2 Ottomans: establishing a permanent presence in Transjordan

The Ottoman central government was in a financial bind throughout the nineteenth century. Nationalist movements in the Balkans diminished revenues from the economic heartlands of Rumelia, as more and more territories seceded from the Empire. A series of disastrous wars left the armed forces struggling to rebuild. The various infrastructural develop­ment projects undertaken by the government as part of the age of reforms combined to make heavy demands on the strapped treasury. Reduced revenues and growing expenditures threatened the viability of the Empire. Consequently;~ the central government put pressure on the Anatolian and Arab provinces to raise revenues by every means possible. 1

The provincial government in Syria had difficulty balancing its own budget, going from crisis to financial crisis in the mid-nineteenth century. 2 Successive governors in DamascuS" began to view Transjordan as an unexploited asset- fertile agricultural lands which brought little or no revenues to the provincial coffers. Repeated projects were raised by governors in Damascus to extend the administrative apparatus south­wards to the steppe lands of <Ajlun and the Balqa:.. The central government's enthusiasm for these plans was motivated by more than just financial concerns. Transjordan was a strategic link between Damascus and the Arabian province of the Hijaz. On the retreat from its Balkan provinces, the Ottomans were following an expansionist policy in the Arabian peninsula. Initiatives were undertaken to extend Ottoman rule iri the Persian Gulf from Kuwait as far as Qatar;~ in the central Arabian province of the Najd, as well as in the Yemen. 3 Trans­jordan was seen as the land bridge to Arabia;~ by which the Ottomans hoped to reinforce their presence in the Najd and Hijaz. And;~ in the 1 Roger Owen~ The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914 (London~ 1 9 81),

pp. 57-64, 100-108. 2 Elizabeth Thompson, "Ottoman Political Reform in the Provinces: The Damascus

Advisory Council in 1844-45," IJMES 25 (1993), pp. 459-61. 3 Frederick Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait_, Saudi: Arabia and

Qatar (New York, 1997).

44

Ottomans 45

aftermath of the British occupation of Egypt in 1882~ the Sublime Porte made a high priority of reinforcing its presence in southern Syria to check further European ambitions in its Arab provinces.

The extension of direct rule into the southeastern districts of the province of Syria would prove a slow process. A government center needed to be created. Police and gendarmes had to be posted to provide security. Villages needed to be created~ and settlers encouraged to extend the area under cultivation. The submission of the Bedouin to government rule had to be won and preserved. The Ottomans never succeeded in ruling a territory without first changing realities on the ground. The process began in the northernmost district of cAjlun.

Dividing the frontier into administrative units

Irbid a!ld :Jabal cAjlun

In the first decade of the Tanzimat~ the Ottoman government in Damascus undertook a number of initiatives to extend its authority over the district of Jabal cAjlun. The government-'s primary concerns in 'Ajlun were to assure the security of agricultural production and the collection of tax revenues against the demands of the Bedouin. The 'Adwan tribe and various bran<;hes of the cAnaza confederation were established in force in Jabal cAJiun and so were in a better position to extract surplus from the peasants than was the government. Faced with what amounted to double taxation by tribes and state~ peasants were driven to abandon their villages for such areas as were taxed uniquely by one authority. In March 1844, this situation was put before the Consultative Council (Majlis al-Shura) in Damascus.4 In a report to the Council~ the provincial governor and military commander expressed their concern over Bedouin exactions and peasant flight. "It is now the time for cultivation," their report explained~ "and it is our duty to examine the means to provide for the safety of the fallahin and their speedy resettlement~ to assure them in the conduct of their affairs and the preservation of tax revenues." 5

The Council appointed Muhammad Sacid Agha Shamdin, one of the Kurdish irregular army commanders of Damascus~ to proceed to cAjlun with his own troops to assure the district's security. 6 The expenses of the force of fifty cavalrymen were to be levied from the local peasantry.

4 On the Consultative Council, cf. Thompson, "Ottoman Political Reform,:', pp. 461-64. 5 HDC, Awamir Sultaniyya, vol. 5, pp. 57-58, report, 29 Safar 1260/20 March 1844. 6 On Muhammad Sacid Agha Shamdin, cf. L. S. Schilcher, Families in Politics: Damascene

Factions and Estates ofthe 18th and 19th Centuries (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 74, 95, 153.

46 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

Muhammad Sa'id Agha's seems not to have fulfilled his commission_, for within thirty months a new governor in Damascus was petitioning the Grand Vizier in Istanbul to appoint a district governor to the village of 'Il'al to the northeast of Irbid_, supported by 600-700 soldiers. While the project was approved by Sultan Abdiilmecid in 1846_, again it appears never to have been executed. 7

1851 is usually given as the date the Ottomans established a district center in Irbid_, though the documentary evidence suggests this was but another short-lived attempt to establish a government presence in Trans jordan. 8 The background to the initiative was a crisis in provincial finances. According to French consular sources_, while Damascus had balanced its budget through 1849 _, a series of unforeseen expenses had driven the province's accounts to a deficit of some 4 million piasters by February 1851. 9 When renewed Bedouin attacks on settled cultivators in March threatened the crops in 'Ajlun_, the military commander in Damascus intervened to drive the Bedouin out and save the year's harvests for tax collection. He led a series of attacks on the Sirhan and Bani IZilab tribes_, in which some 2_,200 sheep and 38 camels were confiscated_, and on the Bani Sakhr in which he claimed to have confiscated 5_,000 sheep and 400 camels. 10

While the provincial military commander pursued military solutions with quick results_, th~·::governor of Syria was working on longer-term administrative solutioris. He took his inspiration from the growing community of Algerians seeking refuge in Damascus from General Bugeaud's war against the Amir 'Abd al-Qadir in Algeria. The governor was concerned that the impoverished Algerian veterans might turn their military experience to brigandage. He entered into negotiations with the leader of the community to establish an administrative post in Irbid with the military support of his Algerian irregulars. The leader_, referred to as Ben Salem in French accounts and Ahmet Ejendi Salim in Turkish_, was not at first interested in the assignment of policing farmlands against ·Bedouin. However_, as the refugee community swelled with no means of support_, the Algerians were left with no alternative.

7 Engin Akarli, Ba'd al-watha'iq al-'uthmaniyya al-muta'alliqa bi-tarikh al-'urdunn, 1846-1851 [Some Ottoman Documents Related to the History of Jordan] (Amman, 1989), pp. 4-5.

8 See, for example, Munib al-Madi and Sulayman Musa, Tarikh al-Urdunn fi'l-qarn al-cishrin [The History of Jordan in the Twentieth Century] (Amman, 1959); F. G. Peake, A History of :Jordan and its Tribes (Coral Gables FL, 1958); Walid Kazziha, The Social History of Southern Syria (Trans-:-:Jordan) in the 19th and Early 20th Century (Beirut, 1972).

9 ADN, Damascus Consulate Carton 65, 5 and 13 February 1851. 10 BBA, I.Dah 13842, report from the Serasker to the Porte, 16 :Junzada al-awwal1267/19

March 1851. ADN, Damascus Consulate Carton 65, 31 March 1851.

