The emergence of cultural heritage in Jordan The itinerary of colonial invention

• Although at the end of the nineteenth century the Ottoman sultan began a policy aimed at building a national archaeological heritage, the Arab provinces of the Empire were excluded from this process
• It was only after the First World War that the governments of the new colonial states of the area started to elaborate a coherent policy aimed at creating institutions of cultural heritage
• At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sultan Abdulhamid II gave the German Emperor visiting the Ottoman Empire the marvelous façade of the Mshatta castle as a present
• The castle is an important example of Umayyad architecture and is situated at about 40 km south of Amman, the capital of modern Jordan
• During the last decades of the Ottoman rule a new interest in archaeology had emerged in the Empire, mainly as a reaction to the aggressive policy of the European states that were trying to impose their influence on the Near East using various religious, cultural, and commercial means
• The interest in cultural heritage was reinforced by the idea that to be modern entailed protecting the cultural heritage of the nation-state and thus looking for its ancient roots
• As a consequence, by the second half of the nineteenth century a group of Ottoman archaeologists had already begun to elaborate a defensive archaeology and a local conception of Ottoman cultural heritage
• When the façade of the Mshatta castle was removed from the site and sent to Germany, the local population did not show any form of concern, since, regardless of their Islamic and Arab character, nobody seemed to be interested in the preservation of the castle's ruins
• Yet, only some years later, a much more trivial matter was at the origin of a scandal in the newly created Emirate of Transjordan
• In this article I first examine the context of the Basilica Affair and its political and cultural implications. Then, I illustrate how the practices and discourses related to cultural heritage became a tool of the colonial power in order to impose its domination on the autochthonous population
• The origin of the Basilica Affair is identified with the decision of Emir Abdullah to build a mosque in Amman, the new capital of the Emirate
• This act was very significant, if we consider both the political situation of Transjordan and the status of Amman at the beginning of the 1920s
• The site chosen for the mosque was in a central area near to the small river which crossed the village, where there were already some ruins from several historical periods
• Emir Abdallah probably chose this site because of its central position and above all because of the presence of the necessary building material. In the region it was very common to reuse the stone blocks of old or even antique edifices to erect new buildings since it was more practical and less expensive
• The British representative in Transjordan was not willing to make a compromise in order to support the political and religious role Abdullah was trying to play in the Emirate. His unique interest was to preserve a monument of the Byzantine period he regarded as part of the western cultural heritage
• The destruction of the Byzantine wall of the basilica became an event out of proportion to the value of the remains
• The relations between Philby and Emir Abdullah became so strained that they decided to turn to Sir Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner of Palestine
• The words used by Emir Abdllah in the letter sent to Samuel are very significant because they indicate that he interpreted the intervention of Sir Philby not as a matter concerning cultural heritage but as an intrusion in the religious affairs of the Emirate
• Although the British representative in Transjordan was apparently concerned about the preservation of cultural heritage, the conflict seems to derive less from Philby's preoccupation with the destruction of the Byzantine wall than from his desire to impose his authority on Emir Abdullah
• The description of the incident given by Wilson seems to confirm this idea since she stresses the fact that before the Basilica Affair the relations between Abdullah and Philby were already very tense
• Despite the manifest political nature of the event, the cultural aspect of the Basilica Affair is also worth mentioning. I find it particularly interesting that Philby justified his interference by employing the idiom of cultural heritage, whereas the Hashemite prince used religious language to legitimize and defend the construction of the mosque
• Abdullah had shown that he had a clear awareness of the historical and artistic value of ancient monuments and therefore was concerned by matters related to cultural heritage
• He had chosen to prioritize religion over cultural heritage in order to have more of a chance of establishing his authority without surrendering himself to the power of the British representative in Transjordan
• If my interpretation is correct, Abdullah had voluntarily abandoned the idiom of cultural heritage and adopted the religious one, simulating a lack of understanding of Philby's arguments. Abdullah's denial of considering the Basilica Affair to be one of cultural heritage was also the expression of his resistance to practice typical of colonial power
• Indeed, the progressive process of transforming the local ancient vestiges into cultural heritage might have been perceived of as a way the colonial power sought to impose itself on the autochthonous population
