INTRODUCTION

1At the time of the Ottoman withdrawal from southern Syria in 1918, there was no reason to suspect that the lands to the east of the River Jordan would be made to constitute a state of their own. While under British surveillance, Transjordan was officially part of the Syrian kingdom ruled by Faysal ibn al-Husayn, with its capital in Damascus (1918-1920). As such, there was a continuity between Ottoman and Hashemite rule in which the towns of Transjordan served as administrative centres under the authority of Damascus. Some towns were more supportive of the Faysali state than others: Irbid more than Ajlun, Amman more than al-Salt, and al-Karak hardly at all. Yet, no one town exercised authority over the others, as al-Salt and al-Karak had done under the Ottomans.

2In 1920, the imposition of the League of Nations’ mandate system on greater Syria began to push Transjordan towards statehood. The territory to the east of the Jordan was included in the British mandate over Palestine in March, and the Faysali state was replaced by the French mandate in Syria in October, cutting Transjordan off from Damascus. When the British began to look into the ways and means of administering Transjordan, their first instinct was to work with the regional particularisms of the area. British junior officers were sent to advise in the formation of self-governing structures - the Kirkbride brothers in al-Karak and Amman, Major F. R. Somerset and Reginald Monckton in the Ajlun district1. To the extent that the British saw a need for an administrative centre for this diffused system of indirect rule, they showed an inclination towards al-Salt.

3In 1920 there was much to recommend al-Salt over the other towns of Transjordan. It was the largest town of the region, it had been endowed with extensive administrative facilities by the Ottomans over the previous half century, it had been adorned with sumptuous houses built by a merchant notability, and had specifically British ties through the Protestant community tended by the Church Missionary Society. And yet, paradoxically, by the end of 1921 the British had established the Circassian village of Amman as the capital of Transjordan. In this essay it will be argued that the preference of Amman over al-Salt is best understood in terms of the imperative of centrality for an administrative capital - all the more important in a newly-created colonial state. Given its communication links and the severance of Transjordan from Jerusalem’s administration, Amman was better placed to meet a capital city’s requisite centrality.

4While arguably more “central”, Amman had little else to recommend it as a national capital; nor, given the strict budgetary constraints under which Transjordan was administered, could the British or the Hashemites undertake the sort of building projects which might give the town a more "capital" appearance. The second part of the essay examines the uses to which town space was put to project the authority of the state, primarily through ceremonial. In this way, I hope to trace the processes by which Amman was transformed from a minor Ottoman village to the capital of a minor colonial state in the decade spanning the Ottoman withdrawal in late September 1918 and the drafting of the Transjordan Organic Law in February 1928 which confirmed Amman’s designation as capital.

THE MAKING OF A CAPITAL

5In August, 1920, Captain CD. Brunton was sent from Palestine to report on the political situation in “Trans-Jordania”. It was a vague name for an undefined territory newly under British mandate Appropriate colonial apparatuses were being created for Palestine and Iraq; Brunton’s task was to suggest how to rule the territory in between. Based on his observations, Brunton suggested a local administration for Transjordan to be ruled through al-Salt. He recommended the appointment of a mutasarrif there to serve as “acting Governor of Trans-Jordania”, answerable to the High Commissioner in Jerusalem and with subordinates in Ajlun and al-Karak2.

6As long as Trans-Jordania was to be ruled from Jerusalem it would best be ruled through al-Salt. The road from Jerusalem to al-Salt, via Jericho and the Ottoman, later Allenby Bridge, was the chief artery linking the east and west banks of the Jordan. Beyond the imperative of communications, al-Salt had developed into a major town and administrative centre in the last decades of Ottoman rule. As a district capital (markaz qadâ’) al-Salt had extensive bureaucratic facilities: official residences, government and municipal offices, courts, a police station and prison. As an arena of missionary competition, al-Salt came to be endowed with a number of schools and medical facilities, as well as churches and mosques. And, as the Pax Ottomanica had attracted urban merchant activity, primarily from Nablus and Damascus, so the town witnessed a building boom in shops, warehouses and fine residences. With a population of at least 10,000, it was by far the largest town in Ottoman Transjordan3. Thus, when the British High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, wished, in August 1920, to address a Transjordanian audience to present Britain’s position in that territory, he chose al-Salt for his stage.

