Exceedingly rare - the 'embargoed' final official annual report of the Hejaz Railway for 1330 Rumi Calendar (1914), the last year of its peacetime operations when the line carried over 300,000 Hajj Pilgrims to Medina (the jumping off point for Mecca), the work having been originally banned from publication due to wartime secrecy regulations, but eventually printed, in early 1918, for the restricted use of senior Ottoman figures, printed entirely in Ottoman Turkish, featuring a wealth of statistics and insider information available nowhere else, including numerous graphs and charts of valuable statistics, as well as the highlight, a stellar large-format example of Mukhtar Bey, Umar Zaki and Hasan Mu'ayyin's authoritative map of the railway – considered today to be a seminal primary source on the railway at key juncture.

This is one of the rarest and most important of all original works on the Hejaz Railway, being the official annual report of the system covering the last year of its peacetime operations (1330 Rumi / 1914). The work was initially banned from publication, due to onset of World War I, lest the detailed intelligence it contained aid the Entente Powers. It was eventually published, as here, for the first time early in 1918, as a highly classified document exclusively for the eyes of senior Ottoman officials and military officers as they struggled to keep the railway, their only lifeline to the Red Sea, operating against frequent enemy attacks.

Commissioned by the Directors of the Hejaz Railway, the report features a vast wealth of authoritative information available nowhere else regarding the system during the busiest year of its operations, when it transported over 300,000 Hajj Pilgrims on the 55-hour long, 1,320 km-long journey to Medina, the second most sacred city in Islam (just 400 km short of Mecca). It is an unrivalled resource for scholars, as the text, illustrated with numerous graphs, charts and tables, details every imaginable aspect of the railway's finances; traffic
volumes; scheduling; as well as technical specifications on the rails, stations and rolling stock; all statistics provided directly by the railway's officials and engineers.

A highlight of the report is the large folding map (measuring 820 by 545mm), that appears at the end of the work. It is a version of the official map of the Hejaz Railway that was made under the supervision of the project's chief engineer, Mukhtar Bey, and is largely predicated upon field surveys conducted by the Ottoman cavalry officers Captain Umar Zaki and Lieutenant Hasan Mu'ayyin. The map was initially issued in 1904 as a separate publication, but has here been completely re-lithographed, with updated information, for the railway's annual report.
The map embraces a broad area extending from just north of Hama, Syria, all the way south down just past Mecca; in between the map covers most of Syria, all of Palestine, the Sinai Peninsula, the Suez Canal, and all the north-western Arabian Peninsula. The entire route of the Hejaz Railway, from Damascus to Medina, is precisely delineated in bold red lines, labelling each and every station. Additionally, the map traces the branch railways in the Levant (in black lines), while the proposed routes for extending the Hejaz Railway to Mecca and Jeddah are expressed through intermittent red lines. The map also labels the major caravan routes used by pilgrims.

Why the Present Report was Initially Banned, and Why it was Eventually Published

The Hejaz Railway was completed and opened for service between Damascus and Medina in 1908 (the intended continuation to Mecca was never realized). During the early period of the railway's operation, the system's officials and engineers sent information to headquarters in a piecemeal fashion. However, it was eventually decided that the railway should consolidate all of its seminal data into a single official annual report.

The railway issued reports in a regular fashion for the years from 1326 to 1329 Rumi Calendar (1910 to 1913) inclusive, with the relevant report published early the following year. While they featured different titles that the present work, their format and contents were very similar. These reports were issued in only very small print runs, and while not classified as state secrets, were intended for private circulation amongst senior railway executives, as well as top Ottoman political and military figures. These reports are all extremely rare today.
The year 1330 Rumi (1914) represented the apogee of the Hejaz Railway's operations, as it enjoyed its highest ever volumes and revenues, while many of the technical kinks that troubled the line (ex. sandstorms, security issues viz. local tribes, etc.) had been ironed out, leading to smooth running. There was every reason for optimism, and the Hejaz Railway directors surely intended to publish the annual report for that annum, at the beginning of the following year. However, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the German side in November 1914, a momentous event that was not entirely expected (and certainly not welcomed by those involved in running the Hejaz Railway). Given that the railway held immense military importance as the Ottomans' only link to the Red Sea, every stakeholder knew from the outset that the line was henceforth a prime target for attack by Britain, or her local proxies.

The present report contains an immense amount of technical data on the Hejaz Railway that would not have been available to the British, but which would be most useful to anyone planning a military operation against the railway. Naturally, it was decided that the annual report of 1330/1914 would not be published, not even in a secret form, lest it fall into enemy hands (Istanbul was filled with Entente spies).
As it turned out, the Ottomans' worries about the security of the Hejaz Railway were well founded. The war in Hejaz and Transjordan flared during the Arab Revolt (June 1916 – October 1918), when Arab forces allied to the Sharif of Mecca rose against the Sublime Porte, with British backing. Advised by T.E. Lawrence, the legendary 'Lawrence of Arabia', the Arab fighters aimed to disrupt, if not sever, the Hejaz Railway. Notably, from March to December 1917, the insurgents and the British mounted five significant operations against the line, that included the bombing of Al-Ula Station, raiding other stations in Hejaz, including Tabuk and Aba el Naam (between Al-Ula and Medina), while derailing a train near Tabuk. Moreover, in the Spring of 1918, the British mounted two, ultimately unsuccessful, invasions of Transjordan, of which one of their primary objectives was the seizing and severing the Hejaz Railway.

Contrary to the portrayal of the Ottomans in David Lean's epic film Lawrence of Arabia (1962) as blundering clowns, the Sultan's troops and engineers actually did a remarkably good job protecting the line and quickly repairing it in the wake of enemy attacks. For the duration of the war, they controlled almost all of the railway the majority of the time, keeping it running in most sectors.

We have not been able to find an explicit explanation as to why the Ottoman authorities allowed the present report to be published in early 1918, three years after they banned it from going to press. However, a plausible reasoning would be that at this time, the Ottomans still hoped to prevail in the war, or at least gain a negotiated settlement that would allow them to keep most of their territories (Germany still had a strong chance of breaking the Entente forces in France!), such that the present report would be vitally useful in contemplating the railway's future. Moreover, while the Ottomans would made efforts to ensure that the enemy never gained a copy of the report, they were perhaps somewhat less concerned about its secrecy, as by this time the British-Arab side had learned much about the Hejaz Railway from their sabotage missions and intelligence operations.

It was only very late in the war, in the summer and early autumn of 1918, that the Ottomans, seeing that all was probably lost, that they themselves pulled up sections of the tracks of the Hejaz Railway in Syria, so that the line could not be used by the British-Arab forces during their anticipated attack upon Damascus (the British-Arabs would take the city on October 1, 1918).

Interestingly, the Ottoman garrison in Medina never fell, pulling up stakes only in January 1919, two months after the end of the war.
In the wake of the War, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the railway was divided between three jurisdictions. The lines were revived for local use in Syria and Transjordan (where the routes are still used the present day), although in 1920 the tracks in what became Saudi Arabia were abandoned for good.

A Note on Rarity

The present "embargoed" report is exceedingly rare. It would have been issued in only a very small print run for the highly classified use of important Ottoman stakeholders. Moreover, the report is quite fragile, which ensured that its survival rate is very low.
We can trace only 2 institutional examples, held by the University of California – Los Angeles Library and the Turkish Parliamentary Library in Ankara (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Kütüphanesi, TBMM). Moreover, we are not aware of any other examples as having ever appeared in the market.