Hashemite Kings
Theirs is one of the sadder chapters in modern Middle Eastern history. Their place owes more to their failures than their accomplishments, though their survival in Jordan may yet turn out to be a bright spot. Most of us don’t even associate the name with the present King of Jordan and his late father. There was a time in the not so distant past when they were the central figures in a brazen plot to safeguard the survival of the British Empire, one that was never destined to achieve its purpose but, had it turned out better than it did, might have provided an orderly transition for Arab society into the modern era. That it didn’t ensured a new period of conflict that has no end in sight. The opportunity is lost now, but it’s worth remembering what went wrong.
The Hashemites claim direct descent from the Prophet through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the 4th Caliph to Sunni Muslims and 1st Imam to the Shia. These sorts of claims are common among Arab rulers but at least some of what follows is true. Abdullah II represents the 43rd generation of the line and the fourth Hashemite to occupy the throne in Jordan. Muhammad himself was the great grandson of Hashem, for whom the family is named. All this is important because Sharif Qutada Abu Aziz, seventeenth in descent from Ali, conquered Mecca in 1201. They accepted Mamluk suzerainty in 1258 and Ottoman in 1517 but the family ruled the Hejaz for over eight hundred years, right up through the Great War. That gave them responsibility to oversee the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage, and in the Muslim world you can’t get much more prestige than that. This family has been among the most prominent in the region for a long time.
They had one chance for greatness. In the years leading up to WWI the British Governor of Egypt saw them as a vehicle to extend influence all the way east through Mesopotamia and south to the Persian Gulf, a move that would make an increasingly unreliable Ottoman Empire much less critical as a buffer in the centuries old Great Game of jockeying between Britain and Russia. With British backing Emir Hussein, Guardian of the Holy Places at the time, would see his sons become kings in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. He himself would become King of all Arabs and be proclaimed Caliph. When war broke out the British sent T.E. Lawrence into the desert and got Hussein to agree. They never quite pulled it off. Whether through duplicity, the changing fortunes of war, or just poor bureaucratic coordination, the Brits also promised Palestine to Jews and Syria to the French.
As it turns out the weakest component of the deal was in the Hejaz itself. Hussein did proclaim himself both King and Caliph but the allies never backed him in his broadest claims and his neighbors didn’t much care for his pretensions. In 1925 ibn Saud from neighboring Nadj forced him out altogether and introduced Wahabis to the world. At the time nobody knew oil was there. One son, Faisal, did briefly take the throne in Syria but France never gave him the time of day. Once they got their League of Nations Mandate in 1920, they took Damascus by force and tossed him out, separated Lebanon from Syria and maintained direct control for as long as they could. In 1941 French colonial authorities allied themselves with the fascist Vichy government and installed a Nazi style regime. We can thank them for today’s Ba’ath party.
Faisal went on to Iraq in 1921 and with British acquiescence took the throne there, but even Winston Churchill despaired of effectively governing that fractious place. Thirty seven years later King Faisal II and his immediate family were brutally murdered and another Ba’ath party soon took over, the party that spawned Saddam Hussein. Whether Americans can do better in Iraq remains to be seen.
Only in Jordan did a new Hashemite monarchy take root and it has been tenuous even there. The British resolved their conflicting promises more or less by partitioning Palestine and installing Abdullah I as regent over the districts east of the Jordan River then known collectively as Transjordan. It wasn’t that great a prize. The population was estimated in 1922 at 225,000 and nearly half that was nomadic. Abdullah spent the years between wars building a state. Eight hundred years of family tradition in the Hejaz helped. He understood the tribal culture and how to bring competing factions into the government. From the beginning he reigned as a constitutional monarch. The first parliament was elected in 1929. By 1946 he was ready for full independence. Parliament elected him king and officially changed the name of what had been an emirate to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains today.
It would be quite an understatement to say that since 1947 Jordanian politics have been dominated by Israel and the Palestinian question. Those issues are far to complex to go into in depth here, but they have affected Jordan more than any other Arab state. Only Jordan welcomed Palestinian refugees and offered them full citizenship. Her population swelled as a result. The kingdom survived a series of coup attempts in the 1950s, annexation of Palestinian territory west of the Jordan in 1950, the effective loss of that territory to Israel in 1967, and an attempt by Yasser Arafat to create his own Palestinian state inside Jordan in 1970. Martial law was in effect for three decades ending only in 1989.
Jordanian Kings continue to follow the English model in devolving power from the monarch to parliament. They have moved in fits and starts but so did the English. They allow political parties to operate and elect members to parliament, some of them in opposition. They have signed a series of international covenants on rights including economic, social, cultural, civil, political, women’s, and children’s rights, all of which contradict traditional Islamic law to one degree or another. They have an independent judiciary which attempts to navigate between modern civil and Islamic law. They signed a peace treaty with Israel over intense internal objections that could yet cost them their crown.
Political scientist and journalist Fareed Zachariah has observed that liberal democracy follows economic prosperity, not the other way around. Following that principle and despite intense criticism Jordan is attempting to implement commercial reforms ahead of political reforms. Abdullah II recognizes that Islamic tradition as well as hatred of Israel and all things western represent giant obstacles to bringing Jordan into the modern age. He is attempting to allow limited political freedom while encouraging commercial development. That means observing international law, respecting contracts, and promoting trade. It worked in Singapore, it worked in South Korea, and it is working in China. Maybe it can work for Muslims. To that end Jordan has joined the World Trade Organization and agreed to its attendant requirements and restrictions. It has entered into a free trade agreement with the United States that requires further accommodation with Israel. If all this works in Jordan they will have transformed a people. We shall see.
