Hussein

/hoo sayn"/, n.

1. Also Hosein, Husain. (al-Husayn), A.D. 629?-680, Arabian caliph, the son of Ali and Fatima and the brother of Hasan.

2. Saddam /sah dahm"/ (at-Takriti), born 1937, Iraqi political leader: president since 1979.

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in full Ḥussein ibn Ṭalāl

born Nov. 14, 1935, Amman, Transjordan

died Feb. 7, 1999, Amman, Jordan

King of Jordan (1952–99).

Educated in Britain, he succeeded his father, King Ṭalāl, while still in his teens. His country's precarious geographic and economic position and the many Palestinians living there (whom he, unlike other Arab rulers, offered citizenship and a passport) forced him to chart a cautious course in international relations. Though he carried on secret talks with all Israeli leaders except Menachem Begin, he joined other Arab nations against Israel in the Six-Day War (1967). When the Jordan-based Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) threatened his reign after defeat in that conflict, Ḥussein expelled it (1971). Thereafter he sought to repair relations with the PLO without unduly antagonizing Israel or the U.S. He surrendered Jordan's claim to the West Bank in 1988, ceding it to the PLO. He considered his 1994 peace treaty with Israel his crowning achievement.

King Ḥussein of Jordan.

Gamma

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▪ 2000

Hussein ibn Talal 

      Jordanian monarch (b. Nov. 14, 1935, Amman, Transjordan [now Jordan]—d. Feb. 7, 1999, Amman), was a moderate Arab ruler who fostered peace, stability, development, and tolerance in the Middle East, a turbulent region of political and religious extremism. During his 46-year reign, Hussein was one of the few Arab leaders to balance good relations with Western countries, particularly the U.K. and the U.S., with solidarity to the Arab world. Hussein was the grandson of King Abdullah of the Hashimite dynasty, which traced its lineage to the prophet Muhammad. He was educated in Egypt at Victoria College and in Britain at Harrow School and the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. In 1951 he witnessed his grandfather's assassination by a Palestinian nationalist, and in 1953, at the age of 18, he succeeded his father, King Talal, who had been deposed by the parliament on the grounds of mental illness. Throughout his tenure Hussein faced difficult situations in trying to accommodate the interests of the Palestinians, many of them refugees, who formed Jordan's majority. In the 1950s Hussein survived coups and assassination attempts by Arab nationalists. During the Six-Day War of 1967, he lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel, and after the war Palestinian fedayeen commandos under Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat established a virtual state-within-a-state in Jordan. In 1970, during a period known as “Black September,” army troops defeated the Palestinian guerrillas attempting to overthrow Hussein's government. When Jordan stayed out of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Arab League transferred (1974) Hussein's role as the representative of the Palestinian people to Arafat, and in 1988 Hussein surrendered Jordan's claim to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. During the Persian Gulf War (1990–91), he refused to join the coalition against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and instead called for a peaceful resolution. This position prompted the U.S. and the U.K., as well as Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, to withdraw much-needed financial assistance. Hussein later distanced himself from Iraq and played a pivotal role in brokering the postwar Arab-Israeli peace. Endorsing the Madrid conference sponsored by the U.S. in October 1991, he persuaded the Palestinians to participate in the peace talks. In 1994, after years of secret negotiations, Jordan entered into a long-sought peace treaty with Israel. In 1998, though frail from cancer treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Hussein left the hospital to mediate in the summit between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Wye, Md. Just before his death he unexpectedly altered the line of royal succession from his brother Hassan to his oldest son, Abdullah. Hussein was the author of three books: Uneasy Lies the Head (1962), My War with Israel (1969), and Mon Métier de Roi (1975).

