A ‘Crisis of Identity’? Palestinian Christian contributions to Amman’s modern urbanity

ABSTRACT

Amman, as the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, has been said to suffer from a crisis of identity, a condition that is seen as impinging a sense of authentic urban memory and form. As it has become the destination of multiple refugee and migrant communities seeking safety in Jordan, Amman’s subsequent migrant make-up has been primarily narrated as a burden – on space, on resources and on understandings of the Jordanian national self-preventing a sense of national unity being found within its capital. Countering these narratives of burden and crises, this paper seeks to reconceptualise the role of migrants in Jordan’s capital as contributing to and participating in the development of Amman as a modern urban centre. By discussing one particular communal group – Palestinian Christians – and their contributions to the socio-spatial fabric of the city this paper aims to promote a shift in narrative around Amman in particular, and Jordan in general, as one which can embrace its history of not only migrating people but their ideas of modernity and urbanity and how they are imprinted on the urban landscape today.

KEYWORDS:

• Amman
• Palestinian
• Christian
• urban
• modernity
• migration

Introduction

A somewhat perplexing paradox dominates how Jordanians talk about their capital city. A higher proportion of the nation’s population now lives in Amman than ever before, with 42% of the country’s population residing within the Governate of Greater Amman.¹ Yet despite playing such a key role in the lives of the country’s population, Amman remains conspicuously absent in the narratives employed to present the Jordanian nation (Ababsa 2011, Daher 2011, Kassay 2011). The young capital is often overlooked in favour of classical historical periods, such as the Nabateans and their impressive capital in Petra, or its Roman heritage exemplified in sites like Jerash or Um Qais (Daher 2008). Equally, Jordan’s rural tribal heritage is utilised more than its urban centres to consolidate a sense of national identity (Al Oudat and Alshboul 2010, Wojnarowski and Williams 2020). It becomes clear that ‘Jordan did not rely on its towns during the process of nation building, but rather on its countryside and badia’, or desert, from which the anglised word Bedouin is derived (Ababsa 2011, p. 40). It is from this spatial epistemology that Massad argues the Hashemite regime worked to derive its legitimacy by reallocating Bedouin identity to that of the Jordanian state over tribal affiliation (2001, p. 58). As King Hussein demonstrated in his opening of Parliament in 1997, ‘the family or tribe in our country … is one of the cells of society [which] maintains society’s lofty ideals, protects its noble values and moves its beautiful traditions and generous customs forward’.² It is this paradox, of high urban residency countered with an absence of the urban in narratives of national identity, which has led some to ask whether Amman suffers from a crisis of identity (Daher 2011, p. 72). While being ‘young at heart’ the city is thought of as lacking ‘temporal depth’ and therefore as a poor candidate in the existential narration of the nation (Daher 2011, p. 76).

This crisis of identity is attributed to several characteristics of the city, including its young age relative to other regional cities such as Jerusalem, Cairo or Damascus and a lack of subsequent academic and cultural interest. This is compounded by the complicated relationship the city has with the multiple refugee and migrant communities who have sought to settle there. Amman not only houses a high proportion of the nation’s refugees and migrants (Hanania 2014, p. 464, UNHCR 2021), but their presence has been woven into the very fabric of the city (Sawalha 1996, p. 349). Amman’s rapid and unplanned expansion has been attributed to the arrival of multiple refugee populations, necessitating the establishment of emergency housing and subsequent services. Without an overarching spatial logic in relation to housing, transportation, leisure or pedestrianisation, Amman’s urban form is seen as disorderly and chaotic (Razzaz 1996, Melnik 2019, p. 69). The city’s spatial resources were seen as being placed under pressure by successive humanitarian crises rather than able to develop ‘naturally’ in relation to its own needs. This has then become, erroneously, conflated with the idea that Amman lacks its own spatial memory, heritage, and, therefore, historical depth, which in turn delegitimises it as a space of national authenticity and representation.

To counter these conceptualisations of superficiality, burden and crisis this paper seeks to highlight ways in which migrant communities have actively contributed to Amman as a locus of modern urbanity which can, and should, act as both a material and symbolic expression of national representation. It does so through the discussion of how one such group, within multiple possible examples, has contributed to the positive development of Amman as a cultural, vibrant and diverse place. It will trace how Palestinian Christians who were themselves embedded in and part of an emerging Palestinian modernity in urban areas such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, migrated to Jordan and settled in Amman not only with their material possessions but bearing ideas of modernity as it related to the city as a place of inherent socialisation. This discussion will focus on three such institutions: the Terra Sancta College, the Orthodox Club and the YMCA, which were all places of cultural and intellectual significance in urban Palestine prior to 1948 and have subsequently come to reflect that urban modernity in Amman, contributing in a small but significant way to the shaping of the city.

The structure of this paper proceeds as follows: after a brief discussion of introductory context, the theoretical concepts of modernity and urbanity will be analysed to consider why, epistemologically speaking, Amman might be said to be suffering from an identity crisis. Critical reconceptualisations of these concepts will be used to present Amman as an urban space of multiple procedural, socio-spatial interactions, rather than as a product of orientalist and ethnocentric conceptions of Middle Eastern urban centres which set out a highly restrictive view of modernity. This will then be evidenced through the analysis of data exploring the Palestinian Christian presence within the city as one example of how migratory populations have contributed to Amman’s processes of modernity, which can and should be recognised as a legitimate and celebrated form of urbanity.

Introductory context

Palestinian Christians can help to trace this story due to both their similarities and uniqueness of expulsion and exile compared to other communal groups. As Palestinians, they left places of home, employment, education and recreation as they were forced to find safety outside their ancestral homeland. Nevertheless, as Christians this journey was ‘rendered less agonising due to the avoidance of refugee status’ (Gandolfo 2012, p. 199), with familial and church networks providing assistance as well as professional skills, expertise and assets enabling then to (re)-establish a form of life that mirrored, to some extent, what had been lost (Gandolfo 2012, p. 202). This distinction is also important in relation to other more recent migrant populations who arrived with less cultural capital and during temporal junctures which allowed for less spatial opportunity.

