John Bagot Glubb



Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC, KStJ, KPM (16 April 1897 – 17 March 1986), known as Glubb Pasha (غلوب باشا) and Abu Hunaik (أبو حنيك) by the Jordanians, was a British soldier, scholar, and author, who led and trained Transjordan's Arab Legion between 1939 and 1956 as its commanding general. During the First World War, he served in France. Glubb has been described as an "integral tool in the maintenance of British control."

Life
Born in Preston, Lancashire, and educated at Cheltenham College, Glubb gained a commission in the Royal Engineers in 1915. On the Western Front of World War I, he suffered a shattered jaw. In later years, this would lead to his Arab nickname of Abu Hunaik, meaning "the father of the little jaw". He was then transferred to Iraq in 1920, which Britain had started governing under a League of Nations Mandate following war, and was posted to Ramadi in 1922 "to maintain a rickety floating bridge over the river [Euphrates], carried on boats made of reeds daubed with bitumen", as he later put it. He became an officer of the Arab Legion in 1930. The next year he formed the Desert Patrol – a force consisting exclusively of Bedouin – to curb the raiding problem that plagued the southern part of the country. Within a few years he had persuaded the Bedouin to abandon their habit of raiding neighbouring tribes. He also took part in suppressing the Ikhwan revolt.

In 1939, Glubb succeeded Frederick G. Peake as the commander of the Arab Legion (subsequently known as the Jordan Royal Army). During this period, he transformed the Legion into the best-trained force in the Arab world. During World War II he led attacks on Arab forces in Iraq, and on Vichy forces in Lebanon and Syria.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Arab Legion was considered the strongest Arab army involved in the war. Glubb led the Arab Legion across the River Jordan to occupy the West Bank (May 1948). Despite some negotiation and understanding between the Jewish Agency and King Abdullah, severe fighting took place in Kfar Etzion (May 1948), Jerusalem and Latrun (May–July 1948). According to Avi Shlaim,

"Rumours that Abdullah was once again in contact with the Jewish leaders further damaged his standing in the Arab world. His many critics suggested that he was prepared to compromise the Arab claim to the whole of Palestine as long as he could acquire part of Palestine for himself. 'The internecine struggles of the Arabs,' reported Glubb, 'are more in the minds of Arab politicians than the struggle against the Jews. Azzam Pasha, the mufti and the Syrian government would sooner see the Jews get the whole of Palestine than that King Abdullah should benefit.'"



Glubb remained in charge of the defence of the West Bank following the armistice in March 1949. In 1952, differences emerged between Glubb and the newly acceded King Hussein I, especially over defence arrangements, the promotion of Arab officers and the funding of the Legion. Arab nationalists believed that Glubb's first loyalty was to the United Kingdom and that he had attempted to pressure Hussein into joining the Baghdad Pact. Hussein, wanting to distance himself from the British and to disprove the contention that Glubb was the actual ruler of Jordan, dismissed Glubb and several other British senior officers from the Arab Legion on 1 March 1956. Despite his decommission, which was forced upon him by public opinion, Glubb remained a close friend of the King.

He spent the remainder of his life writing books and articles, mostly on the Middle East and on his experiences with the Arabs.

He served on the Board of Governors of Monkton Combe School from 1956 to 1966.

Glubb died in 1986 at his home in Mayfield, East Sussex. King Hussein gave the eulogy at the service of thanksgiving for Glubb's life, held in Westminster Abbey on 17 April 1986. A stained glass window in his local church, St Dunstan's Church, Mayfield, celebrates his life and legacy.

His widow died in 2006, whereupon his papers were deposited with the Middle East Centre Archive at St Antony's College, Oxford.

Honours
Glubb was appointed OBE in 1925; CMG in 1946; and KCB in 1956.

Family
Glubb's father was Major-General Sir Frederic Manley Glubb, of Lancashire, who had been chief engineer in the British Second Army during the First World War; his mother was Letitia Bagot from County Roscommon. He was a brother of the racing driver Gwenda Hawkes.

