John Bagot Glubb

Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC (16 April 1897, Preston, Lancashire – 17 March 1986), 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 received a serious wound – 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 [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.