Lawrence of Arabia in Aqaba of Jordan, during WWI
By: Alis Monte
Tags: Travel, Travel Writing, Middle East, History, Jordan

“The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped’ and on this ocean the Bedu go where they please and strike where they please. This is the way the Bedu have always fought. You’re famed throughout the world for fighting in this way and this is the way you should fight now!” — Lawrence of Arabia, 1962

Battle of Aqaba

This is where during the First World War, British military officer T.E. Lawrence gained the trust of Arab Prince Faisal by capturing Aqaba on July 6th, 1917, after a successful, but the difficult crossing of Nefud desert, a place without any water supplies. It was close to a suicide mission, thus Lawrence avoided informing his superiors and with relatively very few men he attacked Aqaba from the inland — a direction from which the Ottomans didn’t expect an offensive action and therefore was not defending it. In the beginning, Lawrence started the raid with forty men of Prince Faisal, the troops were increased to over a few thousand with some local tribesmen joining the cause, most notoriously forces of Arab irregulars led by Auda Abu Tayi. After this successful expedition, the Ottomans were cut off the Red Sea and Te Lawrence became an advisor of Prince Faisal in the Arab revolt against the Ottomans.

Arab Revolt

The troops of Ottoman Empire had a way better army and technology than Faisal’s forces led by Lawrence and many other, but it was hard for Ottomans to take offensive action as the movement of the supplies was very difficult. After an unsuccessful attempt to capture Medina from Ottoman forces in October 1916, Lawrence convinced the Arabs to leave it alone and cut off the supply line instead. In March 1917, Lawrence led the first successful attack on Hejaz railroad which connected Medina to Damascus and the Dead Sea. This was succeeded by many other such attacks by Arabs and other British and French officers. Later on, in 1918 October 1st, he successfully led Arab armies to Damascus where he found the Arab Revolt Flag already risen by the Arab Nationalists as the Ottoman Empire was in full retreat. Finally, On January 9th, 1919, cut off from the rest of the Ottoman Empire, Medina surrendered under the order from Turkish Government.

Ottoman defense

You might wonder why such a powerful Navy as the British Empire is, requires such an orthodox attack on a coastal town like Aqaba. The problem is that this town stands at the end of a narrow Red Sea which is surrounded by mountains which were heavily defended. Most of the Ottomans defence was prepared for an attack by the sea as it was thought that the East is protected by vast sands of the Nefud desert. And to do so was a risky business. A simple cheap naval mine could sink an expensive British naval ship and it is very hard for smaller vessels to do a scouting mission defusing the mines in this heavily guarded area from the land. During the First World War, clearing out defences on the land proved to be close to impossible even for the professional ground army, not to mention the naval forces which infamously were decimated during such attempts.

Gallipoli campaign

Even though the Ottomans were a declining superpower back in the times of the First World War, this tactic proved to be very effective and even cost Winston Churchill his chair of First Lord of Admiralty after a major failure for allies at the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915–16. This event is considered to be the only major victory for the Ottomans during the First War and they were led by Colonel Mustafa Kemal himself, better known as the Father of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. The success of these defenses became a basis for the independence of Turkey.