the isolated small train stations withstood the continuous night attacks and secured the tracks against increasing number of attacks (around 130 major attacks in 1917 and hundreds in 1918, including more than 300 bombs on 30 April 1918). With the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from the war with the Armistice of Mudros between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I on 30 October 1918, it was expected that Fahreddin would also surrender. But he refused to do so and rejected the armistice. During the siege of Medina, Fahreddin sent the sacred artefacts and manuscripts of Medina to Istanbul in order to protect them from seizure. Most of the manuscripts were returned to Medina by the Ottoman Empire and are now in libraries in the city, while the rest remain in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. According to eye-witness memoirs of Turkish author Feridun Kandemir, who was a Red Crescent volunteer of that time in Medina, one Friday in the spring of 1918, after prayers in Masjid al-Nabawi (also known as the Prophet's Mosque), Fahreddin addressed the troops: "Soldiers! I appeal to you in the name of the Prophet, my witness. I command you to defend him and his city to the last cartridge and the last breath, irrespective of the strength of the enemy. May Allah help us, and may the prayers of Muhammad be with us. "Officers of the heroic Turkish army! O little Muhammads, come forward and promise me, before our Lord and the Prophet, to honor your faith with the supreme sacrifice of your lives." Fahreddin Pasha had said that he had a vision in a dream that the prophet Muhammad had ordered him not to submit. In August 1918, he received a call to surrender from Sharif Husain of Mecca. Fahreddin Pasha replied him in these words: "Fakhr-ud-Din, General, Defender of the Most Sacred City of Medina. Servant of the Prophet. In the name of Allah, the Omnipotent. To him who broke the power of Islam, caused bloodshed among Muslims, jeopardized the caliphate of the Commander of the Faithful, and exposed it to the domination of the British. On Thursday night the fourteenth of Dhu'l-Hijja, I was walking, tired and worn out, thinking of the protection and defense of Medina, when I found myself among unknown men working in a small square. Then I saw standing before me a man with a