1882 - 1951
King of Jordan, 1946 - 1951.
Abdullah ibn Hussein, born in Mecca, was a son of Husayn ibn Ali. On his eleventh birthday, he went to Constantinople (now Istanbul) to join his father, who had been summoned by the sultan. In 1908 Hussein was appointed Sharif of Mecca, over the objections of the Committee for Union and Progress (the Young Turks). Between 1910 and 1914, Abdullah represented Mecca in the Ottoman Parliament.
The Turkish authorities tried to strip Hussein of his administrative (but not religious) duties when the construction of railroad and telegraph lines made direct rule from Constantinople possible. Hussein resisted, and he was in danger of dismissal when the dispute was shelved due to the outbreak of World War I.
In February 1914, Abdullah met Lord Kitchener, then minister plenipotentiary to Egypt, and asked him if Britain would aid Sharif Hussein in case of a dispute with the Turks. Abdullah also met with Ronald Storrs, the Oriental secretary at Britain's consulate in Cairo. This meeting led to a subsequent correspondence between Storrs and Abdullah that later developed into the Husayn - McMahon Correspondence, an exchange in which certain pledges were made by Britain to the sharif concerning an independent Arab kingdom (with ambiguous boundaries) in the Fertile Crescent.
The Turks tried to persuade Hussein to endorse the call for jihad against the Allies, but he delayed until 10 June 1916, when the Arab Revolt was declared. Abdullah was entrusted with the siege of the Turkish garrisons in al-Taʾif and Medina. His brother Faisal, meanwhile, scored quick victories in Syria. Faisal set up an independent Arab kingdom with its capital at Damascus toward the end of 1918; the French drove him out two years later. Meanwhile, Abdullah was defeated in an important battle with the Wahhabi followers of Ibn Saʿud. Britain placed Faisal on the throne of Iraq, which had been slated for Abdullah.
One key to understanding Abdullah is his deep loyalty to Islam, which in his mind was linked to the notion that God had favored the Arabs with a unique position as the carriers of culture and faith. For him, Arabism was inseparable from Islam and meaningless without it. His family, which claimed a direct line of descent from the prophet Muhammad, provided the crucial link between the two.
Another key to an understanding of Abdullah's personality is that, as a rule, he sought cooperation, even in the midst of conflict. He preferred bargaining to fighting, and he constantly formulated value-maximizing strategies in which he compromised with his adversaries so that all sides might stand to gain from the outcome.
Although Abdullah strove for unity, he engaged in nation-building on a limited scale when unity was unattainable. When he appeared with a small band of armed followers in Madaba, after the French had ousted his brother Faisal from the throne of Syria in 1920, he was intent on leading Syrian political refugees, members of the Istiqlal Party still loyal to Faisal, and the bedouins he could muster in a bid to wrest Arab rights in Syria from the French. With T. E. Lawrence acting as a go-between, he negotiated a deal with the new British colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, under which Abdullah agreed to administer Transjordan for six months, beginning on 1 April 1921, and was granted a subsidy by Britain. One consequence of this was to remove Transjordan from the sphere of applicability of the Balfour Declaration.
Abdullah took over the administration of an arid plateau with a population of about 235,000, largely bedouin, poor, and uneducated, a land with some two hundred villages, half a dozen towns, and
no major cities. Governmental services were virtually nonexistent. When he died, he left a nation-state comparable with others in the Middle East, although lacking in financial independence. The period from 1924 to 1940 was one in which central administration was developed, with Palestinians gradually replacing Syrians. An exemplary land program gave farmers property security unmatched in the Fertile Crescent. In 1925 the Maʿān and Aqaba regions were effectively incorporated into Trans-jordan (they had technically formed part of the Hijaz). In the same period, the bedouins, who had preyed on the sedentary population, were successfully integrated into the state, for which John Bagot Glubb, the organizer of the Desert Patrol, was largely responsible.
