Arab revolt
| Arab Revolt formation | |||||||||
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| Part of the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I | |||||||||
 Soldiers of the Arab Army in the Arabian Desert carrying the Flag of the Arab Revolt. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Kingdom of Hejaz British Empire France
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 Ottoman Empire German Empire Emirate of Jabal Shammar
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Hussein bin Ali Faisal Abdullah Edmund Allenby T. E. Lawrence
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Djemal Pasha Fahreddin Pasha Muhiddin Pasha Otto Liman von Sanders Abdul-Aziz bin Mitab
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| Strength | |||||||||
| 30,000 (June 1916) 50,000+ (1918) |
May 1916: 6,500–7,000 troops September 1918: 25,000 troops 340 guns |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Unknown |
47,000+ 5,000 killed 10,000 wounded 22,000+ captured ~10,000 disease deaths |
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The Arab Revolt (Arabic: الثورة العربية, al-Thawra al-‘Arabiyya; Turkish: Arap İsyanı) or Great Arab Revolt (Arabic: الثورة العربية الكبرى, al-Thawra al-‘Arabiyya al-Kubrā) began on June 5, 1916 and was declared on June 8 by the Sherif Hussein bin Ali with the aim of securing independence from the ruling Ottoman Turks and creating a single unified Arab state spanning from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen.
Though the Sherifian revolt has tended to be regarded as a revolt rooted in a secular Arab nationalist sentiment the Sherif did not present it in those terms; rather, he accused the Young Turks of violating the sacred tenets of Islam and called Arab Muslims to sacred rebellion against the ostensibly "impious" Ottoman government. Contrarily, Turks accused rebelling tribes of betraying the Muslim Caliphate during a campaign against imperialist powers which were trying to divide and govern the Muslim lands.
The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire dates from at least 1821. Arab nationalism has its roots in the Mashriq (the Arab lands east of Egypt), particularly in countries of Sham (the Levant). The political orientation of Arab nationalists in the years prior to the Great War was generally moderate. The Arabs' demands were of a reformist nature, limited in general to autonomy, greater use of Arabic in education, and changes in conscription in the Ottoman Empire in peacetime for Arab conscripts that allowed local service in the Ottoman army.
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Wikipedia