Rival jihads: Islam and the Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1918

Abstract

The Ottoman Empire, under pressure from its ally Germany, declared a jihad shortly after entering the First World War. The move was calculated to rouse Muslims in the British, French and Russian empires to rebellion. Dismissed at the time and since as a 'jihad made in Germany', the Ottoman attempt to turn the Great War into a holy war failed to provoke mass revolt in any part of the Muslim world. Yet, as German Orientalists predicted, the mere threat of such a rebellion, particularly in British India, was enough to force Britain and its allies to divert scarce manpower and materiel away from the main theatre of operations in the Western Front to the Ottoman front. The deepening of Britain's engagement in the Middle Eastern theatre of war across the four years of World War I can be attributed in large part to combating the threat of jihad. The Ottoman entry into the First World War should have provoked little or no concern in European capitals. For decades, the West had dismissed the Ottoman Empire as Europe's sick man. 1 Since the late 1870s, the European powers had carved out whole swathes of Ottoman territory for their empires with impunity. The Russians annexed the Caucasian provinces of Kars, Ardahan and Batum in 1878. The French added Tunisia to their North African possessions in 1881, and the British annexed Cyprus in 1878 and occupied Egypt in 1882. Nor had the depredations ended there. Italy occupied Libya in 1911 and the Balkan states seized the last Ottoman territories in Europe in 1912 and 1913. With the outbreak of the Great War, the Entente Powers confidently anticipated Turkey's imminent demise. 1 Yapp (1987: 92-6).