Abdullah I, Abdullah ibn Hussein

King of Jordan 1946–51. In 1921, after the collapse of the Ottoman empire, he became emir of the British mandate of Transjordan, covering present-day Jordan, and became king when the mandate ended in May 1946. In May 1948 King Abdullah attacked the newly established state of Israel, capturing large areas. He retained the area called the West Bank (Arab Palestine) after a ceasefire in 1949 and renamed the country the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He was assassinated in July 1951 by a Palestinian Arab fanatic.

The son of Hussein ibn Ali, King of the Hejaz, and the brother of Faisal I of Iraq, he was born in Mecca and educated in Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey. From 1912 to 1914, Abdullah sat in the Ottoman legislature, representing Mecca, but sided with Britain during World War I. Between 1916 to 1918, working with the British guerrilla leader T E Lawrence, he played a key role in the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule, leading guerrilla raids on Turkish garrisons.