Hejaz Railway

The Hejaz (also Hedjaz) Railway (Turkish: Hicaz Demiryolu) was a narrow gauge railway (1,050 mm/​3 ft 5 ¹¹⁄₃₂ in track gauge) that ran from Damascus to Medina, through the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia, with a branch line to Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea. It was a part of the Ottoman railway network and was built to extend the line from the Haydarpaşa Terminal in Istanbul beyond Damascus to the holy city of Mecca. It got no further than Medina, 400 kilometres (250 mi) short of Mecca, due to the interruption of the construction works caused by the outbreak of World War I. Damascus to Medina is 1,300 kilometres (810 mi).

The main purpose of the railway was to establish a connection between Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the seat of the Islamic Caliphate, and Hejaz in Arabia, the site of the holiest shrines of Islam and the holy city of Mecca, the destination of the Hajj annual pilgrimage. Another important reason was to improve the economic and political integration of the distant Arabian provinces into the Ottoman state, and to facilitate the transportation of military forces.

T. E. Lawrence

Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his First World War activities.

Lawrence was born out of wedlock in Tremadog, Wales in August 1888 to Sir Thomas Chapman and Sarah Junner, a Scottish governess who was herself illegitimate. Chapman had left his wife and first family in Ireland to live with Junner, and they called themselves Mr and Mrs Lawrence. In the summer of 1896, the Lawrences moved to Oxford, where young Lawrence studied History at Jesus College in 1907–10 and graduated with First Class Honours. He became a practising archaeologist in the Middle East, working at various excavations with David George Hogarth and Leonard Woolley. In 1908, he joined the Oxford University Officers' Training Corps and underwent a two-year training course. In January 1914, before the outbreak of World War I, Lawrence was commissioned by the British Army to undertake a military survey of the Negev Desert while doing archaeological research.

Arab Revolt (disambiguation)

The Arab Revolt was a 1916–18 revolt led by sharif Hussein bin Ali against Ottoman rule. The term may also refer to: