The Arabian Commission to the Peace Conference at Versailles, including Emir Faisal and T. E. Lawrence, 22nd January 1919

Part 3. The Kingdom of Iraq and Shaikh Mahmoud’s Kingdom of Kurdistan

Richard Wilding

December 2023

This is the third in a series of articles originally written by Richard Wilding for the Kurdistan Chronicle magazine examining relations between the Kurds and the British during and after World War I. 

During World War I, the British government agreed to recognise Arab independence after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca and his Hashemite family launching an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The Sharif obliged and Arab forces, led by his second son Faisal, expelled the Ottomans from the Hejaz (now in Saudi Arabia), in a campaign later romanticised by T.E. Lawrence.

After the war ended, Britain sought to counter Ottoman claims to the disputed Mosul vilayet by appointing Shaikh Mahmoud as ‘Hukmdar’ (ruler) in Sulaimani. Finding the restrictions placed upon him by the British too severe, Shaikh Mahmoud led a Kurdish uprising. He was captured and sentenced to death, later reduced to ten years’ imprisonment, and was exiled to India.

In January 1919, Emir Faisal led an Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. With the support of Gertrude Bell and other influential British ‘Arabists’, Faisal argued for the establishment of independent emirates for Arab regions previously ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Treaty of Sèvres, 10th August 1920

Faisal was proclaimed King by the Syrian National Congress in Damascus on the 8th March 1920. However, his reign in Syria was to last just four months. At the San Remo Conference of April 1920, the League of Nations Mandate for Syria was allocated to France and the Mandate for Mesopotamia to Britain, reflecting the earlier secret Sykes-Picot agreement. Faisal’s dream of an independent Arab kingdom of Syria ended in July 1920, when the French ejected him from Damascus. The British, especially T.E. Lawrence, believed that Britain had reneged on its promises to the Hashemite family and, in effect, owed Faisal a kingdom.

On the 10th August 1920, despite rapidly decreasing power and legitimacy back home in Turkey, the Ottoman Grand Vizier signed the Treaty of Sèvres with the Allied powers, finalising plans for the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The treaty included provisions for an independent Kurdish state, reflecting earlier British plans drawn up in 1918. However, these terms stirred hostility back home in Turkey where, amidst the nationalist revolt led by Atatürk, the treaty’s signatories were stripped of their citizenship.

Group including Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence in front of the sphinx and pyramids during the Cairo Conference, 1921

Gertrude Bell / Newcastle University

From the end of 1918 until 1921 the situation in Iraq remained dangerously unstable. The British military administration were seen as infidels by the Shia majority and by many Sunnis, who regretted no longer being under the (Ottoman) Caliphate. In 1920, a revolt began in Baghdad and spread to Shia areas in the south. Its demands were independence from British rule and the creation of an Arab government.

In March 1921, Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, convened a conference in Cairo. The British government, alarmed by the unrest in Iraq, agreed to support the fugitive Emir Faisal as candidate for a newly created throne of Iraq. The British hoped that Faisal, as a direct descendant of the Prophet, would be granted sufficient legitimacy by the Arabs, but as an outsider in Iraq he was also weak enough to remain compliant to British interests. On the 23rd August, after a referendum in which the affirmative vote was officially returned as 96 per cent, Emir Faisal was proclaimed King.

The dissenting 4 per cent was chiefly accounted for by Kirkuk, where the Turks favoured a ruler to be chosen from the Ottoman dynasty and the Kurds asked for a Kurdish administration. The liwa of Sulaimani refused to participate in the referendum, and no representative from either liwa attended the accession ceremonies.

King Faisal I of Iraq

After the Treaty of Sèvres, the Turks redoubled their efforts to impress upon the inhabitants of the Mosul vilayet that the treaty was not worth the paper it was written on. There were threats of invasion, warnings to ‘traitors’, and, above all, the religious appeal for loyalty to the Sultan who was also Caliph.

The Turkish government had given one of their agents, Ramzi Bey, the title of Qaimmaqam of Ruwandiz and dispatched him to the district. On his arrival towards the end of May, he gave assurances of the imminent arrival of large Turkish reinforcements, with whose help Sulaimani, Kirkuk and Erbil were to be wrested from the British. He was followed in the middle of June by Colonel Ali Shefiq, popularly known as Özdemir (“pure iron”), who was to play the leading role in inciting rebellion among the Kurdish tribes.

At the end of May, the Turkish incitement triggered a revolt by the Hamawand tribe led by Kerim-i Fattah Beg, who had joined Shaikh Mahmoud in the Kurdish uprising of 1919. On the 18th June, the British officers Captain Bond and his colleague Captain Makant were killed by the Hamawand in the Bazian Pass, reported as a treacherous murder in British newspapers.

By this time, Shaikh Mahmoud had already been brought back by the British from India as far as Kuwait. The logical development was a decision to bring him back to Sulaimani to dampen the growing Kurdish rebellion. In return, Mahmoud promised to prevent the Turks from entering the liwa of Sulaimani. He also accepted the condition that he would on no account interfere in the affairs of Kirkuk and Erbil.

Shaikh Mahmoud
Chris Kutschera Archive / The PhotoLibrary of Kurdistan

Shaikh Mahmoud left Baghdad for Kirkuk by train on 20th September 1922. When he reached the rail-head four miles from Kifri the next morning, hundreds of horsemen from the local tribes invaded the station, shouting and waving banners. They dragged the Shaikh away in triumph before an official deputation from Sulaimani could give their speeches of welcome.

The rapturous reception quickly erased Shaikh Mahmoud’s memory of the limits imposed upon him by the British. He reached Sulaimani on the 30th September and was greeted as ruler of an independent Kurdistan. The local press emphasised that the Major Noel, who had been appointed by the British as Liaison Officer, was nothing more than a Consul to serve as a go-between with the High Commissioner. On the 10th October 1922, a decree ‘given in Sulaimani the capital of Kurdistan’ announced the formation of a cabinet. In November, Shaikh Mahmoud assumed the title of King.

This article originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of the Kurdistan Chronicle magazine.

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