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Updated: June 14, 2025
It is only by a knowledge of the elements of which Islam is made up that we can guess its future, and these are less generally known than they should be. A stranger from Europe visiting the Hejaz is, as I have said, irresistibly struck with the vastness of the religious world in whose centre he stands. Mohammedanism to our Western eyes seems almost bounded by the limits of the Ottoman Empire.
Unconnected with any of these railways, a French line ran from Jaffa to Jerusalem; this also the Turks removed, as between Jaffa and Ludd, while, for the remainder of its length, they altered the gauge so as to adapt it to the rolling stock of the Hejaz Railway.
Abdallah ibn Aoun, the son of Mohammed, who succeeded his father in 1858, and reigned for nineteen years, was a man of considerable ability, and he is credited with having had views of so advanced a nature as to include the opening of Hejaz to European trade. Nor was his brother, who in 1877 became Grand Sherif, of a less liberal mind.
The Sherif depends upon the Sultan because he needs a protector, and needs his Wakaf. The Sultan depends upon the Sherif, because recognition by Hejaz as the protector is a chief title to his Caliphate. Mecca, in fact, is a necessity to Islam even more than a Caliph; and whoever is sovereign there is naturally sovereign of the Mussulman world.
Immediate demobilization of the Turkish army, except troops required for the surveillance of the frontier and the maintenance of internal order; the surrender of the garrisons of the Hejaz, Assir, Yemen, Syria and Mesopotamia, and the withdrawal of troops from Cilicia; the surrender of all ports there; occupation by the Allies of the Taurus Mountains tunnel system; the allied control of all railways; occupation by the Allies of any strategic points considered necessary for their security; prohibition of destruction of military or similar material; all Germans and Austrians to quit Turkey within a month; Turkey to cease all relations with the Central Powers; all allied prisoners in Turkish possession to be handed over unconditionally, but Turkish prisoners in the Allies' hands to be kept at the disposal of the Allies.
It will also be remembered, that the Jordan Valley, and ascent therefrom into the hills of Eastern Palestine are unique. It would therefore have been difficult or impossible to cut the Turks' Hejaz communications by maintaining a permanent garrison astride the railway, such garrison being based on Jericho with an extremely vulnerable line of communications across the valley.
It is at first fertile, but, at distances ranging from 40 to 60 miles inland, it merges into steppe and then into sheer desert. Thus it is a country apart, difficult of access from Jerusalem and Western Palestine, more easy of access from Damascus or from Arabia. Through it, from north to south, runs the Hejaz railway, on its way from Damascus to Medina.
And the major and that rumor we got from old Nasr ed Din, the Hejaz rug-merchant down on Hester Street, how about that?" "Yes, I know. But " "How could a rumor like that come through, about a big, white-skinned, red-haired Ajam slave held by that tribe near Jeddah? How could it, unless there were some truth back of it?" "He wandered away into the desert, quite insane.
The Wady Hamz, which has been mentioned as the southern frontier of Egyptian Midian, and the northern limit of the Ottoman Hejaz, is the most notable feature of its kind upon the North-Western Arabian shore. He appears to identify it with the classical Wady el-Kura. Sprenger clean ignores the name, although he mentions its branches; and of course it is utterly neglected by the Hydrographic Chart.
It seems certainly to have been so considered in the first age of Islam, and many a bloody war was then fought for the right of protecting the Beyt Allah; but the connection of Hejaz with the Empire of the Caliphs has been too often broken to make this a very tenable argument.
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