King Abdullah I

Abdullah bin Al-Hussein was the second son of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, King of Hejaz. A leading military commander in the 1916 Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, he arrived in Ma'an in 1920 to rally Arab forces following the French overthrow of his brother Faisal's kingdom in Damascus, meeting Winston Churchill in Jerusalem in 1921 to negotiate the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan.

Abdullah built Jordan's civil administration and the elite Arab Legion under Glubb Pasha, steering his desert realm to full independence as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946. A skilled poet and chess player who sought diplomatic solutions during the 1948 war, he was assassinated on July 20, 1951, while entering Al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers in Jerusalem.