Hadrian and the Hejaz Railway: Linear features in conflict landscapes. Chapter 13.
The
Hedjaz Railway was built by the Ottomans to take Hajj pilgrims from
Damascus to Medina in the early twentieth century, though it probably
also had covert military and geo-political functions. Completed in 1908,
it was served by station buildings regularly spaced along its length,
many of which were protected by blockhouses and nearby hilltop forts by
the time of the Great Arab Revolt of 1916-18, during the First World
War. In AD 122, during his visit to Britain, the Roman Emperor Hadrian
commissioned his eponymous wall to run from the River Tyne near modern
Newcastle to the Solway estuary near Carlisle. It formed the northern
limit of the Roman Empire, and was defended at regular intervals by
‘mile castles’ and forts. The Hedjaz Railway and Hadrian’s Wall are
iconic linear features in their respective landscapes. They are both
liminal entities, designed not as impenetrable barriers but rather as
stabilising and boundary-defining constructions for the military, for
traders, and as ideological borders for state imperialism. This paper
takes changing views of the environs of Hadrian’s Wall as landscapes of
danger, military activity, romance, and tourism, and applies them to the
Hedjaz Railway in order to generate a new narrative understanding of
modern conflict along a linear conflict zone.
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