Ottomans 47

In October 1851, the Administrative Council in Damascus petitioned Istanbul to appoint Ahmet Efendi Salim as district governor to the Sancak of cAjlun. This represented the first attempt to establish a permanent Ottoman mission in the district, to be based in the village of Irbid. The report called for permanent settlement of the Algerians, "who are in a weakened state [due to] their numbers." This new community would then "oversee the desert zone and routes of passage against Bedouin and tribes," enhance the region-'s security, and encou­rage settlement and remittance of taxes not just from the district of 'Ajlun but also from the town of Salt. The motion passed the Ottoman Supreme Council (Meclis-i Vala) in Istanbul and ultimately received Sultan Abdiilmecit I's approval in December 1851. 11

The Algerian colony did not survive. By the time Ben Salem-'s appointment was approved by the Sultan the Algerian colony was already beginning to decamp. In January 1852, one contingent of the refugees withdrew from cAjlun for Jerusalem and ultimately resettled in Jaffa. 12 Living conditions in Irbid, a village with no source of water except its rainfed reservoirs, would not have been agreeable. It is unlikely that the Algerians would have enjoyed the cooperation of peasants skeptical of all government interventions, or of the tribesmen they were assigned to restrain.

The vestiges of Ottoman authority in cAjlun crumbled in the course of 1852. In May, the government provoked· a peasant rebellion by an ill­conceived attempt to introduce military conscription in cAjlun, among other peripheral districts of the province of Syria. 13 And in October of the same year, the Administrative Council in Damascus sacked the man serving as governor of the districts of cAjlun, Hawran, Jaydur and Jabal Druze, and recommended his replacement with two functionaries, one with responsibility for Hawran and Jaydur, the other for Jabal Druze, with no mention of cAjlun. 14 The experiment of a permanent govern­ment presence in cAjlun had, for the moment, been abandoned.

For the next twelve years the Ottoman provincial government lumped the districts of Karak, Salt and cAjlun under a liva, or regional adminis-

11 BBA, I.Mec.Vala 7796, mazbata of Damascus Majlis al-Idara of 20 Dhu al-Hijja 1267/ 16 October 1851; mazbata of Meclis-i Vdla of7 Safar 1268/2 December 1851; irades of 29 Safar and 9 Rabie al-awwa/1268/24 December 1851 and 2 January 1852.

12 ADN, Damascus Consulate Carton 65, de Segur letter of 2 January 1852. 13 BBA, I.Dah 15570 (May-June 1852); I.Dah 15676 (July 1852); see also C. W. M. Van

de Velde, Narrative of a :Journey through Syria and Palestine in 1851 and 1852~ vol. II (Edinburgh and London, 1854), pp. 349, 351, 393, 427.

14 BBA, I.Mec.Vala 9073, mazbata of 21 Dhu al-hijja and irade of 25 Dhu al-hijja 1268/6 and 11 October 1852. In 1854, Hawran, Jaydur and Jabal Druze were brought under the district governor of Hawran, again to the exclusion of cAjlun. I.Dah 18439, irade of 8:Jumada al-akhir 1270/8 March 1854.

48 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

tration which existed only on paper~ reproduced in government year­books. In reality~ Ottoman rule in cAjlun had been reduced to the annual visit by tax collectors of earlier years~ leaving matters of law and security to the more powerful tribes in the plains and the za'ims in the villages.1s Two developments reversed this situation definitively: the Vilayet Law of 1864~ which provided a standard framework ofprovincial administration to be applied across the Empire; and the posting of a strong vali in Damascus for an unusually long five-year term to apply the law.

The Vilayet Law and the d-istricts of 'Ajlun and Salt

The Vilayet Law provided a blueprint for bringing the state to the periphery and was to prove one of the most effective pieces of Tanzimat legislation. 16 The law established a hierarchy of rule~ a pyramid of authority in which the district (kaza) was the standard unit of adminis­tration. The district brought together three essential functionaries - a district governor~ a mufti to oversee religious affairs~ and a judge. The law also called for the creation of administrative councils composed of locally elected representatives for the governor to consult and involve in the administrative decisions affecting the district.

Good legislation needs implementation, and judging by the record of his actions and the esteem of his contemporaries Mehmet Ra~id Pasha was unusually capable of applying the law to advance Ottoman adminis­tration at the Syrian periphery. Ra~id Pasha served as governor ,in Damascus for five years (1866-71). Within his first year in office, Mehmet Ra~id subdued the 'Alawi community in Jabal Nusayri, reas­serted Ottoman authority over the tribes to the east of Hums .and Hama, and reorganized the administration of the Hawran. 17 He also laid the foundations for an enduring Ottoman presence in Transjordan through the creation of administrative districts in cAjlun and Salt. In applying the Tanzimat administrative structure to these frontier districts Mehmet Ra~id moved beyond the paper structures of earlier decades to an actual extension of the administrative grid to 'Ajlun and Salt. Perhaps more

15 A survey of the catalogues and documents of the BBA lrade files for the years 1268-83 (1851-67) revealed no direct Ottoman administrative presence in cAjlun. See also cAlayan al-Jaludi and Muhammad cAdnan al-Bakhit, Qada' cAjlun fi cahd al-tanzimat al-cuthmaniyya [The District of cAjlun in the Era of Ottoman Reforms] (Amman, 1992), pp. 14-15.

16 On the Vilayet Law, cf. Max Gross, "Ottoman Rule in the Province of Damascus, 1860-1909," Ph.D. diss. Georgetown University (1979); Stanford Shaw and Ezel I<ural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Ernpire and Modern Turkey, vol. II (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 88-90.

17 On the governorship of Mehmet Ra~id Pasha in Damascus, see Gross, "Province of Damascus," pp. 116-67.

Ottomans 49

important~ his long tenure of office permitted Ra~id Pasha the opportu­nity to reinforce these new administrative units when they were challenged by local forces.

In May~ 1867 ~ Ra~id Pasha set about planning an expedition against the tribes of the Balqa:~ as a first step to establishing a permanent presence there. The governor first secured his position in the Hawran~ where he obtained both submission to Ottoman rule and support for his campaign against the Balqa, from the powerful Ruwala~ Wuld cAli and Bani Hasan tribes~ from the Druze~ and from the villagers of the Hawran. Ra~id Pasha then led an expeditionary force of three regular infantry battalions~ nine squadrons of regular and irregular cavalry~ and light artillery through Jabal cAjlun and into the Balqa,. 18 The leading shaykh of the Balqa, was Dhi,ab al-Humud~ head of the cAdwan tribe~ who were then in league with the Sirhan~ the Sardiyya and the Bani Sakhr. Dhi,ab was well aware of the force approaching~ but the real source of his concern was that "a relation of his was with the Turkish army who could act as a guide in all the difficult places~ as he knew the country well/' which deprived the cAd wan of the advantage of facing the Ottomans on their home terrain. 19

Initially~ both the residents of Salt and the Bedouin tribes were intent on resisting the Ottoman force. In the event~ Ra~id Pasha halted his army at a point three hours distant from the village and sent word that the townspeople would be pardoned if they tendered their submission to the government. Intimidated by the size of the force~ the townspeople appointed a delegation of Christian and Muslim notables to treat with the governor's army. The Ottoman force entered Salt without opposition on 17 August 1867~ as Dhi,ab Humud retreated to the south and regrouped his forces near His ban. 20

Over the next two weeks~ Mehmed Ra~id consolidated his position in Salt. The citadel was repaired and converted into a barracks for the 400 troops to be posted in the town. Salt was endowed with the adminis­trative apparatus of an Ottoman district: Faris Agha IZadru_, a Damas­cene IZurd_, was appointed district governor and an administrative council was elected from the leading families of Salt. Massive quantities of grain and livestock were commandeered in the name of tax arrears. According to French consular sources some 6_,000 purses~ or three million piasters_, were deposited in the treasury upon the expedition's

18 AAE, Turquie: Damascus, 16 June, 8 July, 10 August 1867; ADN, Damascus Consulate, 28 September 1867.

19 Charles Warren, "Expedition to East of Jordan, July and August, 1867," PEFQS, 1.6 (1868),p. 297.

20 ADN, Damascus, Rousseau, 28 September 1867.

Plate 2.1 Salt, 12 August 1867. This two-plate panorama was taken by Henry Phillips, a member of the Warren expedition to Transjordan, only five days before the Ottoman occupation of the town. The Citadel Hill is in the centre with the remains of the castle clearly visible. Wadi al-Akrad is to the left, with the main town's square and central mosque, and Wadi al- 'Awamila is to the right, with the peaked roof of the Orthodox church clearly visible. The photograph shows a town of simple dry-stone houses with few windows and flat mud roofs common to peasant villages in Syria and Palestine.

