(ISRAEL, LAND OF)

The Government Press and Survey of Egypt

Cairo

1919

(ALLENBY, GENERAL SIR EDMUND H[enry] H[ynman]). Includes T.E. Lawrence’s first published account of the Arab Campaign.A Brief Record of the Advance of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force Under the Command of General Sir Edmund H.H. Allenby G.C.B., G.C.M.G. July 1917 to October 1918

P. O’Brien, T.E. Lawrence: A Bibliography (1988) A011

General Allenby commanded the Allied forces which in 1917-18 defeated the Turks in Palestine. Much attention is lavished on the participation of the local Arab tribes in overthrowing Ottoman rule (generally attributed to the romantic figure of T.E. Lawrence). The complex politics of the Middle East in years to come are contained in embryonic form in this British account of events. Most moving is the description of the liberation of Jerusalem on December 8, 1917: “After four centuries of conquest, the Turk was ridding the land of his presence, and a great enthusiasm arose among the Jews. There was a running to and fro; daughters called to their fathers and brothers concealed in outhouses, cellars, and attics…’The Turks are running,’ they called; ‘the day of deliverance is come’…It was fitting that the flight of the Turks should have coincided with the national festival of the Hanukah, which commemorates the recapture of the Temple from the heathen Seleucids by Judas Maccabaeus in 165 b.c.e.” (Facing Plate 26)