Husayn in Mecca: Quest for Authority
Upon the finalization of the appointment to the grand sharifate in mid-November, İstanbul advised Husayn to proceed to Mecca swiftly and designated his brother Nasir ibn ‘Ali, who already resided in Mecca, as acting grand sharif until his arrival.[21] The new emir arrived in Jidda on 3 December 1908 in pilgrim garb to find a less than enthusiastic popular reception.[22] In an address to tribal shaykhs he announced that he could secure with one telegraph enough troops to turn the entire Hijaz upside down.[23] Indeed, İstanbul expected him to quell tribal unrest and to pacify the caravan routes in order to ensure the orderly progress of the starting pilgrimage season.
Husayn’s first few months in Mecca set the tone of his term as grand sharif. Relatively discredited and weakened as the grand sharif’s office was in the fall of 1908, Husayn did his utmost to reestablish his authority. He could enhance his power with respect to the tribes and rival emirs in other parts of the Peninsula only to the extent that he could demonstrate İstanbul’s support for him. Conversely, he could maintain a certain amount of freedom of action only to the extent that he could convince İstanbul of his unchallenged local power. Therefore, his aim was not so much to discredit central authority but to prove to the state authorities that he was a capable and reliable ally. On the one hand he tried to elevate his political position and the status of the office of the grand sharif, and on the other, he fulfilled the assignments given to him by the central government.
At the time of Husayn’s arrival, the Beduins were in revolt near Medina because pilgrims were being transported for the first time from Syria on the recently extended railway, threatening the Beduin livelihood based on the camel business. The new muhafız of Medina, Basri Pasha, who was appointed to his post only days before Sharif Husayn,[24] wrote to İstanbul asking for the grand sharif’s intercession and his counsel to the Beduins in arms.[25] Husayn sent an emissary to Medina “equipped with the necessary advice,” which the sharif thought would elicit the desired end, but he also urged serious negotiations between the Beduins and the government for a comprehensive settlement.[26] To complement his services, the sharif also asked İstanbul to send uninscribed medals to be awarded to various shaykhs, as he saw fit.[27] The grand vizierate complied with the request, merely asking that the names of the conferees be submitted subsequently. As this specific case of the appeasement of a tribal group shows, both the sharif and the government found it necessary to allow the other’s local prestige to grow in order to achieve their respective objectives.
Husayn’s first opportunity to demonstrate his influence over the tribes of the Hijaz came at the end of the pilgrimage season in January 1909, when the officially appointed leader of the pilgrimage caravan, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Yusuf, resigned his post to protest the inadequacy of military protection supplied for safe passage through regions of Beduin unrest on the return journey.[28] Husayn nominated his brother Nasir, who had served as acting sharif during Husayn’s journey from İstanbul, to lead the caravan from Mecca to Damascus, accompanied by his son ‘Abdullah. Nasir and ‘Abdullah executed the mission, dutifully keeping the Ministry of the Interior informed of their precise movements.[29] The safe return of the caravan to Medina, and from there by railway to Damascus, enhanced Sharif Husayn’s standing both in the eyes of the government and the tribes.
In his later memoirs, ‘Abdullah interpreted the safe passage of the caravan under the auspices of the grand sharif—when the official entrusted with the duty refrained from making the journey—as a political victory that gained Husayn the upper hand in the Hijaz vis-à-vis the government early in his term.[30] This interpretation has prevailed without critical examination, and the historical significance of the post of emirülhac has lent credibility to it. Indeed, when the direct authority of İstanbul did not extend beyond Damascus, the command of the caravan by a prominent representative of the central government had signified the assertion of central authority in the tribal areas of the Hijaz.[31] In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the governors of Damascus themselves had fulfilled this important task. With the Hijaz Railway making Medina an Ottoman outpost further south, however, the symbolic importance of the emirülhac diminished. The grand vizier considered eliminating the office altogether confronted with ‘Abd al-Rahman’s noncompliance.[32]
In fact, the government deliberately sought to enhance the prestige of its newly arrived agent in Mecca and hence gave approval to the transfer of the command of the pilgrimage to members of Sharif Husayn’s family.[33] The sharif did not so much seek a tour de force to embarrass the government as to establish himself locally as its trusted agent. From Husayn’s viewpoint, the completion of the task by Nasir would establish the emirate’s authority in northern Hijaz, and would coincidentally remove a potential rival from Mecca, while he tried to assert his power there as a newcomer. Thus, Sharif Husayn asked İstanbul in February 1909 for a precise definition of his prerogatives as emir.[34] In the same letter he asked the grand vizier that his brother be invited to İstanbul and appointed to the newly constituted Chamber of Notables. Husayn had an interest in having members of his family in high office in İstanbul so that they could maintain contacts with Ottoman statesmen, follow up political developments, and report to him. (For this purpose he later chose his sons.) But he also wanted to remove Nasir from the Hijaz. Nasir’s senate membership did not take effect immediately.[35] He did not go to İstanbul until July 1909[36] and was subsequently admitted to Parliament as senator.[37] Similarly, Husayn insisted on the removal of the former grand sharif, ‘Ali, who was ailing and repeatedly postponing his departure.[38]
Sharif Husayn arrived in the Hijaz too late to influence the elections to Parliament. The 1908 elections were highly irregular in the Hijaz, and there was the semblance of official electoral process only in the towns of Mecca, Medina, and Jidda, each of which elected one deputy. On 4 November, almost one month before Husayn arrived in the Hijaz, Governor Kazım Pasha reported to the Ministry of the Interior that ‘Abdullah Saraj (Mecca), Qasim Zaynal (Jidda), and Sayyid ‘Abd al-Qadir (Medina) had been elected as deputies for the province.[39] Both ‘Abd al-Qadir and Saraj, who was the Hanafi müftü of Mecca,[40] represented the Hijazi religious notability, but no member of the sharifian families was elected. In Jidda the town notables elected Zaynal, the well-educated son of a wealthy Persian (naturalized Ottoman) shipping agent, “for reasons connected with their own local trade.”[41] Zaynal’s business was in decline, and he ventured into a public career, which had started with a prior experiment with journalism in Egypt.[42]
