartridges were a mystery as the temporary aerodrome was never attacked by the Turks. A speculative explanation was that pilots and ground crew were practice firing or simply taking pot-shots at the towering rock formation which flanked the site and which had left tell-tale pockmarks in the rock face. There was even an ambiguous rock-carving by the pool in which wishful thinking could see the front view of a biplane, its engine cowling and wing struts (Figure 10.12). Wuheida and Disi occupy the two extremes of a war of detachment, where, variously, Arab politics, modern technologies, and weapons met. Each site is a marker of the Arab Revolt, of modern guerrilla warfare, and ultimately contributed to the transformation of the Middle East. The sites exist in the historical sources, their locations are known and documented archaeologically, but both are virtually invisible to the naked eye, and in that sense are intangible heritage on the verge of disappearing entirely. * The Arab Revolt’s role in developing modern guerrilla warfare brings together historical and archaeological evidence in a framework where anthropological ideas of landscape, materiality, identity, and the human body merge. Time and again we encountered places where people stayed for the shortest time yet left traces of their passing, from deepest

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Beyond the Railway prehistory to the Arab Revolt, and down to the present. Some of these places were ambiguous inasmuch as they were ephemeral yet enduring, due to the remoteness and climate of their desert locations. Those belonging to 1917–18, especially, marked the appearance of the hybrid force which combined the technologies of modern warfare and traditional Bedouin tactics of the razzia, where bodies pass through the landscape like ghosts, carrying maps in their memories, but supplemented now by aerial sketches and sometimes photographs.88 The character of conflict in southern Jordan, and further south, strays into the realm of the immaterial, as the faintest signs of life and death actions are evidenced by the most transient remains and sometimes almost no physical evidence at all. Arguably, in few other places have such slight traces heralded such a monumental reorientation of the ways in which conflict is conducted. The merest sandy formations hint at a modern way of war, or rather a modern reconfiguration of an old way of war. The presence of absence which is such an inescapable quality of the desert also manifested itself in the relationship between surprise guerrilla attacks on the railway and the calligraphic signs of Sultan Abdulhamid II attached to Hejaz Railway locomotives. Both played on the psychology of visibility and invisibility, of projecting power into apparently empty spaces. The fear and anxiety of Turkish troops manning the railway’s defences lay partly in the unpredictability of the enemy’s movements and the threat of sudden attack. The tughra as the Sultan’s monogram, symbolized the Sultan himself, the State, and the Ottoman Empire, and was carried by locomotives into the contested sands of the Hejaz as an omnipresent reification of his political and religious identity and authority—both metaphor and metonym.89 The tughra itself had become a contradictory symbol, as Abdulhamid had ‘included an unconventional element, the title al-ghazi (Arabic: “warrior [for the faith]”), which [originally referred] to inter-tribal raids in pre-Islamic times, [and] . . . eventually came to refer to combating non-Muslims in the effort to expand the Dar al-Islam.’90 The al-ghazi title gained its power by referencing traditional Arab raiding—precisely the strategy adopted by the British and their Arab allies to disrupt the line and destroy the same locomotives which carried the imperial cypher. The symbolic presence of Sultan Abdulhamid II in the desert spaces of the Hejaz can be seen as an example of anthropological ideas concerning ‘distributed personhood’91—where, for the Sultan, parts of his imperial body were present across the Empire simultaneously, an idea reinforced by his words and commands travelling instantly (and for some, magically) along the telegraph wires that connected all to Constantinople. That Abdulhamid, like previous sultans and imperial rulers, regarded himself as the embodiment of the state was nothing new, but in the context of the Arab Revolt, the collapse of the Empire, and the Balfour Declaration, there is a further dimension. In 1896 and again in 1901 the Sultan refused Theodor Herzl’s92 offer to pay off a substantial sum of the Ottoman national debt in return for permitting Zionists to settle in Palestine, famously saying, ‘as long as I am alive, I will not have our body divided, only our corpse they can divide’, which duly came to pass. The Arab Revolt created different perspectives on the human body, whether the Sultan’s own distributed personhood or the creation of a ‘new’ warrior (i.e. the modern guerrilla) who combined Bedouin knowledge and tactics with modern technologies. Yet, for the latter, there had to be a catalyst and a conduit, through which the old and the new could be controlled and deployed. For the Arab Revolt, it seems clear that this was Lawrence, whose non-conformist approach provided exactly what was required, and who had the ability to

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Desert Insurgency Figure 10.13 Lawrence (face down, crouching immediately to Feisal’s left) (© Harry Chase, Marist College)

understand and theorize what he had learnt in his twenty-seven principles. The Bedouin understood the desert, while the Turks and the British did not. Lawrence came closest, however, living with the Bedouin, befriending the desert ways,93 and smoothing the volatile paths of inter-tribal cooperation by supplying gold—the epitome of gifts through which Bedouin sheikhs exercised patronage, honour, and political and military power (Figure 10.13). The Turks put a price on his head not for his traditional military expertise, but for his ability to catalyse diverse elements of the Revolt into action. Given that Seven Pillars of Wisdom is, as Lawrence himself admitted, a memory of a memory—written in 1919 from recall and notes, then lost, then rewritten from memory again and amended between late 1919 and 1922,94 it nevertheless captures and transmits a coherent account of events which archaeological investigations showed to be remarkably accurate in many respects. This despite his own caveats that ‘In these pages is not a history of the Arab movement, but just of what happened to me in it,’95 and, ‘how many established reputations were founded, like mine, upon fraud.’96 One of the most piercing comments about the book was made by Albert Hourani in 1975, who regarded it as ‘an attempt to write an epic work about activities that themselves had been moulded by a person who intended to write about them’.97 Under Allenby’s command, the British and their Arab allies would likely have defeated the Turks in due course. Yet, it is probably also true that the loss of no other

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Beyond the Railway single person other than Lawrence would have had such an effect on the course of the war east of the River Jordan. * Most of the remains of the Arab Revolt did not survive in splendid isolation, or as a pristine archaeology of that conflict, though there were partial exceptions, such as the recently discovered site of the Battle of Tafilah fought on 26 January 1918.98 They were embedded rather in a century of change in what initially appeared an empty unchanging desert, a legacy perhaps of the romantic western imagination. This view had quickly faded as it became clear that not only were the remains of the Arab Revolt not simply waiting, undisturbed, to be discovered, but that the majority of the archaeology encountered did not ostensibly belong to the events of 1916–18 at all. The discovery of railway construction camps, together with evidence of their sparse pre-1917 militarization, was both revealing and challenging. Hundreds of tent-rings in dozens of camp sites were soon recognized for what they were, though their number and often good preservation were a tempting challenge to the project’s time and resources. The experience of investigating these places produced a familiarity with camp locations and layout, and enabled consideration of the relationship between two phases of railway defence, against a low-level Bedouin threat during the construction era of 1905 and 1906 (in our area), and the more serious danger of Arab Revolt attacks especially between 1917 and 1918. While refortification of stations was clear, as in impromptu loopholes versus the earlier designed-in examples, and the evidence for mud-brick loopholed wall extensions in 1918 photographs, construction-era tent-ring campsites were often more difficult to interpret. While they were identifiable by size, location, frequency, time-frame, and original purpose, there were unforeseen complications. It became clear that there was a degree of probable re-use of these earlier camps during the Arab Revolt as Turkish patrols moved up and down the line. As railway builders and later railway defenders were all Turkish soldiers, camp layouts were similar, though railway equipment tended to predominate in construction camps, while munitions-related items often defined the Revolt-period sites. As a more detailed and educated understanding of the landscape was gained, something intriguing emerged. Survey and excavation revealed a still not fully understood relationship between the protagonists of the Arab Revolt and the ancient land through which they manoeuvred and fought. The early discovery in 2006 of a cluster of Turkish objects and a prehistoric stone tool was repeated many times, and in more dramatic fashion, in the years that followed. Nineteenth-century travellers and today’s archaeologists have long known about and investigated Jordan’s rich prehistory, but the mix of millennia-old artefacts and early twentieth-century war objects hinted at something else. During the building of the railway and the conflict which followed, it is clear that Turkish labour battalions and fighting units encountered traces of the distant past, creating layers of historically recent activity mixed with a variety of prehistoric remains. While similar conflict layers have been identified in other First World War areas, notably along the Western, Eastern, and Salonika Fronts,99 there seemed to be little evidence hitherto of anything similar in southern Jordan. Yet, investigations revealed that Turkish labourers and soldiers were picking up, moving, keeping, and discarding prehistoric objects, from c.150,000-year-old Middle Palaeolithic hand axes to Neolithic/Bronze Age stone tools and carved-stones100 (Figure 10.14).

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Desert Insurgency Figure 10.14 Middle Palaeolithic hand-axe found in a Turkish campsite (© author)

What they made of them and the rock carvings (of various ages) sometimes located nearby is unknown. Many of these items were clearly artefacts rather than natural objects, yet bore no relationship to the technology or society from which the mainly conscript Turkish troops came. Stranded out in an unknown desert, haunted by djinn, and under constant threat of attack, these small groups of railway defenders were often stressed to the point of desertion. Perhaps these objects simply stoked their curiosity, or maybe they were a physical manifestation of the alien desert into which they had been cast. There was unfortunately no Turkish equivalent to Francis Buckley, who we met on the Somme, to collect, study, and publish the rich and varied array of prehistoric objects (and sites) which lay scattered around and which had been swept up in the Arab Revolt. The evidence for the Bedouin was similar and different. Their selective re-use of tent-rings in railway construction camps since 1918 is an archaeological layer well documented in our investigations.101 Bedouin encounters with prehistory at such locations were distinct from those of the earlier Hejaz Railway builders and defenders. While a mix of prehistoric tools and Bedouin artefacts have been found at various sites in southern Jordan and in the adjacent Negev desert in Israel, the evidence for purposeful rather than incidental manipulation or re-use of such ancient implements is ambiguous.102 This is not to say that the Bedouin are unfamiliar with the usefulness of flint. An observation appropriately made by Lawrence during his time with Woolley in the Negev, was that ‘Oval “scrapers” are used by shepherd boys to shear the sheep’, and that throughout the region, ‘The tribesman is a great maker of flints.’103 This may well explain the Bedouin’s easy recourse to flint blades to cut up the Turkish sheep they captured at Suwaqa Station in June 1917.104

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Beyond the Railway There is a nuance here, however—an intriguing collision between different kinds of archaeology and anthropology, framed by the contemporary. It concerns the Bedouin relationship with prehistoric artefacts found in tent-rings which were known to be historically recent Turkish camps of either the construction era or the Arab Revolt. It is unclear what the Bedouin made (and still make) of encounters with objects from prehistory mixed with Turkish ones but a century old, and belonging to a historically momentous and heavily mythologized past. Perhaps they are considered as nothing special, as evidence of Turkish curiosity, or maybe as a part of their worldview which does not always align with Western distinctions between Nature and Culture. Looking behind the scenes as it were, ancient objects must sometimes have been collected by Turkish labourers and troops and left behind in their tent-rings where they were subsequently encountered by Bedouin re-using these locations and moved around and deposited yet again. In a sense, it is all about ‘objects in motion’—people, places, and artefacts. Curiosity and memory are the likely intermediaries, recalling a view held by another society of the oral tradition a world away—‘I know that place. It stalks me every day.’105

Conclusion The archaeology of the Arab Revolt in southern Jordan reveals a conflict which was inextricably tied to the railway but whose components often lay invisibly scattered well beyond it. The distribution of sites defined the unique characteristics of the landscape which confronted us, and was discoverable mainly because of the nature of the project—a volunteer-based model spread over nine years enabling multiple responses to new information and sites which a more formal and constrained three-year project would have struggled to deal with. The distribution of sites was responsible in part for three important aspects of our research. First, was a conflict landscape composed of three parts: a linear north-south zone composed of the embankment, track, bridges, and culverts; a narrow area 100 metres or so wide on either side of the embankment where stations and infrastructure were located; and an area which stretched out into the desert anywhere between 100 metres to several kilometres containing Turkish defensive positions (karakoll/redoubts and trenches), and Arab-British camps for overnighting before an attack on the railway. Temporary aerodromes, such as Disi and Tahuna, were a separate category and even farther away. Second, some of the varied features of the extended conflict landscape were often either difficult to see or invisible at the time, a fact which meant that many Turkish sites and Arab-British ones melted back into the landscape after 1918, and were overlooked during the short time when the railway was repaired and in operation during the 1920s, and for the far longer period of abandonment and robbing from the late 1920s to the start of our investigations in 2006. The abortive 1960s refurbishment project and the 1970s strengthening of a section of the line for the phosphate trains necessarily focused on the linear features of the railway and its infrastructure, not on long-redundant and transient defences in the desert. The true nature and extent of the extended conflict landscape remained largely invisible once the First World War ended. The third aspect was that it was precisely the isolation and invisibility of these defensive features to the modern eye which contributed to, or was solely responsible for often good, and sometimes extraordinary preservation of sites, as at Ghadir al Haj North 1, Makins’

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Desert Insurgency Fort, the three Ornamental forts, the Fassu’ah Ridge Sector, Tooth Hill Camp East, and Tel Shahm Fort South, to name just a few. By comparison, station buildings and adjacent infrastructure were mostly heavily damaged already by 2006, and Batn al-Ghoul Station had disappeared entirely. In addition to the conflict-related sites there were many forgotten contruction-era campsites and their hundreds of tent-rings, many still intact under windblown sand, with occasional evidence of sporadic Bedouin re-use. Altogether, we recorded in excess of fifty-five campsites and 810 tent-constructions between Ma’an and the Saudi border, though doubtless others have disappeared in the intervening century. Before 2006, remains of the Arab Revolt were judged to be solely the ruined stations and  damaged or destroyed bridges. In fact, these proved to be only part of the conflict landscape, a zone of obvious and highly visible destruction. A fuller understanding of events depended on grasping the existence of another, and to varying degrees invisible part of the landscape, and locating and investigating the many sites it contained. The discovery of Wadi Rutm Army camp in the first hour of the first year of fieldwork was the key that unlocked the door to this uniquely preserved landscape which had lain hidden in plain view for a century. At the interface of archaeology and history lay another of the project’s important contributions. By putting physical locations to place-names known from military archives and Lawrence’s Seven Pillars, and providing an archaeological signature for each, a deeper understanding of the Revolt emerged. Sometimes this supported the historical records, at other times not, but it always added texture and insight into the big events as well as revealing other actions which appear to have slipped through the net of history. This went some way to offset the lack of access to various Turkish archives. The result is that the course of the Arab Revolt in southern Jordan is known in more intimate and nuanced detail today than at any time since the events themselves more than a century ago. It has set them in a longer chronological framework which stretches from 1900 to the present, and, indeed, goes back to medieval times and further, into prehistory. The interdisciplinary aspirations of the project, the year-after-year familiarity with the region (gained mainly on foot), and the co-operation of the Bedouin and Jordanian colleagues suggest that there now exists a more detailed knowledge and understanding of the conflict landscape between Ma’an and Mudawwara than Lawrence and his Arab allies possessed at the time. They were constrained by the life-and-death struggles of war, while we were free to roam, speculate, explore possibilities, and investigate new places. GARP was inescapably also an investigation of railway (industrial) archaeology, far removed from the complex timetables that directed the mass movement of troops on the Western Front and elsewhere, and the innumerable narrow-gauge Decauville railways that connected front and rear areas.106 In this sense also it was the archaeology of the 1960s failed reconstruction project, and of the 1970s partial rebuilding for the phosphate trains. The industrial archaeology dimension was, however, always but part of the whole, and focused by conflict, and thus different from the investigation of the Sudan Military Railway mentioned in chapters 1 and 4 above.107 In Europe, railways served the war effort, but in the Middle East, the Hejaz Railway was also the focus of military action, shaping its nature, and producing a distinctive archaeology of horizontal stratigraphy that reached out from the iron road into the desert. The technology of railways that so changed the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries became the crucible in which modern guerrilla warfare was forged, and which added its own momentum to the development of twentieth-century asymmetrical warfare.

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Beyond the Railway From a military history perspective, the investigations added insight to the conduct of the Revolt—a view of asymmetrical warfare on the ground, characterized by sites and objects which had lain undisturbed (and often unknown) for a century. The railway war played a critical role in the Allied victory over the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Far even from Lawrence’s own view that it was a ‘sideshow of a sideshow’, it contributed to a Middle East struggle which made a world war from a European conflict, with battles ranging across Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. As Eugene Rogan has commented, it included ‘Australians and New Zealanders, every ethnicity in South Asia, North Africans, Senegalese, and Sudanese made common cause with French, English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish soldiers against the Turkish, Arab, Kurdish, Armenian, and Circassian combatants in the Ottoman army and their German and Austrian allies . . . The Ottoman front was a veritable tower of Babel, an unprecedented conflict between international armies.’108 It became increasingly evident as the project developed that it could contribute to discussions about the nature and purpose of archaeology beyond the First World War and the Arab Revolt. Not least of these was the role of the Hejaz Railway as a magnet for regional archaeological research, and a lens through which different kinds of archaeology could be studied. Railway construction ploughed through a rich prehistoric and historical landscape, and the builders encountered a range of millennia-old places and objects, commented on by Lawrence, and photographed from the air for the first time during the Revolt. Railway reconstruction brought John Dayton to the area and led to archaeological surveys of north-western Arabia and the establishment of serious research in the region. GARP itself, while focused on the Arab Revolt, was also the archaeology of past encounters with earlier pasts. GARP also moved into an interdisciplinary present. The ebb and flow of fashionable theories, the relationship between archaeology, history, and anthropology, as well as issues of contested heritage management and tourism came together in an investigation which touched them all at various points. These can be summed up as: the potential of modern conflict archaeology to confirm, deny, refine, and extend the evidence from (sometimes silent or inaccessible) historical sources; to investigate: the relationship between railway places, medieval routeways, and deep prehistory; the role of the Bedouin in re-using century-old Turkish campsites; the characterization of modern guerrilla warfare at ground level (and simultaneously documenting the physical origins of Jordan’s Hashemite dynasty), and highlighting the disjunction between the heritage industry’s championing of the Hejaz Railway and the everyday evidence of ruinous remains falling further into oblivion. And it showed the effectiveness of a volunteer model to deliver such wide-ranging results in such a challenging environment. A guiding aspiration of the project had always been to arrange an exhibition of the research and findings—not least because this was the first archaeological investigation of these events—conflict archaeology in a conflict zone whose ongoing regional violence originated in the war we were investigating. As we have seen in chapter 3, there had only been a small exhibition in the long-since closed Abdullah’s Palace at Ma’an Station, a shortlived display mainly of photographs in the new Jordan Museum in Amman, and three international exhibitions—at the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museum in London, and at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra—for all of which Lawrence had been the leitmotif. Our aim was somewhat different, to bring objects directly from the

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Desert Insurgency desert, to exhibit them alongside more famous items, and thereby breathe new life into all. We sought to transform the well-known with the unknown, in a sense to repatriate meaning into objects which had been exiled from their original landscapes and events for a hundred years. It was disappointing but perhaps telling that there was little interest in an exhibition which focused on the archaeology of the Hejaz Railway and the Revolt rather than specifically on Lawrence. There was even less interest in any televisual documentary of the project, despite the many discoveries, the association with Lawrence, and the relevance of the archaeology and anthropology of modern guerrilla warfare to events in the region.109 Fortunately, we made contact with Kevin Winter, the assistant curator at the National Civil War Centre at Newark Museum and a member of the T. E. Lawrence Society, who together with the museum’s Glyn Hughes and Michael Constantine, commissioned an exhibition entitled Shifting Sands: Lawrence of Arabia—Celebrity, Anonymity, Legacy (Figure 10.15). Lawrence’s name was a draw, but the exhibition was an archaeology-centred display, as we had hoped.110 The exhibition opened in October 2016 and was scheduled for six months, but in the event lasted a further year, to March 2018. Exhibitions have a powerful relationship with archaeology as they are physical representations—configurations of objects and space—that create and recreate intimate views of the past. They are not alone. As we have seen throughout this book, there are different archaeologies to be considered, as there is more than one view of the Arab Revolt, and many more on T. E. Lawrence. While GARP’s main focus was investigating the physical traces of historical events, these traces are entangled with controversies, legends, and widely different interpretations of Lawrence’s role, motivations, and interactions with Feisal and the Arabs. Any book on these issues must acknowledge that different kinds of

Figure 10.15 The Shifting Sands exhibition at Newark, 2016–18 (© author)

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Beyond the Railway archaeology can be applied to investigating them. How many contested truths can be conjured from the desert sands? Cinema has been one of the most profound and influential ways in which Lawrence and the Arab Revolt have been re-presented to the world, and nowhere more powerfully than through David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, an acknowledged masterpiece of cinematic history, which, since 1962, has framed popular ideas concerning the events and personalities of 1916–18. The point of interest here lies not only in the film’s accuracy, its misrepresentations, or its majestic cinematography,111 but in its material traces. Is there perhaps a space in the archaeology of cinema for an investigation into the making of the film on the one hand, and of connections between these traces and those of our own work between 2006 and 2014? In 1960, Lean was scouting for locations in Jordan, and in a letter to the screenplay writer Michael Wilson (later replaced by Robert Bolt), he wrote: ‘I . . . have brought you an old Turkish cartridge case. The desert’s fairly full of them.’112 A few years later, Hollywood replicas had joined them—‘There were still piles of plastic rifles scattered around Qua Disi when I was there, though probably the Bedu extras could have provided their own. In 1968 most carried British Lee-Enfield .303s.’113 This mix of the genuine and the fake exists in real time, in landscapes chosen for their spectacular cinematic visuals, but which have their own archaeology. Stunning opening shots from Lean’s epic of wind-whipped red sand dunes and black mountains were filmed at Jebel Tubeiq, a remote area unmarked on any map in 1960, and 150 miles from water. Yet, there was a Byzantine monastery here until the seventh century, an utterly remote Christian implant into a pre-Islamic pagan landscape featuring rock carvings possibly 12,000 years old.114 There are now, doubtless, the remains of film-making below the sands—a layer of contemporary cinematic archaeology from the early 1960s interleaved with those from a deeper past. In Jordan (and beyond) there are many Arab Revolts today, the past colliding with the present in inherited memories spanning 100 years. Capturing this is a conversation in 1968 in which a Howeitat Sheikh remarked ‘that his father rode with “Aurance” ’ but, striking his breast proudly, he continued that he rode with Peter O’Toole.115 One Arab Revolt created a historical figure, the other a Hollywood film star, and both individuals in their own ways put a human face to archaeological layers and oral histories. History and fiction mixed too in the transposition of geography. In early 2018, a GARP-related team explored Lean’s film-set locations for the Hallat Ammar ambush, scenes of Aqaba, and a desert oasis—all a few kilometres from Almería in southern Spain (Figure 10.16).116 These were created by the film’s production designer John Box, and their investigation throws light not only on the industrial archaeology of film-making, but also on how film-makers transform one landscape into another—the real into the imaginary, which then itself becomes real by the traces it leaves behind, as well as the influence the finished film has on the wider world. In a curious way, these remnant film-sets recall the remains of the ruinous Hejaz Railway stations, both resonating with twentieth-century Western imaginings of an uncanny and timeless desert overlain by romantic views of Lawrence and the Arab Revolt. European archaeologist-soldier-spies of the First World War often experienced Arabia through an orientalizing lens of myth and mystery, as do contemporary audiences of Lean’s film, and, of course, modern tourists. Between these dream-worlds lies another reality—the sand, stone, and steel of the archaeology of the Arab Revolt. *

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Desert Insurgency

Figure 10.16

Ultimately, GARP showed the potential of an interdisciplinary approach to modern conflict, documenting what happened, where, the immediate consequences, and the enduring and volatile legacies. Archaeology had made visible what was previously unseen, a different view of the past conjured from the sands. It showed the rich heritage that was packed into (© Roger Ward) just 113km of the railway, and held out a tantalizing prospect of what survives in the remaining 740km that stretch from Hallat Ammar to Medina. What might the archaeologist Lawrence have made of a project which investigated remains that, in many instances, he was directly or indirectly involved in creating during his subsequent life as a military officer? His hopes for Arab Nationalism were shattered at the Paris-Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 whose decisions continue to haunt and fracture the Middle East and beyond (Figure  10.17). The wreckage of these hopes still lay in the deserts of southern Jordan and beyond, stalking the present with their enduring memories of peoples and places at a turning point in history.

David Lean’s Aqaba site, near Almería in southern Spain in 2018

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Beyond the Railway Figure 10.17 ‘The Peace to end all Peace’, Versailles July 1919 (© Harry Chase, Marist College) Note: Emir Feisal in front; behind, left to right, Rustum Haidar, Nuri al-Said, Captain Pisani, T. E. Lawrence, Captain Tahsin Kadri, with Feisal’s servant behind.

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TIMELINE OF M AJOR EVENTS ON THE HEJA Z R AILWAY BET W EEN M A’A N A ND MUDAW WA R A, 1900–2018

1900–1

Telegraph line construction

1904–6

Hejaz Railway construction (between Ma’an and Mudawwara)

1917

August-March 1918: After the capture of Aqaba, German General Eric von Falkenhayn visits Ma’an Station and advises on defending the surrounding landscape. New Turkish defences built there during this period, and along the railway south 28 August: RFC bombing attacks on Ma’an Station 28–29 August: RFC bombing attack on Abu Lissan 17 September: Lawrence and Zaal unsuccessful attack on/reconnaissance of Mudawwara Station 18 September: Arab/British attack on Turkish train—the Hallat Ammar ambush September–March 1918: Turkish fortification of Hallat Ammar ambush area 6 October: Lawrence and Bedouin blow up train south of Bir Shedia Station

1918

1 January: British armoured-car attack on Siddons’ Bridge Fort (‘Plain Post’), followed by attack on Tel Shahm Station 22 January: Unsuccessful attack by Arab/British forces on Mudawwara Station 9 March: RFC pilots Siddons and Junor dropped bombs on Wadi Rutm Station 28 March–10 April: Lowell Thomas and Harry Chase interview, film, and photograph T.  E.  Lawrence, Emir Feisal, and Auda abu Tayi at Aqaba, Guweira, Abu Lissan, and Wuheida 12 April: Arab attack on Ghadir al Hajj Station; Advanced RAF Landing Ground established at Disi (Decie) near Wadi Rum during this month 13–18 April: Battle of Ma’an 19 April: Arab/British attack on Tel Shahm Fort (‘Rock Post’), station, and nearby karakolls, and, separately, on Siddons’ Ridge Camp and nearby culverts 20 April: Arab/British attack on Ramleh Station, followed by reconnaissance to Mudawwara Station, demolishing a bridge north of Hallat Ammar Station, and blowing of track and bridges near Ramleh 22 April: Attack by British armoured cars and artillery on Wadi Rutm Station 9 May: Arab/British attack on Batn al-Ghoul Station

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Timeline 4 June: Chaim Weizmann meets Emir Feisal at Wuheida 28 June: Arab attack on Hallat Ammar Station 7 August: RAF bombing of Mudawwara Station 8 August: British attack on and taking of Mudawwara Station 1919–25

(Repair and reuse of railway)

1920

Prince Abdullah (later King Abdullah I bin Hussein of Transjordan) uses August Meissner’s house at Ma’an Station as his headquarters and home for several months from November during his time as deputy for his brother Feisal, at which time it was called the National Defence Centre

1923

June: First post-war through train from Damascus to Medina

1925

August: Ma’an to Mudawwara section of railway became part of the Hejaz Railway in Transjordan, operated by The Palestine Railways October: Final train to use the Ma’an to Mudawwara section as part of the last through train from Damascus to Medina

1925–40

Railway south of Ma’an abandoned, and subject to robbing of rails, sleepers, and infrastructure, and re-use in vernacular architecture and fence-posts

1941

Pulling up of 60km of track south of Ma’an by Australian and British soldiers to be re-used for the short-lived route from Ma’an to Naqb Ashtar

1955

Engineering report on the state of the railway between Ma’an and the Medina

1960–1

David Lean films scenes from Lawrence of Arabia at Jefer and Wadi Rum

1965–70

Abortive refurbishment of railway (including rebuilding of stations, embankment, track-laying, bridges, and culverts, and clearance of ArabRevolt-period abandoned locomotives, debris, and human remains)

1972–5

Partial rebuilding and strengthening of railway from north of Ma’an to Batn al-Ghoul, and laying of new track from there to Aqaba for the phosphatecarrying trains. Original route south of Batn al-Ghoul to Mudawwara remains abandoned, albeit partially reconstructed during the 1960s.

1980–present Ongoing damage to railway sites including gold-digging and bulldozing. Use of several locations from Ma’an Station to at least Tel Shahm Fort for joint military exercises by the Royal Jordanian Army and the British Army. 1990s

‘Abdullah’s Palace’ (Meissner’s House) at Ma’an Station becomes a museum of the Arab Revolt

2006–14

Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP). Closure of Abdullah’s Palace Museum at Ma’an Station in 2006/7. The ‘Disi Water Conveyance Project’ (DWCP) (2009–13) lays a pipeline which runs past Tel Shahm Fort, across the area traversed by the armoured-car attacks of 1917–18, and northwards past several Ottoman construction-era campsites.

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Timeline 2015–present Railway south of Ma’an to Batn al-Ghoul continuing use by phosphate trains with re-use of Bir Shedia and Aqabat Hejazia locations; south of Batn al-Ghoul to Mudawwara remains abandoned and subject to continuing speculative gold-digging and destruction of already ruinous stations (which had been refurbished during the 1960s). Start of re-enactment tourist attraction, ‘The Great Arab Revolt Show’ (mock attacks on a train) as a tourist attraction near Wadi Rum. In 2018, reports of a new restoration project for the Abdullah I Palace Museum at Ma’an Station, and a new Jordanian/ Turkish Hejaz Railway Museum in Amman.

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GA ZET TEER OF SITES

T

his gazetteer brings together all Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP) sites ­discovered and investigated by different teams from 2006 to the present. Inevitable variation in recording conditions and nomenclature are reflected and indicated here, as are examples of duplication. The primary aim has been to provide unique site numbers for all sites. All GARP sites are on the database of the ‘Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa’ (EAMENA) web-site, with two levels of access: for public access with no log-on credentials searching is possible by using a GARP site number to obtain the site name, or using a site name to obtain the GARP PMR number; bona-fide researchers can apply to the EAMENA team for an official log-on which will give access to the full records of the site. See http://eamenadatabase.arch.ox.ac.uk. Site No.

Name

Description

1000

Ma’an: Hill of the Birds

A complex of trench systems along a ridge 600m west of Ma’an Station. Comprises approximately 2000m of trench systems and 4 redoubts.

1001

Ma’an: Crenellated Trench

65m-long crenellated trench. 500m north of Site 1002 Ma’an Knoll, 600m north-west of Hill of the Birds.

1002

Ma’an Knoll

A small knoll 600m west of the Hill of the Birds, 1.1km west of Ma’an Station. The top of the knoll is fortified with a trench system. It would have provided covering fire for the level area to the west of the Hill of the Birds.

1003

Ma’an: Northern Ridge Group

A defended position, 1.4km to the north-west of Ma’an Station. Main feature is a 500m-long north-west-facing firing trench, also communications trenches and machine gun posts. Possible anti-aircraft gun positions.

1004

Ma’an: Bewley’s Bluff

Karakoll defence (of human footprint shape) with c.220m of trenches facing north and north-north-east, and located 1.0km north of Ma’an Station. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

1005

Ma’an: Southern Ridge Group

A group of 3 trench systems lying 1.37km south-west of Ma’an Station, situated on a low ridge. The northern and southern positions of the system have been dug as trenches, but the central section (120m long) has been marked out but not dug.

1006

Ma’an: South-East Trench

220m-long trench system, 1.48km south-east of Ma’an station. Aligned east-west and south-facing, with possible machine gun emplacements at either end.

1007

Ma’an: North-east Group 1

Linear trench system, with traverses, located 690m north-east of Ma’an station, on a low rise and aligned north-west–south-east. Total length is c.125m and is bisected by a modern road. Possibly longer originally, but destroyed at its south-east by modern development.

1008

Jebel Semnah South 3

Southernmost of the Jebel Semnah fortifications. A semi-circular trench system on a small knoll.

1009

Jebel Semnah South Tent-rings

Tent-rings and building ruins.

1010

Jebel Semnah South 2

Trench system with 7 traverses, aligned north-south, c.111m long, protecting Jebel Semnah ridge from attack from the west or east.

1011

Jebel Semnah South 1

Short section of trench aligned north-south, c.33m long protecting Jebel Semnah ridge.

1012

Jebel Semnah South 1 Trench Complex

5 short trenches surrounding an elevated machine-gun position in commanding position above old Ma’an to Abu Lissan road. Forms a defensive pair with Site 1013 Mid-Semnah Karakoll on opposite side of the road.

1013

Mid-Semnah Karakoll

Oval-shaped karakoll on a small hill, 200m north of old Ma’an to Abu Lissan road. Forms a defensive pair with Site 1012 Jebel Semnah South 1 Trench Complex on opposite side of road. Located 4.55km west of the modern Ma’an and 7.4km north-west of Ma’an Station.

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Gazet teer of Sites 1014

North Semnah 1

40m-long zig-zag trench aligned northsouth. Part of a system of trenches and outlying breastworks on the top of a low hill 5.15km north-west of Ma’an.

1015

North Semnah 2

A 90m section of trench 360m north-northeast of Site 1048 North Semnah 3, located on a small hill 5.5km north-west of Ma’an.

1016

Ma’an Station Camp West

An area of flat ground 50m to the north-west of Ma’an station. There are a number of building outlines evident, possible barracks and a large number of tent-rings visible on Google Earth.

1017

Bir Shedia Station

Site of Hejaz Railway Station, now occupied by modern (1970s) station buildings. Also designated Site SO79.

1018

Ghadir al Haj Station

Hejaz Railway Station.

1019

Wuheida East Redoubt A

Stone-built redoubt, surrounded by dry-stone perimeter wall, incorporating 10 sunken-floor structures partly cut into bedrock. Protected by 100m long trench on north-western side.

1020

Wuheida East Redoubt B

Poorly preserved structure surrounded by breastwork-trench.

1021

Wuheida East Redoubt C

2 substantial standing structures (blockhouse remains?) and several ruinous structures inside a perimeter of breastwork-trench and protected by outer trench with firing bays/ traverses.

1022

Aqabat Hejazia Station

Aqabat Hejazia Hejaz Railway Station (ruinous, and incorporating modern phosphate-loading station of same name).

1023

Fassu’ah Fort

Mid-eighteenth-century Ottoman Hajj Fort, repurposed during the Arab Revolt.

1024

Batn al-Ghoul Station

Empty site of Hejaz Railway Station of Batn al-Ghoul. Only a part of one wall survives. Also designated Site BG08.

1025

Wadi Rutm Station

Hejaz Railway Station. 3 Late Ottoman period ruined buildings and a mid-twentieth-century building. Also designated Site SO64. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

1026

Wadi Rutm Fort

Hilltop/plateau Turkish fortification overlooking Wadi Rutm station at 1,132m asl.

1027

Ramleh Railway Station

Hejaz Railway Station. A single mid-twentieth-century building and evidence of trench systems and building remains. Also designated Site SO78.

1028

South Ramleh Fort

Prominent inselberg in isolated location fortified by loopholed Turkish stone walling, 76m west of tent-ring Site 1029 South Ramleh Fort Camp.

1029

Ramleh South Fort Camp

20 tent-rings in 2 rows, lying on wadi floor 76m east of Site 1028 South Ramleh Fort to the west, and railway embankment to the east. Also designated Site SO37.

1030

Tel Shahm Station

Hejaz Railway Station.

1031

Tel Shahm Fort

Hilltop fort with possible mediaeval origins. It comprises a dry-stone perimeter wall, with at least three ‘sentry-posts’. In the middle and at the highest point is a blockhouse. Also designated Site TSF10.

1032

Tel Shahm Camp North

21 tent-rings of unusual ‘megalithic’ appearance arranged in 2 rows of 8 plus 5 outliers, 140m north of Tel Shahm Fort hill. Also designated Site TSC10.

1033

North Mudawwara 1, North-east

12 tent-rings, unusually widely spaced, and possibly associated circular redoubts 2.5km north of Mudawwara Station. Also designated Site SO36.

1034

North Mudawwara 2, Central

8 tent-rings and 3 fortified outposts constructed from sandstone blocks.

1035

North Mudawwara 3, North-west

4 defensive towers, c.3m diameter (providing defence of high ground), 2.5km north of Mudawwara Station.

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Gazet teer of Sites 1036

Mudawwara Station

Major Hejaz Railway Station with wind-driven water pump, engine shed, two 201m-long sidings, two large water-storage tanks, several station buildings, surrounded by short trenches to south and east, and three fortified hilltop redoubts to the west. Also designated Site SO81.

1037

Jurf al Darawish Station

Hejaz Railway Station.

1038

Suwaqa Station

Hejaz Railway Station, with ruinous mudbrick buildings 36m east.

1039

Menzil Station

Hejaz Railway Station and associated buildings. Possible barrack building west of the railway line.

1040

Menzil North Karakoll

Roughly circular karakoll with path leading west to railway embankment and located 260m north-east of Site 1039 Menzil Station.

1041

Menzil South Karakoll

Karakoll and north-westerly looping trench, 500m south of Site 1039 Menzil Station.

1042

Al Hasa Station

Hejaz Railway Station complex.

1043

Fassu’ah Ridge Encampment

14 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 7, c.308m west of railway embankment, and 650m north-west of Fassu’ah Ridge Fort.

1044

Jerdun Station

Hejaz Railway Station.

1045

Mid-way Camp, Wadi Rutm

8–10 tent-rings 360m south of Site 1046 Midway Fort and on east side of railway embankment. Also designated Site SO22.

1046

Mid-way Fort. Wadi Rutm

A circular rough-built stone fortified enclosure on a small knoll adjacent to the line of the Hejaz railway with possible prehistoric origins.

1047

Wadi Rutm Turkish Army Camp

24 tent-rings and several observation posts/ machine-gun posts on a small rise overlooking the central wadi route to the west and adjacent to the Hejaz Railway to the east. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

1048

North Semnah 3

A short section of trench, 22m forming a breastwork on the ridge.

1050

Tent Ring Encampment

14 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows 80m east of karakoll designated as Site 1112 Ghadir al Haj North 1.

1051

Trench System Km 471.6

A 6m-long section of trench overlooking a viaduct. On the west side of the railway line. 471.6km from Damascus.

1053

Ghadir al Haj South

Karakoll on small hillock overlooking the railway. Located to the east of the line. Approximately 20m × 12m aligned east-west. At 477.0km from Damascus. Very feint crenellated trench to the east of the station and probable remains of a continuous trench to the west.

1054

Cistern

1996 re-lined cistern, original much older. Arabic name translates as ‘Water for Sheep’.

1055

Ruined Modern Building

The remains of a modern building reduced to rubble.

1056

Stone Quarry

Stone quarry, approximately 100m × 100m overlooking a wadi to the south.

1057

Cistern

Cistern, 2.5m × 2.5m × 2.5m deep. Rendered on the inside surface and surrounded by stones.

1058

 

4 tent-rings likely associated with the nearby Site 1056 Stone Quarry. 2 × 3m and 2 × 4m diameter.

