A small Arab kingdom east of the Mediterranean Sea.
Jordan is bordered on the north by Syria, on the east by Iraq, on the south by Saudi Arabia, and on the west by Israel and the West Bank. The Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of the Red Sea, abuts its southernmost tip. To the west, it shares the Dead Sea (an inland salt lake) with Israel and the West Bank. Jordan is a crossroads in the region: The hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) route from Turkey and Syria passed through Jordan to the Hijaz and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. A major trunk road runs from Iraq to Jordan's only port, Aqaba. Oil pipelines, now nonfunctioning, were built from Iraq and Saudi Arabia across Jordan to Mediterranean ports. Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel (1948), Jordan (called Transjordan from 1920 - 1946) was the transit route from Palestinian ports to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian/Arabian Gulf. With a population that is about 50 percent Jordanian Arabs and 50 percent Palestinian (most refugees from the first Arab - Israel War of 1948), and a location between Israel and the powerful Arab states, Jordan is frequently buffeted by Middle Eastern and international political currents.
Geography and Climate
Jordan's landmass, almost 90,649 square kilometers (38,000 square miles), is marked by three distinct geological systems: the Jordan rift valley, the Transjordan plateau, and the Arabian/Syrian desert. At 397 meters (1,302 feet) below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, the Jordan valley contains the Dead Sea, the lowest surface point on the planet (the lowest actual point being beneath the ocean). Since the 1960s, the Jordanians have developed a sophisticated irrigation system in the valley, because it receives little rain. Given the topography and low rainfall, most of Jordan is a classic desert, with only 3 percent arable (partly under irrigation) and 1 percent forested. The Jordan valley is, however, warm in winter, so off-season fruits and vegetables can be produced for temperate markets. To the east of the rift valley, the Transjordan plateau runs like a wedge from the Syrian border to Maʿan in the south of the country. The plateau is composed of broad rolling plains, cut by precipitous valleys or wadis (stream-beds that have water only during the rainy season). Rain-fed agriculture and animal husbandry are practiced here. To the east and south of the plateau, lies the Arabian/Syrian desert, a wasteland only sparsely populated by Bedouin.
Jordan possesses few natural resources; its only significant mineral deposits consist of phosphates, which are mined, and potash, which is extracted from evaporation of Dead Sea water. Jordan has very few petroleum deposits and no coal. Its important rivers are the Yarmuk River (shared with Syria and Israel), the Jordan River, (shared with Israel and the West Bank), and the Zarqa. Except for the small oasis of Azraq in the northeastern desert, Jordan has no natural freshwater lakes. An artificial lake was established behind the King Talal dam on the Zarqa River.
Jordan has a pleasant warm climate with little humidity, but also little precipitation. In the winter in the capital of Amman, the average high temperature is 11 degrees C (52 degrees F) and the average low is 4.4 degrees C (40 degrees F); in the summer they are 30 degrees C (86 degrees F) and 18 degrees C (64 degrees F). In the northern part of the Transjordan plateau, precipitation averages
64 centimeters (25 inches), but in the southern part it falls to an erratic 25 to 35 centimeters (10 to 14 inches) - barely enough to raise a wheat crop. The desert and the Jordan valley receive 0 to 25 centimeters (0 - 10 inches) of rain. Typical of the eastern Mediterranean, the precipitation falls only during the late autumn, winter, and early spring - the rainy season.
The People, Language, and Religion
Jordan's population of 5,460,265 (mid-2003 estimate), lives largely in the fertile highlands of the Transjordan plateau. Smaller numbers live in the Jordan valley, where they practice agriculture or mining, and in the desert, where they herd sheep, goats, and camels or enlist in the military. About 50 percent of the population are Jordanians who originate from the land east of the Jordan river. Most of the balance have their origins in Palestine. Many arrived as refugees in Jordan following the establishment of the State of Israel and the Arab - Israel Wars of 1948 and 1967. Other Palestinians moved to Jordan beginning in the 1950s. As a result of the Gulf Crisis and war, about 300,000 Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship moved from Kuwait back to Jordan, where they increased the population by 9 percent. While relations between the refugees and other Jordanians are relatively amicable today, Palestinian guerrilla organizations did conduct an unsuccessful civil war against the Jordanian
regime in 1970 ("Black September"). Both groups are of Arab stock and think of themselves as part of the larger Arab nation.
