Lion of Jordan Read Online Free

his support and advice in the difficult days that lay ahead. ‘By the way,’ he added with a twinkle in his eye, ‘has the National Government of Moab ever been recognized internationally?’ Kirkbride replied graciously, ‘I am not quite sure of itsinternational status. I feel, however, that the question is largely of an academic nature now that Your Highness is here.’ 16
    In March 1921 Abdullah arrived in Amman and set up his headquarters, still with the declared intention of raising a larger force to mount an invasion of Syria from the south. Abdullah’s arrival in Transjordan threw into disarray a conference being held in Cairo by Winston Churchill, the British colonial secretary, to discuss Middle Eastern affairs. Churchill had already promised the throne of Iraq to Faisal as a consolation prize for the loss of Syria. This offer was part of his favoured ‘sharifian policy’ of forming a number of small states in Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, all headed by members of the sharif’s family and of course under British influence and guidance. Abdullah’s bold march into Transjordan, and his well-advertised plan of fighting to regain Damascus threatened this policy. Although such a move would have been doomed to failure, it could embroil the British in further difficulties with their suspicious French allies – and besides, Transjordan was needed by them as a link between Palestine and Iraq.
    The initial impulse of the eminent experts assembled in Cairo was to eject the upstart out of Transjordan, by force if necessary, and to administer the area directly. But on further reflection it was decided to accept the fait accompli and let Abdullah stay in Transjordan as the representative of the British government. Sir Herbert Samuel, the Jewish high commissioner for Palestine, doubted Abdullah’s ability to check anti-French and anti-Zionist activities in the area, but Churchill stressed the importance of securing the goodwill of the king of the Hijaz and his sons. T. E. Lawrence, Churchill’s adviser on Arab affairs, claimed that Abdullah was better qualified for the task than the other candidates by reason of his position, lineage and very considerable power, for better or for worse, over the tribesmen. Lawrence was convinced that anti-Zionist sentiment would wane, and that Transjordan could be turned into a safety valve by appointing a ruler on whom Britain could bring pressure to bear to check anti-Zionist agitation. The ideal, said Lawrence, would be ‘a person who was not too powerful, and who was not an inhabitant of Transjordan, but who relied on His Majesty’s Government for the retention of his office’. 17 In other words, the British were looking for a pliant client who could be entrusted to govern the vacant lot east of the Jordan River on their behalf.
    Britain was simply too busy setting up an administration in Palestineproper, west of the Jordan River, to bother with the remote and undeveloped areas that lay to the east of the river. Moreover, these areas were meant to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the national home for the Jews in Palestine had become an accomplished fact. There was no intention at this stage of turning the territory east of the river into an independent Arab state. 18
    At a hastily arranged meeting in Jerusalem in late March 1921, Churchill himself, with the eager assistance and encouragement of Lawrence, therefore offered Abdullah the Amirate of Transjordan, comprising the territory between the Jordan River and the Arab Desert to the east. The condition was that Abdullah renounce his avowed intention of attempting to conquer Syria and recognize the British mandate over Transjordan as part of the Palestine mandate. Abdullah, relieved to be quit of a military adventure with an extremely doubtful outcome, accepted both conditions without argument. In return for Abdullah’s undertaking to