On Wednesday, November 11, 1914, as Ottoman generals mobilized their troops to fight on the side of the Central Powers, Sheikh al-Islam Urguplu Hayri, the highest religious authority in Constantinople, issued five fatwas, calling on Muslims around the world to jihad against the Entente countries and promising them status martyrs if they die in battle. Three days later, on behalf of the Sultan Caliph Mehmed V, "Lord of the Faithful," fatwas were read to a large crowd outside the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul.
After that, at an officially organized rally, the masses with flags and banners marched through the streets of the Ottoman capital, calling for a holy war. Throughout the Ottoman Empire, imams carried the message of jihad to believers in their Friday sermons. Addressing not only Ottoman subjects, but also millions of Muslims living in the Entente countries. The fatwas have been translated into Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Tatar and spread throughout the world.
In London, Paris and St. Petersburg, where officials have been haunted for decades by fears of Islamic insurgency in Muslim-populated parts of their empires, the proclamation of jihad has raised alarm.
Intelligence Directorate of the East
The fatwas were based on an unusual concept of jihad.
Its meaning has always been fluid, ranging from intellectual reflections to military struggle against the infidels. Compared to earlier declarations of armed jihad, these fatwas were theologically unorthodox, though not unprecedented, as they called for selective jihad against the British, French, Montenegrins, Serbs and Russians, rather than against the Caliph's Christian allies Germany and Austria-Hungary. Thus, the holy war was not a religious conflict in the classical sense between "believers" and "unbelievers."
While the declaration was part of the Ottoman Empire's efforts to promote pan-Islamism, the strategy the Porta has pursued since the 19th century to maintain unity within its disparate empire and garner support abroad, officials in Berlin played a major role in this episode. It was the Germans who insisted on the proclamation of jihad. Strategists in the German capital have been discussing this plan for some time.
In the midst of the July crisis, the Kaiser declared that "the entire Muslim world" must be provoked into a "savage rebellion" against the British, Russian and French empires. Shortly thereafter, his chief of the General Staff, Helmut von Moltke, ordered his subordinates to "awaken the fanaticism of Islam." Various plans were developed, the most detailed of which was written by Max von Oppenheim, a Foreign Office official and a leading expert on contemporary Islamic affairs.
His 136-page memorandum on revolutionizing the Islamic territory of German enemies, drawn up in October, a month before the Ottomans entered the war, outlined a campaign to incite religious violence in Muslim-populated areas in the Entente colonies. Describing "Islam" as "one of our most important weapons" that can be "critical to the success of a war," he made a number of specific proposals, including "a call for holy war."
In the following months, Oppenheim created the "Intelligence Agency of the East", which became the center of German politics and propaganda in the countries of Islam. Throughout the Muslim world, German and Ottoman emissaries spread pan-Islamic propaganda using the language of holy war and martyrdom. Berlin also organized missions to incite uprisings in the Muslim hinterlands of the Entente countries.
In the first months of the war, several German expeditions were sent to the Arabian Peninsula to enlist the support of the Bedouins and spread propaganda among the pilgrims. There were also attempts to spread propaganda against Anglo-Egyptian rule in Sudan and organize an uprising in British Egypt. In Cyrenaica, German emissaries tried to convince the leaders of the Islamic Order of Sanusiyya to attack Egypt.
In the previous decade, members of the order organized resistance to an imperial invasion, calling for jihad against French forces in southern Sahara, and fought the Italians after their invasion of Tripolitania in 1911. After lengthy negotiations and significant payments, the members of the order finally took up arms, attacking the western border of Egypt, but were soon stopped by the British. Attempts to arm and provoke Muslim resistance movements in French North Africa and British and French West Africa met with some success, but did not represent a major overall victory.
In early 1915, a German mission traveled to southern Iraq to meet with influential representatives of the cities of Najaf and Karbala, the global centers of Shia Islam. Although leading Shia scholars had already issued decrees in support of the Ottoman fatwas in late 1914, the Germans persuaded several more mullahs (through substantial bribes) to write yet another proclamation of holy war. Some Shiite dignitaries in Iran also decided to help in this matter.
Scholars from the Iranian National Archives recently edited a book of fatwas that were published by Persian ulema during the war, giving insight into the complex theological and political debates sparked by the Sultan's call for jihad.
The most important of all German missions was to spread the uprising from Afghanistan to the Muslim borderlands of British India, led by Bavarian artillery officer Oskar Ritter von Niedermeier and his rival diplomat Werner Otto von Hentig. Although, following an odyssey through Arabia and Iran, Niedermeier and Hentig reached Afghanistan in 1915, they failed to convince local Muslim leaders to join the jihad.
Confrontation
In general, German-Ottoman attempts to use Islam for their war efforts have failed.
In the capitals of the Entente, the call for holy war caused great alarm among officials who kept military reserves in their Muslim colonies, troops that might otherwise have fought in the trenches of Europe. However, Berlin and Istanbul failed to provoke larger uprisings.
The idea that Islam could be used to instigate organized rebellion was misguided. The influence of pan-Islamism has been overestimated. The Muslim world was too heterogeneous. More importantly, the campaign lacked credibility. It was all too obvious that Muslims were being used for strategic purposes by the Central Powers and not for true religious purposes. The sultan had no religious legitimacy and was less generally recognized as the caliph than the strategists in Berlin had hoped.
The Entente powers opposed the jihad.
From the outset, the French circulated edicts of loyal Islamic dignitaries who denied that the Ottoman sultan had the right to issue a call to holy war. Religious leaders actively participated in the recruitment of Muslims in the French Empire to fight in the fields of Europe.
The British responded to Istanbul's call for jihad with their own religious propaganda: Islamic dignitaries across the empire called on believers to support the Entente, denouncing jihad as an unscrupulous and self-serving enterprise and accusing the Sultan of apostasy. Czarist officials also hired religious leaders to condemn the German-Ottoman jihad.
Soon after the proclamation of five fatwas, one of the highest Islamic authorities of the Romanov empire, the Mufti of Orenburg, called on the faithful to arms against the enemies of his empire.
In the end, many Muslims turned out to be loyal to the French, British and Russian governments. Hundreds of thousands fought in their colonial armies.