Ottomans 51

return. 21 Once Ra~id Pasha had secured an Ottoman presence in Salt_, he mobilized his troops and moved south to engage Dhi:lab Humud's forces. On 30 August the Ottoman column met the Bedouin in a four­hour battle in which the cAdwan suffered some fifty casualties and were forced to abandon their encampment - tents, mounts and livestock. As Dhi'ab retreated to IZarak, his son was captured. After attempting to tender his submission from IZarak, Dhi'ab subsequently presented himself before the governor in Damascus and was arrested and impri­soned in Nablus in October 1867.22

In all, Mehmet Ra~id's campaign represented an unprecedented Ottoman success at the Transjordan frontier. The permanent adminis­trative posts which he created in Irbid and Salt were gazetted the following year in the province of Syria's first Salname, or administrative yearbook. The district of cAjlun was placed under the Hawran region. The district of Salt was appended to Nablus as part of a new regional governorate (mutasarrifiyya) ofthe Balqa:~_, which spanned the two banks of the Jordan river. Muhammad Sacid Agha_, who had earlier been posted to cAjlun, was appointed the first regional governor of the Balqa'. 23

This new order did not go unchallenged. In the aftermath of the expedition of 1867 the leading tribes of the region sought to reassert their primacy in cAjlun and the Balqa:~. In the summer of 1869_, the Bani Sakhr and cAdwan_, who in 1867 had overcome past animosities to join forces against Mehmed Ra~id's campaign_, collaborated once again in reasserting their rights to khuwa payments from the villages of the Hawran. They defied Mehmed Ra~id Pasha by leading a raid on the village of Ramtha while the governor was touring the Hawran. Mehmed Ra~id responded with a new expeditionary force and a second Balqa:l campaign. His administrative gains and the district's security would have been seriously undermined should such an affront to the state's authority not be met with a swift and decisive response. Yet such was the governor's confidence of success that he invited the British and French consuls in Damascus to accompany him on the campaign. Using two columns of 1_,500-2_,000 men each_, the second Balqa' expedition was conducted in a series of pincer attacks on the tribes until the Bani Sakhr and Bani Hamida were arrested in the deep gorges of the Wadi Wala and forced to submit to the state and pay a fine of 225_,000 piasters to offset the expense of the campaign. 24 If the first Balqa:~ expedition introduced

21 ADN, Damascus Consulate, 28 September 1867; CCE: Jerusalem, 8 September 1867. 22 AAE, Damascus Consulate, 18 October 1867; ADN, CCE: Damascus, 4 July 1869. 23 Suriye Vilayeti Salnamesi 1285 H (1868-69), pp. 56-59. 24 ADN, Constantinople, Roustan, Damascus, 18 June and 4 July 1869 are the French

consul's eyewitness reports of the second Balqa' expedition.

52 Frontiers ofthe state in the late Ottoman Empire

direct Ottoman rule to the district, the second campaign confirmed that the Ottomans were in Jordan to stay.

I<.arak and Mac an

Ottoman ambitions at the Transjordan frontier did not end in Salt. Beginning in 1868 the state undertook a number of initiatives to extend direct rule south to Macan_, the fortified oasis town on the pilgrimage route. Ra~id Pasha pressed the central government in vain for the establishment of an administrative district in Macan to be attached to the new Balqa:> region. 25 In 1872 Mehmed Ra~id's successor, Abdulletif Subhi Pasha, succeeded in establishing a new administrative region with its center in Macan, combining the districts of Salt, IZarak and the Central Arabian region of the Jawf. This new administrative creation demonstrated the government's ambitions to enter Arabia through Transjordan. Though the project enjoyed the active support of the Grand Vizier, Tanzimat reformer Midhat Pasha, the running costs of the new administrative unit far outweighed any revenues and it was closed the following year. 26 The British occupation of Egypt in 1882 provoked a new strategic concern to extend Ottoman government south to the Sinai to protect their Syrian provinces from further British ambitions. In 1884, the governor in Damascus submitted a proposal to the central government in Istanbul to· create a new vilayet of southern Syria combining the regions of Jerusalem, the Balqa:> and Macan as a buffer against foreign incursions.27 As nothing came of that grandiose pro­posal, a new recommendation was made in 1886 to create a regional administrative unit with its center in Macan, composed of the districts of IZarak and Tafila and the nahiyas of Amman, Bani Hamida and Wadi Musa. 28 In 1888, a major restructuring of the Arab provinces trans­ferred northern Palestine and the Lebanese coastal plain from the province of Syria to create a new vilayet based in Beirut. The governor of Syria, who fought strenuously against the division of his province, took this opportunity to renew his call to establish an administrative center in Macan under the authority ofDamascus.29

25 BBA, I. ,Sura-yi Devlet 422 includes Mehmed Ra$id's proposal of 15 Muharran-z 1285/8 May 1868 and the Sultan's irade approving the project, 6 Rabie al-akhir 1285/27 July 1868.

26 ADN, CCE: Damascus, 28 April 1873; Gross, "Province of Damascus,'' pp. 190-91. 27 BBA, Y-A.Res 24/38, vah~s proposal of 6 Shacban 1301/1 June 1884 and the Prime

Ministry's recommendations to adopt the proposal, 18 Shawal 1301111 August 1884. 28 BBA, Y.Mtv 20/3, proposal from the vilayet of Syria to the Palace secretariat, 3 jumada

al-awwal 1303/7 February 1886. 29 BBA, Y.Mtv 34/51, vah~s proposal to the Palace secretariat 25 Dhu al-qa<da 1305/3

August 1888.

l

Ottomans

MEDITERRANEAN

SEA

PROVINCE OF

EGYPT

PROVINCE .d OF

Sl on SYRIA

Tyre .;f Damascus

~ ... · ~ ~~zahr•unayza ~

~ Ma•an ~ ~ ~

C'j

•Aqaba al-Misriyya ;: ~ al-Shani\ :;J \ \ ~ ~

SINAI ~udawwarat. ~ ~ / { i ~

hours 2 0 4 8 12

111111 I I I I I I I I I I I I kilometres 10 0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Phat al-Hajj 4 ~ ~ . , ~ ........ I:Q

~ ~

PR\)VINCE \.oF

Hi\f.AZ

"\ ... ,,,_"·,,,

53

Map 2 Ottoman map ofTransjordan, drawn by Abdiilhamid, an adjutant of the military staff, dated 7 Kanun-i sani 1299/19 January 1884. The map shows the pilgrimage route and road network as well as the provincial boundaries separating Syria from Egypt and the Hijaz. (N'ote that the map has been drawn to a scale that equates five kilometers to one hour's marching time.)

54 Frontiers ofthe state in the late Ottoman Empire

It is noteworthy that each project targeted Macan and showed only secondary interest in IZarak~ in spite of the latter's relative proximity to Salt and it~ links to Hebron and southern Palestine. In this~ official thinking appears to have been motivated by economic and strategic concerns: the sedentarization of tribes~ the extension of cultivation

)

linkage with the Arabian peninsula and~ after 1882~ securing the southern flank of Syria from potential British incursions. However

' experience was to prove that Macan was too remote from other admin-istrative centers and too thinly populated to be a major administrative center. It was only when the Ottomans abandoned plans for Macan and extended direct administration to IZarak in 1893 that they regained the initiative in extending Ottoman authority to the southern extremities of Syria.