7Amman, too, had been the focus of major developments - particularly since its connection to the Hijâz Railway line in 1903. When Jamal al-Dîn al-Qasimi took the train from Damascus to Amman that same year, he was struck by "the commerce of the town which is reaching the highest level of activity, as is its development (umrân), as a result of the numerous people settling and propagating there" with the new rail link4. Though even at the height of its activity, Amman probably never reached one half the size of al-Salt in Ottoman times, its position as a communications centre gave the Circassian village certain strategic advantages over the district capital. Thus, with the outbreak of the First World War, Amman was designated the headquarters of the Ottoman Fourth Army under Cemal Pasha. This resulted in significant developments near Marka, to the east of Amman: the facilities around the railway station were extended with barracks and warehouses for troops and their provisions, and an airstrip was established at Marka for German planes5. Thus, while the facilities in al-Salt made it an obvious choice for Transjordan’s administrative centre, the military communications complex in the Mahatta-Marka (see Map 1) area convinced Brunton, who was intent on forming a reserve force to assure regional security, that “Amman will in the future be the most important centre in Trans-Jordania”6.

Map 1: Amman and the Marka-Mahatta Complex.

8Yet, there were political considerations which, in the fall of 1920, made Amman seem off-limits to the British. Syrian nationalists had taken refuge in Transjordan in growing numbers and had made Amman a base for their operations7. In September, Sharif Ali came to Amman to recruit volunteers for a campaign against the French, supported by Sharif Muhammad Ali al-Baydawi and Sa’îd Khayr, then mayor of Amman8. These forces had reason to suspect British intentions, given their record of double-dealing with the Hashemites and support for the French position in Damascus. Brunton visited Amman on 21 September and assured the nationalists and the mayor that the British government sought their cooperation and not their exile. The statement could have been rephrased as an either-or choice: cooperation or exile. Brunton wrote that Sa’fd Khayr and the others were “ready and willing to help”9. With this assurance, Brunton laid the groundwork for a reserve force to be based in Amman with the two-fold mission of containing the nationalists and the bedouin tribe10. Later that same month (October, 1920) F. G. Peake came to Amman from Jerusalem with orders from the High Commissioner to form a reserve force of 100 men and 5 officers whose salaries would be paid by the government of Palestine11. It was the first concrete step in shifting the administrative centre of gravity from al-Salt to Amman.

9These first steps to administer Transjordan through Amman were advanced by a number of developments in the course of the year 1921. Peake’s Reserve Force was joined by the RAF’s 14 (B) Squadron, which occupied the airstrip in Marka12. The arrival of Emir Abdullah in Amman in March, and the decisions taken that same month by the British authorities in both the Cairo Conference and Churchill’s meetings with Abdullah in Jerusalem, to put Transjordan under the Emir’s administration for a provisional period of six months, proved yet more significant. Though these measures set Transjordan on the path to distinct statehood, yet the civil secretary to the government of Palestine, Sir Wyndham Deedes, asserted at that time that all major administrative decisions affecting Transjordan would continue to be made by the Palestine government13. And, as already suggested, so long as Transjordan came under Jerusalem’s rule there would be grounds to rule the territory through al-Salt. Evidence for this might be found in Alec Kirkbride’s appointment as British Representative in al-Salt in April, 192114.

