n to be a line
running in a south-easterly direction from Rafa, a place on the
Mediterranean, east of El Arish, to the head of the gulf of Akaba. The
fort of Akaba and other posts farther east Egypt abandoned. So matters
rested until in 1905 in consequence of lawlessness among the Bedouins of
the peninsula a British official was appointed commandant and inspector
of the peninsula and certain administrative measures taken. The report
was spread by pan-Islamic agents that the intention of the Egyptian
government was to construct fortifications on the frontier near Akaba,
to which place the Turks were building a branch railway from the
Damascus-Mecca line. In January 1906 the sultan complained to the
British ambassador at Constantinople of Egyptian encroachments on
Turkish territory, whereupon the khedive asked that the frontier should
be delimited, a request which Turkey rejected. A small Egyptian force
was then directed to occupy Taba, a port near Akaba but on the western
side of the gulf. Before this force could reach Taba that place had been
seized by the Turkish commandant at Akaba. A period of considerable
tension ensued, the Turks removing the boundary posts at Rafa and
sending strong reinforcements to the frontier. The British government
intervened on behalf of the khedive and consistently maintained that the
Rafa-Akaba line must be the frontier. In April a conference was held
between the khedive and Mukhtar Pasha, the Ottoman commissioner. It then
appeared that Turkey was unwilling to recognize the British
interpretation of the telegram of the 8th of April 1892. Turkey claimed
that the peninsula of Sinai consisted only of the territory south of a
straight line from Akaba to Suez, and that Egyptian territory north of
that line was traced from Rafa to Suez. As a compromise Mukhtar Pasha
suggested as the frontier a line drawn direct from Rafa to Ras Mahommed
(the most southern point of the Sinai peninsula), which would have left
the whole of the gulf of Akaba in Turkish territory. In other words the
claim of the Porte was, to quote Lord Cromer:--

"to carry the Turkish frontier and strategical railways to Suez on the
banks of the canal; or that if the Ras Mahommed line were adopted, the
Turkish frontier would be advanced to the neighbourhood of Nekhl, i.e.
within easy striking distance of Egypt, and that ... the gulf of Akaba
... would practically become a _mare clausum_ in the possession of
Turkey and a