In May 1892~ the governor in Damascus~ Osman Nuri Pasha, submitted a report to Istanbul detailing yet another plan for the creation of a regional government center in Macan~ to include the districts of IZarak and Tafila. Abdiilhamid II approved the plans in August.30 The project was delayed while the authorities assembled the necessary resources. Word of the initiative reached IZarak the following spring, prompting the leading shaykh of the town~ Salih al-Majali~ to approach the Ottomans. In April 1893~ Majali wrote to the mufti of Hebron, Shaykh Muhammad IZhalil al-Tamimi~ to say that he had heard rumors of Ottoman plans to establish· a government center in IZarak~ but that he had been unable to go to Damascus to learn the details because of hostilities between IZarak and the Bani Sakhr tribe. He asked the mufti to tender his submission to the state and his willingness to perform any service on its behalf. Tamimi conveyed this message to the provincial governor in Damascus~ who in turn reported this opening to the palace secretariat in Istanbul. 31 For their part~ the Bani Sakhr felt threatened by a new alliance struck between the Majalis and the powerful Ruwala tribe~ and made an independent plea for the Ottomans to intervene. 32

Faced with submissions from two of the most powerful tribes in the region~ the Ottomans shifted their goal from Macan to IZarak~ where they decided to establish a provisional administrative center. By the end of October 1893~ when sufficient resources had been raised~ the new regional governor-designate~ Hiiseyin Helmi Ejendi~ set off with a

30 Engin Akarli, "Establishment of the Macan-I<:.arak Mutasarrifiyya, 1891-1894," Dirasat 13.1 (1986), pp. 29-33.

31 BBA, Y.Mtv 77/86: Majali to Tamimi, 6 Shawal 1310/23 April 1893; Tamimi to the vali, Mehmed Rauf Pasha, 14 Shawa/1310/1 May 1893 and the vali's reply (n.d.); and the vali's report to Istanbul of20 Shawa/1310/7 May 1893.

32 Peake, History of :Jordan, p. 191; Peter Gubser, Politics and Change in Al-Karak, :Jordan (London, 1973), pp. 18-19.

Ottomans 55

battalion of infantry and a squadron of cavalry, accompanied by admin­istrative and judiciary personnel, to assume responsibility of the district from his provisional seat in Karak.33

The troops were needed in spite of Majali's assurances. European missionaries residing in IZarak provide eyewitness accounts which confirm that the Ottoman force was greeted "with rifle shots" and by "huge stones rolled down from above."34 From these accounts it appears that the town was in a state of siege for the better part of a week, and that the new administration was only admitted after extensive negotiations were concluded and costly gifts exchanged. Yet there was much to recommend IZarak over Ma<an as a more important population center and a regional trade entrepot linking the desert to southern Palestine and Hebron in particular. Perhaps more significant were the (admittedly shaky) relations between the Majalis and the Ottoman state. Since 1867, Muhammad Majali had been designated governor of the paper district o£ Karak. The Ottomans appear to have enjoyed no such relations with notables in Macan.35 Consequently, in mid-1895, IZarak was designated officially as the capital of the regional governorate. The district of Salt was detached from the Hawran and appended to IZarak (March 1894), and district governors posted to Tafila and Macan.

With the establishment of the mutasarrifiyya in Karak, and the extension of the administrative network as far south as Macan, Ottoman rule had reached the southernmost extremity of the province of Syria. Yet direct rule was far from homogeneous across the length of Trans­jordan. The very different political orders in <Ajlun, Salt, Karak and Macan played a decisive role in shaping Ottoman rule in those places. While direct rule was imposed by force, it was maintained by persua­sion. Consequently, the men sent to govern Transjordan were very influential in advancing the objectives of the Ottoman state: to encou­rage the economic development of the southern extremities of Syria through the extension of the Ottoman rule of law.

Ottoman administrators

The arrival of Ottoman functionaries to newly created administrative units set in motion a novel and complex relation between the govern­ment and local society. Most of the ·functionaries appointed to the Transjordanian districts retain a certain anonymity, though documen-

33 ADN, CCE: Damascus, 9 November 1893. 34 Pierre Medebielle, Histoire de la mission de Kerak (Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 79-80.

Archibald Forder, "Ventures Among the Arabs (Boston, 1905), pp. 107-108. 35 ADN, CCE: Damascus, 18 March 1894.

56 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

tary evidence survives for a handful of individuals. Their effectiveness in office can be assessed in three ways: by their relations with the local inhabitants; by their integrity or corruption; and by the building projects they undertook. When Ottoman officials were efficient and commanded the respect of local society, public administration worked most effi­ciently.

Relations between administrators and the society in which they worked were of great importance to the local acceptance of direct Ottoman rule. Ottoman officials lived in close contact with the com­munity, had political interaction with the local notability through the elected administrative councils, and presided over public events, from Friday prayers to school examinations. Their effectiveness depended to a great extent on their experience, their origins, and their ability to speak Arabic.

It would seem from the little evidence we have that the government did not give preference to ethnic Arabs in making appointments to Transjordan. In most instances they were Turks, who came to Trans­jordan after extensive experience in the Anatolian and Arab provinces. One of the earliest district governors in Salt, Yunis Agha, was described by a European visitor in 1868 as "an exceedingly friendly old Turk" who had "already served in nearly all parts of the Turkish Empire in Europe as well as in Asia." Yunis Agha "spoke with great enthusiasm of the reforms which would be introduced" and how "the Turkish government would do its best to educate the children of the long neglected a-nd savage inhabitants of these regions."36 Most of the other high officials discussed below fit this description, of professional civil servants who had served in all parts of the Empire before coming to Transjordan. While some spoke no Arabic, most had a depth of experience which enabled them to negotiate the particularisms of local society.

One Arab posted to the region was the Druze Amir Amin Arslan, a native of Syria described with great affection in the memoirs of Salih Tall. Arslan served as district governor in Irbid, and appointed Tall his personal secretary. According to Tall, the Amir was incorruptible and famous for his magnanimity. He was active in fostering good relations between the people and their government, and was successful in arbitrating local disputes. Arslan emerges from Tall's description as a very human and three-dimensional character. Among his peculiarities were his Westernized Ottoman dress - trousers, jacket and tarbush - and his passion for chicken breeding. 37

Incorruptibility was not an essential condition for effective adminis-

36 CMS, C M/0 41/280, August 1868 (IZlein). 37 Tall, pp. 36-39.

Ottomans 57

tration. According to Salih Tall_, bribery was endemic_, largely because government salaries were so low and often paid months in arrears.38

However_, one of the district governors appointed to Irbid was preoccu­pied with rooting out corruption. Ishaq Bey was Turkish and spoke no Arabic. He was referred to Salih Tall by friends in Istanbul as a man of good reputation. In their first meeting_, Ishaq Bey went through the names of the leading families of the district and asked Tall about "their circumstances and morals.-'-' He then asked Tall about "those who obtained influence from governors and employees by giving bribes.-'-' He asked for Salih Talrs cooperation in ensuring the sound administration

- of the region. 39 It is clear from Talrs account that he held Ishaq Bey in high regard_, though contemporary press reports claimed that the district governor of Irbid was "destroying the region for his own benefie-' and claimed that his rule had provoked complaints and petitions from the local inhabitants. 40

Corruption should be viewed in context. Service records compiled by the Ottoman Civil Functionaries Commission for high civil servants provide the most detailed account of individual career trajectories_, shedding light on the origins_, education_, government posts and all promotions or disciplinary actions taken against an official. 41 Two such service records survive for officials posted to Karak at the end of the Harnidian period.