• Put in a more explicit way, they were faced by what Trigger has called 'colonial archaeology', which was nothing else than a practice oriented towards imposing the physical and symbolic presence of the colonizers on the colonized population. In every colonized region this kind of archaeology produced a discourse in the sense of Foucault, which legitimated the superiority of the colonizers on the colonized and completely cut the latter from their past, relegating them in a different spatial and temporal dimension
• In Transjordan very limited attention was paid to Arab-Islamic history for several decades and the value of its remains were downplayed
• The persistence of colonial interests in Jordanian archaeology and the cultural paradigm they entail is striking, when we consider that in the collective volume The Archaeological Heritage of Jordan published by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities they are still very strong
• The fact that the practices connected with cultural heritage were used by the colonial administration to impose its power on the local population had been shown by many authors in several contests
• In the case of Jordan, the political stakes of the archaeological discourses and practices are confirmed by another more recent incident which shows some common elements with the previously mentioned Basilica Affair. The new incident took place during the 1950s when the Jordanian government decided to restore the complex of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem
• If we look at the recent past, the deterioration of the Holy Sepulcher was already a fact during the Mandate period, but many obstacles had hindered the British from carrying out the necessary renovation
• If we come back to the twentieth century, when the French government was informed of the Jordanian intentions to restore the Holy Sepulcher, its representatives protested vehemently, stating that no work could be started without their consent and active participation
• In this way, France was affirming its traditional role as protector of the Catholic population in the Near East and at the same time was claiming its historical rights on the church
• It is, of course, not fortuitous that 30 years after the Basilica Affair, the Jordanian authorities used the same religious idiom employed by Emir Abdullah in order to justify their acts and oppose the French interference
• This idiom was not only one of colonial heritage but also, as St Laurent and Reidlmayer have shown, a discourse used by the Ottoman Sultan in order to reaffirm its authority over the provinces of the Empire
• The British authorities were embarrassed by the situation since at that time they had not officially recognized Jordanian sovereignty over Jerusalem
• It is clear that the issue of the restoration of the Holy Sepulcher was less a matter related to cultural or religious heritage than to political control over a territory and a population
• Therefore I think that the coincidence of the arguments used in 1923 by Emir Abdullah and at the beginning of the 1950s by the Jordanian representative is not accidental, since the objectives of both statements are the same
• In conclusion, if we go back to the Basilica Affair, my interpretation of Abdullah's reaction seems to be confirmed by the above-mentioned facts as well as by the Jordanian historian Abu Nuwwar, who writes that the Department of Antiquities (DOA) was created in the Emirate as a consequence of Philby's protestations
• As I have already noted, during the Ottoan period the archaeological policy of the state did not play a significant role in Transjordan
• After its foundation the DOA began to coordinate the excavations conducted in the Emirate that were previously under the responsibility of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities based in Jerusalem
• Biblical School founded by the French Dominicans in 1980
• The religious nature of these institutions is clearly expressed in their names
• This explains why the archaeologists working for them were mainly concerned with the historical periods in relation to the religious history of Judaism and Christianity
• There is today a general consensus that the quest for the Judeo-Christian roots was at the origin of the western states' archaeological interest in the NEar East
• In fact, the period between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century and the first half of the twentieth century was the golden age of what is usually called biblical archaeology, a discipline that affected the archaeological practice of a great number of archaeologists during this epoch
• The first systematic explorations aiming to identify the material traces of the Biblical story started in the second half of the nineteenth century with the surveys organized by the Palestine Exploration Fund, which was founded in 1865 and was based in London
• Yet, in Transjordan and Palestine during the Mandate period very few excavations were directed to the Islamic era
• At Jericho and at the Citadel of Amman, Islamic material was excavated but did not constitute the focus of interest for the archaeologists working there
• Baramki, one of the few Arab archaeologists working for the Department of Antiquities of Palestine during the British Mandate, mentions very few excavations sponsored by the DAP directed to the exploration of the Islamic period
• Thus in Jordan, it was not until the 1970s that American and Spanish missions started to develop systematically the study of the Early Islamic period
• The Islamic era was not the only neglected historical period, as extremely few and non-methodical excavations of prehistoric sites were conducted in Transjordan during the British Mandate
• If we look more closely at the situation of the Emirate of Transjordan, it is clear that the choice of the sites excavated by the western archaeologist mirrors the influence of the two branches of archaeology mentioned earlier
• What about the participation of the local population?