1059

Redoubt

A partially built/unfinished redoubt (25m × 25m) overlooking one 5-span, two 2-span, and two 1-span bridges.

1060

Abandoned Bedouin Camp

Abandoned Bedouin camp, 14m × 8m. Divided into 3 compartments. Dung floor at eastern end. Shallow drip trench around north, east, and west sides. One piece of a red, possibly medieval Islamic, pottery base found.

1061

Well

Well sited adjacent to Site 1060 Abandoned Bedouin camp.

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Gazet teer of Sites 1062

Stein Camp A

Tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 6 plus 1 outlier to the east.

1063

Stein Camp C

25 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 10, 1 row of 5. 90m west of railway embankment, aligned east-west.

1064

Coal Spread

Spread of coal on the surface. 20mm pieces over a 1m diameter area.

1065

Stone Quarry

Stone quarry adjacent to the railway embankment on its west side.

1066

Railway Blockhouse Km 495

Stone-built blockhouse adjacent to the railway on its west side. Dimensions 14m × 5m. Original Hejaz Railway construction period (c.1905–6), heavily rebuilt in 1960s.

1067

South Blockhouse Camp

30 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows, located c.965m to the south of Site 1066 Railway Blockhouse, and aligned north-south, and approximately 5m in diameter.

1068

12-Span Fort

A small hill top fortification/karakoll, to west of railway embankment (and connected to it by a path) and adjacent to Site 1069 12-span Viaduct.

1069

12-Span Viaduct

Hejaz Railway 12-span viaduct. Protective small fort/karakoll (Site 1068 12-Span Fort) lies 125m south on south side of wadi.

1070

The Great Camp 2

11 tent-rings in one row of 8, and one of 3, located on a small knoll, 110m west of railway embankment, 1.3km south of Site 1068.

1071

The Great Camp 3

24–26 tent-rings, arranged in 2 rows of 9, plus between 6 and 8 outliers, and aligned north-south on a small knoll overlooking a wadi to the south.

1072

Oven

Small domed structure, probably the remains of a bread oven.

1073

The Great Camp 4

20–21 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 9, plus 2–3 outliers, aligned east-west, 200m west of railway embankment on a low ridge.

1074

Horse Lines

Horse-mule tethering station, located between Site 1073 The Great Camp 4 and Site 1075 Stone Quarry. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

1075

Quarry

A sandstone quarry, 200m west of railway embankment on the north bank of wadi.

1076

Observation Post

Observation post, 140m west of the railway embankment, overlooking Site 1075 Quarry and wadi to the north.

1077

Platform

A small rectangular platform cut into the slope, c.3m × 2m and of unknown purpose.

1078

Tent Rings

15 tent-rings, arranged in 2 rows of 6 aligned north-south, plus 3 outliers, 300m west of railway embankment.

1079

Cistern

Concrete-lined water cistern 2m × 3m, c.80m west of the railway embankment.

1080

Lookout Tower

Remains of lookout tower or hunting hide.

1081

Abdullah’s Fort (Ornamental)

A roughly square, 2-roomed dry-stone structure set within a lightly trenched enclosure with parapet and external stone wall. The building is 9m × 9m and the enclosure 17m × 19m orientated north-south. Entrance on the eastern side, external stone walls survive to 12 courses. Located 50m west of railway.

1082

Hunting Hide

Small stone structure thought to be a hunting hide.

1083

Makins’ Fort West

Extensive fortified structure/blockhouse overlooking a 10-span viaduct and substantial wadi. Oral evidence confirms that this was a Turkish Ottoman fortification. Outer defensive perimeter wall survives to 12 courses on the south side. Inner defensive building c.25m × 10m. Also designated Site MF09WC.

1084

Well

Well associated with Makins’ Fort East.

1085

Makins’ Fort East

A 7m × 7m fortified building (remains). Entrance on the east elevation. Also an oven on the west side. Oral evidence suggests that it was used to protect water supplies for the railway. Located to the east of the railway at km 565. Also designated Site MF09EC.

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Gazet teer of Sites 1086

Observation Post

A circular rough-stone-constructed enclosure, c.3m diameter and 8 courses high. 30m north-west of railway embankment.

1087

Saleh’s Fort (Ornamental)

Square fortification with 2 rooms, 8m × 8m, set within a 15m × 15m outer defence. Outer defences consist of a stone wall with inner ditch that suggest a lightly defended location.

1088

Tahuna Advanced Landing Ground

Probable site of RFC/RAF Advanced Landing Ground.

1089

The Round Fort (Ornamental)

A circular fortified building 7m in diameter inside a circular enclosure formed by a bank and ditch. The enclosure is 24m diameter. 1 tent ring 100m to the south-west. Also designated Site TRF11.

1090

Wuheida West Royal Camp A

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1091

Wuheida West Royal Camp B

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1092

Wuheida West Royal Camp C

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1093

Wuheida West Royal Camp D

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1094

Wuheida West Royal Camp E

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1095

Wuheida West Royal Camp F

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

1096

Wuheida West Royal Camp G

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1097

Wuheida West Royal Camp H

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1098

Wuheida West Royal Camp I

Arab army camp on lower slopes of western part of Wuheida wadi, comprising tent-rings, variously shaped tent-enclosures, and pathways, all marked out by stones.

1099

Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 2

Short stretch of breastwork-trench.

1100

Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 1

Short stretch of breastwork-trench.

1101

Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 3

Short stretch of breastwork-trench.

1102

Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 4

Short stretch of breastwork-trench.

1103

Wuheida Northern Hill Horse-Mule Tethering Station

 

1104

Wuheida Eastern Hill Bedouin Graves 1

Assumed Bedouin burials.

1105

Wuheida Eastern Hill Bedouin Graves 2

Assumed Bedouin burials.

1106

Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 1

 

1107

Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 2

 

1108

Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 3

 

1109

Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 4

 

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Gazet teer of Sites 1110

Tent-rings

Heavily damaged tent-ring camp with unknown number of tent-rings, 65m west of railway embankment.

1111

Birds Nest Trench

Linear trench feature 90m south of Site 1113 Birds Nest Camp, 35m-long, 1.70m-wide, and 0.25m-high embankment.

1112

Ghadir al Haj North 1

Karakoll sited on a rise 125m south-west of railway embankment surrounded by wolf-pits, and 80m west of Site 1050 tent-ring camp.

1113

Birds Nest Camp

28 large (‘megalithic’ appearance) tent-rings arranged in 2 rows aligned north-south, 50m west of railway embankment.

1114

Al Batra Fort

Remnants of a fortification. Used as a campsite by British and Arab forces.

1115

Al Fiqai

Location used by Emir Feisal’s troops.

1116

Ma’an Station

Hejaz Railway Station, main railway hub and largest station between Amman and Medinah.

1117

Ma’an West Redoubt

Karakoll-like position of trenches fortifying a 40m north-south-aligned rise.

1118

Ma’an Station Cemetery

Late Ottoman period cemetery associated with the Ma’an railway station complex.

1119

Ma’an Station Mortuary

Single-storey building used as a mortuary for the adjacent cemetery. Extant in 2010 and used for storage.

1120

Disi, (Decie), RFC/RAF Advanced Landing Ground

Location of the landing ground on the Gaa of Disi. Occupation evidence 450m west.

1121

Abu Suawana, RFC/RAF Advanced Landing Ground

Advanced landing ground used by the RFC/RAF.

1122

Ras al Naqb Trenches

Trench system.

1123

Tooth Hill Camp East

Location of a campsite used by British, Arab, and Egyptian forces 1917–18. Also designated as Site SO61 and THC12.

1124

Jerdun Railway Station

Hejaz Railway Station.

1125

Wadi Rutm Darb al Hajj Site

Section of the Darb al Hajj, Wadi Rutm. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

1126

Siddons Ridge Camp

20 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows along a ridge fortified with a 150m-long trench and a fortified circular structures at each end. Signs of prehistoric activity with Neolithic/Bronze Age finds. Also designated SRC 11.

1127

Saleh’s Camp

8 kidney-shaped tent-rings arranged in 2 rows plus 2 larger tent-rectangles. Also designated SLC11. 170m north-west of Site 1087 Saleh’s Fort.

1128

Siddons’ Bridge

Multi-span railway bridge 260m east of Site 1129 Siddons’ Bridge Fort.

1129

Siddons’ Bridge Fort

Rectangular sand-and-stone defensive earthwork (arguably halfway between a sangar and a karakoll) built to protect Site 1128 Siddons’ Bridge 260m to the east. Also designated SBF12.

1130

 

6 tent-rings 93m east of railway embankment, and 137m south-east of Siddons’ Bridge.

1131

 

18 tent-rings arranged as 1 row of 10, 1 row of 5 or 6, plus 6 outliers mainly to north. 105m west of railway embankment.

1132

Hisn Tiswani

Mamluk or Ottoman caravanserai. Heavily damaged remains 165m east of railway embankment but adjacent to Hajj-era road/path.

1133

 

15 tent-rings arranged in 1 row of 8, 1 of 6 (visible today), and 1 outlier, 38m west of railway embankment.

1134

North Ramleh Fort 2

Heavily damaged rectangular karakoll 2.6km north of Ramleh Station.

1135

North Ramleh Fort 1

Rectangular karakoll 550m north-north-east of Ramleh Station. Also designated NRF14.

1136

Mudawwara Northern Redoubt Fortified hilltop opposite Mudawwara Station.

1137

Mudawwara Central Redoubt

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Fortified hilltop lying between Site 1136 Mudawwara Northern Redoubt and Site 1138 Mudawwara Southern Redoubt. Also designated Site SO80.

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Gazet teer of Sites 1138

Mudawwara Southern Redoubt

Fortified hilltop lying 640m south of Site 1137 Mudawwara Central Redoubt. Also designated Site MNR13.

1139

Nick’s Fort

Triangular-shaped stone-built redoubt with adjacent small stone quarry. Also designated Site SO23.

1140

Mudawwara Ottoman Fort

Eighteenth-century Ottoman Hajj fort.

1141

Tel Shahm Fort South

Karakoll 300m east of railway embankment and 3.7km south of Tel Shahm Station. Also designated SO41.

1142

Long Siding

780m-long siding in isolated location leading off south-east from the railway embankment. 200m east of Site SO40 Long Siding Camp. Also designated Site 1142. Located 4.2km north of Ramleh station.

1143

John’s Camp

c.27 tent-rings, 22 arranged in 2 rows, and c.5 located at various locations around the low plateau where site is located at southern end of Wadi Rutm, 155m west of railway embankment. Also designated Site SO47.

1144

Tooth Hill Camp West

Location of a campsite and advance military dump used by British, Arab, and Egyptian forces 1917–18. Also designated as Site SO62 and WTH14.

BG 08

Batn al-Ghoul Station

Empty site of Hejaz Railway Station of Batn al-Ghoul. Only a part of one wall survives. Also designated Site 1024.

MAS13

Hallat Ammar Ambush (Site)

Site area of Hallat Ammar ambush, associated with bulldozed piles of damaged rail tracks and sleepers.

MNR12

Mudawwara Northern Redoubt Also designated Site 1136.

MNR13

Mudawwara Southern Redoubt Also designated Site 1138.

R1AS

Hallat Ammar Redoubt 1 Ambush Site

Eastern stone-built redoubt on prominent ridge top overlooking Hallat Ammar Ambush site, 250m south-west of (later) Site SO32 blockhouse. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

R2AS

Hallat Ammar Redoubt 2 Ambush Site

Western stone-built redoubt on prominent ridge top overlooking and 900m south-west of the Hallat Ammar Ambush site of the railway bridge.

SBF 12

Siddons’ Bridge Fort

Rectangular sand-and-stone defensive earthwork (arguably halfway between a sangar and a karakoll) built to protect Site 1128 Siddons’ Bridge 260m to the east. Also designated Site 1129.

SLC11

Saleh’s Camp

10 tent-structures, arranged in 2 rows of 4 kidney-shaped tent-rings each, and 2 tent-rectangles. Also designated Site 1127.

SO01

 

11 tent-rings, arranged in 2 rows of 5 and 1 outlier, 2km south of Site 1112 Ghadir al Haj North 1.

SO02

 

14 tent-rings 1.5km south of SO01, also designated Site 1050.

SO03

 

7 tent-rings in damaged area, 70m west of railway embankment/bridge, 400m north of Bir Shedia Station.

SO04

 

30 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows, 30m west of railway embankment, 1.45km south of Site 1056/SO12 Stone Quarry.

SO05

The Great Camp 1

14 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows, 180m west of railway embankment, 387m south-south-east of Site 1068 Fortification.

SO06

Horse-Mule Tethering Station

Possible horse or mule-tethering station on southern bank of wadi, opposite similar feature of Site 1074 Horse Lines.

SO07

 

10 visible tent-rings in heavily damaged area 145m west of railway embankment, 80m north-west of Site 1079 Cistern.

SO08

Ghadir al Haj North Karakoll 2

400m south of Ghadir al Haj North Karakoll 1.

SO09

 

13 tent-rings on wadi scarp, 120m west of railway embankment, 300m south of Site 1054 Cistern.

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Gazet teer of Sites SO11a

 

13 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows (1 of 8, 1 of 5 [damaged]), plus miscellaneous circular features associated with it. 250m south-west of railway embankment, 210m south-west of Site SO09.

SO11b

 

12 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 6, 140m south-west of railway embankment, 90m south of Site SO09.

SO12

 

Stone quarry south of Birds Nest Camp, also designated Site 1065.

SO13

 

20 tent-rings in 2 rows of 7, plus 6 outliers, 84m west of railway embankment, 662m south of Birds Nest Camp.

SO14

 

Observation post/machine-gun post on west-facing scarp slope, north-north-west of Site SO16 Fassu’ah Ridge Camp North.

SO15

Fassu’ah Ridge Camp West

14 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows.

SO16

Fassu’ah Ridge Camp

6 tent-rings and a collapsed circular stone structure (possibly a machine-gun post).

SO17

Fassu’ah Fort Pathway Scar Trench North

Short length of trench protecting the path from Fassu’ah Fort to Aqabat Hejazia Station.

SO18

Fassu’ah Fort Pathway Scar Trench South

Short length of trench protecting the path from Fassu’ah Fort to Aqabat Hejazia Station.

SO19

Fassu’ah Fort Pathway Scar Trench North 2

Short length of trench protecting the path from Fassu’ah Fort to Aqabat Hejazia Station.

SO20

Fassu’ah Fort Pathway Stone-rings

2 stone rings, designated as one site.

SO21

 

8 tent-rings on east side of railway embankment and 350m east of Site 1047 Wadi Rutm Turkish Army Camp.

SO22

Mid-way Camp

8–10 tent-rings 360m south of Site 1046 Midway Fort and on east side of railway embankment.

SO23

Nick’s Fort

Triangular-shaped stone-built redoubt with adjacent small stone quarry. Also designated Site 1139.

SO24

Camp North Tel Shahm 1

14 tent-rings (arranged in 2 rows of 6) plus 2 outliers. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

SO25

Camp North Tel Shahm 2

12 tent-rings (arranged in 2 rows of 6) and 1 outlier.

SO26

Hallat Ammar Sangar

Stone-and-sand rectangular earthwork 6.21km north of Hallat Ammar Ambush site and 8.4km south of Mudawwara Station, 310m west of the railway embankment at its nearest point and cutting into earlier tent-rings of Site SO27 Hallat Ammar Sangar Camp.

SO27

Hallat Ammar Sangar Camp

20 tent-rings adjacent to and cut by (later) Site SO26 Hallat Ammar Sangar.

SO28

 

12 eroded tent-rings 1.8km south-south-east of Site SO27 Hallat Ammar Sangar Camp and lying 160m west of railway embankment.

SO29

 

10 tent-rings and 1 outlier 390m north-north-west of Site SO27 Hallat Ammar Sangar Camp.

SO30

Batn al-Ghoul Defile Defence

Short trench with possible machine-gun position at southern end, and nearby mule-tethering station, 1km south of Aqabat Hejazia Station, strategically positioned at entrance to the Batn al-Ghoul defile on high ground east of railway.

SO31

Batn al-Ghoul Loop Trench

18m-long trench with 1 rough-built circular stone-built structure at each end, defending a vulnerable loop in the railway embankment at the foot of the Ras an Naqb escarpment.

SO32

Hallat Ammar Ambush Site blockhouse

Stone-built blockhouse (probably of post-Ambush date) adjacent to railway embankment and 250m north-east of Site R1AS Hallat Ammar Redoubt 1 Ambush Site.

SO33

Mudawwara Turkish Defensive Wall

55m-long west-facing loopholed Turkish wall north-west of Site 1136/MNR12 Mudawwara Northern Redoubt.

SO34

Mudawwara David’s Sangar

10m-long trench ending in a 12m circumference sand-and-stone defensive feature, lying 225m south-west of Site 1136/ MNR12 Mudawwara Northern Redoubt.

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Gazet teer of Sites SO36

North Mudawwara 1, North-east

12 tent-rings, unusually widely spaced, and possibly associated circular redoubts 2.5km north of Mudawwara Station. Also designated Site 1033.

SO37

Ramleh South Fort Camp

20 tent-rings, 76m east of Site 1028 Ramleh South Fort. Also designated Site 1029.

SO38

Ramleh Station Camp

16 (traceable) tent-rings 170m south of Site 1135 North Ramleh Fort 1. Aldo designated Site NRF14.

SO39

Long Siding

780m-long siding in isolated location leading off south-east from the railway embankment. 200m east of Site SO40 Long Siding Camp. Also designated Site 1142. Located 4.2km north of Ramleh station.

SO40

Long Siding Camp

11 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 4, plus 3 outliers adjacent to west. 200m west of Site SO39 Long Siding.

SO41

Tel Shahm Fort South

Karakoll 300m east of railway embankment and 3.7km south of Tel Shahm Station. Also designated Site 1141 (previously NRF10).

SO43

Tel Shahm Camp South

19 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows.

SO44

Tel Shahm Fort Base Structures Miscellaneous footings of stone structures at base of Tel Shahm Fort hill (north side).

SO45

Camp North Tel Shahm 4

18 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 8 (with bulldozer damage to 2 of these) plus 2 outliers, 1 west, 1 east.

SO46

Camp North Tel Shahm 3

6 tent-rings.

SO47

John’s Camp

c.27 tent-rings, 22 arranged in 2 rows, and c.5 located at various locations around the low plateau where site is located at southern end of Wadi Rutm, 155m west of railway embankment. Also designated Site 1143.

SO48

Batn al-Ghoul North Camp

21 tent-structures (mainly tent-rings).

SO49

Batn al-Ghoul North-west Camp

22 tent-structures (mainly tent-rings)

SO50

Batn al-Ghoul South Camp

23 tent-structures (mainly tent-rings). Also designated Site BG09.

SO51

Fassu’ah Ridge Fort

Also designated Site FR08. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

SO52

Fassu’ah Ridge Central

A group of small sites, including a mule-tethering station with feeding trough, standard and large tent-rings, a connecting path from latter to the scarp edge and several buildings/fortifications.

SO53

Tent-rings

7 visible tent-rings arranged in 2 rows, aligned east-west, in heavily damaged area, 108m west of railway embankment.

SO54

Stein Camp B

16 tent-rings in damaged area.

SO55

Stein Camp Defences

2 small earthworks possibly defences for Stein Camp.

SO56

 

14 tent-rings, 279m south-west of Bir Shedia Station.

SO57

 

14 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 6 and 2 outliers (1 east, 1 west), located 130m east of railway embankment, and 1.4km north of Ghadir al Haj Station.

SO58

 

12–14 tent-rings arranged in 1 row of 5 (heavily damaged), 1 row of 7, and several others in heavily disturbed area 50m south-west of railway embankment and 2km north-north-west of Site 1112 Ghadir al Haj North 1.

SO59

 

12 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows of 6, 120m east of railway embankment, 170m south of Site SO60, and 500m south-south-east of Site 1027 Ramleh Station.

SO60

 

13 tent-rings arranged roughly east-west but in no obvious formation. Could be Hejaz Railway construction camp but more likely a  Bedouin campsite. 335m south-south-east of Site 1027 Ramleh Station.

SO61

Tooth Hill Camp East

Location of a campsite used by British, Arab, and Egyptian forces 1917–18. Also designated as Site 1123 and THC12.

SO62

Tooth Hill Camp West

Location of a campsite and advance military dump used by British, Arab, and Egyptian forces 1917–18. Also designated as Site 1144 and WTH14.

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Gazet teer of Sites SO63

Siddons’ Ridge Camp Bridge

Hejaz Railway bridge crossing a wadi 700m north-east of Site 1126 Siddons’ Ridge Camp.

SO64

Wadi Rutm Station

Hejaz Railway Station. 3 Late Ottoman period ruined buildings and a mid-twentieth-century building. Also designated Site 1025.

SO65

Wadi Rutm Observation/ Machine-gun Post

Small fortified natural hill 300m north of Wadi Rutm Station.

SO66

Wadi Rutm Fort Camp

Stone footings of various buildings and/or tented structures and machine-gun position some 30m north of Site 1026 Wadi Rutm Fort.

SO67

Makins’ Fort Ghost Embankment

Abandoned railway embankment of unknown purpose, 430m long from leaving the main track moving south to the wadi.

SO68

Ma’an Station: Northern Redoubt B (Hill of the Birds)

Redoubt/karakoll with sunken bunker and surrounded by crenellated trenches located on Hill of the Birds.

SO69

Ma’an Station: Northern Redoubt A (Hill of the Birds)

Redoubt/karakoll (heavily damaged) surrounded by crenellated trenches located on Hill of the Birds.

SO70

Ma’an Station: Central Redoubt (Hill of the Birds)

Redoubt/karakoll-like feature on low rise partly defined on its western side by communication/defensive trench coming in from west. Located on Hill of the Birds.

SO71

Ma’an Station: Southern Redoubt (Hill of the Birds)

Redoubt/karakoll-like feature on low rise in heavily damaged area and immediately east of bulge in main defensive Trench V. Located on Hill of the Birds.

SO72

Suwaqa South

Ridge-top karakoll overlooking railway bridge and southern approaches to Site 1038 Suwaqa Station 350m north. Karakoll is square-shape and lies at south-western end of a 200m-long ridge-top trench.

SO75

Jebel Uneiza

Trench systems on the summit of Jebel Uneiza.

SO76

Jebel Uneiza

Trench systems on the summit of Jebel Uneiza. (continued )

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Gazet teer of Sites Continued Site No.

Name

Description

SO77

Wadi Rutm Caravan Stop

Miscellaneous scatter of metal objects relating to Hajj caravan overnighting with dated coins suggesting use over 800 years, and lying some 450m south-west of Wadi Rutm Station. Also designated Site 1125.

SO78

Ramleh Railway Station

Hejaz Railway Station. A single mid-twentieth-century building and evidence of trench systems and building remains. Also designated Site 1027.

SO79

Bir Shedia Station

Site of Hejaz Railway Station, now occupied by modern (1970s) station buildings. Also designated Site 1017.

SO80

Mudawwara Central Redoubt

Also designated Site 1137.

SO81

Mudawwara Station

Major Hejaz Railway Station with wind-driven water pump, engine shed, two 201m-long sidings, two large water-storage tanks, several station buildings, surrounded by short trenches to south and east, and three fortified hilltop redoubts to the west. Also designated Site 1036.

SO82

Fassu’ah Ridge Tented-Railway Halt

Remains of 1 possibly 2 tent-rings located a few metres from the railway embankment with tumbled stone (building?) remains nearby—possibly a halt for Turkish officers to access Fassu’ah Ridge Fort along a path.

SO83

North Semnah 4

3 small trenches facing west, located 100mm south-west of Site 1014 North Semnah 1.

SO84

North Semnah 5

40m-long west-facing trench, 330m north of Site 1015 North Semnah 2.

SO85

Wuheida West Royal Camp

Composed of 9 discrete tented-structure camp sites, designated Sites 1090 Wuheida West Royal Camp A—1098 Wuheida West Royal Camp I.

S1O10

 

16 tent-rings arranged in 2 rows plus 1 southerly outlier. 350m south-west of Site 1053 Karakoll.

WE09

Wuheida East Complex

3 stone-built Turkish redoubts on fortified Eastern Hill, and trenches on fortified Northern Hill on other side of the wadi.

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NOTES

Chapter 1 1. (Hogarth 1920: 429, 431) 2. Coincidentally, we overlapped briefly with another archaeological investigation of a railway in the region. The Sudan Military Railway was built by the British from Wadi Halfa on the border between Egypt and Sudan south to Kerma in Sudan between 1875 and 1897. This railway too was embroiled in war—the Mahdi Revolt of 1881–99—but its professional and painstaking investigation was very different, conceived and undertaken solely as an exercise in Industrial Archaeology rather than Conflict Archaeology (Welsby 2011). 3. (Stoller 2017) 4. (Ochsenwald  1980: ix–x); The Turkish Military and Strategic Studies Archive in Ankara has the largest collection of Ottoman/Turkish material on the First World War, but was inaccessible (Winterburn 2016: 65). The ‘Ottoman Archives’ in Istanbul hold the central State Archives (Devlet arşivleri) within The Prime Minister’s Ottoman Archives (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivleri), and these too were inaccessible. 5. Field reconnaissance, survey, and excavation continued in tandem with ongoing desktop/archive/map research, in part because we hardly knew what questions to ask at first. Only when we began to see and record material in the field did we get a clear idea what we should be asking of the archive material. 6. The ‘Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East’ (APAAME n.d.), is a long-term project founded by Professor David Kennedy in 1978 and now run jointly with Dr Robert Bewley. ‘The project is designed both to develop a methodology suited to the region, discover, record, monitor and illuminate settlement history in the Near East.’ At the time of writing there are over 115,000 mainly aerial photographs of sites mostly accessible on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ apaame/collections), and APAAME’s own website (http://www.apaame.org/). 7. LiDAR, essentially laser scanning, can be deployed from aircraft (and increasingly drones) to map the earth’s surface and producing digital elevation models and digital surface models to an accuracy of 30 cm resolution. It also, and crucially, has the ability to pierce tree and vegetation cover. 8. The agreement, devised by the British MP Sir Mark Sykes, a self-proclaimed Middle East expert, and François Georges-Picot, the former French consul in Beirut, aimed at dividing the Ottoman Empire after the war. Negotiations began in late 1915 (and initially included Russia, which pulled out after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917) and the agreement was ratified in May 1916. It clearly broke the previous British agreement to recognize Arab independence after the war if Hussein bin Ali, Sharif

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Notes of Mecca, launched an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks. This agreement was recorded in the McMahon correspondence—a series of letters between Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner to Egypt and Hussein between July 1915 and  March 1916. This betrayal was compounded by the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, in which the British Foreign Secretary Sir Arthur Balfour wrote, ‘His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’ These developments would make Lawrence’s promises to Feisal and the Arabs increasingly difficult once the Revolt began, and contributed to his subsequent depression and inner turmoil. 9. (Baram and Carroll 2000: 5–11, 15–16) 10. (Ha’obsh n.d.) Jordanian Cultural Heritage is protected by the ‘Antiquity Law No. 21 for the year 1988’ and its amendment. It regards Antiquities as ‘any object, whether movable or immovable, which has been constructed, shaped, inscribed, erected, excavated, or otherwise produced or modified by humankind earlier than the year 1750 AD’. Recently, in 2003, ‘Interim Law No. (49) For the Protection of Urban and Architectural Heritage’ was approved. The law deals with heritage sites constructed after the year 1750 for its importance either with regards to the structural technique, or its relation to a historically important personality, or its relationship to important national or religious events. A new directorate was created at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to implement this law. 11. For recent discussion of this issue see Huggett (2015); Foyle (2015).

Chapter 2 1. (Satia 2008: 91) 2. (Bender 2002: 103) 3. This passage came to my attention when it was quoted by Keith Basso, an anthropologist who worked with the Western Apache of Arizona, in his extraordinary book Wisdom Sits in Places (Basso 1996). Both authors explore indigenous conceptions of landscape in societies of the oral tradition—and in this sense share much with the Bedouin. The original quotation comes from Silko (1981: 69), and is cited in Basso (1996: 64). 4. (Rabaté 2018: 12) 5. (de Nogales  2003: 284); de Nogales was a Venezuelan mercenary who fought for the Turks. 6. (Herva 2014: 297) Chapter 3 1. (Saunders 2002: 101) 2. (Saunders 2004: 5) 3. Uncontrolled battlefield looting of Second World War bodies and objects has been particularly noticeable in videos uploaded onto the Internet and in some television programmes. A National Geographic series called ‘Nazi War Diggers’ was cancelled in 2014 after international protests from archaeologists and historians.

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Notes 4. This first and arguably most successful example of battlefield archaeology focused on the battlefield of the Little Big Horn in Montana, United States, where Fox, and his colleagues—notably Scott and Melissa Connor—plotted, excavated, and forensically analysed hundreds of bullets and cartridge cases which proved there was no heroic last stand by General (actually Lieutenant Colonel) George Custer’s men, but that they were picked off by Indian snipers with repeating rifles (Fox 1993). Scott con­ tinued the groundbreaking work by examining skeletal remains from the site (Scott et  al. 1998), and subsequently worked on forensic investigations of more recent conflicts concerning Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia. The detailed scholarship and scientific rigour of Fox, Scott, Connor, and a handful of other professionals was too often and easily ignored by self-proclaimed battlefield archaeologists, and reduced to counting and measuring bullets and cartridges and digging for bodies. For a critique of Battlefield Archaeology see Saunders (2012). 5. (e.g. Buchli 2002; Miller 1994; Tilley et al. 2005) 6. (Saunders 2017: 209) 7. (Attfield 2000: 1) 8. (Saunders 2003: 11) 9. Examples appear at least as early as 479 BC, when the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Plataea, and melted down their bronze armour to forge a victory monument known as the Serpent Column—originally set up at Delphi, and now on display in Istanbul (Saunders 2003: 17–18). 10. (Saunders 2017) 11. It was these qualities which revealed trench art as a distinctive and ‘attention-grabbing’ kind of art, not because of its shapes, artistic qualities, or commercial value. 12. Volatility too is an inherent quality, because, as dextrous manipulations of conflictrelated material, trench art can simultaneously embody the experiences of its makers, and transform their pre-war identities. As Alfred Gell observed in Art and Agency, the decoration of an object is not only related to its function (as opposed to mere ‘beautification’), but also to a social project, because the process of decoration attaches the maker to the artefact he is inscribing (Gell 1998: 74). 13. (IGW 1914–15: 153) 14. (Saunders 2001) 15. Statistics tell the story. In the worst areas, more than 1,000 shells landed per square metre. Soldiers experienced this landscape by contributing to its transformation through their own woundings and deaths. ‘Showers of lead flying about & big big shells it’s an unearthy (sic) sight to see them drop in amongst human beings. The cries are terrible’ (papers of Miss Dorothy Scoles, quoted in Bourke 1996: 76). By the end of the war, and for France alone, it was estimated that some 330,000,000 m³ of trenches scarred the landscape as did some 375,000,000 m² of barbed wire (Clout 1996: 46). 16. (Barthas 2014: 32) 17. (see Howes  1991; Classen  2012; Winterton  2012; Leonard  2015; Saunders and Cornish 2017); The war poet Wilfred Owen, after only three weeks at the front, wrote to his mother that ‘I have not seen any dead. I have done worse. In the dank air, I have perceived it, and in the darkness, felt’ (quoted in Das 2005: 7). 18. (Winter 1995: 68–9)

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Notes 19. Buckley supervised trench-digging of the ‘Red Line’ at Coigneux six miles behind British lines south-west of Arras, and published his findings in an archaeological journal (Buckley 1920–1). Various other First World War fronts also saw wartime archaeological investigations (see Saunders 2010: 4–9). 20. Gardner was professor of classical archaeology at the University of London before the war, and had been director of the British School at Athens until 1895. Since hostilities began he had been serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Archaeological finds by British troops on the Salonika Front made their way to Gardner’s ad hoc museum located in Thessaloniki’s White Tower (ironically an Ottoman construction) (Shapland 2017: 85–6). 21. (Toombs 1985, 1989) 22. (Leonard 2015,  2016). These risky investigations were pioneered by The Durand Group (many of whom were ex-military) whose technical expertise was brought to bear in the network of tunnels beneath Vimy Ridge and Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont-Hamel (Dolamore  2000; Watkins  1998). Beneath the medieval city of Arras, the French archaeologist Alain Jacques discovered and investigated a rabbit warren of seventeenth-century underground quarries, one of which, Thompson’s Cave, had been transformed into a British casualty clearing station in 1917 (Girardet et al. 2003: 92–3). There was a waiting room, dressing room, operating theatre, kitchen, officers’ ward, mortuary, and toilets, as well as painted signs on the walls indicating the hospital facilities and the direction of the front line. Altogether, Arras’s underground city extended over 22km, and could house more than 24,000 troops (Saunders 2010: 127–31). 23. In 1991, thirty-six French farmers were killed when their machinery hit unexploded shells (O’Shea 1998: 29), and between 1946 and 1994, 630 French démineurs died during attempts to retrieve and defuse ordnance (O’Shea 1998: 28). 24. The architect Eugène Dhuicque said, ‘Leave the ruins as they are. Why should the 13th or 14th centuries be of more value than the four years of the World War’ (Vermeulen 1999: 10). This view, forcefully expressed by veterans’ associations who believed the ruins should be held in memoriam as holy ground, fell on deaf ears, and Ypres was rebuilt as a replica of its glorious medieval former self. Ironically, the city depends today largely on battlefield tourism for its prosperity. 25. For the multi-cultural war see Dendooven and Chielens (2008); The presence and role of the Chinese Labour Corps on the Western Front is dealt with by Xu (2011) and Li Ma (2012). 26. There are now many examples of this. See Saunders (2010: 100–25, 141–4, 159–60, 173–5) for an early overview; a selection of detailed case studies is: Girardet et al. (2003) for the discovery of twenty-seven British soldiers at Monchy-le-Preux, Adam (2006) on the discovery of the French novelist Alain Fournier, Brown (2009) for the discovery and identification of the German Jakob Hönes, and Loe et al. (2014) for the mass grave of 250 Australian and British soldiers at Fromelles. 27. (Brown and Osgood 2009) 28. (PAP 2010); a short video of the event is available as ‘Reburial of Australian WW1 Soldier’ on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9gCPf24LcI. 29. (Saunders 2010: 114–18) 30. (Price 2004)

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Notes 31. The excavations revealed trenches, shelters, ammunition depots, and gun emplacements, and shed light on the evolution of trench design. German structures, sometimes using concrete, were clearly more solidly built than their flimsy British counterparts, and their trenches preferred wattle-work revetments while the British used corrugated iron. The A19 excavations discovered seven British, one French, and three German soldiers, and there was a sense that with each discovery another personal history came into view, alongside an opportunity to reclaim a soldier from the lists of ‘the missing’ engraved on the nearby Menin Gate and Tyne Cot cemetery. As in France, this was a very anthropological dimension to an archaeological investigation (Dewilde et al. 2004; de Meyer and Pype 2004; Saunders 2010: 155–61). 32. One of the most infamous examples was when such activities were described as a  kind of archaeology: ‘There is nothing sacreligious about digging relics from battlefields . . . [and] the visitor needs nothing more than a good guidebook to become an ‘archaeologist’ (Laffin 1987: 10, 70). 33. (Zalewska et al. 2017; Kobiałka et al. 2017; Košir et al. 2019; Hubacz 2017) 34. For examples of this research see Nicolis et al. (2011); Stichelbaut (2006); Stichelbaut et al. (2009); Stichelbaut and Chielens (2013); and Stichelbaut and Cowley (2016). 35. To name just a few of the most important examples: the work of Gilly Carr (e.g. Carr 2014; Carr et al. 2014), Gabriel Moshenska (e.g. Moshenska 2012, 2014), Alfredo Gónzalez-Ruibal (Gónzalez-Ruibal and Moshenska 2015; Gónzalez-Ruibal 2008, 2016), and Esther Breithoff (Breithoff 2012, 2016) demonstrate albeit in different ways the adoption and power of this interdisciplinary approach. 36. (Buchli and Lucas 2001; Harrison and Schofield 2010: 179–80) 37. Given Lawrence’s own experiences as an archaeologist at Carchemish, and his extensive writings about war, it is interesting that an eighth-century BCE Assyrian philosophical contemplation on the nature of conflict violence describes martial activity as belonging to the realm of seven powers. These are conceptualized as ‘The Seven’ mythical creatures, in essence the technologies of war—the materialization of the war machine, embodying the abstract force of conflict and violence (Bahrani 2008: 208–9). Carchemish itself was conquered by the Assyrian King Sargon II in 717 BCE. Appropriate indeed for Lawrence’s background, and his book’s title and subject, though it must be assumed purely coincidental. 38. The influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture—to the End of the 12th Century. The thesis was based in part on 1600km of walking alone over three months in Ottoman Syria in summer 1909. 39. US General David Petraeus reportedly knows it by heart and quoted from it ­frequently, and another general added that the letters of Gertrude Bell were also important because she was the woman ‘who practically invented modern Iraq’ (Young 2009: 76, 81–2). 40. (Wilson 1988; Nichols 2007) 41. The commercial value of Lawrence-related items sometimes creates its own mysteries. In 2014, London’s Royal Society for Asian Affairs decided that Sotheby’s would auction a rare map of Jebel Rufaiya east of Tabuk—entitled Hejaz Railway to Wadi Sirhan—drawn and annotated by Lawrence from his notebooks of May 1917 during his circuitous desert sojourn en route to the taking of Aqaba. It was valued (some say undervalued) at between £70,000 and £100,000, and was withdrawn soon afterwards

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42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

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without explanation (Murray 2014). The map was created for cartographer Douglas Carruthers (who donated it to the Royal Society in 1962). Lawrence signed it, and added, ‘This is the only drawn copy so please do not lose it prematurely.’ The T. E. Lawrence Photograph Collection is in the Imperial War Museum, London. Among his famous photographs are ‘Nakl Mubarak, scene in a camp at dawn’ (1916/17) (No. 117ii), a ‘tulip’ explosive detonated on the Deraa railway line (IWM Q60020), and (probably) the wrecked railway trucks at Ghadir el Haj station (IWM Q60032). Lawrence had been taught to use a camera and to process photographic plates and prints by his father, a keen amateur photographer (Wilson 1988: 9). (Edwards 2002: 67) (Edwards 2001: 14) ‘At Carchemish he used a Wratten-Wainwright half-plate (3” × 4”) [this should probably read ‘quarter plate’ 4%” × 3%”)- R.L.C. III & S.G.] camera . . .’ (Chapman and Gibson 1996: 95). For a good technical and historical account of Lawrence and his cameras see W.D.H. (1977), and for the Museum of the History of Science collection details see Anon. (n.d.a)—camera accession number 1969–183, inventory number 21126. (W.D.H. 1977) (Wilson 1990: 135–42) Satia (2008) offers a magisterial account of the role of archaeologists, historians, and others as secret agents in Arabia during and after the First World War. Galanakis (2017) provides a fascinating insight into the archaeological role of Major Alexander Gawthrop Wade during the final stages of the First World War on the Salonika Front, in northern Greece. McMeekin (2011: 20); and see Šuško (n.d.: 170). During the war, Oppenheim worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin where he established the so-called ‘News Office for the Orient’, and compiled the Exposé Concerning the Revolutionising of the Islamic Territories of our Enemies, calling for a Jihad against Britain and France, which finally came about in November 1914, though was far less successful than Turkey and Germany had hoped. The British press referred to him as a ‘master spy of the Kaiser’. (Chapman and Gibson 1996: 97, 99) (Chapman and Gibson 1996: 94, 97–8, 101). Forty-seven of the sixty-five photographs are identified here as being taken by Lawrence with the balance presumed to be by Woolley. (Woolley and Lawrence 1915, 2003) (Edwards 2012) Oxford University Collection (Inventory no. 81,355), and see Wilson (1988: 31). (Wilson 1988: 142) (Wilson 1988: 67); Gilbert Clayton was appointed Bureau head with Hogarth as acting director, and its personnel included Lawrence, Herbert Garland, and Gertrude Bell among others. There are two versions of its performance during the war—first that it was a group of incompetent amateurs with pro-Arab sympathies, and the other (more recent reassessment) that its members were skilful strategists and Middle East experts who worked to secure Britain’s imperial interests in the region (Westrate 1992).

