<![CDATA[Petra 1929 - Wider Context]]>

<![CDATA[Petra 1929 - Wider Context]]>Fri, 10 May 2024 05:31:35 +0100Weebly<![CDATA[Mandate Transjordan]]>Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:20:33 GMThttps://www.petra1929.co.uk/wider-context/mandate-transjordanBy Amara Thornton

In the final years of the First World War, British imperial military forces defeated Ottoman troops to occupy Ottoman territory in Palestine. After the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919, Allied politicians agreed that Palestine

would be administered by Britain under a Mandate agreement through the newly constituted League of Nations.

The land that would become Transjordan had also been Ottoman territory, and was after the war incorporated into the Palestine Mandate. The alliance made with the powerful Sherif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca during the war, in return for his assistance in defeating the Ottoman Turkish forces in the region, meant that Hussein's son Abdullah subsequently became Emir (ruler) in Transjordan. Britain's role was to 'assist' the transition of these former Ottoman lands into new independent nations.

In practice, this meant that British officials worked in various government departments, and the British military maintained a presence in the country. A High Commissioner was installed in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British administration, as the chief British official for both Palestine and Transjordan. He reported on progress to the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office in London. A British Resident was put in place in Amman, the new capital of Transjordan, and the seat of King Abdullah's government.

By 1928, a new agreement was signed with Abdullah separating Transjordan from Palestine. However, as the High Commissioner in Jerusalem had oversight over both, they were closely linked in terms of the British representatives in country.

References/Further Reading
Abu Nowar, Maan. 1989. The History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: The Creation and Development of Transjordan 1920-1929. Oxford: Ithaca Press.

Rogan, Eugene. 1992. Frontiers of the State in the late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan 1850-1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, Mary. 1990. King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

]]><![CDATA[Archaeology in Mandate Transjordan]]>Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:14:34 GMThttps://www.petra1929.co.uk/wider-context/archaeology-in-mandate-transjordanBy Amara Thornton

Before the end of the First World War, plans were begun by the Palestine Exploration Fund, working with the British Academy on behalf of the Foreign Office, to open a new British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. The Palestine Exploration Fund had been supporting British archaeological research in Ottoman Palestine since

1865, had an office in Jerusalem and a network of local contacts.

The British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem was established in 1919, joining other pre-war British Schools in Rome and Athens as a new centre for research. The French school of archaeology (École Biblique) and the American Schools of Oriental Research were already well established in Jerusalem. A Department of Antiquities for Palestine was also established at the same time and had a close association with the School in this early period; chiefly due to the fact that both organisations were in the hands of archaeologist John Garstang as Director.

The first three Bulletins of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. The Bulletins enabled BSAJ students to publish the preliminary results of the their excavations. Image: Amara Thornton.

The first students were accepted from 1920. George Horsfield arrived for the 1923-4 session, learning the processes of archaeology through participation in excavation and lectures at the School. He was already a professional architect with international experience, and his skills John Garstang valued highly.

After his initial training at the School, Garstang sent George Horsfield to Jerash, a village in Transjordan with extensive remains of the Roman city Gerasa. Horsfield's task was to begin clearance of the site, preparing it for future excavations and also, importantly, the tourists the Government hoped would soon arrive. He worked with a number of local people from Jerash's Circassian community, in order to undertake the work. During the course of the clearance work some remarkable discoveries were made, including a well preserved statue head, presented as a possible "Head of Christ", which were reported in newspapers. A small museum was also established on site to hold some of the artefacts uncovered.

Mahmud Charish (left) and George Horsfield (right) photographed at Jerash in 1929. Charish wears traditional Circassian garments; George Horsfield wears a Circassian hat, a reflection of his personal affiliation with the community. Copyright UCL Institute of Archaeology.

A Department of Antiquities for Transjordan was established in Amman in 1926, with George Horsfield as its first Chief Inspector (and in some documents inaccurately called Director), eventually responsible for signing off on permissions for excavation to credentialed archaeologists, thus effectively barring anyone who lacked 'proper' training.  The British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, under a new Director John Crowfoot, who with his wife Molly Crowfoot began excavating in Jerash with a few School students in 1928 in a joint project with Yale University (co-led by Clarence Fisher). The year before, an Italian team led by Ciacomo Guidi had begun initial excavations in the Citadel area in Amman.

