Balqa (region)

The Balqa forms the central part of the Transjordanian highlands.[2][3] It extends from the Zarqa River in the north to the Wadi Mujib gorge in the south.[2][3] The southern limit of the Balqa is alternatively placed north of Wadi Mujib at Wadi Zarqa Ma'in, hence the colloquial description of the Balqa as "the land between the two Zarqas".[4] The Zarqa River separates the Balqa from the Jabal Ajlun highlands, while the Wadi Mujib separates it from the Sharat highlands.[2] To the west, the Balqa borders the lowlands of the Jordan Valley (called al-Ghor in Arabic),[2] while the region borders the Syrian Desert in the east.[2]

Mount Nebo, one of the highest peaks in the Balqa

The entire Balqa is a limestone plateau,[3] as compared to the gravel and basalt-covered plateau of the Syrian Desert that makes up over 75% of Jordan's land area.[5] The western part of the Balqa, closer to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, is a relatively fertile zone characterized by its broken ground and deep gorges formed by precipitation-induced erosion.[3] The eastern part of the Balqa sees little rainfall and is characterized by its tabular consistency.[3] In general the Balqa is arid, though the western plains near the Jordan Valley and the depressions allow for some cultivation.[3] This accounts for the ancient and medieval reports of the Balqa's fertility.[3] Like Jabal Ajlun and the Sharat, the Balqa has a dry and temperate climate.[2]

The average elevation of the Balqa is 700–800 meters (2,300–2,600 ft) above sea level.[3] Among the tallest peaks are Tell Nabi Usha (1,096 meters (3,596 ft)) in the northern Balqa and Mount Nebo (835 meters (2,740 ft)) in the south.[3]

The Wadi Shueib valley, 2010

The perennial Wadi Shueib stream traverses the heart of the western Balqa and creates a fertile valley in which many of the area's western towns sit. The stream deposits into the Jordan Valley.[2] The Zarqa River is a tributary of the Jordan River, while the Wadi Mujib stream flows into the Dead Sea.[2]

Map of the southern Levant under Roman rule, c. 1st century CE. The Balqa region spanned part of Perea, the Decapolis and Nabatea

During the Hellenistic period, the western part of the Balqa belonged to the administrative district of Perea centered in the city of Gadara (near modern al-Salt), while much of the northeastern Balqa around Philadelphia (modern Amman) formed part of the Decapolis and the southeastern part belonged to Nabatea.[3]

In 106 CE, during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan, the whole of the Balqa came under the province of Arabia Petraea.[3] The Balqa remained part of Arabia province during the Byzantine period and the Wadi al-Mujib formed the southern boundary of the province, separating it from the new district of Palestina Tertia.[3] The major towns of Byzantine Balqa were Philadelphia, Esbus (modern Hisban) and Madaba.[3]

The interior of Qasr al-Kharane, one of several desert palaces built in the Balqa by the Umayyads

At the time of the early Muslim conquests in the 630s, the principal Arab tribes in the Balqa were the Bali, the Judham, and the Ghassanids.[10] The Balqa was conquered by the Muslims under the commander Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan shortly after the capture of Damascus in late 634/early 635 and the peaceful surrender of Amman.[11] Yazid's father Abu Sufyan owned a village in the Balqa called Biqinis.[12] In 661, Yazid's brother Mu'awiya founded the Levant-based Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), under which the Balqa continued to prosper.[1] Caliph Marwan I (r. 684–685) granted the Sakun, a branch of the Kinda tribe the right to settle the Balqa in return for their support against anti-Umayyad tribes in Syria at the Battle of Marj Rahit.[13] Several palatial residences for the Umayyad caliphs and princes were erected throughout the Balqa, including al-Mshatta, Ziza, Qastal, and Umm al-Walid, as well as Qusayr Amra, al-Kharane, Qasr al-Hallabat and Qasr Tuba further east along the desert fringe.[1]

