Enemy on the Euphrates by Ian Rutledge Read Free Book Online Page A

himself comfortable on his couch and study the communication in more detail.
    Small white turban and black robe – it hadn’t always been like that. This modest attire of the Sharif had been an innovation of one of Husayn’s predecessors, his uncle Sharif ‘Awn al-Rafiq, at a time when the old uncontaminated oriental life was beginning to be replaced and the bravura of the Sharif’s court reduced in tone. Husayn could still remember those earlier days. When he was only three years old, already proud in the knowledge that he was a sharif – the Sunni equivalent of a sayyid – he had travelled from Istanbul to Mecca to witness the investiture of his grandfather Muhammad ibn ‘Awn. Then, the Sharif had been dressed in a scarlet and gold gown with huge hand-concealing wide sleeves and a gigantic turban. Ostrich-feathered fans, armoured black slaves, swordsmen and trumpeters paraded to announce the Sharif’s rising for the dawn prayer. A phalanx of pikemen before him, blind reciters of the Qur’an intoning around him, the Sharif paraded before his people throwing largesse as he rode by, followed by his fearsome black-faced executioners. 18 Now the age-old panoply had gone – for good, Husayn had no doubt; but today not only the panoply but the wealth, power and prestige of the Sharifate were under threat.
    Husayn’s appointment as sharif by Sultan Abdul Hamid in November 1908 had occurred in the very midst of the fractious political manoeuvring of the Young Turk revolution. The military officers who had led that revolution had shied away from deposing the old sultan while he, in turn, had originally feigned acceptance of the return of a liberal constitution, parliament and a free press. A failed counterrevolution in April 1909 saw Abdul Hamid sent into exile and replaced by his more pliable younger brother, Mehmet, but in the intervening period, Abdul Hamid had been able to continue exercising many of his traditional powers of patronage. Among these was his right to appoint the Sharif of Mecca, and when the existing incumbent had been chased out by the local CUP and Abdul Hamid’s first choice of replacement unexpectedly died, the sultan chose Husayn. In doing so he ensured that the Sharifate rested in the hands of someone he knew to be a social and religious conservative like himself.
    Over the next six years, Sharif Husayn grew increasingly hostile to the government in Istanbul. All his instincts were contrary to the innovative spirit of the movement which now held power there and he suspected that they intended to abolish shari‘a law and the powers of the Sharif’s courts. Husayn also feared for his wealth. The income of his stony, unproductive fiefdom depended crucially on the subsidies which, from time immemorial, had flowed from Istanbul – subsidies which reflected the honour and prestige of the Sharif’s office and the recognition throughout Sunni Islam that the ashraf (plural of sharif) were the nearest thing to an aristocracy of the blood which existed in their theoretically egalitarian Sunni Muslim world. Yet the signs were growing unmistakably that the CUP, with their reforms and railways, were seeking to undermine his power and privilege, might reduce his subsidies and even replace him by a rival candidate from the ashraf, something that had happened on numerous occasions in the past. So now he was seriously considering rebellion.
    But Husayn was an extremely cautious player of power politics and he pondered long over the appropriate reply to Kitchener. Eighteen years at the court of Sultan Abdul Hamid – eighteen years in a condition of comfortable but unmistakably compulsory residence, verging on imprisonment – had taught him some valuable lessons in politics and diplomacy. He had to judiciously balance his grievances against the government with his fears that rebellion against it might be seen by the Muslim world as a rebellion against Islam. Successfully appropriating the caliphate would do