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Notes 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

(Wilson 1988: 168) (Oral 2012: 226, 228) (Wilson 1990: 189) (Wilson 1990: 256–7) (Wilson 1990: 258; Gavish 1987) More precisely, a Lee Enfield Short Magazine Rifle Mark 3 (Rogan  2015: 296; Oral 2012: 232–3). In fact, this rifle was one of four picked up by Turkish troops and sent back to Constantinople where each was deeply cut then gold wire beaten in—one was sent to each of Sherif Husayn’s four sons (Rogan 2015: 296; Oral 2012: 232–3). The rifle was also inscribed in Turkish near to the bayonet clip: ‘Presented by Enver Pasha to Sherif Feisal’. His full name was Ahmed Djemal Pasha (1872–1922). The other two were Mehmed Talaat Pasha (1874–1921), grand vizier or prime minister and also minister of the interior, and Ismail Enver Pasha (1881–1922), minister of war. This triumvirate came to power after the coup d’état of 1913. (Rogan 2015: 297–8; Oral 2012: 236) (Lawrence 2003: 115; Rogan 2015: 306–7) (Oral 2012: 236) Today it is in the Royal Collection Trust, catalogue number ‘RCIN 69430’. (Storrs 1937: 203) (Storrs 1937: 203) (Wilson 1988: 67) (Özyüksel 2014: 90–2; Obojski 1979) (Dowson 1918); Bacon (1919: 271) in a review says, ‘The volume is unique in its way, inasmuch as it is, we believe, the first instance of an authentic and carefully prepared history of the production of a set of stamps being compiled and published by the actual makers there of.’ See also, Beech (2005, 2007). Between 1975 and 2010 not a single copy came up for sale at auction. Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria (11–12 December 2013). Sale of Lot 1546, sold for £5,200 at DNW auctioneers. Contents described as, ‘Military Cross, G.V.R., in its case of issue; British War and Victory Medals (2 Lieut. W. T. Davies), these in their card boxes of issue; Territorial Force War Medal 1914–19 (1374 Sjt. W. T. Davies, Shrops. Yeo.).’ The agreed sale failed to reach the estimate of between £6,000 and £8,000, which may have been exceeded if there had been a definitive connection to Lawrence (http://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/catalogue-archive/ lot.php?auction_id=290&lot_id=96362, DNW 2013). (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 155, 140); for a discussion on British gold payments to Feisal and Lawrence’s role see James (1995: 185–9). (Giles 2014; Kennedy 2014) (Wilson 1990: 840, 918) (J. Wilson, pers.comm. 15/2/16) Along with a silver plate, bowl, and spoon, which Lawrence had made to his own design in Jeddah (Berton 2011: 108; 2014/15). Less grand, though intriguing, is a penknife reportedly found in the garden of Lawrence’s cottage at Clouds Hill, Dorset, in the early 1950s, and which has identically

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82.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96. 97.

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styled initials as those on his rifle. The owner of the knife purchased it from a man who lived in Sherborne, and it was his father who found it. He kept quiet about it as he was concerned it might be claimed by Clouds Hill which has been owned by the National Trust since just after Lawrence’s death in 1935. However, in the 1960s he showed it to Pat Knowles, a good friend and neighbour of Lawrence since 1923, and who was a pallbearer at his funeral. Lawrence met Knowles when he leased Clouds Hill from Pat’s father, and Pat and Joyce, his wife, became official caretakers of Clouds Hill in 1938. (Brown  2016; Christies  2016); Lawrence posed with the dagger and robes for a sculpture by Lady Kathleen Scott, widow of R. F. Scott of the Antarctic, in three sittings between 9 and 20 February 1921. He left the items with her so that she could finish the work. Scott married Edward Hilton Young and became Lady Hilton Young, and it is by this name that Lawrence calls her when he mentions in a letter to Lionel Curtis of 22 February 1929 that he wrote rather hesitantly to her in 1922 asking for their return (Lawrence 2015: 232). No answer is recorded, and Lawrence did not retrieve the items, which stayed in the Scott family until the death of Scott’s daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Ann Young, Lady Kennet, whereupon they were sold at Christies in 2015 (Christies 2016). (Brown 2016) The unwieldy full name is ‘The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest’ (RCEWA). (Brown  2016); these items were eventually rescued from the threat of being sold abroad when £100,000 was raised to purchase them and keep them in Britain. (Lawrence 1919) The Imperial War Museum catalogue numbers for these three objects in the order described here are: EPH 9262, EPH 1761, and EPH 9278. (Newell 2015) (Dean 2003) My thanks to Mike Relph for putting me in contact with Mr N. Hopkins whose family owns this object, and who supplied much useful information. The nameplate was loaned to GARP for the Shifting Sands exhibition at Newark. An unpublished report was prepared for GARP (Saunders n.d.). After Abdulhamid was deposed, the adjective hamidiye was discontinued on maps and excised from various items as well as the locomotive nameplates (Simonowtiz 2016: 84). (Berton 2011: 44); Collecting railway nameplates was a particular kind of ‘souveneering’ as shown by the Hejaz Railway carriage maker’s plate acquired by RFC/RAF Flying Officer V. D. Siddons (Berton 2011: 44). (Lawrence 2003: 410) (Crane 2000: 1–25; Küchler and Miller 2005; Schneider 2006) It has been said, anecdotally, that while Lawrence’s Arab robes have a high commercial value they are less valuable than those worn by Peter O’Toole in the Hollywood film. This may simply be auctioneer’s hearsay, but nevertheless resonates with modern understandings of celebrity culture as well as more academic concerns of authenticity. (Lawrence 2003: 115) Quoted in Wilson (1988: 74).

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Notes 98. Both these items are on loan from All Souls College, Oxford. The college elected Lawrence a Fellow in 1918, and also owns several original letters, a white sapphire golden ring, and a pair of sandals as well as the gold dagger, silver bowl, plate, and spoon he used in the desert. 99. All aspects of Lawrence’s regalia seem to retain the magic and appeal of his exploits in the Arab Revolt. In late 2017, a pair of battered sandals left to Rodney Havelock Walker were handed to an auctioneer in a plastic carrier bag and together with several other items fetched £2,600 (anon. 2017a BBC; anon. 2017b BBC2; anon. 2017 DM). The collection included a copy of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and a photograph of Walker as a baby wearing Lawrence’s own white-lace christening robe (Anon. 2017. DM). This pair is one of two documented to have survived, the other aforementioned belonging to All Souls College Oxford. Nevertheless, presumably without DNA analysis, it is impossible to know how many pairs of well-worn sandals Lawrence brought back (and why?). 100. (Seitsonen 2018: 80) 101. Typical trench-art bracelets made from artillery-shell corrugated drive-bands were on display at Abdullah’s Palace Museum in Ma’an Station in 2006.Their current whereabouts (together with the other objects on display at that time) are unknown. 102. (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 156–7) 103. Imperial War Museum catalogue number EPH 4338. 104. Saladin (CE 1137–93) was a Sunni Muslim of Kurdish descent born in Tikrit in what is today Iraq. Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) was also born in Tikrit and made much of this in his propaganda. 105. While Lawrence was acquiring the wreath, and the allies were sweeping through the city, a Damascene metalsmith somewhere nearby decided to commemorate the event in trench art. Recuperating an empty 1916 German 77mm artillery shellcase probably from a Turkish ammunition dump, he engraved elaborate cartouches of the Twelve Apostles fringed with Islamic foliage. The subject matter was suitably Christian rather than Muslim, likely aimed at the war souvenir market, and made even more attractive as such by the apparently French inscription around the rim ‘1 Octobre 1918’, and repeated in Arabic (James Brazier pers. comm. 2014).

Chapter 4 1. (Finkel 2006: 2) 2. (Ochsenwald 1980: 6; Nicholson 2005: 17) 3. (Simonowitz 2016: 89) 4. (Ochsenwald 1980: 7) 5. (Ochsenwald 1980: 4) 6. (Green 2013: 101) 7. (Ochsenwald 1980: 9) 8. By the end of the nineteenth century, France, German, Britain, Austro-Hungary, Russia, and Italy all considered that Ottoman railway development would strengthen the empire economically and militarily and was to be avoided (Landau 1971: 9). 9. (Simonowitz 2016: 64) 10. (Doughty (2003) [1931]: 126, 282) 11. (Ochsenwald 1980: 15)

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Notes 12. (Khairallah 1998: 88) 13. In 1846, for example, 200 horses, 900 camels, and 500 pilgrims had frozen to death (Özyüksel 2014: 57). 14. (Ochsenwald 1980: 15; Hülagü 2010: xxvii) 15. (Nicholson 2005: 11; Ochsenwald 1980: 18) 16. It seems that as a general statement possibly up to 20 per cent of pilgrims lost their lives every year on the Hajj due to Bedouin attacks, lack of water, and illness (Šuško n.d.: 162). 17. (Ochsenwald 1980: 17; Walker 1999: 205–6) 18. Interestingly, Syrian reservists en route to Yemen during the later 1903 revolt mutinied in transit in the Suez Canal, and were diverted to work on the Hejaz Railroad (Ochsenwald 1980: 8–9). 19. (Earle 1936; McMeekin 2011; Landau 1971: 10–11) 20. The heaviest burden for supplying these fell on those areas which had little or no forest resources and who consequently had to pay in cash. Government officials were expected to contribute, and had part of their salaries stopped (Ochsenwald 1980: 23; Nicholson 2005: 14; Rogan 1998: 116). 21. (Rogan 1998: 117) 22. (Özyüksel 2014: 153); Two infantry units on camels patrolled the telegraph line from Ma’an to Medinah, a distance of 458km which would later include twenty-seven stations (2014: 128). 23. (Bektas 2000: 670, 695) 24. (Rogan 1998: 112–13) 25. (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 178) 26. (Minawi 2015: 85) 27. (Minawi 2015: 90) 28. (Ochsenwald 1980: 14; Tourret 1989: 19) 29. (Schilcher 1998: 105) 30. (Khairallah 1998: 90) 31. (Tourret 1989: 14) 32. (Ochsenwald 1980: 28–9) 33. (Tourret 1989: 14) 34. (Ochsenwald 1980: 36); Thus there were two telegraph systems, the original and the latter railway-specific—crossing each other at those locations where the railway left the traditional route and then again where the two routes converged. It is unclear how this was managed and whether both systems functioned at the same time. 35. (Winterburn  2016: 182–3); The heliograph used interrupted flashes of sunlight reflected by a mirror to send Morse code messages with an effective distance in excess of 50km. They were used by the Turks and British during the First World War in the Middle East. 36. (Ochsenwald 1980: 17) 37. (Hülagü 2010: xvi) 38. (Ochsenwald 1980: 79) 39. (Ochsenwald 1980: 59–60) 40. (Landau 1971: 14) 41. (Ochsenwald 1980: 65, 79)

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Notes 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65.

66.

67.

(Ochsenwald 1980: 65, 79) (Da Cruz 1965; Hülagü 2010: 51) (Hülagü 2010: 50–1; Özyüksel 2014: 90–2) (Shaw 2003: 133) For the wider role of German scientists in Ottoman affairs during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries see Stein (2018). (Özyüksel 2014: 91) (Shaw 2003: 133) (Šuško n.d.: 168) Jannisaries were the Ottoman Empire’s elite infantry units, originally constituted of kidnapped Christian boys converted to Islam and who served as the Sultan’s bodyguards. Interestingly, the prehistoric past intervened even here, as the Janissaries were deployed around two Thracian burial mounds, one of which was chosen by Murad from which to observe and direct the battle. (Shaw 2003: 196, 198, 203–4) (Simonowitz 2016: 87; Ekinci 2016); While the Turks had no qualms about taking and publicizing this propaganda photograph, when the British flew over the town for reconnaissance purposes, the pilot was under strict orders from Sherif Hussein bin Ali not to photograph the mosque (Hogarth 1920: 435). (Gill 2011: 188–93) (Shaw 2003: 213) (Shaw 2003: 69, 73–4; Özyüksel 2014: 75) (Khairallah 1998: 87–8) (Ochsenwald 1980: 75–6) (Landau 1971: 19–20) (Landau 1971) (Landau 1971: 42) (Eman 2005) (Schilcher 1998: 105) (Landau  1971: 24). As Morris (2015: 119) has observed, bribery was the ‘least unsuccessful’ strategy for dealing with raiding nomads in asymmetric warfare, and ‘by handing out $70 million in cash to Afghan warlords in 2001, the CIA . . . saved a lot  of money, lives, and trouble’. The non-payment of bribes to the Bedouin was a recurring issue in the history of the Hejaz Railway. (Landau 1971: 24–5, 28). Ārif ’s document has an additional value as the last Muslim account of the Hajj using camels and donkeys. After the railway opened, almost everyone who started their overland pilgrimage from Damascus did so by train, and after the First World War, by sea. (Hülagü 2010: xxiv–v); The three categories of award were calculated thus: nickel TL 5–50, silver TL 50–100, and gold for over TL 100 (Ochsenwald 1980: 62). The ribbons were a different matter. Those who had made large enough donations to merit the silver medal felt they should wear a different ribbon to differentiate their awards, and so a green ribbon replaced the red one on silver medals. (Ochsenwald  1980: 38); Özyüksel (2014: 127) however says there were 327 nickel medals only—twenty-three for urban sheikhs, servants, and officers, and thirty-five for operators and dispatchers.

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Notes 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73.

74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

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(Hülagü 2010: xxiv) (Ochsenwald 1980: 62; Hülagü 2010: xxiv–v) (Nicholson 2005: 41) assisted by Hassan Pasha as vice-president, Izzat Pasha, and Seni Pasha (minister of public works and director of works at the Naval Arsenal). assisted by vice-admiral Hamdi Pasha (general of the Turkish 5th Army) as inspectorgeneral, and general Sadiq Pasha al Muayyad, who had been in charge of constructing the earlier telegraph line, Abdulrahman Pasha Yousif, the leader of the Syrian Hajj caravan, and Adib Nazmi, secretary of the Damascus City Council. Meissner was a Dresden-and-Vienna-trained railroad engineer, and pragmatic when it came to delegating to his Ottoman Turkish subordinates. He was realistic and somewhat prescient inasmuch as he ordered bridges to be built of stone not iron, so that Ottoman labourers could repair them as they were not familiar with iron bridges. He was rewarded for his efforts by the Sultan with the title Pasha on 7 March 1904 (Šuško n.d.: 166), and a TL 1,000 salary, together with an extra TL 2 for every kilometre of track laid (Hülagü 2010: 6–7; Ochsenwald 1980: 30). (Hülagü 2010: xxi, 39, 41–2) The Railway Battalions were created in Damascus as a direct result of Abdulhamid’s imperial order to build the railroad. Each of the two battalions had 1,200 men, comprised of labourers and variously skilled artisans (Nicholson  2005: 27–8; Tourret 1989: 14). Usually, a full-strength battalion would have 500–1,000 men, and three battalions would form a regiment, the equivalent to a brigade in the British army. Tourret (1989: 15) reports that labourers received 1 piastre for moving 1 cubic metre of earth, 2 piastres for the same quantity of rock, and 2 piastres for collecting 1 cubic metre of stones. (Ochsenwald 1980: 34) (Khairallah  1998: 89). Depending on one’s point of view, the railway was an ­international, multi-ethnic, and multi-faith construction rather than a purely Islamic one. (Ochsenwald 1980: 36) Eighteen stone bridges are reported to have been swept away along 40km of line at some point north of Ma’an (Özyüksel 2014: 133). (Tourret 1989: 16); Tourret (1989: 22) makes a curious statement that there appears to have been a military dimension in the design of railroad bridges and culverts, inasmuch as each masonry arch was equipped with an opening for explosives so that they could be blown in case of retreat. This seems inherently unlikely, and is prob­ ably due to Tourret’s misreading of Lawrence’s account of discovering that by packing explosives into conveniently sized and located built-in drainage-overflow channels the destructive effects were magnified. (Özyüksel 2014: 138) (Tourret 1989: 16; Hülagü 2010: 10) (Nicholson 2005: 28; Hülagü 2010: 14) (Tourret 1989: 19, 22) There is a complex relationship here inasmuch as the 1905 Arabic map of the railway portrays calligraphic elements which are ‘discursively and cognitively interwoven

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87. 88. 89. 90.

91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101.

102. 103. 104.

with the metal and calligraphic lines’. The term amir al-mu’minin appears on the map and as well as on the metal rails (Simonowitz 2016: 81–3). (Simonowitz 2016: 77) (Simonowitz  2016: 77; Tourret  1989: 45–6). Altogether, there were forty-three locomotives and 400 wagons (Hülagü 2010: 13), and the custom-made galvanized iron barrels each held 75 litres (16.5 gallons) of water (Hülagü 2010: 22). (Simonowitz 2016: 66–7; TG n.d.) The mosque carriage was in essence a mobile ritual space which ‘served to indict and unify seemingly disparate lines of Ottoman culture (architecture, calligraphy, cartography) and technology (printing, photography, railways, telegraphy). In so doing, it empowered a sophisticated network of meanings, which the Ottomans used to generate a broader discursive space that strengthened the Sultan’s legitimacy and authority and that proved symbolically useful until the Ottomans lost the Hijaz and Syria in 1918’(Simonowitz 2016: 65, 69). A large, elegant cursive script variety of Islamic calligraphy, whose last development was by the Ottoman Mehmet Şevkî Efendi during the late nineteenth century, and which is still used today across the Arab-speaking world, featuring, for example, on the flag of Saudi Arabia. (Simowitz 2016: 71–5) (Hülagü 2010: 4) The complete list of stations between Amman and Ma’an was: Amman, Kassir, Libban, Jiza, Deba’a, Khan Zebib, Suwaqa, Qatrana, Menzil, Faraifra, Al Hasa, Jerouf, Uneiza, Jerdun, Ma’an. (Hülagü 2010: 11–12, 31) (Fahmy 2001: 22) (Tourret 1989: 25, and plate 30). These southerly station buildings functioned also as blockhouses when needed, but are different from structures built specifically as blockhouses, and differ also from mainly earthwork karakolls and stone-built redoubts and forts. Throughout Lawrence’s various publications he alternates somewhat confusingly between the terms blockhouse and guard post, sometimes using both terms to describe the same structure in different accounts. He seems not to have used the term karakoll. (Nicholson 2005: 32). (Bures 1984; Terreal n.d.). (Fahmy 2001: 4) The Handbook of the Turkish Army (1916) published by the British Army’s Cairo Intelligence Section gives the normal allocation of men to tents as twelve, rising to fifteen in emergencies. Our own experiments confirmed this in the field, though it does not mean that all occupants were in the tent at the same time. Interestingly, the same calculation is made for the occupation of British army tents in the Middle East in a German manual for the tactical use of aerial photographs (Kedar 1999: 28), and for construction-camp tents along the Sudan Military Railway several decades before (Welsby 2011: 29). (Nicholson 2005: 32) (Nicholson 2005: 32–3) (Tourret 1989: 18)

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Notes 105. (Tourret  1989: 18); Landau (1971: 15) and Hülagü (2010: 123) both say early 1906 rather than September 1905. It has proven impossible to resolve this difference of four to five months, so I have followed Tourret as the acknowledged railway expert. 106. (Landau 1971: 15) 107. (Ochsenwald 1980: 35; Tourret 1989: 15) 108. (Tourret 1989: 24) 109. (Hülagü 2010: 121, 134). During this overland journey, Gertrude Bell reports hundreds of men and thousands of camels died (Bell 2008: 13–14). 110. (Nicholson 2005: 74; Landau 1971: 16) 111. (Ochsenwald 1980: 95). Deutsches Bank and many German companies were involved (see Šuško n.d.: 167). 112. (Hülagü 2010: 60, 128) 113. (Nicholson 2005: 4) 114. (Ochsenwald 1980: 125) 115. (Özyüksel 2014: 156) 116. (Ochsenwald 1980: 125) 117. (Özyüksel 2014: 154) 118. (Ochsenwald 1980: 127) 119. (Wavell 1912: 58) 120. (Wavell 1912: 55). Between 1910 and 1916, this most dangerous part of the railway was at peace because the Ottomans reinstated the subsidies and abandoned the idea of building the railway to Mecca. The extra money needed to pay these bribes was raised by increasing the price of train tickets but only between Medain Salih and Medina (Özyüksel 2014: 160). 121. (Carruthers 1910: 226) 122. (Ochsenwald 1980: 126) 123. (Özyüksel 2014: 155) 124. (Ochsenwald 1980: 135) 125. and see, Wallin (1854: 125–6). 126. (Rogan 1999: 55; Ochsenwald 1980: 135) 127. During a train journey just before the First World War, Frank  G.  Clemow noted the many wells sunk in the area around Ma’an, and especially the large one called Ain-el-Kelbe just 500 yards away from Ma’an station (which GARP investigated in 2006, and considered it could be of Nabatean/Roman or Byzantine origin). Clemow further observed that water was found in almost unlimited quantities at depths varying from 15 to 50 feet from the surface (Clemow 1913: 535). 128. Burckhardt commented similarly on the plentiful apricots, peaches, and pomegranates of Ma’an, and the fact that in the two days the Hajj caravan stayed there the locals earned enough to last them the whole year (i.e. until the next Hajj) (and see, Milwright 2013: 29; Rogan 1999: 34–6). 129. This general route had been in use from at least the second century BC during Nabatean times as a trade route, which then became the Via Nova Traiana when the region was conquered by the Roman emperor Trajan in the first century CE. Mohammed himself, during his time as a travelling merchant, may have used the route when he journeyed to Bosra (Petersen 2012: 10–16). 130. (Milwright 2013: 31–2; Walker 1999: 206)

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Notes 131. The 1757 Hajj caravan was completely destroyed by the Bani Sakhr tribe (Petersen 2012: 27). 132. (Petersen 2012: 21, 24, 27; Saidel 2001) 133. (Wallin 1854: 122) 134. (Wallin 1854: 123) 135. (Doughty 2003: 16); Doughty’s account has an interesting connection to the Arab Revolt. So detailed and insightful were Doughty’s observations and descriptions, that Lawrence wrote in his introduction to a new 1926 edition of Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta that ‘the great picture-book of nomad life, became a military text book, and helped guide us to victory in the East’ (Petersen 2012: 7). It also preserves interesting archaeological information tying toponyms to artefacts—‘travelling across the gravel plain that the Arabs call Ard Suwwan, the Flint-Ground . . . I have found in it such wrought flint instruments as we have from some river and lake gravels and loams of Europe’ (Doughty 2003: 16). 136. (Doughty 2003: 15–16) 137. (Landau 1971: 50) 138. (Doughty 2003: 13, 17) 139. (Tourret 1989: 18) 140. (Özyüksel 2014: 189) 141. For all its modern appearance and facilities, this location likely has medieval origins. 142. (Maunsell 1908: 575–6); Maunsell was an experienced imperial official. He had been British Military Attaché in Constantinople between 1901 and 1907, and had written the Military Report on Eastern Turkey in Asia in 1904 (Maunsell 1904). 143. There was a rise of 150m in height above sea level over the first 60km of hard ground from Ma’an to the southern edge of the plateau at Ras an Naqb (Hülagü  2010: 9; Nicholson 2005: 37). 144. Doughty’s account is somewhat confusing as he appears to be referring to the area approaching the Hajj fort of Qal’at ‘Unaiza (Petersen  2012: 95–105)—adjacent to the  later Hejaz Railway Station of Uneiza—which lies north not south of Ma’an. Nevertheless, Doughty’s references to the altitude of this area, it belonging to the Howeitat Bedouin, the Arab word for flint being part of local toponyms, and the proximity of the defile down to Batn al-Ghoul being at the plateau’s southern edge, all indicate that he viewed the Jebel Sherra as more extensive than just the area south of Ma’an (Doughty  2003: 19–20). The whole area referred to as Jebel Sherra may extend from Tafileh in the north to the Ras en Naqib escarpment in the south (pers. comm. Fawzi Abudanh 2017). Doughty adds that while walking in the river bed of Ma’an town itself, ‘my eyes alighted upon,—and I took up, moved and astonished, one after another, seven flints chipped to an edge’, and illustrates several examples (Doughty 2010: 35–7). Our excavations were confined to the Jebel Sherra south of Ma’an, and also discovered many examples of Palaeolithic and Neolithic/Bronze Age tools in this area. 145. (Hülagü 2010: 86) 146. (Peterson 2012: 24, 112–21); designated ‘Fassu’ah Fort’ by us (Shqiarat et al. 2011: 102–5). 147. This westerly section of the Ottoman route is still in part hypothetical as it has not been tested by fieldwork. Nevertheless, there is no current evidence that the

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148. 149. 150. 151.

152.

153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158.

159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165.

166.

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medieval Hajj route (or its predecessor) followed the direct route south from the area of Bir Shedia Station to Fassu’ah Fort/Aqabat Hejazia preferred by Meissner and his Hejaz Railway builders. Interestingly, Dauphin et al. (2015) say that, in general terms, there are three Hajj routes, Muslim conquest to Mamluk fifteenth century, then Ottoman sixteenth century to twentieth century, then the Hejaz Railway. Significantly, none of the maps in their publication show a westerly route south of Bir Shedia Station to the area just south of Fassu’ah Fort/Aqabat Hejazia. What is shown is one straight line, the direct route south first used in its entirety only by the railway from 1900. And see note 983 for a similar occurrence further south, between Ramleh and Mudawwara stations. Many of these had been involved with building the first telegraph line (Ochsenwald 1980: 36). (Tourret 1989: 15; Ochsenwald 1980: 38) (Hülagü 2010: 43) The designation Km measures the distance in kilometres from Damascus. It was used during the construction of the Hejaz Railway to measure distances for trains, stations, and halts. The system was also used by the British during the Arab Revolt to identify railway targets for raiding, and its physical markers still survive along the track-bed today. It is worth mentioning that many published maps of the Hejaz Railway in this area do not include all of the stations and halts which we investigated. For example, Ochsenwald (1980: 21) includes a map which shows Ma’an, Ghadir al Haj, Batn al-Ghoul, and Mudawwara stations, missing out Bir Shedia, Aqabat Hejazia, Wadi Rutm, Tel Shahm, and Ramleh. This name, and also Aqaba al-Shāmiyya, was used to distinguish this place-and-station name from the more famous Red Sea port of Aqaba (Landau 1971: 60). (Doughty 2003: 23). This highest point of the line in Jordan was 1,150m above sea level (Tourret 1989: 20, 22). (Peterson 2012: 115) (Hülagü 2010: 25; Tarawneh et al. 2011: 90) (Stetkevych 1984: 667) (Doughty 2010: 53–4); Variations on this story included a monstrous creature called Salewwa, which also haunted the Batn al-Ghoul area, appeared as a woman, and, so Doughty’s informants told him, had been seen by many tribesmen (Doughty 2010: 53–4). (Petersen 2012: 12) (Doughty 2010: 51) (Hülagü 2010: 9) (Nicholson 2005: 37–8) (Hülagü 2010: 89) (Doughty 2010: 52) (Landau 1971: 15; Hülagü 2010: 123); Tourret (1989: 18) gives 1905 as the date which is surely mistaken, as Batn al-Ghoul was not reached until November 1905. Mudawwara means ‘circular’ in Arabic, a coincidentally fitting name today as satellite images reveal that the region is dotted with large circular irrigated agricultural fields. (Maunsell 1908: 576)

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Notes 167. (Petersen 2012: 121–9) 168. (Hülagü 2010: xxi) 169. (Hülagü  2010: xxviii); The only-known example of a printed timetable for the Damascus to Medinah journey stated that there were three journeys a week and each one took about 56 hours—though in practice more usually three days. The average speed seems to have been about 25km per hour, quite slow, but still ten times faster than by traditional caravan (Ochsenwald 1980: 100). 170. (Özyüksel 2014: 183) 171. (Hülagü  2010: 148). Different sources give sometimes very different estimates on pilgrim and secular passenger numbers, occasionally combining both for a total number of passengers. Hülagü’s figure for all passengers in 1914 seems extremely high, and does not sit easily with an estimate calculated for between 1909 and 1913, when a total of 131,858 travellers used the Hejaz railway for religious purposes (Šuško n.d.: 163). While exact numbers are possibly beyond discovery, it is apparent that the railway did significantly increase the numbers of pilgrims between 1908 and 1914, and was used increasingly also by the Turkish military and for local trade. 172. (Özyüksel 2014: 183) 173. (Özyüksel 2014: 187–8) 174. (Ochsenwald 1980: 99) 175. The earlier telegraph also made it easier to synchronize train movements, and had led to disagreements when local calculations of the lunar calendar to establish important religious dates clashed with those which now arrived from Constantinople along its wires (Ochsenwald 1980: 100; Rogan 1998: 119). 176. (Hülagü 2010: xxix) 177. (Orbaşli and Woodward 2008: 162) 178. (Nicholson 2005: 162–3) 179. (Nicholson 2005: 168); The mandate was agreed by the League of Nations on 24 July 1922, and amended on 16 September the same year as the Transjordan Memorandum, and came into effect a year later on 29 September 1923. Prince Abdullah and the Hashemite dynasty became Transjordan’s rulers under a British-appointed high commissioner. 180. (Lawrence  2003: 610); This rebuilding involved prior clearance of some of the wreckage of the war. Henry St. John Basil Armitage, a noted Arabist, diplomat, member of the ‘Camel Corps’ which served in the Arab Legion, and champion of T.  E.  Lawrence, recalls travelling in the region in 1946 and seeing an abandoned locomotive chassis still on the rails in front of Mudawwara Station. He observed that it was not an Arab Revolt wreck but a ‘post-WW1 relic as the line had been cleared and repaired for its last operational years south of Maan in the early twenties’ (St. John Armitage 1998). 181. (Tourret 1989: 86) 182. (Nicholson 2005: 170–1) 183. (Nicholson 2005: 172); Tourret (1989: 93) seems mistaken when he refers somewhat obliquely to trains running all the way to Medinah during the late 1920s (i.e. after 1925), and that the only reason no trains ran south of Ma’an during the 1930s was that ‘the Hedjaz Kingdom authorities did not wish to run one’ (1989: 95). 184. (Tourret 1989: 87)

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Notes 185. (Nicholson  2005: 174–5; Tourret  1989: 97). It is interesting that several stations, fifteen derelict locomotives, and forty wagons damaged during the Arab Revolt and abandoned since 1918 were found to be serviceable after renovation and were brought back into service during the Second World War. In particular, six wagons from a train wrecked by Lawrence in September 1918 were found to be perfectly sound with no rust after twenty-five years in the desert, and were quickly reconditioned for the Allied war effort (Tourret 1989: 97–8). 186. (Nicholson 2005: 175) 187. (Tourret 1989: 114–15) 188. The consortium was composed of—Alderton Construction Co. Ltd, Martin Cowley Ltd, Ingerslev and Partners, a sub-contractor Thomas Summerson and Sons, and the Jordanian General Equipment Company of Amman (Nicholson 2005: 175; Tourret 1989: 118; M. Atkinson pers.comm. 2014). 189. (Parr 2004: xvii; Parr et al. 1968–9; Parr et al. 1971) 190. (Tourret 1989: 118) 191. The quantity surveyor calculated that 1,684,600 cubic yards of earthworks were needed, the track-bed amounted to 784,770 cubic yards, then there were 764,000 rails, 1,600,000 sleepers, 306,000 nuts, bolts, and washers, 3,130,000 base plates, 1,800 spikes, eleven diesel water pumps, three electric pumps, and twenty-four new water tanks (Nicholson 2005: 176). 192. (Anon. 1965) 193. (Nicholson 2005: 177) 194. (Nicholson 2005: 177; Tourret 1989: 120–2) 195. (Dayton 1996; and see, Hülagü 2010: xxx) 196. (Anon.  1965). Unfortunately the account is not clear as to exactly where these ­locations were, though Hallat Ammar Station itself and the nearby ambush site are both possibilities. These 1960s observations, together with those made during the Second World War, yield little-acknowledged insights concerning the make-do service which operated between Amman and Mudawwara during the early–mid 1920s. In several senses it was a true skeleton service along the old front line of the Arab Revolt, with trains passing through ruinous stations, over damaged bridges and culverts, and by derailed and overturned trains. As Grieg observes, this was a ruinous war landscape full of live munitions and human remains still in 1965. 197. (Tourret 1989: 123, 129–30; Nicholson 2005: 177) 198. The Jordan Heritage Revival Company was set up in 2010 by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) with the aim of creating a self-sustaining historical revival sector in Jordan’s tourism and heritage industry, and providing a unique cultural experience for Jordanian and foreign tourists (JHRC n.d.). 199. (BeAmman n.d.) 200. These events last for several hours and run from September to November (BeAmman n.d.). As of April 2014, no prices are given for this show, and no indication either as to how commercially successful they are. An earlier attempt at jump-starting public interest in Hejaz Railway tourist rides began in 2006, and operated between Aqaba and Wadi Rum, but these were not a commercial success. The fate of the Aqaba venture is unknown. Many media reports over the last thirty years have announced new initiatives to rebuild and re-open parts or the entire Hejaz Railway, though none of

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201.

202. 203. 204.

205.

206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212.

213. 214. 215. 216.

these have translated to action. One of the most recent (and comprehensive, if optimistic) assessments is Al-Atwi and Hempler (2015). International politics, propaganda, fantasy, and the Hejaz Railway seem forever locked together. In 2017, there was a report of an Israeli proposal to the Sunni Arab world of an anti-Iran axis involving trade along a reconstructed Hejaz Railway as part of a peace deal to solve the Palestinian issue (Law 2017). (ICOMOS 2005); This draft charter is a response to the growing recognition of the linear aspects of heritage and the conservation and management challenges faced by such sites. ‘The concept of cultural route implies a value as a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts and gives the route its meaning’ (Conti 2005: 892). (Sugio 2005: 840) (Orbaşli and Woodward  2008: 167; and see Eman  2005; Abu Khafajahi and Al Rabady n.d.) (Fahmy 2001: 8); ‘The Hijaz Railway can become a unique tourism attraction in the region only if the buildings, structures and its landscape setting can be adequately protected. The tourism challenge entails making the railway interesting and attractive and, above all, viable. Although tourism is seen as a means of safeguarding the railway, the loss of authentic railway structures or erosion of its integrity as a whole will also diminish the railway’s value to tourism in the region’ (Orbaşli and Woodward  2008: 168–9). Conservation priorities for the railway must therefore consider safeguarding buildings, rolling stock, memorabilia, and the landscape— particularly the raised track bed (2008: 168–9). (Fahmy 2001: 10); Discussing these issues from the perspective of Turkish Railway Museums (including the Hejaz Railroad), Akbulut and Artivlinli (2011: 132) state that railways deeply affected Turkish social life, and when they reached a geographical area they changed the landscape, architecture, and lifestyle of people, becoming part of Turkish culture. (Tourret 1989: 18) (Usul et al. 1999: 22) (Barnard 2014) (Nicholson 2005: 178) (Barnard 2014) (Orbaşli and Woodward  2008: 160); These authors estimate that with around 800,000 tourists annually, there is a significant potential market for a heritage experience at Medinah based on the Hejaz Railway (2008: 165). The entire complex has an area of 540,000 sq metres. Outside, six locomotives lie abandoned where they were left in 1925 when the southern part of the railway south of Ma’an finally stopped operating, accompanied by carriages and wagons—including a Hartmann 2-8-0, a S.L.M.  2-8-0, and a Tubize 0-6-OT. The workshop contains three locomotives—a Hartmann 2-6-0, a Hartmann 2-8-0, and a Swiss Locomotive & Machine Works (S.L.M.) 2-8-0 (Nicholson 2005: 180–3). (Petersen 2012: 145–7) (Nicholson 2005: 183) (JHRC 377 2014; TK 2016; JT 2017; DS 2018). The cost of this investment is reported as 3,500,000 Jordanian Dinars (£3,800,000 as of 1/11/18). (HMKAII n.d.)

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Notes 217. According to local historian Mohammed Maani, the palace had four floors; a ­basement for food storage, the second floor of four halls, where the guests were accommodated, a third floor which served as Abdullah’s private quarters with several bedrooms, and the fourth floor which contained his personal belongings (Freij 2011). 218. (HMKAII n.d.) 219. (Freij 2011) 220. This was despite the fact that planning for the renovation had begun in 2002, and the project design had taken some ten months. The 2010 dispute was between the contractor and Al Hussein Bin Talal University in Ma’an, who had become responsible for the project. A panel of Jordanian experts is currently examining how best to proceed, and once the project is completed the new Abdullah I Palace museum will be promoted to Jordanians and foreign visitors alike. The ultimate aim will be to have the building placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List (Freij  2011). In 2018, there were reports that a new 2-million-dinar restoration project had been agreed for the Abdullah I Palace Museum. 221. (Billings 1996: 70); A recent video uploaded to YouTube shows a group of men rubbing Hejaz Railway tracks and bolts near Amman to reveal that they were made of ‘gold’ (Abidin 2017), and which has been viewed over five million times. In September 2014, Jordan’s interior minister Hussein Majali went on record to say that there was no truth in the wildfire rumour that the military’s Ajloun excavations were about gold-digging, and that a convoy of army trucks had been seen transporting golden treasures away from the site (JT 2014). 222. Ironically, as the physical traces of the railway disappear, its ‘resurrection’ has become a ‘hot topic for graduation projects among architecture students in the different universities in Jordan’ (Abu Khafajahi and Al Rabady n.d.: 6). Most of these, however, are focused on the standing buildings of stations, rather than their cultural landscapes, and even less on the extended conflict landscapes that stretch out from the railway into the desert (e.g. Admour 2003; see also Petersen 2012: 211).

Chapter 5 1. (Thalacker 2003: 16) 2. (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 164) 3. The ‘Twenty-Seven Articles’ article is more easily accessible in Brown (1991: 153–60). The Seven Pillars synopsis is in Lawrence (2003: 195–200). Lawrence returned to this topic several times in later years. He agreed to let Basil Liddell Hart, military editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica, compile an article entitled ‘Science of Guerilla Warfare’ for the publication’s 1929 edition based on his previous writings, particularly the article ‘The Evolution of a Revolt’ published in the Army Quarterly (Lawrence 1920). The Encyclopædia Britannica article was published under Lawrence’s name (Lawrence 1929). 4. (Faulkner 2016: 223) 5. (Hughes 1999: 75) 6. (Özyüksel 2014: 204) 7. Nuri Al-Said, quoted in Mousa (1966: 21–2); Fromkin (2009: 227) 8. (Henderson n.d.)

