Wilson offers the first full-length and scholarly study of 'Abdullah, who was the ruler of Jordan from 1921 to 1951 and one of the major political figures of the twentieth-century Middle East. Drawing upon considerable literary skills and a wealth of research, she succeeds in tracing 'Abdullah's life from his pleasant childhood on the shores of the Bosporus in the 1890s to his efforts to control the West Bank in the 1950s. As a biography of a Middle Eastern figure that is also a pleasure to read, this book is a great rarity.
Its faults lie mainly in the realm of politics. First, Wilson is both ignorant of Israel and biased against it, so that many of her comments about the state are inaccurate. Second, she is surprisingly unaware of the important role Pan-Syrian nationalism played in motivating 'Abdullah. Instead, she ascribes his irredentism only to the weakness of his base in Jordan. It was weak, to be sure, but even had it not been, 'Abdullah's long commitment to Greater Syria would have caused him to seek to expand. Wilson also makes the unfortunate mistake of seeing Palestine as an alternate to the "Syrian hobby-horse." In fact, 'Abdullah always considered Palestine a part of Syria. But these are minor problems in an otherwise excellent study.
