Declaration to the Seven

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Declaration to the Seven

The Declaration to the Seven was a British government document issued on June 16, 1918. It was written by Sir Mark Sykes and approved by Charles Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office. It was a response to an anonymous memorandum from seven Syrian notables in Cairo, which included members of the soon-to-be-formed Syrian Unity Party.

What it said
- The declaration stated that any future government of lands in the Ottoman Empire held by the Allies should be based on the consent of the governed. In other words, British policy supported self-determination for the people in those areas.

Why it mattered
- It was the first British pronouncement to Arabs that national self-determination should guide post-war governance.
- Although Britain wanted to follow the Wilsonian idea of self-determination, it also aimed to protect its own strategic interests and did not fully implement all promises to Arabs or abandon victory gains in the region.
- The declaration helps explain actions like General Edmund Allenby’s halt near Damascus and the Arab forces’ capture of Damascus in 1918, which boosted Arab claims to independence in Syria while challenging French ambitions under the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

The Seven (Arab figures linked to the memorandum)
- Rafiq al-Azm
- Kamal al-Qassab
- Mukhtar al-Sulh
- Abdul Rahman Shahbandar
- Khaled al-Hakim
- Fauzi al-Bakri
- Hasan Himadeh

See also
- Damascus Protocol
- McMahon–Hussein correspondence
- Anglo-French Declaration