Battle of Broken Hill
Battle of Broken Hill | |
---|---|
Part of the First World War | |
Location | Ottoman nationalism, Islamic extremism , personal vendetta |
The Battle of Broken Hill, also known as the Broken Hill massacre, was an incident that took place near the Australian town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, on 1 January 1915. Two Muslim former camel drivers from colonial India who supported the Ottoman Empire—Badsha Mahommed Gool and Mullah Abdullah—shot dead four people and wounded seven others before being killed by the police and local vigilantes. Although the attacks were politically and religiously motivated, the men were not members of any sanctioned armed force. Three days after the attack, the pair's suicide notes were discovered by a miner. Mullah Abdullah's note suggested he was motivated primarily by personal grievances against a local food safety inspector.
The incident has been described as Australia's first terrorist attack.[citation needed] In 1995, Australia's Turkish community announced plans to create a memorial in honour of Gool and Abdullah and the Turkish embassy in Canberra requested that the assailants' remains be handed over to the Turkish government for burial in that country. In 2014, the mayor of Broken Hill requested that the Australian government help finance a ceremony marking the one-hundredth anniversary of the incident. The request was rejected by the government, but the ceremony was held regardless. The attack has been dramatised in film, literature and art.
Background
Arrival of the Afghan camel drivers
During the second half of the 19th century, as many as 4,000 Afghans were brought to Australia as
Upon arriving in Australia, the camel drivers established a series of informal settlements, colloquially known as "ghantowns".[4] In the 1860s, the Afghans built Australia's first mosque in Broken Hill.[1] By the 1890s, most of the Afghans living in the country were camel drivers and they exercised virtually unlimited control over the camel driving business in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Central Australia. Most settled in Marree, Broken Hill, Alice Springs, Adelaide and Perth; all were men.[2] Since they were not intended as permanent settlers, they came to Australia without their families. Some went on to marry Aboriginal or socially disadvantaged and marginalised women.[1]
From the 1890s onward, attempts were made to prevent Afghans from working in certain industries. Efforts to remove them from the
Asailants
Badsha Mahommed Gool was born in 1874 or 1875.
Outbreak of the First World War
The Germans believed that the construction of the
On 2 August 1914, Germany and the Ottoman Empire concluded a
Attack
Each New Year's Day the local lodge of the
The train from Broken Hill to Silverton was crowded with 1200 picnickers in 40 open ore trucks. Three kilometres out of town, Gool and Abdullah positioned themselves on an embankment about 30 metres from the tracks. As the train passed, they opened fire with two rifles, discharging 20 to 30 shots.The picnickers initially thought that the shots were being discharged in honour of the train's passing, as a sham fight, or as target practice.[22] Alma Cowie, aged 17 died instantly. William John Shaw, a foreman in the Sanitary Department, was killed on the train and his daughter Lucy Shaw was injured. Six other people on the train were injured: Mary Kavanagh, George Stokes, Thomas Campbell, Alma Crocker, Rose Crabb and Constable Robert Mills.[23]
The conductor of the train was "Tiger" Dick (Eric Edward) Nyholm,[note 3] also of Broken Hill. He was a renowned marksman and proved instrumental in protecting the train's passengers from further injury.
Police response
Gool and Abdullah made their way from the train towards the West Camel Camp, where they lived. On the way they killed Alfred E. Millard, who had taken shelter in his hut. By this time the train had reached a siding where the police were telephoned. The police contacted Lieutenant Resch at the local army unit, who despatched his men. When police encountered Gool and Abdullah near the Cable Hotel, the pair shot and wounded Constable Mills. Gool and Abdullah then took shelter within a white quartz outcrop that provided good cover. A 90-minute gun battle followed, during which armed members of the public arrived to join the police and military. In support of the police, military, and local militia, the Cameleers assist against the perpetrators, in some instances walking into the line of fire to remove members of the wider community when they were injured or allowing the police to utilise their dwellings for shelter during the gun battle.[25] By the end of the battle very little shooting came from the pair and most of it was off target, leading Constable Ward to conclude that Abdullah was already dead and Gool was wounded. An eyewitness later stated that Gool had stood with a white rag tied to his rifle but was cut down by gunfire. He was found with 16 wounds. The mob would not allow Abdullah's body to be taken away in the ambulance. Later that day the police secretly disposed of both bodies.
James Craig, a 69-year-old occupant of a house behind the Cable Hotel, resisted his daughter's warning about chopping wood during the gun battle and was hit by a stray bullet and killed. He was the fourth to die.
