Abdullah II of Jordan

Abdullah is married to a Palestinian woman Rania Al-Yassin, whom he met in 1993 during a dinner. They immediately connected, got engaged two months later, and married in June 1993. Abdullah is only the second Jordanian king to marry only once. The couple have four children and their eldest son, named after Abdullah’s father, Hussein, has been crowned as the prince.

Abdullah loves living life to the fullest and is heavily into sports, movies and music. He is a massive fan of the ‘Star Trek’ series and has even appeared in one of the episodes.

Abdullah was born on 30th January 1962 in Amman, Jordan in the royal household. He is the son of former King Hussein and Queen Mona, a British, and the second wife of King Hussein. Some unrest in the Middle East prompted his father Hussein to make his younger brother Hassan the heir to the throne, but according to the rules, Abdullah should have been the one to sit on the throne considering the fact that he was King Hussein’s eldest son.

Abdullah’s initial education took place in Jordan and later he went on to finish his education in the UK and the USA. Abdullah was the eldest among 11 of his siblings and step brothers and thus, had the pressure from his initial days to perform, as he was expected to rule Jordan someday. And rightly enough, Abdullah was a responsible kid from the very beginning and was good in academics and sports as well.

His formal education began in the Islamic Educational College in Jordan and he finished his secondary education from English and American schools, and later went on to attend the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and in 1984, the young prince did one year course in foreign affairs and international politics. After studying the international political scenario in Washington DC, he went back to Jordan to serve his country as a military man.

Upon moving back to Jordan in 1989, Abdullah became a part of 17th Royal Tank Battalion as the assistant commander and seeing his abilities, he soon got promoted as a major. He served at the rank for two years and in 1991, he earned the position as Armour Representative in the office of Inspector General. In January 1993, Abdullah rose to the rank of colonel and was handed over the command of special armed forces of Jordan.

His efficiency and extensive experience in Sandhurst academy came handy and it led him to continuously grow through ranks in the Jordanian army. He got promoted to the rank of brigadier general within one year and in 1997, he starting serving Jordan as commander of Special Operations Command and by the middle of the very next year, he was a major general in the Jordanian armed forces.

Abdullah accompanied his father on several of his missions, which apparently included meetings with European, American and Russian delegates, to learn basics of bureaucracy. In 1992, King Hussein was diagnosed with cancer, which apparently led to a shock wave in Jordan. He had already named his younger brother Hassan heir to the throne but in 1998, disputes took place between the two brothers over Hassan’s management of internal affairs in Jordan. Just two weeks before his death, King Hussein named his son Abdullah as the heir, and he was crowned as the king on June 9th 1999.

King Hussein was known as a very able ruler all his life and under his reign, peace and modernisation had persisted in the country. Abdullah was seemingly nervous while taking oaths in the Parliament. But within the very first year of his coronation, he proved his haters wrong and displayed a strong determination and affection towards his people and his foreign policies also reflected the desire of maintaining peace in the region.

He held on to Jordan’s strong ties with western countries, and cracked down on the Hamas’ activities in Jordan, acting on the pleas made by Israel, USA and Palestine. After the 9/11 attacks where most of the world turned their back toward Muslims, Abdullah was among the first Muslim representatives to openly condemn the attacks and said that Jordan is with the USA in the fight against radical Islamic terrorist groups. Abdullah started receiving threat calls from Al-Qaeda for lending his support to the US, but it wasn’t enough to scare him as he was a keen advocate of world peace.

He received criticism in his country for his unconventional moves, one of which was postponing the Jordanian General Election, which was supposed to take place in 2001. The elections finally culminated in 2003 and later, keeping in mind the position of women in the country and its politics, he introduced six seat quota for women in parliament.

Under Abdullah’s reign, Jordan opened up to the world and economic reforms were introduced, upping the standard of living of the Jordanian population. He kept receiving flaks from Muslim radicals for being ‘the puppet’ of western forces, but Abdullah kept ignoring the allegations and did what he thought was right.