This is not to contend that Palestinians, or Palestinian Christians, are the only such group that has contributed to the development of the city. Preceding them were Circassians fleeing Russian expansion in the Caucasus; their settlement in the late nineteenth century of what was then a peripheral Ottoman settlement established the foundations of what was to emerge as an area of urban significance (Potter et al. 2007, p. 7). Circassians became key ‘facilitators of expansion of Ottoman networks of capital’, establishing ‘Levantine lineages of the city’ of Amman (Hamad-Troyansky 2017, p. 606). Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian merchants followed, settling in the fledgling town at the turn of the twentieth century, helping to establish Amman as a centre of trade in the region and connecting it with well-established trading centres such as Damascus and Nablus (Amawi 1996, p. 117). The construction of a stop along the Hijaz railway route in Amman in 1903 further facilitated both movement of people for haj but also goods between the trading centres of balad ash-sham, marking Amman out on the physical and metaphorical map (Hamerneh 1996, p. 69). Amman’s own genesis thus emerges out of regional patterns of mobility and movement, both transitory through the trading of goods and as people passed through, but also more permanent as merchants chose to re-settle in the area, helping to establish small-scale industries and a nascent commercial centre (Amawi 1996, p. 117).

Palestinians, as refugees from 1948 or 1967, as citizens under the annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem or within the contemporary borders of the nation today after disengagement in 1988, or as ‘returnees’ from the Gulf in 1991, all have a complicated relationship with Jordan, and as the locus of much of the population, Amman. As the largest influx of refugees and migrants, Palestinians are seen as having a significant impact on both the Jordanian nation (Brand 1995, Salameh and El-Edwan 2016) and its capital (Hanania 2014), as both have had to readjust to the historical, political and social realities of hosting such a large refugee population.

Subsequent refugee populations include the arrival of Iraqis from 2003 onwards after the allied invasion of Iraq. With many seeking to settle in the capital, their arrival has been blamed for the inflation of house prices and the problem many Ammanis now face in finding affordable housing. Following the start of the civil war in 2011, 1.3 million Syrians are now also hosted within Jordan (just under half being refugees registered with UNHCR), which constitutes approximately 10% of the Jordanian population, with 83% residing in urban areas including Amman, Irbid and Mafraq.³ There are now also sizable Yemeni, Eritrean and Sudanese refugee communities housed in the city.

Official discourses have been used extensively by the Jordanian regime to manage difficult and at times tense relationships between its demographic constitutive parts, particularly regarding its Palestinian population. National campaigns such as the ‘Jordan First’ (2002) or ‘We are all Jordan’ (2016) sought to consolidate a national identity through substantial public relation campaigns using visual and material culture as well as official speeches to disseminate its core messages (Culcassi 2016). Yet these campaigns proved incapable of processing or discussing the tensions and inequalities that persist, and why urban areas such as Amman are considered suspect ‘because they house the majority of people whose allegiance to the Hashemite crown is regularly questioned’ (Ababsa 2011, p. 45). This was demonstrated by the issue of a manifesto from the National Committee of Military Veterans in 2010, where a group representing tens of thousands of retired military personnel demanded the ‘constitutionalisation’ of the 1988 disengagement from the West Bank; the withdrawal of citizenship of Palestinian Jordanians and their transfer to the West Bank.⁴ As the military is acknowledged as playing a central part in Jordanian society, politics and identity (Massad 2001) the significance of such a manifesto should not be underestimated. Such campaigns and ongoing debates maintain a discourse of suspicion around urban areas as they are seen as the material focal point of many of these tensions.

An Urban Modernity, a Modern Urbanity?

The city, as both place and concept, has long been of interest to scholars and urban practitioners, having been considered ‘the most peculiarly modern of spaces’ (Levine 2006, p. 15). This peculiarity is partly found within the simultaneous prospects of prosperity – be it economic, democratic or cultural – and problem, such as overcrowding, crime, the weakening of communal ties and the rise of individualism. Cities are incredibly messy products of both the good and bad of human endeavour and ‘progress’ in heightened physical proximity with an amplified sense of accomplishment over the natural world; the results can be astounding as well as catastrophic. While the terms ‘modern’ and ‘urban’ are at times used interchangeably, for the sake of clarification, here ‘modernity refers to a period of cultural change [bringing] major cultural, technical and territorial transformation affecting architecture, industries and people’s value systems and lifestyles’ (Daher 2011, p. 77) which was as critical to the Arab world as it was to European and other Western contexts. The urban environment, meanwhile, became a crucial geographical locus of material expressions of the socio-political developments of this period. The urban is found not only in the ‘specific building patterns that identify the city’ but also ‘the particular experience of life in such an environment’ (Coward 2002, p. 33). It is this particular experiential form of the city which is expressed through the term ‘urbanity’ which is ‘less a geo-spatial category, more a term applicable to a certain experience of existential quality’ (Coward 2007, p. 12). Modernity, as a temporal era, played out in the urban arena, forming not only the unique spatial environment of the city but its particular experiential character.

Nevertheless, it is pertinent to ask ‘what type’ of modernity and ‘whose’ urbanity is being discussed here? Conceptualisation of the modern and the urban are grounded not only in European and Western epistemologies but colonial and imperial ontologies, setting the theoretical parameters of what is considered ‘modern’ and what urban areas are considered as constituting urbanity. Orientalist paradigms of ‘the Arab city’ functioned through stereotyping characteristics that revolved around a limited number of urban areas, such as Fez or Cairo (Abu-Lughod 1987), which created ‘models of outcomes rather than one of processes’ (Abu-Lughod 1987, p. 172). This restricted the evolution of Middle Eastern urban areas to a narrow set of features, stereotyped as Islamic, which imposed a highly restrictive purview of what an authentically Arab city constituted of, which subsequently shaped ‘generalisations about historical formations of cities, urban morphologies, population structure, political economy or the social and cultural dynamics of class, community and family’ (Shami 1996, p. 37). These highly ethnocentric approaches to ‘Arab authenticity’ were also influenced by dichotomous understandings of occidental urban areas (Said 1978,Weber 1958), which only served to ‘lock’ knowledge of Middle Eastern cities into ‘long debates on definitions’ and unnecessarily narrow ‘specificities’ (Shami 1996, p. 49).