10With the drafting of Article 25 of the mandate for Palestine (August, 1921), providing a legal framework for the exclusion of "the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine" from the Jewish national home policy, a self-governing mandate began to take shape in Transjordan. This was confirmed by the reappointment of Emir Abdullah in October, 1921; by the September Memorandum of 1922 confirming Transjordan’s exclusion from the Jewish national home; and by the April 1923 Agreement regulating Britain’s relations with the Emir’s government in Transjordan. As Transjordan evolved into a discrete colonial state, so the need for a discrete colonial capital developed. Communications with Jerusalem now became of secondary importance to the imperative of centrality. The notion of centrality is one of reach rather than of absolute geography, of the state’s ability to radiate its rule of law from the decision-making centre to the limits of its territorial frontiers. With a railway link connecting Amman to all of the population centres the length of Transjordan, as well as to Damascus and the Hijâz and, via the Dar’a spur, to Palestine, and with an air base to permit surveillance of those areas beyond reach of roads and rails, as well as air links with Iraq and Palestine, Amman had clear advantages over al-Salt as a point from which to radiate the colonial state’s rule of law.

11In November, 1921, Harry St. John Philby arrived in Amman to take up the post of Chief British Representative (CBR). As the official charged with overseeing the Emir’s administration of Transjordan, Philby was quite influential in the decision to favour Amman over al-Salt as the capital. Of his reasons for insisting on Amman as the capital he wrote: “... its importance as a railway and air centre, to say nothing of its river, combined to make it the indispensable centre of the administration”15. His was not a self-interested preference, as shown by his descriptions of the British residences in al-Salt and Amman. In Amman, Philby was given Sa’Td al-Mufti’s house by Emir Abdullah. While recognizing it was “the best accommodation Amman could provide for the representative of Great Britain” Philby claimed “not a visitor we had, but went away with the feeling that we were not well housed”. The British Representative’s house in al-Salt, however, was “not only palatial in itself but... magnificently furnished”16. In spite of this, shortly after assuming his post as CBR Philby gave notice to the clerk of the former British Representative in al-Salt with effect from 31 December 1921. From that point forward all state administration was centred in Amman.

12It was thus the severance of Transjordan from the Palestine mandate, creating the need for a central administrative centre or capital, and the military communications complex to the east of Amman which explain the preference of Amman over the larger and more established town of al-Salt as capital of Transjordan. In making this assertion I wish to revise the prevalent view that Emir Abdullah chose Amman because the Circassians provided a loyal community in what was essentially an alien land. The later loyalty of the Circassians, symbolized by the Circassian palace guard, should not be confused with the mutual mistrust of the early years. In December, 1921, Emir Abdullah’s close confident, Sharif Shakir, admitted to Philby his hatred of the Circassians, which seemed to stem from their Ottoman loyalties and “insolent behaviour” in the pre-war years. “Shakir admitted that his mother was a Circassian but declared that he detested them none the less for that, their vile speech he could not understand and they form the only element in these parts with any spark of religious (Muslim) fanaticism”17. Nor was this attitude lost on the leaders of the Circassian community. On Philby’s last day in Amman he called on Mirza Pasha Wasfi, the head of the Circassian community, “...who with deep emotion expressed the hope that Great Britain would always maintain its attitude of protection of the strangers like themselves sojourning in the land and not leave them to the tender mercies of the Arabs”18.

13Nor does it seem likely that Emir Abdullah preferred Amman because of the alleged hostility of the people of al-Salt, as demonstrated by the expulsion of his entourage in the summer of 192119. Philby’s memoirs suggest that it was the Saltis’ avidity rather than their hostility which lost them the capital. In 1922, the Damascene Rida Pasha al-Rikâbi was appointed by Emir Abdullah to head his cabinet.

14“Unable to find in the Amman of those days a mansion suitable for the accommodation of his family (a wife and two daughters and their servants) he had gone to Salt, where he could live in reasonable comfort in a delightful situation. But that scarcely seemed to justify his idea of transferring the capital thither from Amman... However, Rikâbi’s plan for Salt was defeated in a curious way: the local landlords, apprised of the intended move, had anticipated it by raising their house-rents to fabulous levels; and even Rikâbi boggled at that, without losing his dislike of Amman. He then sought a solution in the small Circassian village of Suwailih, on the Amman-Salt road, which in imagination he re-named al-Hâshimiya, in honour of the dynasty: oblivious of the fact that it would require a building programme far beyond the reach of any prospective financial resources of the country. So he had to make the best of Amman as it was, leaving it to a much later generation to make it better”20.

