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Abstract
Amman has been relatively underexplored in the literature on Middle Eastern cities. Using a broad range of primary and secondary sources, this article addresses the impact of the 1947–1949 Arab-Israeli War on the Jordanian capital during the late 1940s and 1950s. A number of themes are examined: Amman during wartime; the settlement of the Palestinians; change and continuity in terms of Jordan's centralization process and Amman's urban growth; and, finally, the city's transformative socio-economic structures and political forces. This article argues that the influx of Palestinian refugees transformed the public culture of Ammani society, which became much more politicized than before. It is also argued, however, that the political developments of the late 1940s and 1950s were not sufficient to overturn the defining characteristics of Amman as it had existed before the 1947–1949 Arab-Israeli War.
Notes
Unless otherwise noted, all translations of quotations from texts that were originally published in Arabic were done by the author of this article. Interviews were conducted in both Arabic and English.
1 This criticism is made by Shaul Mishal, West Bank/East Bank: The Palestinians in Jordan, 1949–1967 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), p. xi. One example of a work on this period that exhibits some of the characteristics that I critique is Avi Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, 1948–1957 (London: Frank Cass, 1981), p. 33. Naseer Aruri's, Jordan: A Study in Political Development, 1921–1965 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972) is less concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in particular and interested in highlighting the ‘impact of external factors’ in the country and the ‘dynamics of interdependence between domestic and international politics’, pp. vii–viii.
2 ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif, Story of a City: A Childhood in Amman, trans. Samira Ka‘war (London: Quartert, 1996), pp. 257, 275.
3 Hazza‘ al-Majali, Mudhakarati (Amman, 1960), p. 59. Majali served as Prime Minister in 1955 and in 1959–1960. He was assassinated in August of 1960. This memoir was published a few months prior to this author's assassination.
4 Majali, Mudhakarati, p. 59; Alec Kirkbride, From the Wings: Amman Memoirs, 1947–1951 (London: Frank Cass, 1976), p. 45.
5 Majali, Mudhakarati, p. 66.
6 Kirkbride, From the Wings, pp. 9, 17.
7 Munif, Story of a City, p. 288.
8 Kirkbride, From the Wings, pp. 79–84.
9 TNA (National Archives): PRO FO 953/927 (9 March 1950).
10 The Amman Municipality, ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fourth Decade, 1939–1949’ and ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fifth Decade, 1949–1959’, published on 28 December 2009 on the Amman Centennial web site http://ammancity100.jo (accessed 26 February 2010). In another section of the web site http://ammancity100.jo/en/content/story-amman/1948, the population figure in 1952 is noted as 250,000 (an error), which it had not yet reached. Figures about Amman's population following the events of 1947–1949 slightly diverge. For example, in Jordan: A Study in Political Development, Naseer Aruri uses Jordanian figures at the time and places the population of the city in 1952 at 108,304, a figure that is cited and reprinted in Lee Tesdell's study, A Working Bibliography for Use in Urban Planning: Amman, Jordan, the History of its Social and Economic Development (1878–1948) (Monticello, IL: Vance Bibliographies, 1980). A Housing Census undertaken in August 1952 found there to be 108,304 people in Amman. This figure is cited in Jane Hacker, Modern ‘Amman: A Social History (Durham: Durham Colleges in the University of Durham), p. 39. The most likely figure for Amman's population during the mid-1950s would be within the range of about 150,000, a marked increase from the pre-1948 population, but one that is most likely accurate when we consider the arrival of refugees accounted for in British and Jordanian documents and narratives, and the incorporation of more areas under Amman's jurisdiction.
11 UNRWA, Survey of the Refugee Population (June 1951), cited in Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 75, 101 fn. 2. According to Hacker, this migration significantly increased the percentage of Christians in the city, since Muslims previously outnumbered Christians by a larger margin. The author also noted that the proportion of Christian refugees to Amman was the second highest among all refugee migrations, following those refugees who went to Jerusalem and/or Bethlehem.
