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Violet Line (1914)

British-Ottoman boundary line

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ22935597 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Violet Line was a boundary line agreed between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire in March 1914. It started from the termination of the Blue Line agreed to at the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 and extended to the border between the Ottoman Yemen Vilayet and the British Aden Protectorates.

Specifically, the line went north-east (at 45°) from the village of Lakamat Al Ash’ub (13.827888°N 44.754798°E / 13.827888; 44.754798) and began where it intersected with the previously agreed tribal boundary in 1905. It then continued until it met the Blue Line at the 20th parallel. Together with the Blue Line, the Violet Line effectively divided the Arabian peninsula in two. This boundary between the Ottoman and British empires is what eventually led to the border between North Yemen and South Yemen.

References

Further reading

Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: the creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Kelly, J. B. Eastern Arabian Frontiers New York: Frederick A Praeger, 1964.

Kelly, J. B. Sovereignty and Jurisdiction in Eastern Arabia International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs) 34.4 (1958): 16–24.

Kelly, Saul B, ed.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Violet Line (1914)” as british-Ottoman boundary line. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1914, 1913, 1905, 1997—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Violet, Line and British-Ottoman can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as british-Ottoman boundary line. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22935597. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1913, 1905 and 1997.

Critical limits

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Violet Line (1914)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.