While still a prince, Yazid II built Qastal and al-Muwaqqar, another palace near Amman, and was possibly associated with Umm al-Walid;[14] he ruled as caliph in 720–724 and died in the Balqa town of Irbid.[15] Yazid II's son al-Walid II resided in his Balqa estates during part of his years as the heir apparent of Caliph Hisham and built Qusayr Amra.[16] Al-Walid II's father-in-law, a member of the Umayyad family, Caliph Uthman's great-grandson Sa'id ibn Khalid ibn Amr ibn Uthman, owned an estate called al-Faddayn in the Balqa, which al-Walid II regularly visited.[17] After succeeding Hisham in 743, he continued to live in the Balqa.[18] He imprisoned Hisham's son Sulayman in Amman.[19] Descendants of al-Walid II may have continued to reside in Qastal as late as the early Abbasid period, as possibly attested by gravestones at the site.[20]

Map of Islamic Syria and its districts under the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century. The Balqa is shown as part of Dimashq (Damascus), lying east of Filastin (Palestine)

The administrative and geographic definition of the Balqa varied throughout the early Islamic period.[1] Under the Umayyads until at least the late 9th century the Balqa included much of the Jabal Ajlun and Ma'ab areas and was a subdistrict of Jund Dimashq (military district of Damascus) with its own ʿāmil (governor).[21] The historian al-Ya'qubi held that the Balqa was divided into two zones: the Ghor with its center in Jericho (west of the Jordan River) and the Zahir centered in Amman.[1] The writings of the 10th-century geographer al-Muqaddasi indicate that the Balqa shifted to administrative dependence on Jund Filastin (military district of Palestine).[1]

The post of the sub-governor of Balqa first appeared in the Islamic traditional sources during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705).[22]

• Ubayd Allah ibn Marwan, governed for undetermined period under his brother Caliph Abd al-Malik.[23]
• Muhammad ibn Umar al-Thaqafi, governed for undetermined period under Caliph Abd al-Malik. Muhammad was a brother of Yusuf ibn Umar al-Thaqafi from the clan of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf.[24] Yusuf ibn Umar had been al-Walid II's governor in Iraq and relocated to his Thaqafi family's estate in the Balqa. The historian Garth Fowden proposed that the family estate may have been Umm al-Walid (Mother of al-Walid) based on the assumption that it belonged to al-Walid II's mother, who belonged to al-Hajjaj's family.[25]
• Al-Walid ibn Qa'qa al-Absi, may have governed for undetermined period under Caliph al-Walid I (r. 705–715).[26]
• Harith ibn Amr al-Ta'i, governed for undetermined period under Caliph Umar II (r. 717–720).[27]
• Unnamed governor under Marwan II (r. 744–750)[28]
• Salih ibn Ali ibn Abdallah ibn Abbas, governor in 750 under his nephew, the Abbasid caliph al-Saffah.[29]
• Abdallah ibn Sulayman ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Muttalib, governed for undetermined period under his distant kinsman Caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–775).[30]
• Salih ibn Sulayman ibn Abdallah ibn Abbas, governed from 796 under Ja'far ibn Yahya al-Barmaki, vizier of Salih ibn Sulayman's kinsman Caliph Harun al-Rashid.[31]

Under the Ayyubids (1180s–1250), the Balqa administratively included and excluded the Sharat, while under the Mamluks the Balqa was a district of the southern march of Mamlakat Dimashq (province of Damascus) with its center in Hisban.[1] At times, the town of al-Salt formed its own wilaya (subdistrict).[1] Practically, it depended, at least temporarily, on Niyabat al-Karak (province of al-Karak) to the south.[1] The major tribes of the Balqa during Mamluk rule were the Banu Sakhr and the Banu Mahdi, both counted as descendants of the Judham, whose presence in the southern Levant dated to the late Byzantine and early Islamic periods.[32]

A sheikh of the Da'aja tribe in al-Muwaqqar in the Balqa, c. 1900. The Da'aja were one of two tribes recorded in Ottoman tax records as living in the Balqa in the 16th century

Although Ottoman tax records from the 16th century do not specify the Bedouin tribes living in the Balqa, the Ottoman historian al-Khalidi al-Safadi (d. 1628) noted that two tribes, the Da'aja and Jahawisha, dwelt there.[33] Only four villages were officially recorded in the Balqa during the 16th century.[34] By the end of the 18th century, the only permanent settlement in the region was the mixed Muslim and Christian town of Salt, a situation which persisted until the late 19th century.[35] The rest of the Balqa was dominated by the local Bedouin tribes.[34]

