Page 277 - Life of Gertrude Bell

faisal’s kingdom 251
cally suited to become the hub of an Asiatic empire. Hogarth,
‘father confessor’ of the Arab Bureau, had taken up the argument
in the Arab Bulletin:

The compelling cause [of Baghdad’s ascendency] was rather
the force of economic gravity in the great plain-land of South-
West Asia. Its centre shifted as inevitably from Damascus to
Iraq as it had shifted from Mecca to Damascus ... Should
Empire be there again, the centre of gravity will swing round
the same arc. Mecca will not keep it, nor can Damascus long;
its swing may be more slow, since Iraq is not now what it was
before I-Ialuga ruined its canals; but eventually it must gravitate
to the old point of rest, and Semitic Empire will cease as before
to be purely Arab or purely Semitic, or anything more than
West Asian. There are Arabs who know this tradition and hope
of the Hashemite Caliphate of Baghdad was doubtless in the
minds of the Emir of Mecca when he claimed the style and title
of Hashemite King.

From the moment he arrived in Baghdad, Faisal had fulminated
against the French and their mandate in Syria, and had talked
openly to Gertrude of extending his empire to the bordering
lands. He and his British advisers had reckoned without the
most potent force in Arabia, however, Ibn Saud. Gertrude had
begun, as did most people who set eyes on that imposing ruler of
Najd and ‘all its tribes’, with admiration. She finished by loathing
him; a woman scorned, she hoped profoundly that he would be
put in his place. In 1914 Britain had signed a treaty with the Turks
designed to restrict Ibn Saud to his homeland and to guarantee
his rival Ibn Rashid against attack. In 1917 Philby had been sent
to Riyadh in the company of Lt-Colonel CunlifFe Owen as repre­
sentative of the C.-in-G, and Colonel Hamilton of Kuwait, to re­
verse that policy by offering Ibn Saud money and arms with which
to attack Hail. But Ibn Saud had waited on Britain for six years
by then. Now he saw which way the wind was blowing and he
decided to bide his time.
In November 1921, when Ibn Saud finally took Hail, the
Shammar tribesmen sought refuge in Iraq. Just before the event,
Gertrude wrote: ‘The problem is that the Shammar, harried by
Ibn Saud, have fled in large numbers from the vicinity of Hail and
taken refuge with our own Anai2a ... Faisal was most wise about
it and concocted schemes for restraining the Shammar, even