Chapter 3, Part 1: How News Spread in Aleppo and Italy's Seizure of Libya in 1911

In his youth Rushdi al-Kikhya lived through a series of events that took place on the stage of life in the Arab world. Although it was not his lot to influence their course or play any part in them, he certainly responded to them, understood their meaning and was affected by them, especially the events after the First World War, since by then he had become a young man of twenty. He must have listened to what was said about them by the regular visitors to his family's guest hall, as was the custom among the well-to-do notables of those days. The people who sat in those gatherings asked about everything and discussed the general news that the well-informed brought with them. This was the best means of education, since there was no radio, television or political press in those days. Everyone else learned things by hearsay, that is, by passing talk from mouth to ear and from one person to another.. One French politician called this way of spreading news the "trumpet of Islam", out of astonishment at how quickly news spread under the French occupation in the Arab Maghreb.

I should note that I will not refer to these momentous events as their historian, for that is not my interest or my aim, but only for the way they were reflected in the general culture of that generation.

I will confine myself to pointing to the following events and recalling them, because of their importance:

Section One
Italy's Seizure of Libya

At the beginning of this century the Ottoman state was at the lowest point of weakness and humiliation, so Italy had little difficulty in getting its share of the spoils of the "sick man". After France had annexed Algeria in 1830 and then occupied Tunisia in 1881, after England had occupied Egypt in 1882 as well, and after France had occupied Morocco in 1912, under the cover of a protectorate, the Italian fleet set out across the Mediterranean in search of cheap spoils. It landed troops in the Ottoman Dodecanese (in the Aegean Sea) without meeting any real resistance, then headed south toward the Libyan shore and on 28 September 1911 suddenly occupied the coast of the provinces of Tripoli and Benghazi.. Italy declared war on the Ottoman state. The two states met in unequal battles, because Egypt was under English occupation and the Ottoman fleet in the Mediterranean was weak, which deprived the Ottoman army of any reinforcements that might reach it from the east and the north, on top of its poor training and arms. At this difficult time the Balkan states, namely Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece, declared war on the Ottoman state to seize what was left of the Macedonian provinces, and the Ottoman state was forced to make peace with Italy at Lausanne, ceding Libya to it on 15 October 1912. The loss of the Ottoman Balkan provinces of Salonica, Monastir and Skopje soon followed. The Ottoman state held on to the city of Edirne only with great difficulty. The collapse of this state was shameful, because it could no longer hide the infirmities eating away at its worn-out body, which cost it its prestige and tempted its enemies at home and abroad.

I can say with certainty that the grief of the Muslims was great at the decline of their state, which had once been the protector of Islam and the bearer of its banner.