Word: abdullah
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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From Tent io Palace. In 1921, as a reward for the Hashemites' services, Britain's Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, made Abdullah Emir of Trans-Jordan and made his brother Feisal King of Iraq. The boys had their troubles. Their father, Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, was attacked by his old rival, Ibn Saud. In the end, Ibn Saud drove the Sherif out of his domain, annexed Mecca and the surrounding district to his holdings in Arabia...
...Emir Abdullah, meanwhile, worked hard to transform Jordan, an ungainly, rocky patch of land, into a kingdom. For two years he lived in a tent. On the tent site at Amman Abdullah later built his palace. He ruled as an absolute monarch, but the poorest Bedouin could come to plead with him at any time. He once spent a whole day personally tracking down a rascal who had made a poor woman pregnant...
...throne was an ordinary armchair in claret-colored upholstery, his garb a spotless white shirt and beige ankle-length robe, elastic-sided boots, and a white turban wound around his head, one end hanging rakishly loose in Hejaz style. Once Abdullah installed a set of distorting mirrors in the entrance to his audience chamber so that he could chuckle at the changing shapes of approaching people, particularly dignified British diplomats...
...Abdullah had three wives, two sons, three daughters. No. 1 Queen was a cousin, Umm Talal, mother of Prince Talal; No. 2 Queen was a Turk, Umm Naif, mother of Prince Naif the new regent; No. 3 was a comely Ethiopian, black as the tents of Kedar, onetime maidservant to Umm Naif. The black queen attended to Abdullah's clothes, prepared his favorite meals of tender lamb, rice and raisins. A trim figure with a passion for green clothes and nylon stockings, she is, despite her heavy veil, often recognized in Amman's streets. An Amman urchin once...
Dream of a Half Moon. Abdullah stayed consistently loyal to the British, even during World War II, when many other Arab leaders were flirting with the Axis. His great political dream was a new state to combine Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, "that great half moon," as he called it, "which opens' on two seas...