Nestled between Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is considered an exception in the always turbulent Middle East. The uprisings that shook the Arab world in 2011 only touched this country, and the terrorism that plagues its neighbors hardly hits there. This stability has come from the Hashemite dynasty, which has shaped the country since its birth. Descendants of Hussein ibn Ali, who was the Sharif of Mecca and later king of the Hijaz (1916-1925), the members of the Hashemite dynasty trace their origins to Muhammad himself, prophet of the Islamic faith.
The Hashemites have played an important role in major events that have defined today’s Middle East: they guarded the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and ruled Syria and Iraq in the early 20th century. Despite the relevance it once had, the Hashemite dynasty has gradually lost its influence, although they still retain the throne of Jordan.
The “people of the House”, the Banu Hashim and the Quraish tribe
Islam emerged more than 1,400 years ago in the Arabian Peninsula, profoundly altering the sociopolitical reality of its population. However, certain traditional elements of Arab society remained, including social organization based on Kabila (‘tribe’ in Arabic). The Kabila It is built on the blood ties of its members following a patrilineal line, that is, each person belongs to the tribe to which their father belongs. This social organization would end up having great importance in the early years of Islam.
Muhammad belonged to the Quraish tribe, an Adnanite Arab tribe that traces its origins to Adam through the prophets Ishmael and his father, Abraham. Before the arrival of Islam, the Quraysh were merchants and controlled the city of Mecca, a center of polytheistic worship and an important commercial hub. At first, Islam generated divisions in the Quraish tribe, which in 622 expelled Muhammad and his followers, mostly members of the Hashim clan, from the city. Banu Hashim. However, in 630 Muhammad conquered Mecca and the Quraysh converted en masse to Islam. The relevance of the Banu Hashim and the Quraish tribe in the early years of Islam is enormous: they were essential in the expansion and consolidation of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. The entire first generation of caliphs, who succeeded Muhammad at the head of Islam, were Quraysh.
In Islam there is the concept of Ahlul Bayt, which would be translated as ‘people of the House’. It refers to the prophet’s close family: his daughter Fatima, his cousin and son-in-law Ali, and his two grandsons, Hasan and Hussein. After the death of Muhammad, it was the blood relationship with the prophet that caused the schism between Sunnis and Shiites. While the Sunnis considered that any member of the Quraish tribe could access the caliphate, the Shiites defended that only the direct descendants of Muhammad could do so: Ali and his descendants.
Proving today to be a descendant of Muhammad is, to say the least, complicated. However, in Muslim-majority countries there continues to be social recognition of those who are able to trace their ancestry back to the prophet, who receive the honorary title of sharif (‘jerife’ in Spanish). In Iran, for example, men who disowned Muhammad are reserved for wearing black turbans, instead of the usual white ones.
In the Hejaz region, west of the Arabian Peninsula and where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located, the sharif They belonged to the most prominent families. During the Abbasid Caliphate (8th-13th centuries), these families there constituted the Jerifate, or Emirate, of Mecca, governed by a sherif dependent on the caliph of Baghdad. After the fall of the Abbasids, the Sherifate continued to exist under the control of the different empires that succeeded them: the Fatimid Caliphate, the Ayyubid Sultanate, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and, finally, the Ottoman Empire, against which the Sherif of La Mecca rebelled at the beginning of the 20th century.
A family called to govern the Arabs
The modern Hashemite dynasty emerged in the Jerifate of Mecca at the beginning of the 20th century and, as its name indicates, claims descent from the Hashim clan and Muhammad. In 1908, Hussein ibn Ali was appointed sheikh of Mecca. His coming to power coincided with the rise of movements opposing Ottoman domination of Arab territories. A cultural movement called Al Nahda emerged in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. (‘the renaissance’ in Arabic), which spread throughout the rest of the Arab world and defended its independence from the Ottoman Empire, which had controlled it for centuries. Sherif Hussein, who aspired to become caliph, became the greatest standard-bearer of Arabism, legitimized by his status as a descendant of the prophet.
With the outbreak of World War I, the Sherif saw his opportunity to create an independent Muslim Arab country under the Ottoman Empire, taking advantage of the momentum of newborn Arab nationalism. Hussein began to have contacts with the British commissioner in Egypt, Henry McMahon. Through a series of letters, known as the “Hussein-McMahon correspondence,” the British secured the support of the Sherif of Mecca in the war against the Ottoman Empire. Hussein pledged to lead an Arab revolt against the Ottomans. In return, the United Kingdom promised him an independent Arab kingdom that would include Greater Syria – modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan – part of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, with the exception of the Yemeni port of Aden, which would remain under control. British due to its strategic position on the route to India.