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Notes 9. (Winterburn 2016: 193) 10. Garland (1880–1921), like Lawrence, had been associated with archaeology before the war, when he was a metallurgist engaged in conserving ancient Egyptian tools. When the war started he developed a type of mortar shell called the ‘Garland grenade’ which was widely used in the Gallipoli campaign (Barr 2006: 77) and was designed to be used with the ‘65mm Grenade Howitzer Mark 1’ which Garland also invented (hence its more popular name the ‘Garland Trench Mortar’) (Alleyne 2010; AWM n.d.). He trained Lawrence and others, including the Bedouin, to use explosives. He also developed the ‘Garland Contact Mine’ sometimes referred to as an automatic mine, which was a hair-trigger device for blowing up Hejaz Railway trains, and on 12 February 1917 at Towaira, this was likely the first time this kind of activity had ever been undertaken. 11. (Hogarth 1920: 429) 12. Newcombe (1878–1956) already knew Lawrence and Woolley from the survey of Sinai (‘Wilderness of Zin’) which he commanded just before the war. He was to lead several dynamiting attacks on the railway in 1917 (al-Askari 2003: 115). 13. Their combined efforts destroyed two locomotives and several wagons, while further north still, Sherif Nassir’s third group failed to do any real damage. 14. (Lawrence 1935: 203) 15. (Lawrence 1935: 203) 16. Referred to as ‘Madahrij’ by Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and in his reports and letters. 17. (Hughes 1999: 77) 18. Liman von Sanders (1927: 207–8) 19. (Özyüksel 2014: 202) 20. Wilson was appointed military and political officer for the Hejaz at Jeddah, acting under the disguise of pilgrimage officer. 21. (Wilson 1990: 401) 22. (Wilson 1990: 370) 23. (Wilson 1990: 397, 399) 24. (Lawrence 2003: 240) 25. (Mousa 1966: 67) 26. For a critique of why Arab sources, and Mousa (1966) especially, sought to cast ­serious doubt on Lawrence’s version see Wilson (1990: 1069–70). 27. Meanwhile, a Royal Flying Corps flight took off from the forward landing strip at Gayadah and dropped twelve bombs on Al Ula Station on 15 May. 28. Referred to as ‘Atwi’ by Lawrence in Seven Pillars (2003: 314), and as a ‘Siding’ by Hüllagü (2010: 82). 29. This is an intriguing and perhaps problematical passage for several reasons. First, the bridge is 375m south of the station and the nearest vantage point is a Turkish hilltop karakoll (Suwaqa South, Site SO72), just 175m north-east and at the southwestern end of a 210m-long ridge-top trench clearly meant to protect the bridge and the southern approaches to the station. It must have been that this strategic and highly visible position was unmanned, and was occupied by Lawrence and Zaal, though Lawrence doesn’t mention its formidable earthworks. Second, further north, a semi-circular defensive trench stretches some 460m from the north-east to the

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30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

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north and the south-west and surrounds the station and its sidings, and extends over the railway itself (field observation 24/11/11 and GE). Lawrence’s (2003: 315–16) account makes no mention of this either and so it too must have been unmanned. If one or both of these Turkish defences had been manned the raid might well have turned out differently. Just 36m east of the station buildings, and immediately adjacent to the main siding, is a group of ruinous mud-brick structures which may have served as accommodation for labourers during the railway’s construction, or, possibly, belong to post-1918 railway reconstruction (field observation 24/11/11). (Lawrence 2003: 315–16) (Lawrence 2003: 316) (Lawrence 2003: 321–2) (Wilson 1990: 416) Lawrence quoted in (Scoville 1982: 207) (Scott 2014: 84) (Scoville 1982: 208–9, 211) (Lawrence 2003: 338) (Wilson 1990: 417) (Lawrence 2003: 349) Letter to Stirling on 25 September 1917 written at Aqaba. Stirling was about to be  appointed chief staff officer, in charge of building Feisal’s Northern Army (Brown  1988: 125). Lawrence continues in a vein which is almost apologetic— ‘Seriously, the Arabs put up a surprisingly good show, and as the only Englishman and historian, I get more than my share of notoriety. I don’t think it is my fault. One must send in a report, and what more is to be done?’ (1988: 125). In an Intelligence Report headed ‘Arabia/Hejaz’ of 24 July 1917, Lawrence wrote ‘The forces which accomplished these remarkably successful operations were mainly Abu Tayyi Howeitat under Sheikh Auda Abu Tayi, Rualla Anazeh under Sheikh ibn Dughini and Sherarat’ (Lawrence 1917a). A secret British War Office report of August 1918 stated ‘Akaba had been captured by a Sherifian force, accompanied by Lawrence’ (Anon. 1918: 2). (Scott 2014: 50–2, 84–9; and see Fromkin 2009: 310). Lawrence was recommended for a Victoria Cross for his role in the taking of Aqaba but this was not awarded due  to the fact that the action had not been witnessed by another British officer (Wilson 1990: 424–5). (Faulkner 2016: 240–7, 249–55, respectively) Joyce (1878–1965) arrived in Wejh on 17 March 1917 and was head of the British Military Mission attached to Feisal’s Northern Army from July the same year, and accompanied him to Damascus. He was extremely unimpressed by his first meeting with Lawrence at Wejh (al-Askari 2003: 115). (Nicholson 2005: 116) Jafar Pasha al-Askari (1885–1936) was originally an Imperial Ottoman Army general in charge of the regular Sanussi forces in Cyrenaica (Libya) in 1915–16. He was captured by the British, befriended by Lawrence and other British officers, changed sides due to his belief in Arab Nationalism, and released to be in charge of Hussein’s Arab regular forces in March 1917. Garland quoted in Nicholson (2005: 118)

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Notes 48. (Lawrence 2003: 375–6) 49. Wood came a poor second to coal for running the locomotives. Originally, between 20,000 and 25,000 tons of coal per year were needed to run the railway, most of which in pre-war times came from Cardiff (Hülagü  2010: 23). In extremis, it has been reported, that olive branches, seeds, liquorice, and camel dung were used (Nicolle 2008: 24), and Lawrence (1916) mentions thorn, broom, acacia, and tamarisk collected locally. 50. These activities often showed the Turks in their worst light. Large palm plantations to the east of Medinah were ravaged, and their cultivators massacred. These were the Beni Ali, a Shiite part of the Bedouin Harb tribe (Hogarth 1920: 436). 51. Called variously, Al-Halla, Jabal ‘Unaiza. (Hüllagü 2010: 84; Petersen 2012: 95–105). The volcano has two major sets of trenches, designated Site SO75 and Site SO76 (field observation 13/11/2008). 52. These include the remains of a fort, some footings of the wood-loading station, ­several watchtowers, a repurposed earlier caravanserai, and in a private house an antique saw said to have been used by the Turks in cutting down the forest (Shqiarat et al. 2011: 109–11; Atkinson and Beaumont 1971: 311). The anthropological fieldwork here highlights the different focus of GARP compared to the investigations of the Sudan Military Railway (Welsby 2011). See also Anon. (2001: 14–15). 53. (Lawrence 2003: 405) 54. (Lawrence 2003: 406–5) 55. Letter from Lawrence to Major W. F. Stirling on 25 September, 1917 (Brown 1988: 125). 56. (Nicholson 2005: 132). 57. Originally refugees from nineteenth-century Russian advances into the Caucasus, the Circassians were ultra-loyal to the Ottomans, and raised their own volunteer cavalry which defended the railway (Rogan 2015: 340). 58. (Nicholson 2005: 127–28) 59. Pisani commanded 146 French-Algerians armed with Schneider 75mm mountain guns and machine-guns who played a major role in the Arab Revolt, impressing Lawrence and al-Askari despite their suspicions of French ambitions for Syria (Al-Askari 2003: 136; Leclerc 1999). 60. (Lawrence 1917b: 151–2) 61. (Lawrence 2003: 421) 62. (Lawrence 2003: 423) 63. (al-Askari 2003: 130) 64. (Nicholson 2005: 139) 65. The Romans had been the first to build here due to the presence of an oasis, and the site was subsequently used by the Byzantines and Umayyad Muslims, with the present structure belonging to the Ayyubid construction begun in 1237 ce. 66. (Lawrence 2003: 483) 67. (Nicholson 2005: 129) 68. (Hogarth 1920: 435) 69. (Nicholson 2005: 118) 70. (Satia 2008: 93) 71. (Wavell [1931] 1951: 19)

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Notes 72. (Wavell [1931] 1951: 21); Lawrence too was of the same opinion, ‘I think one company of Turks, properly entrenched in open country, would defeat the Sherif ’s armies’ (quoted in Fromkin 2009: 222). 73. Jolley  2018: 170–2; Thomas and Chase subsequently spent time with Lawrence in Aqaba, and then Feisal at Guweira, Wuheida, Abu Lissan, Shobek and Petra, with Thomas making endless notes, and Chase taking photographs and shooting film. After the war, Thomas made a film With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia, and subsequently toured with a dramatic film-slideshow, guaranteeing Lawrence’s international fame. In 1924, he published With Lawrence in Arabia. Lawrence was conflicted about his relationship with Thomas, the latter famously saying, ‘He had a genius for backing into the limelight.’ 74. Lawrence’s Rolls-Royce was a 40/50 horsepower ‘Silver Ghost’ tender nicknamed ‘Blue Mist’, one of four which had been stripped of its armour, and which together with at least three more fully armour-plated versions formed the Hejaz Armoured Car Battery. (See also, Pierce Reid 2017; Stejskal 2017). 75. (Bean  1941; Inchbald  2005: 47–52; McGuirk  2007). The Senussi Campaign lasted from November 1915 to March 1917, and involved the British and the Italians against the indigenous religious sect of the Senussi. A notable action was by Major Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, who commanded the armoured cars that destroyed Senussi forces at Agagia on 26 February 1916. Lawrence’s own car was a Rolls-Royce Mk.1 1914 pattern, fitted with 4×4, and with front axles fitted with twin tyres to deal with difficult terrain. The armour was 12mm rolled-steel plates, and had a rear revolving turret which housed a water-cooled standard naval 7.62mm calibre Vickers machine-gun (Fletcher 2012; Pierce Reid 2017). The Italians had been the first to use armoured vehicles on a significant scale in war (during this conflict), and it had been the Italian company Fabbrica Automobili Isotta Fraschini who in 1911 had produced an early version of an armour-plated car (Stephenson 2014: 141, 229). 76. quoted in Nicholson (2005: 187) 77. (Lawrence 2003: 518) 78. Nuri al-Said (1888–1958), was an Ottoman Army officer who converted to Arab Nationalism after his capture by the British during the Sensussi revolt in Libya in 1915. He became one of Feisal’s most gifted guerrilla leaders during the Arab Revolt, and was part of his delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. Sherif Nasir bin Ali was the brother of the Emir of Medina and Feisal’s cousin. He was one of the principal and most successful of the Arab Revolt leaders, and much impressed Lawrence when they first met in 1917. 79. Site 1037 80. Site 1074; today the site lies to the east of the modern highway, atop a 57-metre high strategic ridge. It appears to have two distinct defensive trenches surrounding its centre, the inner far more substantial with embayments. Scattered around, especially on the ridge lip to the north are craters which may be the result of artillery exchanges. 81. Feisal, a keen smoker, felt so sorry for the Turkish Hejaz troops deprived of their tobacco that he ordered pack animals to be loaded with cigarettes and driven into Tabuk (Nicholson 2005: 148). 82. (Lawrence 2003: 379; al-Askari 2003: 132)

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Notes 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88.

89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102.

(Nicholson 2005: 149) (Lawrence 2003: 602; and see Rogan 2015: 365–6) (al-Askari 2003: 138) (al-Askari 2003: 141) (Nicholson 2005: 149–50; al-Askari 2003: 143). The Turks were unaware at the time that Pisani had run out of ammunition and were surprised at the Arab failure to press home the attack in the station. Consequently, they launched a bayonet counterattack aided by 500 inhabitants of Ma’an town who supported the Turkish side (El-Edroos 1980: 136; Rogan 2015: 367). This action is sometimes referred to as the First Battle of Ma’an, with a second, third, and fourth taking place on 11–14 May, 17 May, and 21 July respectively (El-Edroos 1980: 141–2,144–5). These actions, however, all took place at Jerdun Station, and while the strategic objective of all of them was to cut off Ma’an from reinforcements from Amman, they were not fought at Ma’an itself and so do not merit being so described. Dawnay was appointed head of the Hejaz Operations Staff in November 1917, liaising between General Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force and the Arab Revolt forces, directing the ‘Arab Operations’ team in Cairo and working closely with the Arab Bureau. After the taking of Aqaba, he recognized the scope for conventional regular army actions in addition to the guerrilla raids which had predominated hitherto. Lawrence thought extremely highly of him (al-Askari 2003: 137; Wilson 1989: 477–8). (Lawrence 2003: 607) The Royal Flying Corps became the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918. (Khan 2013) (Lawrence 2003: 608) A secret British War Office Report of 18 August 1918 says fifty-two prisoners were  taken along with 450 boxes of bombs and 280,000 rounds of ammunition (Anon. 1918: 6). Peake (1886–1970) was a commissioned officer in the British Army in India between 1908 and 1913, and then served in Darfur. He accompanied Lawrence in raids against the Hejaz Railway, and is credited along with Lawrence for inventing the ‘Tulip’ railway-demolition technique. He was in command of two companies of the Imperial Camel Corps during the 1918 attack on Mudawwara. He had a distinguished postwar career, and created the Arab Legion in TransJordan in 1923. (Walker  2018: 155–6); Gilman had arrived at Jeddah by March 1917 with two armoured cars (2018: 85). (Lawrence 2003: 610) Quoted in (Barr 2006: 235). (Lawrence 2003: 610) Letter written by Lawrence on 15 July 1918 from Cairo (Brown 1988: 152). The Turks too may have added to the destruction inasmuch as it was reported that on 14 July the Yilderim Army command ordered that the remaining track between Ma’an and Ghadir al Haj be pulled up to mend the breaks in the line north of Ma’an (Anon. 1918: 6 note). (Hogarth 1920: 432–3) (Kedar 1999: 44)

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Notes 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120.

121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127.

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(Wilson 1990: 423–4) (Anon. 1918: 11) (Fromkin 2009: 311–12) mud-brick palace—Brown (2005: 202); telegraph poles—Barr (2006: 253). The force consisted of ‘14 officers, 314 other ranks, and 411 camels with a Camel Field Ambulance Section’ together with four medical staff, including Major Marshall, RAMC and ‘22 Egyptian Camel Corps with 30 camels’ (Marshall n.d. 1). (Marshall n.d.: 9) (Moore n.d.; and see, Inchbald 2005: 201–3) Turks began shooting through the window slits and throwing grenades with long sputtering fuses but the British troops threw them back into the buildings (Dawson n.d.). It may be that these grenades had the original 10-second fuses rather than the shorter 5-second variety which replaced them at some point (IWM n.d.). (Moore n.d.) (Inchbald 2005: 202; Marshall n.d.: 12) These stayed where they had been thrown until the late 1960s when they were removed by a construction team engaged in the refurbishment of the railway (pers. comm. M. Schofield 2009). Various versions of this photograph (and many others) exist in different inter­ nation­al collections. The most easily accessible is that belonging to the ‘Pearman Douglas (Captain) Collection’ at the Imperial War Museum, no. Q 105583. The tower was blown by Captain Scott-Higgins, a demolition expert seconded from the Royal Welsh Regiment (Winterburn et al. n.d.). They were pursued by Lt Pascoe in an RFA car and eventually captured. (Lawrence 2003: 724); Lawrence deals in depth with the various ways of blowing up rail tracks and bridges (including the Tulip technique) in his article ‘Demolitions under Fire’ (Lawrence 1919). (Nicholson 2005: 156) Quoted in (Nicholson 2005: 158). The photograph is part of the ‘Ministry of Information First World War Collection’ at the Imperial War Museum, no. Q 12367. Glubb fought on the Western Front in the First World War, transferred to Iraq in 1920, and became an officer in the Arab Legion ten years later. In 1931 he formed the Desert Patrol, a Bedouin unit deployed to control raiding in the south of the country. In 1939 he succeeded one of Lawrence’s Arab Revolt comrades, Frederick Peake, as Commander of the Arab Legion—subsequently the Jordanian Royal Army—forging it into arguably the best-trained Arab force in the Middle East (Glubb 1959). quoted in (Nicholson 2005: 125) (Clausewitz 1993: 579) (Lawrence 2003: 195) (Thalacker 2003: 17) Quoted in Wavell ([1931] 1951: 234). (Wavell [1931] 1951: 235) Wavell noted that the same argument works for the Turks—‘The Turks must have “contained” much larger numbers of their adversaries then they themselves put in

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Notes the field’. Table 3 reveals that by August 1918 the Turks had 36,000 men in Palestine but held down 100,000 Allied soldiers (Wavell [1931] 1951: 18–19). 128. (Hughes 1999: 74)

Chapter 6 1. Site 1116 2. (Winterburn 2016: 144) 3. (Maunsell 1908; IOR 3142/1903 n.d. File 3142/1903 ‘Hedjaz Railway’, IOR/L/PS/10/12, Indian Office Records, The British Library, London) 4. (Hogarth 1978 [1917]: 128–9) 5. (Lawrence 2003: 375–6) 6. (Lawrence 2003: 374) 7. (Atli n.d.; Rogan 1999: 233) 8. (Safi 2016: 47, Polat Safi pers. comm. December 19, 2016; Anon. n.d.b); Behçet Bey was known as Ali Behçet Günay in the Republican period (Grand National n.d.). There is an important issue here to clarify. The Turkish General Djemal Mersinli, better known as Mohammad Djemal Pasha Kuchuk (‘The Lesser’) was responsible for the whole railway north from Ma’an to Deraa (Nicholson 2005: 136; El-Edroos 1980: 94–5, 115; and see Tamari  2011a,  2011b). On 9 November 1917, Mersinli had been en route from Damascus to Jerusalem to reinforce Turkish defences against Allenby’s imminent attack when his train was ambushed by Lawrence at Km. 172 near Minifir (Lawrence 2003: 483). Ma’an was too important to have its commander based in and concerned with Jerusalem as well, and so at some point Behçet Bey had taken over the ‘Ma’an Command’ as Lawrence recorded. It appears that this was in August/September, and so it is possible that both Djemal Mersinli and Behçet Bey received Falkenhayn at Ma’an at this time to discuss fortifying it. As Mersinli was soon called away to other responsibilities, including being appointed head of the Syrian Fourth Army, in all likelihood it was Behçet who was responsible for and oversaw the fortification of Ma’an and the railway south, and this is the position I have adopted. 9. (Lawrence 2003: 373; Rogan 1999: 233) 10. (Lawrence  2003: 374); S.  C. Rolls commented similarly, perhaps derivatively, how Ma’an ‘was entrenched and protected by redoubts to such an extent that it was nigh impregnable’ (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 163). 11. (Lawrence 2003: 373) 12. (Lawrence 1935: 342) 13. (Lawrence 2003: 373) 14. (Winterburn 2016: 146) 15. TNA WO/95/4415 HACS (n.d.) Hedjaz Armoured Car Section, 1918 April–1919 January, Vol. 1, The National Archive, London; (Winterburn 2016: 146 Figure 5.28) 16. (APAAME: n.d.) 17. Site 1002 18. Site 1001 19. Site 1117 Ma’an West Redoubt 20. Site 1008 Jebel Semnah South 3 21. Site 1009 Jebel Semnah South tent-rings

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Notes 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

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Site 1010 Jebel Semnah South 2 Site 1011 Jebel Semnah South 1 Site 1012 Jebel Semnah South 1 Trench Complex Site 1013 Mid-Semnah Karakoll Sites 1048 North Semnah 3, 1014 North Semnah 1, 1015 North Semnah 2, SO83 North Semnah 4, SO84 North Semnah 5 Site 1003 Site 1004 Bewley’s Bluff Site 1005 Site 1006 Site 1000 Site SO69 Site SO68 Site SO70 Site SO71 AR 2006; excavated as Trenches IV and III. AR 2006 AR 2006 AR 2006; excavated as Trench III. AR 2006; excavated as Trench I. AR 2006; it had an interior space 3.25m by 3.73m. AR 2006 AR 2006 AR 2006, and excavated as Trench VI. AR 2006; this speculative interpretation is based on the recovery of small fragments of wood from the fill of the trench which may be evidence for revetting and roofing. AR 2006 AR 2007; excavated as Trench X AR 2007; excavated as Trench XI AR 2007, FR 2007, and ‘2006 to 2009 Finds Report Update’. AR 2007; Site 1016 This was presumably not the one mentioned by Hogarth (1978 [1917]: 128) which lies south-west of the station—though this identification is not secure. (Lawrence 2003: 603) Site 1001 (al-Askari 2003: 143) (Lawrence 2003: 603) (Nicholson 2005: 149–50; al-Askari 2003: 143) (al-Askari 2003: 143) The cemetery, Site 1118, which has an adjacent mortuary building, Site 1119, has no observable perimeter wall. In 2009, it measured roughly 96m north-south, 98m east-west, with an approximate area of 6,543 square metres. The area appears damaged on its periphery and so some graves may have disappeared during the last 100 years, though there appears to be no deliberate damage, but also no obvious effort to protect its integrity. There are several large inscribed tombstones in Ottoman script, but the majority are unmarked other than by the presence of local spherical white stones.

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Notes

59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

The mortuary building remained intact in 2009. Our visit was time-and-access-limited, so survey was mainly impressionistic, and no excavation was undertaken. It is unknown if there exists an official Turkish list or plan of those buried here in the archives in Istanbul or Ankara. As far as we are aware this is the only formal cemetery in our study area and so it is surmised that Turkish casualties along the  line as well as at Ma’an itself were buried here (transported by train from beyond Ma’an)—though the catchment area is unknown, and in any event train transport of bodies from the south would have been impossible after March/April 1918 once Ma’an was effectively cut off. From this point on at least, Turkish casualties were likely buried nearby where they fell in the desert and at other smaller stations. (al-Askari 2003: 144) ‘2007 Finds Catalogue’, ‘2006–2009 Find Report Update’, and AR 2006. The Turks certainly knew about these modern kinds of defences and employed them in Palestine, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli, and further afield in the Caucasus where the threat was equally modern. The Arab Revolt in our study area had not merited their adoption before August/September 1917. El-Edroos (1980: 94–5) is thus only partly correct when he says that strongpoints were built to protect the stations. Our fieldwork revises this view, albeit that some karakolls likely served both purposes. Many of these construction camps likely had identifying names or numbers for the railway administration, but none have been located. It is likely that such detailed information lies in Turkish archives in Istanbul and Ankara, which, as noted previously, were not accessible. Winterburn (2016: 124–5) offers calculations of time needed to construct stone-built fortifications, but while no estimate is available for the earthwork karakolls, it seems reasonable to suggest that a group of thirty men could complete one karakoll in two days at most. (Lawrence 2003: 519) An example of karakolls being ‘invisible’ in the landscape and of equating bell-tents with a military threat is Lt Victor Donald Siddons’ reconnaissance flight of 4 April 1918 where he reports seeing no outposts at all, very little activity, and no bell-tents along this section of the line (Air1/1667/204/100/3, X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London). (Hülagü 2010: 43) Petersen (2012: 36) makes the interesting observation that ‘What seems most likely is that the tents used in the Hajj resembled Turkish military tents, as depicted, for example in a manuscript of Nusretname painted in 1582.’ (Winterburn 2016: 127–8) Site 1112 (TNA Air/1667/204/100/3 n.d. X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London; Winterburn 2016: 127–8) Google Earth historical layer of 2011. A simple defence originating probably in pre-Roman times, though mainly known from the Medieval period (as Trou de loup), as a pit with a sharpened stake set in the base, often arranged en masse around a defended position, as here.

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Notes 74. Powles (1922: 109). Idriess (1973 [1932]: 184) describes the same as being six feet deep with ‘the lip of each rim adjoining two other lips so that it was impossible for a horse to step between’. 75. (Wavell 1912: 58; Ochsenwald 1980: 126) 76. Site 1050 77. The Handbook of the Turkish Army (1916) published by the British Army’s Cairo Intelligence Section gives the normal allocation of men to tents as twelve, rising to fifteen in emergencies. It states that each battalion of 1,081 men (at full wartime strength) carried 100 tents, and that each battalion company of 265 men was served by six sergeants and eighteen corporals. It can be suggested that a ‘tent group’ of twelve men commanded by an NCO formed the smallest unit of occupation in the Ottoman Army labour battalions for construction campsites, though possibly less than this during the Arab Revolt with the pressure on manpower. 78. Nevertheless, while this was likely Behcet Bey’s intention, in practice it may have been different. North of Ma’an, a clearly frustrated Thalacker (2003: 24) recorded that ‘To prevent destruction of bridges and tracks, I repeatedly requested security troop reinforcements from the A.O.K-4-. My requests were always refused due to lack of manpower. The suggestion to deploy the “karakolls” adjacent to large bridges instead of 2–3km to the side of the tracks was also refused with the note: it was preferable if just the bridges were destroyed, rather than losing both the bridge and the “karakoll” force. This was followed by discussions with the leaders of the “karakolls”, asking for patrols to check the tracks from one “karakoll” to another several times by day and night. The very polite and carefree Turks agreed to my request, but never carried the patrols out.’ 79. Thalacker (2003: 25). How typical such inaction by the railway defenders was is impossible to say, though at least in this case it was probable that the numerical superiority of the raiders over the karakoll garrison was a strong disincentive to engage. 80. Site SO01—typically in two parallel rows with one outlier. 81. Site SO02, fourteen tent-rings also arranged in parallel rows with banked outlier to north-west. 82. Site SO08 83. These two karakolls may be those mentioned by Siddons in the aforementioned reconnaissance report of 4 April 1918, where he says there was ‘A large series of bridges defended by 2 redoubts’. (Air1/1667/204/100/3, X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London). 84. Site 1018 85. (Lawrence 2003: 322) 86. (Lawrence 2003: 418) 87. Lawrence (1917b) recorded that ‘Bir shedia From Batra we marched on October 3 to near kilo. 475, where I meant to mine; but we found Turkish guard posts (of fifteen to twenty-five men) too close to the suitable spots. At nightfall, therefore, we went away to the south, till midnight, when we found a good place, and buried an automatic mine. [Report dated October 10, received from Major Lawrence, C.B.] (Arab Bulletin, 21 October 1917). 88. (al-Askari 2003: 141; Lawrence 2003: 602; Wilson 1990: 497); IWM Q 104083.

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Notes 89. FR 2011 (Munitions); of the 105 finds from the station, forty (38.10 per cent) are munitions-related, and of these, thirty-two (82.05 per cent) are spent cartridge cases, of which twenty-nine were Mauser (twenty-three from the defensive trench, and six from the ruined building). Two of the six had ‘S’ stamped on their heads, standing for Königliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau, the Royal Prussian arsenal near Berlin. The defensive trench yielded another two with the ‘S’ stamp, and one with a ‘C’ stamp, standing for Cassel Munitionsfabrik, another German manufacturer. A Mauser clip was also collected from the trench. Of the three other spent cartridge cases, one from the building was a 7.65 Mannlicher (Austrian pistol), with a head stamp ‘SB’, standing for Sellier & Bellot Schönebeck an der Elbe, and dated 1917. 90. (Winterburn 2016: Figure 6.15); (Google Earth, 15 December 2011) 91. Site 1053 Karakoll 92. Site S1O10, 210m west of embankment. 93. This appears to be a camp with two sets of nearby tent-rings, designated Sites SO11a and SO11b. 94. Site SO09, built 170m nearer to the railway embankment (and only about 120m west of it), and south of Site 1054 Cistern. 95. Approximately 2m higher than the tent-rings. 96. Site 1056 Stone Quarry 97. Site SO04, located approximately 130m west of the line. 98. Another smaller campsite of four tent-rings (Site 1058) lay 600m south on a plateau, and 70m away from another (probably seasonal) cistern (Site 1057 Cistern). From this point, the railway travels directly south for 725m before making a turn to the south-east and crossing a small wadi with three bridges, and is protected as it does so by a small redoubt (Site  1059 Redoubt) built on the northern wadi edge some 190m to the south-west of the railway. Just 2.6km further south again is Site SO03, a heavily damaged construction campsite of seven visible tent-rings (probably originally arranged in two parallel rows of five), lying 70m west of a bridge, and 400m north of Bir el Shedia Station. 99. Site 1017 (also designated Site SO79) 100. (Winterburn 2016: 228 Figure 6.15); (TNA Air/1667/204/100/31. n.d. X Flight RAF War Diary, February 1918, Vol. 5, The National Archive, London) 101. (Lawrence 2003: 610) 102. Site SO56 103. (Lawrence 1917b: 151) 104. Nevertheless, GARP always acknowledged that some features may have vanished leaving no trace at all, and this seems to be the case here as during an RAF reconnaissance report of 14 May 1918 written by Pilot 2nd Lt  K.  J.  Oldfield recorded a ‘White building 2 miles S.  of SHEDIA unoccupied but apparently not destroyed’ (TNA Air1/1667/204/100/4 (n.d.) X Flight RAF War Diary, May 1918, Vol. 8, The National Archive, London.) No trace of this was observed during fieldwork. 105. (Stein 1940: 436, 438); Stein’s description gives a rare account of the Hejaz Railway’s condition during the inter-war years, and is worth reproducing here. In May 1939, the route chosen for reaching ‘Aqaba led us for some 120 miles down to the southernmost border of Trans-Jordan along that derelict portion of the Hejjaz railway which had seen much fighting between Colonel Lawrence’s Arabs and the Turks. Ruined posts

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Notes

106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

all along the railway, blown-up viaducts, long stretches of rail upheaved and again repaired, with many a grim relic of desert warfare, testified to the tenacity, remarkable but futile, with which Turkish troops had clung to the line. Yet the permanent way [i.e. embankment] still remains almost intact. It may serve perhaps for centuries to come as a proof of the care with which the old Turkish regime had here carried out a pet scheme of Abdul Hamid’s closing years in the face of serious physical difficulties. From the southernmost of the few posts by which the Desert Patrol manages to assure complete security nowadays in a desolate region, we passed by a desert track through bold sandstone hills picturesquely eroded to “Aqaba” ’ (Stein 1940: 436; and see Kennedy 2000). Site 1062 Site SO54 Site SO55 Site 1063 Site 1064 Coal spread Site 1065 Stone Quarry Site 1113 AR 2011 This range is between 3.85m and 4.80m. FR 2011; only two unrecognizable cartridges were found which could easily be the result of random firing or loss. The richness of these finds is recorded in FR 2011, from which this extract gives a brief account: Cut-throat razors: Tent-ring XXVII yielded a blade of 8cm × 1.5cm with its handle missing; Tent-ring XI yielded a complete example, the blade 8cm × 2cm and the handle a 2.5cm loop attached to one end of the blade with a pin.’ Padlocks: these were a common find throughout the investigated area, and may be indicative of the social conditions in camps where hundreds of labourers lived in close proximity and needed to secure their personal belongings. Paper fragments: 47 fragments of paper were collected (10.02% of site finds), the majority were either cigarette-rolling paper packaging or cigarette packaging (13 and 20 respectively) with the rest of unknown origin. Buttons: 27 buttons were found in 2011 season (adding to 68 discovered in 2009). This accounts for 7.05% of all 2011 items, but when the 2009 examples are added, buttons account for 20.26% of the overall finds assemblage. 57 of the 95 found (or 60%) are of the standard Turkish 18-21mm Crescent & Star type. Two examples had the stamp ‘FEIN’ on the reverse indicating German manufacture, and one (from 2009) had traces of gilding. There were five smaller 15mm Crescent & Star variety used on the cuffs of Ottoman uniforms. Two unusual buttons were a British silver Naval button and a 26mm plain German button stamped Extra Fein Qualitaet on the reverse (both found in 2009). The star and crescent motif also decorates a spoon broken in two places and found in Tent-ring VI. It has a foliage design on the upper side of the handle, and on the lower, an engraving in Arabic for ‘health’.

117. Hani Falahat (pers. comm. 20/8/18), and see Anwaar Al-Farayh (2016).

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Notes 118. The ring, broken (possibly deliberately cut) and with the sides bent back towards the top, has an unknown blue-glass stone set in the top. No identification was possible other than that it might be an heirloom ninth-century Islamic ring. 119. (Ochsenwald 1980: 35). Seal here refers to the implement used to make the impression, properly called the ‘seal matrix’, and used to authorize documents. In Ottoman Turkey seal engraving was a well established and highly regulated profession (Gallop 2014). Deeply rooted in the Islamic world, they served as symbols of textual authority and ownership (Lowe  2014). The personal seal, which is inscribed in Arabic, has been translated to read ‘Said bin Salim 1323’. If a Hirci date, this corresponds to 1905/6 in the Gregorian calendar, if a Rumi date, then it is 1907/8 in the Gregorian calendar. 120. FR 2009 121. (Anon. 2014; and see Bures 1984) 122. Site 1111 Birds Nest Trench; 35m long and 1.70m wide, with a 0.25m high embankment on both sides. 123. Site SO12. More accurately, this is a series of extraction points along an exposed stony ridge. Bore holes for explosive charges and/or the water expansion method were clearly visible in 2009. 124. (Ingerslev 1995) 125. For example, Site SO13 lies 662m south of Bird’s Nest Camp, 84m west of the line, and has fourteen tent-rings arranged in two parallel rows with six outliers nearby. 126. Site 1066 127. Many structures are referred to as Blockhouses in the historical records, and by us  during the project, sometimes because they were regarded (and occasionally named) as such during the Arab Revolt, and sometimes because their architecture indicated that they could have functioned in this way if needed. The stand-alone blockhouse at Km. 495, however, is the only one clearly designed and built as such when the railway was constructed, and so reflects Ottoman security concerns before the First World War rather than being a response to the Arab Revolt. Unsurprisingly its stone-built architecture is the most sophisticated example in our study area. 128. (Maunsell 1908; IOR/L/PS/10/12, File 3142/1903 ‘Hedjaz Railway’, 1901–1908, India Office Records, British Library) 129. (Lawrence 2003: 445) 130. (Winterburn 2016: 228 Figure 6.15) 131. AR 2010—Standing Buildings Survey and metal-detector survey only, no excavation. 132. AR 2010; one currently unanswerable question is how closely the 1960s rebuilding programme intended to follow the original Ottoman design, and whether or not the project’s engineers had access to original Hejaz Railway blueprints for these structures. Our fieldwork evidence suggests that the 1960s project managers attempted to rebuild as accurately as possible, and clearly identified the rebuilt sections by using quadrilateral-shaped stones roughly arranged and bonded with a pale pink sandy mortar. These stylistic changes, together with differences in patination indicate the rebuilt sections. 133. Site 1067 South Blockhouse Camp 134. AR 2010; Site 1068 Fortification

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Notes 135. The Great Camp is a GARP designation. The four tent-ring camps are, north to south: Site SO05 The Great Camp 1 of fourteen tent-rings arranged in two parallel rows of seven, lying 387m south-south-west of Site 1068 Fortification and 180m west of the railway; one kilometre further south is Site 1070 The Great Camp 2, a camp of eleven tent-rings lying 110m west of the railway, and oriented north-south; 235m south again is Site 1071 The Great Camp 3, a very well-preserved camp of two parallel rows of nine tent-rings each and between six and eight outliers; a further 212m south is what appears to be the remains of a bread oven (Site 1072) positioned on the southern ridge of an intervening wadi, and possibly used to cook for the approximately 200 men of Site 1071, and maybe also of Site 1070 (and possibly beyond in both directions as well). Some 115m south-west of the oven is another camp (Site 1073 The Great Camp’) of two parallel rows of nine tent-rings each with two or three outliers and oriented east-west, and beyond which, some 75m south, a likely mule or horse tethering line (Site 1074 Horse Lines) located on the northern edge of a wadi. Seventy metres further south again, on the downward slope of the northern side of the wadi is a stone quarry (Site 1075 Quarry), and 80m further south, at a similarly breeze-catching position on the southern side of the wadi, is Site SO06, another possible horse or mule line tethering station. 136. The size of this camp may have required the building of this bread oven in addition to the well-documented portable ones (Hülagü 2010: 43). 137. Site 1076 Observation Post 138. Site SO07, a heavily damaged possible construction camp of ten visible tent-rings but originally perhaps two rows of seven tent-rings each, lying 145m west of the railway. Site 1079 Cistern. 139. Site 1078 Tent Rings; A lookout tower (Site 1080 Lookout Tower) lies 1.3km to the south but its isolated position, some 725m west of the railway, suggests it may not be connected to railway defence though could still have been re-occupied during the Revolt. Another 2.57km south is Site 1110 Tent Rings, a heavily eroded campsite 65m west of the railway, though too damaged to ascertain the number of tent-rings.

Chapter 7 1. Site 1081, 50m west of the line. AR 2009. 2. Discovered and surveyed in November 2009, though not excavated, the fort was heavily damaged in 2011 by bulldozing. 3. As at Ghadir al Hajj North 1, these wolf-pits are invisible on satellite imagery and only discernable in relatively low-level aerial photographs, and at ground level to the practiced eye. 4. (Winterburn 2016: 183, Fig. 5.57, 184) 5. Western Complex is Site 1083 Makins’ Fort West and also designated as Site MF 09 WC, Eastern Complex is Site 1085 Makins’ Fort East and also designated MF09 EC. 6. The Western Complex’s main area measures 55m by 29m. Winterburn (2016: 124) calculates that the 50-metre long perimeter dry-stone wall would have taken between sixteen and seventy-five man-days to build. 7. The walls, similar to those recorded at Fassu’ah Ridge, (FR08), were constructed by using large outer coursing stones on both faces packed in-between with smaller stones.

