'mobilisation'; Arabic: النفير العام, romanized: Alnafeer AlAm [ʔlnfjr ʔlʕaːm]) was the mobilisation effected by the late Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War of 1913 and World War I from 1914 to 1918, which involved the forced conscription of Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, and Kurdish men to fight on its behalf[1] as well as the deportation of 'numerous Lebanese & Syrian & Kurdish families' (5,000 according to one contemporary account) to Anatolia under Djemal (Cemal) Pasha's orders.
Announcements calling for mobilisation were posted in public areas in Ottoman towns and distributed to local leaders, and the word seferberlik was prominently printed on top.
The WWI diary of a Palestinian Ottoman soldier, Ihsan Turjman, describes the scarcity of foodstuffs and the overpricing of sugar, rice and grains.
Siham Turjman recounts how her mother, who was then 14 years old, told her how everything was expensive during the Seferberlik and how people would line up in front of the bakery at midnight to buy burnt, and overpriced bread.
Memoirs and reports published shortly after the end of the Great War describe the horrific scenes of famine that filled Lebanon’s streets.
In Antun Yamin’s two-two-volume history Lubnan fi al-Harb (published in 1919) a chapter entitled 'Stories that Would Shake Rocks' gives a detailed report of people attacking the corpses of dead animals and children and eating them.
'[16] Yusuf Shalhub, the famous Zajal poet, lamented the deterioration of living standards during the War, which led many women to sell their bodies in exchange for bread.
According to current research on the topic in Medina, Seferberlik invokes memories of humiliation and the destruction of social and familial structure for the original inhabitants of the city.
Novelists, journalists, and playwrights used the oral accounts of those who experienced WWI, and the miseries of the Seferberlik to produce an impressive body of literary and dramatic production.
In the 20th century Arab literary and historical accounts of the Seferberlik period became synonymous with the famine that overran the Levant and especially Mount Lebanon in 1916.
The Syrian drama series Ikhwat al-Turab (Brothers in Soil), directed by Najdat Anzour in the 1990s, shows soldiers being separated from their families and loved ones because of the Seferberlik.