15Thus by 1922 Amman was the undisputed capital of Transjordan. This was made official in the 1928 Organic Law, whose second article named Amman as capital, though noting that “the capital may be changed by a special law to another place21. Yet the logic which determined Amman as the capital back in 1922 was only reinforced by subsequent developments.

THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE CAPITAL

16Estimates of the population of Amman in 1920 range between three and five thousand inhabitants22. Of these, most descriptions claim about half were Circassians, the remainder a mixture of Greater Syrian merchants, migrants and political refugees. The Circassians and commercial interests had laid the basic structure of the town in Ottoman times, in terms of road network, commercial centre, residential quarters. Yet this new town was an extremely modest capital in the 1920’s, : no bank, no hospital, no hotel23, no proper school, no proper mosque, no telephone, no electricity or running water, to name but a few of the services yet to be provided. And, while a certain amount of new construction went on, and most of these services would come to be provided in the course of the 1920’s, yet the overall shape of Amman would change very little over the decade (see Map 2). Though the map lists a number of government buildings, great economy was shown in recycling private structures for public purposes. The Emir’s diwân, for example, was a modified house which was distinguished only by “a sentry box in fresh Sharifian colours on either side”, and other examples of this recycling include the original prime ministry and the post office24.

Map 2: Street Plan in Amman.

17The evidence suggests that Amman’s basic morphology was little changed by either residents or rulers. Essentially the buildings remained simple one-story structures with some exceptional two-story buildings such as the old Municipality (to which a third story would be added in the 1930’s). There were a handful of more important projects undertaken by the rulers of Transjordan, but these are perhaps best seen in the context of a discussion of the uses to which the rulers of Transjordan put the capital - the infrastructural priorities, the spatial demonstration of authority or legitimacy. There were, of course, two foci of authority, one which we can label the British or colonial and the other Hashemite or sharifian. The ways in which these authorities reflected themselves in the town of Amman was what gave the town its character in that first decade as capital. The essential point is that, for want of funds, there were limited possibilites to build a statement in Amman; rather the colonial and sharifian rulers influenced urban development by the uses to which they put the city.

COLONIAL AMMAN

18In the aftermath of the Cairo Conference and Churchill’s meetings with Abdullah in Jerusalem in March, 1921, the British found themselves committed to the formation of a colonial state in an undefined territory with no precedent of rule as an autonomous unit. The lack of a centre in such a territory, the absence of institutions of order in the British sense of the word confronted the authorities of the Palestine government with what they described in terms of a Hobbesian state of nature. A centre was essential, a place where lawmakers and decision-makers and security forces might establish a rule of law and apply it with consistency to the limits of the territorial boundaries - in sum, a capital. The first priority was to establish what was consistently referred to as security, which essentially meant restraints on the actions of the bedouin against those whose economic activity was regulable - cultivators and merchants. And security in this sense required force, a force provided by the RAF and Brunton’s Reserve Force, which developed into the Arab Legion under Peake.

19Thus, the colonial capital lay more in the vicinity of Marka-Mahatta than in Amman proper. It consisted of the Ottoman military communications complex, which was much enhanced over the decade. The railway lines, much sabotaged during the war, were put into working order the length of Transjordan and down to the Hijâz. The Ottoman barracks attached to the train station became the headquarters of the Arab Legion. Perhaps the area of greatest expansion at this time was the RAF base. The aerodrome, “handed over in perpetuity to the RAF by the Government” against a payment of 223 pounds, doubled in surface area to some 915 dunums by 192225. To this were added customs and quarantine stations and the central prison. Good roads were paved linking the complex with the town of Amman, and the country’s one steam-roller was employed alternately on the Amman-Marka and Amman-Salt roads26. Once built, this road received special protection from the Amman Municipal Council, reconstituted in 1925, which passed an ordinance prohibiting all vehicles with iron tyres of less than 2 1/2 inches “on account of the considerable damage caused thereby”27.