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Notes 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Sites are designated OS II and OS III. There were no finds. Designated Room 3. FR 2009 FR 2009 The size and weight of this stone precludes its transportation by mule or camel, and so a train seems the obvious explanation. It would seem to be overkill for a small garrison though may have been re-used by them if it had originally been brought in for railway labourers during the construction period. Site SO67 Ghost Embankment Every day during construction, several wagons with two tanks holding 8 cubic metres of water were sent by train from Ma’an to the construction area. The problem was that ‘the line had incomplete sections because the rails were laid faster than the bridges across the valleys, leaving gaps in the line. The problem was overcome by building an auxiliary line that went down, into the valley and then rejoined the main line’ (Hülagü 2010: 23). Site 1086 Observation Post, 3m in diameter, and 30m north-west of the line. (Hülagü 2010: 87; and see Winterburn 2016: 124–5; IOR3142/1903.n.d.) Maunsell’s reference to a six-span bridge where there is now a ten-span structure has several possible explanations—it could refer to an earlier version, it might be that after war damage the original was replaced with a more substantial version, or that the original was replaced by the current one during the 1960s refurbishment or the 1970s strengthening of the track. Saleh’s Fort, Site 1087. Saleh’s Camp, Site SLC 11. AR 2011, FR 2011; as at Abdullah’s Fort, it was built some 50m west of the line. The wall stands 0.25m high (though possibly originally heightened by sandbags), and the interior trench is 0.31m deep. They are 0.70m in diameter, and spaced about 0.40m apart. The walls measured 10m × 7m, construction is large stones with smaller packing stones on the inside. The blast-wall is aligned north-south, is 1.30m long by 0.80m wide. FR 2011; west room extension yielded five fragments of textile. Saleh’s Camp, Site 1127, also designated as Site SLC 11. FR 2011. These features had an average dimension of 4.5m by 4.5m. Feature Tr III was planned. Most of the finds came from just two tent-rectangles, VI and VIII. (de Nogales 2003 [1926]: 312) Site TRF11/1089; AR 2011 (Air1/1667/204/100/3, X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London) These holes were between 0.7m to 1m in diameter, and 0.25m or more deep (slightly larger than those at Saleh’s Fort). Structure measures 7.20m × 6.50m internally. FR 2011, one spent Mauser cartridge found. Site 1022 (TNA Air/1667/204/100/1. (n.d.) X Flight RAF War Diary, February 1918, Vol. 5, The National Archive, London); (Winterburn 2016: 160)

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Notes 34. (Winterburn 2016: 212) 35. (Winterburn 2016: 216 Fig. 6.16); (TNA Air/1667/204/100/2 n.d. X Flight RAF War Diary, March 1918, Vol. 6, The National Archive) 36. Peake quoted in Barr (2006: 235). 37. There are voids in the top of the eastern wall suggesting timber supports for an original and possibly sloping ceiling and roof. 38. (Shqiarat et al. 2011: 105–9) 39. (Hülagü 2010: 87) 40. FR 2007; seven fragments of spherical Turkish hand grenade and an intact fuse with a protective copper alloy chape were found. Diameter of 73mm, and fitted originally with 10-second, then five-second fuse (IWM n.d.). 41. FR 2007, five artillery shell fragments, three Mauser cartridges, one Mauser clip, and two .303 bullets, one of which was a Mk V1, dated 09/1913. 42. Site 1023. (Peterson 2012: 24, 112–21; Shqiarat et al. 2011: 101–5); although the present fort is eighteenth century, there is some indication that the location could be much earlier—perhaps identified with a thirteenth century site called Dhat al-Manar (Petersen 2012: 112–13). 43. (TNA Air1/1667/204/100/2 (n.d.) X Flight RAF War Diary, March 1918, Vol. 6; Winterburn 2016: 167) 44. (Winterburn 2016: 228–30; TNA Air1/1667/204/100/2 (n.d.) X Flight RAF War Diary March 1918, Vol. 6, The National Archive, London) 45. AR 2007 46. Both features recorded collectively as Site SO20. 47. Three short trenches: Sites SO17, SO18, SO19. The Horses’ Route (al-Salameen n.d.) 48. Petersen (2012: 24) notes that eighteenth-century forts differ from earlier thirteenthcentury examples by having narrower rifle slits rather than larger arrow slits, and so any Arab Revolt period remodelling of the fort may have simply taken advantage of this or perhaps modified them slightly. 49. Faisal’s Arab regular army was partly armed with a portion of 500,000 obsolete ‘Arisaka Type 30’ rifles purchased by Britain from Japan between 1914 and 1916 (as a stop-gap until the Lee-Enfield was available) which had been used by the Imperial Japanese Army between 1897 and 1905. 50. (Hani Falahat pers. comm. 2007); this may be indicative of burials from a mixed tribal force, though this is speculation. 51. Site SO30 52. Site SO51, also designated Site FR08. 53. AR 2008, FR 2008; excavated from Trench VI. FR 2009, a domino made from the edge of a cardboard box, with lines and circles marked in pencil is another example of social life, as is, in a different way, an envelope which appears to preserve part of a contract between a Turk (Askar Aishani) and an Arab (Said ibn Mahmoud), written in Arabic with some Turkish words (Jennings 2010: 2). 54. These outside structures are designated OS V–VII. 55. Excavated as Trench III. Finds were a few tacks and metal strips attached to leather. 56. AR 2008, FR 2008 57. AR 2008; its area is 21m by 19m, and structures are designated BH II–IV and VI–IX.

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Notes 58. Loopholes formed by leaving gaps in the walls during construction, and averaged 0.15m × 0.10m, two at 0.60m above ground-level, the remainder at heights of 0.70m, 0.75m, and 1.23m. Wall height is 1.30m; Stepped entrance is 1.30m wide; Observation post is designated OS IV. 59. Loophole is 1.10m above ground level at the northern side, measuring 0.15m × 0.10m. The doorway is 0.5m wide; the feature is designated BH V. 60. This second phase of activity is clearly later as the spurs begin at the blocked-up section. The breastwork spurs were located either side of the main structural wall. The L-shaped spur located within the interior of the structure measured 2.35m long × 0.80m wide north-south and 1.80m long × 1.30m wide east-west. The outside breastwork was almost identical in shape and size. 61. The loopholes measured 0.10m by 0.15m, and were 1.16m by 0.53m by 1.10m above ground level. The doorway is 1m wide; feature is designated Enclosure I. 62. AR 2008; this is designated Room BH II, a rectangular space measuring 7.38m × 2.55m, its partially demolished walls stand 1.47m high where complete, with a 0.71m-wide doorway on its south side flanked on each side by a stone-slab fireplace, one well preserved the other heavily damaged. 63. Designated Room BH III, in the north-east corner, and much disturbed by golddigging, and measuring 6.00m × 2.60m, with a single 0.60m-wide doorway. 64. FR 2008, Appendix K; the majority of collected textiles (70 per cent of the 169 fragments) are believed to be from Late Ottoman uniforms, 2 per cent seem to be post-war, 15 per cent are thought to be Bedouin (although whether this is con­tem­ por­ary or modern is unknown), and the rest are unidentifiable. Eighty-nine per cent of the textiles found at Fassu’ah Ridge Fort were excavated from the various rooms in the inner fort structure and the blockhouses investigated (BH I–V). 65. Designated Room BH IV, with a 0.85m-wide doorway in its north wall. 66. Designated Room BH VII. 67. Designated Room BH VI, with a 0.50m-wide doorway, and the trench was designated Trench 1. 68. AR 2008; Designated Room BV VIII, whose square-shaped section measured between 2.45m–2.60m wide (internally) and 3.15m–3.30m (externally) and 2.78m long (internally) and 3.90m (externally). Wall width c.0.55m, and remaining wall height varied from 0.70m to 1.30m. The semi-circular wall measured 3.50m wide (externally) and 2.50m wide (internally), and 2.20m long (externally), and was 1.70m long (internally). 69. Doorway is 0.75m wide. 70. Doorway is 0.85m wide. 71. AR 2008; a small depressor or atomizer from a bottle. The name of F. Wolff & Sohne Karlsruhe was clear, and was a German toiletries and cosmetics company founded in 1857. They reduced their product range to just perfume for some years, corresponding well with our period. 72. Eight radial and two smaller paths were recorded, all sharing a common width of around 0.90m. 73. It also gives an insight into the mentality of gold-diggers whose attention is drawn to unusual features in the (not always) forlorn hope that ‘Turkish Gold’ will be found at such locations.

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Notes 74. The connecting trench may have originally been covered over. The blockhouse walls are 6m long by 2.10m wide, with a thickness of 0.65m. Their heights were between 1.50m and 1.60m internally but only 0.50m to 0.60m externally. 75. AR 2008, FR 2008 76. Designated BH V, and measuring 5.0m long (externally) 4.60m (internally), and 4.40m wide (externally) and 2.20m (internally). There was no east wall, suggesting either that it had been demolished or that it had always been a three-sided building. 77. AR 2008, FR 2008 78. AR 2008, FR 2008; designated Enclosure 1, and excavated as Trench I on the west side of the main courtyard blockhouse, the other, designated Enclosure 2, and excavated as Trenches II and V on its east side. Enclosure 1 had two east-west trenches, measuring 10.10m and 20m long, and two north-south trenches with lengths of 12.10m and 4.50m. One section of trench connected the courtyard blockhouse to Blockhouse I, though the finds were a mix of fragments of paper, metal, fabric, and charcoal together with one Mauser cartridge. Enclosure 2 was a single trench, running east-west from the courtyard blockhouse for 12m, then turning south for 11m where it met the perimeter wall, and was flanked on its east and north sides by a short stretch of a 0.40m-high stone wall located on a raised bank. The wall was composed of three or four courses of roughly cut sub-rectangular pieces of local stone. 79. AR 2008, FR 2008; Two small dry-stone structures were connected by pathways to the fort, one rectangular and open on its north side the other almost circular and open to the north-east. Designated Outside Structure I (OS I), measuring 6.85m × 2.0m, with an internal division wall, and Outside Structure II (OS II) which lay to the west of OS I, and measured 2.40m long externally, 1.40m internally, and 1.80m wide externally and 1.20m internally. Excavation gave no clue as to the purpose of either, though OS II had a 0.65m by 0.22m pit which might have been a latrine. 80. Designated OS III. 81. Site SO82 (tented railway halt). 82. Although in theory a Turkish regiment had 3,000 men, in practice by 1917–18 attrition meant that Turkish units were seriously under-strength, and a regiment would have had around 600 men. 83. Quoted in Barr (2006: 235). 84. (Petersen 2012: 121) 85. AR 2008, FR 2008: Munitions: thirty-five Mauser cartridges were found in and around the main fort. Of these, six (17 per cent) were collected from inside the excavated rooms and blockhouses, three (9 per cent) from the three excavation trenches, and the remainder being surface finds. An impacted example of a largebore Martini-Henry lead bullet was also found inside the fortifications walls. There were also two .303 cartridges (one stamped 1915, the other 1917), three Mauser clips, several 10–15mm lead balls (two of which were impacted), and a large-bore lead bullet. The presence of these munitions suggest some exchange of fire, if only on a small scale. 86. Site SO52 87. There are four tent rings designated TR I–IV, four larger stone rings designated R I–IV, a rectangular structure designated B I, and a linear stone structure designated FT with an area of compacted ground designated ML adjacent to its eastern side.

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Notes 88. AR 2008; the two linear stone lines of the trough are designated ‘FT’, and the adjacent compacted ground is designated ‘ML’. FT is aligned north-south, between 0.50m and 1.25m wide, with a 0.5m gap in-between. 89. AR 2008, ML, measures 11m long by 3m wide. 90. The total number of mules/horses could have been much higher as not all would have been present at the trough at the same time. These troughs were impromptu stone constructions in the desert, and were lined with canvas to hold water. The sandy crescent was either cleared for the mules, or produced by them by constant use. 91. 2008 fieldnotes of Julian Evan-Hart titled ‘GARP 2008 MDS finds catalogue’. Buttons: of 104 buttons found around the Fassu’ah West area ninety-three (72.66 per cent) are standard-sized star and crescent (type MB 3.1.1). Almost 50 per cent of these were found at a set of tent-rings in the area, and the rest were spread across the Fassu’ah West sub-site. One had a makers stamp on the reverse in Arabic text (type MB 3.1.1.9), the first ever recorded of this variety. There were also three smaller star and crescent examples (type MB 4.1.1), used as cuff buttons on Ottoman Army tunics. 92. AR 2008, called a ‘stone ring’, and designated R II. 93. Metal-detecting nearby recovered nails and a second seal matrix associated with surface finds of fragments of cream pottery and a decorative cup. 94. AR 2008, structure designated B I. It had four walls and was 6m long by 3m wide. 95. AR 2008, structure designated GE I. It was 8.2m long by 1.4m wide. 96. Site SO15 97. A more convincing construction camp is Site 1043 just 308m west of the railway. 98. Site SO14 99. Site SO16 100. Site 1024, also designated Site BG08. 101. There is some confusion as to whether this wadi is called Wadi Rutm or Wadi Batn al-Ghoul. If the latter, then it becomes the former perhaps half-way down towards Wadi Rutm Station. 102. (Hülagü 2010: 88) 103. Before the massive earth-moving and reconfiguring of this plateau to accommodate the wide looping railway embankment, the station, and the large construction camps, this location must have been a rich archaeological palimpsest of two thousand years of occupation and use—of which no trace, apart from some coins, was found during our investigations in 2007–9 and 2013. 104. (Hülagü 2010: 88) 105. (Barr 2006: 35) 106. (TNA Air/1667/204/100/3 n.d. X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London; Winterburn 2016: 230, Fig. 6: 17) 107. (Barr  2006, 34–5, 235; and pers. comm.; IWM FG Peake Papers DS/Misc/16); the secret British Office Report of 18 August 1918 remarked on this action that it was estimated it would take 500 Turkish soldiers a month to repair though in the event this was never done (Anon. 1918: 6). 108. Undoubtedly there were more tented structures on the plateau which have been lost to post-1918 disturbance and so the number of labourers was probably greater.

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Notes 109. AR 2013 110. Further sub-divided into Type 1a (with a single course of interior drystone revetting wall formed of large irregular blocks, in addition to an outer ring of stone weights and/or earth bank), and Type 1b (identical minus the interior revetting wall). 111. With an outer ring of stone weights and/or earth bank. 112. With wide, shallow gullies, and lines of stone weights and/or earth bank on three sides, with the fourth side left open. 113. For drainage, or maybe a natural formation by winter rainwater streaming down the sides of the tent. This feature may be related to seasonality inasmuch as tents with drip-gullies might indicate winter rainy season occupation, and those without being used in the summer. On drip-gullies see Reynolds (1995: 23). 114. (Simms 1988; Saidel 2001; Palmer and Daly 2006) 115. Site SO48 116. Thirteen Mamluk coins were also found (‘Coins 2007 FR general finds’). 117. The angular stones measured between 160mm × 200mm and 200mm × 220mm × 190mm. 118. AR 2008 119. AR 2008, FR 2008; this was 17.50m west of tent-ring 1, measured 4.50m in diameter (internally) and 6.50m in diameter (externally), and while damaged, was formed of small and medium stones measuring 150mm × 120mm placed on the surface. Apart from the playing card, there were paper fragments with mainly Arabic numbers written on them and which may have been financial calculations. Also found were strands of rope, nails, pottery, nut and fruit stones, shells, twisted wire, animal bone, animal waste, leather, metal fragments, charcoal, and one Turkish star-and-crescent button. 120. AR 2008, FR 2008; this was 33m south and 6.20m west of tent-ring 2, measured 4.50m in diameter (internally) and between 5.10m and 6.20m in diameter (externally), with a 1.80m-wide entrance also in the south-east. The compacted red-grey-orange floor was empty of finds with the exception of two wooden stakes driven into it. In the overlying layer an in situ hearth and pieces of modern ceramics indicated recent Bedouin activity. The uppermost layer yielded the majority of the fifty-seven finds, including buttons, leather strap, a metal buckle, rope, paper with illustrations, ceramic sherds, seeds, shells and fruit stones, charcoal, metal fragments, a metal hook, animal bone, and fabric (including felt and uniform fabric). 121. AR 2008, FR 2008; tent-ring 4 was similar again, and was located 6.20m east of  tent-ring 3, measured 4.0m in diameter (internally) and between 5.75m and 7.0m in diameter (externally), had wooden stakes pushed into its red and orange sand-and-gravel floor, and finds were almost identical to tent-ring 3. 122. AR 2008, FR 2008; tent-ring 5 is 5.0m east of tent-ring 4 in the second row, and is 4.0m in diameter (internally) and between 5.0m and 5.50m in diameter (externally), composed of small angular stones. 123. Tent-ring 6 is 5.50m south of Tent Ring 5, measured 2.60m and 3.40m in diameter (internally) and between 5.70m and 6.0m in diameter (externally). The bank is 0.39m high and 1.5m wide. 124. AR 2008, FR 2008

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Notes 125. Although the patent for the Allen Key was taken out in 1910, it was the Second World War that first saw its widespread military use, and so, apart from clearly not belonging to the construction era, it cannot be used to accurately date the later use of the site. It is equally possible that it could have been left/lost there during the Second World War when the rail lines here were pulled up by Australian troops, or perhaps in the 1960s during the relaying of the tracks for the refurbishment, or even the alteration of rails and embankment during the 1970s to strengthen the line for the phosphate trains. 126. AR 2008, FR 2008; tent-ring 7 is 4.80m west of tent-ring 6, was 25 per cent destroyed by modern activity. Its remains measured 4.30m in diameter (internally) and 6.60m in diameter (externally). 127. AR 2013, FR 2013 128. Turkish star and crescent button (type MB 3.1.1, 18–21mm) was the most commonly found, and being represented by forty-two of the fifty-eight buttons collected (or 72.41 per cent). The next most frequent was the dimple button (type MB 4.1.4, 15mm) of which six were collected, and five of the smaller star and crescent (type MB 4.1.1, 15mm). In addition, there were two 22–25mm domed (plain) (type MB 2.1.2) and two 22–25mm scimitar (type MB 2.1.3), and one 15mm raised oval design (type MB 4.0.1). 129. FR 2013; SF No. 10—one large and two small decorative studs and a fragment. Very ornate (MO 4.3.4). The full list is: SF No. 11—personal seal matrix (most of) (MO 4.1) SF No. 14—personal seal (complete) (MO 4.1) SF No. 15—decorated pendant with hanging ring (MO 4.8.4) SF No. 17—padlock (MO 4.4.2) SF No. 19—personal seal (head and part of handle) (MO 4.1) SF No. 31—composite item of unknown use—possible piece of trench art (MO 4.9.7) SF No. 32—padlock (circular) (MO 4.4.2) SF No. 35—blown railway piece (MO 5.2) SF No. 36—mule shoe (MO 6.1.0). The possible trench art item is a section of round tin with wood placed in its centre and the edges of the tin bent over to enclose the wood. There is a wooden peg in the centre of the wood and six nails have been pierced into the sides of the tin at roughly regular intervals. It has no obvious purpose. 130. This belongs to ‘Type 1b’, had a sunken floor but no internal revetting wall, and with an eastern entrance; two pegs were found inside, five amid or close to the ring of stone weights, and three forming part of the outer perimeter ring. 131. ‘Type 1a’. 132. A north-eastern entrance was still discernible, but the only diagnostic Turkish find was a single military button. Three tent pegs were found, but were of indeterminate age. 133. Tent-squares 38 and 40, both were open to the east and featured shallow gullies and occasional stone weights. 134. Textiles: 81 per cent of the 378 textile fragments found are believed to be from uniforms of the period. A further 3 per cent seem to be post-war textiles, 5 per cent are thought to relate to Bedouin activity (although whether this is contemporary or modern is unknown), and the rest are unknown. Full list of textile typologies is in

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Notes

135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144.

145.

146. 147.

148. 149.

150. 151.

310

FR 2009: Appendix F—Textile Typology Category List, as is list of textile types for the Northern Camp. Also, part of a balsa wood and paper matchbox, highly decorated with lions, crowns, and a flag-bearing dog, and was labelled in Italian marca di Fabbica (Jennings 2010). Interestingly these retained their casting sprues, and thus appear to have been dropped rather than fired. It may be that they were cast on site. AR 2008, FR 2008 Site SO50, also designated Site BG09 AR 2009, FR 2009; several of these were half or quarter excavated. Tent-rings 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, and 24. Tent-ring 9 measured 5.50m × 5.70m (internally) and 5.66m × 6.65m (externally), and was composed of large stones with smaller stones in-between as packing. Tent-ring 10 measured 4.30m in diameter (internally) and 5.10m in diameter (externally), with the same construction technique of large stones with smaller packing stones in-between, and a 0.70m-wide entrance to the south. FR 2009 AR 2009, FR 2009; tent-ring 13 measured 4.40m in diameter (internally) and 6.30m in diameter (externally), composed of stones measuring 260mm × 150mm × 50mm and 90mm × 90mm × 50mm, and also had a drip-gulley, and two possible entrances to the north and south-west. The internal layering was the same as the other examples, and the finds too were the same, i.e. many small nails approximately 30mm long, and a few larger ones, and a large metal fragment possibly related to the railway, fragments of textile, leather, clear glass, pottery, nut and fruit stones, and paper. AR 2009, FR 2009. Two circular tent-rings, 14 and 15, were surveyed but not excavated. Both had 0.70m-wide drip-gulleys around their perimeters. Tent-ring 14 measured 4.50m in diameter (internally) and 5.80m in diameter (externally), and may in places have been two courses high. Tent-ring 15 measured 4.40m in diameter (internally) and 5.35m in diameter (externally). Tent-ring 17 was defined by eleven stones and the remains of surrounding ditch/gully. A bank was created by cutting the gully, and no entrance was recognized. Tent-ring 18 measured 4.90m in diameter (internally) and 6.05m in diameter (externally). Tent-ring 19 measured 4.50m × 4.50m in diameter externally, and had an unusual spread of stones inside, particularly a small circular-shaped stone cluster within the north-eastern edge. There was no perimeter bank or drip-gulley, but excavation did also yield textile, fruit stones, and a wooden button. Tent-ring 20 measured 4.2m by 4.0m, and had a probable 0.80m-wide entrance on its southern side whose excavation yielded only two in situ tent pegs. The first was tent-ring/square 11, measuring 4.19m × 4.67m (internally) and 4.62m × 4.98m (externally). It had a 2.0m-wide entrance on its west side, and three in situ tent pegs. The second was tent-ring 12 which measured 4.63m × 4.86m (internally) and 5.23m × 5.65m (externally), had a drip-gully running around its entire circuit, and a 0.94m-wide entrance on its north-eastern side, opening onto the ‘avenue’. Site SO49 AR 2013, FR 2013; twenty-six buttons were collected from the North Western Camp, which represents 5.22 per cent of the finds from that camp. The majority (nineteen

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Notes or 73.08 per cent) were collected as part of the metal-detector survey, though the four excavated tent-rings also yielded a few. As with the other camps, the predominant type was the Ottoman Army 18–21mm star and crescent (type MB 3.1.1) with eighteen of these being collected. There were also two of the smaller 15mm star and crescent (type MB 4.1.1), one of the 22–25mm scimitar (type MB 2.1.3), one of the 22–25mm domed (plain) (type MB 2.1.2) and also three of the 15mm dimple (type MB 4.1.4). In addition there was a new type of button that had a patterned background and a ‘6’ embossed on it. This was logged as 2013 Small Find No. 45. 152. FR 2013; SF No. 42—two playing card fragments, ‘7 Clubs’ and ‘7 Hearts’ SF No. 47—playing card ‘Queen of Spades’ SF No. 48—two playing card fragments, both are ‘Queen of Hearts’ SF No. 53—cigarette-rolling paper with ribbon attached SF No. 54—cigarette paper with writing. 153. 154. 155. 156.

Type 1b FR 2013, mainly nails from wooden packing cases. Site SO31 (Winterburn 2016: 115)

Chapter 8 1. Lawrence made the same comment concerning armoured cars in his ‘Evolution of a  Revolt’ (1920)—‘On some occasions we strengthened tribal raids by armoured cars, . . . [which] once they have found a possible track can keep up with a camel party. They are, however, cumbrous and shorter-ranged, because of the difficulty of carrying petrol.’ For camels versus wheeled transportation more broadly see Bulliet (1990). 2. (Hogarth 1978 [1917]: 131; Hülagü 2010: 89) 3. One 100lb bomb exploded 75 yards (68.5m) from its target, the other was a dud. (AIR1/1667/204/100/2 War Diary of X Flight, March 1918, Vol. 6, The National Archive, London.) 4. Positioned wrongly as being south of the station whereas it lies north of the station. 5. (Winterburn 2016: 233; TNA Air1/1667/204/100/3 (n.d.) War Diary of X Flight, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London) There is some ambiguity over the date of this sketch map. Winterburn believes it is a composite, drawn from the results of several earlier flying missions over Wadi Rutm.The date on the map, 22 April, is not the date it was drawn but the date that it was intended to be used (J. Winterburn pers. comm. August and December 2017). 6. (Jarvis  1942); The Royal Central Asian Society (now The Royal Society for Asian Affairs) awarded Jarvis their ‘Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal’ in 1938. 7. (Jarvis 1942: 35) 8. Site 1025 (also designated Site SO64). 9. AR 2006, AR 2007; the maximum width of the sand base of the embankment was 9.61m. Above this was a carefully laid layer of clinker or rubble that was a consistent depth of 0.08m across its entire width of 3.52m. This layer was the base for construction. Above this was a more solid make-up layer comprising large stones packed

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Notes

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

312

around with sand and pebbles. Above this, at the top of the embankment where the sleepers had rested, was a consistent layer of sand and stone almost cob-like in character, 2.30m wide and 0.05m deep. See Ochsenwald (1980: 54) for two contemporary photographs illustrating the embankment construction process. (Tourret 1989: 18) AR 2006 AR 2006, AR 2007; Building 1 measured 16.70m by 8.70m externally. The rooms are numbered 1 to 4 from north-west to south-east, with the two end rooms measuring 4.40m by 5.0m internally, and the two middle rooms, 3.0m by 5.0m. There is a 0.40–0.45m foundation course beneath, which itself was built on a base of cemented rubble up to 0.65m deep. This is 0.04m deep, overlying a layer of fragmented grey stone 0.09m deep. The loopholes stood 1.30m above floor-level, and were about 0.30m high. AR 2006 AR 2006; the building measures 9.60m by 9.60m, with walls at least 3.70m high, and foundations at least 1.35m deep. This is 0.20m thick. The outer cellar walls, which also provided foundations for the above-ground external walls, were angled inwards from base to ceiling. Floor remains indicated loose rough concrete and stone about 0.50m thick, overlain by compact concrete about 0.80m thick, and surfaced with concrete and plaster more than 0.20m thick. The single surviving window in the north-west wall was of dressed stone with six long thin rectangular blocks forming the window-ledge and two sides, but with seven blocks and a keystone forming an arch above. AR 2006, AR 2007; it is 16.60m long by 8.70m wide, with walls up to 4.70m high above ground level, and with foundations comprising a single course of ashlar blocks 0.38m high overlying rough-cut and rough-coursed masonry at least 1.50m deep. These foundation walls formed the cellar walls also, and as with Building 1 (but unlike Building 2) these walls were of carefully laid and well-cut ashlar blocks. Site SO65 (Winterburn 2016: 232–3) Site 1047 AR 2006, AR 2007 Site SO21 (Lawrence 2003: 378, 400) Petersen (2012: 190–7) discusses pipes from this area, and in particular the Turkish Chibouk style to which this example belongs. While Petersen (2012: 197) states that by the time of the Arab Revolt pipe smoking had long since been abandoned in favour of cigarettes, the evidence from our investigations indicates both were used. The larger bowl characteristic of the Chibouk style differs greatly from that of the smaller kaolin style of pipe common in Europe, and originated in West Africa whence it moved across the Sahara to the Middle East (see Simpson 2011). AR 2006, AR 2007 There are two groups, most are circular, and a few are rectangular/squarish. The latter, TR VI, TR X, TR XII, TR XV, TR XVI, and TR XX, are all located in close proximity to each other towards the centre of the camp. Four of these (TR VI,

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Notes

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

TR  XII, TR XV, and TR XVI) ran in a north-east/south-west alignment on the western side of the plateau. All face in different directions. These post-holes averaged between 0.20m and 0.25m in diameter, and were approximately 0.20m deep. TR I—IV, and one fire-pit CGE I. Tent-ring I, AR 2006. This is 0.50 by 0.30m wide and 0.30m deep. See Ochsenwald (1980: 83) for a contemporary photograph of these tents. AR 2006; TR III—measuring 4.00–4.30m in internal diameter and 5.50m in external diameter, with a 1m-wide south-east entrance. This measured 0.19m in diameter at the top, 0.27m in depth, tapering to 0.11m in diameter at the base, and had some large stones around it for support. The Arabic newspaper does not offer a definitive date—as while Turkish officers would have used the Ottoman script for military correspondence many were multilingual, and thus able to read Arabic script as well. AR 2007, designated SR I, measuring 4.90m × 4.73m. There is a probable entrance as a 0.31m gap on the south-east side. AR 2007, designated CP 1, and measuring 2.40m by 2m and half a metre deep. (Handbook of the Turkish Army 1916: 139) AR 2007, designated LP 1, and measuring 1.65m by 1.20m and 1.09m deep. In places within the pit, tool marking could be observed, which suggest the use of a pickaxe. Staining was at the base and lower edges. AR 2007, designated CGE I, CGE II, CGE III, and CGE IV. CGE I and CGE III are sub-rectangular (measuring 8.50m by 4.80m, and 7.55m by 4.50m respectively). CGE II and CGE IV measure 5.3m by 2.6m, and 3.30m by 2.30m, respectively. A green-grey clay was observed at several locations along Wadi Rutm—local sources available for cultural use and characteristic of the area’s geology (Tarawneh et al. 2011: 90). AR 2007, designated SD I. This measured 0.10m by 0.10m by 0.20m deep. Site 1046. The previously mentioned ambiguous transition where Wadi Batn al-Ghoul becomes Wadi Rutm lies somewhere in this area. Winterburn (2016: 124) calculates that the 30-metre long perimeter dry-stone wall would have taken between 20 and 9.5 man-days to build. (Winterburn 2016: 184) Site SO22, has eight to ten tent-rings and lies 360m south of Midway Fort on the east side of the line. Site 1026 (Winterburn 2016: 183, Fig. 5.57) AR 2012 Winterburn (2016: 124) calculates that the 204-metre long perimeter dry-stone wall would have taken between 136 and 63 man-days to build. AR and FR 2012; the Primus stove is 2012 Small Find No. 30, uniform items are a D-ring-style buckle and a boot-heel plate, and personal items are a clothes’ stud and a badly corroded padlock face-plate.

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Notes 55. FR 2014; ‘Appendix J Wadi Rutm Fort Site Analysis v 2’: Turkish outgoing fire is represented by forty-six Mauser cartridges and twenty-five Mauser clips were found, representing 60.53 per cent and 32.89 per cent of the small arms finds and 28.93 per cent and 15.72 per cent of the total munitions finds, respectively. As at other sites where there is Turkish outgoing fire, the following German munitions manufacturers are present here—Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken at Karlsruhe (head stamp DM), Polte of Magdeburg (head stamp P), and Konigliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau (head stamp S). As at Siddons’ Bridge Fort, this site also yielded a cartridge by Rheinische Metallwarenfabrik based in Dusseldorf (head stamp H). One cartridge, head-stamped ‘G’) represents Wurtembergische Metallwarenfabrik. Incoming fire is represented by five .303 bullets, thirteen unidentified/damaged bullets, as well as eighteen .303 cartridges and seven .303 clips. 56. Site SO66, Wadi Rutm Fort Camp 57. This feature was 4m long and 2m wide. 58. This measured 7m by 4m, with smaller rectangles attached to three of its four sides, each measuring 7m by 2m. 59. These are designated S I, a square-shaped structure, measuring 2.70m × 2.30m internally, 4.10m × 3.70m externally, and with a 0.65m-wide open doorway in the north-east corner. S VI measured 4.76m wide and was sub-square shaped. 60. FR 2012; in total 192 finds were discovered that were classified as Metal Other, these represented 44.04 per cent of the site finds. 61. There were twenty-three lengths of packing-case straps, mostly from Structure II. Also, fragments of six toothed strap tensioners for use on webbing strapping, two of which had enough fragments to reconstruct the complete item. The last item was three fragments of what is thought to be a packing case label holder. 62. Site SO77 63. The site, more accurately the scatter of metal objects, spread some 150m along the length of the wadi and about 75m across it. 64. AR 2006: three possibly thirteenth-century bronze finger-rings, three harness decorations (also possibly thirteenth century), three bronze goat or camel bells, a possible bronze strap-end or small buckle-plate (possibly thirteenth–fourteenth century), a possible bronze purse-bar terminal, one cylindrical weight with a crescentmoon stamp, and one small, folded, cone-shaped copper sheet (possibly a tack or a shoelace chape). 65. The rest were, five modern/foreign, and twenty unidentified. ‘Catalogue of the Coins discovered at Batn al-Ghoul (mis-labelled, actually Wadi Rutm) in 2006’, unpublished GARP Report. 66. (Walker 1999: 204–5) 67. (Walker 1999: 204) 68. FR 2007 Coins; thirteen Mamluk coins were found at Batn al-Ghoul. 69. The distinctive metal-detector evidence from this site indicates that despite its ephemeral nature it is possible to identify such transient sites archaeologically, contra Petersen (2012: 36). 70. AR 2006; field identification by Dr Muhammad Abu Abileh established that three were Nabatean—though whether this represents Nabatean presence or stray finds carried and lost by Hajj pilgrims could not be determined.

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Notes 71. AR 2007; a lorry loaded with what appears to have been the family’s household furniture and other goods, a small lorry tanker carrying water, a 4×4 pick-up truck. 72. AR 2007 73. (Buchli and Lucas 2001) 74. (Petersen 2012: 32) 75. (Bulliet 1990). According to Mohamed Jabr Amarat, one of the labourers on the new highway, the earlier post-1918 road was little used by heavy vehicles due to its rough condition until the 1967 Arab–Israeli War when the strategic importance of the route was recognized. At this time, Saudi armed forces used this route to arrive at Ma’an to support the Jordanians. This eye witness confirms that the old road was indeed narrow, paved with asphalt, and regularly covered with the moving sands characteristic of the wadi (interview conducted by Hani Falahat, pers. comm. 6/11/18). 76. Site 1126 Siddons Ridge Camp’, also designated SRC 11; (Air1/1667/204/100/3, X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London.) 77. Of these the largest is Site SO63 Siddons’ Ridge Camp Bridge. 78. Site SO23/ Nick’s Fort. Its shape is an isosceles triangle with its western and northeastern sides 40m long and southern side 30m long. 79. 2011 Small Find Nos 26 and 30. 80. Small Find No. 30, although in two pieces, was a complete seal. If the Hirci calendar was used this translates as 1901/2 in the Gregorian calendar, or in the Rumi calendar it would be 1903/4 in the Gregorian calendar. 81. AR 2011; in total seventy-two buttons (21.62 per cent of the finds assemblage) were found, all but one by metal-detector survey or as surface finds. Of these 51.39 per cent were standard-sized star and crescent (type MB 3.1.1, 18–21mm), and another 5.56 per cent were the smaller 15mm variety of cuff buttons. The 22–25mm domed (plain) type accounted for 25 per cent (eighteen buttons), and there were three buttons of the 22–25mm scimitar variety (type MB 2.1.3). One of the type MB 3.1.1 buttons had ‘Superior Quality’ stamped on the reverse (2011 Small Find No. 9, and given a sub-type code of MB 3.1.1.5). One of the domed (plain) variety had a French makers’ stamp BREVETE stamped on the reverse (2011 Small Find No. 31 with a subtype code of MB 2.1.2.1.). Also, three new types of button were found, a 16mm tall domed button (type MB 6.1.7) (2011 Small Find No. 20) on the reverse of which was stamped a small star and crescent logo and the words GUARDE IMPERIALE OTTOMANE, believed to have been a standard Turkish army tunic button on post1909 uniforms. The second new type is a 25mm backless plain button (2011 Small Find No. 22 with a type code of MB 2.1.5), again believed to be a standard tunic button on the post-1909 Turkish army uniforms. The third type was a 18-21mm button with a chevron design (type MB 3.1.6) (2011 Small Find No. 10), thought to be a civilian button, possibly a waistcoat, or perhaps trousers given that Turkish officers frequently wore breeches with a distinctive line of several buttons (on the outside knee) to close the breeches above the boot line (Chris Flaherty, pers. comm.). 82. As Tr X and Tr XVI. 83. Investigated as Tr I. 84. Height was 0.80m high; dimensions were 21.50m by 10.75m, 28m in circumference, ­0.40–0.50m wide, composed of large angular stones at its base and smaller stones above.

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Notes 85. These were spaced about 0.75m apart, each was formed by four pieces of stone, two long rounded pieces laid flat on a larger one, with its width the same as the wall width. Each had a narrow firing gap 0.10m wide on the exterior and 0.30m wide on the inside. Overlying each was a large in situ capstone. 86. The grey occupation level was between 0.10 and 0.15m thick, overlain by windblown sand 0.45m thick. 87. Pieces of pearlized lamp glass and a crushed metal lamp-wick holder. 88. Excavated as Tr III, measuring 5.50m by 1.90–2.65m wide. 89. The ledge was 1.10m deep and 0.8m below the wall height. Windblown sand was between 0.45m and 0.93m deep. 90. Table 8: Details of Mauser cases collected from Southern Defensive Structure at Siddons’ Ridge Camp Item

Code

A. Manufacturer (where can see)

B. Date (where can see)

Mauser cases Mauser cases Mauser case

MM 1.1.1.0 MM 1.1.1.0 MM 1.1.1.5

1917 n/a 1917

4 3 1

Mauser case

MM 1.1.1.5

March 1917

1

Mauser case

MM 1.1.1.5

n/a

2

Mauser case

MM 1.1.1.6

n/a

1

Total

 

n/a n/a Königliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau Königliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau Königliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau C. Lindener Zündhütchen und Thonwarenfabrik of Hannover  

 

Qty

12

91. AR 2011; on the southern slope of the campsite was a rectangular stone-built structure (4.00m by 3.80m) excavated and recorded as Tr IV. Each (of the variably preserved) walls was of large sub-rectangular natural stones, with the northern wall 1.10m deep and the eastern wall 0.85m deep. The walls varied in thickness from 1.10m to 0.25m. The entrance was via a 1.20m gap in the south-western corner, and the floor was natural red sand and gravel, overlain by a thin layer of ash. Cut into the northern edge were two recesses, each formed by protruding arms of small gravel stones. The floor of both was covered in a thicker layer of ash, suggesting a possible cookhouse function, but there were no finds. 92. A large rectangular structure with a three-sided breastwork wall and a large bank (recorded as Tr V), and aligned roughly north-east/south-west on its eastern edge. The wall had three to four courses of stones measuring approximately 0.5m high. The floor was compacted red sand and gravel. The eastern bank/mound was formed of windblown sand and animal manure, possibly suggesting this was a horse or mule corral/tethering station. An unidentified, possibly Ottoman, coin was collected by metal-detection. 93. Excavated as Tr VII (2.30m by 2.20m) on the western slope, and Tr VI (2.90m by 2.80m) on the eastern slope.

