In 1918, towards the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire's forces withdrew from Syria after being defeated by the Allied Powers (Great Britain and France) and their Hashemite Arab allies from the Hejaz. The British had promised the Hashemites control over a united Arab state consisting of the bulk of Arabic-speaking lands the Ottomans withdrew from, but the Allies had made their own territorial designs over the region entailed in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement.