Declaration to the Seven

The Declaration to the Seven was a document written by Sir Mark Sykes, approved by Charles Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office and released^[1] on June 16, 1918^[2] in response to a memorandum issued anonymously by seven Syrian notables in Cairo that included members of the soon to be formed Syrian Unity Party, established in the wake of the Balfour Declaration and the November 23, 1917 publication by the Bolsheviks of the secret May 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France.^[3] The memorandum requested a "guarantee of the ultimate independence of Arabia". The Declaration stated the British policy that the future government of the regions of the Ottoman Empire occupied by Allies of World War I "should be based upon the principle of the consent of the governed".^[4]

^ "McMahon-Husain correspondence - Report of Arab-UK committee - UK documentation Cmd. 5974 (excerpts)/Non-UN document (16 March 1939)". 2008-06-18. Archived from the original on 2008-06-18. Retrieved 2022-07-30.
^ Elie Kedourie (2000). In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and Its Interpretations, 1914-1939. Psychology Press. pp. 295–. ISBN 978-0-7146-5097-5.
^ Choueiri, Youssef M. (2000). Arab nationalism, a history: nation and state in the Arab world. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Pub. p. 149. ISBN 0-631-21729-0.
^ Friedman, Isaiah (2000). Palestine: A Twice-Promised Land? Vol. 1: The British, the Arabs, and Zionism, 1915-1920. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A: Transaction Publishers. pp. 195–197. ISBN 1-56000-391-X.