If these orientalist, ethnocentric paradigms defined Arab cities of the past, it is neo-liberal economics and globalisation which have come to categorise cities of significance in the contemporary era. Global city theory (Sassen 2005) emerged as the dominant analytical approach to studying urban areas that sought to ascertain levels of connectivity between cities so as to evaluate them as a ‘space of flows as opposed to the space of places’ (Elsheshtawy 2008, p. 7). Cities such as London, New York and Tokyo were heralded as archetypal cities with concentrated financial services which act as ‘command and control centres’ for global capital and labour flows (Elsheshtawy 2008, p. 7). Global city theory sought to classify cities across a scale of core, semi-peripheral and peripheral, which not only marginalised many urban areas but also ignored local agents (Brenner and Kell 2006) and networks (Fainstein 2001) which shape many of the cities relegated to peripheral obscurity. By continuing to deploy these definitions in the theoretical paradigms through which cities are categorised and analysed, many cities were either left in obscurity or privileged over others due to their perceived level of economic development. This has precipitated narrow interest in the booming cities of the Gulf States and what has become known as ‘Gulfication’ or ‘Dubaisation’ (Elsheshtawy 2008, p. 4). While debates continue as to whether globalisation is an external or internal force in the Middle East (Abu-Lughod 1995), others argue for a shift in focus away from only economic output to considering the everyday experiences and ordinary interactions of city life (Elsheshtawy 2010). Concepts such as transnational urbanism (Smith 2000), translocality (Brickell and Datta 2011) and diaspora cities (Blunt et al. 2012) have all attempted to ground these globalising forces in their localised contexts to help recognise cities of all status and stature as important sites ‘of dwelling and mobility, shaped by connections within and across different cities and communities in the past and present’ (Blunt and Bonnerjee 2013, p. 236).

These historical and contemporary paradigms have contributed to the oversight and erasure of Amman’s own form of urbanity as it evolved historically and is constituted today. Levine’s work calling for a critical reconceptualisation of modernity in this region is of particular importance to this discussion of Amman. In Overthrowing Geography, he discusses the fourfold matrix of modernity, colonialism, capitalism and nationalism with regards to the development of and relationship between Jaffa and Tel Aviv as a unique yet internally connected form of modern urbanity in twentieth-century Palestine. In doing so, he questions the prevailing logic of a singular type of modernity which, as previously discussed, is tied to European ideals and the distinct form of ethnocentric knowledge which existed with regards to the Middle East (2006, p. 18). Rather than a modernity which sought a neat and tidy separation from what was conceived of as ‘pre-modern’, modernity here should be recognised as a messy, fluid and even at times barbaric condition (2006, p. 24) which charts its own course in relation to the varying forms and particular experiences of the matrix of colonialism, capitalism and nationalism in any given place. The answer to Amman’s seeming inability to contribute to and narrate the Jordanian national, and modern, self, is found within the misconceptualisations within this matrix, the scope of which this paper is unable to unpack in its completeness. Nevertheless, at the very least, these preconceived notions of what constitutes modernity shapes how a nation understands itself, and ultimately who, and what is able to narrate that modern self. Even though they are constitutive characteristics of the modern age, mobility and migration are not considered conventional or celebratory features of the modern national self, which rather seeks to see itself as settled and delineated rather than fluid or peripatetic.

Similarly to Levine’s multiple and messy ‘modernities’, Shami and Hannoyer contend that any study of urban modernity should not consist of a composite study of a city’s separated parts but rather an integrative process of developments amongst both the social and the spatial (1996, p. 40). Here they are incorporating influential work by spatial theorists such as Lefebvre, who sought to reconceptualise known, felt, and experienced place as something produced through time and in continually unfolding space, rather than appearing as an isolated object, disconnected from its temporal and social surroundings. These critical paradigms of space help us to appreciate the urban as ‘not merely an arena in which social life unfolds, but rather as a medium through which social relations are produced and reproduced’ (Greggory and Urry 1990, p. 3). This medium requires a ‘geographical imagination’ of the city which must be inherently interested in the dialectical relationship between social process and spatial form, which produces a particular urban ‘spatial consciousness’ (Harvey 1973), in this case, defined as urbanity. This socio-spatial dialectical process recognises ‘that social and spatial relations are dialectically inter-reactive, interdependent; that social relations of production are both space-forming and space contingent’ (Soja 1990, p. 81).

As is so often the case, however, these subtle nuances of urban form and experience are marginalised by hegemonic narratives which intentionally disregard the city for its own nationalistic ends. Amman’s own story of modernity is a messy, multi-layered one, which is found in the ‘marginal realities’ (Daher 2011) of the multiple and varied groups of people who have settled there, contributing to and participating in its own distinct form of urbanity. As Rafai comments, cities are ‘probably the most important historical document’, acting as ‘an honest story-teller of its people and culture’ (1996, p. 133). Rather than being overlooked, therefore, in favour of other geographical spaces or historical periods or overshadowed by its regional cousins, Amman, as the capital of the Jordanian nation, has within it the spatial form and consciousness to constitute it a city with its own depth of meaning and identity.