Mehmet cArefi Bey was nominated by the Civil Functionaries Corn­mission to serve as regional governor in Karak in 1907. Born in the town of Hasa in the province of Adana in 1859_, cArefi Bey was 48 at the time of his appointment to IZarak. He had been schooled in Nish and Edirne and was fluent in Arabic and Persian when he received his first government post in the provincial supplies office in Edirne_, at the age of 15. From that point forward_, the Civil Functionaries Commission gave a detailed record of every government job held by Mehmet cArefi. Over the next three years he was transferred to the scribal service_, and appointed assistant to the editor of the official provincial newspaper of Edirne. His first appointment in Syria was as a teacher at the state middle school in Aleppo at age 19. He was subsequently transferred to the provincial secretariat (mektubcu kalemi) as a rough-draft scribe. Two years later he was promoted to chief scribe (ba.§katip) of the

38 Salih Tall made no attempt to hide his own acceptance ofbribes. Tall, p. 211. 39 Tall_, pp. 52-53. 40 The Damascene newspaper Al-Muqtabis, 1909, cited in Jaludi and Bakhit, Qada,

cAjlun, p. 23. 41 On corruption in the civil service, cf. Carter V. Findley., Ottoman Civil Officialdom

(Princeton NJ., 1989), chapter 8. Findley drew extensively on personnel records; cf. ibid., Appendix A.

I. I

58 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

provincial government in Aleppo. Over the next five years he was assigned to different posts in the nearby districts of Antakya and Iskenderiin_, and to the province of Adana. In 1887 he was appointed to the province of Hijaz_, where he was made district governor of the Red Sea port of Jidda. He was promoted to the rank of pasha in 1890 when appointed governor of one of the regions of the southeast Anatolian province of Diyarbakir_, where he built a school and a mosque. cArefi Pasha preserved the rank of regional governor for the rest of his career_, with transfers to new regions every year or two: Shehrizor in the province of Baghdad, the Bayezid region of Erzerum_, the Marcash region of Aleppo_, the Sulaymaniyya region of Mosul. In December 1903_, however_, he was dismissed from office for "improper activities." He was reinstated in May 1904_, as regional governor in Gene; and subsequently to Mardin_, before taking up his post in IZarak. The dismissal in 1903 was the only stain on a distinguished career marked with decorations for state service_, including the Mecidi Order of the Third and First Classes_, and after his reinstatement, the Nijan-i cAli-i Osmani, First Class.42 It would seem that the new governor of IZarak was a distinguished civil servant.

The second record -of service described the career of an Iraqi IZurd who was appointed to serve as treasurer in IZarak_, despite repeated instances of corruption. Ahmet Hamdi Efendi_, son of a lieutenant in the Ottoman army_, was born in the town of Sulaymaniyya in April 1857; he was thus 51 when nominated to serve in IZarak in 1908. He went to school in Sulaymaniyya_, where he learned to read and write Arabic, Persian and Turkish_, in addition to his native IZurdish. Like, cArefi Pasha_, Ahmet Hamdi entered state service at the age of 15 with a job in the dispatch offices (Tahrirat Kalemi) in his home town. After several posts in the scribal service in the province of Mosul_, Ahmet Hamdi was transferred to the provincial treasury in 1879, a shift in career path which led to a life in provincial accounts. His was a more turbulent career than _cArefi Pasha's. He alternated between state and private service for five years before a definitive posting in 1892 as treasurer (miihasibe) to the Ertughrul region_, near Bursa. He had a falling out with the regional governor and had to be transferred to another post in the province of Trabzon. Here again Ahmet Hamdi seems to have had a falling out with his colleagues (the term used_, imtizacs£z_, is suggestive of a bad fit) and was again transferred_, this time to the Hakari region of the Eastern Anatolian province of Van. He was dismissed in 1896 when the local administration found him guilty of "irregular practices and un-

42 BBA, Y-A.Res 150/75, 25 Shacban 1325/3 October 1907.

Ottomans 59

lawful acts" involving the misappropriation of 21,369 piasters of state funds. He was later pardoned and the sum returned to the treasury and, due to a shortage of trained treasurers, Ahmet Hamdi was drawn once again into state service as treasurer in the province of Basra in 1899. After two years of good service he was transferred to the cAkka region of the province of Beirut. He was given leave to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca - associated with leaving sinful ways behind - and returned to active service in Acre. Before being appointed to Karak, Ahmet Hamdi Efendi received a promotion for good service in 1906.43

These documents suggest that corruption was one element in the complex formula by which a career was judged. The seemingly repu­table Mehmet cArefi Bey was no more immune to "improper activities" than the seemingly disreputable Ahmet Hamdi Efendi. However, Mehmet cArefi was a builder who used his office as governor of the Macden region of Diyarbakir to build a mosque and a school. Local accounts in Transjordan suggest that those governors who undertook building projects created the greatest impression on local society. Tall noted one such "builder" in his memoirs. Tahir Bey Badirkhan, appointed to Irbid in 1882, rebuilt the ancient town mosque and established the primary school which Salih Tall attended.44 He also sought to remedy the perennial water problems in the town. Without spring water, Irbid was reliant on rain-filled reservoirs. Over the years these had become contaminated and were a health problem. Tahir Bey mobilized villagers from Irbid and the surrounding area to drain the reservoirs, clear the accumulated dirt, and mortar the sides of the tanks in a bid to improve the quality of drinking water.45 In Karak, Mehmed Re~id Pasha undertook yet more extensive projects. Re~id Pasha, who served in Karak for five years (1897-1902), was a legal scholar and commentator on the Mecelle, the Ottoman civil code. Among the projects he undertook were a major secondary school in Karak, the reconstruction of the town's main mosque, and extensive government offices in Karak and Tafila. 46 Re~id Pasha's influence extended beyond the towns of Transjordan. Significantly, Qusus noted that the tribes of Karak began to build villages in the midst of their farm lands during his tenure of office.47

After centuries of neglect, the Ottoman government was beginning to invest in public building projects in Transjordan. There is no doubt that

43 BBA, Y-A.Res 155/39, 19 Rabi' al-awwal 1326/21 April 1908. 44 Jaludi and Bakhit, Qada> 'Ajlun, p. 22. 45 Tall, p. 136. 46 Photographs of the two-story Government House in Karak are reproduced in Jacob

Landau, Abdul-Hamid"s Palestine {London, 1979), p. 78. 47 Qusus, p. 76.

60 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

these projects impressed the government's presence most effectively on local society. A permanent Ottoman presence in Transjordan required a major investment in infrastructure -to erect suitable buildings for the conduct of government and to establish lines for efficient communi­cation across the great expanses separating sedentary communities. The development of infrastructure was thus a fundamental part of the extension of Ottoman rule in Transjordan.

Infrastructure

The very low level of basic infrastructure posed an immediate challenge to the extension of Ottoman rule into the southeastern periphery of Syria. The lack of public buildings hindered the function of government and restricted the expansion of bureaucracy. In Salt_, the first governors were housed in the ruined citadel. A European visitor in 1868 described the "judgment hall and private apartments" of the governor being "of a most primitive kind; in the castle ... he occupies two roughly built rooms_, the larger one used as a place where the mejlis meets and at the same time as his own sitting room_, opening into this is a little room which serves as his bedroom."48 His successor, a Nabulsi named Sa<=id al-Husayni, requisitioned one of the nicer houses in town in 1870, to serve as his residence_, government offices, barracks and stable. The owner and his family were confined to one quarter of their horne. 49

Requisitioned facilities raised local resentment and could only serve as interim measures while the government set about constructing the buildings which would impress the permanence of its presence on the local landscape. Similarly, new lines of communications needed to be laid to facilitate the movement of administrators, security forces and intelligence_, as well as to encourage the flow of goods and persons between the frontier lands and the urban centers of Syria. These activities became one of the hallmarks of Ottoman rule at the Trans­jordan frontier.

