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Historical Flags (Jordan)

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Before 1916

by Antonio Martins

Jordan was part of the Ottoman Empire and used the Ottoman flag.

Santiago Dotor, 10 November 2000

Emirate of Transjordan 1921-1928

by Santiago Dotor

The Transjordanian flag was the same as today, but without the white star, which makes it the same as the Palestinian National Authority flag. That is black, white, green horizontal stripes with a red triangle at the hoist. At that point (1923 is the year I am quoting) Hejaz's (now in Saudi Arabia) flag was black, green, white horizontal stripes with a red triangle at the hoist. The Federation of Syria's flag was green, white, green horizontal stripes with a French flag in the canton (1/2 the width). The British Mandate of Palestine used the Union Flag. The Kingdom of Egypt's flag was green with a large white crescent, within whose horns were three stars in a triangular formation (two to the left and one to the right). All this came from some research William Crampton did for me when I was doing a historical map of the Middle East showing the changing borders this century. I wanted to make sure that for each year we featured the flags were the correct ones.

Graham Bartram, 1 July 1997

The zone was occupied by the Arab Legion and British troops. The emirate was created in 1921 for a Hashemite family member. The flag should be the flag of the Arab revolt, the same of the Hejaz (the king was the father of Transjordan's emir), Syria (kingdom on 1920 but flag of Arab revolt in use between 1918 to 1920, and star was added 1920) or Iraq (arab government 1920-21, two stars were added 1921 if I don't remember wrong).

Jaume Ollé, 2 July 1997

Abdullah, son of Sharif Hussein of the Hejaz, became king of Transjordan on 1 April 1921. Transjordan was separated from Palestine as an autonomous state on 26 May 1923. In 1921 Abdullah adopted for Transjordan a variation of the Sharifian flag, changing the order of the stripes to black-white-green, and adding a white star in the red triangle.

T.F. Mills, 16 December 1997

Jordan used the same flag as Hejaz from March 1921. After this several variants were used but I believe that the star was not added until 1928 when a definitive design was adopted.

Jaume Ollé, 10 November 2000

I wonder if Jaume Ollé is actually saying that Hejaz changed the order of its stripes to black-white-green on March 1921. Since the Transjordan Emirate was also created c.1921, the obvious question is, did it ever use the black-green-white flag? Or did it use the black-white-green flag before Hejaz did?

Santiago Dotor, 13 November 2000

The timing may be coincidental, but the British decision to slice Transjordan off from the rest of the Palestine Mandate was made in February 1921 and the Cairo Conference, at which the British decided to place Sharif Hussein's sons Abdallah and Feisal on the thrones of Transjordan and Iraq respectively took place in March 1921.

Joseph McMillan, 13 November 2000

Joseph McMillan pointed out a very interesting link to one of Gertrude Bell's letters, extracted in the Hejaz page. That letter was dated 28th August 1921. Should we assume that at least until that date the flag of Hejaz, Jordan and (until 1920) Syria were the same, black-green-white (with the red triangle)? Obviously at that time Jordan did not still have a star, since Gertrude Bell (who knew very well those countries) proposes to differentiate the Hejaz flag for Iraq by putting a gold star on the black stripe or on the red triangle.

Santiago Dotor, 16 November 2000

Emirate of Transjordan 1928-c.1939

by Željko Heimer

The Organic Law of Transjordan (16 April 1928) has a description of the flag in Article 3 of the Law. The height of the triangle is equal to 1/3 of flag-length, the diameter of the star is equal to 1/24 of flag-length (i.e. 1/12 of flag-height).

Victor Lomantsov, 5 November 2000

The flag must have changed since 1928 (and probably before the publishing of Flaggenbuch 1939). I understand that the height of the triangle means the distance from the hoist to its central point. This is currently the same dimension as the flag's width, i.e. half the flag's length. And 1/12th of the flag's width is quite a tiny star.

Santiago Dotor, 6 November 2000

This was the flag of Syria, also adopted by the emirate of Jordan, reported in Sulaiman Musa, Origins of the Arab revolt flag, The Flag Bulletin no. 123, 1987. Musa shows the flag with equilateral triangle, shorter than today. The long triangle reaching the centre of the flag was not introduced in 1928, but only some years later. (...)

Ralf Stelter, 25 January 2001