Methods

This particular line of enquiry emerged during and out of doctoral fieldwork in Amman between June and December 2019, collecting data for a project seeking to understand concepts of home and belonging amongst Christians of Palestinian origin in Amman. It sought to understand home in its material and symbolic form across multiple scales, from the personal and local to the national and the global, and how this intersected with religious and national identities. This fieldwork followed a focused ethnography approach which combined conventional ethnographic methodology with a more pragmatic and efficient form of data collection. Focused ethnography seeks to enter a closed field of investigation with focused research aims and objectives, utilising multiple and varied methods of data collection to answer prepared research questions (Higginbottom et al. 2013, p. 4). My fieldwork revolved around 28 key interlocutors who identified as Palestinian Christians who lived in Amman. As well as regular contact and interaction, I was able to conduct semi-structured interviews with 25 of these interlocutors, which lasted between 45 min and 2 hours. The remaining three were more intermittent conversations recorded through field-note diary entries. There were also 10 key gatekeepers who helped provide broader contextual understanding and insight through regular contact and semi-structured interviews. Alongside these on-going interactions, participant observation at regular church events was utilised as well as document and photograph analysis. Over a period of six months, I became well acquainted with three church congregations across the city, eliciting data in both formal and informal settings. This also included interviews with representatives of the three institutions of interest in this paper, the Terra Sancta College, the Orthodox Club and the YMCA, alongside documents given to me during these interviews and tours of the facilities. Interlocutors have been assigned pseudonyms for anonymity. Interest in these institutions grew out of reference to them in interviews and conversations with interlocutors and gatekeepers. The data collected in relation to these institutions has been synthesised and corroborated with historical data from archival and secondary sources.

Discussion

Terra Sancta College

The impressive campus of the Terra Sancta College stands proud atop the hill which has come to define the neighbourhood of Jabal al-Lweibdeh in Western Amman. Its extensive amenities begin in the nursery and progress up to Grade 12, boasting state-of-the-art science and sporting facilities, as well as a large auditorium for school productions and graduation ceremonies. As a large school, currently, with around 1500 students, it offers parallel national and international curriculums, the latter taught in English and popular amongst those students, and families, with ambitions to study or work abroad. Its reputation attracts students from all over the country as well as city, with admission based on an entrance exam and an interview with their family, siblings being given priority in the competitive spaces at the school. As a private school, fees are around 1000 Jordanian Dinars (£1115), a year, or three months’ wages on the average Jordanian salary.⁵ It is a Christian school, run by the Franciscan order which has been in the region since 1219, its namesake – Francis of Assisi – having obtained a royal decree from the Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt, al-Kamil, to make pilgrimage to and subsequently establish a religious order in the Holy Land. Francis’ religious order was given the title Custodian of the Holy Land (Custodia Terrae Sanctae in Latin) by the Vatican, coming to be known simply as Terra Sancta, and thus synonymous with the Holy Land.⁶ As such, Christians make up 90% of the school’s student population, with the 10% Muslim students studying alongside them as they progress through the grades together, except for religious education classes that are taught separately as proscribed by Jordanian law and determined by student’s identity cards.

As a sign of its status, on its semicentennial in March 1997, King Hussein wrote with ‘pleasure and honour’ to congratulate the college as an institution which had ‘supplied our dear country with many graduates who contributed to building the country and exerted their efforts and energies for the sake of its dignity’.⁷ This rhetoric is demonstrative of an official and intentional strategy utilised by the regime to ‘sustain and legitimise its existence and status in relation to both its population and the international community’ (Maggiolini 2015, p. 39). Indeed, early in its formation, Hashemite rule recognised the strategic importance of managing and regulating what Maggiolini has termed ‘authoritarian pluralism’, which functions ‘by promoting cooperation between the regime and various elements and actors in its socio-political space’ (Maggiolini 2015, p. 40). This authoritarian pluralism has meant Christians, including those of Palestinian origin, have fared well under Hashemite rule in comparison to regional neighbours, with Jordan developing a reputation for being a ‘safe haven’ for Christians who have been given relative amounts of guarantees if not complete freedoms (Gandolfo 2012, p. 199). This mutually beneficial relationship is not, however, devoid of fragilities as an officially Islamic state must navigate a ‘specific policy towards Christians […] making them an integral part of their selective system of alliances’ (Maggiolini 2015, p. 48) from which the regime is able to retain not only domestic stability but also internationally recognised tolerance and security on which it capitalises politically and economical.⁸ Terra Sancta sits within this critical nexus of state and religion, freedom and control, authoritarianism and pluralism as it goes about its daily activities in a highly public way helping constitute the Jordanian nation as open, tolerant, and pluralistic. All the while it must still adhere to the conditions upon which the relationship rests upon, as seen in the separation of religious education between its Christian and Muslim students.

Nevertheless, even with these socio-political considerations in mind, the school’s material presence has a significant impact on the spatio-temporal landscape of the neighbourhood in which it is located. Its Christian origins shape not only the school day, beginning with a mass at 7:15 am, but also the school week. The school’s weekend is held on Friday, in accordance with wider national practices as the Islamic holy day, and Sunday, to allow for adherence to the Christian day of worship, with school in session on a Saturday. These temporal rhythms leave an impact on the spatial configuration of Jabal al-Lweibdeh with patterns of movement around the neighbourhood, seen mostly in car and bus traffic amassing in its small streets, coinciding with school days, drop-off and pick-up times. This active negotiation with national temporal institutions, shaped by Islamic practice, allows for Christian activity, which is then materially present in the visual, sensorial and sound scape of the city; what is seen, felt and heard in certain places, at certain times. This communal norm of a split weekend across a Friday and Sunday, which I came across amongst multiple interlocutors, was a pattern often set by Christian schools, which then went on to shape personal weekly rhythms.

Beyond its physical existence, the campus also acts as a prominent landmark used in the navigational system common in Amman. As Mamou discusses, Amman is a city ‘where maps and formal address systems are minimally consulted’ but where ‘way-finding systems’ rely on ‘memory-navigation’ around and between places of prominence (Mamou 2014, p. 1). As street names and house numbers have only been introduced relatively recently across the city, navigational mobility relies not on a formalised mapping system but rather subjective cartographies which utilises ‘mnemonic methods’, ‘visual clues’ and ‘key landmarks’ (Mamou 2014). As a city that remains predominantly reliant on taxis for transport across its sprawling metropolitan landscape, movement depends, therefore, on a shared geographical schema that can be referred to, interpreted, and then geographically located to allow for movement. Terra Sancta acts as a common navigational landmark for taxi drivers all over the city, indicating its presence as an establishment that is part of the urban vocabulary and geographical imagination of Amman. As my own apartment was located just across the street from the campus, I utilised this urban vocabulary daily, taking for granted that it acted as a common navigational landmark for my own mobility across the city. Yet even this vocabulary was itself subjected to change and alteration with the pronunciation of the Latin word sancta being more commonly pronounced as santa in colloquial Arabic and written as such (سانطى)in official documentation and urban signage. This exemplifies how even these linguistic references to the subjective cartographies of the city are adapted and modified through regular parlance.

Even while Terra Sancta is well embedded in its Ammani surroundings, its own heritage lies not within Jordan but unsurprisingly, given its name, within ‘The Holy Land’. As part of the Franciscan tradition of establishing churches, convents and schools,⁹ Terra Sancta’s parent school was first established in Jerusalem in 1926. By 1929 the doors of the school were officially opened on King George Street in the Western part of the City, in what was described as ‘one of the modern districts in Jerusalem’.¹⁰ While Jerusalem is often thought of primarily through its sacredness (Armstrong 1998), the construction of a school like Terra Sancta in Jerusalem can be seen as part of the moment ‘in the modern social history of Palestine,’ which is defined by ‘mass literacy, schooling, the daily press and articulated ideas of the Arab enlightenment’ (Tamari 2020, pp. 1–2). Emerging out of an autarkic town, part of a wider Syrian province under the Ottoman empire, Jerusalem in particular had become an administrative centre in its own right, marking a moment of ‘entry into modernity’ (Tamari 2008, p. 4) as it became not only a centre of commercial trading, government functionalities but also the rise of an urban elite (Tamari 2008, p. 5). This urban elite developed what became recognisably known as a ‘pluralistic-secular character’ even if it emerged around quasi-Christian establishments, particularly schools, which were able to provide a much sought-after multi-lingual education which ‘further enhanced the European influence and the cosmopolitan atmosphere’ (Radai 2007, p. 963). This character was also found in the proliferation of bookstores, photography studios, literary, lecture and social clubs (Davis 1999, pp. 46–47). This rise of an urban bourgeoisie has been well studied by Salim Tamari who writes that ‘current debates on Jerusalem have been so mystified by the nature of ideological claim […] that we forget before the war [of 1948] there was an ‘ordinary’ Jerusalem (1999, p. 2), which he describes as ‘an evolving and vibrant city whose life was cut short’ (1999). The vibrancy of these ‘bourgeois, generally well-educated and mainly Christian’ neighbourhoods within the city (Radai 2011, p. 6) was evident not only in the architectural style of the buildings constructed (Radai 2007, p. 962), the types of businesses invested in or material possessions acquired but also through a distinctly urban and modern way of life.

As the ensuing communal conflict turned into all-out warfare, Terra Sancta was forced to close its doors in Jerusalem for a period of time. Amongst the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were expelled during this tumultuous period, many of the residents of Jerusalem’s Western neighbourhoods sought the nascent Jordanian nation and its capital, Amman (Radai 2007, p. 975). This included the leadership of Terra Sancta school who ‘decided to move to Jordan [where] they began to establish the college in the same year out of concern for the future of their students’ who had already missed out on a sizable amount of tuition due to the chaotic events of 1948.¹¹ The Jerusalem branch of the school remained and subsequently re-opened under new leadership, yet as the original leadership and much of the student body had left Jerusalem for Jordan, the establishment of a branch in Amman, whilst not being a replacement, should be seen as a reproduction of the urban ideals developed in Palestine in this unique temporal moment.

Able to rent suitable premises from Mr. Tawfiq Marar in Jabal Amman,¹² the school was located within a neighbourhood which already housed several Christian institutions such as the Redeemer Church and the Bishop’s and Ahliyyah Schools. Nevertheless, in less than a year, the school was able to acquire a plot of land in the neighbouring district of Jabal al-Lweibdeh. By the beginning of the 1949/1950 academic year, the new school building, which remains today, was able to begin admitting students. Even while the building lacked electricity, running water and glass in the windows, the school ‘insisted on starting the studies in the college’ for the benefit of its students.¹³ This era is often designated as a chaotic one in Amman’s history, with thousands of Palestinian refugees arriving in a city which was unable to respond to their needs, and while this is indeed an important part of the chronicle of Palestinians in Amman, this overlooks productive experiences of movement between Palestine and Jordan, in this particular case, Jerusalem and Amman. As has been presented here, part of the urban elite that had been evolving in Jerusalem’s Western neighbourhoods were not only able to move with considerable assets but with a conscious appreciation for a decidedly urban form of living which can be found in Amman today. It is salient, however, that while this dimension of Christian activity is permitted and even celebrated in an official capacity to ensure Christians ‘play their part in consolidating and legitimising the Hashemite regime’ (Maggiolini 2015, p. 48), Terra Sancta’s own connections to and origins in these migratory journeys are overlooked and its demonstrable contribution to the city disregarded.