20Otherwise, very little was built in Amman in its first decade as capital. According to British figures only 53 government buildings “large and small” were built in all of Transjordan between 1924 and 193528. Instead of constructing a new town, the authorities had to satisfy themselves by imposing a British notion of order on the old: even the capital of a minor colony needed to be orderly. In 1925 the British reported to the League of Nations that the main streets of Amman were “re-aligned and widened" and that "well-built shops and houses” were being erected29. Free labour for such municipal projects was to be had from the central prison, also built c. 1925 - the reform of prisoners too constituting a British notion of order30. Similarly, the British imposed their great concern for animal welfare. A branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was established in Amman in 1925, and an animal hospital, “under the direction of a British Inspectory” opened the following year31. In fairness, it must be added that a government hospital with 20 beds “staffed and equipped on modern lines” was also opened in 1926 with a share of the expenses “borne by the Municipality”32.

SHARIFIAN AMMAN

21From 1921 through 1924 Emir Abdullah preferred to live in an encampment to the east of Amman rather than in the house of Sa’îd al-Mufti, which he gave to the Chief British Resident. This seemed less to reflect Abdullah’s preference for tent life than the fact that Damascus, not Amman, was his ultimate political objective. Yet as his position in Amman became more settled, and chances for a Hashemite restoration in Damascus more remote, the need arose for Abdullah to impose his presence on his new capital. He did so through two major construction projects - the Umari mosque (later al-Husayni al-Kabîr) and the Raghdân palace.

22Islamic court records from the late Ottoman period confirm that the ancient ‘Umari mosque had served as Amman’s congregational mosque at the turn of the century33. By the early 1920’s, however, the mosque was apparently so dilapidated that Abdullah preferred to lead prayers on public occasions in front of his saray34. So, “in the summer of 1922,” Philby wrote, “the Emir Abdullah decided that the capital of his country should at least have a decent mosque for the prayers of its citizens”35. He called for voluntary subscriptions to build a new mosque on the site of the old, which raised some six thousand pounds. Philby brought to Abdullah’s attention the fact that, as the ‘Umari mosque had been built against a Byzantine basilica, its mihrâb was not properly aligned with Mecca. With the aid of a compass and a map of Arabia, Philby traced for the Emir what he believed to be the true qibla, which Abdullah adopted - prompting a local poet to extemporize during the laying of the cornerstone for the new mosque:

Our Amir, like the moon
Illuminates the East with the West
He departed from the qibla of Umar
And aligned himself with the qibla of Philby36

23In building the mosque, Abdullah had the remains of the basilica torn down, provoking a rupture in his relations with Philby which never mended. Philby’s priorities lay in preserving classical remains where the mosque Abdullah built gave Amman the spiritual and spatial focal point it needed to serve as his capital.

24The Raghdan Palace was built over the years 1924-27 and was the grandest modern construction in town37. Situated to the east of Amman on a hill overlooking the town, the palace was at once distant from and in view of the capital - a spatial parallel to the prince’s relation to his subjects. No sooner was Raghdan completed than the British Residency was destroyed by earthquake, which finally justified the construction of a purpose-built residence. With seeming deliberation the British chose to build the new Dar al-Mu ‘tamid behind Raghdan palace, accessible only by the same road (Map 2). Thus, in order to reach the British Resident, one had to go beyond the Emir’s palace, which notion of the power behind the power appears very much a spatial parallel to the prince’s relation to the British.

25Beyond the handful of functional buildings commissioned by the British authorities, and the three landmarks of the ‘Umari Mosque, Raghdan Palace and the Residency, or Dar al-Mu’tamid, neither the Hashemites nor the British enjoyed the resources to impose their authority on Amman through building projects - no elaborate house of parliament, court of justice, or institution of higher education. Rather than seeking to project the state’s power through architecture, the ruling authorities used Amman as a stage on which they enacted elaborate spectacles of ceremonial intended to reaffirm both elements of the colonial state: British trusteeship and Hashemite rule.