Aftermath
Immediate events
The attackers left notes connecting their actions to the hostilities between the Ottoman and British Empires, which had been officially declared in October 1914. Believing he would be killed, Gool Mahomed left a letter in his waist-belt which stated that he was a subject of the Ottoman Sultan and that, "I must kill you and give my life for my faith, Allāhu Akbar." Abdullah said in his last letter that he was dying for his faith and in obedience to the order of the Sultan, "but owing to my grudge against Chief Sanitary Inspector Brosnan it was my intention to kill him first."[26] Turkish sources claim that the letter from the Ottoman Sultan was a forgery, and that the Turkish flag found with the perpetrators was planted. It is claimed that the incident was attributed to Turks in order to rally the Australian public for the war.[27]
The actions were seen as representative of enemy aliens and Germans in the area were the focus of violence, as it was believed that the Germans had agitated the assailants to attack.
Souvenir hunters quickly tore Gool's ice-cream cart apart and scavenged the scene of the train attack looking for expended cartridges.[11] That evening, a crowd gathered on Argent Street. The townsfolk squabbled over whether the attackers were Afghans or Turks, and whether the attack had been instigated by the Germans.[28][29] On the evening of Friday 1 January the mob then made its way to the German Club on Delamore Street,[28] cutting the hoses of the firemen who came to fight the flames to ensure the building was completely destroyed.[26][30] The club had been empty since the start of the war, when all Germans living in Australia were rounded up and interned.[13] Singing patriotic songs and cursing the Germans, Turks and Afghans, members of the mob tossed stones through its windows, forced their way inside and set it on fire.[28] Someone shouted, "now for the camel camp!"[28] At 9:30 p.m., the police entered the local mosque and conducted a search, in response to allegations that a constable was being held hostage there, which were eventually deemed false. As they were leaving, the officers saw the mob approaching the ghantown.[28] The mob demanded to be given the assailants' corpses, but the police refused. They were prevented from entering the encampment by soldiers and policemen, who stood on guard all night.[29] Undertakers contacted by the local authorities refused to have any part in burying the two assailants' remains.[31] Following the deaths of the perpetrators, the Cameleers were offered the bodies so they could be buried according to Islamic burial rites. However, the local Cameleers refused to accept them as they stated they were angry at the actions of the perpetrators and refused to wash the bodies according to Islamic practice nor have them buried within the "Mohammedan" section of the cemetery.[25] There was no further violence against the Afghan community.
Those who orchestrated the burning of the German Club were never prosecuted.
The next day the mines of Broken Hill fired all employees deemed enemy aliens under the 1914 Commonwealth War Precautions Act. Six Austrians, four Germans and one Turk were ordered out of town by the public. Shortly afterwards, all enemy aliens in Australia were interned for the duration of the war.[30]
On Sunday 3 January thousands of people assembled in Broken Hill to witness the funerals of the four victims.[34]
German propaganda
The Sydney journal
Discovery of suicide notes
Three days after the attacks, a miner discovered three sheets of paper hidden underneath a rock, two of which contained the assailants' suicide notes. I am a poor man and belong to the Sultan, the Sultan Abdul Hamid, in whose country I have been four times to fight. I have got no chance now to fight. I have got a paper from Abdul Hamid with his seal. The paper is in my belt. I will fight and kill your people because your people are fighting my country. This I am doing because I feel it so much. I have no enemies among you, and nobody told me to do this. I have told nobody as God is my witness and nobody knows except us two.[37]
Mullah Abdullah's suicide note offered insight into his motives, suggesting that he was motivated more by personal grievances than by religious extremism or nationalism:
I am a poor sinner in the sight of the Almighty, and I supplicate his mercy. I am a poor resident of this country. I gave another name for my own purpose. One day the inspector accused me. On another occasion, I begged and prayed, but he would not listen to me. I was sitting brooding in anger. Just then the man Gool Badsha Mahomed came to me and [we] made our grievances known to each other. I rejoiced and gladly fell in with his plans. For my faith and in obedience to the order of the Sultan of the Koran: but owing to the grudge against the inspector it was my intention to kill him first. Beyond this there is enmity against anybody. I swear this by God and on the Koran.[37]
Since their discovery, the authenticity of the suicide notes has been brought into question.[11]
Publishing of the event