The Orthodox Club

The Orthodox Club, now housed in the prosperous neighbourhood of Abdoun, followed a similar trajectory, finding its origins in this period of emerging modernity in Palestine’s urban centres before being re-established in Amman. Similarly, it too took up lodgings in a small house in Jabal Amman in 1952, before moving to a larger plot of land in Abdoun in 1972 to expand its facilities to be able to accommodate growing interest from both Palestinian and Jordanian families. At the time of purchase, Abdoun was not yet the high-end, affluent neighbourhood it has since become. The club’s recruitment manager explained that: ‘You know, before the Club came to Abdoun, there was nothing here. Abdoun was made by the Club. The land was very cheap then … we bought this plot and then, after that, other people came, the Embassies you know’.¹⁴ This assertion, that the Club actively contributed to the formation of its surroundings, is demonstrative of how the Club sees itself as being fully constituted within its immediate urban environs. Rather than being a discrete, isolated space members enter into, detaching them from their external domain, the Club exists in a connected symbiosis with its surrounding neighbourhood, both imparting and utilising its reputation of progressive values and a propensity for leisure to bolster and maintain its own status.

With almost 10,000 members on its books, the club has grown extensively with these members coming from 3000, mostly Christian, families, with membership permitted only as part of a family; ‘we have a very good reputation. People know they cannot do bad things when families are here, it brings discipline. You know, we have rules, but we don’t use them because families keep people in check’.¹⁵ This family orientation is congruent with not only pervading social conservativism, which privileges the family unit over the individual, but a further example of the measures taken by the regime to control and circumscribe social and political mobilisation that might destabilise its position. The family, in this case, Christian families, in particular, are considered an acceptable non-state social formation that can be managed. This is seen in the application process, in which prospective members must be recommended by three existing members and a strict vetting process culminating in board approval; ‘in Jordan it is important to know people, everyone knows everyone’.¹⁶ It is this knowledge which allows communal familiarity and belonging but also the regulation of individual behaviour through the mechanisms of religious community and family (Rabo 1996, Amawi 2000). As is the case with Terra Sancta, the Club is recognised as an acceptable cultural space that has been allowed to flourish and subsequently shape its wider urban landscape. Its own origins in the migratory patterns and peoples between Palestine and Jordan are, however, deemed less suitable in the job of maintaining social cohesion and stability.

These origins are found in the emergence of non-formal church activities in the Greek Orthodox denomination, which was part of a developing social landscape in Palestine as far back as the 1870s. The establishment of the Orthodox Philanthropic Foundation in 1879 was followed by a proliferation of social gatherings and clubs in the twentieth century, with an extensive network across Palestine’s urban areas such as Jaffa (1924), Jerusalem (1926), Acre (1929), Beit Sahour (1930), Lydda (1932) and Haifa (1937) (Haiduc-Dale 2013, pp. 173–175). These clubs ‘developed rapidly and became meeting places for leading writers, poets and intellectuals’ as well as places of sport, with football and basketball become popular pastimes.¹⁷ These locally oriented clubs were unified in the early 1940s, with the Orthodox Union Club of Jerusalem (OUC) acting as the administrative and symbolic leader, under the leadership of Hanna Salameh. Not far from Terra Sancta School on King George Street, the OUC’s premises in Jerusalem was also part of this emerging ‘secular, middle-class, celebratory culture’, typified by secular education alongside new cultural spaces (Tamari, 2008, pp. 91–92) such as these. The Club became part of this socio-spatial schema which consisted of architectural developments, educational reform (famously spear-headed by Khalil Sakakini) and a rise in middle-class leisure pursuits (Radai 2007, p. 963). This evolving socio-spatial landscape should be understood, not simply through religious activity or theological belief, but wider socio-political and economic developments. With the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate encountering financial difficulty at the turn of the century, lands surrounding the Saint Simon Monastery in the south-western parts of the city, including the neighbourhoods of Qatamon, Talbiya, al-Numamreh and Baq’a, were sold off after the end of the First World War, precipitating something of a building boom (Piroyansky 2020, p. 857). These spatial opportunities coincided with social developments taking place to create a decidedly ‘modern’ lifestyle in these suburbs of the Holy City.

It would be this lifestyle, alongside land, material possessions and national aspirations, which came under attack and was ultimately lost in the escalation of violence and dispersal of West Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. The properties left behind, both personal residences as well as institutional buildings, came under the control of the Israeli Custodian of Abandoned Property which categorised them as ‘Absentee Property,’ thus giving the newly formed Israeli state the right to re-house Israeli Jews within them. An Arab League survey published in 1956 put the total value of property lost in West Jerusalem at 1,933 million Palestine pounds in 1948 prices (Habbash and Rempel 1999, p. 171). While bricks and motor may have been lost, the Orthodox Club was able to access its assets through the Arab Bank, which too was established in Jerusalem in the 1930s before moving its headquarters to Amman, where it is currently based.¹⁸ As Neveu comments in her work on Orthodox Associations in Palestine and Jordan, Orthodox Palestinians ‘brought to Jordan new associative models they had already developed in Palestine. Thanks to their expertise and networks, they opened new cultural associations and clubs’ (2020, p. 55), evidenced when not long after arrival, a ‘committee of twenty was formed’ to secure lodgings and obtain government approval for the establishment of an Orthodox Club in Amman.¹⁹ A ‘medium, two-storey hall’ that included offices, indoor games space and an outside orchard was found in Jabal Amman and in the beginning of 1952, royal consent was secured, allowing it to open as a social club.²⁰ The first basketball team of the Jordanian kingdom was formed out of the Club’s early years in Amman, a team that still competes in regional and national leagues today. As it outgrew its original premises in Jabal Amman a more sizable plot was purchased, and a large campus of interconnected buildings was constructed in Abdoun. The Club received Royal Patronage in 1990, being registered with the Ministry of Youth as a social, cultural and sports club.²¹

The Orthodox Club, with its Christian origins across Palestine and emerging modern character in Jerusalem, came to find a home in a neighbourhood in West Amman with striking similarities to those left in Jerusalem. Within its walls, it hosts thousands of families, Palestinian and Jordanian, mostly Christian but also Muslim, who regularly gather together to socialise and celebrate events guided by the Christian calendar. It must do so, however, within the confines of state-sanctioned communal activity that uses religious and familial structures as mechanisms to monitor non-state organisations. Yet, even while its own transnational background is deemed suspicious, it has gone on to shape its surrounding neighbourhood as an area of prosperity, leisure and quintessential modernity, contributing to the development of Amman’s own unique form of urbanity.