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▪ king of Jordan

in full  Ḥussein ibn Ṭalāl , Ḥussein also spelled  Ḥusayn 

born Nov. 14, 1935, Amman, Transjordan [now Jordan]

died Feb. 7, 1999, Amman, Jordan

 king of Jordan from 1953 to 1999 and a member of the Hāshimite dynasty, considered by many Muslims to be among the Ahl al-Bayt (“People of the House,” the direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and the traditional guardians of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. His reign marked the shaping of the modern kingdom of Jordan, and his policies greatly increased the Jordanian standard of living.

      Following the July 1951 assassination of Ḥussein's grandfather King ʿAbdullāh (Abdullāh Iʿ) in Jerusalem, his father, Ṭalāl, ascended to the throne but was in 1952 declared unfit to rule by parliament owing to mental illness. King Ṭalāl abdicated in favour of Ḥussein, who, after spending some months at Sandhurst Royal Military College in England, assumed full constitutional powers on May 2, 1953.

      Ḥussein's policies fostered slow but steady economic progress, though he was forced to depend on significant financial aid from the West. Ḥussein's base of support was his country's indigenous Bedouin tribesmen, with whom he fostered close personal ties. The king's socially conservative policies and his alignment with the Western powers were often criticized by other Arab leaders as well as by his domestic opposition. Thus, popular demonstrations—especially among Palestinians who had fled to the West Bank after the 1948–49 war with Israel—and political unrest precluded his joining the pro-Western mutual defense treaty between the United Kingdom, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, known as the Central Treaty Organization, or Baghdad Pact (1955), which he had helped initiate. In an effort to build domestic support, in 1956 he dismissed Gen. John Bagot Glubb (Glubb, Sir John Bagot), the British officer who commanded the Arab Legion (later part of a unified Jordanian army). Many Palestinians—who by that time represented a majority in Jordan—felt little attachment to his dynasty; Ḥussein responded by strengthening the military establishment to assert the authority of the crown over that of parliament.

      With U.S. aid he steadily expanded and modernized his military forces, which he used to prevent attempts to overthrow his regime. Ḥussein reluctantly entered the Six-Day War of June 1967 (see Arab-Israeli wars), but Israel's military victory was a severe setback, resulting as it did in the loss to Israel of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Jordan had annexed in 1950, and the influx of some 250,000 additional Palestinian refugees into the country. After the war Ḥussein's rule was threatened by the military forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who based themselves in Jordan to carry out guerrilla raids against Israel. By September 1970 the PLO virtually controlled a state within a state. With his future in doubt, Ḥussein launched a full-scale attack to expel the organization in a civil war later remembered as Black September (see Jordan: From 1967 to civil war (Jordan)). Despite Iraqi and Syrian military support for the PLO, by August 1971 Ḥussein's army had succeeded in driving the PLO's forces from Jordan.

      In the following years Ḥussein steered a difficult course: he refrained from confronting Israel militarily, mended relations with the PLO, and sought both closer ties with and financial aid from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. He also maintained good relations with the United States and Great Britain. In 1988 Ḥussein surrendered Jordan's claim to the disputed West Bank, as well as its role in representing the Palestinians living there, to the PLO. Ḥussein walked a fine line during and after the events leading to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War of 1991. While remaining sympathetic to Iraq brought popular domestic support for the king, the war cost Jordan dearly economically, as more than 300,000 Palestinians expelled from states in the Gulf region moved into Jordan. In the wake of the Israel-PLO accords of 1993, Ḥussein on Oct. 26, 1994, signed a bilateral peace treaty ending more than 40 years of hostility and normalizing relations between Jordan and Israel.

 Until his death in early 1999, Ḥussein helped further peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and even intervened in October 1998 to prevent the collapse of the Wye River talks (see Israel: The Wye River Memorandum (Israel)) after having spent most of that year in the United States undergoing medical treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Ḥussein's funeral was attended by numerous heads of state and important political figures, an indication of his international reputation. He was succeeded by his eldest son, ʿAbdullāh, who became King ʿAbdullāh II (Abdullah IIʿ).

      Ḥussein's autobiography, Uneasy Lies the Head, was published in 1962.

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