The battle of Aqaba was won by Arabs led by Auda ibu Taayi and T.E. Lawrence. This is when 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.