• During the Mandate period there were no Transjordanian archaeologists working in the Emirate
• The situation was somewhat different in Palestine where some Arab individuals trained in archaeology were working for the Department of Antiquities during the 1930s and 1940s
• Hence, during the Mandate period, the Arab population of Palestine and Transjordan was almost totally excluded from the possibility of actively participating in the archaeological activities sponsored by the colonial institutions because the natives, except for very few individuals who studied in the missionary schools or in Europe, did not have any training in the field
• It is not fortuitous that the choice of the places to be excavated almost completely excluded the Islamic sites from the Umayyad to the Ottoman era, as at that time these vestiges did not seem to be attractive either for the colonizers or for the colonized
• The biblical and evolutionary paradigms were not only dominant in the colonial period but were to leave a lasting intellectual heritage in the region, despite the fact that it was interpreted and elaborated in various ways by the postcolonial states that emerged after the Second World War
• In this book Salibi demonstrates that the land God promised to the Jewish people is in fact the region of Hejaz in the Arabian Peninsula and not historical Palestine
• Other examples of counter-narrations exist in Syria and Iraq, where the governmental institutions have promoted the production of works aimed at discarding the Israeli construction of the past
• The Jordanian authorities (and more recently the Palestinian National Authority) have felt an intense need to counterbalance the nationalistic narrative fabricated in Israel during the first decades after independence
• The relations between Israel archaeology and the national archaeological schools that developed in neighboring Arab countries (and especially in Jordan) deserve to be mentioned
• As Philippe King and others have shown, Jewish residents in Palestine started to be active in the field of archaeology in the 1920s
• In fact, we can say that since the Second World War there have been two trends in the region: on the one hand, there has been a progressive movement toward the creation of local archaeologies which are more autonomous of the western model, although the scholarly discourses produced in Europe and in the USA are still a fundamental reference; on the other hand, new relations have been established between the various national schools of the Arab countries and the corpus of archaeological texts produced by Israeli scholars
• This short sketch of the situation shows clearly the crucial importance of history, and particularly ancient history, for the Jordanian authorities
• Another text which I consider particularly significant to understanding Jordanian scholars' awareness of the political stakes entailed in history and archaeology is the article published by Adnan Hadidi, who became General Director of Antiquities in 1977
• Finally, at the opening of the Third International Conference on the History of Jordan in 1987, Prince Hasan officially stated that, concerning historical and archaeological studies, Jordan was making all possible efforts 'to redress the balance especially in the area of the so called biblical periods'
• These quotations confirm that, despite the influence exerted by biblical archaeology on the historical and archaeology studies in Jordan, local scholars have been able to take a critical stand against it
• I think that the prominence attributed to the Christian character of Jordanian history is one of these inherited elements
• Most recently, during the 1990s, religious tourism (both Christian and Islamic) has again become a priority for the Jordanian government, although Jerusalem and the holy places situated west of the Jordan were definitely lost
• The revival of the Christian heritage in Jordan was made easier by the fact, as mentioned above, the emphasis on biblical sites already had a long history in the country: there were numerous brochures, books, cards, postage stamps, etc. dating back to the 1950s and 1960s that reminded western visitors and pilgrims of the holy nature of the Jordanian soil
• Furthermore, according to local commentators, Jordan is not only the place of origin of the religions of the Book, but also the cradle of human civilization as witnessed by the numerous monuments of different historical epochs scattered throughout the country
• Pre-Christian and pre-Islamic history is another important element that contributes to the common field where Muslim and Christian believers can meet
• Biblical Jordan also contains the detailed description of 20 holy sites situated in Jordan
• Therefore, despite the representation of Jordan as the Holy Land, the Jewish population is almost absent from the tourist brochures, guides, and signs placed in the archaeological sites for western visitors, as well as from the text books used in local schools and in the academic literature
• The discursive lacuna about the Jewish history is accompanied by the effacement of the material traces left by the Jewish people n the Kingdom's archaeological landscape
• A slightly different case is that of the site of Iraq al-Amir, some kilometers west of Amman, where the Hellenistic palace of Hyrcanus is situated
• In fact, the political implications related to the possible emphasis put on Iraq al-Amir are so sensitive that the Jordanian authorities cannot recognize its proper value, despite the fact that it might deserve to be visited by foreign as well as local tourists
• As Paul Sham and Russell Lucas stress, after the signing of the peace treaty the Jordanian citizens were expecting important economic benefits from the new commercial relationships with Israel, which were heavily supported by the US government
• The fear expressed by the local press and the archaeological preoccupations of the Jordanian authorities seem to be justified if we think about what happened in the territory of historical Palestine during the second half of the twentieth century
• To sum it up, all these elements allow us to understand why, though Jordan presents its territory as the Holy Land, the local authorities are very careful and stress exclusively the Christian nature of this heritage, while suppressing the reference to the Jewish history most of the time
• Finally, it is worth considering the fact that the official Islamic State of Jordan stresses the importance of its Christian past
• The reasons for this choice, which dates back to the first decades after Independence, are political, strategic, religious, and economic
• If we look at the internal political arena, the Hashemites have kept, with some minor modifications, the electoral system elaborated by the British colonizers
• Furthermore, Jordan is usually presented as a country at a crossroads of different civilizations
• There is also an economic rationale justifying the Jordanian archaeological policy on the Christian heritage, which is related to the tourist promotion of the Kingdom
• Despite the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Jordan did not give up presenting its territory as the Holy Land and Christian tourism in the Kingdom was bolstered in 2000 when John Paul II visited the Kingdom
• Biblical tourist itineraries thus remain an extremely important element in the official policy of the DOA despite the loss of the West Bank
• To recapitulate the itinerary I have been following in this article, I hope I have shown how archaeology has entered the Jordanian cultural scene and shaped the local perception of the past