|
 |
Image 300 / 319 |
 |
 |
Memorabilia from a bygone era: The Mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Salim Al-Husseini (with walking stick and cigarette), with his party under a white flag-of-truce, attempts to deliver the surrender document signed by the Ottoman Governor Izzat Pasha just outside Jerusalem’s western limits on the morning of 9 December 1917 to Sergeants James Sedgewick and Frederick Hurcomb of 2/19th Battalion of the London Regiment (fourth and seventh from left in the picture). The surprised sergeants, who were scouting ahead of General Sir Edmund Allenby's main force, refused to take the letter, as did several more arriving troops.
The Mayor was accompanied by a number of officials including his nephew Toufiq Saleh Al-Husseini, police inspectors Abdelqadir Al-Alami (seen in parade uniform at the extreme left of the picture) and Ahmad Sharaf (Second from right in the picture), policemen Hussein Al-Assaly and Ibrahim Al-Zaanoun, as well as a group of young men among whom were Rushdi Mohamed Al-Muhtada, Jawad Ismail Al-Husseini, and Hanna Iskandar Al-Lahham, who carried the white flag. The Mayor was also accompanied by a young photographer named Lewis Larsson, who later became Swedish Consul in Palestine, and whose role was to record the ceremony. It began to look to the Jerusalemites as if nobody would let them surrender, until Brigadier-General C.F. Watson, commanding 180th Infantry Brigade entered the town, accepted the documents, and Larsson could photograph the event properly.
The full story of the Ottoman surrender to the British was slightly more offhand. Before the Commander in Chief General John Shea arrived at the city gates, he got stuck in mud en route and appeared long after the excited crowds had dispersed. When Shea learned that young Larsson had captured on film the real moment of surrender, and not the moment when he stood on the steps of David’s Tower to proclaim martial law, he demanded that Larsson destroy the negatives and all copies of the picture. He sent an officer to see that his order was executed.
Fortunately, however, a copy of the original snapshot of this historic moment has survived and is in the possession of Larsson’s son Theo, a resident of London who has written a book about his youth in Jerusalem titled “Seven Passports for Palestine”. It happens that Theo Larsson is the husband of Herbert Olivier’s granddaughter, Barclay Sanders Larsson, whose family knew Flora and Freya Stark. This detail is important because the full story of the surrender as related above with some editing is partially quoted from the following book written by American author Jane Fletcher Geniesse about the life of Freya Stark, a famous Arabist in the after-war years.
Sources: “Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark”, by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Random House Editors, New York (1999), p.151; and the website “New Zealand History on-line”:
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/jerusalem-surrender-party.
http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=361
© Photograph - Imperial War Museum, London
|
|
Image 300 / 319 |
|
|