In terms of minorities, about 5 percent of the population are Arab Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox. They have positive relations with the Muslim majority and hold responsible and high-level positions in business, industry, commerce, banking, and government. Ethnic minority groups are even smaller; among these are Armenian Christians, Chechen Muslims, and Circassian Muslims. Some Circassians are royal palace guards.
The official language of Jordan is Arabic. Throughout the Arab world, although the written language is virtually the same, spoken dialects have developed. The Arabic spoken in Jordan conforms to the general eastern Mediterranean dialect; however, one finds some variations in the spoken language between the rural and urban regions, the older and younger generations, and the Jordanians and Palestinians. The influence of modern communications and education is causing many of these differences to be tempered or to disappear. Among the ethnic minority groups, Arabic is spoken in public but their mother tongue is often spoken at home.
Islam is Jordan's official religion. Ninety-five percent of the population are of that faith and almost all are Sunni Muslims. The government supports the established religion through its ministry of Awqaf (Waqf) and Islamic affairs. (Religious pluralism is also officially countenanced; the state recognizes and respects the rights of religious minorities.) Islam deeply affects the lives and behavior of many Jordanians. Praying five times a day, attendance at mosque on Fridays, tithing, fasting during Ramadan, and the Hajj to Mecca are aspired to and practiced by many. The wave of popular Islamic fundamentalism that has affected the Middle East since the 1970s has had its influence in Jordan. Some practice their religion more diligently and demonstrably. Islamic classes and discussions, including informal and formal organizational activities, are popular; some women follow the religious dress code characterized by modest long coats and head scarves.
Jordan is a highly urbanized country. Seven out of every ten Jordanians live in towns of 5,000 or more; the balance resides in villages and encampments. With the return of the Palestinian Jordanians from Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, many of whom settled in Amman, 1,864,500 people lived in that city by 1999. In the 1970s, there was a great contrast between urban and rural living standards. Urbanites enjoyed basic services, such as drinking water and electricity in their homes, with schools and clinics in close proximity to their residences. By the late 1980s, those differences had substantially, but not entirely, disappeared. In urban areas, 99 percent have electricity in their residences; in the rural areas, the figure is 81 percent. For drinking water, the figures are 92 percent and 78 percent respectively. In terms of living space, while there are certainly some crowded quarters in the urban regions, they do not approach the crowded conditions often associated with developing countries. About 10 percent of the people reside in Palestinian refugee camps, where living conditions are congested. In rural areas, around 25 percent live in stone and mud houses; a diminishing number (less than 5 percent) follow the traditional life of the Arab Bedouin, living in tents and tending camels, sheep, and goats.
Jordan is substantially overpopulated, given its limited natural resources, because of the influx of Palestinian refugees and the very high birth rate. This overpopulation is a major reason for the degree of urbanization in the country. Low rainfall and a growing population put pressure on the very limited water supply. Some significant cuts in irrigation have already occurred and more are expected. In addition, as of the early twenty-first century, some 52 percent of the population is below 20 years of age - a heavy burden on the economy and service sector, especially in education.
Economy
Jordan's economy is highly skewed by its growing population and its dependence on the economies and politics of the Middle East. From the period of its gradual independence from Great Britain in the late 1940s and early 1950s, development has been the watchword of Jordan's economy. Beginning from a modest base, it grew by 11 percent per year from 1954 to 1967. During this period, Jordan received considerable economic and financial assistance first from Britain and later from the United States. After a period of decline caused by wars, civil strife, and international and regional constraints, it recommenced steady growth in 1974. This was stimulated by substantial aid and remittances from the oil-rich states of the region, plus a period of relative stability in Jordan and the region. By the mid-1980s, along with the Middle East economy generally, growth slowed to the point of stagnation. In 1988, the Jordanian currency, the dinar, was considered to be overvalued by international financial circles and devalued by 40 percent. This economic decline was exacerbated by the Gulf Crisis and war (1990 - 1991). Among other things, Jordan lost most of the remittances from the returned Jordanians who had been working in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf states as well as the direct financial aid from those countries.