In the late 1970s, Ayten Kuyululu intended to turn the story into a film, The Battle of Broken Hill. Initially she planned to direct the film herself but found backers unwilling to fund an unknown female Turkish director, so Donald Crombie took over as intended director. Her efforts were however unsuccessful.[38][39][40]
Nicholas Shakespeare wrote the novella Oddfellows (2015) based on this event.[21]
The battle is the subject of the song "Battle of Broken Hill" by the Sydney-based Celtic-punk band Handsome Young Strangers, found on their 2016 EP of the same name.[citation needed]
In 2014 the Greek Australian genocides scholar Panayiotis Diamadis noted that the attack occurred only a few weeks after the declaration of jihad (holy war) on 14 November 1914 by Sultan Mehmed V and Shaykh al-Islām (primary religious leader) Essad Effendi of the Ottoman Empire against Great Britain and the Allies.[41][42]
The Australian government refused requests to fund a commemoration of the event for its 100th anniversary.[43] A ceremony marking the centenary of the event was held at Broken Hill railway station on 1 January 2015.[44]
A 2019 Turkish film by Can Ulkay , Türk Isi Dondurma (Turkish Ice Cream) presented a highly fictionalised version of the story.[45]
Legacy
The incident at Broken Hill was the only war-related conflagration to take place on Australian soil during the First World War.[46] Nahid Kabir, a professor specializing in the history and culture of expatriate Muslim communities, states that it "may be regarded as the most horrifying act of treason in Australia during the entire war period."[19] The attack has variously been described as domestic terrorism[47] and a "suicide-terrorist mission".[28]
Shortly after the attack, the J. C. Williamson Film Company released a propaganda film called Broken Hill on New Year's Day Massacre. It was filmed on-location and documented the experiences of Broken Hill's residents.[48] The attack was also depicted in a 1965 painting by Australian artist Sam Byrne.[49] It was later dramatised in a 1981 feature film called The Battle of Broken Hill.[50][51] After its release, the incident came to be widely known by this name.[11] It has also been dubbed the Broken Hill massacre.[36] In 2015, British writer Nicholas Shakespeare released a novel titled Oddfellows based on this event.[52]
In the years after the attack, students from a local
See also
Footnotes
- ^ The policy's stated objective was the prohibition of individuals who were not of Anglo-Saxon descent from immigrating to Australia in an attempt to keep the country "racially pure".[5]
- ^ The assailant's name is spelled Muhammad Gül in some modern sources.[12] In contemporary press reports, his name was spelled Mahommed Gool.[13]
- Ronald Nyholm, a chemist who was a leading figure in inorganic chemistry in the 1950s and 1960s.[24]
References
- ^ a b c Saeed (2006), p. 73.
- ^ a b Fazal (2001), p. 164.
- ^ Cleland (2001), p. 12.
- ^ Stevens (2002), p. 239.
- ^ a b c Saeed (2006), p. 74.
- ^ Kabir (2013), p. 52—53.
- ^ Kabir (2013), p. 57—58.
- ^ Stevens (2002), p. 264—266.
- ^ a b c Jones & Kenny (2010), p. 187.
- ^ a b c d Stevens (2005), p. 1.
- ^ a b c d e f Murphy 14 October 2014.
- ^ a b Jones & Kenny (2010), p. 177.
- ^ a b c d Dash 20 October 2011.
- ^ Stevens (2002), p. 162.
- ^ McMeekin (2012), p. 209.
- ^ Aydin (2017), p. 115.
- ^ Strachan (2001), p. 659—660, 713—715.
- ^ Strachan (2001), p. 677—680.
- ^ a b Kabir (2013), p. 100.
- ^ Palmer (1992), p. 226.
- ^ ISBN 9780857987181.
- ^ "'For Revenge'". The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, SA). 4 January 1915. p. 6.
- ^ The Barrier Miner, 2 January 1915.[full citation needed]
- ISSN 1833-7538.
- ^ S2CID 257702312.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-554976-7
- ^ Özdil, Yilmaz (3 January 2013). "Sayın Apo Anzak oldu!". Hürriyet (in Turkish). Retrieved 3 January 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f Stevens (2002), p. 164.
- ^ a b c Kabir (2013), p. 103.
- ^ ISBN 0-7241-8450-3
- ^ a b Stevens (2002), p. 166.
- ^ Kabir (2013), pp. 107–108.
- ^ Tampke (2006), p. 122.
- ^ "The New Year's Day Tragedy. Funerals of the Victims". The Barrier Miner. Broken Hill, New South Wales. p. 2.
- ^ Whyte, Brendan. "Propaganda eats itself: The Bulletin and the battle of Broken Hill". Sabretache, Vol. 57, No. 3, September 2016: 48–57.
- ^ a b Shakespeare 28 February 2015.
- ^ a b Kabir (2013), p. 101.
- ^ Stratton, David (30 January 2021). "The Forgotten Pioneer of Australian Cinema". The Australian. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
- ^ David Stratton, The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival, Angus & Robertson 1980, p. 281
- ^ "Production Survey", Cinema Papers, January 1978, p. 251
- ^ Panayiotis Diamadis, "History repeating: from the Battle of Broken Hill to the sands of Syria", The Conversation, 3 October 2014. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
- ISBN 9781597974967.
- ^ "Battle of Broken Hill an act of war or terrorism won't be commemorated" by Damien Murphy, The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 October 2014
- ^ Breen, Jacqueline. "Broken Hill remembers victims of 1915 attack by gunmen brandishing Turkish flag". ABC News. Retrieved 1 January 2015.
- IMDb
- ^ Clodfelter (2017), p. 421.
