Page:The King of Hedjaz and Arab Independence (1917).djvu/13

 in the year 1327 in order to raise the siege of Abha, and in the following year a similar movement was carried out under the leadership of one of my sons, as is well known. The Emirs continued to support the Ottoman State until the Society of Union and Progress appeared in the State and proceeded to take over the administration thereof and all its affairs, with the result that the State suffered a loss of territory which quite destroyed its prestige, as the whole world knows, was plunged into the horrors of war and brought to its present perilous position, as is patent to all. This was all done for certain well-known ends, which our feelings forbid to dilate upon. They caused Moslem hearts to ache with grief for the Empire of Islam, for the destruction of the remaining inhabitants of her provinces—Moslem as well as non-Moslem—some of them hanged or otherwise done to death, others driven into exile. Add to this the losses they have sustained through the war in their persons and property, the latter especially in the Holy Land as is briefly demonstrated by the fact that in that quarter the general stress compelled even the middle classes to sell the doors of their houses, their cupboards and the wood from their ceilings, after selling all their belongings to keep life in their bodies. All this evidently did not fulfil the designs of the Society of Union and Progress. They proceeded next to sever the essential bond between the Ottoman Sultanate and the whole Moslem community, to wit, adherence to the Koran and the Sunna. One of the Constantinople newspapers, called "Al-Ijtihad," actually