The garrison at Medina led by Fakhri Pasha held out against the rebels. Fakhri Pasha then emerged from Medina with a force of at least two brigades. He fell upon the Arab rear and then pursued them southwards.
The proper revolt, however, began on June 10 when Sharif Hussein took up a rifle to fire the opening shot of the Arab Revolt from his palace in the holy city of Makkah. He fired once at the Ottoman barracks to initiate the rebellion.
Most of those rallying to Faysal’s (son of Hussein bin Ali) call for a revolt were Bedouin tribesmen. Shortly after Sharif's opening shot on 10 June, 4,000 Bedouin horsemen descended on the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. The 1,500 Ottoman soldiers initially repelled the attackers with machine guns and cannon fire, dealing a heavy blow to Bedouin morale.
Previously, the Ottoman victory over the British in the Gallipoli War in 1916 alarmed the British war planners about the reverberations of their defeat across the Muslim world. The British feared their recent string of defeats to the Ottomans would encourage colonial Muslims to rebel against the Allies.
War planners in Cairo and Whitehall hoped that an alliance with the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites would neutralize the appeal of the Ottoman Sultan/Caliph’s Jihad at a moment when Britain’s military credibility was at its lowest point since the start of the war.
Britain was also negotiating with the Zionists and with Sherif Hussein of Makkah to secure their support against the Ottomans, promising the former a Zionist homeland in Palestine and the latter recognition of Arab national aspirations in return.