RITUALS AND CEREMONIAL

26The topography of Amman, a series of valleys between stark hills creating a natural centre at their point of convergence, and the dramatic remains of antiquity combined to make an ideal stage for ceremonial displays. Both the British and Emir Abdullah’s government learned to exploit this setting for shows designed to reinforce the legitimacy of their rule. Some were simple and regular, such as the Emir’s procession from his palace through the centre of town to attend Friday prayers in the ‘Umari Mosque38. King Faysal Street, as the broadest and one of the most central avenues in Amman, was also a focal point for such ceremonies as military parades and the award of medals39. Yet from the very beginning of Anglo-Hashemite rule in Amman, the spectacle of military drill was exploited to impress the citizenry with the strength and discipline of the armed forces.

27In October, 1921, while Peake was raising the Reserve Force, T.E. Lawrence was in Amman to report on the situation to the Colonial Office. He wrote then:

28“Peake cannot show his men in public till they are reasonably smart and till they have rifles, for in Trans-Jordan every man of military age carries a rifle as a mark of self respect, and Peake’s so-called Military Force is the only unarmed body of men in the country. When this is set right public suspicion will go to rest”40.

29Until public suspicions were put to rest the threat of rebellion against both British and Hashemite rule was quite real. Already the RAF had been called in to suppress the Kura Revolt (June 1921), and in September 1923 both the Arab Legion and the RAF were employed to suppress the ‘Adwân Revolt. Added to this was the external threat of Saudi-Wahabi expansionism which came within a dozen miles of Amman when a band of Ikhwân raiders struck two Bani Sakhr villages in 1922. To gain the confidence and respect of the local population, the new military force had to make public displays which would impress spectators with the numbers, weapons and discipline of the Arab Legion.

30To the east of Amman, between the town and the military complex at the railway station, the Arab Legion established its parade ground41. By February 1922, the reservations raised by Lawrence had apparently been put to rest.

31“The Reserve Force had a grand parade for our benefit”, St. John Philby wrote, “and looked very imposing. Its presence in full strength has effected a marvellous change and we may well hope that, now that security and peace is restored, the taxes will come in and the effective occupation of what has so long been a thorn in our sides will show the world that the Transjordan Government is alive”42.

32Philby’s remarks underline the political significance attached to the spectacle of parade - and, given that both the Kura and ‘Adwân revolts were tax strikes, its fiscal importance as well.

33The external threat posed by the Wahabi Ikhwân raiders was not to be dispelled by parade. Given the small size of the Reserve Force and the vast area it was charged with protecting, there were limits to its effectiveness. More often than not the military reached the scene of a raid well after the damage had been done. When Peake arrived at the Bani Sakhr village of Tunayb in July, 1922, he found the corpses of some 45 men and women but no trace of their killers43. The first opportunity to satisfy those seeking revenge came the following year when a dozen raiders were captured after an attack on a trolley running on the Hijâz Railway line near Zarqa’. The captives were tried and condemned to death.

34While the men could have been executed within the military compound or the prison, the authorities took the extraordinary step of holding a public execution “with the Roman theatre as the background to the drama”, as Philby noted. While Philby chose not to attend the execution he had a full description from Peake who claimed that the execution “had been conducted in a very orderly manner, while the crowd also maintained a decorous silence. The victims were tied to poles in front of the Odeum, two by two; and only two of them failed to be killed outright: a second volley being needed to despatch them. Two of them had fainted as they awaited their turn, and had to be carried to the posts; and only one man made a passionate appeal for mercy to Abdullah, who was not present. Afterwards the dozen corpses were placed on stretchers, covered with sheets, and left unburied at the cemetery for the afternoon for the entertainment of the idle throng of sight-seers”44.

35In this way the state sought to demonstrate to its constituents that it could reach its enemies and destroy them. The choice of the Roman amphitheatre, which provided a dramatic backdrop and would have contained and amplified the sound of the rifle volleys, must have been deliberate, no doubt intended to heighten the effect of the spectacle. While a large crowd assembled out of fascination, it is worth noting that Emir Abdullah told Philby that he had heard criticisms of the executions, “the critics being generally agreed that it would have been sufficient to slay a few of them and imprison the rest”45. With the decimation of a major Wahâbi force outside Amman in 1924, claiming 500 Ikhwân lives and 600 wounded by British estimates, the external threat was eliminated and with it the need for further public executions46.

