The third son of the Sharif of Mecca, a deputy in the Ottoman parliament before the war, who led his father's revolt north to Damascus, pleaded for an Arab state in Paris, lost Syria to a French army, and was made king of Iraq by the British instead.
The fork
May 1916. In Damascus to reassure the Ottomans of his father's loyalty, he is there when Jamal Pasha hangs Arab nationalists, some of them men he had met in secret. In June the Hashemites rise, and the revolt's march north becomes his.
What they wanted
An Arab state from Aleppo to the Yemen, and a seat for it among the nations. When France takes Syria he settles for Iraq, and works to make it independent and to hold its Sunnis, Shias and Kurds together.
What it cost
A crown handed to him by the British after a referendum they arranged; a kingdom that put down revolts with British aircraft; and, weeks before he died in 1933, his army's massacre of Assyrian villagers at Simele.
The fight
Ali Allawi, a former Iraqi minister, makes him a statesman who got more out of the British than anyone expected; Arab nationalists long called him Britain's tool. Lawrence's book made him a supporting player in his own revolt.