Sherif Hussein proclaimed himself king of the Hijaz—the region of the Arabian Peninsula where the holy cities are—and declared war on the Ottoman Empire on June 10, 1916, thus inaugurating the Hashemite dynasty. With British military and economic aid, the Arabs launched the Arab Revolt, expelling the Ottomans from Arabia and liberating Damascus in October 1918. However, British promises of a great Arab kingdom were soon broken. The secret Sykes-Picot agreements (1916) were soon made public, which divided the Middle East between France and the United Kingdom, and the Balfour Declaration (1917), which gave up the Palestinian territories for the construction of an independent Jewish State.
After breaking their promise, the United Kingdom sought a solution that would please King Hussein. Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia—who had served as a liaison with the Arabs during the revolt—proposed what was called the sharifian solution (‘Sherifian solution’). The proposal was to grant three separate kingdoms to three sons of Hussein: Faisal would be king of Syria, Abdullah of the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad and Basra, in modern-day Iraq, and Zeid of parts of northern Iraq and Syria. Hussein’s first-born son, Ali, would inherit the throne of Hejaz. Although Hussein accepted the proposal, it was never carried out effectively.
The kingdoms of the Hashemite dynasty
Faisal was named king of Syria in 1918, but his reign was short-lived. Syria was under the domination of France, and having an Arab monarch in Damascus conflicted with the interests of Paris. After a brief Franco-Syrian war, Faisal I of Syria was expelled to Iraq. His brother Abdullah tried to retake Damascus by force, but Churchill stopped him to avoid a major conflict between the Arabs and the French, both allies of the British. In exchange, the United Kingdom agreed with Abdullah to give him the throne of a new protectorate in the Emirate of Transjordan, and Faisal was named king of Iraq shortly after.
Map of the sharifian solution proposed by TE Lawrence. Source: Wikipedia
After significant ups and downs, in 1921 there were three branches of the Hashemite dynasty: that of the Hejaz, under the reign of Hussein; the Iraqi branch, with his son Faisal I; and the transjordanian branch, headed by another son of Hussein, Abdullah. But this situation did not last long: in 1924 Hussein abdicated the crown of Hejaz to his son Ali and proclaimed himself caliph. Ali inherited a kingdom threatened by one of his neighbors, the Nejd Sultanate, ruled by the House of Saud. The Saudis were expanding their territory at the expense of the Kingdom of Hijaz and conquered it definitively in 1926. Already dominating most of the Arabian Peninsula, including the holy cities, the Saud house founded a new State, Saudi Arabia.
The Hashemite branch of the Hejaz disappeared. King Hussein took refuge in Cyprus, then a British colony, and years later he moved to the kingdom of his son Abdullah in Jordan, where he died in 1931. Ali, the last king of the Hejaz, fled with his family to Iraq, where his brother Faisal I was still king. Years later, Ali’s son, Abdullah, would be regent of Iraq after the sudden death of his cousin, King Gazi I, son of Faisal. Abdullah led Iraq for fourteen years, between 1939 and 1953, until the young Faisal II, who was only four years old when his father Gazi died, could reign.
The Emirate of Transjordan became independent from the United Kingdom in 1946, in the midst of the decolonization wave. Three years later, King Abdullah decided to change the country’s name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after conquering the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the first Arab-Israeli war. The rest of the Arab countries saw Abdullah of Jordan as a threat due to his expansionist aspirations towards Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. However, Abdullah’s dreams of building a Hashemite kingdom with its capital in Damascus were cut short in 1951, when he was assassinated by a Palestinian militant at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. He was succeeded by his son Talal, who was forced by the British to abdicate due to alleged schizophrenia just a year later, leaving the throne to his brother Hussein.
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Simultaneously, in Egypt the nationalist military, led by the young colonel Gamal Abdel Náser, carried out a coup d’état, overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a republic in 1952. Their success unleashed nationalism against Western interventionism and the creation of the State of Israel in the entire Arab world. The pan-Arabism defended by Náser took hold, giving rise in 1958 to two ephemeral union projects that were at odds with each other. On the one hand, the United Arab Republic, which merged the socialist republics of Egypt and Syria into a single country, and lasted until 1961. On the other, the Arab Federation, a union between the Hashemite kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan that lasted only a few months. . Nasser’s nationalism also reached Iraq, where the military pointed out King Faisal II as a puppet of the United Kingdom. The Army staged a coup in 1958, Faisal was assassinated and Iraq became a…