History of Jordan

Introduction to History of Jordan

Jordan's area includes what in Biblical times were the lands of Gilead, Ammon, Moab, and Edom, on the eastern side of the Jordan River and Dead Sea; and most of Judah and Israel (later Judea and Samaria) on the western side.

Jordan was created out of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. As Trans-Jordan, the land east of the river became a British mandate in 1920, with Abdullah ibn-Hussein of the Hashemite dynasty as ruler.

Independent Jordan

Transjordan became independent in 1946, and in 1949 took the name Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with Abdullah as its first king. Meanwhile in 1948 Palestine had been partitioned into two countries—Jewish Israel and Arab Palestine—with Jerusalem under UN control. The Arab League immediately went to war against Israel. When fighting ended in 1949, Jordan's British-trained Arab Legion held Arab Palestine and the eastern half of Jerusalem. Over protests of other Arab nations, in 1950 Jordan annexed this territory, which became western Jordan.

Abdullah was assassinated in 1951. His son, Talal, was mentally ill and was deposed in 1952 after a short rule. Talal's son, Hussein, became king. Hussein faced much political opposition, primarily from a radical Arab party influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt. In 1957, when the Nasserites, as the radicals were called, almost toppled his regime, Hussein outlawed all political activity.

In February, 1958, Hussein and his cousin Faisal II, king of Iraq, formed a federation of Jordan and Iraq. The federation was ended in July by a revolution in Iraq in which Faisal was killed.

During the 1960's, the Arab nations' relations with Israel grew more tense. From Jordan, Palestinian guerrillas made repeated raids into Israel. (The Palestinians formed the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, in 1964.) War broke out in June of 1967, and within six days Jordan and its allies, Egypt and Syria, were defeated by Israel. Jordan lost western Jordan (the West Bank), and about 200,000 Arabs fled into eastern Jordan. West Bank governmental institutions continued ties to Jordan, however, although the region was under Israeli occupation. Also, during the conflict, Hussein had declared martial law and thereafter ruled almost as an absolute monarch.

The PLO soon resumed attacks from Jordan against Israel. Hussein tried to restrict them, and repeated armed clashes between his troops and those of the PLO erupted into civil war in 1970. By mid-1971, the PLO guerrillas had been driven out of Jordan, and the country's relations with its neighbors deteriorated. In 1973, Jordan was reconciled with Egypt and Syria, and in the Arab-Israeli war that year, Jordan sent troops to Syria to fight the Israelis. In 1974, Hussein gave up Jordan's claim to the West Bank in favor of the PLO's claim to the region.

Hussein gradually made his rule more democratic in the 1980's. In 1984, the first national elections to the House of Representatives were held since the Six Day War (1967). In 1989, he abolished martial law. which had been in force since 1967, thus ending restrictions on freedom of assembly, speech, and the press. In 1991, Hussein ended the ban on political parties.

Meanwhile, in 1988, Jordan severed its legal and administrative links with the West Bank. All Jordanian governmental employees were dismissed, and Hussein dissolved the House of Representatives, in which half the seats were held by West Bank deputies. Elections for a new House of Representatives, with deputies being elected only from East Bank districts, were held in 1989.

Jordan was one of the few countries in the Arab world to support Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. In October 1994 Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty, ending a state of war that had existed between the two countries since 1948. In 1999 King Hussein died and was succeeded by his son, who became King Abdullah II.