Saudi Arabia: Lawrence of Arabia’s home restored as tourist attraction after decades of neglect
Red Sea property had become derelict after locals speculated it was haunted
Abu Dhabi: A Red Sea house where Lawrence of Arabia stayed on the eve of his famous campaign in the desert is to be restored as a tourist attraction, Saudi Arabia’s tourism ministry has announced.
Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence settled for a short time in the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea during the Great Arab Revolt of 1916 when the port became an important supply base for the British and Arab forces fighting the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
Despite calls from historians to protect the home, the two-story building in which Lawrence stayed was in ruins amid local rumours that it was haunted.
Who is Lawrence of Arabia?
He is a British researcher, writer and military who mobilised for the Arab revolution in World War I and became known as “Lawrence of Arabia”.
On August 16, 1888, Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in North Wales to an English father and a Scottish mother. His father, Thomas Chapman, left his wife to live with Lawrence’s mother Sarah Madden, who was a nanny.
Lawrence studied at Oxford University and from a young age loved painting on copper, and was particularly attached to archeology. His interest in the Arabs stemmed from his passion for history and archeology.
In 1909, the man, whose height did not exceed 167 cm, was able to make a walking trip that traveled 1,100 miles in Syria and Palestine to paint paintings and photographed thirty castles. A year later, he joined the archaeological excavations in Syria, where he stayed from 1911 to 1914, where he learned and mastered the Arabic language, and developed deep sympathy for the Arabs, who had suffered for centuries under the Turkish yoke. At the beginning of 1914, Lawrence participated in a secret military reconnaissance mission in North Sinai, under the cover of an archaeological exploration mission. This mission had a profound effect on his career.
As the war approached, Lord Kitchener, the British official in Egypt, wanted to map out the area between the Sinai and the Negev desert, which was under Turkish rule, and the area that the Turks had expected to use as a way to attack the Suez Canal.
After the outbreak of the war in August 1914, Lawrence joined the geography department of the War Ministry in London and then became an intelligence officer in Cairo to be part of the intelligence work to assist the war effort against Turkey, which fought the war on the side of Germany against the Allies.
One of the main goals was to explore how to encourage the Arab tribes to revolt against the Turks. In mid-1915 his brothers Will and Frank were killed in the war in France.
The Great Arab Revolt
In June 1916, the Arab Revolt against Turkey, an ally of Germany, began, a revolution that the British worked hard to encourage.
Lawrence went to the Arabian Peninsula and worked with the Arab irregular forces for two consecutive years. Lawrence became a liaison officer and advisor to Faisal, son of the leader of the Sharif Hussein bin Ali revolution in Mecca. Lawrence was a distinguished tactician and highly influential theoretician in guerrilla warfare against the Turks.
His small and effective irregular forces attacked Turkish communication and supply routes and prevented thousands of Turkish troops from participating in the fighting against the Allied forces led by General Edward Allenby.
Lawrence’s overarching goal was to help the Arabs achieve the military success that would lead to post-war self-government.
In June 1917 the Arab forces achieved their first major victory when they captured Aqaba, a strategically important port on the Red Sea, and the success continued as they gradually made their way north.
Lawrence’s proposals for boundaries
After the fall of Damascus in October 1918, Lawrence left for London and then the Paris Peace Conference to press for Arab independence.
Lawrence’s memorandum to the Eastern Committee of the War Cabinet on November 4, 1918, contained proposals regarding borders.
Lawrence proposed two separate governments for the Kurdish and Arab regions of present-day Iraq. He also proposed two separate governments for Arabs in Mesopotamia and Armenians in Syria.
However, the British and French had agreed, before the start of the Paris conference, on the future of the Arab lands that were subject to Turkey.
Lawrence was disappointed by his failure to secure Arab autonomy. He wanted Arabia to achieve independence.
In 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill appointed Lawrence as his advisor on Arab affairs, but he resigned in 1922 and joined the Royal Air Force.
The British Encyclopedia says that Lawrence left the Royal Air Force and retired on February 26, 1935, and then his life ended in middle age away from the Arabian Peninsula, as he died on May 19 of the same year in a motorcycle accident.
Since then, some have considered him a great writer, while others see him as at best a fringe mark of the last days of the empire.