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Notes 94. (Shahack-Grass et al.  2009); threshing floors were used to obtain flour from the samnh plant. 95. (TNA WO/95/4415 HACS (n.d.) Hedjaz Armoured Car Section, 1918 April–1919 January, Vol. 1, The National Archive, London) 96. Palaeolithic stone artefacts are reported for Wadi Rutm nearby (Cordova 2007: 27). 97. Site 1132 Hisn Tiswani 98. Walkover survey only, no excavation. 99. (Walker 1999: 204) 100. Site 1129, also designated SBF 12. Nearby is Site 1128 Siddons’ Bridge. 101. (TNA Air1/1667/204/100/3, X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London). 102. (Lawrence 2003: 517–18, 606) 103. (Lawrence 2003: 518) 104. (Lawrence 2003: 518) 105. AR 2012; six excavations as Tr I–VI. 106. AR 2012; German munitions manufacturers were, Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken at Karlsruhe (head stamp DM), Polte of Magdeburg (head stamp P), and Königliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau (head stamp S), and manufacture dates ranged primarily between 1915 and 1917. Two earlier 1910 cases of Königliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau origin were also found, and there was another single cartridge head-stamped ‘H’ representing Rheinische Metallwarenfabrik based in Dusseldorf. Percentages of these munitions are: fifty Mauser cartridges (43.86 per cent of all munitions-related finds), one complete Mauser round, nineteen Mauser clips (16.67 per cent of the munitions finds), and forty (35.09 per cent of the munitions finds) were British .303 cartridges with one .303 clip. 107. Breakdown of finds in excavation trenches is: Tr II had ten, Tr III had eighteen, and Tr VI had fourteen, with Tr II and Tr VI being directly up against the inside of the wall. 108. AR 2012; apart from the Arab-Revolt-period finds a coin with an Arabic inscription and Hejira date of 1237 (corresponding to 1815) was found. As this was a hundred years earlier than the railway and its defences, it could have been a random loss at the time or picked up by one of the fort’s defenders and subsequently lost. 109. (Lawrence 2003: 518) 110. Site 1030 111. (Lawrence  2003: 518). Lawrence’s memory may be at fault here inasmuch as we found no trace of a ‘blockhouse’ or karakoll within this distance of Tel Shahm Station. The nearest possible locations are Tel Shahm Fort 2km north, and Tel Shahm Fort South, 3.7km south. It is possible that there was a small redoubt nearer to the station that has been erased by bulldozing. 112. On 16 April 1918 another attempt to obtain images was made by Lt Siddons with ‘excellent results which were of the utmost value to British forces’ (TNA Air1/1667/ 204/100/3 (n.d.) X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London). These photographs were considered vital for the attack on Tel Shahm and the plates, exposed at 07:00 were flown to Aqaba, developed and then ‘delivered to Lt Col Dawnay later the same day at Abu Suwana 60 miles from Akaba (sic)’ (TNA Air1/1667/204/100/3 (n.d.) X Flight RAF War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London).

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Notes 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119.

(Lawrence 2003: 607) (Hynes 2010: 69) (Lawrence 2003: 607) (Lawrence 2003: 607) Site 1032/TSC10 (pers. comm. Zeyad Al-Salameen 2010) Clothing included buckles, boot-heel plates, and belt straps; most munitions were unidentified artillery shell fragments, plus several unidentified bullets, and a Mauser cartridge (FR 2010). There were twenty-eight pieces of possible lamp glass, twentyfive of which came from tent-ring IV, and have what appears to be a sooty residue on one side. 120. (2010 Small Find No. 15) 121. Site SO44 122. Site 1031/TSF 10. Winterburn (2016: 124) calculates that the 122-metre long per­im­eter dry-stone wall would have taken between 81 and 38 man-days to build. 123. Measuring 7.70m by 4.36m. 124. Measuring 0.53m wide, 0.69m in height, and 0.53m deep. 125. Measuring 0.65m wide and 1.30m high, composed of similar (but mortar-less) stones. 126. This wall measured between 0.70m and 1.20m in height, was composed of large stones. 127. Two entrances measuring 1.05m wide and 1.10m in height, and marked by two large upstanding stones measuring 950mm by 450mm and 1300mm by 500mm, respectively. 128. It measured 3.0m by 2.0m, with walls between eight and ten courses, and stood between 0.80m and 1.60m tall. It was excavated as Tr I. 129. Excavated as Tr II, and measured 2.40m by 2.00m, its walls were 0.60m wide and between 0.53m and 0.83m high. 130. Excavated as Tr III, it measured 0.25m by 0.85m. 131. Excavated as Tr V, it measured approximately 2.60m by 1.60m, with its wall 0.65m in height. 132. Site SO43 133. Their average diameter was 4.50m × 4.60m, and average depth was less than 0.10m. 134. Measures 20m × 3m. 135. Forty-six buttons were collected from Tel Shahm Southern Camp, all by metaldetecting; these represent 73 per cent of the buttons collected from the overall site and 27 per cent of the finds collected from the Southern Camp. The majority of these were the standard types; eighteen of type MB 3.1.1 (18–21mm star and crescent), fourteen of type MB 2.1.2 (22–25mm domed plain) and three of type MB 4.1.4 (15mm dimple). These represent 39.13 per cent, 30.43 per cent, and 6.52 per cent of the buttons collected from the Southern Camp respectively. However the slightly more unusual types MB 4.1.1 (15mm star and crescent) and MB 2.1.3 (22–25mm scimitar design) were also present. Thirteen munitions-related items were collected at the Southern Camp by metal detection. These represent 26 per cent (thirteen of fifty) of the total munitions found at Tel Shahm, and only 7.65 per cent of the finds collected from the Southern Camp. As with the Northern Camp the majority of these were unidentifiable artillery shell

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Notes

136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153.

fragments, but there was also a 10–15mm lead bullet and several small arms related items, which included a Mauser cartridge with a date stamp of 1916 (pers. comm. Ian McKenzie). (Lawrence 2003: 607) Site SO41 (previously NRF10). The path is bordered by two narrow lines of stone, aligned east-west, measuring 0.30m wide, and stones measured on average 220mm × 190mm × 40mm. The surviving part measures 13m north-south and 10m east-west. Loophole construction is of two pieces of flat stone placed on their sides and covered by a third as a lintel. This trench is 1.50m across, the bank 2.0m across. Excavated as Tr I and Tr II. Excavated as Tr IV. Quarter excavated as Tr III; sand bank was 1.50m wide and 0.35m high. Recorded as OS I, OS II, and OS III. OS I, measured 2.35m wide by 0.50m high, and built of local rectangular stones. OS II, measures 2.60m × 2.80m, with 0.45m thick continuous wall formed of rectangular thin natural stone. Wall c.0.60m high but no loopholes. The east side had bank of sand and stone rather than a stone wall. (Lawrence 2003: 607) (Lawrence 2003: 608) (Lawence 2003: 608) Interestingly, the designed-in loopholes, presumably for defence against Bedouin attack, are very narrow, while those in the later mud-brick extensions are much larger. No excavation; walk-over survey only. This included several small tent-ring camps just over 1km to the north of Site 1032 Tel Shahm Camp North, and between that site and Site 1129 Siddons’ Bridge Fort. North to south these are: Site SO25 Camp North Tel Shahm 2 (twelve tent-rings), Site SO46 Camp North Tel Shahm 3 (six tent-rings), Site SO24 Camp North Tel Shahm 1 (fourteen tent-rings), and Site SO45 Camp North Tel Shahm 4 (eighteen tent-rings).

Chapter 9 1. (Faulkner and Saunders 2014: 32–3) 2. (Lawrence 2003: 605) 3. Originally designated ‘C Flight’ of No. 14 Squadron Royal Flying Corps formed in 1915. Their War Diary for October 1917 describes them as a Special Duty Flight, and from November 1917 as ‘X Flight’ (Winterburn 2016: 192–3, 202–3). 4. (National Archives File AIR1/1667/204/100/3). However, detailed examination of the written accounts in the file indicated that it was in fact produced following a reconnaissance mission on 16 April 1918. 5. (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 192) 6. For example, from the private collection of Lt George Pascoe. 7. Proof of this quickly followed. Even before the site was published in a preliminary general account (Faulkner and Saunders 2014), word had leaked out, and a variety of individuals visited the location. On at least one occasion, where the location had not

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Notes

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.



14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

320

been correctly identified, it was reported that our designation ‘Tooth Hill’ had been mistaken for an English translation of a traditional Arabic name, and the search was on to identify sites with that local toponym. AR 2012. Four separate teams: the metal-detectorists; the excavators of Campfire 1; the excavators of Campfire 2; and then entire GARP team for a final field-walking survey on 11 November. FR 2012. Altogether, 212 fragments of rum jar were found around camp fire 1 and more generally across the site, in all likelihood representing at least two rum jars. FR 2012. Several fragments of the gin bottle had diagnostic evidence that they were from a Gordon’s London Dry Gin bottle, including a base fragment with an embossed boar’s head motif and other fragments with registration numbers 61061 and 10617 which Diageo (the successor company) confirmed were registration numbers added to the front of the bottle in 1913. FR 2012.88. Munitions-related finds were collected as surface finds at Tooth Hill Camp (East), representing just 9.30 per cent of the counted finds assemblage. Eightyone of these (or 92.05 per cent of the munitions finds) were .303 cartridges, two unfired .303 rounds, and one a .303 clip. Identification of some items was not possible due to corrosion. FR 2012. Two pieces of a vehicle spark-plug insulator that were logged as 2012 Small Find No. 6. The ‘H’ that can be seen on this item is believed to be part of the word CHAMPION, an American brand of spark plug in existence since the early twentieth century. FR 2012. This was identified as a Mark IV Friction tub, logged as 2012 Small Find No.  19, and given the typology code MM 2.3.1.1. The ten-pounder guns needed a friction tube type T, such as the type found here, to fire their artillery shells. The fact that this example had no firing loop in situ suggests that it was discarded post firing. FR 2012 (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 173–4) (Rolls 2005 [1937]: 149) This measured approximately 65cm east-west by 50cm north-south and was around 2cm deep. (Faulkner and Saunders 2014: 34–5) This measured approximately 1.5m across, with the stones ranging in size from 12 × 8 × 3cm to 32 × 17 × 15cm. This was supported by one screw still attached to a fragment of burnt wood, and many nails were bent, as if prised out of position. Many had been compressed, presumably by vehicles driving over them. The stones around the fire-pit were fewer than in Campfire 1, presumably because of later disturbance, and ranged in size from 30 × 20 × 3.5cm to 19 × 10 × 8cm. It measured approximately 1.2m east-west by 0.6m north-south, and its base was between 10 and 15cm beneath the modern surface. (TNA WO/95/4415 (n.d.) War Diary of Hejaz Operations, Reconnaissance Report, May 1918, The National Archive London) AR 2012. FR 2012. Of the twenty-nine food canisters found, ten (or 34.49 per cent) were identified as being by the manufacturers C & E Morton. Established in 1849 by Thomas Morton, the company, which exported canned and other preserved foods,

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Notes

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

became C & E Morton after his death when it was then run by his sons. It was one of the key suppliers of canned foods to the armed forces during the First World War. The tins are large, circular, shallow containers that would have contained British Army basic food rations. Of the ten found, six were just the tin lid and the other four were the empty tins (one with the lid still attached and bent back). On seven of the items the embossing could still be clearly seen, spelling out ‘C & E Morton, M & V Rations 3B’. On one of the items a date stamp of 10/17 could be seen and on six the date of 11/17 (representing October 1917 and November 1917, respectively). Those with date stamps visible were allocated 2012 Small Find numbers as follows; empty tin with lid open and date of 11/17 = SF 3; empty tin with date of 11/17 = SF 4; empty tin with date of 11/17 = SF 8; tin lid with date of 10/17 = SF 33, and three tin lids with the date of 11/17 = SF 34 (collected from the same spot). Tooth Hill Camp East is Site 11234, designated also SO61 and THC12, Tooth Hill Camp West is Site 1144, SO62, and WTH14. FR 2014, FA 2014; the site was investigated on 21 and 22 November 2014. (Lawrence 2003: 605–6) Neil Faulkner field notes and site plan for 21–22 November 2014. (TNA WO/95/4415. Egyptian Expeditionary Force War Diary: 10th Motor section, Vol. 1, The National Archive, London). (TNA WO/95/4415. Egyptian Expeditionary Force War Diary: 10th Motor section, Vol. 1, The National Archive, London) ‘Wadi Rutm (mis-labelled, actually Tooth Hill West) 2014 Finds (post-ex) (March 2015)’. Unpublished GARP report Excel spreadsheet. FR 2014. Seventy-four fragments of ceramics, eighty-two pieces of glass, seventy-five munitions as random finds, 1,263 miscellaneous metal pieces. The quantity of nonmunitions metal items appears diagnostic of the camp’s status as a frequently used advance dump—a detailed list of the finds is therefore insightful and is reproduced here: SF 5—C&E tin lid 11/17 (042–9) SF 8—Belt buckle (065–071) SF 9—Tyre valve caps (072–079) SF 10—Long tin J W III (080–089) SF 11—Boot-heel plate (090–099) SF 12—Circular cap (100–110) SF 14—Rivet (117–127) SF 15—Rubber bush (128–33) SF 16—Y-shaped thing (134–9) SF 17—C&E tin lid 11/17 (140–5) SF 18—C&E tin lid 11/17 (140–5) SF 19—C&E tin lid 11/17 (140–5) SF 20—C&E tin lid 10/17 (146–53) SF 21—C&E tin lid 11/17 (154–9) SF 22—John Player (160–6) SF 23—Tin lid E J III (167–74) SF 25—Oxo tin (189–201)

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Notes SF 26—Bully beef tin (202–12) SF 27—C&E tin lid 9/17 (213–20) SF 28—Ammunition box lid (221–8) SF 30—C&E tin lid 11/17 (248–55) SF 31—C&E tin lid 10/17 (256–61) SF 32—C&E tin lid 11/17 (262–7) SF 33—C&E tin lid 11/17 (268–73) SF 34—C&E tin lid 11/17 (274–9) SF 36—John Player (307–13) SF 37—Wills tobacco tin lid (314–21) SF 38—Tyre valve (322–8) SF 39—C&E tin lid 11/17 (329–34) SF 46—Shell can (386–406) SF 48—Toothed strap tensioner (444–9) SF 49—Lid for Shell can (450–5) SF 52—Part of Shell can (491–508) 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

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FR 2014, ‘Tooth Hill West 2014 Munitions M Finds Report’. Neil Faulkner field notes and site plan for 21–22 November 2014. (Lawrence 2003: 605) (Lawrence 2003: 516) Site 1027 (also designated Site SO78). Railway siding is Site 1142 also designated SO39 Long Siding; small camp of eleven tent-rings is Site SO40 Long Siding Camp. (Hülagü 2010: 89–90; Maunsell in IOR 3142/1903 n.d. File 3142/1903 ‘Hedjaz Railway’, IOR/L/PS/10/12, Indian Office Records, The British Library, London) (Winterburn 2016: 145 Fig. 5.31). (Hülagü 2010: 89–90) (Lawrence 2003: 608–9); (Jarvis 1942: 34) (Lawrence 2003: 609) (Jarvis 1942: 34–5) (Rolls 205 [1937]: 195) Site 1135(also designated NRF 14), measuring 13m by 13m. Site SO38 FR 2014. Though an isolated find in the site debris, this object has an unusual history. It is a heavily worn white Meerschaum pipe bowl (the name coming from the German for ‘foam of the sea’). Meerschaum’s soft white clay (‘sepiolite’) allowed it to be carved into elaborate shapes, often portraits. The excavated example appears to be a 3-D portrait of the Hapsburg Emperor Franz Joseph (1848–1916). Interestingly, a major source of sepiolite is the Eskisehir Province of central western Turkey (Anatolia), and during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most of this was exported to Vienna as pre-forms where it was carved into objets d’art and smokers’ paraphernalia, and came to be known as the ‘Vienna Stone’ (Sariiz and Isik 1995: 43). Franz Joseph was presented with an elaborate Meerschaum pipe, and smoked his favourite cigars in a Meerschaum cigar-holder (TD Blogspot 2012). There is an elaborate Meerschaum cameo of him showing a likeness to the excavated pipe bowl held

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Notes

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

in the Natural History Museum in Vienna (Sariiz and Isik 1995: 44). The presence of this distinctive object at ‘North Ramleh Fort 1’ could indicate the sometime presence of an Austro-Hungarian (or German) officer, or a Turkish officer who acquired it at some point from one of Turkey’s allies. Site 1028 (Bender 1975: 13; Osborn and Duford 1981: 1) Winterburn (2016: 124) calculates that the 162-metre long perimeter dry-stone wall would have taken between 108 and 50 man-days to build. Site 1029 Ramleh South Fort Camp, also designated Site SO37 Mudawwara Fort is Site 1140 (Petersen 2012: 32, 129). Maunsell’s observation is in IOR 3142/1903 n.d. File 3142/1903 ‘Hedjaz Railway’, IOR/L/PS/10/12, Indian Office Records, The British Library, London. As above, in note 276 concerning the similar divergence south of Bir Shedia Station, this westerly stretch of the original Ottoman route remains hypothetical and is yet to be tested by fieldwork. Nevertheless, there is no current evidence that this medieval Hajj route (or its predecessor) followed the direct route south from the area of Ramleh Station to the area of Mudawwara Station that was forged by August Meissner. It is also true that this Ottoman route to Mudawwara Fort follows a path through the hills and at no point is connected to the direct route railway south from Ramleh Station after the divergence already mentioned. Also as with the Bir Shedia case, Dauphin et al.’s (2015) maps do not show this divergence—the westerly Ottoman route between Ramleh Station and Mudawwara Fort is invisible, and only the 1900 railway route straight south to Mudawwara Station is shown. It is important to note here that an early photograph of Mudawwara Fort clearly shows telegraph poles following the traditional Ottoman Hajj route, and which supports the earlier statement that there were two telegraphic systems—the other following the railway (Ochsenwald 1980: 36), and Maunsell’s statement above. Site 1036 Mudawwara Station, also designated Site SO81. The toponym Mudawwara, which means ‘large round thing’, originates not in these modern circular fields but rather refers to a group of conical hills some 3km north of the modern settlement (Sheikh Khaled Suleiman Al-Atoun, pers. comm. 2012 as quoted in Winterburn 2016: 168). (Lawrence 2003: 400) (Lawrence 2003: 379; al-Askari 2003: 132) (Lawrence 2003: 609) As shown on Junor’s sketch-map of 21 April 1918 (TNA Air1/1667/204/100/3 n.d. X Flight War Diary, April 1918, Vol. 7, The National Archive, London), and the newly discovered aerial photograph of April/May 1918 (Winterburn 2016: 237 Fig. 6.22)— and almost certainly destroyed by later agricultural field ridges, now returned to desert adjacent to one of the large circular irrigated fields. (Lawrence 2003: 379) (Lawrence 2003: 400) Site 1136 Mudawwara Northern Redoubt, also designated Site MNR12. Winterburn (2016: 124, 126) calculates that the 410-metre long perimeter dry-stone wall would have taken between 273 and 127 man-days to build. AR 2012

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Notes 67. AR 2012, averaging 0.33m wide and 0.23m deep. 68. FR 2012; AR 2012; Trench I was 3.70m wide by 0.90m. Removed windblown, stone rubble and re-deposited natural to depth of 0.30m down to natural. 69. FR 2012; AR 2012; despite their damaged condition, the alignments were clearly discernable, though gave no clues as to their original purpose. 70. Excavated as Trench III. The walled feature measured 5.00m × 5.60m and was surrounded by a 0.70m-high wall. 71. Its dimensions were 5.50m × 4.70m. 72. FR 2012. Munitions: A variety of German munitions manufacturers’ products had been used at Mudawwara, and represented the most commonly found examples in  our investigations. They included, Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken at Karlsruhe (head stamp DM), Polte of Magdeburg (head stamp P) and Königliche Munitionsfabrik Spandau (head stamp S). In addition, one case was head-stamped ‘G’, representing the German company Wurtembergische Metallwarenfabrik, another head-stamped ‘SB’ and ‘SC’, representing Sellier & Bellot Schonebeck an der Elbe. The dates of the Mauser cartidges, as usual, ranged from the years immediately before the Arab Revolt through to its later period (1914–17). However, two examples were earl­ ier, 1910 and 1913 (both head-stamped ‘S’). Two Turkish-made Mauser cartridges were head-stamped 1333 and 1335, which translate to 1912 and 1914 respectively. There were also twenty-five Mauser clips (representing 8.71 per cent of total munitions and 12.08 per cent of small-arms-related finds), collected from all features investigated except Trench II. In addition, twenty-two .303 bullets were found, representing 7.67 per cent of the munitions at the Northern Redoubt, the majority as general site metal-detector finds, though two came from Trench V, which was the only trench to have incoming as well as outgoing small-arms-related finds. Only two of the .303 cartridges had readable markings; one was head-stamped ‘1913 B’, a product of the English company Birmingham Metal & Munitions Co. Ltd. The second was head-stamped ‘1916 J’, a product of Joyce & Co. One of the .303 bullets collected as part of the metal-detecting survey was a tracer bullet. Longer than the standard .303 bullet this is pointed with a hole at the back. This could have been fired from a Lewis gun or from an aircraft machine gun. 73. Not excavated. 74. Constructed of rectangular slabs and square stone blocks cut into the bedrock. 75. This section of wall excavated as Trench V, and the east-west part measured c 2.00m long, 0.40m wide, and 0.65m deep, while the north-south section of wall was 2.70m long, 0.40m wide, and between 0.12m and 0.40m high. 76. FR 2012. Three Mauser cartridges and two Mauser clips were found, two .303 bullets, two shrapnel balls, and a shrapnel ball container base. 77. Structure 1, excavated as Trench II. 78. (TNA WO/95/4415 Vol. 6 (n.d.) Vol. 6, War Diary, 10 pdr Motor Section, Royal Field Artillery, Hedjaz Operations, The National Archive, London) 79. (Winterburn 2016: 283) 80. (TNA Air1/1667/204/100/7 (n.d.) X Flight RAF War Diary, August 1918, Vol. 11, The National Archive, London)

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Notes 81. FR 2012 82. Breastwork 1, facing south-west, was a curved wall measuring 5.60m wide, 1.20m deep, and 0.90m high, and was 0.90m wide. No coursing, and roughly constructed. Smaller stones used to block gaps in the wall. Breastwork 2 measured 11.55m wide, 3.20m deep, and 0.50m high, 0.70m wide, and was less well preserved than Breastwork 1 with lots of tumble. 83. Site SO33/Turkish Defensive Wall 84. Site SO34/Mudawwara David’s Sangar, was 12m in circumference. 85. Site 1137 Mudawwara Central Redoubt, also designated Site SO80. Winterburn (2016: 124) calculates that the 244-metre long perimeter dry-stone wall would have taken between 163 and 76 man-days to build. 86. The redoubt’s treacherous approaches meant that it was investigated by metal de­tect­or and walk-over survey, and satellite imagery. 87. Marshall (n.d.: 12) confirms the existence of a gun position here, noting that it was overrun as soon as the attackers stormed the position. 88. Site 1138 Mudawwara Southern Redoubt, also designated Site MNR13 89. FR 2013. Seventeen Turkish buttons were found. 90. Survey in 2012 was followed by excavation the following year. Winterburn (2016: 124) calculates that the 310-metre long perimeter dry-stone wall would have taken between 207 and 96 man-days to build. 91. Varying in height from ground-level between 0.85m and 1.20m. 92. To height of between 0.40m and 0.50m, and is c.0.75m thick. 93. Loophole size is typically 0.85m wide by 0.90m high, and all are missing their lintel capstones. 94. AR 2013 95. Constructed mainly of medium-sized, sub-rectangular stones. 96. Metal-detected and sample-trenched in two places (Trench 7 to the west, Trench 8 a short distance to the east). 97. AR 2013. The wall is 1.15m high, and 0.90m wide. In plan it is an elongated east-west S-shape, and is roughly coursed with local large angular stones with smaller stones as packing. 98. These are numbered OS2, 3, 4, and 5, running north to south, and located on the eastern slope, and none had an obvious function. OS2 measured 5.20m wide by 3.70m deep and on its north side a circular structure reminiscent of a tent-ring. OS3 was heavily tumbled but appears to have been rectangular, and OS4 was similar but had an identifiable entrance, and OS5 is also sub-rectangular, and lies half way up the slope between the lower terrace and the hilltop. It too had an entrance on the western side, and two paths associated with it—one connecting it to the lower terrace, the other running in front of it. 99. AR 2013, the middle-terrace rings comprised: a) b) c) d)

Tent-ring 4 (3.80m × 4.70m with 0.40–0.50m-wide bank) Tent-ring 5 (3.80m × 3.80m with 0.80m-wide bank) Tent-ring 6 (4.50m × 4.30m with 1m-wide bank) Tent-ring 7 (3.50m × 3.0m with 0.90m-wide bank)

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Notes The lower-terrace rings comprised: a) Tent-ring 2 (3.70m × 3.80m) b) Tent-ring 3 (3.20m × 3.40m) c) Tent-ring 1. 100. Excavated as Tr 3. 101. This possibility is arguably enhanced by their proximity to the main building on the lower terrace, and to their apparent association with five small, rock-cut, rock-lined circular structures on the middle terrace. 102. FR 2013, of the rest, seven munitions were excavated from Tent-ring I, two Mauser cartridges, one .303 bullet, and four too damaged for recognition. 103. Access may have been via a ladder. This structure measures 6.3m in width and 6.2m in depth, the outer walls are 0.45m thick, and much of the internal revetting wall has collapsed. 104. Excavation, as Tr 4, was of the northern half of the structure. 105. More enigmatic were five small, rock-cut, rock-lined features on the edge of the middle terrace, apparently associated with the nearby tent-rings but with no obvious function. 106. AR 2013. One of these had traces of a possible fire-pit at its centre. Measurements were, a) Ring 1, measuring 1.50m × 1.40m and 0.15m deep. Function unknown. b) Ring 2, measuring 3.40m × 4.0m and 0.60m deep. Unlikely to be tent-ring since the construction is crude; a fire-pit or a communal sitting area? c) Ring 3, measuring 3.30m × 3.0m with 1.40m bank and depth of 0.45m. Function unknown. 107. AR 2013 108. FR 2013 109. AR 2013 110. (TNA Air1/2250/209/47/3 (n.d.) War Diary of X Flight RFC, January 1918, Vol. 4, The National Archive, London) 111. (Winterburn 2016: 174) 112. (Lawrence 2003: 554) 113. (TNA 4 (n.d.) Air1/2250/209/47/3, War diary of X Flight RFC, January 1918, Vol. 4, The National Archive) 114. (TNA 4 (n.d.) Air1/2250/209/47/3, War diary of X Flight RFC, January 1918, Vol. 4, The National Archive) 115. The use of the obscure term ‘engrailed’ here probably indicates outward curving defensive positions which Winterburn (2016: 174) sees as characteristic of the Northern Redoubt, yet might as easily be referring to the extramural structures of the Southern Redoubt. 116. (Winterburn 2016: 174, Fig. 5.51) 117. In this famous scene Lawrence wields a Webley & Scott No. 1 Mk III Flare pistol rather than the standard issue Webley Mk VI Revolver. The Mk III flare pistol wasn’t available until 1918, and so to be historically correct Lawrence should have been using the No.1 Mk 1. In fact, he carried a privately acquired ‘Model of 1911 Colt Automatic’ (see note 126 below). 118. Site MAS13 Hallat Ammar Ambush 119. (Lawrence 2003: 404)

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Notes 120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

(Lawrence 2003: 401–2) ‘GARP Metal Analysis 2013’. (Lawrence 2003: 409) AR 2013; M. Schofield (pers. comm. 2009) AR 2013; a pile of railway debris (sub-site code MAD) was investigated. It included tracks and sleepers which had been cut in situ (some acetylene torch waste was found), and some twisting and break-up is likely the result of bulldozing. The heavy corrosion, moreover, makes a First World War date likely, as does the existence here of the only such quantity of damaged railway material found between 2006 and 2014. 125. (Lawrence 2003: 406) 126. Several comments have been made concerning the ‘Lawrence Bullet’ first publicized in the Daily Mail on 31/3/16. The first is that there is no evidence that Lawrence possessed and used a Colt M1911 (and likely had a standard-issue Webley Revolver instead); second, that it was fired by an Austro-Hungarian soldier inside one of the ambushed train carriages, and third, that the bullet was not fired by a Colt M1911.   The first point is erroneous. There is irrefutable evidence that Lawrence owned a ‘Model of 1911 Colt Automatic’ of .45 ACP calibre. On 18 September 1914 Lawrence wrote to Mrs Emily Rieder (whom he knew from the American Mission School at Jebail), ‘Dear Mrs Rieder, 5 minutes ago your pistols came: . . . They are exactly what I want: and your decency in sending two is very great’ (Garnett 1938: 185). Rieder sent these at Lawrence’s request as ‘for several weeks after war broke out there was a shortage of pistols in England. Lawrence had left his [previous] pistol in charge of Dahoum’ (Garnett  1938: 185), a close friend in Syria, and who is shown holding Lawrence’s earlier Colt 1908 in the Imperial War Museum photograph Q60098A. Lawrence added in the same letter, ‘I’m going to send you a letter of thanks very soon: tonight perhaps: I’m also going to congratulate you on your quickness in getting the things over. It will give Frank [Lawrence’s brother] time to practise with his’ (1938: 186). This gift is supported by a letter written by Frank to their father in September 1914, in which he says, ‘I have had a great time with the Colt. It took me some time to find out how to dismount it, and a longer time to put it together again’ (Lawrence  1954: 617). In a subsequent letter to Lawrence, Frank discusses how to obtain plentiful supplies of Colt ammunition at 200 and 230 grains weight in London, which corresponds to the .45 calibre ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) used in the ‘Model of 1911 Colt Automatic’, and adds ‘The Colt is a lovely pistol. The more I examine it the more I like it. There is a vast gulf between it and the ordinary revolver’ (1954: 618). Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence’s official biographer, was of the opinion that the above information ‘leads one to the conclusion that it could only have been a Colt Model 1911 in .45 caliber’ (pers. comm. 15 April 2016). The Imperial War Museum photograph Q 60099 shows Lawrence loading the Colt before going on a raid.   The second and third points are interrelated. The suggestion that the bullet was fired inside a train carriage is not supported by archaeology or history. The bullet was found within a cluster of twenty .303 machine-gun bullets and Lebel bullets representing the incoming Arab-British fire onto the northern side of the railway embankment—around 240m away from the Arab-British positions. This places the bullet in exactly the right archaeological context of ‘fall of shot’ to have been fired by

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Notes

127. 128. 129. 130.

131. 132.

328

the ambushers rather than the ambushed, as no Turk or Austro-Hungarian would have fired on their own retreating men. The historical evidence accords with this on two points: The Arab-British rifle and machine-gun fire against the panic-stricken Turkish troops is well documented. As the Turks cast aside their rifles and fled, this was the opportunity of the Lewis-gunners to mow them down (Lawrence  2003: 408). This was the exact area where the cluster of twenty bullets was found, and thirty Turkish bodies were counted later by the Lewis gun sergeant who had despatched them (2003: 410). Lawrence notes that an Austrian instructor-sergeant ‘fired a shot at Rahail [Lawrence’s bodyguard] from his pistol’ (2003: 410). This appears to have taken place either inside or adjacent to a railway carriage whose location (as we don’t know which carriage was involved) was between 75m and 120m away from the twenty-bullet spread in the desert to the north-east. If fired inside a carriage then there is no obvious explanation of how the bullet ended up where it did; if fired on south-west side of the embankment, then the intervening wreckage would have blocked the view and any possible bullet trajectory to the north-east.   The final point concerns the identification of the bullet. There are several different identifications to date, all of whose accuracy is qualified by the corrosion, distortion, and weight loss of the bullet itself. First, three separate expert military sources agreed that it appeared to be a jacketed .45 ACP bullet, and came from a ‘Model of 1911 Colt Automatic’. Second, the Imperial War Museum regarded the bullet as possibly fired by an 11mm Montenegrin Gasser Revolver which had become obsolete before 1914, but was widely available in a cheap Belgian-made version in the region (pers. comm. IWM 2016). Turkish officers could purchase their own preferred choice of weapon and were unlikely to have chosen an out-of-date Belgian weapon. More likely, as Lawrence infers it was an Austro-Hungarian who fired the shot, is that the sergeant and his comrades had the newer standard issue Rast & Gasser M1898 Revolver which fired 8mm Gasser cartridges, none of which were found at the ambush site. The Royal Armouries considered it possible that the bullet was fired from a Colt M1911, but subsequently considered it could be a .44 Special made by Smith and Wesson, and were unable to confirm the Colt identification. The archaeology evidences that the bullet was fired by one of Lawrence’s ambushing force—Lawrence himself in the case of a .45 ACP bullet, or, given that neither Turks, Austro-Hungarians, nor British soldiers are likely to have had a Montenegrin Gasser Revolver, then one of Lawrence’s Bedouin. (Lawrence 1927: 200) (Faulkner 2016: 306) Feature designated MAC. These surface remains were: one cranium, one maxilla, one mandible, four vertebrae, one clavicle, two scapulae, seven ribs, one humerus, two pelvises, and three femurs. The question was, and remains, had a Turkish battlefield cemetery been almost completely destroyed, or was it still below the surface? By the time of the ambush, the railway was blocked northwards, and so there was no opportunity to take the bodies to the Turkish military cemetery at Ma’an Station. It is also possible that the human remains had been moved by feral dogs which were occasionally seen. FR 2013 FR 2013. These two buttons were too corroded to allow identification.

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Notes 133. (chapter five; Anon. 1965) 134. Designated Hallat Ammar Redoubt 1 Ambush Site (R1AS), and Hallat Ammar Redoubt 2 Ambush Site (R2AS). 135. Site R2AS. It has a two-part structure. Lying on a hill 7.5m above the plain, a perimeter wall some 243m long surrounds the summit and appears Turkish (though may have earlier origins). Almost certainly Turkish however, and lying in the northern section of the hilltop is an inner redoubt surrounded by a circumference wall some 7.5m in length. It is this section which overlooks the railway bridge. The northernmost edge of the wall directly overlooking the bridge has two small square structures adjacent to each other likely serving as observation posts, seemingly integrated into the perimeter wall. Each structure is about 3m wide and 2m long (ns), and there are several indistinct circular depressions within the enclosed area which might be tent-rings. 136. Site R1AS. It is 5m higher than the plain, and had a similar perimeter wall to R2AS around the summit, with a circumference length of 153m. It appears a simpler version of R2AS, and has no separate inner section, though does have what appears to be a large tent-ring in its northern part, a possible trench across its southern interior, and a definite entrance gap in the perimeter wall at the south-western side. 137. Site SO32. AR 2013. The walls were of irregular angular blocks and were 0.50m thick, with corners formed of ornate quoin-stone construction. 138. AR 2013. The structure has a sub-site code MAB, and its constituent parts are designated ‘Outbuilding’, and ‘Sentry-Posts A, B, and C’. 139. The north-facing section (i.e. from east to west, Rooms 1–6) has four entrances and four windows facing north to the railway outside, and one window on both the east and west sides. Fragments and impressions of wood indicate the likelihood of a wooden door and window frames. Rooms 1–3 were linked by internal doorways, and Room 2 could only be accessed internally. Rooms 4–6 could be accessed only via their external doorways 140. To a depth of 0.60m along the Phase 2 southern wall. The building measures 29.85m in length, 9.00m in width, and 2.45m in height. 141. AR 2013. Two small and two very small square buildings (labelled, from west to east, S1, S2, S3, and S4) to the south of the blockhouse are likely to have been ancillary buildings, perhaps including cookhouse and latrine. 142. FR 2013. This was an Ottoman coin with the Arabic date of 1293 (AD 1875) and was logged as 2013 Small Finds No. 6. 143. Site SO26, designated ‘Hallat Ammar Sangar’. The structure lies 6.21km north of the ambush site and 8.4km south of Mudawwara Station. The sangar is about 14m long by 11m wide, with two long sides the same and two short sides similarly. There appears to be stone walling or revetments atop the sand and earth mound. 144. Site SO27 Hallat Ammar Sangar Camp. There are several other small construction camps in the area. Site SO28 is an eroded example of twelve tent-ring construction camp some 160m west of the embankment and 1.8km south-south-east of Site SO27 construction camp. A third, Site SO29, lies 270m west-south-west of the railway at its nearest point, and 400m north of Site SO26 Hallat Ammar Sangar. It is possible that other construction camps lie on the western side of the railway between Site SO29 and Mudawwara Station, but this area has been substantially redeveloped for agriculture, destroying all traces of previous activity.