12 Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, p. 33.
13 Ibid, pp. 33–34.
14 ‘Abd al-Mun‘im al-Rifa‘i, al-Amwaj: safahat min rihlat al-hayat (Amman: Ministry of Culture, 2002), pp. 73–74.
15 Munif, Story of a City, p. 281.
16 Hacker, Modern Amman, p. 39.
17 Majali, Mudhakarati, p. 177.
18 This comparison is made in the memoir of the British travel writer Ethel Mannin, entitled The Lovely Land: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 111. Mannin first visited Amman in 1962.
19 Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 39–40, 88; UNRWA, ‘Jabal el-Hussein refugee camp’, http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id = 126 (accessed 26 May 2010); UNRWA, ‘Amman New Camp refugee camp’, http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id = 129 (accessed 26 May 2010).
20 Kirkbride, From the Wings, p. 47.
21 Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 39–40; UNRWA, ‘Jabal el-Hussein refugee camp’ and ‘Amman New Camp refugee camp’; Amman Municipality, Amman Centennial web site.
22 Interview with Sharif Fawwaz Sharaf, 12 June 2007.
23 Amman Municipality, ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fourth Decade, 1939–1949’ and ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fifth Decade, 1949–1959’.
24 Muhammad Asad, The Old Houses of Jordan: Amman, 1920–1950 (Amman: TURAB, 1997), p 15.
25 Ibid., p. 21.
26 Amman Municipality, ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fifth Decade, 1949–1959’.
27 Majali, Mudhakarati, pp. 85–86.
28 Amman Municipality, ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fourth Decade, 1939–1949’.
29 Interview with Michel Hamarneh, September 2007.
30 Taleb al-Rifa‘i, ‘Amman City Centre: Typologies of Architecture and Urban Space’, in Jean Hannoyer and Seteney Shami (ed.), Amman: The City and its Society, (Beirut: Cermoc, 1996), p. 153.
31 Ihsan Fathi and Kamel Mahadin, ‘Villa Architecture in Amman: The Current Spectrum of Styles’ in Hannoyer and Shami (ed.), Amman: The City and Its Society, pp. 176–177.
32 Asad, Old Houses of Jordan, pp. 21–22.
33 Rifa‘i, ‘Amman City Centre’, p. 136; Asad, Old Houses of Jordan, p. 22.
34 Asad, Old Houses of Jordan, p. 22.
35 Rifa‘i, ‘Amman City Centre’, pp. 135–136.
36 Municipalities Law No. 29 (Qanun al-baladiyyat), 1955, originally published in the Official Gazette (al-Jarida al-rasmiyya), No. 403, 5 January 1955. Full reprint of original law in Arabic available online on the official web site of the National Information Council of Jordan (Nizam al-ma‘lumat al-watani) on Jordanian laws. The site is entitled ‘al-Tashri‘at al-Urdunniyya’ and can be accessed on: http://www.lob.gov.jo/ui/laws/search_no.jsp?year = 1955&no = 29 (accessed 27 May 2010). Also discussed and summarized in the Amman Municipality, ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fifth Decade, 1949–1959’.
37 Majali, Mudhakarati, pp. 85–86.
38 Asad, Old Houses of Jordan, p. 35; for a similar point, see Eugene Rogan, ‘The Making of a Capital: Amman, 1918–1928’, in Hannoyer and Shami (ed.), Amman: The City and Its Society.
39 Asad, Old Houses of Jordan, p. 35.
40 Maynard Owen Williams, ‘Home to Holy Land’, National Geographic Magazine, 98 (Dec. 1950), pp. 707–745. Quotes on pp. 707, 708, 716, 739.
41 Interview with Fawwaz Sharaf, 12 June 2007.
42 Interview with Zeid al-Rifa‘i, 1 September 2007.
43 Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 63, 87.
