d Subtitle - NPS Publications - Naval Postgraduate School

out by degrees, or become scattered among the indigenous
population. Our appearance at Amman at once aroused their
apprehensions. They believed us to be the pioneers of a
power which was about to seize the country, and anxiously
inquired whether they would be allowed to remain where they
were in case of an English or French occupation. It was
in vain that I protested that our work had no connection
with politics. The Emir begged hard to be made the confidant
of a secret which, he insisted, we knew, and I was at
length obliged, in order to get rid of him, to express the
opinion, that whether French or English took Syria, there
was no reason to suppose his settlement would be disturbed,
or that he would (as he seemed chiefly to fear) be given
up to the tender mercies of the Russians. 58
The assumption that a large number of Circassians who
settled in Amman and the surrounding area were part of the
peoples settled and later displaced from the Balkans is
supported by several other works. Miss Goodrich Freer
states,
"The Circassians of east Jordan land seem to have
first left their home in the Caucasus, Korimolsk or
Kakupschi, about the year 1860, and to have wandered in
search of a home where they might be privileged to live
under Moslem rule. Their leader, the Emir Huh Bey, a
major in the Russian army, conducted them first to Asia
Minor, and finally, after many difficulties and disappointments,
about 1878, to this district, which they call the
edge of the desert: ,,59
The foremost Jordanian-Circassian authority on early
Circassian history also traces the first Circassian settlers
from the Balkans:
The Circassians who had gone to the Balkans as emigrees
subsequently left those regions owing to the Russian
penetration of the Ottoman lands in 1877, and resettled in
Anatolia. A small part of them came to Syria and Jordan
where the Ottoman State gave them agricultural land on
which to live. The Shapsoghs were the first tribe to leave
Turkey on a ship which caught fire while at sea. About
58Ibid., p. 161.
59preer, G., In a Syrian Saddle, London, 1905, p. 53.
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