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Notes Chapter 10 1. For the anthropology of technology more widely see Pfaffenberger (1992). 2. (Bakhtin 1981: 7, quoted in Basso 1996: 62) 3. J.  J.  Gibson, an ecological psychologist, created the noun ‘affordance’ to describe the  environment giving an opportunity for action. For Gibson, when humans perceive an object or place they see its many affordances rather than its qualities, i.e. they see what can be done with it and thus what different kinds of behaviours are possible (Gibson 1986). 4. Bahrani (2008: 180–1) discusses Assyrian warfare as a reordering/reconfiguration of space. 5. For a detailed and insightful analysis and discussion of this issue, conceptualized as ‘Degrees of Freedom’ and ‘Asymmetry’ in terms of movement in the desert, see Winterburn (2016: 75–108). 6. The only prerequisite was testing the ground for its suitability, a geological constraint nowhere near as limiting as railway building. 7. Letter written by Lawrence on 23 May 1923 from Bovington Camp (Brown 1988: 238). 8. Variously referred to as al-Wahaidah and Ain Wuheida in historical sources. El-Edroos (1980: 101). 9. Lawrence (2003: 319); here as elsewhere, Lawrence used the term ‘blockhouse’ to describe a strongpoint rather than a conventional stone-built structure, and no trace of such a building was found between 2009 and 2012. The presence of Turkish troops at Wuheida before July 1917 may be supported by the finding in 2009 of a German soldier’s canteen dated 1916 at Wuheida East, though this cannot be verified, and various other explanations could be suggested. 10. During an interview with 100-year-old Attalah Hwaimel (an elder of the Wuheida community) on 21/11/09 (conducted with Hani Falahat), he recalled stories told to him as a child by his father and grandfather. One of these was that during the Arab Revolt his uncles had petitioned Feisal in Aqaba for gold, but were told they had first to prove themselves loyal to his cause, whereupon they killed a Turkish ‘Major Izzidin’, and took his epaulettes to Feisal who then paid them. Whether or not this is totally accurate in its details, it is in accord with many stories of loyalty and co-operation being bought with gold, and in this case locates the small village of Wuheida within a larger memoryscape of these momentous events. 11. Lawrence (2003: 329, 374, 514). Mousa (1966: 125) gives more detail, and says that Maulud forced the Turks back to Wuheida in December 1917 and defeated them there, but later that month a Turkish force of four battalions and two artillery batteries tried to retake it but were repulsed, whereupon they retreated to Semnah. 12. al-Askari (2003: 130, 133–4) refers to the Turks being stationed at Wuheida in the late summer of 1917, and during the winter of that year how they retreated from Abu Lissan and made their way back to Wuheida and Ma’an. Similarly, El-Edroos (1980: 119) says that the Turks pulled back to their position at Wuheida in November 1917 under pressure from Maulud Mukhlis. 13. Winterburn (2016: 279); (TNA Air1/2250/209/49/1 (n.d.) War Diary of X Flight RFC, November 1917, Vol. 2, The National Archive, London) There is a map labelled

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14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

‘Waheida’ at (TNA Air1/2250/209/47/3 (n.d.) War Diary of X Flight RFC, January 1918, Vol. 4, The National Archive, London). Wuheida East as a complex is Site WE09, its three redoubts are listed separately below (Sites 1019, 1020, 1021), and its miscellaneous sites are 1104 Wuheida Eastern Hill Bedouin Graves 1, 1105 Wuheida Eastern Hill Bedouin Graves 2, 1106 Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 1, 1107 Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 2, 1108 Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 3, 1109 Wuheida Eastern Hill Breastworks 4. Site 1019 Wuheida East Redoubt 1 Investigated in three sondages labelled A–C, located in better preserved areas of trench and at traverses along its length. Sondages measured between 2–2.50m in length and involved excavation of trench backfill only, not the sand and stone bank on its outer western side. All three sondages revealed a large build up of wind-blown sand and stone tumble partially backfilling the trench. No evidence of sand bags. Depth varied from 0.30m (Sondage A) to 0.70m deep (Sondage B); width of trench established as variable from 0.60m to 1.45m, and whose excavation yielded a single .303 cartridge, an iron fragment, and a boot fragment. AR 2009, AR 2012: on the south-west side, the 18m-long wall was constructed on a small sand and gravel bank (0.80m high and 1.50m wide) with parallel ditch (1.60m wide) inside. The wall projected out west for 6.0m where the west and south walls met, a section which contained an internal dividing wall which created two internal rooms recorded as WA1 (4.40m by 3.05m by 0.70m) and WA2. The lack of finds made it difficult to assign an original purpose for both structures. ‘OS I–III’ Structure One (SS I) was 2.38m × 2.17m × 1.20m deep. The hearth measured 0.70m × 0.50m × 1.30m in height. Structure Two (SSII) measured 3.30m × 2.25m and between 0.60 and 1.70m high. Composed of medium-sized rectangular stones with occasional larger stones as the base course. Hearth measured 0.52m wide, 0.45m deep, and 1.00m in height. The compacted layer measured 1.40m × 2.25m × 0.08m deep. Structure three (SS III). The entire structure measured 9.0m × 3.30m, the north room measured 4.34m × 3.14m. The walls stood between 0.30m and 1.20m in height. Hearth measured 0.22m wide × 0.18m × 0.60m, and was formed of three large base stones overlaid with six courses of rectangular stone. FR 2009, FR 2012. Structure Four (SSIV). It measured 2.16m × 1.80m. The hearth measured 0.47m × 0.40m × 0.95m high. FR 2009 Update. One of these was a 1918 pattern design (Evan-Hart 2009: 7). FR 2009 Update: the two Turkish examples are the commonly found 15mm Turkish dimple button (MB 4.1.4). Two of the British examples bear the standard British Army insignia—one is MB 2.2.1, the standard tunic button, the other is the slightly smaller cuff button MB 3.2.1. The other three are unidentified but have a flat edge

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34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

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and are slightly domed (MB 7.2.3)—one of which has a manufacturer’s stamp of W. Twigg & Co. Ltd., an established button manufacturer based in Birmingham that supplied buttons for the British Army. FR 2012. Of the forty-one other metal items found at Redoubt A, twenty (48.78 per cent) are construction-related items such as nails and screws that could be related to either structures at the site or packaging of equipment. Neither were investigated/excavated, but were photographed, sketch-planned, had a written record and a metal-detector survey completed. Site 1020 Wuheida East Redoubt B Site 1021 Wuheida East Redoubt C. FR 2012. Most were stamped ‘S’ and ‘1917’ (Evan-Hart 2009: 18). (Evan-Hart 2009: 18) FR 2009 Update, and Evan-Hart (2009: 18). Ten of these were observed, the major ones recorded as Sites 1100 Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 1, 1099 Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 2, 1101 Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 3, 1102 Wuheida Northern Hill Breastwork 4. Site 1103 Northern Hill horse-mule tethering station Site SO85 Wuheida West Royal Camp. Composed of at least nine discrete camp sites, designated Sites 1090 Wuheida West Royal Camp A—1098 Wuheida West Royal Camp I. al-Askari (2003: 138) records that in March 1918 the Northern Army’s 1st Division was at Wuheida. Faulkner (2016: 406) Feisal’s royal tent was pitched on the slope not the top of the Western Hill, as reported during the interview with 100-year-old Attalah Hwaimel on 21/11/09 from stories inherited from his father and grandfather. Interview conducted by Hani Falahat. Anon. (2005); Wilson (1990: 1095, note 33). (Wilson 1990: 513) Anon. (2005); Wilson (1990: 1095, note 33); Knightly and Simpson (1969: 117). This image is both intriguing and insightful. In Malcolm Brown’s Secret Despatches (Brown 1991: plate opposite p. 137), it appeared labelled as showing Feisal, Thomas, Maulud, Nuri al-Said, and Auda Abu Tayi at Wuheida in May 1918 (though these individuals have their faces turned away from the camera). In the archives of Marist College which holds the original photograph it is labelled ‘Emir Feisal and Lowell Thomas using field glasses to watch a battle at Maan’. An examination of the photograph at high resolution and of Thomas’ and Chase’s itinerary between 28 March and 10 April 1918 (Hodson 1995: 18) shows that this is impossible topographically and chronologically, not least because they sailed from Aqaba for Suez a week before the Battle of Ma’an began. A possible answer to this conundrum is that on their way from Guweira to the Crusader Castle at Shobek, thence to Petra, Thomas and Chase would have passed by Wuheida where Thomas could have taken the opportunity to stage a photograph (a common practice for him) showing Feisal, his Arab commanders, and Thomas looking at the Northern Army’s tented-camp across the wadi. However, there is no mention of Wuheida in Thomas’ itinerary, though this does not preclude the possibility. The itinerary does mention the nearby village of Abu Lissan for 1 April, along with the presence there of 500 of Feisal’s Northern Army regular

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51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

troops. Up to this point, the written documentation favours Abu Lissan, but the topography suggests Wuheida. An examination of the copy of this photograph held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford—the one used by Brown—reveals a pencil annotation by Lawrence himself which reads ‘Waheida Feisal L.Thomas Auda Nuri Said Maulus  A.D.C to Maulud’. This appears to seal the issue, identifying the figures whose faces are not visible in the photograph, naming the location, and clearly being the source of Brown’s caption (though he doesn’t mention Lawrence). The Marist caption for this photograph appears somewhat unreliable, and another somewhat confused annotation (not by Lawrence) appears on the Bodleian copy as well. Several points are clear: the photograph was staged, it could not have been taken in May (more likely between 1–2 April) 1918, and it is definitely neither Ma’an nor any battle there. Given the visual topographical evidence (the GARP team being very familiar with this location), the unreliability of some of the written documentation, and Lawrence’s own annotation, it seems most likely that this photograph was indeed taken at Wuheida. I am very grateful to Oliver House of the Special Collections, Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, for his expert help with this issue. (Lawrence 2003: 602, 613) This was built at Wadi Rum in 1961 (Morris and Raskin 1992: 99). AR 2009, FR 2009, AR 2012, FR 2012 Camp A, Site 1090 Camp B, Site 1091 Site 1092 Site 1093 (Evan-Hart 2009: 11) FR 2012: A small section of stone enclosure boundary was recorded in the northern corner. A walk-over survey of smaller camps ‘G’ and ‘K’ further along the wadi was made in 2012. Camp F, Site 1095 WW12 excavated in 2012. Excavated as TR I, and which measured 5.30m × 4.50m. The pathway was sectioned as Tr II to investigate the deposits on path, removed minimal amount of alluvial sand to reveal natural. Four fragments recovered in Trench II and three more as random surface finds. ‘Wuheida Site Analysis’ (Faulkner 2016: 369). FR 2009, FR 2012: 116 munitions-related finds in 2009 and fifty-one in 2012. 159 of the 167 items (95.21 per cent) were small arms—seventy-six cartridges, fifty-one bullets, twenty-five clips and seven complete rounds. Most were .303 related. Two .303 cartridges had readable markings—‘1916 KF’ (i.e. Kirkee, an Indian company that made munitions for British rifles), and ‘1916 K’ (i.e. Kynoch Ltd of Birmingham). In addition, there were two Lebel cartridges, and one pistol case. Mauser-related items were represented by twenty-four cartridges, four bullets, and one clip. Only one Mauser cartridge had recognizable markings and was stamped ‘1917 C’ (i.e. Cassel Munitionsfabrik). FR 2009, FR 2012: the fragment of shell body, the shell carrier/fuse protector, and the Turkish hand grenade fuse chape came from Camp D in 2009, and the shrapnel ball a random surface find from 2012. The shell carrier/fuse protector was made of

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68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

76.

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copper alloy and is stamped ‘VSM’, has an arrow, the digit ‘1’ and the figures ‘2.95’. This was likely a 2.95-inch Mountain Gun Fuse Protection Clip commercially developed by Vickers Son & Maxim and marketed as a 75mm (Evan-Hart 2009: 3). Flechettes are metal aerial darts dropped from aircraft on infantry mainly on the Western Front, though the identification of this example (code MM 4.2.2, Small Find No. 41) is not certain. Both the flechette and the detonator (MM 4.3.1) were recovered in 2012. Interview with 100-year-old Attalah Hwaimel on 21/11/09 from stories inherited from his father and grandfather. Interview conducted by Hani Falahat. IWM photograph Q 60114. FR 2009, FR 2012: a total of 185 items. Field walking recovered thirty-four such items in 2009 and 151 in 2012 which together accounts for 32.57 per cent of the total. Twenty-seven unidentifiable cans and twenty-nine unidentified circular cans, of which most were collected in Complex F1 and as 2012 surface finds, cannot be regarded as all contemporary to our period as some may be due to later Bedouin re-use of the site. FR 2009, FR 2012: in 2009, one food tin lid was stamped ‘GILLARD & Co, M&V Rations 3.B’, and in 2012, one of the milk cans bore the markings ‘BORDEN MILK CO LIMITED MONTREAL’ (2012 Small Find No. 36). FR 2012: This item was logged as 2012 Small Find No. 37. FR 2009, FR 2012: the decorated case was collected from Camp B in 2009, and the spoon from Camp D in the same year. The three sections of Hurricane lamp were found in 2012 (Small Finds Nos. 43, 44, and 45). Several everyday items were collected in 2012, and these included copper alloy tarpaulin hole protectors, metal tent pegs, two animal-harness buckles, a tyre valve, and twelve pieces of canvas textile— the presence of an eyelet in one piece suggests they are from British Army tents. The metal tent pegs are unusual inasmuch as most examples found throughout the study area are of wood. In Complex F1, five wood tent pegs were found though not collected. FR 2009, 2012: The two tobacco or snuff-tin lids are logged as ‘GT0517’ and ‘GT0518’.   Five coins recovered, two in 2009 (Camps B and F), three in 2012 (general surface finds). The 2009 Complex/Camp B coin is an Arabic silver coin (date unknown), and that from Camp F a 1917 Egyptian 50 Piastre. The 2012 coins were a Turkish coin (2012 Small Find No. 47), a small Arabic coin (2012 Small Find No. 53), and a 1905 Arabic coin (2012 Small Find No. 54). FR 2009 Update: nine standard-tunic-sized examples (MB 2.2.1), thirteen standardcuff-sized (MB 3.2.1), and twenty-two of the flat edged and domed variety (MB 7.2.3) collected from across camps A, C, D, F, and J. FR 2012, eleven buttons discovered in total: nine were of the 15mm dimple type (MB 4.1.4) and are standard Army trouser buttons. Two were of good enough condition that names survived on the reverse— one was stamped ‘TW Broughton, Birmingham’ (a British button manufacturer) and logged as ‘2012 Small Find No. 48’, and the other was stamped ‘NE PLUS ULTRA’ (with an asterix or star next to the text) was logged as 2012 Small Find No. 49. The last two were of types (MB 2.2.1) and (MB 3.2.1). FR 2012: most found in Camp F in 2012 with four more from Trench II and another three as random finds.

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Notes 77. Trench 1 78. FR 2012: there was a significant amount of the clear, thin, curved glass, twenty-one pieces collected whilst field walking Camp F. The remainder of the glass pieces are of unknown types and were logged by their physical characteristics i.e. colour and shape. 79. FR 2009 Update: unlike other seal matrices, this one from Camp F was inscribed with one word, possibly translated as ‘Yes’, rather than a personal name, and which might indicate its use as an official stamp of confirmation for letters and orders, though this is speculation. 80. (Evan-Hart 2009: 7) 81. ALGs were temporary bases, not designed for continuous use, and their lifespan was measured in weeks. They were necessary because topographic and atmospheric conditions in the area meant that First World War aircraft flying from Aqaba needed to climb over 1,300m to clear the surrounding mountains, and were severely restricted in their carrying capacity and range due to high daytime temperatures, often exceeding 40 degrees centigrade. From Aqaba to targets on the Hejaz Railway south of Ma’an meant a round-trip at the extreme range of these aircraft if carrying a full bomb load (Winterburn  2016: 197). ALGs located north and north-east of Aqaba overcame this problem as they were over 800m above sea level, did not need to climb over high peaks, and were at least 50km nearer to the target areas (2016: 197). 82. Site 1120. Often ‘Decie’ in British reports. Disi was one of eventually five such ALGs, the others being located at Guweira, Abu Suwana, Tahuna (Tahonie) just 14km north-west of Ma’an, and albeit briefly, at Jefer (Jafr), some 36km east of Ma’an (Winterburn 2016: 197). 83. (Lawrence 2003: 613) 84. (Winterburn 2016: 198) 85. Lts. Gilman of the Hejaz Armoured Car Column and Pascoe of the Royal Field Artillery travelled through Disi in April 1918 on their way to Tooth Hill and the raids at Tel Shahm. This single photograph was key evidence in identifying the Disi ALG (Winterburn 2016: 200). 86. The abundant water at Disi which would have made it attractive for men and aeroplanes and which has now made it an agricultural station is due to the area lying above the Qa-Disi aquifer which extends south into Saudi Arabia (where the main part of the water source lies). It is this same aquifer which supplies water to the Mudawwara area and which made it a stop-over for the traditional Hajj route and for the Turks to build the station there around 1906 and constructed the deep winddriven well there. The aquifer therefore made Mudawwara Station a strategic target during the Arab Revolt. Today, water from the Jordanian part of the Qa-Disi aquifer is pumped north to Amman as part of the ‘Disi Water Conveyance Project’ (DWCP). The pipeline runs parallel to the Hejaz Railway line within our study area at several points, and has been the cause of social unrest (concerning local employment opportunities), several attacks on the pipeline, a government response of establishing mobile security patrols, and several fatalities. These twenty-first-century parallels to the Arab Revolt raids on the railway were emphasized by the fact that the Jordanian government awarded the 1-billion-dollar contract to a Turkish company. After one  hundred years, Turks were once again digging trenches in southern Jordan (Winterburn 2016: 95–6).

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Notes 87. Finds Report 2014, and Site Finds Analysis 2014. 88. It is often reported how indigenous people around the world make a distinction between their way of navigating space and that employed by Europeans. For ex­ample, the Apache of North America say ‘White men need paper maps . . . We have maps in our minds’ (Basso 1996: 43). 89. Interestingly, a banner emblazoned with the tughra was used to cover the mosaic cross which was part of the ecclesiastical Christian architecture of Constantinople’s Military Museum during its wartime remodelling in 1916 (Shaw 2003: 202). 90. Simonowitz (2016: 66–7), and see Finkel (2006: 10). 91. (Gell 1998: 21) 92. Herzl was Jewish Austro-Hungarian journalist, regarded as the spiritual father of Zionism. 93. In the unpublished transcript of two BBC broadcasts in April 1939 and July 1941, Joyce recalled his experiences of driving through the desert with Lawrence in his Rolls-Royce tender ‘Blue Mist’—‘we tore across sand dunes and ridges under his almost uncanny guidance [a number of the men who accompanied Lawrence in the desert have remarked upon his ability to recall the location of a bush, a rise, or a rock after he had once seen it]’ (Mack 1990: 202). 94. (Lawrence 2003: 4); An early typescript of Seven Pillars surfaced at auction in 1997, and according to Jeremy Wilson (Lawrence’s official biographer) who authenticated it, ‘This is a truly remarkable discovery and it tells us something unexpected: the lost Seven Pillars was nothing like the masterpiece Lawrence later created. Indeed, the quality of the writing in this early draft will fuel speculation that he did not lose the  original manuscript at Reading [station]— as he claimed—but destroyed it’ (Knightly 1997). 95. (Lawrence  2003: 6); Lawrence repeats this in a letter written to LieutenantColonel W. F. Stirling on 15 October 1924 from Clouds Hill—‘If people read it as a history: —then they mistake it’ (Brown 1988: 275). 96. (Brown 1988: 678) 97. (Satia 2008: 83) 98. A brief walk-over survey conducted by Neil Faulkner with the T. E. Lawrence Society in November 2017 confirmed the location of the site previously identified by a combination of contemporary maps, satellite imagery, and field reconnaissance. Located at the eastern end of what Lawrence calls the Northern Ridge, the site includes ancient and medieval remains of masonry and pottery, Mauser cartridges, .303 cart­ ridges and clips, and miscellaneous military metalwork. The evidence for Mauser and .303 outgoing fire found together at one part of the site exactly fits with Lawrence’s account of the battle, where this position was first used by the Arabs, then the Turks, and finally taken back by the Arabs. 99. For the Western Front see Saunders (2010: 4–9), the Eastern Front, Liulevicius (2000: 37–8), and the Salonika Front, Shapland and Stefani (2017). 100. See, Cordova (2007: 158, 173–4). 101. (Simms  1988; Saidel  2001; Palmer and Daly  2006). The Bedouin re-use of tentrings associated with the Hejaz Railway camps is distinct from that of their own traditional camps even when these span several centuries, such as that at Nahal Be’erotayim West in the Negev which appears to have been used from fifteenth-century

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102.

103.

104. 105. 106.

107. 108. 109. 110.

111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

Ottoman times through to the mid-twentieth-century British Mandate era (Saidel and Erickson-Geni 2014). For example, the finding of Chalcolithic and Mousterian artefacts along with Bedouin ceramics at Tor Sahiba (Henry 2010: 58), and the mixing of epipalaeolithic tools with Bedouin objects in a Bedouin hearth at the rock shelter of Qa Salab near Guweira (2010: 271–2). (Woolley and Lawrence 2003: 25, 88). This observation/comment opens up an interesting issue—how many worked flints found today are not prehistoric but rather Bedouin-made within say the last 100 or 200 years? Are the two distinguishable? Are historically recent Bedouin examples ‘copies’ of prehistoric ones or impromptu designs made for the purpose at hand? The result of discussion on this issue with Professors Timothy Insoll, Robert Carter, and Peter van Dommelen suggests that Bedouin make flakes and chippings rather anything recognizably ‘Neolithic’ in shape, and that these are made by a basic flint-knapping/expedient technique on an ad hoc basis rather than recapitulating any Neolithic types, though some Neolithic examples appear to have been repurposed (e.g. as a fire-starter, and possibly a gun flint). Given this, it might be that what Lawrence saw in the Negev was the Bedouin re-use of Neolithic oval scrapers or expediently made flint tools. (Lawrence 2003: 316) (Basso 1996: 57) See Roden (2014) for the role of railways in the First World War, and Farebrother and Farebrother (2015) and Davies (1967) for narrow-gauge Decauville railways. See also Faulkner (2016: 112) for British railway construction from December 1915 in support of offensives in Gaza. (Welsby 2011); exemplifying the different approach is Shqiarat et al. (2011). (Rogan 2015: xvii) We had many discussions with a variety of initially enthusiastic television com­pan­ ies throughout almost the entire duration of the project, all of whom eventually declined (some several times) for reasons which were never entirely clear. (Robinson 2017). Given the decisive role of motorized transport in the raids against the railway, and Lawrence’s own fascination with speed in armoured cars, aircraft, and later with speedboats, it was appropriate that the exhibition was fronted by an example of his other passion, the Brough Superior motorcycles. Lawrence had owned seven of these, and was waiting on the eighth at the time of his fatal crash on  another one in 1935. The Newark example, a rare SS100 model, is a rebuild of  an  original made in Nottingham in 1925, and is identical to one that as Aircraftmen  T.  E.  Shaw he rode along the rural roads of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire while stationed at the RAF Cadet College at Cranwell between August 1925 and December 1926. (Morris and Raskin 1992; Turner 1994) (Brownlow 1997: 415) Professor Richard Selley pers. comm. 11/6/18 (Morris and Raskin 1992: 75) Professor Richard Selley pers. comm. 11/6/18 At Genovese Beach at San Jose on the Cabo de Gata was the set for the train ambush, though it is radically different today than in the film. Similarly, in a dry river-bed

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Notes leading to the sea at Playa de Algarrobico, near the small town of Carboneras, a screen version of Aqaba was constructed comprising over 300 buildings along with gun emplacements cut into the hillsides. The base of the valley has since been scoured by winter flood waters, but numerous traces of the set on the higher ground remain. Finally, in a visually spectacular canyon at El Cautivo in the Rambla Viciana, near Tabernas, a pool was built, and planted with palm-trees and other vegetation to represent a desert oasis. This set was used in many later films, and remains part of a wider film-location landscape still in use today.

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BIBLIOGR APH Y

Abidin, A. (2017) Parallel Reality 2017: Gold Fever in Amman. http://www.adelabidin.com/ works/parallel-reality Accessed 28/10/18. Abu Khafajah, S., and R. Al Rabady (n.d.) The Hijazi Railroad Line: A Cultural Landscape of a World Heritage Quality. Available on Academia.edu, at http://www.academia. edu/1219541/The_Hijazi_Railline_a_cultural_landscape_with_world_heritage_quality. Accessed 21/4/14. Adam, F. (2006) Alain-Fournier et ses compagnons d’arme. Metz: Editions Serpenoise. Admour, H. (2003) ‘Hijaz Railway Stations in the Middle and Southern Districts of Jordan (An Analytical and Architectural Study).’ Unpublished MA dissertation, Department of Archaeology, Yarmouk University, Jordan. Akbulut, G. and E. Artivlinli (2011) ‘Effects of Turkish Railway Museums on Cultural Tourism’, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 19: 131–8. Al-Atawi, A. and M.  Hempler (2015) Hejaz Railway Project. http://archivesma.epfl. ch/2015/003/al-atwi_hempler_enonce/PDM_AlAtwi_Hempler.pdf/ Accessed 8/11/18. Al-Askari, J. P. (2003) A Soldier’s Story: From Ottoman Rule to Independent Iraq. London: Arabian Publishing. Alleyne, R. (2010) Garland of Arabia: The Forgotten Story of T. E. Lawrence’s Brother-inArms’, The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7918929/Garland-ofArabia-the-forgotten-story-of-TE-Lawrences-brother-in-arms.html Anon. (1918) ‘Summary of the Hejaz Revolt.’ General Staff, War Office, 31 August 1918. IOR/L/PS/18/B287. London: The British Library. Anon. (1965) ‘Hejaz Railway Is Being Rebuilt to Take Moslems to Holy Cities’, Reading Eagle, 12 December: 92. Anon. (2001) Some More Notes on the Hedjaz Railway: A/The Forestry Branch. Harakevet 51 (January): 14–15. http://harakevetmagazine.com/downloads/HRKIssue51.pdf Accessed 7/11/18. Anon. (2005) ‘5th Draft of the ICOMOS Charter on Cultural Routes. (September, 2005).’ Working document presented for discussion at the 15th General Assembly, China. http://www.international.icomos.org/xian2005/culturalroutes-draft.pdf Accessed 1/8/14. Anon. (2005) The Weizmann Feisal Agreement. ‘Israels Documented Story website’ 6/1/2015 blog. http://israelsdocuments.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-weizmann-feisal-agreement-­ january.html Accessed 19/7/18. Anon. (2014) La Coudoulière, a District of Six-fours. http://coudouliere.blogspot.co. uk/2014/10/largile-de-la-coudouliere.html Accessed 4/10/17. Anon. (2017a) ‘WW1 Hero Lawrence of Arabia’s Sandals to Be Auctioned.’ BBC News website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-42236618 Accessed 6/12/17.

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INDE X

Abd al-Haqq  37 Abdulaziz ibn Saud  52 Abdulhamid II, Sultan  28, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42 imperial body/presence of  233 deposed 51 tughra (imperial monogram)  40–41, 233, 336n.89 Abdullah bin al-Hussein (son of Hussein)  26, 51, 76, 84 as King Abdullah I of Transjordan 52 Abdullah’s Fort  118 Abdullah’s Palace/Meissener’s House, Ma’an Station  57 Figure 4.13 Abdulaziz ibn Saud  52 Abu Al-Lissan  66, 142, 218 Abu Na’am (Hejaz Railway Station)  68, 84 Abu Suwana  317n.112 Acre 36 Adam, Jennifer  26 Advance Landing Ground (ALG)  228–232, 335n.81; and see, Disi Advanced Landing Ground ‘Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East’ (APAAME)  269n.6 aerial bombing  79, 163, 199, 201–202, 217 aerial photographs  4, 6, 17, 22, 81, 89, 102, 109, 193 Figure 9.6, 269n.6, 281n.101, 302n.3, 317n.112, 323n.61 aerial sketch-maps, by RFC/RAF pilots  89 Figure 6.2, 91, 97, 107, 109, 113, 118, 126, 131, 142,

151, 153 Figure 8.2, 156, 162, 167, 171, 184, 185, 200 Figure 9.13, 202, 206, 207, 219, 311n.5, 323n.61 Afule Station  83 affordances 217 Ageyl, see Bedouin tribes, Ageyl Ahmed Ratib Pasha  34 AK-47 rifle armchair (trench art) 14; round 222 Akaba  48, and see Aqaba Al Abyadh (phosphate mine) 54 Al-Akhdar Fort and (Hejaz Railway Station) 72 al-Askari, Jafar  68 Figure 5.6, 71, 97–98, 219 Al-Atoun, Sheikh Khaled  229 al Dheilan, Sheikh Mohammed  78, 80, 109, 127, 131 al-Drubi, see Zaki al-Drubi, Major Al Hasa (Hejaz Railway Station)  54, 79 Al-Hiyysheh Forest  68, 71 Al-Masri, Aziz  61, 63, 64, 84 Al-Raid al-Misri (Egyptian newspaper) 38 Alderton Construction  53 Allen key  144 Aleppo  30, 98 Ali bin Hussein, Prince  51 Ali Fuat Erden  64 Ali Rida al-Rikabi  34 Allenby, Edmund  23, 60, 66, 72, 79, 82, 83, 84 All Souls College, Oxford  27

Almeria (Spain)  241–242 Figure 10.16 Al Ula (Hejaz Railway Station)  38, 42, 62, 67 Al-Walid, Caliph  36 amir al-hajj (protector/guide of the hajj pilgrimage)  33 amir al-mu’minin (‘Commander of the Faithful’)  40 American Steel Trust  40 Amman (Hejaz Railway Station)  41, 55–56, 80, 83 ANZACS 83 Aqaba (Red Sea port)  26–27, 42, 52–54, 57, 60–61 Figure 5.1, 64–65, 71, 73, 79–80, 91, 102, 104, 121, 142, 172, 189, 198, 216–217, 219, 223, 229, 241, 286n.200, 290n.40, 292n.73, 317, n.112, 330n.10, 332n.50, 335n.81, 338n.116; and see Almeria (Spain) Arab taking of  66–67, 88–89, 213–214, 219, 273n.41, 290n.40,n.42, 293n.89, 299n.105 Aqaba Railway Corporation  54, 57 Aqabat al-Suwwan  48–49 Aqabat Hejazia (Hejaz Railway Station)  48, 78, 109, 112, 124, 126–130 Figures 7.11, 7.12, 7.13, 131–132, 139–142, 155, 217, 284n.147,n.152,n.153 Arab Bulletin  21, 59–60, 72, 105, 298n.88 Arab Bureau  12, 21, 75, 293n.89 Arab nationalism  30, 216, 242, 290n.46, 292n.78

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index Arab Revolt, begins  87 cost to British  85 manpower available/deployed  85 Arabia  1, 12, 13, 23, 27, 30, 36, 49, 53, 54, 61, 62, 73, 85, 86, 103, 164, 239, 241, 290n.41 Arabia, north-west (archaeological survey) 53 Arras 272n.19,n.22 archaeological heritage, see Ottoman archaeological heritage archaeology of cinema  241 archaeology and diplomacy  36 archaeology and the senses, see senses and war Ard Suwwan (Flint Ground)  47, 283n.135 Arif, Muhammad  38 Arisaka cartridge  131, 304n.49 Armenians 239 Armistice Day (First World War)  94, 200, 363 Armistice at Mudros, see Mudros, Armistice armoured cars  60, 70, 73–76, 77, 78 Figure 5.1, 79, 80 Figure 5.13, 84, 104, 151–152, 170, 171 Figure 8.18, 172–173, 179, 182, 184–186 Figure 9.1, 189, 193–194, 198, 217–218, 292 n.74,n.75, 293n.96, 295n.15, 311n.1, 317n.95, 335n.85, 337n.110 artillery  17, 36, 62, 80, 99, 101, 107, 172, 217, 292n.80 Austrian howitzer  77 friction fuse  187 Figure 9.3 bottom row second from right 320n.13 Pisani’s French Schneider 75mm mountain guns  70, 75, 76–77, 83, 98 shell fragments  93 Figure 6.5, 95–98, 128, 147–148, 158, 163, 172, 175, 179, 218, 222, 226, 277n.101,n.105, 304n.41, 318n.119,n.135, 320n.13

358

10-pounder (Royal Field Artillery, mounted on Talbot cars)  74, 76, 78, 162, 175, 177, 182, 189, 198, 201–202 Turkish  67–68, 72, 88, 89, 91–92, 330n.11 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford  12, 30 Assyrians  218, 273n.37 Athanassoula Freres (cigarettepaper makers)  146 Athenaeum Club, London  34 Auchonvillers (Somme, France)  17 Auda abu Tayi  64 Figure 5.3, 65–66, 71, 76, 80, 83, 85, 224 Figure 10.4, 290n.41, 332–333n.50 mud-brick palace  80, 294n.106 Aurel Stein, see Stein, Aurel Austrians  39, 239, 299n.89, 328n.126 Australia/Australians  17, 26, 53, 272n.26,n.28, 309n.125 Australian Light Horse  103, 125 Australian War Memorial, Canberra, exhibition  19, 239 authenticity (issues of)  16 ‘Awn al-Rāfiq Pasha  34 Aydinili Abdullah Pasha  50 Ayyubid dynasty  30, 164, 291n.65 Azraq castle  71 Baghdad  33, 63, 86 bag seals, see cement-bag seals Balfour, Sir Arthur  270n.8 Balfour Declaration  27, 233, 270n.8 Balkan Wars  32 Bamford, Captain  79 Bank of England  25–26 barbed wire  17, 44, 60, 103, 122, 124–125, 217, 271n.15 barrels, see water barrels Barthas, Louis  15 Basra 22 Batn al-Ghoul  131 Batn al-Ghoul Loop Trench  142, 148–149 Figure 7.24 Bedouin mythology concerning 48–49

geography  48–49, 142 construction camps  142–150 Northern Camp  143–147 Figure 7.21 North-west Camp  148 possible phasing  148–150 Southern Camp  148 Hejaz Railway Station  48–49, 53, 78–79, 142 Battlefield Archaeology  2, 13, 18, 270n.4 battlefield tourism  16–17 Bedouin and firearms  59, 216 Bedouin and gold  217, 234, 330n.10 Bedouin raiding (razzia): traditional (against the Hajj)  26, 38, 44, 59, 216, 233, 279n.64 influence on/participation in modern guerrilla warfare  1, 62–63, 71, 73, 75, 83–84, 102, 139, 142, 172, 215, 217, 228, 232–234 Bedouin relationship with prehistoric flint tools  236, 337n.103; and see prehistoric tools and objects Bedouin re-use of Ottoman Turkish tent-rings and buildings  120, 145, 147–148, 158, 170, 236, 238, 334n.70, 336n.101; and see Turkish re-use of earlier structures Bedouin tribes Ageyl  46, 65 Beni Ali  291n.50 Beni Atiyeh/Atiyya  44, 70, 71, 80 Beni Sakhr  44, 75, 79 Dhumaniyeh 102 Harb  43, 291n.50 Howeitat  45, 66, 75–77, 79– 80, 105 Juheina/Juhanni 62–63 Otaibi 62 Ruwalla 83 Tawaiha  78, 127, 131 Beersheba 71–72

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index Behçet, Lieutenant Colonel Bey  88, 90, 97, 101, 107–108, 117, 141, 166, 198, 213, 217, 295n.8, 298n.78 Behjet, see Behçet, Lieutenant Colonel Bey Beirut 269 Bell, Gertrude  18, 21–22, 273n.39, 274n.56, 282n.109 Bell-Irving, Captain  81, 202 bell-tents  62, 97, 101–102, 159, 297n.66 Beni Ali, see Bedouin tribes, Beni Ali Beni Atiyeh/Atiyya, see Bedouin tribes, Beni Atiyeh/Atiyeh Beni Sakhr, see Bedouin tribes, Beni Sakhr berat 38 Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway Berton, Joe  184 ‘Bewley’s Bluff ’ karakoll  91–92 Figure 6.4 Bewley, Robert  89, 269n.5 Commander Bey, Fazil  88 Bin Laden (construction company) 53 Birds Nest Camp  109–113 Figure 6.16; tent-ring XXV finds  112 Figure 6.17 Bir ibn Hermas (Hejaz Railway Station) 71 Bir Shedia (Hejaz Railway Station)  47, 48, 70, 78, 108–110 Figure 6.15 black stone/gravel pavement  118, 121–122 Figure 7.4, 125–128 Figures 7.8, 7.9, 7.10 blast-walls  122, 126, 177, 303n.21 Blockhouse, The  113–116 Figures 6.18, 6.19, 6.20 ‘blockhouses’  41, 59, 102, 104–105, 107–108, 113, 126, 130, 137–138, 222, 281n.97, 301n.127, 306n.85 blood-debts (Bedouin)  33 ‘Blue Mist’ (Lawrence’s Rolls Royce tender)  25, 292n.74, 336n.93 blue-stone ring, (Birds Nest Camp)  112 Figure 6.17a

body, the soldier  13–14, 30, 232–233 Bombay 37 bombing, see aerial bombing Bosnian conflict  14 boxes, see wooden boxes Boyer, Etienne (French industrialist) 112 Boy Scouts of America  28 bread ovens  42, 48, 114, 138–139 Figure 7.19 bridges, see Hejaz Railway bridges Brodie, Sam  76, 81, 152, 162, 172, 175, 177, 182, 189, 201 Bronze Age  15, 68, 167–168, 170, 174, 235, 278, 283n.144 brother tax (Bedouin)  45 Buckley, Captain Francis  15, 236 bugle, see Mudawwara Bugle bulldozer (damage to sites)  6, 92, 105, 113, 121, 125 Figure 7.8, 142, 152, 171, 194, 208 bullet jewellery (trench art)   14 bully-beef 192 tin  188, 227 Buwat (Hejaz Railway Station)  72 Buxton, Robert (‘Robin’)  80–82 C Flight No. 14 Squadron (later X Flight) 61 café-museums  83–85, 89, 349, 357–359 Cairo  21, 23, 64, 66–67 Figure 5.5, 71, 75, 281n.101, 293n.89, n.100, 298n.77 Cairo Conference  51 Caliphate  63, 101, 216 caltrops  102–103, 118, 125 camels 47 camera, see Lawrence, T.E. camera camouflage 17 caravanserai  68, 170–171, 260, 291n.52 Carchemish excavations  20–21, 273n.37, 274n.45 cardboard envelopes (found Ma’an)  95–96 Figure 6.8 Carruthers, Douglas  44 Caucasus campaigns  291n.57, 297n.61

cement  48, 106, 176, 198, 211 cement-bag seals  112, 225 cemetery, Ottoman (Ma’an Station)  98–99 Figure 6.9, 296–297n.58 Hallat Ammar ambush site  328n.130 Tyne Cot  273n.31 Centenary (First World War)  19 Chanak Kale’ (Gallipoli)  22 Chase, Harry  73, 223 Chaytor, Major-General Edward  83 Chemin de fer 38 Chinese Labour Corps  17 Christians  18, 36, 39, 44, 165, 241, 277n.105, 279n.50, 336n.89 Churchill, Winston  51 cigarette case  36, 227 butt 165 papers (found in excavations)  3, 111, 134, 144, 146 Figure 7.23, 147, 163, 180, 300n.116, 311n.152 tin  186–187 Figure 9.3 bottom left, 191 cinema, see archaeology of cinema Circassian cavalry  70 cisterns, see Hejaz Railway cisterns Clausewitz, Carl von  84 Clayton, General Sir Gilbert  66, 274n.56 Clouds Hill  27, 275–276n.81, 336n.95 clothes/clothing/identity 29–30 coal  68, 109, 291n.49 Cockerill 40 coins  164–165, 307n.103, 314n.65, 334n.74 Ayyubid 164 Mamluk  134, 164–165, 222, 308n.116, 314n.68 Nabatean 165 Ottoman  134, 164, 316n.92 Roman  146, 165 unidentified  147, 213, 227, 307n.103 Venetian silver Grosso  134

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index Colt handgun, ‘Model of 1911 Colt Automatic’ 326n.117, 327–328n.126 concrete  106, 114, 128, 153, 155, 192, 212, 256, 273n.31, 312n.19 Constantinople  22, 32, 35; Military Museum 36 Constantinople to Ismid Railroad  33 construction camps, see Hejaz Railway construction camps cooking  143, 158–159, 181, 209 Coopers bombs (aerial)  201 Crusaders  8, 18, 30, 36, 68 Crusader Castles, T E Lawrence thesis 18 Curtis, Lionel  27 Dahoum 327n.126 Dallmeyer, J.H.  20 Damascus  30, 41, 54–55, 76; Arabs enter  83 Dardanelles  36, 38 Davies, W.T.  25, 81, 275n.75 Darb al-Bighal (‘Horses’ Route’)  131 Darb al-Hajj al-Shami  45, 59, 216 Dawnay, Alan  67 Figure 5.5, 77, 151, 184, 189, 191, 193–194, 317n.112 Dayton, John  53, 239 Decauville railway  238 Decie, see Disi Advanced Landing Ground Deraa (Hejaz Railway Station)  41, 79, 82–83 Dervish Revolts (Sudan)  33 ‘Devil’s Donkey’  43 Dhat al-Hajj (Hejaz Railway Station, and fort)  45, 71 Dieckmann, Peter  43 Disa’ad (Hejaz Railway Station)  63, 65 Disi Advanced Landing Ground  xxii, 219, 228–232 Figures 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12, 237, 335n.81,n.85,n.86 Lawrence mentions  229 ‘Disi Water Conveyance Project’ (DWCP)  216, 335n.86

