in Cairo military intelligence, 4.1, 4.2
at Carchemish dig, 2.1, 3.1
Feinberg and
World War I, itr.1, 5.1
aerial reconnaissance in
aerial warfare in
casualties in
Central Powers in, see Central Powers
Eastern Front in, 4.1, 5.1
European outbreak of
European powers jockeying for advantage as cause of
European theater of
as gentleman’s war
horse-mounted cavalry in
impact of Dardanelles decision on
impact on European imperial powers of
Middle Eastern theater in
Ottoman entry into, 1.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 5.1, 6.1
Ottoman humiliation in
peace process in
progress of
totalitarianism in wake of
Triple Entente in, see Triple Entente
U.S. entry into, 9.1, 10.1, 11.1, 12.1, 12.2, 13.1, 14.1, 15.1, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3
weapons changes in
Western Front in, 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 11.1, 12.1, 13.1, 14.1, 14.2, 15.1, 15.2, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, 18.1, 18.2
World War II
Prüfer in
Yale and
World Zionist Congress,
Yale, Elihu
Yale, William, itr.1, 1.1, 3.1, 3.2
Aaronsohn and, 16.1, 16.2, 18.1
background and education of
Beersheva meeting with Lawrence by, 1.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.1, 17.1, nts.1n
black market scheme of
Djemal Pasha and, 4.1, 6.1, 7.1, 10.1, 11.1
as history professor
at Kornub massif
Lawrence and, 16.1, 17.1, 18.1, epi.1
Lawrence’s Cairo encounter with
in London
in Oklahoma, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 17.1
Ottoman oil concessions explored by
Palestine oil development projects of
Panama Canal and, 2.1, 2.2, 4.1, 17.1
Paris Peace Conference and, 18.1, epi.1, epi.2
romantic entanglements and rivalries of
search for wartime role by
and Socony’s Middle East strategy, 5.1, 6.1
and Spring-Rice, 13.1, 14.1
as State Department “special agent,” 14.1, 15.1, 16.1, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, 17.5, 18.1, epi.1
Syria report of, 14.1, 14.2
Turkish hospital incident and
U.S. entry into war and changed conditions for
as U.S. military attaché to EEF, 17.1, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 18.4, 18.5, 18.6, 18.7
in wartime Cairo, 4.1, 5.1
World War II service of
Yale, William Henry
Yale Plan
Yale University, 2.1, 2.2
Yarmuk mission, 15.1, 15.2, 15.3, 16.1, 16.2, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 18.4
Yemen, 7.1, epi.1
civil war in
Yenbo, 8.1, 9.1, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 14.1
Lawrence stranded in, 9.1, 9.2
Yildirim Army Group
Yom Kippur
Young Turks (Committee of Union and Progress), 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 5.2, 10.1, 10.2, 12.1, 17.1, 17.2, 18.1, epi.1, epi.2
Abbas Hilmi II feted by
Armenian massacres and, 6.1, 7.1
Capitulations withdrawn by
conservative Arab opposition to, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1
Doris incident and, 5.1
European liberalism and
Hussein and
internal contradictions of, 4.1, 4.2
modernization, Islam, and Turanism as rallying points of
1913 coup by
seen as modern and secular, 5.1, 5.2
Yusuf, Abdul Rahman Pasha al-,
Zaki Bey, 11.1, 17.1
Zammarin
Zichron Yaakov, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 6.1, 12.1, 13.1, 15.1, nts.1n
NILI repudiated by, 15.1, 17.1
in wake of Ottoman entry into the war
Zin Desert, 1.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5
Lawrence in, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 6.1, 11.1
Zionism, Zionists, 1.1, 3.1, 6.1, 7.1, 12.1, 12.2, 14.1, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, 18.1, epi.1, epi.2, epi.3
Aaronsohn’s leadership of, 1.1, 3.1, 3.2, 9.1, 10.1, 15.1
Arab rebels and, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3
Arabs and
assimilation vs.
British, 9.1, 12.1, 12.2, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, 14.4, 15.1, 15.2, 16.1, 16.2, 16.3, 18.1
British government and, 14.1, 15.1, epi.1
definition of a Jewish state and
as divisive issue among Jews
Faisal and
Germans and, 14.1, 15.1
Hussein and
modern, founding of
opposition to, 3.1, 14.1, 14.2, 16.1
Palestine land bought by
Sykes’s support for, 9.1, 11.1, 12.1, 12.2, 14.1, 16.1, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, 18.1
Turkey and
in U.S., 3.1, 3.2, 9.1, 12.1, 12.2, 14.1, 16.1, 16.2, 17.1, 17.2
U.S. government and
Zionist Commission, 16.1, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3
Zionist Federation, U.S.
