On May 16, 1916, Great Britain and France concluded a secret agreement commonly, though unofficially, known as the “Sykes – Picot Agreement.” Embodied in notes exchanged between Great Britain, France and Russia, the Agreement actually delimited Ottoman territory into British and French spheres of influence.
Without detailing the “Skyes – Picot Agreement,” key provisions included the partition of the entire Fertile Crescent into several zones, which influenced directly, the eventual delineation of not only the Jordan – Syria boundary but also included most of the other areas of former Ottoman Arab lands. For all practical purposes, (a) France assumed control of northern Syria which became Lebanon and Syria including “Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, but also Mosul in Northern Iraq. (b) Britain assumed the Baghdad Vilayet. (c) Syria to the east of Homs, Hamah and Damascus became an “independent Arab State or Confederation” but directly under French influence. (d) South Syria, in what was to become Trans-Jordan, in the general area of the present Jordan – Syria boundary was assigned to be directly under British influence.
International Boundary Study
No. 94 – December 30, 1969
Jordan – Syria Boundary
(Country Codes: JO-SY)
by The Geographer Office of the Geographer Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State
http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS094.pdf
Sykes–Picot Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
The Sykes–Picot Agreement, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and France, with the assent of Russia, defining their proposed spheres of influence and control in the Middle East should the Triple Entente succeed in defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The negotiation of the treaty occurred between November 1915 and March 1916. The agreement was concluded on 16 May 1916.
The agreement effectively divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire outside the Arabian peninsula into areas of future British and French control or influence. The terms were negotiated by the French diplomat François Georges-Picot and British Sir Mark Sykes. The Russian Tsarist government was a minor party to the Sykes–Picot agreement, and when, following the Russian Revolution of October 1917, the Bolsheviks exposed the agreement, “the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed and the Turks delighted.”