Corresponding geographically to today's Kingdom of
Jordan, the
Emirate of Transjordan was an autonomous political
subdivision of the
Middle East split off from the territory to be allocated to the
British Mandate of Palestine in
April 1921 and was administered separately from
the British Mandate of
Palestine by the
British, which was not fully
operational until the full
ratification of the Treaty of San Remo in
September 1923, under the nominal auspices of the
League of Nations until its independence in
1946.
"Transjordan" was a word coined to express the idea that the lands so described were "across the
Jordan", i.e. on the far (eastern) side of the
Jordan River. On the western side of the
Jordan River was
Palestine which contained many places of historical and religious signifance to
Judaism,
Christianity, and
Islam.
Under the
Ottoman empire, Transjordan did not correspond precisely to a political division, though most of it belonged to the
Vilayet of
SyriaThe Syrian Arab Republic is a country in Southwest Asia, bordering (from south to north) on Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. The border with Israel is subject to dispute, pending the resolution of outstanding conflicts over possession of the Gola and a small southern section came from the Vilayet of
HejazHejaz (also Hijaz Hedjaz is a region in the northwest of present-day Saudi Arabia; its main city is Jeddah, but it is probably better-known for the holy city of Mecca. As a region, The Hijaz as it is often referred to, because of being the site of Islam's. 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. Historically the territory had formed part of various empires; among these are the
Jewish,
Assyrian . Assyrians are the indigenous people of north Iraq members of the Assyrian Church of th,
Achaemenid, Macedonian (
Seleucid),
Nabataean,
Ptolemaic,
Roman,
Sassanid,
Muslim,
Crusader, and Ottoman empires.
The territory covered by Transjordan resulted from a compromise between the competing promises in the
Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and
Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Previously a part of the territory covered by the planned League of Nations mandate for Palestine, Transjordan was created as a separate administrative entity on April 11, 1921 to provide a throne of sorts (albeit one under British control) for the
Hashemite Emir Abdullah, elder son of Britain's wartime Arab ally
Sharif Hussein of Mecca.
The move also excluded the land east of the Jordan from Britain's wartime undertaking in the Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917) to support the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
Britain recognized Transjordan as a state on
May 15,
1923 and gradually relinquished control, limiting its oversight to financial, military and foreign policy matters. 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. In December 1948, 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. The coinage,
Cisjordan, meant to apply specifically to the
West Bank at that time, has not since caught on, outside Jordanian circles.
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