36The protocol for the state visit in January 1924 by Emir Abdullah’s father, King Husayn of the Hijâz, demonstrates the extent of forethought and planning which went into state ceremonial. For the spectacle to be orderly, its organizers were obliged to think of every detail in advance, all participants instructed in their roles, and effective measures taken against the unforseen. There needed to be a delegation of authority such that individuals could be held responsible for the success or failure of specific aspects of the ceremonial. Towards this end a detailed protocol was written out and printed for distribution to all participants and responsible authorities47.

37Once again, Amman was to be turned into a stage for the spectacle. The mayor, the president of the municipality and the director of police were charged with decorating the town in flags, branches, flowers and triumphal arches. By night the town was to be lit with strings of electric lights, this at a time when electricity was generated by a diesel engine in a flour mill after hours. The train station, where King Husayn was due to arrive, was to be decorated with carpets, banners and flowers.

38Within this setting an elaborate choreography followed such that the King’s gaze would pass from people of greater to those of lesser importance. Thus he would first see the Council of Advisers, the effective cabinet of the country, then the officials of the British Residency, then the officers of the RAF, then the officers of the Arab Legion, then the top civil servants, representatives of the tribes, and members of the press. The King would only encounter the masses as he moved through the station and out to the street. The people were to line both sides of the road from the station to Amman, the crowd interspersed at regular intervals with cavalry from the Arab Legion to ensure order.

39The sounds of the procession similarly were regulated by protocol. On arrival of the train in the station the soldiers were to give the royal salute by shouting dâ’iman (“forever”) three times. When the King’s feet touched the ground of the station, the Arab Legion was to fire a 101-gun salute. As the King passed between the ranks of attendants the crowd was to shout the same royal salute of dâ’iman three times. The crowds were instructed to salute the King as he passed, though applause was expressly forbidden. On arrival at Raghdân Palace, a crowd of school children was to shout the royal salute and a band of army musicians would strike up the royal fanfare.

40The order of procession from the station to the palace, the order of reception by King Husayn within the palace, regulation of what was and was not to be worn (kafiyya was appropriate, tarbush forbidden), even the appropriate manner of greeting the King (“restricted to kissing the two royal hallowed hands”) was set forth in black and white by the chief of protocol. And for three nights the town was to be given over to festivities. Following the last call to prayer, soldiers and school children accompanied by the military band were to lead a torch-light procession from what was now called the Husayni Mosque to the Palace, where they would give the royal salute, shouting dâ’iman three times.

41Thus, in a town with only two modern monuments, it was necessary to dress the town and its residents and convert Amman in its totality into an operatic stage with main characters, chorus and supernumeraries. It was, in all, a gentle and cost-effective way of projecting the power of a new colonial state.

CONCLUSION

42On the first of July, 1927, Amman was struck by a violent earthquake which destroyed 278 houses and damaged a further 245. Casualty figures were astonishingly low, with only 11 dead and 35 injured. Among the buildings destroyed were the Government Hospital, whose staff and patients all survived; the home of the prime minister and, as previously mentioned, the British Residency48. The minaret of the new Husayni Mosque snapped in half, prompting Philby to gloat over “the tawdry new minaret crumbling to the ground”49. As would be repeated in 1948 and again in 1967, tents were raised for the homeless as the government and townspeople set about reconstruction.

43Though much disrupted, Amman was still the capital. It was chosen for its centrality and military facilities. Before 1927, for lack of funds, very little had been built in the way of bureaucratic infrastructure. Amman had thus been distinguished as a capital more through ceremonial practices than through structures, which minimized the damage done by the earthquake to the town as capital. While houses, hospitals and minarets were being rebuilt, Amman was legally established as the capital of Transjordan through the Organic Law of 1928. As it would be many years before more elaborate administrative buildings could be laid, rulers and residents alike were best advised to do as Philby said of the frustrated Rida Pasha al-Rikâbi back in 1922: make the best of Amman as it was, leaving it to a much later generation to make it better.