The Transjordan Department of Antiquities had very little money for extensive excavations, so Agnes Conway's fundraising for the Petra Excavation Fund in 1929 offered Horsfield the opportunity to conduct work without substantially effecting the Department's overall budget.

References/Further Reading
Corbett, Elena. 2014. Competitve Archaeology in Jordan: Narrating Identity from the Ottomans to the Hashemites. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Gibson, Shimon. 1999. British Archaeological Institutions in Mandatory Palestine, 1917-1948. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 131 (2): 115-143.

Thornton, A. 2012. Archaeologists-in-Training: Students of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1920-1936. Journal of Open Archaeology Data.

Thornton, A. 2012. Tents, Tours and Treks: Archaeologists, Antiquities Services and Tourism in British Mandate Palestine and Transjordan. Public Archaeology 11 (4): 195-216.

Thornton, A. 2014. The Nobody: Exploring Archaeological Identity with George Horsfield (1882-1956). Archaeology International.

Thornton, A. 2015. Social Networks in the History of Archaeology: Placing Archaeology in its Context.  New Historiographical Approaches to Past Archaeological Research. Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 32. (pp. 69-94). Berlin: Edition TOPOI.

]]><![CDATA[Tourism in Mandate Transjordan]]>Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:11:21 GMThttps://www.petra1929.co.uk/wider-context/tourism-in-mandate-transjordanby Amara Thornton

With the creation of the Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan, the Mandate government began encouraging tourists to travel to the Middle East to see the archaeological sites now maintained and cared for under British authority. In his capacity as Director of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine and Director of the British School, John Garstang wrote "Digging in Sacred Soil", a series of articles published in the Illustrated London News in the early 1920s,

advertising the key sites in Palestine and Transjordan under his authority, the work being done to protect and research them, and campaigning for public support.

British governmental infrastructure in the Mandate meant that jobs were available for British men and women in both Transjordan and Palestine. These ex-pats became some of the initial post-war tourists – Norman Bentwich, the Attorney General in Palestine, and his wife Helen, were among a group of 20 tourists who went Petra in March 1923 and during their stay indulged in a rummaging round the tombs. Catherine Dixon, Secretary for the Palestine Department of Antiquities during the 1920s, also travelled through Transjordan with a few friends in 1925. Thomas Cook had established a camp within Petra, which is referred to in the diary.

A white Cook's Tent set up near El Habis, Petra, 1927. Copyright UCL Institute of Archaeology.

It was located near the Qasr el Bint; people could be housed there in both tents and in Petra's mountain caves, which Ditlef Nielsen referred to as a "natural hotel". The road for British tourists to Petra was not entirely smooth. The Ma'an district (of which Petra was part) bordered on the Hejaz (now in Saudi Arabia), and was not part of Transjordan until 1925. Those who lived around Petra were considered by Western tourists to be dangerous and volatile, and groups of tourists going to Petra were accompanied by armed guards. The issue of "security" was regularly presented in the press in the early 1920s.

By 1926, the Mandate governments in Palestine and Syria (under French control) considered sufficient progress had been made in security matters to invite representatives of international archaeological societies, universities and groups to tour around the Mandates' archaeological gems. The 26th International Archaeological Congress (the first since the outbreak of war) was duly held in the spring of 1926, but the initial route had to be revised due to unrest.

Petra was included in the tour, but only at the last minute, with the Emir himself ensuring the safety of the party. Travel writer Norah Rowan-Hamilton managed to attach herself to this archaeological expedition, and charted the voyage to Petra and three days stay there (in the company of Emir Abdullah, his retinue and her fellow scholar-tourists) in her book Both Sides of the Jordan.

References/Further Reading
Glyn, J. (Ed.). 2000. Tidings from Zion: Helen Bentwich's Letters from Jerusalem 1919-1931. London: I. B. Tauris.

Nielsen, D. 1927. The Site of Biblical Mount Sinai. Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society XIII: 187-208.

Rowan-Hamilton, N. 1928. Both Sides of the Jordan. London: Herbert Jenkins Ltd.

Thornton, A. 2012. Tents, Tours and Treks: Archaeologists, Antiquities Services and Tourism in British Mandate Palestine and Transjordan. Public Archaeology 11 (4): 195-216.

]]><![CDATA[Public Petra]]>Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:06:59 GMThttps://www.petra1929.co.uk/wider-context/public-petraBy Amara Thornton

Petra had captured the public's imagination for over a century before the Petra expedition of 1929. The man widely credited with first describing Petra for Western readers was the Swiss traveller and explorer Johann Ludwig

Burckhardt, whose journeys (in disguise) around the Middle East were funded by Joseph Banks. Burckhardt's journey to Petra was included in his 1822 book Travels in Syria and the Holy Land.

