Outline
Despite its small size and an initial appearance of homogeneity, Jordan provides an excellent case study for a dynamic, relational, historically contingent and fluid approach to ethnic, political and religious minorities in the context of the imposition of a modern state system on complex and variegated traditional societies. In this volume, the editors and contributors have sought to bind together a fluid, dynamic and relational approach to the status and historical process involving the creation and absorption of minority groups within the Jordanian case study. As such, the volume produces a double contribution. On the one hand, it provides a fresh set of contributions to empirically and conceptually enrich and diversify our understanding of the modern history of the state and societal groups in today’s Jordan, and on the other hand, it provides an example of why and how scholars can challenge the static and discursively governmental-minded approaches to minorities and minoritisation—especially with respect to the traditional emphasis on demographic balances. Allow us to briefly outline a short contextual history of (Trans-)Jordan for the reader’s familiarisation, before we outline our understanding of the dynamic, fluid and relational approach to the historical process and its importance in being applied to minorities and minoritisation in Jordan.
Historical Context
This section on the historical context of (Trans-)Jordan is particularly brief due to the extensive, period-by-period, historical contexts that readers will be able to consult in each chapter herein. Nevertheless, as a brief overall outline, suffice to say that the people who today have become the societal groups within the land of Jordan have an evidently ancient and fluid historical existence. Like Syria, Palestine, Israel and the whole of the Levant region, it is a truism to mention that this is a crossroads and meeting point of peoples since “time immemorial”. Although proto-state forms of power and management already emerged in this land since the mid-1860s and were increasingly present from the end of the nineteenth century (al-Qusūs, n.d.; Rogan 2002; Abujaber 1989), the attempt at creating modern Westphalian-style sovereign territorial states is very recent; dating from the post-Ottoman, post-World War I collapse (Dann 1984; Mūsā and al-Māḍī 1988; Rogan and Tall 1994; Robins 2004). Yet, in many ways, the Middle East provides a kind of “petri dish” of the process of state territorialisation and the historical process enforcing and absorbing the societal groups. In this condensed and, indeed precipitous, process of state formation, territorialisation and resistance from variegated societal groupings over the past hundred years, Jordan provides one case study that is relatively overlooked. What is particularly understudied is the situation of Jordan-based ethnic, political, ideological and other minority groups, as well as the process of their minoritisation. Furthermore, the Jordanian government’s relation and reactions to them has not been sufficiently examined.
First, we must note the use of terminology in the present work. The terms “regime” and “government” will be used interchangeably. This is done to reflect and respect the variety of views of the authors herein as well as to fundamentally underline that these words have become highly politicised, and propagandised, after the 2011 Arab Spring—to the extent that they have lost much of their historical significance and grounding. For instance, the term “regime” does automatically entail negative connotations, but was also often (and is indeed sometimes still) used neutrally in Western contexts (“neoliberal regime”, “presidential regime”). Ultimately, although it is important to respect the variety of views including those embracing the Arab Spring protests and seeking democratisation and radical changes in the region, there is also a duty to consider the historically generalised fact that governments/regimes try to enforce, repress and control the societal groups within their territories—even if the measures they take can vary in their direness (something that must indeed be acknowledged). A final note: each author’s election of the term “regime” or “government” should not automatically infer political stances.
Since its foundation, the Hashemite-led state of (Trans-)Jordan has been fundamentally underpinned by a triad of societal, statal and ideological pillars: great power support, Hashemite claims to a direct lineage to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and a conservative, initially Arabist and regional, Arab nationalist rhetoric that has gradually been confined to a Jordanian patriotic scope. Formally, Jordan came into being in the 1920s as a result of two ideologically contradictory, yet paradoxically historically complementary, socio-statal forces. On the one hand, the British Empire was seeking to create local anchors for its power in the region in an attempt to face the surging strength of the United States and Russia. Thus, in the 1910s and 1920s, key Whitehall officials such as Winston Churchill combined forces with local bureaucrats and officers such as Henry MacMahon and T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) to implement a strategy that would entrench a UK’s presence in the region. The MacMahon–Husayn correspondence that incited King Abdullah of Jordan’s father, Sharif Husayn of Mecca, to revolt against the Ottoman Empire’s rule over the Middle East was one element of this strategy. A subsequent manoeuvre was enabled thanks to the efforts of, among others, T.E. Lawrence who (in)famously joined the ranks of the revolting Arabist nationalists as the revolt spread northward into Ottoman Palestine and Syria.
On the other hand, there was a longer-term growth of Arabism and anti-Ottoman activities due to the autochthonous rise of (Pan-)Arab nationalism. This began with the anti-Turkish late nineteenth-century Nahḍa (a cultural Arabist renaissance) and grew fervent during Sharif Husayn’s and his sons (Faysal in Syria/Iraq, Abdullah in Jordan and Zayd)’s attempts at being crowned the leaders of an anti-Ottoman and later anti-European Arabist liberation movement after World War I. In the aftermath of the fast-paced and multi-layered discussions, positionings and outcomes of World War I Era (1914–1920), several revolutionary (sometimes radical) (inter-)nationalist movements (Arabist, Armenian, Kurdish, Jewish Zionist and Turkish) were clashing with the conservative imperial designs of France and Britain. The region was also beginning to absorb the implications of the of multiple “meta-level” supra-national ideological conflicts that would peak in the post-World War II Cold War Era (Islamism vs. Secularism, Capitalism vs. Communism). It was at this juncture, and much to his father Husayn’s chagrin (due a perception of British betrayal) that Abdullah arranged for his coronation as the sovereign over a piece of land outlined to the east of Palestine by the British.
The land of Trans(“across the”)-Jordan had initially been planned to be absorbed to the land of Palestine, which had fallen under British supervision in contrast to Lebanon and Syria to the north (under French mandate supervision). But British planners in Whitehall refused the hopes of the local Jewish Zionist leadership and of the British High Commissioner in Palestine Herbert Samuel; they instead insisted on creating this “buffer zone” land that they brought Abdullah into supervise. Officially, this was done to protect Palestine from Bedouin Arab incursions. However, one may speculate that its real aim was to contain Jewish Zionist aspirations for a wide-ranging territory in the Levant.1 Regardless of what the motivation was, neither the Hashemites nor the British would easily implement their statal apparatuses and territorialisation efforts on a land criss-crossed by nomadic and semi-nomadic societal groups who had resisted Roman, Islamic and Ottoman Empire policing (Peake 1958; Gubser 1985). Abdullah’s influence in Trans-Jordan was thus incipiently weak since it was premised on the triad of pillars holding modern Jordan’s Hashemite (the term comes from Sharif Husayn’s family originating in Mecca) grasp on the societal groups within this British-designed colonial territory (Alon 2007; Tall 2013).
Among the many challenges he and the group of British administrators supporting him faced were the fluid societal groups of Bedouin Arabs, migrants from other regions in the Middle East or further abroad (such as Circassians or Armenians) and indeed the Jewish Zionist, Saudi Arabian and (later on) Syrian and pan-Arabist designs ...