State and Islam in Jordan: The Contested Islamic Modern

Abstract

On November 11,1920, Sharif Abdullah arrived from Medina by train in the British mandatory territory of Transjordan. Previously serving his father, King Hussein of the Hijaz, as foreign minister, Abdullah announced in the border town of Maan his will to redeem the Syrian Arab Kingdom whose short life had ended with the French advance into Damascus on July 24, 1920 (Salibi 1993, 49). At this point in time, prospects to transform the Transjordanian territorial remnants of the Arab Kingdom into a modern national state were pretty bleak. Under Ottoman rule, the territory was never an administrative unit and because of its tribal social nature (almost) impossible or difficult to be governed by Istanbul. Moreover, the territory was part of the British mandate and therewith under colonial rule. Given these conditions, state building required strategies for both internal nation building and external efforts to gaining international recognition as an independent state. The crucial balancing act for Abdullah was to cultivate a sense of national unity among independent tribes and to achieve the support of London to establish a sovereign national state. Although formal independence from Great Britain was achieved in May 1946, the very difficult internal nation-building process was further aggravated by the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948–1949. Following his long-standing territorial ambitions, King Abdullah eventually succeeded in incorporating the West Bank into the Transjordanian state in 1950.