Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca in the context of "Battle of Mecca (1916)"

Establishment of the Emirate of Transjordan refers to the government that was set up in Transjordan on 11 April 1921, following a brief interregnum period.

Abdullah, the second son of Sharif Hussein (leader of the 1916 Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire), arrived from Hejaz by train in Ma'an in southern Transjordan on 21 November 1920. His stated aim was fighting the French in Syria, after they had defeated the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria during the Battle of Maysalun on 24 July 1920.

The McMahon–Hussein correspondence is a series of letters that were exchanged during World War I, in which the government of the United Kingdom agreed to recognize Arab independence in a large region after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca launching the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The correspondence had a significant influence on Middle Eastern history during and after the war; a dispute over Palestine continued thereafter.

The correspondence is composed of ten letters that were exchanged from July 1915 to March 1916 between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner to Egypt. Whilst there was some military value in the Arab manpower and local knowledge alongside the British Army, the primary reason for the arrangement was to counteract the Ottoman declaration of jihad ("holy war") against the Allies, and to maintain the support of the 70 million Muslims in British India (particularly those in the Indian Army that had been deployed in all major theatres of the wider war). The area of Arab independence was defined to be "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo"; conflicting interpretations of this description were to cause great controversy in subsequent years. One particular dispute, which continues to the present, is the extent of the coastal exclusion.

Sir Vincent Arthur Henry McMahon GCMG GCVO KCIE CSI KStJ (28 November 1862 – 29 December 1949) was a British Indian Army officer and diplomat who served as Foreign Secretary in the Government of India from 1911 to 1915 and as High Commissioner in Egypt from 1915 to 1917. As the Foreign Secretary McMahon conducted the tripartite negotiations between Tibet, China and Britain that led to the Simla Convention. Even though China did not in the end sign the Convention, the agreement governed the British relations with Tibet till 1947. In Egypt, McMahon was best known for the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, and the Declaration to the Seven in response to a memorandum written by seven notable Syrians. After the Sykes-Picot Agreement was published by the Bolshevik Russian government in November 1917, McMahon resigned. He also features prominently in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.