In 1928, Transjordan acquired an organic law under which Abdullah gained recognition in international law. It also provided for constitutional government and a legislative council, but Abdullah had wide authority to rule by decree, under the guidance of Britain. Although Transjordan remained militarily dependent on Britain, on 22 March 1946 a treaty was concluded whereby Britain recognized Transjordan "as a fully independent state and His Highness the Amir as the sovereign thereof." Following a name change, the Hashimite kingdom of Jordan concluded a new treaty with Britain in 1948.
Through years of dependency on Britain, Abdullah fell behind the times, continuing to reflect the Ottoman Empire in which he had grown up: dynastic and theocratic, Arabs accepting foreign suzerainty under compulsion. He was out of step with Palestinian and secular Arab nationalism as well as Zionism. He sought to use British influence to forge Arab unity rather than to get rid of the British as a first step toward unity. British residents, notably St. John Philby and Percy Cox, drove a wedge between him and Syrian members of the Istiqlal party, who had perceived the Hashimites as champions of Syria's independence from France. When Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, a nationalist Syrian leader who had been a longtime supporter of Abdullah, was assassinated in July 1940, Abdullah's base of support in Syria died with him.
Abdullah could accept a Jewish homeland only in the context of the old millet system: as a minority with a large degree of autonomy within a kingdom that he ruled. Zionists found this totally unacceptable but valued his accommodating approach to the problem. Yet he was a pioneer of Arab - Jewish understanding. He accepted the Peel Commission Report of 1937, which recommended partition of Palestine, even if he did not embrace a Jewish state. He also publicly accepted the 1939 white paper on Palestine, which was favorable to the Arabs. It has been said that he was driven by personal ambition, hoping to incorporate the Arab portion of Palestine within his domain, yet it is clear that he saw himself as an Arab acting for the Arabs. As his grandson King Hussein pointed out, Abdullah realized that the Jewish community in Palestine was only the tip of the iceberg and that the balance of forces dictated compromise. Abdullah met with Golda Meir, who was acting on behalf of the political department of the Jewish Agency, on 17 November 1947, and it was agreed that Abdullah would annex the Arab part of Palestine under the UN partition plan but would not invade the Jewish part.
When the British mandate ended on 14 May 1948, the Jews declared the creation of a Jewish state, and war broke out with the Arabs. The Arab Legion (Jordanian army) occupied what came to be known as the West Bank; Britain accepted this as long as Abdullah kept out of the Jewish zone; when Jewish forces and the Arab Legion clashed over Jerusalem, which was to have been designated an international zone, Britain cut off arms supplies and spare parts, and ordered all of its officers to return to Amman. The Arabs held on to East Jerusalem, but the Arab Legion had to withdraw from the towns of Lydda and Ramla, which laid Abdullah open to charges of betrayal. In the final analysis, his strategy salvaged territory for the Arabs that may one day serve as the basis for a Palestinian state.
Abdullah initiated a conference in Jericho at which the Palestinian participants expressed a wish to join in one country with Jordan. Parliamentary elections were subsequently held in the west and east banks, with twenty seats assigned to each. Parliament convened on 24 April 1950, at which time Palestinian deputies tabled a motion to unite both banks of the Jordan. This was unanimously adopted. Abdullah became king of a country that now included the holy places in Palestine, with a population of 1.5 million, triple the population of Transjordan alone.
Abdullah was assassinated at the al-Aqsa Mosque on 20 July 1951 by a handful of disgruntled Palestinians believed to be working with Egypt's intelligence service.
Bibliography
Abdullah, King of Jordan. My Memoirs Completed, translated by Harold W. Glidden. London and New York: Longman, 1978.
Dann, Uriel. Studies in the History of Transjordan, 1920 - 1949: The Making of a State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984.
Kirkbride, Sir Alec. From the Wings: Amman Memoirs 1947 - 1951. London: F. Cass, 1976.
Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
Wilson, Mary C. King Abdullah, Britain, and the Making of Jordan. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
— JENAB TUTUNJI