The YMCA

The YMCA – Young Men’s Christian Association – unlike the Orthodox Club, does not have indigenous roots in the region but was rather a missionary import from the 1880s. It was founded in London in 1844, out of concerns that the malaise of industrialisation was severing traditional communal connections such as family and religion and exposing individuals to the ‘vices’ of the city. Concerned about the city’s corrupting impact on the mind, body and, ultimately, the soul, founders sought to establish places of ‘wholesome recreation that would preserve youth from the temptations of alcohol, gambling, prostitution and that would promote good citizenship’ (Frost 1998, p. 476) through Christian principles and practices including bible lectures and prayer meetings as well as sports and athletics. The movement spread rapidly, with local associations being established worldwide, including the American YMCA that would go on to establish a branch in Palestine in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1924 Philanthropist James Jarvie from New Jersey donated one million dollars to construct a new YMCA building in Jerusalem on a plot of land purchased from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. The completed premises were opened in April 1933 by British General Allenby, whose address was broadcasted internationally, proclaiming the new building as ‘an international monument of peace and brotherhood’.²² This was in keeping with British Mandate policy that encouraged the proliferation of leisure, social and cultural gatherings across Palestine (Hillel 2019). Furthermore, the opening of the new facilities was heralded as ‘a major event described in detail in the world press, and the building quickly became a landmark, as well as a cultural, social, athletic and intellectual centre in the city’.²³ By 1936 the YMCA had nearly 1500 members, with Jews and Arabs using their sporting facilities as well as attending weekly lectures on health, travel and personal improvement as part of a programme of quasi-Christian events. Even as tensions rose in the City during the 1940s membership grew to 1927 (two-thirds Christian, one-third combined Jewish and Muslim).

As leadership and funding were located in America, the building remained in what became Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem in 1948 while the majority of its members were now cut off from the club in Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem and the West and East banks of Jordan. In response to this, a YMCA branch was set up in East Jerusalem in 1954, working closely with UNRWA to help provide education, healthcare and food for refugees as well as seeking to help members become self-sufficient through the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills such as wood, metal and leather work.²⁴ As part of Jordanian territory, East Jerusalem’s YMCA, while primarily attended by Palestinians, was seen as a Jordanian establishment and thus attended by families across both banks. Yet, with the loss of East Jerusalem in 1967, the YMCA was once again cut off from many of its members who resided in the East bank of Jordan, particularly in Amman. Formal disengagement from the West Bank and East Jerusalem would come over 20 years later, in 1988, when Jordan rescinded all territorial claims and administrative responsibility (Tal 2020, p. 51). This official proclamation precipitated the decision to establish a YMCA branch in Amman in 1988 to serve the families, Christian and Muslim, Jordanian and Palestinian, who had been involved with the YMCA in East Jerusalem. A sizable plot of land was purchased on Airport Road on the outskirts of the city, which today houses facilities including gyms, a dance hall, study facilities and swimming pools, popular for seasonal events over Christmas and Easter, parties and weddings amongst the 300 families who are members.²⁵

Differing from Terra Sancta and the Orthodox Club, the YMCA’s own genesis in the city took place during a time of increasing property prices as Amman saw Gulf remittances being invested in the expanding city. Rapid urbanisation has seen the physical form of the city enlarge, with residential and commercial sectors taking precedent over an increasing demand for relaxation and leisure spaces, which are now located on the city’s margins. This is not unintentional nor by coincidence as ‘increasing urbanisation poses new challenges to the regime: controlling urban sprawl’ (Ababsa 2011, p. 41). Surrounded by golf clubs, recreational and amusement parks, the YMCA is part of a regulated leisure landscape where semi-public spaces are frequented by families or private clubs through regulated membership, which function as monitoring mechanisms for individual behaviour through these non-state social formations. Located at the margins of the city, this form of activity is also restricted to the mobile classes who enjoy freedom of movement around the city made possible through the ownership of private vehicles. Even while the YMCA markets itself towards ‘working families’,²⁶ with membership costing considerably less than that of the Orthodox Club, its geographical location is nonetheless prohibitive as access remains reliant on private transport. The YMCA can therefore be seen as signifying another salient form of urban modernity, in which leisure space becomes spatially peripheral to city living and therefore a privilege of the classes who enjoy a certain level of mobility at the expense of those who cannot (Rybczynski 1991, p. 176).

While more a product of external missionary and colonial activity, geo-politics and the shifting of territorial borders, rather than indigenous forms of social and cultural gatherings, the YMCA is an important material representative of the quasi-Christian, secular modernity which emerged in Palestine during the mandate period and, due to the movements of people, as well as borders, precipitated the establishment of a branch in Amman. Today the branch also speaks to contemporary spatial dynamics of urban modernity as it relates to leisure and relaxation activities, which must remain regulated so as to ensure cohesion and stability, meaning its own migratory origins and diasporic connections must be modulated.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, let us return to the question posed in the opening of this paper; is Amman a city in crisis? Does it inherently suffer from a crisis of space and identity? The city has indeed been disregarded as an inadequate representation of the Jordanian nation. It has been understudied and undertheorised in comparison to many of its regional cousins, even while it has continued to grow as a populous metropolis. To address this, therefore, this paper has first sought to account for the ways in which modernity and urbanity delegitimised the city as unable to represent the Jordanian nation, due to its migratory history and character, by depending on orientalist and ethnocentric historical accounts of authenticity and equally ostracising conceptualisations of globalisation and economic development. Secondly, by reframing the relationship between migrant populations and the city, from one of crisis and burden to contribution and participation, this paper has given voice to the ‘marginal realities’ of Amman. In doing so, the city’s urban form and experience are presented as inherently procedural and in dynamic motion, forming out of regional connections, mobilities and ideas about space and place. It, therefore, places Amman within a regional ‘process of globalisation that affected the mobility of three categories in particular: people, objects and ideas’ (Summerer and Zananiri 2020, p. 20). The three examples of Palestinian Christian socio-cultural institutions have grounded this assertion by analysing how emerging forms of urban modernity found in Mandate Palestine came to be reflected in Amman’s urban fabric today. This can be identified in the socio-spatial dynamics of these three institutions as they act in symbiosis with their surroundings, shaping their experiential form into what can be recognised as a uniquely Ammani version of a modern urbanity.

