Description
Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir (ERKILET) (1883 – 1958).
Istanbul: Matbaa-i Askeriye, 1337 Rumi Calendar [1921].
This is the last important Ottoman map of Palestine, predicated upon military field surveys executed during World War I under the direction of the Ottoman General Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir (who subsequently took the surname ‘Erkilet’). During the conflict, Palestine, which was major combat theatre, was extensively remapped to very high standards by Ottoman and German military engineers, charting elements of the landscape, as well as new settlements and infrastructure that had never appeared on previous maps. While some elements of these surveys appeared on highly classified military maps of specific localities, the Ottomans seemed hesitant to publish such a detailed, accurate and updated general map of the country during the war, perhaps fearing it falling into the wrong hands. It was not until the early part of 1921, that Hüseyin commissioned the present map to be printed in Istanbul, which was then under Western occupation, the capital of an empire that existed in name only. While the map no longer served an active military purpose, Hüseyin, who spent so many months overseeing the Palestine surveys, believed that the map should be published as a valuable scientific record and a memento of considerable human achievement.
The map embraces the strategically critical bulk of Palestine, extending from the great port of Haifa and the Sea of Galilee, in the north, all the way down past Beersheba, in the south; and extending from the shores of the Mediterranean, in the west, over past the Dead Sea to take in in good part of what is today Jordan, in the east. Jerusalem is located almost in the centre of the map, with the port of Jaffa located to the southwest along the coast. A masterpiece of advanced military surveying, with the mapping done by German and Ottoman engineers under the most difficult circumstances in a active theatre, the map follows the most advanced European standards, featuring all details necessary to aid military movement. Areas of elevation are expressed through carefully lithographed shading, while the legend in the lower margin identifies the symbols used to identify, cities, towns and settlements of various sizes; roads and named caravan routes of various descriptions; railways; telegraph lines; forts; trigonometric base-points; wells; archaeological sites; as well as various topographical details (wadis, swamps, rivers); in addition to elements of lands use, such as orchards.
The map was printed in Istanbul while the city was under Western occupation, but before the Ottoman Empire had been officially dissolved. In a strange zombie-like way, for a few years after the war many of the empire’s old institutions continued to operate in the city, but without any real direction or overriding purpose. The Ottoman Army Press, the Matbaa-i Askeriye, still functioned, although it suffered from a shortage of supplies (paper, inks and equipment), reducing its technical capabilities. It was in this context that in early months of 1921, General Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir, who was then furloughed between his military ventures, had the press publish the present general map of Palestine that he had prepared from the best Ottoman-German surveys made during the late war. While the map possesses a certain visual charm, it was printed upon cheap paper in a rather crude form, with the lithographic tone varying between its upper and lower sheets. In fact, it seems that the two sheets may have been printed at slightly different times, as the map is today seldom found in its complete form, with both sheets.
All of Palestine had been scientifically and systematically surveyed to an incredibly high standard in the 1870s by the British-backed Palestine Exploration Fund. However, in the succeeding decades the landscape had undergone transformative change. Mass Jewish migration to region had led to the foundation of new towns and extensive agrarian development. Many archaeological sites, some of world-class importance, were discovered, as the land was ‘civilized’. Moreover, the Ottomans had built and railways and roads in Palestine, notably the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway (completed 1892) and the Jezreel Valley Railway, that connected Haifa with Deraa, Syria (completed in 1905). To the east, in what is now Jordan, one can see a stretch of the Hejaz Railway, the epic line that was meant to connect Damascus to Mecca, so as to aid pilgrims travelling on the Hajj and to assert the Ottoman Sultan’s rule over Islam’s holiest sites. This line, completed as far south as Medina in 1908 (it was never extended to Mecca), and proved to be a vital transport corridor for some years and major factor during the World War I, famously being attacked by Arab forces guided by Lawrence of Arabia.
While today it does not have the prominence in memory as the Western Front, Palestine played an exceedingly important role in World War I. Geo-strategically, it was a keystone, occupying a vital location between the Sinai and the Suez Canal (the vital lifeline of global trade and the British Empire), on one side, and the heart of the Middle East, on the other. Home to the holy city of Jerusalem, the region possessed tremendous symbolic importance.
During the conflict, the British side was headquartered in Cairo, while the Ottoman-German command was based in Damascus – with Palestine in between. In the early days, the Ottoman-German side, led by Enver Pasha, the Ottoman War Minister, assisted by some of Germany’s best generals, took the offensive, making credible, but ultimately unsuccessful runs at the Suez Canal – utterly terrifying British officials from India to London. As shown on the present map, in 1915, the Ottoman-Germans completed a railway running north-south down the heart of Palestine, form Tulkarm to Beersheba. To aid their venture in the Sinai they also built rail lines in southern Palestine down to and crossing the Egyptian boundary, along with a vast network of camps, forts and defensive works.
In the summer of 1916, the British Army in the region, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) regrouped and took the offensive, driving the Ottoman-Germans out of the Sinai. The British entered Palestine at the beginning of 1917, winning the Battle of Rafah (January 9, 1917), located near the lower-left corner of the map. However, the EEF soon became bogged down in a stalemate, in part due to the new Ottoman-German defensive infrastructure depicted upon the present map. The gridlock lasted until October 1917, when the EEF took Beersheba and progressively moved northwards, conquering territory. The British commander General Allenby famously entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917. From there, the contest, once again, became evenly matched, and it was not until the Battle of Megiddo, the “Breakthrough at Nablus” (September 19-25, 1918), that the British subjected a crushing defeat upon the Ottoman-German side, causing their retreat from Palestine into Lebanon and Syria. Damascus fell on October 1, 1918, but it was not until the Ottoman-German side was chased up to Haritan, north of Aleppo, the war in the Middle East ended upon the declaration of the Armistice of Mudros (October 30, 1918).
