How Two Men Secretly Carved Up the Middle East

In 1916, in the middle of World War One, a British member of Parliament and a French diplomat sat down with a map of the Ottoman Empire and drew a line from Acre, on the coast, to Kirkuk, in the hills of northern Iraq. At the very same time, an army of camel riders was leaving Mecca, convinced that much of the same land had been promised to them. Follow both on the map: the secret Sykes-Picot agreement taking shape in London and Paris, and the Arab Revolt riding north from Mecca to Jeddah, Wejh, Aqaba and Damascus. See the blue and red zones of 1916, the leak that exposed the deal in 1917, the four-hour battle of Maysalun, the Cairo meeting of 1921, Mosul and the oil of Kirkuk, and how Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine were shaped between 1916 and 1925. 0:00 One line across the Middle East 0:46 December 1915: who takes the pieces? 1:51 Mecca and the secret letters 2:36 France enters the room 3:00 The colored map of 1916 4:05 The Arab Revolt begins 5:07 The boldest move: Aqaba 6:17 Two pieces, one board 6:43 The leak 7:43 The railway war 8:05 Damascus, 1918 8:24 The line moves again 9:17 A king in Damascus, then Maysalun 10:19 Cairo, Iraq and Jordan 11:12 So who really got the Middle East? If the people of Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem had drawn the map themselves, where do you think the lines would be? Tell us in the comments, and subscribe to Empires in Motion Maps for more history told on the map.