Salt was the most developed town and the commercial center of Transjordan from the 18th century until the early years of the Emirate of Transjordan.[34] The high hills and deep valleys upon which the town was built protected Salt from raids by the Bedouin tribes, with whom the townspeople made commercial accommodations: the tribes guaranteed the townspeople access to their wheat fields in the Balqa's eastern plains and the tribes were able to buy and sell goods in the town's extensive markets.[34] Salt townspeople encamped in Amman and Wadi Wala in the spring until harvest and paid an annual tribute to the dominant tribe of the Balqa, which until the 1810s was the Adwan, known as "lords of the Balqa".[36] Afterward, the Banu Sakhr overtook the Adwan and collected the tribute from Salt.[36] The town's defenses and isolation in a land practically controlled by Bedouin tribes also enabled its inhabitants to ignore the impositions of the Ottoman authorities without consequence.[36]

In 1866–1867 the governor of Syria Vilayet (to which the Balqa nominally belonged), Rashid Pasha, extended the imperial Tanzimat reforms into the Balqa.[37] He launched an expedition against the tribes of the Balqa at the head of a large army.[38] The townspeople of Salt made terms with Rashid Pasha, who repaired the town's fort, garrisoned it with 400 troops and confiscated large amounts of grain and livestock as tax arrears.[38] He established the town as the center of a district encompassing the Balqa, appointed as its governor the Damascene Kurd Faris Agha Kadru and established an elected administrative council composed of the town's elite.[38] He proceeded toward Hisban against the Adwan, which was allied with their traditional rivals the Banu Sakhr and led by Dhi'ab al-Humud. The Ottomans defeated the Adwan, killing or wounding fifty tribesmen, capturing Dhi'ab's son and forcing the tribe's retreat toward Karak.[38] By October Dhi'ab surrendered himself and was imprisoned in Nablus.[39] The following year, the Balqa was appended to the Nablus Sanjak, which became a new district straddling both sides of the Jordan River and called the Mutasarifiyya of Balqa; its first governor was Muhammad Sa'id Pasha, the former governor of the new district of Ajlun. Two years later, the Adwan and Banu Sakhr attempted to reassert their dominance in Transjordan and attacked the village of Ramtha, prompting a second, larger expedition by Rashid Pasha into the Balqa.[39] The Banu Sakhr and the Banu Hamida were cornered into the deep gorges of Wadi Wala, submitted to the Ottoman authorities and paid a large fine.[39] According to the historian Eugene Rogan: "If the first Balqa expedition introduced direct Ottoman rule to the district, the second campaign confirmed that the Ottomans were in Jordan to stay."[40]

The Circassian settlement of Wadi Sir, 1900, one of several villages founded in the Balqa during the Ottoman-sponsored drive to settle the region in the late 19th century

Between 1878 and 1884 the Ottoman authorities in Damascus launched their first attempt to establish permanent settlements in grain-growing areas in the eastern Balqa with access to regular sources of water.[41] The first settlers were Circassians transported to the region from other parts of the Empire and the first two Circassian villages established in the Balqa were Amman and Wadi Sir.[41] A third village was established at al-Ruman in 1884 by Turkmen settlers.[42] The Turkmens and Circassians were known to be highly loyal to the Ottomans, skilled in agriculture and willing to combat Bedouin raiders.[43] During roughly the same period, Christian townspeople established settlements in the Balqa after leaving established towns in Transjordan.[44] Between 1869 and 1875, Christians from Salt transformed the nearby encampment of Fuheis from sixteen tents to twenty-five–thirty houses. Between 1870 and 1879, members of the Christian family of Siyagh established the village of Rumaymin in the vicinity of Salt, and in 1881 Christians from Karak established a permanent settlement at Madaba, which became the southernmost settlement of the Balqa, with support from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the governor of Damascus Midhat Pasha.[45][44]

