Lion of Jordan Read Online Free PDF Page A

Faisal nor was it the Iraqis who raised him to the throne in their own countries. Abdullah could not have gained power in Transjordan without Britain’s approval, and had he tried to do so in defiance of Britain he would not have survived for very long. Ibn Saud was not invited by the Hijazis to their country but rather he was enabled by British-supplied arms to enter and conquer their land. And just as the withdrawal of British support paved the way to the decline and fall of the Hashemite kingdom in the Hijaz, so it was British protection, and only British protection, that could preserve the Hashemite crown in Transjordan.
    Ibn Saud was not content with his victory over Hussein. Driven by political ambition to expand his own realm and by the religious zeal of the Wahhabi reform movement, he turned northwards with the intent of completing the destruction of the house of Hashem. Abdullah’s incorporation of the provinces of Ma’an and Aqaba, which formerly belonged to the Kingdom of the Hijaz, into the Amirate of Transjordan exacerbated the poor relations between the two rival dynasties. In August 1924 Wahhabi forces crossed the border into Transjordan, and had it not been for an RAF squadron from Jerusalem and a detachment of Britisharmoured cars that furiously mowed down Ibn Saud’s column of camel riders, Abdullah undoubtedly would have met the same fate as his father.
    Ibn Saud did not abandon his designs on Transjordan, and the conflict continued to smoulder, with occasional forays across the border and tribal clashes. The 1928 treaty, which recognized Transjordan’s independence but left finance and foreign affairs under British control, was signed at the time when Wahhabi raids were increasing. It was just as well for Abdullah that the British also undertook to defend the borders of the amirate, because this time the Wahhabis, fired by the fervour to sweep away all corruption and restore their pristine and puritanical brand of Islam, advanced upon Amman itself. Once again it was only the swift and forceful intervention of the RAF, this time assisted by the Arab Legion, that repelled the invasion and kept the amir on his throne in Amman. The Arab Legion (Al-Jaish al-Arabi) was a military formation created in Transjordan in 1920 by the British to maintain internal law and order. It was financed by Britain and commanded by British officers, underlining the local ruler’s dependence on his colonial masters.
    The principality that Abdullah had carved out for himself and from which he was in danger of being ejected was a political anomaly and a geographical nonsense. It had no obvious
raison d’être
and was indeed of such little political significance that the European powers, in their generally acquisitive wartime diplomacy, tended to overlook it as an unimportant corner of Syria. The status of this territory had remained indistinct until Abdullah’s arrival. The Amirate of Transjordan was then created by the famous stroke of Churchill’s pen, in mitigation of the sense of guilt the British felt towards the sharif, and in the hope of securing a modicum of stability and order east of the Jordan River at the lowest possible cost to their exchequer.
    The borders of the new principality did not correspond to any particular historic, cultural or geographical unit. Bounded by the valley of the Yarmouk on the north, by the Arabian Desert on the east, by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea and Wadi Araba on the west, it had no outlet to the sea until Abdullah grabbed Ma’an and Aqaba from the expiring Kingdom of the Hijaz. Effectively, Transjordan was a strip of cultivable land 270 kilometres long with a width tapering from 80 kilometres in the north to almost nothing in the south, and flanked by a great deal of desert; it possessed some 230,000 inhabitants, one railway line and hardly any roads, no industrial resources and no revenue exceptfor a modest British subsidy. The capital and largest