John Bagot Glubb


Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC, KStJ, KPM, known as Glubb Pasha, 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.

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 one with 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 , 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.
In 1939, Glubb succeeded Frederick G. Peake as the commander of the Arab Legion. During this period, he transformed the Legion into the best-trained force in the Arab world.
According to the Encyclopædia of the Orient:
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. Despite some negotiation and understanding between the Jewish Agency and King Abdullah, severe fighting took place in Kfar Etzion massacre, Jerusalem and Latrun. According to Avi Shlaim,
Glubb remained in charge of the defence of the West Bank following the armistice in March 1949. He retained command of the Arab Legion until 1 March 1956, when King Hussein dismissed him and several other British senior officers in the Arab Legion. Hussein wanted to distance himself from the British and to disprove the contention of Arab nationalists that Glubb was the actual ruler of Jordan. Differences between Glubb and Hussein had been apparent since 1952, especially over defence arrangements, the promotion of Arab officers and the funding of the Legion. 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.

Honours

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

RibbonDescriptionNotes
Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath
  • 1956
Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George
  • 1946
    • Distinguished Service Order
  • 1941
    • Order of the British Empire
  • 1924
    • Military Cross
  • 1918
    • Order of Saint John
  • 1954, Knight
    • King's Police Medal
  • 1939, for distinguished service.
    • 1914-15 Star
  • British War Medal
  • Victory Medal
  • General Service Medal
  • 1939-1945 Star
  • Defence Medal
  • War Medal 1939-1945
  • Supreme Order of the Renaissance
  • Order of El Nahda, 1st Class
    • Order of Independence
  • Order of El Istiqlal, 1st Class
    • Arab Legion Medal for World War II
  • Arab Legion Medal for 1948 Arab–Israeli War
  • Order of Al Rafidain

  • Family

    In 1938, Glubb married Muriel Rosemary Forbes, the daughter of physician James Graham Forbes. The couple had a son, Godfrey 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.
    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.
    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. His widow died in 2006, whereupon his papers were deposited with the Middle East Centre Archive at St Antony's College, Oxford.

    Autobiography

    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 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 Abdulla of Jordan. The portrait photograph is captioned "Glubb Pasha—'I... failed hopelessly.'" Voss calls the book well written, absorbing, and often deeply moving; engrossing and informative, no matter how subjective; but also overly long. He enjoys the sensitive and lyrical writing that in places "could be scanned as poetry", feeling the "sudden fury of a border raid".

    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."

    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 *.