Guys, can we stop for a bit? This mom needs to catch her breath!”, This is how Queen Rania of Jordan joked a few days ago on Instagram before the many news in the lives of her children. This 2023 has been a great year for the youngest of the Hashemite dynasty. The Crown Prince Hussein is getting married this Thursday, Princess Iman got married last March, Princess Salma graduated from university two weeks ago, and the youngest Prince Hashem also celebrated his school graduation last week. documented on Rania’s Instagram, which for some time has become the best means of communication for the family.
This Thursday, the heir to Abdallah II marries the Saudi architect Rajwa al-Saif, daughter of businessman Khalid al-Saif and a cousin of King Salman of Saudi Arabia. The event has brought together representatives of a large part of the royal houses from around the world in Amman as it is the wedding of an heir, so this will be the new great meeting of royals after the coronation of Carlos III. The last time a Jordanian heir, the now-estranged Prince Hamza, was married in 2004 and attended by the then newlyweds Princes of Asturias and Queen SofÃa. On this occasion, the kings Juan Carlos and SofÃa will attend together, and the kings Felipe and Letizia were not expected to attend.
Despite Rania’s efforts to dress Jordan’s as a renewed monarchy, the bride’s link to Saudi royalty is reminiscent of a time in Europe when royal marriages cemented new diplomatic relations between neighboring countries, such as This was the case of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which in a not too distant time were nations at odds over the complicated territorial division of the Middle East in the 20th century.
More or less over that era, Hussein declared his love for Rajwa a few weeks ago in this way: “I met my fiancée through one of my classmates. I am lucky because it is not every day you meet someone like Rajwa. Fate did the rest.” The last wedding of a European crown prince was that of William of Luxembourg and Stéphanie de Lannoy in 2012, and it is possible that after the wedding of Hussein of Jordan we will have to wait another decade to see a first-rate heir go down the aisle .
A worthy heir to her mother-in-law’s European style, Rajwa al-Saif does not wear an Islamic headscarf like her future husband’s mother and two sisters. This aesthetic sets them all apart from the outfits of most women in the country, as happened to Princess Lalla Salma of Morocco, ex-wife of King Mohamed VI, because, in part, all of them have been called to be a spring of modernization within Arab countries.
At her wedding last March with the Greek-Venezuelan Dimitrios Alexandros Thermiotis Hernández, Princess Imam, although she followed the tradition of the Muslim rite, could not resist wearing a more western bridal look signed by Dior. This season of liaisons in Jordan has once again placed the country in the international spotlight after the notorious power struggle between King Abdullah II and his brother, Prince Hamza, who has been accused of carrying out up to two coups in The last two years.
In Jordan, the Hashemite dynasty’s succession issues are sold to the international community and visiting tourists as “family issues” outside of politics. This family conflict arose because it is a tradition –contrary to European monarchies where the succession is clear: hereditary from parents to children– that in Arab countries a brother of the king is designated heir as long as he does not have a son old enough to be considered successor. Abdullah II first named his half-brother Hamzah as his heir in compliance with his father’s wishes. But in 2004, six months after his wedding, he removed him from the line of succession and in 2009 he named his eldest son, Hussein, heir.
For her part, Princess Salma, who graduated from the University of Southern California in archeology, has thus joined this excellent year of celebrations for the Jordanian royal family. When Kings Abdullah II and Rania of Jordan, Princess Imam and her husband met in California for the occasion, they coincided with Michelle and Barack Obama, since they accompanied her daughter Sasha that day, who was also graduating from the same university. Salma graduated in 2018 from the prestigious Sandhurst Military Academy, where her older brother had also attended, and, in 2020, she was the first Jordanian woman to become a military aircraft pilot.
Last September there was another interesting wedding within the Jordanian royal family. Madrid businesswoman Miriam UngrÃa, widow of Kardam of Bulgaria, married Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, cultural adviser and first cousin of the current monarch. So the wedding was announced the same day it happened, without many knowing the link between them, which is not uncommon in the weddings of members of Middle Eastern royal families outside the line of succession. Miriam UngrÃa, who became Maryam Al Ghazi after her wedding, was at Rajwa’s henna night and will also be at her wedding tomorrow.