44 Ibid., pp. 43–44.
45 Interview with Sharaf, 12 June 2007.
46 ‘Abd al-Rahman Shuqayr, Min Qasiyun ila Rabbat ‘Ammon: Rihlat al-‘Umur (Amman: Kitab al-Urdunn al-Jadid, 1991), p. 83.
47 Roderick Parkes to the Foreign Office, 8 February 1963, FO 371/10265. Reprinted in Alan de L. Rush, ed., Transjordan: The Reign of King Hussein, Vol. 9 of Records of the Hashimite Dynasties: A Twentieth Century Documentary History (Slough: Archive Editions, 1995), pp. 681–690. See p. 683.
48 Hacker, Modern Amman, p. 43.
49 Eugene Hoade, East of the Jordan (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1966), p. 25; ‘The Boy King’, TIME Magazine, 2 April, 1956.
50 Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 113, 116.
51 Hoade, East of the Jordan, p. 25; ‘The Boy King’, TIME Magazine, 2 April, 1956.
52 Hoade, East of the Jordan, pp. 26, 32.
53 Hacker, Modern Amman, p. 118.
54 ‘Reluctant Dragon’, TIME Magazine, 24 May 1948.
55 Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 113, 116.
56 George Tarif al-Dawud and Zuhayr Ghanem, Amman fi al-Ahd al-Hashimi, Part II, 1950–2002 (Amman: Greater Amman Municipality, 2004), pp. 95–96.
57 Parkes to the Foreign Office, FO 371/10265 (8 February 1963).
58 Hacker, Modern Amman, p. 43.
59 Ibid., p. 88.
60 TNA: PRO FO 953/927 (9 March 1950); Middle East Secretariat to the British Embassy, Amman, TNA: PRO ET 1741 (2 April 1953).
61 For more information on this period, see The Amman Municipality, ‘The History of Amman's Municipality: The Fifth Decade, 1949–1959’; Hind Abu Sha‘r and Nufan al-Hmud, Amman fi al-‘Ahd al-Hashimi, Part I, 1916–1952 (Amman: Greater Amman Municipality, 2004), p. 11.
62 See National Library (Henceforth NL) File No. 21/4/1, entitled Lawazim al-baladiyyat (Municipal Accessories).
63 Letter from the Minister of Interior to the Prime Minister, 6 February 1951, NL document no. 21/4/19. For the response this request, see document no. 21/4/1/22.
64 Aruri, Jordan, pp. 66–69. Aruri wrote that ‘East Bank cities are [were] gaining population at the expense of rural districts’, and that the ‘rising population makes the city the center of political activity. The once-tranquil city of Amman has seen frequent demonstrations…’, pp. 66–69.
65 Munif al-Razzaz, Rasa’il ila-awladi: awraq ghayr manshura (Amman: al-Urdunn al-Jadid Research Center and Sinbad Publishing House, 1995), p. 53. Razzaz was born in Damascus in 1919. His father was an ex-officer in the Ottoman Army and a veterinarian who left Damascus for Amman in 1925–1926 because of French surveillance and pressure during the Syrian Revolt. Razzaz studied in Amman and Jerusalem before pursuing medical studies at the American University of Beirut, teaching secondary school in Amman, and completing his medical degree at Cairo University. He joined the Jordanian-branch of the Ba‘ath Party in 1950, was elected to Jordan's parliament in 1951 and succeeded Michel ‘Aflaq as the secretary general of the whole Ba‘ath Party in 1965. He died in Baghdad in 1984, after spending five years of forced residence in Iraq. The author's biography is provided in Rasa’il ila-awladi.
66 Majali, Mudhakarati, p. 63; Kirkbride, From the Wings, pp. 21–22; Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan, p. 169; Avraham Sela, ‘Transjordan, Israel and the 1948 War: Myth, Historiography and Reality’, Middle Eastern Studies, 28 (1992), pp. 623–688. Meyerson met the King in Amman on 10–11 May 1948.
