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Abstract
This narrative discusses the use of architecture as a mechanism of control over territories, resources, and peoples in the Jordanian desert during the period of interwar British Mandatory rule. The text presents and compares varying modes of imperial and Indigenous architectural control in the desert through a case study of Qal’at al-Jafr, a building constructed after World War I by the Bedouin leader Auda abu Tayeh, and coopted a decade later into the British Mandate’s scheme for “desert control.”
Notes
1 This narrative is drawn from the author’s PhD dissertation, “Principles for Desert Control: Architecture, Imperialism, and Nomadic Peoples during the British Mandate (1920–1948),” currently being undertaken in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I am grateful to Marilyn Levine, Rhiannon Garth Jones, Ozayr Salojee, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this text. Photo source: “Photographs and Blueprints: Palestine and Transjordan: Typical Country,” 1926–30, AIR 5/1157, National Archives, Kew, UK.
2 For an account of the policies, key figures, and historical context of the British Mandate’s “desert administration,” see Robert Fletcher, British Imperialism and “the Tribal Question”: Desert Administration and Nomadic Societies in the Middle East, 1919-1936, 1st ed., Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015).
3 John Glubb, “Policy on Control of Desert,” November 19, 1930, CO 831/10/2, National Archives, Kew, UK.
4 John Glubb, “Trans-Jordan Desert Report: June 1937,” CO 831/41/11, National Archives, Kew, UK.
5 Thomas Edward Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, reset ed. (London: Cape, 1955), chap. 39; Suleiman Mousa, T. E. Lawrence: An Arab View, trans. Albert Butros (London ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 64–65.
6 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 302–3.
7 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, chap. 52.
8 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, chap. 30; Mousa, T. E. Lawrence, 65.
9 Air Commodore Playfair, “A Report on the Siting of Desert Intelligence Posts in Transjordan,” June 20, 1930, CO 830/10/1, National Archives, Kew, UK; John Glubb, “Major Glubb’s Monthly Reports on Events in the Southern Desert,” 1937-1938, CO 831/46/9, National Archives, Kew, UK; Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 288; Mousa, T. E. Lawrence, 69.
10 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 290–91.
11 See for example Mahmoud Bashir Alhasanat et al., “Spatial Analysis of a Historical Phenomenon: Using GIS to Demonstrate the Strategic Placement of Umayyad Desert Palaces,” GeoJournal 77 (2012), 343–59; D. L. Kennedy and D. N. Riley, Rome’s Desert Frontier: From the Air, 1st University of Texas Press ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); G. R. D. King, “The Distribution of Sites and Routes in the Jordanian and Syrian Deserts in the Early Islamic Period,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 17 (1987): 91–105; Andrew Petersen, The Medieval and Ottoman Hajj Route in Jordan: An Archaeological and Historical Study, Levant Supplementary Series, vol. 12 (Oxford; Oakville, CT: [London]: Oxbow Books; Council for British Research in the Levant, 2012).
12 Margaret Freeman, “A Fort under Another Name: ‘Imperial’ Architecture as a Tool of Bedouin Control in the British Mandate,” in Interwar Crossroads: Entangled Histories of the Middle Eastern and North Atlantic World Between the World Wars, ed. Leon Julius Biela and Anna Bundt, Global and Colonial History, vol. 8 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2023), 247–74.
13 For more on the practice of wasim as territorial and property markings among the Bedouin, see for example Davida Eisenberg-Degen, George H. Nash, and Joshua Schmidt, “Inscribing History: The Complex Geographies of Bedouin Tribal Symbols in the Negev Desert, Southern Israel,” in Relating to Rock Art in the Contemporary World: Navigating Symbolism, Meaning, and Significance, ed. Liam M. Brady and Paul S. C. Tacçon (University Press of Colorado, 2016), 157–87; Davida Eisenberg-Degen, Joshua Schmidt, and George H. Nash, “Signposts in the Landscape: Marks and Identity among the Negev Highland Bedouin,” Nomadic Peoples 22:2 (2018), 195–221; Michael C. A. Macdonald, “Inscriptions, Rock Drawings and Wusūm from the Ayl to Ras an-Naqab Archaeological Survey,” in The Ayl to Ras An-Naqab Archaeological Survey, Southern Jordan (2005–2007), ed. Burton MacDonald et al. (Boston: The American Schools of Oriental Research, 2012), 433–66.
14 Glubb, “Policy on Control of Desert.”
15 Glubb, “Policy on Control of Desert.”
16 Glubb, “Policy on Control of Desert.”
17 Glubb, “Policy on Control of Desert.”
18 Glubb, “Trans-Jordan Desert Report.”
19 Glubb, “Trans-Jordan Desert Report.”
20 John Glubb, “Captain Glubb’s Reports,” 1934, FO 905/15, National Archives, Kew, UK.
21 W. Jennings Bramley, “Note on the Fort at Burg El-Arab,” September 24, 1926, FO 141/514/5, National Archives, Kew, UK.
22 “Rights and Privileges of Bedouins,” 1922, FO 141/514/5, National Archives, Kew, UK.
23 John Bagot Glubb, The Story of the Arab Legion (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948), 194; John Glubb, “Memorandum,” January 1929, CO 730/140/8, National Archives, Kew, UK.
24 John Glubb, “Report on Events in the Southern Desert,” 1936, CO 831/37/3, National Archives, Kew UK.
25 “Glubb, John Bagot Oral History,” Reel 3, 1979, 4410, Imperial War Museums London, UK.
26 For a relevant theoretical engagement with concepts of water as a medium of power wielded by state and nonstate actors, see Michael Ekers and Alex Loftus, “The Power of Water: Developing Dialogues between Foucault and Gramsci,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26:4 (August 2008), 698–718.
27 See for example discussions of the historical, and in particular Greco-Roman, inspirations for Britain’s “desert control” policies in Fletcher, British Imperialism,” chap. 4.
28 28. Dafi Jama’ani, Min Al-Hizb Ila Al-Sijn [From the Party to the Prison], 1948–1994: Mudhakkirāt [Diaries](Beirut: Riyād al-Rayyis lil-Kutub wa-al-Nashr, 2007), trans. 2016 by The Palestinian Revolution; Amal Nafaa, “Qisat Tarwid Muetaqali: Hin Hawl Alshuyueiuwn Sijn Aljafar Alsahrawii ‘Iilaa Basatin Khadra,’ [The story of domesticating a prisoner: when the communists transformed al-Jafr desert prison into green orchards]” Al-Sijill, January 15, 2009, http://www.al-sijill.com/sijill_items/sitem5252.htm.
29 David E. Kaplan and Ilana Ozernoy, “Al Qaeda’s Desert Inn,” U.S. News & World Report, June 2, 2003; Joby Warrick, “A Portrait of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the Spiritual Founder of ISIS,” Time, November 11, 2015, https://time.com/4083596/isis-black-flags/.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Margaret Freeman
Margaret Freeman is a PhD candidate in History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her dissertation, “Principles for Desert Control: Architecture, Imperialism, and Nomadic Peoples During the British Mandate (1920–1948),” examines how the built environment was mobilized and manipulated to control nomadic peoples under the authority of the British Mandate in the Middle East, and how nomadic groups responded to and influenced building projects intended to control or surveil them.