Everything about Transjordan totally explained
The
Emirate of Transjordan (
Arabic: ) was a former
Ottoman territory incorporated into the
British Mandate of Palestine in 1921 as an autonomous political division under
as-Sayyid Abdullah bin al-Husayn. This move was formalized by the addition of a September 1922 clause to the charter governing the Mandate for Palestine. Transjordan was geographically equivalent to 1942–1965 Kingdom of
Jordan (slightly different from today's borders), and remained under the nominal auspices of the
League of Nations and British supreme rule, until its independence in 1946.
Under the
Ottoman empire, Transjordan didn't correspond precisely to a political division, though most of it belonged to the
Vilayet of
Syria and a small southern section came from the Vilayet of
Hejaz. The inhabitants of northern Jordan had traditionally associated with Syria, those of southern Jordan with the Arabian Peninsula, and those of western Jordan with the administrative districts west of the Jordan River. However, the creation of the
Hejaz railway by the Ottoman Empire had started to reshape the associations within the territory. Historically the territory had formed part of various empires; among these are the
Jewish,
Assyrian,
Achaemenid, Macedonian (
Seleucid),
Nabataean,
Ptolemaic,
Roman,
Byzantine,
Sassanid,
Muslim,
Crusader, and
Ottoman empire.
The Mandate for Palestine, while specifying actions in support of Jewish immigration and political status, stated that in the territory to the east of the Jordan River, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' those articles of the Mandate concerning a
Jewish National Home. In September 1922, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations stating that Transjordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement, and this memorandum was approved by the League on
11 September. From that point onwards, Britain administered the part west of the Jordan as Palestine, and the part east of the Jordan as Transjordan. Technically they remained one mandate but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates. Transjordan remained under British control until 1946.
The borders and territory of Transjordan were not determined until after the Mandate came into effect. The borders in the east of the country were designed so as to aid the British in building an oil pipeline from their Mandate of
Iraq through Transjordan to seaports in the Palestine Mandate.
The
Hashemite Emir Abdullah, elder son of Britain's wartime Arab ally
Sharif Hussein of Mecca, was placed on the throne of Transjordan. Britain recognized Transjordan as a state on
May 15,
1923, and gradually relinquished control, limiting its oversight to financial, military and foreign policy matters. This had an impact on the goals of
Revisionist Zionism, which sought a state on both banks of the Jordan, as it effectively severed Transjordan from Palestine and so reduced the area on which a future Jewish state in the region could be established. In March 1946, under the
Treaty of London, Transjordan became a kingdom and on
May 25,
1946, the parliament of Transjordan proclaimed the emir king, and formally changed the name of the country from the Emirate of Transjordan to the
Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. After capturing the 'West Bank' area of Cisjordan during the
1948–49 war with Israel, Abdullah took the title King of Jordan, and he officially changed the country's name to the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in April 1949. The following year he annexed the West Bank. With the exception of the French
Cisjordanie, the coinage,
Cisjordan, meant to apply specifically to the
West Bank at that time, hasn't since caught on, outside Jordanian circles.
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