Palestinian Christian communal activity is of particular interest here as it touches upon converging dynamics at play in Jordan. As Palestinians, these communities have navigated contentious elements of national identity and allegiance, while as Christians, they have enjoyed certain guarantees bestowed by the regime as a strategy of legitimacy and stability. That they have enjoyed spatial and social room to establish and flourish in Jordan is demonstrative of how they are amenable to regime structures that permit and regulate certain forms of communal behaviour. Nevertheless, the fact that the migratory origins and connections of such institutions are overlooked shows how competing ideas of legitimacy work to silence and delegitimise certain histories and experiences of the city today.

There are many subsequent avenues to explore here, incorporating other migratory and refugee populations and a variety of communal and spatial practice, from hip-hop culture to street art, embroidery and cuisine. Rather than being framed by either appropriation or assimilation, Amman’s own urban experience can be a showcase of tradition and heritage alongside development from amongst its migrant populations who travelled with their own ideas of modernity and urbanity that are now impressed in the material and emotional form of the city. They have done so as an orientation process, between what was lost and what has been made. Conventional conceptions of the so-called modern nation and the city force allegiances to be drawn across strictly delineated lines, be it physical borders or national loyalties. State mechanisms, which become reflected in official discourses and narratives, also work to classify legitimate forms of personal and communal activity that remain ignorant of these originating, and enduring, transnational and translocal connections. Nevertheless, these conceptualisations fall down in a place like Amman, rendering it in common parlance as invisible, overshadowed or in crisis. Whereas it should be appreciated for what it is, a vibrant amalgamation of ideas of what constitutes a city by the multifarious groups who call it home, which coalesce to form a city not in crisis but with its own sense of composure.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the British Institute in Amman for their facilitation of this research project, including a language tuition scholarship. I would also like to thank Dr Myriam Ababsa and Dr Falestin Naili at the IFPO, Amman, for their helpful suggestions in the early stages of research and Dr Sarah Irving, and the reviewing panel, whose insightful feedback made an invaluable difference to this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers under the Dudley Stamp Memorial Award.

Notes on contributors

Annabel C. Evans

Annabel C. Evans is currently conducting her doctoral studies at Loughborough University in the department of Geography and Environment. Her thesis is interested in concepts of home and belonging amongst the Palestinian Christian diaspora in Jordan where she conducted a 6-month focused ethnography in 2019. Her interests in the Middle East have evolved from a highly interdisciplinary approach having studied the region from historical, political, sociological and anthropological disciplinary perspectives.

Notes

1 Ghazal, M., 2016. Population stands at around 9.5 million, including 2.9 million guests. Amman, The Jordan Times, 30 January. Available from: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/population-stands-around-95-million-including-29-million-guests [Accessed 11 June 2020].

2 King Hussein, 1997. Speech from the Throne: Opening of the Thirteenth Parliament. Amman, 27 November. Available from: http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/97_nov29.html [Accessed 3 November 2020].

3 WFP, USA, 2020. 10 Facts About the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Jordan, 29 October. Available from: https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/10-facts-about-the-syrian-refugee-crisis-in-jordan/#:~:text=Jordan's%20exceptional%20solidarity%20with%20the,refugees%20in%20Jordan%20remains%20precarious [Accessed 15 November 2020].

4 David, A., 2010. The Revolt of Jordan’s Military Veterans, 16 June. Available from: http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/15/the_revolt_of_jordans_military_veterans [Accessed 12 November 2020].

5 Evans, A, C., 2019. Interview with Reem, 19 November, Amman, Jordan.

6 Terra Sancta College, Fiftieth Anniversary, 1998, Commemorative booklet (Arabic & English), p. 8 (English section).

7 Terra Sancta College,., p. 6 (Arabic section, author's translation).

8 Evans, A, C., 2019. Interview with Graeme, 4 September, Amman, Jordan.

9 The efforts of which are now commemorated in a Franciscan Museum in St Saviours Monastery, Jerusalem which was first opened in 1902. Its mission statement is ‘to let the world know about the roots of Christianity and about the history of the Christian presence in the Holy Land’, https://www.custodia.org/en/culture-and-education [Accessed 9 June 2020].

10 Terra Sancta College, p. 9 (English section).

11 Terra Sancta College, p. 9 (English section).

12 In a building which now houses the Indian Embassy on Amro Ben Saed Street, which sits off the popular thoroughfare of Rainbow Street.

13 Terra Sancta College, p. 9.

14 Evans, A, C., 2019. Interview with Maya, 21 October, Amman, Jordan.

15 Interview w. Maya.

16 Interview w. Maya.

17 The Orthodox Club, The Journey of the Orthodox Club, 2002, Commemorative Booklet (Arabic,author’s translation), p. 11.

18 Arab Bank, Amman. Our History. Available from: https://www.arabbank.jo/smartmenu/smart-menu/about-us-2/our-history [Accessed 16 June 2020].

19 The Journey of the Orthodox Club, p. 13.

20 The Journey of the Orthodox Club, p. 1.

21 Interview with Maya.

22 Kautz Family YMCA Archives Records of YMCA International Work in Palestine and Israel, Y.USA.9-2-2. University of Minnesota. Available at: https://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/7/resources/929 [Accessed 16 June 2020].

23 YMCA Archives.

24 YMCA Archives.

25 Evans, A, C., 2019. Interview with Elias, 18 November, Amman, Jordan.

26 Interview w. Elias.