A Note on Rarity
The present map is rare. It was published in only a small print run, and due to the fact that it was issued in a large format on fragile paper, ensures that its survival rate is very low. We are ware of two institutional examples outside of Turkey, held by the New York Public Library and David Rumsey Map Collection, while he can cite only 2 examples of the map in Turkish institutions, at the Archives of the Istanbul Maritime Museum and the National Library of Turkey (Ankara).
Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir Erkilet: Brilliant, yet Controversial, Military Commander and Diplomat
Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir Erkilet (1883 – 1958) was born into a military family and graduated from the elite Ottoman Military Academy in Üsküdar in 1904. He then entered the General Staff College, graduating as a lieutenant in 1907. His superiors recognized Hüseyin’s extraordinary intelligence, and he was given important administrative roles at Army HQ. From 1910 to 1912, he was sent to study military science and to act a liaison in Germany. There he learned to speak German fluently and mastered advanced surveying techniques, skills that would serve him well in the near future.
During the disastrous First Balkan War (1912-3), Hüseyin rushed back home, where he played a heroic role in helping to save Istanbul from being taken by Bulgarian forces. He then served in senior administrative roles at Army HQ.
Upon the advent of World War I, Hüseyin was deployed to the front at Gallipoli, where he befriended Colonel Mustafa Kemal, the greatest Ottoman hero of the war and the future founder of the Turkish state, later known as ‘Atatürk’. After leading an important diplomatic mission in Serbia, in July 1917, Hüseyin was appointed as the Chief of Staff of the elite Yildirim “Thunderbolt” Army Group, and was stationed in Palestine. There he played a key role in leading teams of German and Ottoman engineers as they mapped the country to an incredibly high degree of precision. Hüseyin then played a key role in editing the sketches and overseeing the drafting of finished manuscripts, before deciding what maps should be dispatched to Istanbul to be printed as ‘classified’ sheets. It was from this vast corpus of new information that he created the present map.
While Hüseyin fought with great distinction in Palestine and Syria, the Ottoman cause was lost, and the Sublime Porte surrendered at the end of October 1918. Hüseyin, a restless man, deprived of the battle action he craved, headed back to Istanbul and turned his attention to writing his memoirs and works on military science, as well as overseeing the publication of the present map.
Hüseyin was re-energised by Mustafa Kemal’s design to retake Anatolia and Istanbul by force with the aim of creating an independent Turkish state. In the summer of 1921, he went to Switzerland on an important mission to purchase arms for the cause, and in September 1912, joined the Turkish War of Independence on the front lines in Anatolia. He played a key role as a field commander during the Great Smyrna Offensive (August 1922) that effectively won the war and secured Turkish independence.
In the post-war period, Hüseyin held senior army posts, attaining the rank of lieutenant general in 1928; he retired from the forces in 1932. While his obvious competence and stellar resume should have assured him a senior civilian role, such as being a cabinet minster or ambassador, President Atatürk kept him at a distance, as Hüseyin increasingly became wedded to inconvenient, even ‘kooky’, political views. While his friendship with Atatürk prevented him from being censured or arrested, Hüseyin became enamoured with fascism and ‘Turanism’, the notion of the cultural and political unity of all ethnic Turkic peoples, whose lands spanned Asia. Atatürk, while a populist and nationalist, was no fascist, and believed that Turanism was a threat to his new agenda.
Upon the outbreak of World War II, Turkey was caught in the middle. Many key Turkish figures, especially those who had forged close bonds with German officers during the previous war, including Hüseyin, believed that Turkey should enter the conflict in support of the Axis. Many others preferred to side with the Allies, while most of the country’s elite, including Atatürk’s successor, İsmet İnönü, preferred that Turkey remain neutral – if possible.
In 1941, Hüseyin travelled to the German-Soviet battlefront in Crimea, at the invitation of the Nazi Field Marshal Feodoro von Bock. His fascinating memoir of his time on the Eastern Front was published as the bestseller, Şark Cephesinde Gördüklerim [What I Saw on the Eastern Front] (Istanbul, 1943). In 1942, Hüseyin, with the backing of pro-German Turkish elites, conducted secret ‘rogue’ diplomacy with Franz von Pappen, the German Ambassador to Ankara. However, all these efforts were in vain, as in 1944, as the war had turned against Germany, Turkey formally entered the conflict on the Allied side.
After the war, Hüseyin continued to promote his right-wing, Turanian agenda in various journals and books until his death in 1958.References: New York Public Library: Map Div. 19-776 / OCLC: 1134392191; Istanbul Deniz Müzesi Arşivi [Archives of the Istanbul Maritime Museum], no. 452/339; Milli Kütüphane [National Library of Turkey (Ankara)], no. 2995; Z. KURŞUN, A. STEIH and A.I. AYDIN, Osmanlı Filistini Yer İsimleri Kılavuzu ve Atlası (1516-1917) [A Handbook of Ottoman Palestine Place Names and Atlas] (Istanbul: Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, 2020), Map no. 73 (p. 208).