Buildings

Little was spent on establishing government buildings in the Jabal cAjlun district. As one of the districts of the Hawran region there was less need for a major administrative apparatus given the proximity of the regional center_, which alternated between the Hawrani villages of Shaykh Sacd,

48 CMS, C M/0 41/280, August 1868 (Klein). 49 LPJ, "Memoires de M. Jean Moretain a Salt, 1869-1871'' (unpublished ms),

pp. 474-75.

l I

Ottomans 61

Darca, Ramtha and Muzayrib. The government presence in Irbid was thus limited to a modest, four-room native house for the governor, a prison, and the school added on to the restored Western Mosque. 50

The districts of Salt, IZarak and Macan were sufficiently isolated from each other and from major government centers as to warrant a higher degree of investment in construction. By 1874, a Committee for State Constructions had been created in Salt to build a governor's residence, and a saray, or government office, was erected in the town's central square in 1876.51 The saray was completed c. 1889, after 500 Ottoman pounds in "contributions" were collected from the town's residents and government employees. 52 It was an impressive two-story yellow-stone structure with a prominent external staircase and a pitched roof made from imported red tiles. In addition to the governor's offices, it housed the court and the district prison. As already noted, Mehmed Re~id Pasha built a similar structure in Karak, with an open courtyard and water well. 53 More modest government offices were built in the smaller centers. A six-room saray was built in Madaba in 1898 with a dedication plaque honoring Sultan Abdiilhamid II. Similar structures were built in Tafila (1902), Macan, Shawbak (1911), Wadi Musa, near Petra (1911) and al-ciraq, near IZarak (1912). 54 Other civil projects were undertaken by the government to provide social services to the population, including schools and mosques. Along with administrative centers, the govern­ment allocated funds for a network of prisons in 1910. Judging by the funds budgeted, the largest prison was to be built in Karak (500,000 piasters), though 100,000 piasters were allocated for new prisons in Irbid and Madaba and 100,000 piasters were put aside to upgrade existing prisons in cAjlun, Salt, Mac an and Tafila. 55

In all, the government erected a number of important buildings, though they lacked the means to build more than the essentials. The government offices and mosques· were monumental compared to the majority of buildings which surrounded them in Salt and IZarak. A respectable distance could be preserved between governors housed in

50 A description and photograph are given in CMS, G3 P/0 1885 #153. On the prison, see Tall, pp. 14-15; on the school, see Tall, pp. 183-85.

51 Victor Lebedev, ed., Inventory of the Documents in Arabic Language Kept in the Oriental Department of the aCyril and Methodius~~ National Library in Sofia, XIII-XX C. (Sofia, 1984), pp. 224-28, docs. 500, 507, 511-12.

52 Muhammad Salim al-Tarawna, Tarikh mantiqat al-Balqa' wa Mac an wa'l-Karak, 1864-1919 [The History of the Districts of the Balqa', Macan and Karak] (Amman, 1992), p. 360.

53 Tarawna, Tarikh mantiqat al-Balqa', p. 361. 54 Tarawna, Tarikh mantiqat al-Balqa', pp. 360-62. 55 HDC, Derkenar, vol. 51 1326, table of funds spent on prisons in the province of Syria,

appended to report dated 22 Subat 1325/7 March 1910.

62 Frontiers ofthe state in the late Ottoman Empire

suitable buildings and the people they governed. The state left it to private initiative to endow the towns of Transjordan with better shops and houses, and applied its limited resources to enhancing the region's communications network.

Communications

The road network Initially the Ottomans made little investment in roads. Rather:! old routes between new settlements were revitalized:! though generally only suitable for animal transport and not wheeled traffic. Two main north­south routes crossed the Transjordan region. The Hajj Road (Darb al-Haj'j) linked the settlements at the desert's edge:! notably Ramtha_, Zarqa=> and Ma can; and the !Zing's Highway (Darb al-Sultani) followed the Roman Emperor Trajan's ancient road across the highlands_, descending from Busra Eski Sham in the east Hawran and descending through Mafraq to the Circassian settlements of Zarqa=> and Amman. The !Zing's Highway extended from Amman through Hisban:l Madaba_, and Dhiban before crossing the vast Wadi Mujib and passing via I<arak and Petra down to cAqaba. 56

With the expansion of settlements:! a series of road networks emerged. One linked the administrative center of Salt with surrounding settle­ments:! with roads to Amman:! to Jarash (via Rumaymin):l and to Madaba (via Nacur). As is well known:! the Circassians are credited with reintroducing wheeled traffic to Jordan; their villages and fields were soon interconnected by a road network which could accommodate their wicker carts. A third network developed with IZarak at its hub:! linking Lajjun and Qatrana:l Tafila and Macan:l Shawbak and Wadi Musa. 57

Smaller tracks linked administrative centers to their surrounding vil­lages. With police posted at each of these strategic points, and mounted detachments of gendarmes regularly patrolling the intervening terrain, Western travelers frequently remarked on the improved state of security along the roads in Transjordan. 58

Later in the century:! the Ottomans began to invest in extending urban roads and in cutting new routes suitable for wheeled traffic. The provincial yearbook noted in 1899 that the government had dispatched

56 G. W Bowersock, R01nanArabia (Cambridge MA, 1983), pp. 93, 101. 57 Tarawna, Tarikh mantiqat al-Balqa', pp. 179-82. 58 Tarawna, Tarikh mantiqat al-Balqa', pp. 178-83. On improved security see Gray Hill,

"A Journey East of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, 1895," PEFQS (1896), pp. 24, 38-39; Gray Hill, "A Joumey to Petra- 1896," PEFQS (1897), p. 35; Frederick Jones Bliss, "Narrative of an Expedition to Moab and Gilead in March, 1895," PEFQS (1895), p. 203.

Ottomans 63

workers to upgrade the roads in the Tafila district to render them fit for wheeled traffic. 59 In 1903, work began on a road linking Madaba to IZarak. Following the laying of the Hijaz Railway, the provincial General Council in Damascus approved funds for paved roads linking railway stations to their neighboring towns, specifically one linking the Amman station to Salt, the Qatrana station to IZarak, and the Macan station to the town. 60

The extension of communications westwards to the Palestinian districts opened Jordan to regional markets. Ferries were installed on the Jordan river servicing both the Nablus and Jerusalem roads shortly after 1867. A bridge replaced the Nimrin ferry (near the site of the Allenby Bridge) by 1890, though it had to be rebuilt after flood damage in 1895. 61 Two roads linked Salt to Jerusalem, making for a twelve-hour journey by one route and fourteen hours by the other. 62 The govern­ment also put a modest fleet of sailboats into operation on the Dead Sea, running between the shores nearest to Jericho and the closest point to IZarak, on the north shore of the Lis an peninsula. An English missionary who traveled by these boats in 1895 claimed they reduced the length of the trip from Jerusalem to IZarak by three days. 63

The most innovative lines of communication were t._l].e telegraph and the railway links between Damascus and Madina. Both represented costly new forms of technology imported from industrial Europe. For most natives of the frontier districts, telegraph wires and railway lines were their first encounter with the instruments of European modernity.

