IV. The Ottomans and the 19th Century: Shaping Jordan’s Modern Administrative Boundaries

The years 1300-1402 were labeled as a growth spurt for the Ottoman Empire. The Empire began with the Turks in Anatolia and lasted for over 600 years.  By 1402 the Ottomans controlled most of the Southeastern European, Western Asia, and Northern Africa regions. This expansion occurred after conquering the Byzantine Empire which controlled most of the land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea in addition to some of the Middle East and North Africa.

In 1516 “Bilad alSham” (the Levant) was occupied by the Ottomans. As with the earlier Islamic period, administrative divisions were used. The area came under Ottoman rule for four centuries until 1918. Niyabat al-Kerak was now known as Liwa Ajlun – basically covering the same land as modern-day Jordan. The Kingdom was divided into several “Nawahi”, al-Salt, al-Ghor, Ajlun, al-Kerak, Bani Alwan, and al-Kura, amongst others. The Jordan River, except for the north, formed the valley which was lined with continuous villages. Only in the south were there any isolated ones. Each of the Nawahi was composed of various settlements and villages, which included population groups of Christians, Muslims, and even sporadic Jews.  The whole area was under the auspices of the Province of Damascus. The pilgrimage route caravans to Mecca brought the region much stability.

Transjordan was a province of minor importance to the Ottoman Empire, between the 16^th and the 19^th centuries. The area was governed locally, with the safety of the Hajj pilgrimage route being of paramount importance. Starting in 1866, the Damascus Province governor, Rashid Pasha, created new administrative boundaries in Transjordan. The Qada’ of Ajlun was created, as was al-Salt. New districts were again created in 1872 with Ma’an as the capital, and updated in 1895 when al-Kerak replaced Ma‘an as the region’s capital.

The first Ottoman Empire atlas was printed in 1732 and included a copy of Katip Celebi’s map who was a geographer at the time. This map is the first detailed effort at drafting the Empire’s Asian provinces. The phrase “Land of Palestine” is written in Arabic down the River Jordan. The Ottoman Cedid Atlas by Müderris Abdurrahman Efendii shows Ottoman Syria in 1803. This map is thought to be inspired by the 1794 d’Anville map (which can be found in the General Atlas of William Faden). However, this version included additional details reflecting the Ottoman provinces. Likewise, it reads “Land of Palestine” in Arabic on it.

Figure 13: Cedid Atlas by Müderris Abdurrahman Efendi

Source: Cedid Atlas, 1803

The Carte de l’Egypte from 1799 was drafted by Pierre Jacotin, under Napoleon, who originally worked on the surveying during Napoleon’s movements in Egypt and Syria. He produced the 1^st map of Palestine which was based on triangulation, and which formed the starting point for many of the subsequent maps until that of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) in 1873 (which I write about below). The map is considered highly flawed, though it is a major shift from the political and biblical maps produced earlier. The boundaries shown are only physical, however where the French were unable to survey, made up details were “added to the map ad libitum.” This is especially clear with the natural landscape and mountain ranges drawn.

Figure 14: Jacotin Map of the Jordan

Source: Jacotin, 1799

By 1815, Aaron Arrowsmith, who was an English cartographer, engraver, and publisher, based on Henry Maundrell’s work from 1703, Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, produced “A Sketch of the Countries between Jerusalem and Aleppo”. Maundrell was an Oxford academic who had undertaken an Easter pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1697. On the map, the description of Jacob’s Well, on the outskirts of Nablus, is a direct quotation from Maundrell. A line from the German explorer Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, from A Brief Account of the Countries Adjoining the Lake of Tiberias, the Jordan and the Dead Sea published in 1809 is also included. The map is a combination of a modern map and a biblical map, which also shows the Twelve Tribes (the twelve sons of Jacob from Rachel and Leah).

One of the earliest maps showing the Ottoman divisions was that of Sidney Hall in 1830. Hall was a British engraver and cartographer who reproduced atlases with maps of the United Kingdom and the ancient world from his engravings.

Figure 15: Hall Map 1830

Source: Sidney Hall, 1830

William Hughes was an English geographer, cartographer, author and academic who had made a career of producing maps of Palestine. In 1840 he published the Illuminated Atlas of Scripture Geography. Produced for the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, an organization which prided itself on publishing information to support those who could not access formal education, the map below is almost entirely political, showing detailed illustrations of the Ottoman administrative districts.

Figure 16: Hughes Map

Source: William Hughes, 1840

In 1840 Charles Rochfort Scott, an army officer, developed the Royal Engineers map, which was drafted during the Oriental Crisis, of the Egyptian Ottoman war. This was the second time that a triangulation-based attempt was made to map Jordan and Palestine. A version was prepared in 1846 for the British Foreign Office. The map was also the base for the drafting of Van de Velde’s map, which we will discuss later.

In 1841 Heinrich Kiepert, a German geographer, produced a map to be included with the first edition of Biblical Researches in Palestine by the “Father of Biblical Geography” Edward Robinson. The 1849 map from William Lynch, a naval officer, was prepared for the United States Hydrographic Office as commissioned and was published in Narrative of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea. Lynch was the first cartographer to determine that the Dead Sea was below sea level through using the method of triangulation, which the scientific community had previously suspected but had not been able to conclusively prove. The mission was equally cultural and promotional as it was scientific as he was tasked with understanding his surroundings more and mapping a potential route from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea.