The establishment of farming villages by settlers and local Christians spurred the development of the Bedouin plantation village, which were small hamlets registered in the name of Bedouin tribesmen and farmed largely by peasants from Palestine and Egypt.[46] By 1883, nine such tax-paying plantation villages were established in the Balqa: Jalul, Sahab was Salbud, al-Raqib, Juwayda, Dhiban, Manja, Umm al-Amad, al-Ghabya and Barazin.[47] The Balqa remained a kaza (called after Salt) attached to the Nablus Sanjak, including after the sanjak's incorporation into the Beirut Vilayet established in 1888, during which Khalil Bek El-Assaad was in office, Balqa remained under his clan's control until the kaza of Salt was transferred..[48] Between 1901 and 1906 five new Circassian and Chechen settlements were established at Zarqa, Rusayfa, Na'ur, Suwaylih and Sukhna, all to the east of Amman.[41] In 1905 the kaza of Salt was transferred to the Karak Sanjak, part of the Damascus Vilayet.[48] By 1908, there were at least nineteen Bedouin plantation villages around Madaba.[46] During the same approximate period, the Abu Jabir clan of Salt began to cultivate their sixty-feddan farms 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) south of Amman.[49]

The Circassians introduced a network of dirt roads throughout the Balqa, which could accommodate their large-wheeled carts.[49] Interconnectivity with the rest of the Empire and centralization increased with the construction of the Hejaz Railway, which connected Amman to Damascus upon its inauguration in 1903. The following year the line was extended from Amman southward to Ma'an and by 1908 to Medina. The Circassians of the Balqa were employed in the construction, maintenance and lower management of the railway, and Circassian ox-driven carts transported goods from Damascus to the markets of the Balqa after the arrival of the goods to Amman by train.[50]

Bedouin and Circassian chiefs with British officers on the Aerodome at Amman, 1921

The occupation of Transjordan and the wider Levant by British-led Allied forces during World War I marked the end of the late Ottoman period of growing trade, settlement and cultivation in the Balqa. With the disruptions to the railway caused by the war, trade and security eroded and Bedouin tribesmen who had begun transitioning to plantation farming or cultivation reverted to nomadism. The importance of the area also decreased under the British and French mandatory powers whose focus centered on Palestine, the northern half of the Levant and Mesopotamia. Commerce eventually returned to the Balqa, but underwent significant change as a result of new borders separating it from Damascus and Medina and new foreign interests.[50] In a 1922 population survey, the Balqa district had a settled population of 39,600 living in fifteen settlements, the largest of which was Salt (pop. 20,000), followed by Wadi Sir, Amman and Madaba whose populations ranged between 2,400 and 3,200.[51] There were 59,500 Adwan, Balqawiyya, Banu Hamida and Salit tribesmen living in 11,900 tents, while the Banu Sakhr, whose encampments were not restricted to the Balqa, had 5,500 tents and counted 27,500 tribesmen.[51] With the exception of a mostly Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic Christian minority in Salt, its smaller satellite villages of Fuheis and Rumaymin, and Madaba, the inhabitants were Sunni Muslims.[51][52] Other than the Circassian/Chechens who represented about 5% of Transjordan's population, the inhabitants of the Balqa and Transjordan in general were ethnically Arab, the main social division being between pastoralists and peasants.[51] The main crops of the Balqa were corn, wheat and barley, as well as the well-known grapes of Salt.[53]

Relations between the settled residents and the Bedouin, the Circassians and the Arabs and the Muslims and Christians were generally amicable at the time. Most conflict, when it occurred, centered on competition for land between the Bedouin and the settled people.[51] The semi-nomadic Adwan had lost its paramountcy in the Balqa to the largely nomadic Banu Sakhr during the 19th century and the latter tribe remained dominant in the Balqa under indirect British rule. The Adwan and Banu Hasan, who dwelt north of Amman along the Zarqa River, were allied against the Banu Sakhr, and the tribal rivalry continued in the early years of British rule. The British had recognized the Hashemite emir Abdullah as the Emir of Transjordan, separating the region's governance from the direct British administration in neighboring Palestine. Abdullah had courted and granted high favor the more powerful Banu Sakhr; to guarantee their loyalty from the burgeoning influence of the Wahhabi movement of Ibn Saud, the emir granted the tribe large tracts and assessed taxes at a fractional rate to that imposed on the Adwan and other Balqa tribes. By August 1923, the taxation disparity and tribal rivalries had grown and the following month the paramount emir of the Adwan at the head of his tribesmen marched toward Abdullah's residence in Amman in what became known as the Adwan Rebellion. They were intercepted by the British-led Arab Legion units not long after their departure from Sweileh. In the ensuing clashes, 86 Adwan tribesmen, including 13 women, were killed or injured and the tribe's leader fled to the Jabal al-Druze in French Mandatory Syria.[54]