In terms of both labor force and share of gross national product (GNP), Jordan's economy is dominated by the service sector (over 60 percent in both categories), followed by mining and manufacturing, construction, and agriculture. The service sector overshadows the economy because of the country's relatively large population, high birth rate, number of government employees in both the civilian and military sectors, and the government's successful efforts at extending essential services throughout the country. The mining and manufacturing sector is composed of five large companies - phosphate mining, potash extraction, fertilizer and cement facilities, and an oil refinery (that refines imported oil) - as well as many small factories and artisans. Agriculture, which is usually important in developing countries, claims less than 10 percent of both GNP and the labor force in Jordan.
In the 1990s, Jordan started moving in another economic direction: free trade. After the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, the United States and Jordan established "Qualified Industrial Zones" (QIZs) in the country. Under this system, manufacturers in the twelve QIZs use a combination of Israeli, Jordanian, and West Bank - Gaza materials to manufacture goods that are then exported to the United States duty free. Jordan's exports to the United States grew from $20 million in 1999 to $200 million in 2002. However, only 20 percent of these manufacturers are Jordanian firms, and only one-half of the 20,000 work force in the QIZs are Jordanians. Then in 2000, Jordan signed a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, according to which the two nations pledged to phase out their respective import tariffs over ten years. Jordan's commitment to U.S. - led free trade was symbolized by Jordan's hosting of the World Economic Forum meeting in June 2003. There has been another side of these close economic ties: The United States has provided $3 billion in financial and military aid since 1993, including $700 million as payment for Jordan's role in the 2003 Iraq war. Still, unemployment was about 20 percent in 2003.
History
Throughout most of recorded history, Jordan (formerly Transjordan) was not a distinct geographical or political entity. Rather it was usually just a provincial area of a larger state or empire. The exceptions might be the biblical Moabite kingdom centered in what is now Karak, the Nabatean trading state ruled from its unique capital carved out of the rose-colored stone cliffs of Petra, and the Crusader state led by Renard de Châtillon, who built a large citadel in Karak. Otherwise, the area was ruled successively by the Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Israelites, Greeks, Seleucids, Ptolemies, Romans, Byzantines, and the Muslim dynasties (Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, and Mamluks). In 1517 the Ottoman Empire established control in the region that would endure until the last days of World War I.
After World War I, Transjordan came under the British-sponsored rule of King Faisal I ibn Hussein and the short-lived United Syrian Kingdom. In July 1920, France drove Faisal out of Syria and took control of most of the Arab kingdom, while Britain continued to claim Transjordan, as prescribed in the secret French-British Sykes-Picot Agreement. In the meantime, Faisal's brother, Amir Abdullah I ibn Hussein, arrived in Maʿan with an entourage of followers in the fall of 1920. In 1921, British colonial secretary Winston Churchill accepted Abdullah as the ruler of Transjordan under the League of Nations Mandate System for Britain (while Faisal was made ruler of Iraq). Amir Abdullah, with the crucial cooperation and financial help of Britain, established the basic institutions of the state - a government, parliament (Council of Notables, later replaced by the Legislative Council in 1928), a constitution (the Organic Law in 1928), and a security force (the Arab Legion). After World War II, in 1946, an Anglo-Jordanian treaty was signed, to be revised in 1948 - after which the emi-rate of Transjordan became the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan and Abdullah was crowned king.
In May 1948, Jordan, along with several other Arab states, entered Palestine and joined the Arab - Israel War of 1948 six months after fighting first broke out between Jewish forces and local Palestinians. In 1949, at the end of the war, Jordan was in military possession of that portion of central Palestine that came to be called the West Bank. Following considerable political maneuvering and parliamentary elections on the East Bank (of the Jordan river - the old Transjordan) and the West Bank, the two entities were coupled via a parliamentary vote as a unitary kingdom. On 20 July 1951, angered by Jordan's secret negotiations with Israel, a Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah in Jerusalem's alHaram al-Sharif, whose shrines are the third holiest Islamic sites in the world. He was succeeded by his son Talal ibn Abdullah. By constitutional means, Talal was removed from the throne in 1952 due to mental illness. He was succeeded that year by his son, Hussein ibn Talal, who was then a minor. King Hussein did not officially take up his duties until he reached the age of eighteen in 1953.