360

Divers, 2nd Lt R.J.  89, 97, 107, 109, 113, 142, 182 Djemal Pasha, Ahmed (‘the greater’)  22, 275n.64 Djemal Pasha, Mehmed (‘the lesser’), also called Mohammed Djemal Pasha Kuchuk or Djemal Mersinli  71–72, 295n.8 djinn (spirits)  8, 11, 48, 85, 236 DNA studies  17 Donawitz 40 Doughty, Charles  33, 45–49, 283n.135,n.144, 284n.158 Dowlais 40 drainage hole used for explosives  65–66 Figure 5.4, 104 eau-de-cologne (Fassu’ah Ridge Fort) 136 Egyptian Camel Corps  142, 170, 189 Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF)  66, 191, 193 Field Survey Section of  79, 85 Eid al-Adha festival  35 Eno Salts bottle (fragments)  187, 227 Enver Pasha, Ismael  275n.63, n.64 Esbeita 21 Es Salt  79 Estar-Alai (mule-mounted Turkish troops)  124, 140; see also mule patrol European Community  27 exhibitions, see Lawrence, T.E. exhibitions Ezra Station  83 Fakhri, Pasha  64, 84, 101 Falahat, Hani  300n.117, 304n.50, 315n.75, 330n.10 Falkenhayn, General Erich von  88, 90, 101, 295n.8 Faraifra (Hejaz Railway Station)  79 Fasoa, see Fassu’ah Fort Fassu’ah Fort  46, 48, 124, 131–132, 139, 141–142, 283n.146, 284n.147 Fassu’ah Ridge Fort  132–139 Figures 7.15, 7.18, 7.19;

courtyard-blockhouse 134–137 Figures 7.16, 7.17; railway halt  138 Fassu’ah Ridge Sector  132–142 Figure 7.14 Fassu’ah Ridge Sector Sites  140–142; Fassu’ah Ridge Central 140–141 Figure 7.20; Fassu’ah Ridge Camp North 41 Faulkner, Neil  viii, 85, 336n.98 Feisal, son of Hussein  23 Figure 3.5 At Wejh with Auda abu Tayi an Lawrence 64 at Wuheida see Wuheida West (Royal Camp) authorizes more attacks on Hejaz Railway 63 enters Damascus  83 establishes headquarters at Deraa 83 and failed attack on Mudawwara Station 198 filmed interview with Lowell Thomas in Aqaba  73 receives rifle from Djemal Pasha  22–23 Figure 3.4 gifts Presentation Wreath to Lawrence 30 gifts rifle to Lawrence  23 meeting at Rabegh with British and French  61 meeting at Wuheida with Chaim Weizmann 223 photographed at Versailles  243 Figure 10.17 photographed at Wuheida with Lowell Thomas, Maulud Mukhlis, Auda abu Tayi, Nuri al Said  223–224 Figure 10.4 plan to cut off Ma’an Station with Lawrence and Joyce  76 recommends Lawrence to wear Arab dress  29 Figure 3.12 smoker 292n.81 ‘fighting de luxe’  172, 174 firearms, hand-held  45 flag-pole 137

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index flint tools, see prehistoric tools and objects ‘Forest Railway’ (Uneiza Hejaz Railway Station to Ras Al-Hadid) 68 Fox, Richard  13 friction fuse, see artillery, friction fuse From the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf 21 Furness-Williams, Captain  174, 182 Gaa of Disi (mudflats)  229 Gallipoli (Turkey)  21–22 Gardener, Ernest  15 Garland, Major Herbert ’Bimbashi’  62 Figure 5.2, 63, 68, 274n.56, 289n.10 Garland mine  63, 65, 289n.10 gas, imagery by T. E. Lawrence  84, 218 Gaza  21, 35 Figure 4.1, 66, 71–72 Second Battle  10 Third Battle  71 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 17 Georges-Picot, François  269n.8 ‘German Squadron 305’  79 Ghadir al Haj (Hejaz Railway Station)  48, 66, 76, 78, 101–102, 104–107 Figures 6.12, 6.13, 6.14 Ghadir al Haj North 1 Karakoll 102–103 Figure 6.11, 105 Ghadir al Haj North 2 Karakoll 104–105 Ghazala Station  83 ghosts, see djinn ‘ghost’ embankment (Makins’ Fort) 120–121 Gibson, James  217 ‘Gillard & Co M&V Rations  3’ rations tin (Wuheida)  227 Gilman, Lt Leofric  77–78 Figure 5.11, 185 Figure 9.1 Glubb, Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot (‘Glubb Pasha’)  84, 294n.120

gold-digging  58, 92, 94, 136–137, 139, 152–153, 154 Figure 8.3, 159 Figure 8.8, 222, 288n.221, 305n.73 Goltz, General Von der  33 Goodall & Co. Leeds  227 Gordon’s Gin bottle fragments (Tooth Hill East)  187 Figure 9.3 middle row, middle image graffiti  114, 116 Figure 6.20, 153, 232 Figure 10.12 Grant, Lt D.R.  202 Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP)  xvii, xxi, xxii, 1–7, 215, 238–242, 246, 249, 276n.90, 282n.127, 291n.52, 299n.104, 302n.135, 307n.91, 320n.8, 332n.50 GARP team (2006–2014)  vii–viii ‘Great Arab Revolt Show’  54 Great Camp, (Hejaz Railway construction camp)  114 Greco-Turkish War  32 Greeks and building the Hejaz Railway 39 grenades, Turkish  128, 130 Figure 7.13, 163, 202, 226 German  191; and see Mills bombs Grieg, Eric  53, 210 grinding stone (volcanic)  120 guerrilla as a ‘new’ warrior  233–234 guerrilla warfare/tactics  44, 61, 73–74, 84, 207, 216–218, 232–234 Lawrence on  84, 217, 218; and see ‘Twenty-seven Articles’; and see space and distance Guichard Carvin et Cie  42 Gülstein, Kapp von  39 Gute-Hoffnung-Hutte 40 Guweira  66, 73, 77–78, 184 gun-cotton  28, 67, 70, 83 Hadji Mukhtar Bey  34 hadith 40

Hagia Sophia mosque, Constantinople 41 Haifa-Deraa branch line  83 Haine St. Pierre (rolling stock)  40 Hajj (pilgrimage)  45, 46 attacks on by Bedouin  43, 44–45, 59, 216, 278n.16, 283n.131 average size of  46 and Hejaz Railway  51, 53, 55 overnighting  164–166 Figure 8.13 traditional route skirted by Hejaz Railway  47–48, 86, 131, 195–196, 283n.147, 323n.55 travelling  46–47, 148, 171, 198, 279n.64, 282n.128 Hallat Ammar ambush (site)  28–29, 68–70 Figure 5.7, 78, 207–214 Figures 9.18, 9.19, 9.20 archaeology of  208–214; bullet-spread evidence  208–210 Figure 9.19; looting 209–210 Hallat Ammar (Hejaz Railway Station)  68–69, 80, 210 Hallat Ammar, post-ambush construction/defences  212–213 Figure 9.20 Hallat Ammar Sangar  213, 329n.144 Hamas rockets (as trench art ‘roses’) 14 hamidiye (‘belonging to Abdulhamid’) 28 Hamidiye Hijaz Railroad (‘praiseworthy railroad’)  34 Harb, see Bedouin tribes, Harb Hartmann locomotive  40, 83, 210 Hashemite dynasty  19, 52, 239 Hashemite Northern Army  68, 85, 223–224 Figure 10.4, 227, 290n.44, 332n.50 haunting, see djinn Hawran region  38 Hazaa, Sherif  77, 174, 181–182, 189 Hedia (Hejaz Railway Station)  63, 67, 68 heliograph  35 Figure 4.1, 95, 117, 120, 141, 179, 183, 278n.35

361

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index heritage  6, 11, 13, 15–17, 19, 36, 54–58, 216, 228, 232, 239, 242 ‘Hejaz Armoured Car Company’  185, 189 Hejaz Construction Company  53 Hejaz Railway  21 afterlife 50–58 battalions 39 Bedouin attacks  43–44, 65 bridges  47 Figure 4.9, 63, 68, 82, 107–108, 118–119 cisterns  41, 45, 48, 49, 50, 120, 127–128, 131–132, 140, 141, 151, 156 Figure 8.5, 196, 229, 254, 256, 262, 299n.94,n.98, 302n.138 construction camps  101–102, 103–104, 107, 109–116, 146, 158, 167, 169–170, 174, 179, 183, 192, 281n.101, 297n.63, 302n.138, 307n.97, 329n.144 Damascus, Local Commission  38; stations 54–55 financing  35–38, 51 heritage 54–58 locomotive nameplate  28–29 Figure 3.11, 40–41, 210, 276n.90,n.92 locomotives  110 Figure 6.15b abandoned after 1918  54 medallions  37–39 Figure 4.3 mosque wagon  41 origins and construction  32–50, Figure 4.4 passenger capacity  51 phosphate train refurbishment 1970s  54, 105, 128, 142 refurbishment project 1960s (cost and plans)  52–54; physical evidence of  114 repaired and re-used 1920s  51 rolling stock  110 Figure 6.15a and b roof tiles  42–43 Figure 4.7, 112 Saudi Arabia  55 station architecture House Style  41–42, 52 Figure 4.11

362

stone quarries  41, 170 tourism  110 Figure 6.15b Hejaz Railway Museum Medina  55 Hejaz stamps  23–24 Figure 3.7 Henderson, Captain Thomas  61 heritage, see Hejaz Railway, heritage Herzl, Theodor  233 Heslop, Major D.  51 Hicaz Şmendüferi 38 ‘Hill of the Birds’, Ma’an Station  4 Figure 1.1, 87, 89–90 Figure 6.3, 90–100 Figures 6.6, 6.7, 6.10; role in Battle of Ma’an  98; and see Ma’an Hejaz Railway Station ‘Hill Post 4’ (between Dhat al Hajj and Bir ibn Hermas Hejaz Railway stations)  71 Hisn Tiswani (caravanserai)  171 Historial de la Grande Guerre (Péronne, Somme, France)  17 Hodeidah (Yemen)  42 Hogarth, David  12–13, 20, 21, 62, 67 Figure 5.5, 72, 88, 151 Hornby, Captain Henry  67, 77–79, 127, 139, 142, 174 horse-line, see mule/horse tethering line Hourani, Albert  234 Howeitat, see Bedouin tribes, Howeitat human body/senses (effect of war on), see senses weaponization of  30 Huntington Library (California) 185 Hussein, King  56 Hussein, Sherif  23 Figure 3.6, 87, 279n.53 Hwaimel, Attalah (Wuheida elder) interview 330n.10 Ibn Saud, see Abdulaziz ibn Saud ICOMOS, see International Council on Monuments and Sites  54, 287n.201 Idriess, Ion  298n.74

Imam Yahya revolt  33 Imperial Camel Corps (ICC)  25, 80 Figure 5.13, 205 Imperial War Museum, London, exhibition 19 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) 62 Imrie, Captain Blair  26 India, Muslim community donates to Hejaz Railway  37 In Flanders Fields Museum (Ypres, Belgium) 17 International Charter for Cultural Routes 54 International Council on Monuments and Sites  54 International Resources and Exploration Group  52 inter-visibility between stations, see visibility/inter-visibility Iraq, invasion and occupation by Coalition Forces  19, 56, 62, 86, 192, 216, 273n.39 ‘iron chair’  27–28 Figure 3.10 ISIS, see, Islamic State Islamic State  30, 192 Israeli War of Independence  15 Istabal Antar (Hejaz Railway Station) 68 Italians and building the Hejaz Railway 39 Italo-Ottoman War  74 Izzat Pasha al Abid  33 Jafar al-Askari, see al-Askari, Jafar Jaffa 36 jambiyas (Bedouin daggers)  26–27 Janisseries  45, 279n.50 Jarvis, Claude  152, 193 Jaussen, Antonin  142 Jebel Semnah (fortifications)  76–77, 89–91, 97, 219 Jebel Sherra  47, 70, 86, 116 Jebel Tubeiq  241 Jeda’a (Hejaz Railway Station)  68 Jeddah  33, 38 Jefer  71, 80, 335n.81 Jerdun  76, 79, 293n.88

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index Jerouf al Darawish (Hejaz Railway Station)  75, 79–80 Jerusalem  72, 73 jihad  33, 274n.49 Jisr al Mejami Station  83 Jiza (Hejaz Railway Station)  83 John, Augustus  27 Jordan Heritage Revival Company 54 Jordan Phosphate Mines Company 54 Jordanian Air Force graffiti  114 Jordanian Army  58 Jordanian Department of Antiquities 210 Jordanian Special Forces  56 Joyce, Lt Col Pierce  67, 73, 82, 206 Juheina/Juhanni, see Bedouin tribes, Juheina/Juhanni Junor, Lt H.R.  151, 162, 200, 206, 229, 231 Figure 10.11 Kaiser-Friedrich Museum  36 Kaiserschlacht 79 Kaiser Wilhelm II  30, 36, 39 Kalaat-i-Mudeverre (Mudawwara) 49 Kanawat (Hejaz Railway Station, Damascus) 55 karakolls  60, 75, 84, 89, 91, 97, 100–101, 104, 107–109, 114, 179, 216–217, 289n.29 Kashim Sana’a (Hejaz Railway Station) 62 Kazim Pasha, Field Marshal  38 keffiyeh 30 Kerak  44, 75 Khadra 66 khaki 30 khan, see caravanserai kidney-shaped tent-rings, (Saleh’s Camp)  122, 123 Figure 7.6 King George V  23 Kithara 66 Km 475  104 Km 489  108 Km 495  113 Km 507  121

Km 514  126 Km 530  151 Km 554  192 Km 572  198 Km 587  207 Koran 40 Korea 14 Kraus locomotives  40 Kudrat Jugayman  50 La Coudoulière (roof tile factory, Marseilles) 112 Laguna Pueblo New Mexico  10 landscape layers of GARP in southern Jordan  215–216; and see palimpsest, landscape as landscape, guerrilla transformation (weaponization) of  217–218 ‘Lawrence of Arabia legend’  18 Lawrence of Arabia (film)  2, 8, 207, 241 Lawrence, Frank  327n.126 Lawrence, T.E. and Aqaba  64, 67 Figure 5.5 Arab robes  29–30 Figure 3.12 camera  20–21 Figure 3.3, 274n.42,n.45 exhibitions about  19, 239–240 Figure 10.15 fame and  234 Feisal and  234 Figure 10.13 jambiyas 26–27 ‘man with the gold’  80 memorabilia 20–31 photography 21–22 price on head  73 rifle  22–23 Figure 3.4 saddlebag 26 stamps  23–24 Figure 3.7 T.E. Lawrence Society  184–185, 240 Victoria Cross and  290n.42 and see Seven Pillars of Wisdom Lean, David  8, 29, 207 Letter  66, 79, 218, 223, 241, 276n.82, 290n.40, 291n.55, 293n.100, 327n.126, 330n.7, 336n.95 Lee Enfield rifles  17, 22–23 Figure 3.4, 241

.303 cartridges  95, 139, 172, 178, 187 Figure 9.3 top right  203, 208, 222 Lewis guns  70, 324n.72, 328n.126 LiDAR  17, 269n.7 Liddell Hart, Basil  288n.3 Liman von Sanders, Otto  63, 83 Little Big Horn, Battle of  13 Long Range Desert Group  75 loopholes  42 Figure 4.6, 48, 59, 87, 114, 119, 128, 137, 156 Figure 8.6, 161, 179, 182–183 Figure 8.29, 199, 203 Figure 9.15, 204, 206, 235 Lyall, Captain  81, 205 lyddite 71 Ma’an (Hejaz Railway Station), Station  38, 41, 42, 44–46 Figure 4.8, 57–58 Figure 4.13, 66, 86–100 Battle of  76–77, 86, 87 Figure 6.1, 90, 97–100 military cemetery  98–99 Figure 6.9 fortifications 88–97 Figures 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.6, 6.7 ‘Bewley’s Bluff ’ karakoll  91–92 Figure 6.4 Central Redoubt  95 Hill of the Birds  87, 89–97 Figure 6.3 Northern Redoubt A’  93 Northern Redoubt B  93–97 Figures 6.6, 6.7 Trench V  93–97 Figure 6.6 Northern Ridge  89, 91 Southern Redoubt  95 Southern Ridge  89, 91 Western Hillock  89, 90 heritage 56–57 spur line to Naqb Ashtar  52 town  44–45, 86 ‘Ma’an Knoll’  90, 97 ‘Ma’an West Redoubt’  90 machine-gun/positions  9, 63, 67, 69–70, 72, 74–75, 77–78, 81–82, 84, 90–91, 93, 96–97, 101–102, 104, 107–108, 114,

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index machine-gun/positions (cont.) 119, 132, 141, 148, 151, 156, 160 Figure 8.9, 162–163, 167, 169, 172–173, 178 Figure 8.24, 179, 183, 185, 187, 193, 207, 209–210 Figure 9.19, 217–218, 249–250, 253, 263–264, 267, 291n.59, 292n.75, 324n.72, 327–328n.126 Madaba 75 Mafraq (Hejaz Railway Station)  65, 82, 83 Mahattah (Hejaz Railway Station, Amman)  55–56 Figure 4.12 Mada’in as-Salih, see Medain Saleh Makins 2nd Lt Arthur Dayer  118, 126, 131, 142, 202 Makins’ Fort  118–121 Figures 7.1, 7.2, 7.3; ‘ghost’ embankment 12–121 Mamluk Revival style  42 Sultanate  45, 165 and see coins, Mamluk Manaret Mosque, Bombay  37 maps, of Hejaz Railway  108 T.E. Lawrence copying  21–22, and see aerial sketch-maps 21 Marseilles 42 Marshall, Major  81, 294n.107 Martini-Henry rifles/bullets  34, 99, 139, 158 Martinsyde biplanes  151 Mather, Private Alan  17 Maulud, Mukhlus  68, 71, 76, 90, 97, 219 Maunsell, Lt Col Frederick R.  47, 49, 87–88, 113, 121, 151, 192, 196 Mauser cartridges  95, 106–107, 139, 158, 172, 178–179, 191, 203, 206, 208, 222; unfired with bullets detached 222 McMahon, Henry  270n.8 Mecca  23, 26, 30, 32, 63, 87

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Medain Saleh (Hejaz Railway Station)  36, 42, 44, 55, 62, 63, 84 medallions, see Hejaz Railway medallions Medina  32, 36, 37 Figure 4.2, 38, 43, 44, 50, 52, 55, 61, 63, 76, 84, 101 ‘megalithic’ style construction camp tent-rings 110–111 Figure 6.16, 174–175 Figure 8.21 Mehmetchick (’Little Mehmet’), soldierly qualities  72–73 Figure 5.8 Meissner, Heinrich August  39, 42, 46–49, 51, 59, 86, 176, 280n.73, 284n.147 Meissener’s House/Abdullah’s Palace, Ma’an Station  57 Figure 4.13 memorialization  xxi, 31, 95 memory/photographs and Bedouin interview process  229 Menin Gate (Ypres)  17 Mesopotamia  22, 33 metal detector survey (Ma’an Station)  99–100 Figure 6.10, 107, 128, 147, 158, 164, 229 Military Museum, Constantinople 36 Mills bombs (British grenades)  199, 205 mines  28, 62–63, 65, 69–71, 182, 217 Garland mine  63, 65, 289n.10 Minifer (Hejaz Railway Station)  65 ambush, 71 mineral rights (along the Hejaz Railway) 35 ‘Missing, The’  37–38, 86 modernity and tradition  18, 34, 40, 51, 58–59, 80, 216 Modern Conflict Archaeology  2, 13, 192, 239 Mohammad bin Salman, Crown Prince 55 Mohammed, Prophet  38

Montenegrins and building the Hejaz Railway  39 Moore, Lawrence  81 Morse code  81, 278n.34 Morton, C & E ration tins  189–191 Figure 9.5 mosque wagon, see Hejaz Railway mosque wagon Mozambique, civil war  14 Muazzam Fort (and Hejaz Railway Station) 63 Mudarraj (Hejaz Railway Station) 67 Mudawwara and conflict landscape 198–207 Figures 9.12, 9.13, 9.14, 9.15, 9.16, 9.17 Battle of  25, 80–82 Figures 5.14, 5.15 bugle  24–25 Figure 3.8 Hejaz Railway Station  42, 49–50, 52, 68–69, 73–74, 76, 80, 198–199 Figure 9.12 Ottoman Fort  46, 50 Figure 4.10, 81 redoubts  198–199, 200 Figure 9.13 Central  202–203 Figure 9.15 Northern  199–202 Figure 9.14 Southern 203–207 Figures 9.16, 9.17 redoubts, phasing of  205–207 mud-brick (Turkish construction/ walls)  80, 81 Figure 5.14, 93–94, 112, 128, 130, 132, 155, 182–183 Figure 8.29, 194 Figure 9.7, 198, 217, 235, 289–290n.29, 319n.151; and see Auda abu Tayi mud-brick palace Mudros, Armistice  84 Muhammad Arif  38 mule/horse tethering line  114, 116, 132, 140 Figure 7.20, 179, 223, 225, 258, 262, 264, 266, 302n.135, 316n.92, 332n.41 mule railway patrols (Turkish)  108, 112, 116, 132, 140, 143, 235, 298n.78

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index mule shoes  124, 132, 140, 222 Murad, Sultan  36, 279n.51 murals 293 Murray, General Sir Archibald  66 Museum of the Great War, Meaux  17 Muzerib (Hejaz Railway Station) 83 Nabatean  45, 58, 71, 165, 282n.127,n.129, 314n.70 Nablus branch line  83 Naqb Ashtar spur line (from Ma’an) 52 Nasib al-Bakri  64 Nasir bin Ali, Sherif  27, 62, 64, 66, 68, 75, 79, 83 National Archives, Kew, London 232 National Portrait Gallery, London, (exhibition) 19 nameplate, see Hejaz Railway locomotive nameplate National Civil War Centre (Newark) 240 Naval Arsensal, Ottoman Imperial (Constantinople) 41 Naval Dockyards, Ottoman Imperial (Constantinople) 36 Negev desert  236 Neolithic  167–168, 170, 175, 235, 283n.144, 337n.103 Nessib 82–83 Newark 240 Newcombe, Captain Stewart  20, 62, 63, 67 Newfoundland Memorial Park  16, 272n.22 New South Wales  17 Nicholson, James  55 Nogales, Rafael de  10 nomadism, ephemeral archaeology of  165–166 Figure 8.14 North Ramleh Fort 1  194–196 Figures 9.8, 9.9 North Ramleh Fort 2  194 ‘Northern Ridge’ (fortifications, Ma’an Station)  89 Northumberland Fusiliers  15

Nuri al-Said  74–75 Figure 5.10, 76–77, 79, 83, 97 Ocean Villas tea room (Somme, France) 17 Oldfield, Lt  182, 299n.104 Oppenheim, Max von  21 Orientations 23 Ornamental forts  118, 121–126, 137 Osman I  32 Otaibi, see Bedouin tribes, Otaibi O’Toole, Peter  29, 207, 241 Ottoman archaeological heritage sold to raise funds  36–37 Figure 4.2 Ottoman army/soldiers/troops  11, 32, 33, 34, 40, 42, 43, 44, 72, 86, 102, 117, 143, 146, 150, 279n.50, 290n.46, 292n.78, 298n.77 and 78, 307n.91, 311n.151 Ottoman Empire  1, 6, 18, 22, 29, 30, 32, 54, 61, 216, 233, 239, 269n.8 Ottoman honorific titles  36 Owen, Wilfred  271n.17 Oxford University  21, 277n.98,n.99, 333n.50 Oxo tin  191 padlocks (finds in tent-rings)  111, 145 Figure 7.22, 148, 179 Palaeolithic  15, 170, 235–236 Figure 10.14, 283n.144 palimpsest, landscape as  7, 58, 102, 114, 191, 207, 214–215, 226, 307n.103 Palestine, British Mandate  51 Palestine Exploration Society, London 21 Pan-Islamism 32 paper fragments (found in excavations)  119, 124, 143–144, 145; and see cigarette paper Pascoe, Lt George  229 Pathan Rising  33 ‘pavement’, see black stone/gravel pavement

Peake, Captain Frederick Gerard  77–79 Figure 5.12, 82, 127, 139, 142, 152, 162, 189, 193–194 pen nib and blue-ink sand  144 Pergamon Museum  36 Petra  21, 71, 332n.50 Philby, H. St. J.  51 Philips, Sir Hayden  27 phosphate trains, see Hejaz Railway, phosphate train refurbishment 1970s photographs and memory  229 pickelhaube (German helmet)  17 pipe, see tobacco Pisani, Captain Rosario  70, 76–77, 83, 98, 102, 105 ‘Plain Post’  74, 172 Pole Hill  20 Port Sudan  33 pot shots (by Bedouin and British) 232 prehistoric tools and objects  47, 65, 235–236 Figure 10.14, 236 moved by Turkish soldiers and Bedouin  143, 170, 175, 235 Presentation Wreath (gilt-bronze)  30 ‘preservation-by-record’  6, 186 Prophet’s Mosque, Medina  36 Qadem (Hejaz Railway Station, Damascus)  41, 54–55, 83 Qal’at al-Fassu’a, see Fassu’ah Fort Qal’at Mudawwara, see Mudawwara Fort Qal’at Unaiza, see Uneiza Fort Qasr Al-Mshatta palace  36 Qatrana (Hejaz Railway Station)  41, 42–44 Figure 4.7, 45, 46, 51, 60, 65, 79 quarries, see Hejaz Railway stone quarries quartz 111 Quntilla (aerodrome)  68, 89 Rabegh  61, 64 Raho, Captain  62 Railway Battalions, see Hejaz Railway Battalions

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index railway lines curved  65, 142 fragments of  27–28 inscribed, amir al-mu’minin (‘Commander of the Faithful’)  40 Figure 4.5 laying of  39 Figure 4.3 re-use in vernacular architecture  51–52 Figure 4.11 types of  40 Figure 4.5 railway subsidies (paid to Bedouin)  33, 38, 43 Ramleh construction camp  194 Ramleh (Hejaz Railway Station)  77–78, 101, 192–194 Figures 9.6, 9.7 Ramleh South Fort  195–196, 197 Figure 9.11 Ras Al-Hadid  68 Ras an Naqb escarpment  111, 116, 132, 143, 148–149 Figure 7.24, 151, 161, 283n.143 rations, soldiers  22, 77, 142, 227, 321n.25, 334n.71 ration tins  187 Figure 9.3 bottom right, 189–191, 227; and see bully-beef tins razor blades, cut-throat (finds in tent-rings)  111, 124 Figure 7.7, 144 Richards, Evan  28 Richards, Vyvyan  28 rifles AK-47 222 Lee-Enfield  17, 22–23 Figure 3.4 Martini-Henry 34 plastic replicas (for Lawrence of Arabia film)  241 Revolt in the Desert 19 Robertson, Sir William  66 rock art, prehistoric (Tel Shahm)  175; rock art/doodle (Disi Advanced Landing Ground)  232 Figure 10.12 ‘Rock Post’ (Tel Shahm Fort)  77, 173–174, 178 Rogan, Eugene  239

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Rolls, S.C. (T.E. Lawrence’s driver)  25, 30, 34, 60, 185, 187, 194 Rolls Royce  25, 73, 76, 77, 151, 172, 185 Figure 9.1, 191; and see armoured cars Roman 45 roof tiles, see Hejaz Railway roof tiles Round Fort  124–128 Figures 7.8, 7.9, 7.10 Rowan, Lt  81 Royal Air Force  77, 79, 193, 202; and see Royal Flying Corps Royal Field Artillery  189 Royal Flying Corps  22, 61, 67, 68, 76, 89, 101, 126, 131, 182, 219 Royal Geographical Society  12 Royal Jordanian Army  207 rum jars/fragments  111, 186–187 Figure 9.3 top left and bottom second from left, 191, 225, 227 Russo-Turkish War  32 Ruwalla, see Bedouin tribes, Ruwalla Saddam Hussein  277n.104 Saddlebag, see Lawrence, T.E. saddlebag Sadiq Pasha al Muyyad, General  33, 34 Sahl al Matran (Hejaz Railway Station) 67 ‘Said bin Salim 1323’ inscription on seal matrix (Birds Nest Camp) 112 Saladin 30–31 Saleh ibn Shefia  98 Saleh’s Camp  122–124 Figures 7.5, 7.6, 7.7 Saleh’s Fort  121–123 Figures 7.4, 7.5 Salem 69 Salonika  15, 32, 235, 272n.20, 274n.48, 336n.99 Salonika Front  235, 272n.20, 274n.48, 336n.99 ‘Salonika Museum’  15 Salt, see Es Salt

Samakh Station  83 Samra (Hejaz Railway Station) 65 Sanctuary Wood café-museum  16 Saudi Arabia, see Hejaz Railway, Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabian Deputy Ministry for Antiquities and Museums 55 Scott, Douglas  13 seals, see seal matrix seal matrix  112 Figure 6.17b, 140, 145, 194, 228, 301n.119, 307n.93, 309n.129 Sefi, Lt C.R.  202 Semnah, see Jebel Semnah senses, and war  10, 15, 69 sensory account of Hallat Ammar ambush Senussi  73, 172 Serbo-Turkish War  32 Seven Pillars of Wisdom  4, 18–19, 60, 64 Aqaba, taking of  64 archaeology and  9, 192, 234, 238 Hallat Ammar ambush and  207, 209 manuscript, lost or not?  234, 336n.94 nature of  18, 234 Plain Post, attack on  172 principles of guerrilla warfare in 60 read by American military and insurgents 19 Shaalan, Terad  83 Shawbak, Crusader castle  68, 71, 79 Shawish Azil  62 shells (artillery), see artillery Sherif Abdul Muin  68 Sherif Fauzan al-Harthi  62, 67 Sherif Shakir  62, 72 Sherif Sharraf  67, 72 Shifting Sands: Lawrence of Arabia and the Great Arab Revolt Exhibition (Newark)  240–241 Figure 10.15

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index Shidyia (phosphate mine)  54 shrapnel balls  17, 92–93 Figure 6.5, 99, 107, 148, 163, 199, 226, 324n.76, 333n.67 shrapnel shells/fragments  55, 67, 68, 95, 201 Siddons, Lt Victor Donald  102, 124–125, 131, 142, 151, 162, 167, 202, 206, 229, 317n.112 Siddon’s Bridge Fort  74 Figure 5.9, 171–172 Figure 8.18 Siddon’s Ridge Camp  166–171 Figures 8.16, 8.17 armoured car and Bedouin attack on 170 Mauser cartridges in situ inside defensive position  169 Figure 8.17 prehistoric objects  168, 170 quarry nearby  168 zig-zag trench  167–169 Figure 8.16 ‘sideshow to a sideshow’  79, 239 Silko, Leslie  10 Sinai  66, 80, 88–89, 289n.12; and see Wilderness of Zin ‘Six-Day’ War  53 sketch-maps, see aerial sketch-maps smoke canisters  164 Figure 8.12 Smyrna (Izmir)  146 snuff-tin, see tobacco Somaliland 33 Somme  217, 236 Battle of, trenches  15–16 Figure 3.2 battlefield tourism  16–17 South Africa (Boer War)  44 ‘South Post’ (Tel Shahm Fort South)  174, 181 souvenirs/’souveneering’  13, 17, 25, 27, 29, 41, 77, 186, 277 ‘Southern Ridge’ (fortifications, Ma’an Station)  89 space and distance, (conceptions/ perceptions of)  218, 232, 330n.5 spark plug (Tooth Hill Camp East)  187 Figure 9.3 middle row, right image

spirits, see djinn SRD (‘Supply Reserve Depot’) rum jar  186, 187 Figure 9.3 top left, 191 and see rum jars stamps  23–24 Figure 3.7, 36 ‘star-and-crescent’ Turkish buttons (found in excavations)  10 Figure 2.2, 111, 140, 143–144, 147, 158–160, 169, 175, 179, 210, 308 Steel Chariots in the Desert, (S.C. Rolls) 186 Stein, Aurel  109 Stein Camps  109 Stirling, Major W.F.  66 Stokes mortar  70, 207, 209 stonemasons 39 stone outlines and marker boundaries (Arab camp)  224–225 Figure 10.5, and see Wuheida West (Royal Camp) stone quarries, see Hejaz Railway stone quarries Storrs, Ronald  23 subsidies, see Railway subsidies Sudan Military Railway  32, 238, 269n.2, 281n.101, 291n.52 Suez Canal  21, 32, 38, 43 Suleiman I, Sultan  45 Sultani (Hejaz Railway crossing point) 79 Sultan’s Mule (jahshat al-sultan)  34, 61 ‘Survey of Egypt’  21–22 Suwaqa (Hejaz Railway Station)  65, 236, 289n.29 Sykes, Mark  269n.8 Sykes-Picot Agreement  5, 18, 27 Sultan al Faqir’, Sheikh  84 Syria, civil war  54 Syrian refugees  27 Tabuk  38, 43, 44, 53, 55, 70, 72, 84, 292n.81 Tafilah 79 Battle of  75–76, 235 Tahuna Advanced Landing Ground 237

Talbots  74, 76, 172, 185, 187, 189 Tallal, Sheikh  83 Tawaiha, see Bedouin tribes, Tawaiha Tel Shahm Camp North  174–176 Figures 8.21, 8.22 Tel Shahm Camp South  179 Tel Shahm Fort  175–179, Figures 8.23, 8.24 Tel Shahm Fort South  179–182 Figures 8.25, 8.26, 8.27, 8.28 Tel Shahm (Hejaz Railway Station and landscape)  74, 79, 101, 173–183 Figure 8.19 Tel Shahm fractured rails  174 Figure 8.20, 179 Tel Shahm rock art  175 Tel Shebab bridge  71, 83 telegraph battalions  33, 39 telegraph line construction  33–34, 47–48 telegraph line, Bedouin attacks on  34, 65 telegraph line spiritual dimensions 34 Tell el-Hesi, Israel  15 tent-pegs (found in excavations)  124, 144–145, 147, 158–159, 309n.130, n.132, 310n.148,n.149, 334n.73 tent-ring types  143 tent-squares  143, 145, 147, 191, 309n.133 Thalacker, Lieutenant  84 The Hejaz Railway 55 The Increasing and Eternal Happiness – the Hejaz Railway 38 The Palestine Campaigns 73 The Wilderness of Zin 21 Thomas, Lowell  73, 223 thuluth script  41 tobacco/smoking  30, 146, 227 Figure 10.7, 292n.81, 322n.33, 334n.74 tobacco/snuff tin lids, WD & HO Wills *Bristol & London*  227, Edwards, Ringer & Bigg Company, Bristol  227 Figure 10.7

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index tobacco/smoking (cont.) international consortium ‘Regie Co-interessée’ 146 pipes (Ottoman)  175, 194, 197 Figure 9.10 Tooth Hill  178 Figure 8.24, 184–192 Figures 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5 Tooth Hill Camp East, discovery 184–186 Figures 9.1, 9.2; camp fires excavated finds  187–189 Figures 9.3, 9.4 Tooth Hill Camp West, discovery  189–190; excavation, 190–192 Figure 9.5 Towaira (Hejaz Railway Station)  62, 67 trade/traders, long distance  165 training exercises, Jordanian-British armies  132, 179 Travels in Arabia Deserta 283n.135 trench art  14, Figure 3.1, 30, 277n.101,n.105 tribes, Bedouin see Bedouin tribes Tripoli 36 tughra, see Abdulhamid II tughra Tuileries Roman BoyerMarseille 42 ‘Tulip’ technique  82–83, 217 Turkish  3rd Air Squadron, 88 Turkish Armies, 4th and 7th  82 23rd Division  88 Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Coordination (TIKA)  56 Turkish soldier re-use of earlier structures  68, 102, 108, 112, 116, 121, 134, 147–148, 150, 155, 158–159, 161, 174, 194, 235 ‘Twenty-seven Articles’  59–60 Ummayad dynasty  36 Uneiza Fort and (Hejaz Railway Station)  45, 68 uniforms, fragments of (Turkish)  42, 111, 136, 300n.116, 305n.64 urban surra, see railway subsidies

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Vaizey, Ed  27 Varna 36 Venetian silver Grosso  134 Verdun (making trench art at)  14 Versailles peace settlement  242, 243 Figure 10.17 Victoria Cross, see Lawrence, T.E. and Victoria Cross Vietnam war  5 Vignoles type rails  40 Vimy Ridge  272n.22 visibility/inter-visibility (between stations)  34, 109, 112, 113, 117, 124, 141, 161, 179 Wade, A.G.  21 Wadi Ais  63 Wadi Araba  21 Wadi Batn al-Ghoul  148, 307n.101, 313n.47 Wadi Hamdh  62 Wadi Ithil (Hejaz Railway Station) 70 Wadi Mousa  185 Bedouin defeat of Turks at  71 Wadi Rum  53–54 Wadi Rutm  152 Figure 8.1 defended observation post/ machine-gun nest  155–156 Hejaz Railway Station  101, 151–166 Figures 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6 Midway Fort  151, 161–162 Figure 8.10 Old Pilgrim/Caravan Road  166–167 Figure 8.15 temporary caravan stop  164–166 Figures 8.13, 8.14; Coins and other metal objects 164–165 Turkish Army Camp  157–161 Figures 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, 238 Wadi Rutm Fort  162–164 Figures 8.11, 8.12 Wadi Sirhan  26 Wadi Yutm  64, 66, 71 Wagga 76 Wahhabi  33, 56

Wallin, George Augustus  45 waqf 35 water barrels  40, 42, 48–49, 121, 142, 151, 281n.88 water-skins 131–132 Wavell, Major Arthur John Byng  44, 59 Wavell, Field Marshal Earl Archibald  44, 73, 84 Wayban (Hejaz Railway Station)  62, 84 WD & HO Wills *Bristol & London* tobacco/snuff tin lids (Wuheida)  227 wedding-rings 30 Weizmann, Chaim  223 Wejh (Red Sea port)  61, 64, 65 Weli Sheikh Nuran (Palestine)  103, 125 wells  55, 86, 219, 282n.127 Western Front  13–18, 217, 238, 336n.99 ‘Western Hillock’ (fortifications, Ma’an Station)  89, 90 Wilderness of Zin 21 Wilson, Colonel Cyril  64, 289n.20 Wilson, Field Marshall Sir Henry  60 Wilson, Jeremy (T.E. Lawrence’s official biographer)  275n.79, 327n.126, 336n.94 Wingate, Sir Reginald  66, 85 Winter, Jay  15 Winter, Kevin  240 Winterburn, John  184, 219, 229, 311n.5, 313n.47,n.53 ‘wolf-pits’  102–103 Figure 6.11, 118–120 Figures 7.1, 7.2, 122 Figure 7.4, 125–127 Figures 7.8, 7.9 wood as coal substitute for locomotives 68 wooden boxes (remains of, and used for kindling)  120, 187–189, 232 Woolley, Leonard  20, 236 Wratten-Wainwright camera  20, 21 Figure 3.3 wreath, see Presentation Wreath

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index Wuheida  77, 184, 219–228 Figures 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 330n.8,n.10 battles at  226–227 Wuheida East  219–223 Figures 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 Wuheida West (Royal Camp)  223–228 Figures 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 Lawrence visits Feisal at  223–224 photograph showing Feisal, Lowell Thomas, Auda abu Tayi, Nuri al Said, and

Maulud Mukhlis looking at  224 Figure 10.4 X Flight  61 Figure 5.1, 89, 118, 151, 167, 174, 184, 189, 219, 317n.112 Yahya, Imam, see Imam Yahya revolt Yarmouk Valley  71, 83 Bridge No. 14  71 Yemen  32, 33, 42 Yenbo 23 Yildirim (‘Lightning’) Army Group 88

Yorkshire Relish jar (fragments) Wuheida 227 Young Turks  28, 51 Ypres (Belgium)  15–17, 272n.24 Zaal abu Tayi  65, 68–69, 109, 207 Zaki al-Drubi, Major  64 Zehringer, Otto  43 Zerqa (Hejaz Railway Station)  40, 65, 83 Zimpel, Dr Charles  33 Zionism  223, 336n.92 Zumurrad (Hejaz Railway Station) 67

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