The Hashemites claim direct descent from the Prophet through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the 4th Caliph to Sunni Muslims and 1st Imam to the Shia. These sorts of claims are common among Arab rulers but at least some of what follows is true. Abdullah II represents the 43rd generation of the line and the fourth Hashemite to occupy the throne in Jordan. Muhammad himself was the great grandson of Hashem, for whom the family is named. All this is important because Sharif Qutada Abu Aziz, seventeenth in descent from Ali, conquered Mecca in 1201. They accepted Mamluk suzerainty in 1258 and Ottoman in 1517 but the family ruled the Hejaz for over eight hundred years, right up through the Great War. That gave them responsibility to oversee the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage, and in the Muslim world you can’t get much more prestige than that. This family has been among the most prominent in the region for a long time.
They had one chance for greatness. In the years leading up to WWI the British Governor of Egypt saw them as a vehicle to extend influence all the way east through Mesopotamia and south to the Persian Gulf, a move that would make an increasingly unreliable Ottoman Empire much less critical as a buffer in the centuries old Great Game of jockeying between Britain and Russia. With British backing Emir Hussein, Guardian of the Holy Places at the time, would see his sons become kings in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. He himself would become King of all Arabs and be proclaimed Caliph. When war broke out the British sent T.E. Lawrence into the desert and got Hussein to agree. They never quite pulled it off. Whether through duplicity, the changing fortunes of war, or just poor bureaucratic coordination, the Brits also promised Palestine to Jews and Syria to the French.
As it turns out the weakest component of the deal was in the Hejaz itself. Hussein did proclaim himself both King and Caliph but the allies never backed him in his broadest claims and his neighbors didn’t much care for his pretensions. In 1925 ibn Saud from neighboring Nadj forced him out altogether and introduced Wahabis to the world. At the time nobody knew oil was there. One son, Faisal, did briefly take the throne in Syria but France never gave him the time of day. Once they got their League of Nations Mandate in 1920, they took Damascus by force and tossed him out, separated Lebanon from Syria and maintained direct control for as long as they could. In 1941 French colonial authorities allied themselves with the fascist Vichy government and installed a Nazi style regime. We can thank them for today’s Ba’ath party.
Faisal went on to Iraq in 1921 and with British acquiescence took the throne there, but even Winston Churchill despaired of effectively governing that fractious place. Thirty seven years later King Faisal II and his immediate family were brutally murdered and another Ba’ath party soon took over, the party that spawned Saddam Hussein. Whether Americans can do better in Iraq remains to be seen.
Only in Jordan did a new Hashemite monarchy take root and it has been tenuous even there. The British resolved their conflicting promises more or less by partitioning Palestine and installing Abdullah I as regent over the districts east of the Jordan River then known collectively as Transjordan. It wasn’t that great a prize. The population was estimated in 1922 at 225,000 and nearly half that was nomadic. Abdullah spent the years between wars building a state. Eight hundred years of family tradition in the Hejaz helped. He understood the tribal culture and how to bring competing factions into the government. From the beginning he reigned as a constitutional monarch. The first parliament was elected in 1929. By 1946 he was ready for full independence. Parliament elected him king and officially changed the name of what had been an emirate to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains today.
It would be quite an understatement to say that since 1947 Jordanian politics have been dominated by Israel and the Palestinian question. Those issues are far to complex to go into in depth here, but they have affected Jordan more than any other Arab state. Only Jordan welcomed Palestinian refugees and offered them full citizenship. Her population swelled as a result. The kingdom survived a series of coup attempts in the 1950s, annexation of Palestinian territory west of the Jordan in 1950, the effective loss of that territory to Israel in 1967, and an attempt by Yasser Arafat to create his own Palestinian state inside Jordan in 1970. Martial law was in effect for three decades ending only in 1989.
Jordanian Kings continue to follow the English model in devolving power from the monarch to parliament. They have moved in fits and starts but so did the English. They allow political parties to operate and elect members to parliament, some of them in opposition. They have signed a series of international covenants on rights including economic, social, cultural, civil, political, women’s, and children’s rights, all of which contradict traditional Islamic law to one degree or another. They have an independent judiciary which attempts to navigate between modern civil and Islamic law. They signed a peace treaty with Israel over intense internal objections that could yet cost them their crown.
Political scientist and journalist Fareed Zachariah has observed that liberal democracy follows economic prosperity, not the other way around. Following that principle and despite intense criticism Jordan is attempting to implement commercial reforms ahead of political reforms. Abdullah II recognizes that Islamic tradition as well as hatred of Israel and all things western represent giant obstacles to bringing Jordan into the modern age. He is attempting to allow limited political freedom while encouraging commercial development. That means observing international law, respecting contracts, and promoting trade. It worked in Singapore, it worked in South Korea, and it is working in China. Maybe it can work for Muslims. To that end Jordan has joined the World Trade Organization and agreed to its attendant requirements and restrictions. It has entered into a free trade agreement with the United States that requires further accommodation with Israel. If all this works in Jordan they will have transformed a people. We shall see.
posted by Onfoot at 2:12 PM
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