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Sir Mark Sykes

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"SIR MARK SYKES, 6TH Bart. (1879-1919), English traveller and politician, was born March 16 1879, the only child of Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th Bart., of Sledmeer, Yorks. He was educated at the Roman Catholic public school of Beaumont College and afterwards at the Ecole des Jesuites, Monaco, and Jesus College, Cambridge. He served in the South African War (1902), in 1904 became secretary to Mr. George Wyndham in Ireland, and in 1905 went to Constantinople as honorary attache to the British embassy, remaining there until 1907. Before this, however, he had begun a series of travels and explorations, especially in Turkey and the Near East. He published several works dealing with his various expeditions, among them being Through Five Turkish Provinces (1900); Dar-el-Islam (1903); and Five Mansions of the House of Othman (1909). He also prepared maps of the north-western region of Mesopotamia and of the southern districts of Palestine, for which in 1906 he was thanked by the Army Council and Foreign Office. His knowledge of these regions proved invaluable during the World War. In 1911 he was elected to Parliament for Central Hull as a Unionist, and in 1913 he succeeded his father as 6th Baronet. On the outbreak of war in 1914, Sir Mark Sykes raised a battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, but did not proceed with it to France. He was sent on important special missions to Russia, Mesopotamia and Syria, and published in 1915 The Caliphs' Last Heritage. He died suddenly in Paris Feb. 16 1919.