ELECTRICAL CURRENT AND NATIONALIST TRENDS IN TRANSJORDAN: PINHAS RUTENBERG AND THE ELECTRIFICATION OF AMMAN

Abstract

[Amman] was quite different from the Beirut I was getting to know and feel comfortable in. In the first place, Beirut was a good-sized city of al most 150,000, a busy cosmopolitan seaport. Amman with a population of about 18,000 was entitled to be called a city by virtue of its being the national capital, and by contrast with the desert, the scattered villages, and the few small towns of Transjordan. Beirut was noisy with motor traffic, braying donkeys, and a web of tramlines with their clanging cars. Amman was quiet with a few cars, lots of horses, and a few camels. Sometimes, on quiet nights in Beirut the muezzin could be heard chanting the call to prayer from a minaret in the Muslim quarter of the city. In Amman, the call of the muez zin was loud and clear. (...) In Beirut, European clothes were the rule. The long, flowing aba, and the aqal and kaffiyeh of the desert Arabs were so rare as to attract attention. In Amman we four in European clothes were stared at. Desert robes were the rule (...). Our hotel, the caf? across the street, a lot of small shops, the post office and other government offices commer cial downtown so to speak were in a valley surrounded by hills on which the people of Amman had built their homes. On the top of one hill was the Amir's palace, looking across a noble Roman ruin on the top of an other. (...).1