In 1938, Glubb married Muriel Rosemary Forbes, the daughter of physician James Graham Forbes. The couple had a son, Godfrey Peter Manley (named after the Crusader King Godfrey of Bouillon) born in Jerusalem in 1939, and another son was born in May 1940 but lived only a few days. In 1944, they adopted Naomi, a Bedouin girl who was then three months old, and in 1948 they adopted two Palestinian refugee children called Atalla, renamed John and Mary.

Reception
Glubb's autobiographical story A Soldier with the Arabs was reviewed in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1958; The National Review, May 1958; The Saturday Review, February 1958; The Reporter, April 1958; The New Yorker, October 1958; and Foreign Affairs, April 1958.

Writing in The Reporter, Ray Alan commented that the book was more than just an apologia; while it provided "no serious political analysis or social observation", it did offer interesting insights into the period, even if Glubb was out of touch with later trends in Middle Eastern politics. What Alan found more surprising was that Glubb also had hardly anything new to say about the 1948 Palestine war "in which he had star billing," instead lapsing into self-justifying propaganda. Alan ends his review with a long quotation from T. E. Lawrence, in which he reflects on what role a foreigner may play, and prays to God that "men will not, for love of the glamour of strangeness, go out to prostitute themselves and their talents in serving another race", but will let them "take what action or reaction they please from [his] silent example".

Writing in the Saturday Review, Carl Hermann Voss commented that Glubb served with and for the Arabs for 36 years, 17 of them for King Abdullah of Jordan. The portrait photograph is captioned "Glubb Pasha—'I ... failed hopelessly.'" Voss calls the book well written no matter how subjective.

Legacy
In his 1993 poetry collection, Out of Danger, James Fenton mentions Glubb Pasha in "Here Come the Drum Majorettes!": There's a Gleb on a steppe in a dacha. There's a Glob on a dig on the slack side. There's a Glubb in the sand (he's a pasha).

Writings
The source for the following bibliography is Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2005. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005, except *.
 * (With Henry Field) The Yezidis, Sulubba, and Other Tribes of Iraq and Adjacent Regions, G. Banta, 1943.
 * , Hodder & Stoughton, 1948, Da Capo Press, 1976.
 * , Hodder & Stoughton, 1957.
 * Britain and the Arabs: A Study of Fifty Years, 1908 to 1958, Hodder & Stoughton, 1959.
 * War in the Desert: An R.A.F. Frontier Campaign, Hodder & Stoughton, 1960, Norton, 1961.
 * The Great Arab Conquests, Hodder & Stoughton, 1963, Prentice-Hall, 1964.
 * The Empire of the Arabs, Hodder & Stoughton, 1963, Prentice-Hall, 1964.
 * The Course of Empire: The Arabs and Their Successors, Hodder & Stoughton, 1965, Prentice-Hall, 1966.
 * The Lost Centuries: From the Muslim Empires to the Renaissance of Europe, 1145–1453, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966, Prentice-Hall, 1967.
 * Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, Walker & Co., 1967.
 * The Middle East Crisis: A Personal Interpretation, Hodder & Stoughton, 1967.
 * A Short History of the Arab Peoples, Stein & Day, 1969.
 * The Life and Times of Muhammad, Stein & Day, 1970.
 * , Hodder & Stoughton, 1971 (unavailable on line 8 Aug. 2021).
 * Soldiers of Fortune: The Story of the Mamlukes, Stein & Day, 1973.
 *  The Way of Love: Lessons from a Long Life, Hodder & Stoughton, 1974.
 * Haroon Al Rasheed and the Great Abbasids, Hodder & Stoughton, 1976.
 * Into Battle: A Soldier's Diary of the Great War, Cassell, 1977.
 * , Blackwood (Edinburgh), 1978.
 * Arabian Adventures: Ten Years of Joyful Service, Cassell (London), 1978.
 * The Changing Scenes of Life: An Autobiography, Quartet Books (London), 1983.

Photos

 * Glubb Pasha on the right with King Abdullah in the middle
 * The Desert Patrol