John Winterburn (University of Bristol, UK)

The area of what is today the south of Jordan formed part of the Ottoman Empire for a least 400 years until the early 20th century. The area was traversed by the Hajj pilgrimage caravan route, taking pilgrims south to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Hejaz.

By the end of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire was in decline and had become the “sick man of Europe” and in a last desperate act of modernity the sultan ordered the construction of a railway to convey pilgrims to Mecca and increasing his influence among the Muslim faithful.

The Hajj route had been protected by a few Ottoman forts dating from the middle ages but the real protection for the pilgrims came from the Bedouin tribes who offered safe passage and protection in return for payment. The Bedouin saw the coming of the railway as a threat to their livelihood and control of the area and as a pseudo-military occupation of their lands.
The Hejaz Railway always needed to be protected from Bedouin raiders, who saw it a both a threat and as an opportunity to pillage its infrastructure. However, with the outbreak of the First World War and the allegiance of the Ottoman Empire to the Axis powers the railway became fully militarised and a linear zone of occupation, some 1300km long came into being; an occupation by an powerful industrial empire within a landscape of Bedouin pastoralists.
The archaeology that survives from this period provides an insight into how the landscape was controlled by the occupying forces and remnants of their material culture shows links to Europe and to the battles taking place in northern Europe. Today, myths and legends about the occupation stimulate both and interest in and a destruction of the archaeology.