Fall of Jerusalem (1917): Allenby Takes the Holy City

The fall of Jerusalem in December 1917 ended exactly four centuries of Ottoman rule over the city. After defeating Ottoman and German forces in southern Palestine, the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force under General Sir Edmund Allenby closed in on Jerusalem; the Ottomans withdrew, the mayor surrendered the city on 9 December, and on 11 December Allenby walked in on foot through the Jaffa Gate. The capture was a major morale boost for the Allies in a grim year of the First World War.

Background: the war in Sinai and Palestine

When the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of Germany in late 1914, Britain’s priority in the region was to protect the Suez Canal. By early 1917 British and Empire forces had pushed across Sinai, but two attacks on Gaza in March and April 1917 failed with heavy losses.

The British prime minister, David Lloyd George, wanted a success in the East to set against the deadlock on the Western Front. In June 1917 he sent Allenby, a cavalry general known as “the Bull”, to take command, with instructions widely reported as asking for Jerusalem as a Christmas present for the British nation. Allenby was given reinforcements, and he reorganised his army over the summer.

The road to Jerusalem

Allenby’s offensive opened on 31 October 1917 with the capture of Beersheba, famous for the charge of the Australian Light Horse (see Battle of Beersheba). Gaza fell on 7 November, and the Ottoman Seventh and Eighth Armies fell back north. They were part of the Yildirim Army Group, commanded by the German general Erich von Falkenhayn.

British infantry and mounted troops advanced into the Judaean Hills in mid-November. Rain, cold, poor roads and stubborn Ottoman resistance made the fighting slow and costly, especially around Nebi Samwil, a hilltop north-west of the city. Allenby ordered that the holy places must not be damaged, so the city itself was to be encircled rather than attacked directly.

The surrender of 9 December

A renewed British attack on 8 December broke the Ottoman line west and south of Jerusalem. That night the Ottoman garrison and the governor, Izzet Bey, left the city. Early on 9 December the mayor, Hussein Salim al-Husseini, went out under a white flag carrying the governor’s letter of surrender.

According to well-known accounts, the first British soldiers he met were two sergeants of a London regiment who had gone out in search of supplies, and who declined to accept such an important document. The letter passed up the chain of command over the course of the morning. It was finally accepted by Major-General John Shea of the 60th (London) Division, and British troops took control of the city that day.

Allenby’s entry through the Jaffa Gate

On 11 December 1917 Allenby made a carefully staged official entry. He dismounted outside the walls and walked in through the Jaffa Gate, accompanied by his staff, Allied officers including French and Italian representatives, and T. E. Lawrence. The contrast with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had entered on horseback in 1898, was intended and widely noted.

At the steps of the Citadel, near the Tower of David, a proclamation of martial law was read in English, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Russian and Italian. It promised that the holy places of all three faiths would be protected and that existing customs would be respected. The ceremony lasted about a quarter of an hour, and photographs and film of it were circulated around the world.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Allenby declared that “the Crusades are now complete”. Fact: There is no reliable evidence that he said this. The British government asked the press to avoid crusading language for fear of offending Muslim soldiers and subjects, and Allenby himself rejected the comparison.
• Myth: The Old City was taken by storm. Fact: The decisive fighting took place in the surrounding hills; the Ottomans withdrew and the city was surrendered without being bombarded.
• Myth: The war in Palestine ended with Jerusalem. Fact: Fighting continued for almost another year, until the British victory at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918 and the Ottoman armistice at Mudros on 30 October 1918.

Consequences

An Ottoman counter-attack to retake Jerusalem at the end of December 1917 was defeated. The city remained under British military administration, and its capture came only weeks after the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, in which Britain had declared support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. The combination shaped the post-war settlement.

After the war Britain governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, with Jerusalem as its capital, until 1948. Competing promises made during the war to Arabs, Zionists and Britain’s French ally left a legacy of conflict that continues to be debated by historians.

Timeline

• 1917, June: General Edmund Allenby takes command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
• 1917, 31 October: Capture of Beersheba opens the Third Battle of Gaza.
• 1917, 2 November: Britain issues the Balfour Declaration.
• 1917, 7 November: Ottoman forces abandon Gaza.
• 1917, 8 December: British attack breaks the defences west and south of Jerusalem.
• 1917, 9 December: Ottoman troops withdraw and Mayor Hussein Salim al-Husseini surrenders the city.
• 1917, 11 December: Allenby enters Jerusalem on foot through the Jaffa Gate.
• 1917, 26-30 December: Ottoman counter-attack to recapture Jerusalem fails.

Why it matters

The capture of Jerusalem gave the Allies a symbolic victory at a low point of the war and ended Ottoman rule in the city, which had begun in 1517. It opened the period of British rule in Palestine, whose decisions still echo in the politics of the region. Allenby’s modest entry on foot remains one of the best-remembered images of the First World War in the Middle East, a city whose long history of sieges goes back to the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099 and earlier.