page_title: Tyre, Lebanon
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: Tyre, Lebanon / History / Ottoman period (1516–1918) / Rise and rivalry of the feudal Zu'ama / World War I
caption_attribution_description: English: Tyre - Seaforth Highlanders resting in their march north to Beyrout image: infantrymen of the Seaforth Highlanders sit and rest along a narrow road that runs across the composition. Further back can be seen the buildings and roofs of the town of Tyre, with the sea visible beyond.
context_page_description: Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido. The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1984.
  The historian Ernest Renan noted:
  One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins.
  Today Tyre is the fifth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Aley and Sidon, It is the capital of the Tyre District in the South Governorate. There were approximately 200,000 inhabitants in the Tyre urban area in 2016, including many refugees.
context_section_description: At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, many Shiites in Jabal Amel were conscripted and thus had to leave their farms. One year later famine struck as locusts devastated the fields. This triggered another wave of emigration to Africa and also to the US.
  As opposition to the Turkish rulers grew across the Levant, Arab nationalism was on the rise in Jabal Amel as well. However, in March 1915 the Ottoman authorities launched a new wave repressions and arrested a number of activists of the Decentralisation Party in Tyre as in other cities like Sidon, Nabatiya, and Beirut. Some of them were executed.
  Also in 1915, Abdel Karim al-Khalil – the leader of the al-Khalil clan, who were the Tyrian allies of the al-Sulh dynasty from Sidon – was executed by the Ottoman regime "at the instigation" of Kamil al-As'ad from the rival Ali al-Saghir dynasty, some believed.
  Still in 1915, fighting reached Tyre: in November of that year, four locals spying for the French intelligence were reportedly captured in Tyre and two of them executed in Beirut. The commander of the French Navy protected cruiser D'Estrés, who had demanded their release, in retaliation ordered the shelling of Tyre's harbour, where four boats were sunk. In February 1917, British intelligence agents undertook another operation to the area of Tyre to gather information about the Ottoman presence there.
  In September 1918, following the British victory at the Battle of Megiddo over the Ottoman Yildirim Army Group, the latter's remnants were forced to withdraw towards Damascus. The commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force General Edmund Allenby ordered his infantry and corps cavalry to capture the ports of Beirut and Tripoli to supply his forces in their Pursuit to Haritan of the retreating Ottoman troops.
  Tyre was a strategic supply post on this route. Within three days, the second column of the British Indian Army's 7th (Meerut) Division paved the way across the Ladder of Tyre by expanding the narrow track over the steep cliff. Meanwhile, the XXI Corps Cavalry Regiment comprising one squadron Duke of Lancashire Yeomanry and two squadrons of 1/1st Hertfordshire Yeomanry advanced quickly and arrived in Tyre on 4 October. On their way they encountered "few if any Turkish troops." Three days supplies were delivered by the Royal Navy to the port of Tyre for the infantry columns on their way north first to Sidon and then to Beirut.
caption: "Tyre - Seaforth Highlanders resting in their march north to Beyrout" during WWI, painting by James McBey
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