Selim Ahmed (Dahoum)
Encyclopedia
T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
at a pre-war archaeological dig at Carchemish
Carchemish
Carchemish or Kargamış was an important ancient city of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo Assyrian Empires, now on the frontier between Turkey and Syria. It was the location of an important battle between the Babylonians and Egyptians, mentioned in the Bible...
. They met while Lawrence was working as an archaeologist at Carchemish
Carchemish
Carchemish or Kargamış was an important ancient city of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo Assyrian Empires, now on the frontier between Turkey and Syria. It was the location of an important battle between the Babylonians and Egyptians, mentioned in the Bible...
, where Ahmed had been hired as a water boy. Lawrence employed Dahoum as an assistant, sending him to investigate Deve Huyuk, a village between Carchemish and Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
, where an early grave site had been discovered. Ahmed learned English and maths from Lawrence, and taught him Arabic in exchange. In June 1914, Lawrence left Dahoum as custodian at the Carchemish site to return to England and participate in the war effort. Upon his return to Syria in 1918, he discovered Dahoum had succumbed to typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
in 1916.
Relationship with T.E. Lawrence
There were widespread and scandalous allegations that T.E. Lawrence was engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Selim Ahmed at Lawrence's home in CarchemishCarchemish
Carchemish or Kargamış was an important ancient city of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo Assyrian Empires, now on the frontier between Turkey and Syria. It was the location of an important battle between the Babylonians and Egyptians, mentioned in the Bible...
, where it was said that Ahmed came to live and where Lawrence had erected a naked statue of Dahoum. T.E. Lawrence explained to Will Lawrence in a letter on 21 October 1913, "I persuaded Young in his week here to spend his spare time carving gargoyles for the better adornment of the house. He managed in limestone an ideal head of a woman; I did a squatting demon of the Notre-Dame style, also in limestone, and we have now built them into the walls and roof, and the house is become remarkable in N. Syria. The local people come up in crowds to look at them." As seen in Young's photograph of the statue, Lawrence's sculpture is not of a squatting demon, but of a naked young man, which according to the Lawrence's biographer Jeremy Wilson was the cause of Leonard Woolley's allegations that "Lawrence, stopping in the house after the dig was over, had Dahoum to live with him and got him to pose as model for a queer crouching figure which he carved in the soft local limestone and set up on the edge of the house roof; to make an image was bad enough in its way, but to portray a naked figure was proof to them of evil of another sort. The scandal about Lawrence was widely spread and firmly believed."
Dedication of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Lawrence dedicated Seven Pillars of Wisdom to "S.A.":
I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.
The identity of "S.A." remains unclear; it has been argued that these initials identify a man, a woman, a nation, or some combination of the above. Lawrence himself maintained that "S.A." was a composite character. One specific claim that has been made is that S.A. is Selim Ahmed.