Talal of Jordan
Talal was king of Jordan for thirteen months, from his father Abdullah's assassination in July 1951 to August 1952, when the parliament removed him on the finding of three doctors that his schizophrenia made him unfit, and his son Hussein, seventeen and at Harrow, was proclaimed in his place. He was in a Swiss clinic when his father was shot, and was brought home and crowned in September 1951 against the British resident's advice and with the Jordanian public's insistence, since the alternative was his brother Naif. In his year he gave the country the constitution of January 1952, the one it still has, which made the cabinet answerable to the parliament and the parliament elected, and which his son later governed around rather than under. He settled the quarrel with the Saudis and signed the Arab collective security pact, reversing his father's isolation in the Arab League, which the Arab street credited to him and the British held against him. He was born in Mecca in 1909, grew up in Amman and at Sandhurst, and served in the Arab Legion. He was his father's opposite in everything, hating the British his father worked with, sympathising with the Palestinians his father had annexed, and quarrelling with the old man so violently in the 1940s that Glubb and the resident reported him unstable, which was true and was also convenient. The illness was real, with episodes of violence against his wife Zein and his children. The queen, who was the family's strength, agreed to the removal. He lived the remaining twenty years in a sanatorium in Istanbul, visited by his sons, and died there in July 1972. He is buried in Amman. The constitution he gave and the son he gave, who reigned for forty-seven years, are the reign's whole account, and not a small one for thirteen months.
- Lived: 1909 CE – 1972 CE
- Nationality: Jordanian
- Roles: monarch, king
