Page 47 - Arabian Studies (V)

The British Government and the
Khurmah Dispute, 1918-19191

Daniel Silverfarb

In 1918 and 1919 the Sharif Husayn of the Hijaz, Britain’s leading
Arab ally in the war against the Ottoman Empire, struggled bitterly
against Ibn Sa‘ud for control of the oasis town of Khurmah.2
Khurmah was located on the border between Najd and the Hijaz
astride one of the principal trade routes linking Riyadh and Mecca
and was then a commercial centre with a population of about
5,000. The town was unwalled and situated in the middle of an
extensive plantation of date palms. The inhabitants of Khurmah
were mainly from the Subai’ tribe, most of whose members lived in
Najd. In the early years of the twentieth century Khurmah enjoyed
an autonomous status under the suzerainty of the Sharif of Mecca,
though during much of the previous century it had been controlled
by Najd. The population of Khurmah was predominantly Wahhabi
and therefore drawn towards Najd for religious reasons.
During the First World War the loyalty of the people of
Khurmah inclined increasingly towards Ibn Sa‘ud as a result of a
systematic and successful campaign of proselytism by Ikhwan
missionaries from Najd.3 The Ikhwan were a great source of
strength to Ibn Sa‘ud, because they combined the traditional
mobility and love of combat of the bedouin with the steadfastness
in battle of the townsmen. At the time of the Khurmah crisis the
Ikhwan probably numbered at least 30,000 men, though supply
problems made it difficult to utilize more than about 5,000 in a
single campaign.
By the latter stages of the first world war Husayn was acutely
conscious of the threat to his interests posed by Ibn Sa‘ud as leader
of the Ikhwan. In December 1917 the Sharif’s son, Faysal, stated
that he wanted to ‘strangle the new faith in the desert, until it
becomes again a dogmatic abstraction’.4 The following month
Commander D.G. Hogarth, former head of the Arab Bureau in

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