ثورة فلسطين - أسبابها ونتائجها
The Palestine Revolt: Its Causes and Consequencesby Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā

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ودان لهم أمراء الحجاز؛ ولكنهم ظلوا أصحاب السيادة والنفوذ فيه وحاولوا بعد ذلك كله قهر عرب الجزيرة وإخضاعهم لحكمهم فظلوا يقاتلونهم عليها أربعة قرون ونيف، فنقصوها من أطرافها، واستولوا على ثغورهم البحرية؛ ولكنهم عجزوا عن قهر أئمة اليمن وأمراء نجد وإخضاعهم لحكمهم، فالعرب الصرحاء الخُلَّص ظلوا في عقر جزيرتهم مستقلين في حكم أنفسهم، لم يقهرهم الترك عليها، بل ظلوا يدافعونهم عنها وينتصرون عليهم فيها، حتى إذا مزقت الحرب الأخيرة سلطنتهم الواسعة، ظهرت جزيرة العرب في الوجود مستقلة تامة الاستقلال سالمة من كل نفوذ أو امتياز للدول الأجنبية فيها، إلا ثغر عدن الذي اغتصبته الدولة البريطانية في القرن الماضي والمقاطعات التسع اليمنية التي تدَّعي حمايتها ولا تتدخل في أمر حكوماتها، وإلا ما كان وهبه الملك علي بن حسين من أرض مملكة الحجاز لإمارة شرق الأردن، وهو ثغر العقبة المنيع على البحر الأحمر والمنطقة الممتدة منه إلى معان أهم المحطات لسكة الحديد الحجازية، فكل من هذا وذاك موضع نزاع بين الإنكليز والدولتين العربيتين المستقلتين في جزيرة العرب: مملكة اليمن الإمامية ومملكة الحجاز ونجد الملكية، وقد اعترفت الدولة البريطانية بالاستقلال التام المطلق لهذه الدولة دون تلك، وعقدت معها معاهدة على قاعدة المساواة؛ ولكن بقيت منطقة العقبة ومعان موقوفة لتحل عقدتها بالمفاوضة السياسية، وأما الاعتراف باستقلال اليمن فقد تعددت فيه المراسلات والمفاوضات بين الدولتين البريطانية واليمانية، ولابد أن تنتهي قريبًا برجوع الأولى عن كل حق تدعيه فيما عدا منطقة عدن، فإنه يستحيل تركها إياها لليمن.

حال الممالك العربية اليوم

(9) ذلك شأن مهد الأمة العربية ومنبت أرومتها، ومعقل قوتها، لم يغلبها عليه كله أحد، فهي لا تزال فيه عزيزة النفس، قوية البأس، مرفوعة الرأس، وأما ما يتصل به من مواطن حضارتها وعمرانها، وعواصم خلافتها أو سلطانها، وهي مصر وسورية والعراق فقد احتل أكثره الإنكليز وبعضه الفرنسيس قبل الحرب وبعدها، وجعلوا حكوماتها العربية تحت سيطرتهم العسكرية بدعوى مساعدتها على إصلاح شؤونها إلى أن تقوى على النهوض بأعباء استقلالها المعترف لها به بنفسها، ولا تزال

English
translation

and the emirs of the Hijaz submitted to them. Yet the Ottomans continued to hold sovereignty and influence there. After all this they tried to subdue the Arabs of the Peninsula and bring them under their rule, fighting them for more than four centuries. They encroached on it from its edges and took their seaports, but could not subdue the imams of Yemen and emirs of Najd. The pure Arabs remained independent and governed themselves in the heart of their peninsula. The Turks did not conquer them there. The Arabs continued to defend their land against them and defeat them in it. When the recent war broke apart the vast Ottoman sultanate, the Arabian Peninsula appeared fully independent, free from foreign influence or special rights for foreign states, except for the port of Aden, which the British state had seized in the previous century, and nine Yemeni districts it claims to protect while leaving their governments alone. There was also the land that King Ali ibn Hussein gave from the Kingdom of the Hijaz to the Emirate of Transjordan: the fortified Red Sea port of Aqaba and the region stretching from it to Maan, a major station on the Hijaz railway. Both matters are disputed between the English and the two independent Arab states of the Peninsula, the Imamate Kingdom of Yemen and the Kingdom of the Hijaz and Najd. The British state has recognized the full and absolute independence of the latter but not the former, and made a treaty with the latter on equal terms. The Aqaba and Maan region, however, remains suspended pending political negotiation. On recognition of Yemen's independence, the British and Yemeni states have exchanged many letters and held many negotiations. These must soon end in Britain's giving up every right it claims apart from the Aden region, which it cannot possibly relinquish to Yemen.