67 John Scofield, ‘Hashemite Jordan, Arab Heartland’, National Geographic 102 (Dec. 1952), p. 848.
68 Interview with Sharaf, 12 June 2007.
69 Munif, Story of a City, p. 249; Razzaz, Rasa’il ila-awladi, p. 53.
70 Razzaz, Rasa’il ila-awladi, p. 53.
71 Munif, Story of a City, p. 250.
72 Ibid., pp. 253–255; Majali, Mudhakarati, pp. 195–196.
73 ‘Ali Husayn al-Safadi, Durj Far‘awn…al-shahid al-tarikhi: Sirat Amman fi al-khamsiniyyat (Amman: Matabi‘ al-dustur, 2006), p. 58.
74 ‘Communism in Trans-Jordan’, TNA: PRO FO 816/103 (April 1950).
75 Majali, Mudhakarati, p. 193.
76 Aruri, Jordan, pp. 94–101; Majali, Mudhakarati, pp. 195–196; Safadi, Sirat Amman, pp. 119–131; Munif, Story of a City, pp. 248–257.
77 Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, p. 17.
78 Hacker, Modern Amman, p. 130.
79 Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, p. 17.
80 This description is used to explain Palestinian political sympathies in the West Bank between 1949–1967 by Mishal, West Bank/East Bank, pp. 74, 89, xii, but in my opinion, applies to the Palestinians of Amman as well. Quote on p. 89.
81 Mishal, West Bank/East Bank, p. 91.
82 Parkes to the Foreign Office, FO 371/10265 (8 February 1963).
83 Kirkbride, From the Wings, p. 64.
84 Salah came to Amman in 1948–1949. He fled Haifa after 1948 and initially went to Beirut where his stay was short-lived. Salah left Beirut for Amman after receiving an invitation from King ‘Abdullah I to work in Jordan. In my interview with Salah, who was in his nineties and is now deceased, he recalled that ‘Abdullah's invitation, passed along in letter form through Jordan's Ambassador to Lebanon, emphasized that the Jordanian government needed Palestinians ‘to stand by them to get Palestine back’.
85 Interview with Walid Salah, 11 July 2007.
86 Interview with Zeid al-Rifa‘i, 1 September 2007. Another of my interviewees, Fawwaz Sharaf, shared Rifa‘i's view and recalled a new stage in Amman's history during this period following 1948. He remembered King Hussein's ascension to the throne as ‘a new phase [during which time] we left behind the memory of World War I and World War II’, interview with Sharaf, 12 June 2007.
87 Interview with Hamarneh, September 2007.
88 Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 65–66.
89 An argument also voiced by Mishal in West Bank/East Bank.
90 Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, p. 39.
91 Ibid., pp. 34–35.
92 Hacker, Modern Amman, pp. 80–81.
93 See Rami Daher, ‘Celebrating and Qualifying Amman: The City of Many Hats’, Jordan Property 14, (Dec. 2007–Jan. 2008), pp. 32–39; Daher, ‘Amman: Disguised Genealogy and Recent Urban Restructuring and Neoliberal Threats’, in Yasser Elsheshtawy (ed.), The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development (New York: Routledge, 2008); and Seteney Shami, ‘“Amman is Not a City”: Middle Eastern Cities in Question’, in Alev Zinar and Thomas Bender (eds.), Urban Imaginaries: Locating the Modern City(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
94 Aruri, Jordan, p. 40.
95 Ibid., pp. 40–42.
96 Hacker, Modern Amman, p. 76.
97 Parkes to the Foreign Office, FO 371/10265 (8 February 1963).
98 Hacker, Modern Amman, p. 132.
99 Razzaz, Rasa’il ila awladi, p. 22.
100 Ibid., pp. 22, 26.
101 Interview with Zeid al-Rifa‘i, 1 September 2007.
102 For details, see Roger Owen and Sevket Pamuk, A History of the Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Centuries (London: Tauris, 1998), p. 191.