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From Colony to Capital: Reconsidering the Socio-Economic and Political History of Amman, 1878–1928

Jordanian nationalist historiography describes the four centuries of Ottoman dominion over Arab lands (1516–1918) as a time of stagnation, chaos and despotism. This trend is seen in historical studies of the city of Amman which understate Ottoman accomplishments. Many sources separate the Ottoman and Hashemite periods by either beginning or ending their narrative of the city’s history in 1916, the year of the Arab Revolt, or 1921, when Emir Abdullah arrived in Amman. These historical narratives do not comprehensively identify the continuities between the Ottoman and British–Hashemite systems of governance in Amman. Expounding on Eugene Rogan’s work Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921, but focusing more narrowly on Amman, I chart the conceptual foundations of the re–birth and development of the town during the Ottoman and British–Hashemite eras in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I argue that a comprehensive account of the city’s history that crosses the traditional dividing years of 1916 and 1921 leads to a different understanding of the forces that make Amman what it is today. By looking at several themes and sources, I arrive at a synopsis of the urban identity of Amman and its different groups and classes. Amman was once a vibrant city with a long history of continued settlement. By the mid-fourteenth century, the city succumbed to plague and depopulation, leaving Amman devoid of settlement until the immigration of Circassians in the late nineteenth century. Modern Amman was developed as part of the Ottoman Empire’s modernisation efforts in the late nineteenth century. It was planned as a new provincial centre that would facilitate communication and military networks, house immigrants, and solidify the safety of the Islamic pilgrimage route. The decision to re-settle Amman and its consequences cannot be understood without contextualising the history of Greater Syria under Ottoman rule. This region was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1516 and remained in Ottoman hands until the First World War. During these years, the area was not organised into a single administrative or political entity by the Ottoman state, nor was it seen as such by the local population. No single term prevails in records and travel narratives from Ottoman times. The population in southeastern Syria included nomads and town–dwellers. Of these small population centres in the al-Balqaʿ region of the Jordan Valley, al-Salt was the most affluent. During these four centuries of indirect Ottoman rule over southeastern Syria, Amman did not constitute any sort of urban centre. According to the Ottoman salname of 1871, there were an estimated 200 hanes (households) in the ‘village’ of Amman, 60 hanes in the village of Hisban and 40 hanes in Wadi al-Sir. The salname of 1881–1882 estimated that Bedouin tribes constituted