Abstract
This chapter explores the lifespan of the Arab Legion, the British-financed and officered Jordanian army, which was in existence from 1923 to 1956. It examines its origins after the First World War, as Britain sought to establish control of its new imperial possessions in the Middle East; its significance towards state formation in Transjordan and the creation of a Jordanian national identity; its peripheral role in the Second World War; its crucial role in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War; and its Arabisation after the dismissal of its British commander, Glubb Pasha, in March 1956.
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- 1.
Quoted in: P. J. Vatikiotis, Politics and the Military in Jordan: A Study of the Arab Legion 1921–1957 (London, 1967), p. 60.
- 2.
C. S. Jarvis, Arab Command: The Biography of Lieutenant-Colonel F. W. Peake Pasha (London, 1942), p. 77.
- 3.
Jarvis, Arab Command, p. 72.
- 4.
Humphreys to Glubb, 9 December 1930, Glubb Papers (2006 accession), Box 4, St Antony’s College, Middle East Centre Archive (MECA), Oxford.
- 5.
Quoted in: Joseph Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York, 2001), p. 106.
- 6.
Graham Jevon, Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion: Britain, Jordan, and the End of Empire in the Middle East (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 33–53.
- 7.
Jevon, Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion, pp. 63–88.
- 8.
Matthew Hughes, ‘The Conduct of Operations: Glubb Pasha, the Arab Legion, and the First Arab–Israeli War, 1948–49’, War in History (2018), pp. 1–24.
- 9.
Abdullah al-Tall, Karithat Filastin, Mudhakkarat Abdullah al-Tall, Qaid Marakat al-Quds (Cairo, 1958). For a comparison and reconciliation of Glubb’s and al-Tal’s differing accounts of the 1948 War in their respective memoirs, see: Eugene Rogan, “Jordan and the 1948 War,” in Rogan and Shlaim (eds.), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 104–124.
- 10.
Shahir Abu Shahut, Qissat Harakat al-Dubbat al-Urduniyyin al-Ahrar (1952–1957) (unpublished manuscript, 1993); quoted in: Massad, Colonial Effects, p. 169.
- 11.
Interview with Ali Abu Nowar, 20 June 1990, Geyelin Papers, MECA.
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Jevon, G. (2019). The Arab Legion. In: Kumaraswamy, P.R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9166-8_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9166-8_15
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