Deep Time and Modern Anxiety: Jordan’s Quest for a National Narrative

by Sameh Almahariq

Petra - part of Jordan's narrative?

A decade ago, the term “narrative” rarely appeared outside academic humanities circles in Jordan. It then moved into journalism, often a sign of intellectual seriousness. Today, it has been elevated into a state project, formally embraced by the Jordanian Ministry of Culture. The ambition is wide: to construct a national narrative that stretches back two million years, drawing on prehistoric archaeological findings to anchor the nation’s presence in deep time. Yet this ambition raises a question that has received surprisingly little attention. Can a “story of a people” meaningfully exist in periods where neither a people, nor a shared language, nor a collective consciousness can be said to exist? At what point does deep time cease to be history and become something closer to abstraction?

In its next phase, the project took a more participatory, digital turn. Through an official online platform launched by the Ministry of Culture, the state invited citizens to submit personal testimonies, local folklore, and family archives to help construct the national narrative. While the gesture was inclusive, it also revealed a certain confusion: narratives are rarely built through crowdsourced campaigns. They tend to emerge more slowly, and often from less visible, organic spaces of cultural production rather than institutional coordination.

It is worth asking why this effort is taking shape now. Jordan has existed as a modern state for over a century, established as an Emirate in 1921 under Hashemite leadership and later emerging as a fully independent kingdom in the post–World War II order. Why, then, does the question of narrative appear with such urgency today?

Part of the answer lies in the present geopolitical moment. The recent escalation of violence in Gaza and the broader region has intensified existential anxieties in Jordan, particularly amid fears that regional crises do not remain contained and could threaten domestic stability. In such moments, the search for a stable national core capable of anchoring identity and sustaining resilience becomes more pressing.

For many Jordanians, this crisis has meant reaffirming a necessary distinction: that Palestine is Palestine, and Jordan is Jordan. This stance is crucial for protecting Jordanian sovereignty against regional schemes of displacement. Yet the difficulty of maintaining this distinction in absolute terms is equally apparent. The histories of the two lands, and the lives of their peoples, have been deeply intertwined for generations. Any attempt to separate them entirely risks simplifying a far more complex reality.

More broadly, the idea that any nation possesses a purely authentic, uninterrupted narrative about its land and people is difficult to sustain. This is not only a Jordanian condition; it is a global one. Nations are shaped by layers, interruptions, and encounters. Their stories are rarely singular, and almost never pure.

Jordan, in this sense, is not without a story. But its story has always come with complex historical conditions. At the moment of its formation in the early 20th century, many in the emerging political community imagined a different future, one tied to a larger Syrian or pan-Arab state. The Hashemite project itself, rooted in the legacy of the Great Arab Revolt, was not initially confined to the colonial borders that would later define the Jordanian state. Even after territorial consolidation in the 1920s, the country remained suspended between two geopolitical orientations, toward the Arabian Peninsula on one side, and toward the Levant on the other.

This geographical and political tension did not prevent the formation of a distinct national identity, but it complicated it. The question became even more profound with the mass displacement of Palestinians following the 1948 war, the subsequent unification of the East and West Banks, and the later influx of refugees from regional conflicts. These events created a deep and enduring entanglement between Jordan and Palestine on political, social, and emotional levels.

At the same time, Jordan came to be seen, by others and by itself, as a frontline state in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This perception shaped not only its external diplomatic role but also elements of its internal identity, where the language of steadfastness and sacrifice became central to the national self-image. Yet such images carried their own domestic tensions, culminating in 1970 in a direct, tragic confrontation between the sovereignty of the state and the momentum of Palestinian revolutionary factions.

Since then, the foundational question of “who is the Jordanian?” has never entirely disappeared. It has resurfaced in different forms, at different moments, often reflecting broader shifts in the region. What has been less consistent is the presence of a sustained, independent intellectual effort capable of engaging this question beyond immediate political or security needs.

In recent decades, as Arab states have increasingly turned inward, prioritizing local stability over broader, pan-Arab ideological projects, the demand for a more defined national narrative has become more understandable. Jordan is no exception. The need, in itself, is not the problem. The difficulty lies in how such a narrative is pursued.

When narratives are treated as administrative projects to be implemented, or public relations campaigns to be managed, they risk becoming reactive responses to geopolitical anxiety rather than expressions of accumulated cultural experience. They may offer temporary official reassurance, but not necessarily historical coherence.

There is, in the Jordanian case, a certain unease surrounding the idea of narrative. And perhaps this unease is justified. For while Jordan is often described as one of the more stable countries in a volatile region, stability does not automatically produce confidence, especially in the absence of independent intellectual traditions that grow organically, rather than under institutional direction.

As Chinua Achebe once wrote: “If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.” Jordanians, it seems, are not entirely satisfied with how their story has been told by outsiders. But dissatisfaction, on its own, does not produce a cohesive narrative. Without a clear, grounded point of departure in the present, the search risks dissolving into an open-ended past that stretches too far back to gather into a shared, contemporary meaning.

Sameh Almahariq is a writer focused on economic and social issues, working in the field of microfinance. His writing explores the intersections of politics and economics, with particular attention to middle-class transformations and patterns of social change in the Arab world. He is a columnist for a number of local and regional newspapers and media outlets. Almahariq holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and an Executive Master’s in Economic Development.