Egypt and Sinai from Cram's 1896 Railway Map of the Turkish Empire.
Egypt, Penisula of Sinai, Red [Sea], Nubia, Nubain Es Soudan, Gulf of Suez, Suez Canal, Suez
"The year 1916 opened with a maritime loss, when a German submarine sank the British troop transport Ivernia off Cape Matapan and 121 troops were drowned. They had been on their way to Egypt, to form part of the force that was pushing the Turks back across the Sinai desert towards Palestine. Nine days later a British force drove the Turks out of the border town of Rafah, taking 1,600 prisoners. The whole of the Sinai Peninsula, hitherto an outpost of the Ottoman Empire, was now under British control."
In February, 1915, the British had halted a Turkish offensive on the Suez Canal, and had subsequently begun to build the infrastructure — roads, water — to advance along the coast to Palestine. Allied, primarily British and Dominion forces, were progressing against the southern regions of the Ottoman Empire, both in Sinai and Palestine to Turkey's southwest, and in Mesopotamia to the southeast.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 305, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
1917-01-11, 1917, January, Rafah, Sinai, Palestine
