The Hughes Land Affair in Transjordan

Abstract

At the Cairo Conference in March 1921, the East Bank of the Jordan (Transjordan) was separated from the territory administered by the British under the Mandate for Palestine and an emirate, ruled by Abdullah I bin Al Hussein of the Hashemite dynasty, was instated under British protection. In the 1920s the Zionist institutions in Palestine had hopes of minimizing the damage by settling Jews east of the Jordan River. In the early 1930s an opportunity arose: struggling economically, the local inhabitants resorted to selling their land. Beginning in the summer of 1933, the Palestine Land Development Company (Hachsharat Hayishuv) negotiated with a British citizen named Richard Hughes for the purchase of 17,000 dunams in Transjordan’s al-Salt district. On January 18, 1934, the parties signed a contract finalizing the deal. In practice however, land ownership rights were never formally transferred. This was due to restrictions imposed by the Transjordan government on the acquisition of land by foreigners and the opposition of the British authorities in Palestine to Jewish settlement in the region. The article traces the history of the Hughes land affair and its consequences before and after the establishment of the State of Israel. In the 1970s, the land in question was nationalized by the Jordanian government.