A Note About the Author
Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Sudan, Bosnia, El Salvador, and many other strife-torn countries. A contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, he has also written for Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, and Outside. He is the author of the novels Moonlight Hotel and Triage and of the nonfiction books The Man Who Tried to Save the World and The 4 O’Clock Murders, and coauthor of War Zones and Inside the League with his brother, Jon Lee Anderson.
Other titles by Scott Anderson available in eBook format:
Moonlight Hotel • 978-0-307-38703-5
For more information, please visit www.doubleday.com
T. E. Lawrence (far left) and his four brothers (left to right): Frank, Arnold, Robert, and Will. While T. E. waged “paper-combat” in Cairo during 1915, both Frank and Will would be killed on the Western Front.
Bodleian ref: MS. Photog. c. 122, fol. 3
Scholar, spy, and notorious ladies’ man: Curt Prüfer in Cairo, 1906
© Trina Prufer
Fallen aristocrat William Yale was the only American intelligence agent in the Middle East during World War I—even while he secretly remained on the payroll of Standard Oil.
© Milne Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library
A towering figure: Aaron Aaronsohn, brilliant scientist, ardent Zionist, and mastermind of the most successful spy ring in the Middle East
All rights are reserved to the Beit Aaronsohn Museum NILI
Englishmen abroad: T. E. Lawrence (right) and Leonard Woolley at the archaeological ruins of Carchemish, 1912. Lawrence would recall his time at Carchemish as the happiest of his life.
Stewart Newcombe, Lawrence’s supervisor on the mysterious Wilderness of Zin expedition and the man who brought him to wartime Cairo for intelligence work
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
Dahoum, Lawrence’s young assistant at Carchemish, to whom he dedicated Seven Pillars of Wisdom
© The British Library Board, MS 50584, f.115–116
After his vast family fortune evaporated, William Yale signed on with Standard Oil for a clandestine mission to the prewar Ottoman Empire in search of oil.
© Milne Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library
Playboys in the Holy Land: To keep their mission secret, Yale and his Standard Oil partners (J. C. Hill, second from left, and Rudolf McGovern, second from right) were told to masquerade as wealthy “playboys” on a tour of biblical sights—to limited success.
© Milne Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library
Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Caesar of Germany. A gener
ation of his subjects, including Curt Prüfer, was stirred by Wilhelm’s bellicose demand that Germany assume its rightful “place in the sun.”
“The Kaiser’s spy” and Curt Prüfer’s mentor, Count Max von Oppenheim. While indulging his passion for archaeology, slave girls, and the racetrack, Oppenheim dreamed of setting the Middle East aflame through Islamic jihad.
Prüfer on the eve of the Turkish assault on the Suez Canal, February 1915. Despite predicting disaster in his private diary, he urged the attack forward.
© Trina Prufer
Lord Kitchener, appointed the British war secretary in August 1914. Where others foresaw a quick and painless war, Kitchener predicted one that would sap British manpower “to the last million.”
© UIG History / Science & Society Picture Library
Diplomatic gadfly and amateur extraordinaire Mark Sykes. “The imaginative advocate of unconvincing world movements,” a disdainful Lawrence wrote of Sykes, “a bundle of prejudices, intuitions, half-sciences.”
Reginald Wingate, the sirdar of the Egyptian army and British high commissioner to Egypt. He apparently never figured out T. E. Lawrence’s double cross.
Photo by Hulton Archive/ Getty Images
Ahmed Djemal Pasha (in white coat), the Ottoman governor-general of Syria. Over the course of the war, William Yale, Curt Prüfer, and Aaron Aaronsohn would all have close dealings with the mercurial Djemal.
“The handsomest man in the Turkish army,” Ottoman minister of war Enver Pasha, who conspired with Curt Prüfer to destroy the Suez Canal
© DIZ Muenchen GmbH, Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy
Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk,” the hero of Gallipoli and the founder of the modern Turkish republic
Library of Congress
King Hussein of the Hejaz
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
Ronald Storrs, the liaison in the secret negotiations between Hussein and the British, and the man who brought T. E. Lawrence into the Arab Revolt
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
“The armed prophet,” Faisal ibn Hussein, King Hussein’s third son and T. E. Lawrence’s chief ally during the Arab Revolt
Interminable talks and languorous meals: a tribal council at Faisal’s roving war headquarters, 1917. Unique among his military officer colleagues, Lawrence understood that the British had to adapt to the Arab way of war.
