The Amirate of Transjordan has fewer than four hundred thousand inhabitants at its inception in 1921.

Of this number, about twenty percent live in four towns each having populations of from ten thousand to thirty thousand.

The balance are farmers in village communities and pastoral nomadic and seminomadic tribespeople.

The amirate's treasury operates on British financial aid established on the basis of an annual subsidy.

A native civil service is gradually trained with British assistance, but government is simple, and Abdullah rules directly with a small executive council, much in the manner of a tribal sheikh.

British officials handle the problems of defense, finance, and foreign policy, leaving internal political affairs to Abdullah.
To supplement the rudimentary police, in 1921 a reserve Arab force is organized by F. G. Peake, a British officer known to the Arabs as Peake Pasha.

This Arab force soon is actively engaged in suppressing brigandage and repelling raids by the Wahhabis.