From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Arab Legion (Al-jaish Al'-arabi) was Transjordans and lanter on also Jordans regular army. It was formed in 1921 by Liutenant Colonel Frederick Gerard Peake as a police force to keep order among Transjordanians tribes and to guard the important Jerusalem-Amman road. Originnally it consisted of only 150 men, most of them stationed along the road.
In 1939, John Bagot Glubb, better known as Glubb Pasha, became the legion's commander and transformed it to the, at the time, best trained Arab army in the world.
The legion's actions in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war played an important role for the outcome of that war. In bloody fightings with the Zionists it conquered the Old City of Jerusalem in May xx, 1948 and managed to hold it against repeated attacks. It also secured the West Bank for Jordan.
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