- ^ Stanley (2017), p. 29.
- ^ Palmer (1988), p. 7.
- ^ Jones & Kenny (2010), p. 146—147.
- ^ Mazur (2011), p. 43.
- ^ Wittmann (2014), p. 569.
- ^ McEvoy 1 February 2015.
- ^ Şakul (2016), p. 198.
- ^ Murphy 31 October 2014.
- ^ Breen 1 January 2015.
Works cited
- Aydin, Cemil (2017). The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-67497-738-9.
- Breen, Jacqueline (1 January 2015). "Broken Hill remembers victims of 1915 attack by gunmen brandishing Turkish flag". ABC News. Retrieved 1 January 2015.
- Cleland, Bilal (2001). "The History of Muslims in Australia". In Akbarzadeh, Shahram; Saeed, Abdullah (eds.). Muslim Communities in Australia. Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press. pp. 12–32. ISBN 9780868405803.
- Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (4th ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 9780786474707.
- Coote, Gavin (27 March 2014). "Military commentator wants Broken Hill to be included in national ANZAC Centenary". abc.net.au.
- Dash, Mike (20 October 2011). "The Battle of Broken Hill". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
- Fazal, Abdul Khaliq (2001). "Afghans". In Jupp, James (ed.). The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 164–165. ISBN 9780521807890.
- Gregory, Jenny (2011). "Traversing the Margins, Connecting Worlds". In Mayne, Alan; Atkinson, Stephen (eds.). Outside Country: Histories of Inland Australia. Adelaide, Australia: Wakefield Press. ISBN 9781862549609.
- Jones, Philip; Kenny, Anna (2010). Australia's Muslim Cameleers: Pioneers of the Inland, 1860s–1930s. Adelaide, Australia: Wakefield Press. ISBN 9781862548725.
- Kabir, Nahid (2013). Muslims in Australia. London, England: Routledge. ISBN 9781136215063.
- Mazur, Eric Michael (2011). Encyclopedia of Religion and Film. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780313330728.
- McEvoy, Marc (1 February 2015). "English author Nicholas Shakespeare chronicles Australia's first terrorist attack". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- McMeekin, Sean (2012). The Berlin-Baghdad Express. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674058538.
- Murphy, Damien (14 October 2014). "Broken Hill, New Year's Day, 1915 was Australia's first terrorist attack". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- Murphy, Damien (31 October 2014). "Battle of Broken Hill an act of war or terrorism won't be commemorated". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- Palmer, Scott (1988). A Who's Who of Australian and New Zealand Film Actors: The Sound Era. New York, New York: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810820906.
- ISBN 9781566198479.
- Saeed, Abdullah (2006). "Muslims in Australia". In Mansouri, Fethi (ed.). Australia and the Middle East: A Front-Line Relationship. London, England: I.B.Tauris. pp. 73–84. ISBN 9780857710673.
- Şakul, Kahraman (2016). "Contemporary Turkish Perceptions of the Gallipoli Campaign". In Gürcan, Metin; Johnson, Robert (eds.). The Gallipoli Campaign: The Turkish Perspective. London, England: Routledge. pp. 181–204. ISBN 9781317030850.
- Shakespeare, Nicholas (28 February 2015). "The bloody ballad of Broken Hill: How jihad came to the Australian outback in 1915". The Independent.
- Stanley, Peter (2017). The Crying Years: Australia's Great War. Canberra: National Library of Australia. ISBN 9780642279057.
- Stevens, Christine (2002) [1989]. Tin Mosques & Ghantowns: A History of Afghan Camel Drivers in Australia. Alice Springs, Australia: Paul Fitzsimons. ISBN 9780958176002.
- Stevens, Christine (2005). "Abdullah, Mullah (1855–1915)". In Cunneen, Christopher; Roe, Jillian; Garton, Stephen; Kingston, Beverley (eds.). Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplement: 1580–1980. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 9780522852141.
- ISBN 9780198208778.
- Tampke, Jürgen (2006). The Germans in Australia. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521612432.
- Wittmann, Anna M. (2014). "Film and World War I". In Tucker, Spencer C. (ed.). World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 560–569. ISBN 9781851099658.
- Whyte, Brendan (2016). ""Propaganda Eats Itself: The Bulletin and the Battle of Broken Hill"". Sabretache. 57 (3): 48–57. ISSN 0048-8933.
External links
- Sharing the Lode: The Broken Hill Migrant Story
- The Battle of Broken Hill film
- Battle of Broken Hill, Postcards TV show visits the area
- "Broken Hill Picnic Train Massacre" Archived 14 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine by Brendan Whyte in Strategy & Tactics, no. 231, pp. 30–31, November/December 2005 (11 MB)
- Abu Bakr Sirajuddin Cook (2023). "Mullah Abdullah, A Mullah? A Reassessment of the Assertions and the Evidence". Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.