Artist David Roberts went to Petra in the 1830s, creating afterwards stunning depictions of the site which were published in the three volume work The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia. Influenced by Roberts' vision, English poet John William Burgon wrote "Petra" in 1845; its memorable line "a rose red city, half as old as time" is usually quoted or referenced in popular coverage of the site.

Author and reformer Harriet Martineau also went to Petra in the 1840s; her visit to the site became part of local folklore, which was shared with Tawfiq Canaan during his conversations with Petra's locals in 1929. Her account of the journey there, and the time spent at Petra, was published in her book Eastern Life, Past and Present in 1848. Edward Lear, a popular artist and humour writer, also went to Petra in the 1850s. His pictures of the site have recently been published, but a description of his journey there was posthumously printed in Macmillan's Magazine in 1897.

Petra was a tourist destination from the mid-19th century onward, and many travellers who went there (despite the difficulties of the journey), wrote about it. Companies such as Thomas Cook conducted Western travellers to Petra, and the site featured in English-language guidebooks issued by Cooks, John Murray and Baedeker. Those who went often gave public lectures about their travels, accounts of which were frequently published in local newspapers.

During the First World War a joint German-Turkish military unit, the Deutsch-Turkishes Denkmalshutzkommando, led by archaeologist-turned-officer Theodor Wiegand and a company of architects, archaeologists and orientalists, was based for a few weeks at Petra in December 1916. The fruits of their efforts were published in German in 1921. By spring 1918, Thomas Edward Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") an archaeologist who had worked in wartime military intelligence, was part of military movements in the area, participating in the destruction of parts of the Hejaz Railway, which ran through Ma'an, close to Petra.

One of the British soldiers commanding Egyptian Army Camel Corps in Southern Palestine during this time was Colonel Frederick Gerard Peake (later to be of much help to Agnes Conway and George Horsfield); he took the opportunity to visit Petra while stationed in the area. His biographer later recorded he remembered this trip

…not only because it was the first of so many he made afterwards, but more particularly because of the wonderful peace and quietness of the long-deserted city in a world torn with war and the noise of battle."

'Lawrence of Arabia''s subsequent notoriety and celebrity, fuelled by Lowell Thomas's cinematic travelogue "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia", drew attention to the site. Thomas's film featured Petra; it was screened across the UK in the early 1920s and reviewed widely in newspapers.

Alexander Kennedy's sojourn at Petra in 1924 and 1925 had made the headlines too. Through the offices of British Resident in Transjordan Harry St John Philby, Kennedy had obtained official permission from Transjordan's Emir Abdullah to stay on site (Abdullah had established a camp at Petra). Philby contributed the first contextual chapter to Kennedy's Petra, which would, having been published by Country Life, presumably have been marketed to readers of Country Life's noted magazine.

Birmingham-born artist David Bomberg travelled to Petra during this period too; his paintings of the site were exhibited in the UK on his return. Bomberg participated in a BBC radio broadcast on his experiences at Petra with writer and traveller Beatrice Erskine (Mrs Steuart Erskine, nee Strong), whose book Vanished Cities of Arabia featuring Petra, was published in 1925, with illustrations by another artist (and archaeologist), George Henry Benton Fletcher. Erskine's Trans-Jordan also recorded her sojourn in Petra. Bomberg's patrons included the Mond family (one of whom, Henry Mond, provided the funding for the 1929 Petra expedition). Agnes Conway went to see an exhibition of Bomberg's work before departing for Petra.

References/Further Reading
Cavendish, R. 2012. The Discovery of Petra. History Today 62 (8). 8 August.

Erskine, B [Mrs Steuart Erskine]. 1924. Trans-jordan: some impressions. London: Ernest Benn Ltd.

Erskine, B. [Mrs Steuart Erskine] 1925. The Vanished Cities of Arabia. London: Hutchinson & Co.

Jarvis, C. S. 1942. Arab Command: The Biography of Colonel F. G. Peake Pasha. London: Hutchinson & Co.

Kennedy, A. 1925. Petra: Its History and Monuments. London: Country Life.

BBC Genome. Mr David Bomberg and Mrs Steuart Erskine: The Ancient City of Petra.

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