Jordan's history during King Hussein's long reign (1952 - 1999) may be divided into three major periods. The first two decades were marked by internally and externally generated crises and threats to Hashimite rule and the very existence of the country: Radical Arab nationalism stimulated street riots, challenges to the regime from Jordan's Prime Minister Sulayman al-Nabulsi in 1956 and 1957, destabilization by larger and stronger Arab states, and the devastating loss of the West Bank to Israel in the Arab - Israel War of June 1967. In addition, the Palestinian guerrilla organizations confronted Jordan in the bloody Black September civil war in 1970. Nonetheless, while relying on his loyal military to survive, King Hussein and his circle helped put in place the bases for social and economic development.
The second phase, starting after the Arab - Israel War of October 1973, is distinguished by quieter political conditions within Jordan, rapid development fueled by funds (direct grants, loans, individual remittances) derived from the oil boom in neighboring states, and improved relations with most of Jordan's Arab neighbors in a relatively less radical regional atmosphere. Despite Jordan's problems with the Palestinians and its frequently strained relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the country became an accepted player and the king came to be a respected leader in most Arab capitals. Indeed, Jordan hosted two Arab summits - 1980 and 1987 - in Amman.
The third phase was dominated by the end of the Cold War and the alteration of regional relationships. In a sense, as a precursor to these changes, King Hussein decided to disengage Jordan politically and administratively from the West Bank in July 1988, in response to the pressures from the Palestinian Intifada (uprising), which began in late 1987. More important was the withdrawal of the Soviet Union as an active player in the region (1989 - 1990), the United States's ensuing dominance in areas of its perceived interests, and the resulting polarization of the Arab world. The 1990 - 1991 Gulf Crisis and war left Jordan (then diplomatically allied with Saddam Hussein's Iraq) and a few other poor Arab states politically, economically, and regionally isolated.
On the domestic level, though, Jordan began a gradual democratization process; its parliament had been recalled in 1984 after a hiatus that began in 1970, and in 1989, elections (generally considered to be the freest in the Arab Middle East) were held. Subsequently, under a mandate from King Hussein, leaders from all political streams wrote a national charter defining the general principles for political life in the country. They include democracy, pluralism, and the recognition of the legitimacy of the Hashimite throne. A special general
congress, of 2,000 representatives, ratified the document on 9 June 1991. Democratization initially led to significant parliamentary gains by opposition Islamic candidates and parties, although non-ideological, pro-regime politicians dominated the parliament by the early 2000s.
Jordan fully embraced the United States - sponsored Middle East peace process and, along with other Arab states and the Palestinians, participated in direct negotiations with Israel beginning at the October 1991 Madrid Conference. In the wake of the September 1993 Oslo Accord between Israel and the PLO, Jordan signed its own peace treaty with Israel in October 1994, the second Arab state to do so. In November 1995, King Hussein traveled to Jerusalem for the first time since 1967 to attend the funeral of assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Hussein's own death in January 1999 from cancer devastated Jordanians, many of whom had never known any leader but him, and who had come to associate him with the very existence of Jordan. Two weeks prior to his death, Hussein had shocked the nation by ousting his brother, Hassan, from the post of crown prince that he had held since 1965, and replacing him with his eldest son, Abdullah II ibn Hussein. The young king quickly assumed the throne upon his father's death, and faced monumentally large shoes to fill. Since then, he has pulled Jordan even closer to the United States and its vision of the Middle East. In addition to developing bilateral free trade agreements, Jordan also allowed the United States to station troops in the country before and during the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. With the Jordanian economy still in trouble, the Israeli - Palestinian peace process stalled, and a new regional balance of power given the direct intervention of the United States in Iraq, King Abdullah faced some serious challenges by late 2003.
Bibliography
Brand, Laurie A. Jordan's Inter-Arab Relations: The PoliticalEconomy of Alliance Making. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Fischbach, Michael R. State, Society, and Land in Jordan. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000.
Gubser, Peter. Jordan: Crossroads of Middle Eastern Events. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1983.
Massad, Joseph A. Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Piro, Timothy J. The Political Economy of Market Reform in Jordan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
Salibi, Kamal. The Modern History of Jordan. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the ZionistMovement and the Partition of Palestin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
Vatikiotis, P. J. Politics and the Military in Jordan: A Study of theArab Legion, 1927 - 1957. London: Cass, 1967.
Wilson, Mary C. King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan. Cambridge, U.K. and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
— PETER GUBSER
UPDATED BY MICHAEL R. FISCHBACH
