Kimberly Katz. Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. xvi + 150 pp. $59.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8130-2844-6. Reviewed by Michael Fischbach Published on H-Levant (October, 2007) One of the topics that has generated consider‐ time) as well as to maintain these changing identi‐ able scholarly interest in the past decade, within ties in the face of powerful regional currents, the various disciplines dealing with modern Mid‐ forces, events, and neighbors that often (if not dle Eastern history, is the question of how nation‐ usually) have militated against these efforts. For al identity is created. Various factors, from socio- example, the fact that Jordan's Hashemite mon‐ economic to cultural and spatial, have been ana‐ archs have embraced and celebrated the lyzed by those seeking to discover how national Hashemite family's traditionalist and pro-Western communities--what Benedict Anderson's seminal Arab nationalist credentials frequently has collid‐ 1991 book calls "imagined communities"--are ed with the anti-Western, anti-colonial sentiments formed. Despite the fact that all the modern-day so often found among Arabs in the twentieth cen‐ states of the Fertile Crescent were creations of tury, including those living in Jordan itself. This Western imperialism, Jordan has been the subject was particularly true in the mid-twentieth centu‐ of particular focus in regard to this issue. What ry, when so many of the traditional values upon factors have gone into the creation of a Jordanian which Hashemite Jordanian identity rested had national consciousness and identity? What de‐ become distinctly out of fashion in the Arab fines "Jordanianness?" How did this identity deal world, enamored as it was with the secular, "revo‐ with others, particularly Palestinian identity, and lutionary," and anti-Western pan-Arab national‐ how did it negotiate between and among other ism espoused by the likes of the Ba'th Party and forces current in the Arab world, including pan- Egypt's President Jamal Abd al-Nasir (Gamal Ab‐ Arab nationalism? del Nasser). Jordanian national identity thus had The Hashemite rulers, who have ruled the to contend with the albatross of its imperial country since the British created Transjordan in parentage and its continued ties with its former 1921, always have struggled to articulate a vision colonial master, and the fact that, with the no‐ of Jordanianness (which in fact has changed over table exception of Lebanon, it was alone among the Arab states of the Fertile Crescent and North H-Net Reviews Africa in not rising in armed rebellion against its meeting place of religion and nationalism" and European overlords during the period between the ways that "just as nations and religious groups the world wars. are imagined communities, holy places are also Another fact crucial to understanding mod‐ imagined spaces" (p. 1). Her case study analyzes ern Jordanian national identity has been the the way that Jordanian political elites tried to le‐ country's complicated and conflicted relationship gitimize the regime by using the holy city and its with the Palestinians, and with that people's own shrines to shape the country's religious and mate‐ rival sense of national identity. From its birth at rial culture, and in the process change and enno‐ the Cairo Conference in 1921, Transjordan be‐ ble Jordan's national identity. The end result is a came linked with the fate of the Palestinians book that makes an important contribution to the when it was subsumed within the rubric of the fields of Jordanian and Palestinian history, as well British Mandate for Palestine. After Jordanian in‐ as to the ongoing scholarly discussion about na‐ dependence in 1946, the wider regional ambitions tional identities. Furthermore, Katz's book is the of Emir (later King) Abdullah I were partially real‐ first to examine Jerusalem during the period that ized when Jordan's Arab Legion managed to con‐ it was under Jordanian rule, a welcome develop‐ trol the portions of Palestine later called the West ment on a feld that has hitherto displayed inordi‐ Bank (including East Jerusalem) during the frst nate focus on the periods of Ottoman and Israeli Arab-Israeli war of 1948. While some Palestinian rule. elites heralded Jordanian rule as preferable to Is‐ Jordanian Jerusalem begins by looking at the raeli rule, many of the country's hundreds of origins of Jordan, from its beginnings in 1921 as thousands of new Palestinian citizens were op‐ Emirate of Transjordan, through independence as posed to Abdullah's rule and his policies--as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946, and its demonstrated by his assassination at the hands of control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in a disgruntled Palestinian in Jerusalem in 1951. 1948. Katz spends several chapters examining the Jordanian national identity, particularly the nature of Jordanian rule in Jerusalem, in particu‐ legitimacy of this identity in the eyes of its own lar its involvement in religious affairs in the holy citizens, was thus hobbled by several serious city. She then discusses the ways that Jerusalem problems by the early 1950s. Yet the country's an‐ literally began to appear as part of Jordan's new nexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem-- self-created image as "the Holy Land" through dis‐ the portion of the holy city containing the impor‐ plays of Muslim and Christian shrines on postage tant Muslim and Christian (and Jewish) shrines-- stamps and currency notes, and through tourist afforded the Hashemite regime the opportunity to campaigns aimed at encouraging visits by reli‐ exploit the national and religious sentiments that gious pilgrims from abroad. She ends the book by the city evoked for Palestinians, and indeed the analyzing how the creation of the Palestine Liber‐ entire Arab world, to construct a new national ation Organization in 1964 impacted Jordan's identity that could help refurbish and improve carefully self-generated image of the Hashemites Jordan's image at home, in the Arab world, and in as the custodians of the city the Palestinians the wider world. called their capital, as well as how Israel's occupa‐ tion of East Jerusalem in 1967 affected Jordan's Kimberly Katz (Towson University) has pro‐ entire relationship with the city. Although the duced a fne study of the role Jerusalem played in book's theses are presented in the introduction the construction of modern Jordanian national and reinforced throughout, its lack of a conclu‐ identity during the period of Jordanian rule in the city (1948-67) and thereafter. She discusses "the 2 H-Net Reviews sion, which would have summarized and clarified the above, is a notable flaw. Throughout this short book, Katz does well in charting the various material and ideological fac‐ tors that went into the changing nature of Jorda‐ nian national identity as it was consciously articu‐ lated by the Hashemite monarchy. A refreshing aspect of Katz's book is not just her use of postage stamps, tourist brochures, currency notes, and other aspects of material culture, but also her re‐ liance on archival and other Arabic-language pri‐ mary source materials. This leads to a rare con‐ vergence of the methodologies of materialist scholars with those of post-modernists. This is one of the best and most innovative books on Jordan to have emerged in recent years. Its examination of material culture in particular adds a new dimension to some of the perennial is‐ sues about the country that scholars long have ex‐ plored (e.g., Jordanian identity, and the nature of Palestinian-Jordanian relations), and at the same time flls the yawning gap that exists in the litera‐ ture on Jerusalem, which until now has focused almost exclusively on the periods of Ottoman and Israeli rule. If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-levant Citation: Michael Fischbach. Review of Katz, Kimberly. Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces. H-Levant, H-Net Reviews. October, 2007. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13746 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3.