The condition of the Arab kingdoms today

(9) Such is the cradle of the Arab nation, the place from which its stock arose and the stronghold of its power. No one has ever conquered it in full. Its people remain proud, strong, and dignified there. As for the lands linked to its civilization and settlement, and the capitals of its caliphate or sultanate, namely Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, the English occupied most of them and the French some, before and after the war. They placed their Arab governments under military control, claiming to help them put their affairs in order until they were strong enough to bear the burdens of the independence those powers themselves had recognized. These Arab peoples continue

Analysis

Riḍā presents the Arabian Peninsula as unconquered at its core and disputes British claims around Yemen, Aden, Aqaba, and Maan. The 1927 Treaty of Jeddah confirms British recognition of the complete and absolute independence of Ibn Saud's dominions. Its exchanged frontier notes show that Ibn Saud did not accept a final settlement of Maʿān and Aqaba, but agreed to maintain the status quo pending one. The treaty and notes do not establish Riḍā's account of an earlier land grant by King Ali, the Yemen claims, or the later outcome. These statements show the territorial and political map he used in 1929. He then turns to British and French control in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, continuing the sentence on p. 464.

British parliamentary statements show that the government proposed formal recognition of the Imam's independence in Yemen in 1928, later called it recognition of complete independence, and still described treaty negotiations as unresolved in December 1929. One statement called the Imam an independent sovereign. This supports Riḍā's account of repeated correspondence and negotiations without a completed recognition treaty. It does not support his prediction that Britain would surrender every claim outside Aden or settle the disputed frontier in Yemen's favor.

The longer Yemen chronology supports repeated Ottoman occupation and resistance, but not Riḍā's simple four-century formula. An Oxford chronology dates a first Ottoman period from 1538 to 1634, a second conquest of Sanaa in 1872, and the 1911 Treaty of Daʿan, which acknowledged Imam Yaḥyā's temporal and spiritual authority in the northern highlands. It also dates the British capture of Aden to 1839. These points support the survival of a distinct imamate and the source's broad Aden chronology, while showing interrupted Ottoman control and leaving its nine-district count and complete-peninsula claim unverified.

Najd was not simply beyond Ottoman power. Research based on Ottoman and European archives finds increasing Ottoman influence in central Arabia through partnership with the Rashidis from the late nineteenth century to 1918, while also describing relatively independent Bedouin politics and failed efforts to extend direct administration into central Najd. This supports Riḍā's narrower point that the Ottomans did not fully subject the region to direct rule. It corrects his absolute picture of an untouched, wholly independent interior.

A 1914 Anglo-Ottoman boundary map explicitly labels the territory adjoining Yemen as the “nine cantons of Aden.” This confirms that Riḍā's count reflects a contemporary boundary designation. It does not show that the nine cantons were nine modern administrative districts or that Britain exercised the same form of rule in each.

Jordan's official historical account dates the incorporation of Aqaba and Maʿān into Transjordan to May 1925. This confirms the territorial change behind Riḍā's dispute and places it before the 1927 frontier notes. It does not establish that King ʿAlī personally gave away land belonging to the Hijaz, or that this description settled the competing legal claims.

The postwar peninsula was not free of all foreign influence beyond Riḍā's listed exceptions. A 1928 British précis records treaty relationships and British obligations involving Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Trucial Coast, and Oman. These arrangements contradict the absolute claim of complete freedom from foreign influence or privilege. They did not create one uniform form of direct rule, so the legal and political position of each polity still requires separate treatment.