The Mad£na telegraph line In 1890, Salt was linked to Damascus by telegraph, and remained the southernmost station in the Syrian network until June 1900. The extension of the line southward was prompted by the central govern­ment's need for direct communications with its Hijaz and Yemen provinces.· Up to this point the Ottomans had been obliged to channel their correspondence through the British Eastern Telegraph Company at an annual expense of some £16,000. 64 To obviate this expense and the irksome reliance on a foreign company, Sultan Abdiilhamid II decided to lay a direct line to connect the Arabian provinces to Istanbul via Damascus. He ordered the ministry of post and telegraph to

59 Suriye Vilayeti Salnamesi 1317, p. 361. 60 Tarawna, Tarikh mantiqat al-Balqa,, pp. 182-83. 61

Photographs of the "Ghoraniyya Bridge" on the road from Salt to Jericho are published in Landau, Abdul-Hamid-'s Palestine, p. 74.

62 ICR Salt, vol. 11, pp. 55-56,28 Rajab 1321/21 October 1903.

63 Archibald Forder, With the Arabs in Tent and Town (London, 1902), pp. 193-95.

64 ADN, CCE: Damascus, 24 June 1901.

64 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

commission engineers to chart a route for the line and to estimate the project's cost in September 1892.65 The high cost of the project delayed implementation of the plan .for the rest of the decade while the Sultan raised the funds directly from his subjects. The necessary sums were translated into telegraph poles, and a "voluntary" contribution was imposed on the Arab provinces to provide a certain number of poles or their cash equivalent. Civil officials were also pressed into contributing and a part of their salaries was withheld to help finance the line. 66

In June 1900, the work crew began extending the line from Salt. 67

Telegraph poles were transported on camels requisitioned from the Bedouin of Damascus and the Hawran, and swift progress was made. The line linked administrative centers through the length of Trans­jordan: Salt, Madaba, IZarak, Tafila, and Ma<an, reaching the Hijaz at <Aqaba. From <Aqaba, the line connected the pilgrimage stations along the Hajj Road. The first telegram was sent from Madina to the Sultan inaugurating the line on 6 January 1901. Impressed by the speed and facility with which the first line had been laid, Abdulhamid II com­manded the laying of a second line along the same poles to enable the doubling of communications. In subsequent years, new stations were opened, less to serve existing communities than to extend the govern­ment's presence. Thus, in 1906 a new station was proposed in al-Qu­wayra, a site "without water and uninhabited" situated between Macan and <Aqaba. 68

Outsjde of major cities, both the employees of the telegraph service and the line itself were isolated and vulnerable to attack, particularly from the Bedouin who rightly saw the telegraph as a further extension of government influence into their territory. The soldiers in each station were responsible for the surveillance of the line in their area. Bedouin shaykhs were employed to help in this job. Thirteen shaykhs from tribes whose lands were crossed by the Damascus-Madina line were paid monthly saleries of 1,200 piasters to discourage their fellow tribesmen from vandalizing the telegraph system. A number of lesser tribesmen were paid monthly wages ranging from 300-500 piasters. 69

The advent of telegraphic communications not only gave the central government direct access to its outermost territories, but gave the residents of those lands the means to assure the immediate transmission of petitions to both the provincial and imperial capitals. It was thus a

65 BBA, Y.Mtv 67/72, report to Palace dated 25 Safar 1310/20 September 1892. 66 ADN, Damascus Consulate, 24 June 1901. 67 BBA, Y.Mtv 201/29, Tezkere issued by the Serasker, 25 Mart 1316/8 April 1900; ADN,

Damascus Consulate, 24 June 1901. 68 BBA, Y-A.Res 137/78, report from the Surayi Devlet, 3 Temmuz 1322/16 July 1906. 69 ADN, Damascus Consulate, 24 June 1901.

Ottomans 65

two-way line of communication which proved very influential in state­society relations. 70

The Hi.jaz Railway Work on the Hijaz Railway began at much the same time as the telegraph line to Madina. Sultan Abdiilhamid II emphasized the reli­gious aspect of the project when presenting it to the world. The Hijaz Railway would bring rapid transit to the Muslim pilgrimage. By redu­cing a four-month desert journey to a matter of days_, the Sultan reduced the expense and the risk of performing the religious duty of pilgrimage. In discharging his duties as guardian of the two holy cities of Mecca and Madina, the Sultan vowed to preserve the Muslim character of the railway. Only Muslim funds would be used to lay the road; European assistance would be limited to technical advice and heavy capital. This prohibition of European financial involvement was a convenient way to prevent Western powers from seeking concessions in the volatile Syrian desert and Red Sea regions. The Hijaz Railway would thus be an Ottoman and a Muslim project. 71 The Sultan limited European involve­ment to technical advice_, provided by the German railway engineer Heinrich Meisner and others_, and the provision of the necessary equipment and rolling stock.

The railroad was closely linked with the Sultan's twenty-fifth jubilee celebrations. The first rail was laid on 1 September 1900, the anniver­sary of Abdiilhamid II's ascension to the sultanate_, and the engineers worked to reach new targets by the first of September in subsequent years. Work was slow initially_, due to the difficulties of establishing an administration and training the laborers in railway construction. In the first year only 15 kilometers were laid_, from the line's terminus in Muzayrib_, where it connected with the Damascus-Hawran railway_, to Dar'a. By 1 September 1902_, the line reached 80 kilometers further to Zarqa~_, reflecting improved efficiency. The pace accelerated_, and in 1903 nearly 250 kilometers had been laid_, linking the line from Dar'a to Damascus to end reliance on the French-owned Damascus-Hawran line_, and reaching 123 kilometers south of Zarqa~ to Qatrana by 1 September. In 1904_, work began in earnest on the Dar'a-Haifa spur_, and by September 1906 the Hijaz line reached the pilgrimage station at Tabuk_, passing the half-way mark of the 1,300 kilometers separating 70 Eugene Rogan_, "Instant Communication: The Impact of the Telegraph in Ottoman

Syria,'' in T. Philipp and B. Schaebler, eds., The Syrian Land: Processes of Integrat£on and Fragmentat£on £n B£lad al-Sham from the 18th Century to the 20th Century (Stuttgart_, 1998), pp. 113-28.

71 William Ochsenwald, The Hijaz Ra£lroad (Charlottesville VA, 1980), pp. 59-88; Tarawna, Tarikh mant£qat al-Balqa>, pp. 184-92.

66 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

Damascus and Madina. In 1907 and 1908~ all effort was concentrated on the Hijaz line~ and Madina was reached by 1 September 1908. As Ochsenwald argues~ the line was a tremendous accomplishment in all regards: it was built faster than any other line in Ottoman domains~ to a very high standard~ at extremely low cost- "one of the least expensive railroads ever built."72

The consequences of the new line varied from one segment of society to another. It shortened distances for state and society alike. With stations every 10-20 kilometers apart~ and some sixteen stations between Amman and the Hijaz border~ travelers on the railway line no longer measured distance by the old temporal calculation of 5 kilometers per hour. The line also proved an important stimulus for development in the towns it reached. The Damascene religious scholar Jamal al-Din Qasimi traveled to Amman by train in April 1903 and was impressed by "the commerce of the town which is reaching the highest level of activity~ as is the construction of buildings~ as a result of the numerous people settling there."73 The railway gave new access to markets for grain grown at the Transjordan frontier. The spur from Dar'a to Haifa, opened in 1904~ provided access to Mediterranean markets which quadrupled Hawran grain exports from Haifa between 1904 and 1913.74

Advantages to grain farmers did not compensate pastoralists whose livelihood was closely tied to· transport animals. The government no longer awarded lucrative contracts to favored tribes to provide camels for the pilgrimage caravan from Damascus to Mecca. Nor did they pay for the safe passage of the pilgrimage caravan. With the advent of the "iron horse" tribal leaders were reduced to a salary to guard the railroad tracks. There are no figures to estimate the loss in income this represented to the tribes along the railroad's path~ though it is clear that the central government made every attempt to reduce its payments, particularly as they increased the troop presence along the line. 75 The combination of instant communications provided by the telegraph, the extension of the Ottoman military presence which resulted from the railway~ and the rapid movement of troops which it facilitated~ combined to enhance regional security and to shift the balance of power away from the region's tribes to the government's advantage.

