Introduction

The establishment of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (known as the Emirate of Trans-Jordan until 1946) was connected to several developments in the Middle East after the First World War. During that conflict, Great Britain had contacts with, Sharīf Hussein (H _ usayn bin ‘Alī), a descendant of the Prophet Muh _ ammad, who was one of the local Arab leaders in the Arabian Peninsula and who was serving as Amīr of Mecca at that time. In exchange for his agreement to take Britain’s side against the Ottoman Empire, and to initiate an Arab revolt, Britain promised Sharīf Hussein that he would head an independent Arab state that would be established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The two parties discussed the borders of the state in negotiations between them in 1915–1916 and this was documented in the correspondence of Hussein-McMahon (the British High Commissioner in Egypt), which was first published in full by the Arab historian George Antonius in his book, The Arab Awakening, in 1938. At the end of the First World War, it became clear, however, that Britain, despite the promises it had made to Sharīf Hussein, had secretly signed a treaty with France (the Sykes-Picot Agreement), under which France would gain control over Syria and Lebanon with the cessation of hostilities. Thus, Sharīf Hussein’s ambitious plan to establish a greater Arab state in the Middle East under his leadership disintegrated. In July 1920, after General Henri Gouraud, the newly appointed French High Commissioner, arrived in Damascus and forcibly expelled Sharīf Hussein’s supporters, who had stayed in the city since the end of the war and who had already proclaimed Faisal, Hussein’s son, King of Syria. Many of them fled to the then British mandatory territory of Palestine and Amman, which was originally part of this, became an important site of refuge for some of these. In November 1920, intending to regain control of Syria for the Hashemite family, Faisal’s brother, Amīr Abdullah, the second son of Sharīf Hussein, traveled from Hejāz to Ma’ān in the south of Trans-Jordan. There, Abdullah began to recruit supporters for his campaign against the French in Damascus.