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
With a keen insight into how tribal politics worked, Lawrence was the only British officer in Arabia to be truly accepted into Faisal’s inner circle. Faisal (third from right) and his tribal lieutenants, with Lawrence at lower right.
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
War at its most primal. Lawrence’s decisions on when and where to attack the Turks were largely dictated by the availability of water and forage.
© www.rogersstudy.co.uk. March 1917. Photo by Captain Thomas Henderson
Gilbert Clayton, Britain’s chief spymaster in Egypt and T. E. Lawrence’s supervisor. By autumn 1917, Clayton was so concerned at the risks Lawrence was taking that he planned to remove him from the battlefield, “but the time is not yet, as he is wanted just now.”
A detachment of the Ottoman Camel Corps in southern Palestine, 1916. Until the guerrilla tactics advocated by Lawrence and others were finally adopted, British forces were repeatedly humiliated by the antiquated and outnumbered Turkish army.
Lawrence’s powers of endurance, exemplified by his marathon camel treks, astounded even his hardiest Bedouin companions.
© Imperial War Museum (Q 60212)
A spectacle out of the Middle Ages: Faisal (center in white robe), leading his tribal army for the assault on Wejh
© Imperial War Museum (Q 58863)
The entrance to Aaronsohn’s Jewish Agricultural Experiment Station at Athlit, the headquarters of his NILI spy ring
All rights are reserved to the Beit Aaronsohn Museum NILI
Aaronsohn’s younger sister, twenty-seven-year-old Sarah, masterfully operated the NILI spy ring inside Palestine despite ever-mounting peril.
All rights are reserved to the Beit Aaronsohn Museum NILI
As Germany’s spymaster, Curt Prüfer was one of the most feared figures in the Middle East during World War I, but he never suspected there was a Jewish spy ring operating out of Athlit.
© Trina Prufer
July 6, 1917: In one of the most daring military exploits of World War I, Arab rebels under Lawrence’s leadership captured the strategically vital port of Aqaba.
© Imperial War Museum (Q 59193)
Auda Abu Tayi, a legendary warrior and Lawrence’s chief ally in seizing Aqaba.
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
The British and French hoped to deny their Arab allies control of Aqaba. Without their knowledge, Lawrence devised the audacious scheme for the Arabs to get there first.
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
“We turned our Hotchkiss on the prisoners and made an end of them.” As the war dragged on, Lawrence became an ever more pitiless battlefield commander.
© Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
A primary target of the British and Arab rebels was the Hejaz Railway, the lifeline of the Turkish army. By his count, Lawrence personally destroyed seventy-nine bridges during the war.
The chessboard changes. The Turks had no answer when the British introduced Rolls-Royce armored cars to the desert campaign.
Faisal ibn Hussein (in the front passenger seat) and other Arab rebel leaders being transported across the desert, 1918
THREE PHOTOS: © Marist Archives and Special Collections, Lowell Thomas Papers
British Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann (left) and Faisal ibn Hussein, June 4, 1918. The following year, with Lawrence as intermediary, the two joined forces at the Paris Peace Conference to call for a combined Arab-Jewish state in Palestine. This effort was ultimately sabotaged by British and French imperial machinations.
The “Big Four” at the Paris Peace Conference. Left to right, David Lloyd George (Great Britain), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), Georges Clemenceau (France), and Woodrow Wilson (United States). Lloyd George and Clemenceau made a secret pact to divide up the Middle East before Wilson reached Paris. Library of Congress
The betrayal revealed. Lawrence on the balcony of the Victoria Hotel in Damascus, October 3, 1918, after the fateful meeting between Allenby and Faisal. The next day Lawrence would leave Syria, never to return.
© Imperial War Museum (Q 114044)
“I imagine leaves must feel like this after they have fallen from their tree,” Lawrence wrote a friend one week before the motorcycle accident that killed him. This is one of the last formal portraits taken of Lawrence, in December 1934.
Bodleian MS. Photogr. c. 126, fol. 75r
Also by Scott Anderson
Nonfiction
The 4 O’Clock Murders
The Man Who Tried to Save the World
With Jon Lee Anderson
Inside the League
War Zones
Fiction
Triage
Moonlight Hotel
Lawrence in Arabia Page 84