72 Ochsenwald, Hijaz Railroad, pp. 50-53. 73 Zafir al-Qasimi, :Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi wa <asruhu (Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi and his

Age] (Damascus, 1965), pp. 103-105. 74 Ochsenwald, Hi_jaz Railroad, p. 133. 75 Ochsenwald, HiJaz Railroad, pp. 122-26.

Ottomans 67

Security

The creation of each new administrative center extended the state's security apparatus. New barracks were built for the police (zapt£ye) in the main towns of Salt, IZarak, Tafila and Macan. Guard houses were distributed along strategic villages and intersections for the mule­mounted gendarmes (jandarrna). These troops collaborated to ensure the security of towns and surrounding countryside, though with a certain division of labor. The police preserved order within the towns, acted as bailiffs for the courts, supervised the prisons, and served as the local fire brigade. The gendarmes were more concerned with patrolling the countryside to preserve free movement along the roads, to secure settler villages, and to prevent smuggling. The preservation of telegraph and rail communications was a top priority. Both the police and gendarmes assisted in tax collection in the countryside, and in the transmission of government orders. The police force was composed of both locals and recruits from other parts of Syria. 76

The Circassian and Chechen settlers, many of whom had formal military training, were particularly active in the .Jandarrna. Mirza Wasfi was the most famous of the Circassian military men in Transjordan. Born in the Caucasus in the 1850s, Mirza Wasfi entered Ottoman domains with his family as refugees from Russia~ expansion in 1864-65. They settled in Bulgaria, where Mirza Bey joined the army in 1873. He served in the Serbian War (1876) and in the famous siege ofPlevna in the Russo­Ottoman War of 1876-77. After the expulsion of the Circassians from the Balkans, Mirza Bey served in the Arab provinces. He was assigned to Damascus in the 1880s, and commanded the military police in Beirut, Mecca and Yemen, before returning to Syria in 1910. He settled in Amman where he became commanding officer of the local:Jandarma and the leader ofthe Circassian community.77

Numerous telegram orders survive among the papers of Mirza Wasfi which document the activities ofthe.Jandarma between 1895 and 1898, when he was serving in the Golan. His forces patrolled the Hawran, the Jabal Druze, Jabal cAjlun and as far south as Zarqa:~ and Amman. They were called upon to mediate between tribes, Tiirkmen and Circassian settlers, and local villagers. They were to prevent aggressors from entering certain regions, to return stolen property, and to arrest murder suspects. And they were to accompany tax collectors, or indeed collect the taxes themselves from Bedouin and other remote communities. 78

76 Tarawna, Tarikh mantiqat al-Balqa>, pp. 124-27. 77 MW 7/7, autobiographical note dated 11 Subat 1332/24 February 1917. 78 MW 5/2, 18 Tijrin-i sani 1311; 5/1, 29 Tzjrin-i sani 1311; 5/7, 14 Nisan 1313; 5/9, 17

68 Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire

Mirza Wasfi kept no record of his troops' actions which might shed light on their effectiveness in carrying out these orders. However, one file preserved among the Yildiz Palace archives documents the govern­ment response to a Bedouin raid against a merchant caravan from first attack through final compensation.

In the summer of 1893, an cUqayli caravan was raided by one of the poorer branches of the Bani Sakhr tribe in the Hawran, near Muzayrib. The cUqayl were a tribe of merchants from the Najd who conducted an overland trade between Baghdad, Arabia and Damascus. The response of the local authorities in Salt was measured and effective. Working on the intelligence that the caravan had been raided by the Huqaysh branch of the Bani Sakhr, the district governor in Salt requested a detachment of 300 cavalry from Damascus. With this support, the district governor convened a meeting with the leaders of the Huqaysh, along with leaders of the more powerful Zabn and Fayiz branches ofthe Bani Sakhr, where he presented them with a list of articles stolen from the cuqayl. The district governor was able to negotiate a return of all stolen property -personal effects, merchandise, cash and livestock - guaranteed by the more powerful Bani Sakhr shaykhs.79 The example suggests the Otto­mans placed as much emphasis on negotiation and the development of relations of trust as on force majeure in providing regional security.

The Ottoman security apparatus had immediate effects on the flow of goods and persons into the Transjordan frontier from other parts of Ottoman Syria, as well as enhancing their circulation within the region. It enabled the reconstruction of old villages and the creation of new ones, as well as the extension of the area under cultivation. It encour­aged the flow of merchant. trade and capit.al into the region. Security was the sine qua non of the extension of the Ottoman order and, judging by the documentary evidence, the government succeeded to a large extent in enhancing the region's security.

Conclusion

For centuries the Ottomans had left Transjordan to its local rulers. In the age of Ottoman reforms, the government aspired to a more direct form of rule without having the means to impose it. Administrative districts began to appear in the government's yearbooks which enjoyed only a paper reality, such as the sancaks of cAjlun, Salt and I.Zarak which

Nisan 1313; 5/4,5 Haziran 1313; 5/8, 17 Haziran 1313; 5/3, 14 Nisan 1314; 5110, 18 Haz£ran 1314; 5/11,4 Haziran 1313; 5/5,2 Haz£ran 1314.

79 BBA, Y.Mtv 104/2, letter from district governor 20 Tenzmuz 1309/1 August 1893; and list ofproperty stolen 4 Aghustos 1309/16 August 1893.

Ottomans 69

appeared in the Devlet Salnames of the 1850s and 1860s. After a number of false starts in the 1850s~ a strong governor in Damascus imposed the administrative structures of the provincial reform law in Irbid and Salt in 1867. Mehmed Ra~id Pasha succeeded in establishing direct rule by appointing administrators and judges to uphold the Ottoman rule of law~ and by billeting troops to enforce it. After a quarter century of consolidating their rule in the districts of cAjlun and the Balqa> ~ the Ottomans extended their administrative network to the southern extre­mities of the province of Syria, to IZarak and Macan. This administrative presence was entrenched by public building projects and communi­cation links~ and reinforced by an extensive security apparatus.

The Ottomans extended their administration to Transjordan for a number of strategic reasons: to reconsolidate their presence in the Arab provinces while retreating from the Balkans and to contain the threat of European~ particularly British~ expansionism into Palestine and southern Syria from Egypt. Yet foremost among the priorities of the governors in Damascus was to relieve their financial problems by expand~ng the economic productivity of the province. The extension of direct rule over a fertile though underpopulated and undercultivated region would remain a great expense until the land was settled and farmed. Thus the provincial governors of Syria embarked on a series of measures to encourage the creation of agricultural villages and the conversion of tribal domain, used for grazing and occasional farming~ into plantations. Having extended direct administration over the different districts of Transjordan through the application of the 1864 Provincial Reform Law~ the governors in Damascus set about consoli­dating their hold and enhancing the economic viability of these districts through another key piece of Tanzimat legislation: the 1858 Land Law. The application of these two laws reversed a centuries-old trend of population contraction and agricultural stagnation to recover demo­graphic and economic levels not witnessed in the region since Byzantine times. 80

80 Jeremy Johns~ ~~The Longue Duree: State and Settlement Strategies in Southern Transjordan Across the Islamic Centuries/' in E. Rogan and T. Tell~ eds.~ Village, Steppe and State: The Social Origins of Modern:Jordan (London~ 1994)~ pp. 1-31.