The 1850 Carl Zimmermann map, made by the German painter, in The Atlas of Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula, was spread over 11 lithographic maps and two geologic profiles. This continued this much more scientific trend. Charles Van de Velde in 1858 produced what became known as one of the most precise maps preceding the PEF Survey which I will discuss later.

In 1870 the French sent an expedition to map the Levant as a follow-up attempt to expand the map of Lebanon to include full coverage of Jordan and Palestine. The Franco Prussian War outbreak saw the two cartographers Galilee Jean-Joseph Mieulet and Isidore Derrien recalled. The map was published in 1873. This map did not have a legend and was considered inferior to the PEF.

By the end of the Ottoman Empire, the administration had taken as many steps as possible to divide up the region, with the Jordan River as the major boundary with trade routes magnifying. As the Ottomans continued with their districting, during 1873, the Palestine Exploration Fund was made to help excavate and map Palestine. With Queen Victoria as the royal patron, the PEF was designed to elevate the fields of history and archaeology with research, and glean a better understanding of the geology, topography, customs and culture of biblical Palestine. Their cartography initiative was funded by the British War Office and operated by members of the Royal Engineers and was focused on the production of a scientific map that had little to do with the major archaeological efforts that the PEF had undertaken in the past. Ultimately the PEF produced the map used by British General Edmund Allenby to drive the Ottomans out of Palestine, which, with some modifications, defined the initial colonial claims to Palestine. This shows how the measurement and representation involved in cartography can also be used to control and define regions, and many identify this map as the first which made colonial claims to Palestine. The PEF considered themselves geographers and were mostly unaware of how their efforts were leveraged by the War Office. The PEF were the peak of cartographic work in Palestine as the first fully scientific map. While the map is said to be scientific and historically accurate, the divisive lines drawn show just how much maps are methods of exerting power and control politically.

It was clear early on to the PEF surveyors that the Jordan River was a dividing line along which urban density varied, and east of the Jordan was much sparser and less densely populated. There was a sense of “competition” between the British and French explorers within the Holy Land, and with limited resources and funding, the PEF heavily invested in mapping the region to the west of the Jordan, and as it developed.

With the American Palestine Exploration Society (APES) offering assistance, the PEF, internally expecting them to fall short, assigned them the task they expected was of less significance from a military, and biblical, perspective. This was the “eastern” survey. The PEF promptly disregarded these efforts, which made for Palestinian terrain exclusively western. Thus, the boundary of the Jordan River was cemented as a lasting and permanent border, for the first time in this manner, and this led to a Palestine only west of the Jordan River.

The War Office published its maps in 1879, and the PEF a year later. The maps that PEF published were indeed biblical in their north-south and east-west axis, or “from Dan to Beersheba” and “from the Jordan to the Sea”. The area was divided with the idea of it to be ruled as a colony, and Protestant homeland.

A map of the east of the Jordan was also needed in the fight against the Ottomans, especially with the Germans building a railway from Damascus to Haifa. In 1884, the PEF published the Eastern Map of the Jordan, which was 500 square miles, gaining knowledge from Gottlieb Schumacher, who was the German railway engineer and had surveyed the area by the Yarmouk River. The detail was lacking as it compared to the map of Western Palestine, and the area was thus named Eastern Palestine.

Figure 17: PEF Atlas

Source: PEF Atlas, 1884

In 1882, the Hawran’s Special Committee for Land, under the Damascus Province, drew up the district of Ajlun’s land cadaster. The new cadaster led to agricultural villages emerging. In 1822 Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, a Swiss traveler, who claimed to have been the first modern European to have laid eyes on Petra, produced a map of Syria, Jordan and the Holy Land, including Egypt, published in his Travels in Syria and the Holy Land.

In 1906, for the southern districts, the land register was launched, covering al-Kerak, al-Salt, al-Tafila, and Ma’an. The Ottomans had very little by way of road infrastructure. The King’s Highway and the Hajj Road were two main north-south roads that crossed Transjordan, and settlements developed along these routes. In 1900, construction began for the Hijaz railway and in 1908 Medina was reached. Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hamid II, from 1876 to 1909, and the last Sultan to effectively control the fragile and failing state, celebrated the religious aspects the railway would facilitate.

The railway encouraged the emergence of new settlements, helping shape the borders of new administrative districts in modern Jordan. Extended communication links with Palestine meant the exposure of the Jordanian market regionally, and two roads linked Jerusalem with Salt, with a bridge built, connecting the two banks of the Jordan River.

The Ottoman Empire remained in control until 1918 in the Arab region and were the first to consider the Jordan River a divide between Liwas. For Jordan, the Ottoman reign meant utilizing the Jordan River as a border between Liwas, while leveraging it for trade and migration which defined this period. Most Liwas had the Jordan River as their border, the only exception being the Liwa of Ajloun.

By the end of the Ottoman era, especially with the production of the PEF map, the triangulation of the maps was much better structured, and the maps were more accurate. The boundary of the Jordan River as a dividing force for administrative and political control was well established and would become the foundation for modern Jordan moving forward.