Royal Standard (Jordan)

Last modified: 2002-12-07 by santiago dotor
Keywords: jordan | royal | triangle: hoist (red) | star: 7 points | crown (white) | crown (yellow) | gironny |
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by Michael P. Smuda

• Description
• Colour of the Crown
• Standard of the Emir of Transjordan 1928-?
• Former King's Standard 1959-1966 ?

See also:

• Jordan

Jordan's royal standard is quite unique, it has a small national flag in the center, on a white oval, only the star in the triangle is replaced by an arched crown. The field is made up of rays in the state colors, black in each corner (like an andrew's cross) then white, green, white, red, white, repeats. If you could have gyronny with 4 colors and white in every other space that is what this looks like.

Josh Fruhlinger, 8 April 1996

Smith 1975 p. 295 depicts the crown on the arms in gold/yellow.

Kevin McNamara, 18 November 1998

After watching Jordan TV, I found out that the crown is in gold.

Dov Gutterman, 19 November 1998

Months ago I submitted a GIF of the Jordanian Royal Standard. Dov Gutterman and others said that the crown should have been gold, so I changed it. This evening on the TV news, they showed the new king of Jordan and behind him were two royal standards, both with white crowns as shown in Pedersen 1971. This is via cable and my color is fine. What's up?

Michael P. Smuda, 8 February 1999

Page 3 of The Guardian UK newspaper February 8th 1999 has a photo of the new King Abdullah passing a Jordanian royal standard in the background. This is the rayed version and it clearly bears a white crown.

Roy Stilling, 8 February 1999

Yesterday all Spanish TV channels plus BBC World showed Queen Noor and women of the royal family standing before a royal standard with a white crown. Also King Abdullah was shown taking office before two royal standards with white crowns. But I believe at some point (or simultaneously) a royal standard with a golden crown has existed. Whitney Smith had it like that in Smith 1975 and Dov Gutterman saw it on Jordan TV. By the way, the crown looked more elaborate than the one in FOTW: some thin, black fimbriation in the borders plus some hatching to make slight shadows.

Santiago Dotor, 9 February 1999

I must add one more piece more to the puzzle. My observation on the royal flag was when I watched the finale of JTV broadcasting, showing, while the himn is sung, the picture of the late king and the royal standard. The same finale was used since I started watching JTV about more than 15 years ago, and by judging from the quite "young days" photo of the late king, even more. Therefore, my observation, even registered in last months, is not, by all means by watching a current flag. If W. Smith informed about a gold crown at 1975, and no doubt the current flags are with white crown, I must agree with Santiago's suggestion that there was a change somewhere in the way. BTW - I tried to copy the finale with my VCR, but it was already changed!

Dov Gutterman, 10 February 1999

I was to Jordan in March 2000 and I can say with certainty, from having seen it in the king's office in Basman palace and flying from a pole above the palace entrance that it [the crown on the royal standard] is all white with black detailing and with none of the red field behind it showing through.

Joseph McMillan, 4 April 2000

After the early 1999 funerals for King Hussein and the frequent media display of royal standards which took place at the time, it is now clear that the current standard shows a white crown. However, there are reasons to think that it was gold at some time in the past, until sometime in between 1971 and 1999. Pedersen 1971 shows it white, but Smith 1975 keeps showing it gold. Dov Gutterman saw it as gold on a Jordanian TV recording from the 1980s until late 1998 or early 1999, when the recording was replaced with one showing the flag with a white crown.

Moreover, there are clues that even earlier it had a star instead of a crown, so that the flag contained inside the oval was identical to the national flag. It is shown like that in both Flaggenbuch 1939 and Neubecker 1939 — read on under Standard of the Emir of Transjordan 1939 below.

Znamierowski 1999 says the Jordanian royal standard (with crown) has been in use "since 1928". Znamierowski 1999 is wrong however in that it shows the crown as gold.

Conclusions? Well, it appears that we have some facts:

• the current standard has a white crown;
• the crown was gold on a former standard, for which dates are uncertain;

• the original standard had a star, this changed later to a gold crown, then to a white one;
• Neubecker (Flaggenbuch 1939 and Neubecker 1939) is mistaken and the standard never had a star, only a crown (firstly gold later white);
• Smith, Znamierowski et.al. are mistaken and the crown has always been white since 1928.

Santiago Dotor, 31 October 2000

The Jordanian protocol department confirmed that the Royal Standard has a white crown rather than a gold one as I had originally assumed.

Graham Bartram, 1 November 2000

by Ivan Sache and Michael P. Smuda

Flaggenbuch 1939 shows the standard of the Emir of Transjordan as a small national flag in the centre of a white oval. The national flag nearly touches the oval and has no black border, whereas the oval does have a black border.

Ivan Sache, 11 March 2000

Both Flaggenbuch 1939 and Neubecker 1939 show a star instead of a crown, so that the flag contained inside the oval was identical to the national flag.

This might be a (quite unusual) mistake of Neubecker's, since there are reasons to think that the flag within the oval was never actually the same as the Jordanian flag. Barraclough and Crampton 1981 claims that the unusual design of the royal standard aimed to differentiate it from the (at the time) royal standards of Hejaz and Iraq — the two other countries ruled in the early 1920s by the Hashemite dinasty. Barraclough and Crampton 1981 adds that the flag contained in the oval (national flag with crown instead of star, no indication if white or yellow as it only has a line drawing) was identical to the 1930-1958 royal standard of Iraq. Flaggenbuch 1939 shows indeed the Iraqi royal standard as a black-white-green tricolour with a red hoist triangle on which appears a yellow arab crown. The only difference with the flag in the oval of the Jordanian royal standard is that the triangle in the Iraqi standard has a square angle, as that of Hejaz.

Also Znamierowski 1999 says the Jordanian royal standard with crown has been in use "since 1928".

Santiago Dotor, 31 October 2000

by Calvin Paige Herring

This flag is described as the King's flag in two versions of The Observer's Book of Flags: Evans 1959 and Evans 1966. The description was "[t]he King's Standard adds a crown, in gold, between the star and the hoist". Flaggenbuch 1939 and all recent (since 1970s) books say that the King's Standard is the white with the multicolored rays. Was this a real royal flag, is it something else, or is it nothing?

Calvin Paige Herring, 6 February 1999