British Consul Monahan described the conduct of the Jidda election as follows:
The consul also added that the eight electors who voted in Zaynal’s favor were either his relatives or in close business contact with him.About two months ago the local government invited the inhabitants of Jidda to register themselves as voters but there was no response as the inhabitants thought it might mean enrolment for military service. Then the three headmen (sheikhs) of the three wards of the town were charged to choose 600 notables, 200 from each ward. These notables chose a body of 25 and the 25 finally voted about four weeks ago, the largest number of votes, eight, being obtained by one Kasim Zeinal. Little or no public interest was taken in the election.[43]
While ‘Abd al-Qadir[44] and Zaynal[45] took their seats in Parliament, neither Saraj nor any other representative from Mecca went to İstanbul.[46] Therefore, the Mecca election had to be repeated one year later, in February 1910. By this time Sharif Husayn had managed to assert his authority in Mecca. Taking advantage of the general lack of interest in Parliament among the Meccan notables, he managed to have his son ‘Abdullah elected as deputy in an election where a few hundred notables chose among twenty-four candidates.[47]
The local Committees of Union and Progress that had been organized in August 1908 carried on their activities in the Hijaz, often all too ready to frustrate the sharif’s schemes to dominate the politics of the three major towns. Two newspapers were established in Mecca after the Revolution, Hijaz and Shams al-haqiqa (Sun of Truth). The first was the official Turkish/Arabic weekly, which promoted İstanbul’s policies and featured “articles in praise of Islam and freedom, and, in one of its earlier numbers, a seemingly rather fanciful lucubration about the Prophet and the Arab race being the originators of parliaments.”[48] The second paper, Shams al-haqiqa, was the local Unionist paper and had separate Turkish and Arabic issues differing in content. The Turkish numbers contained criticism of the sharif’s conduct of policy. Shams al-haqiqa’s readers were the relatively better-educated and more cosmopolitan elite of Mecca, and its objective was to counteract the sharif’s domination of urban politics.[49]
Shams al-haqiqa emerged in the spring of 1909 as the organ of the sharif’s political opponents, apparently Unionists.[50] Husayn was incensed by an article that reported his mission against the Mutayr tribe as a failure. He protested to the grand vizier, specifically accusing three reporters (two of whom worked in the financial administration of the province) of disturbing with inflammatory articles the peace and order that he was struggling to establish.[51] In these letters Husayn did not fail to make references to the honorable life he had led despite the injustice and oppression of Sultan Abdülhamid (just deposed by the Unionists), thus ingratiating himself to the new leadership, but also suggesting that he would insist on demands that he perceived were necessary to secure his honor and prestige.[52] He blamed Governor Fuad Pasha, who had replaced Kazım a few months before, for allowing the paper to be printed in the government printing house and for procrastinating in taking action against the two officials Hasan Makki and ‘Abdullah Qasim and their accomplice Nuri Daghistani, a merchant.[53] Sharif Husayn urged the government earnestly to expel these three men in the interests of the “nation and the state.”
In the summer of 1909 the CUP had started to assert itself in imperial administration, with Talat and Cavid now in key cabinet posts. The sharif’s complaint about the financial officials involved with the Shams al-haqiqa and the governor’s alleged permissive attitude to their wrongdoing was directed to Talat and Cavid’s ministries, the Interior and the Finance, both of which declined to take action on the sharif’s request for the removal of these officials. The grand vizier independently informed the sharif that the third person, Nuri Daghistani, was not a government official and that no action could be taken against him unless he were found guilty of some crime by a court.[54] Talat enjoined the governor to find out from the sharif the circumstances that would justify a dismissal or transfer of the two officials—an initiative interpreted by the sharif as a sign of distrust.[55] In a similar manner, Cavid maintained that there were no sound grounds upon which his ministry could take action for a transfer, and that such a transfer would in any case be contrary to the principle of tevsi’-i mezuniyet, which stipulated that the appointment and dismissal of such officials be carried out by the provincial government.[56]
During the course of this correspondence in October 1909, the government replaced Governor Fuad Pasha with Şevket Pasha, governor of Baghdad and commander of the Sixth Army, in view of the differences of opinion between Fuad and the sharif.[57] However, the change in the top administrative position of the province did not satisfy Sharif Husayn, who continued to push for the transfer of Makki and Qasim. Makki was still in Mecca during the February 1910 by-election and was nominated as a candidate. He received the fourth-largest number of votes in a race that took place among two dozen candidates for two positions.[58] The Ministry of Finance finally transferred Makki and Qasim from Mecca in March 1910—with promotions.[59]
Even though the local branches of the CUP continued to be a factor in local politics, the influence of the Unionists steadily diminished in the Hijaz, reflecting the CUP’s declining fortunes in İstanbul. On the eve of the 1912 elections the new Liberty and Entente branch in Mecca had entirely overshadowed the local CUP.[60] Sharif Husayn’s attitude toward the Entente remained as equivocal as his attitude toward the CUP. In the elections he promoted his sons, while the two Hijazi incumbents who had sided with the Entente lost their seats. In general, Husayn’s endeavors to preserve the emirate’s power and prestige required that he continue to cooperate with the central government.