Major General Frederick Gerard Peake, (12 June 1886 – 30 March 1970), known as Peake Pasha, was a
British Army
The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
and police officer and creator of the
Arab Legion
The Arab Legion () was the police force, then regular army, of the Emirate of Transjordan, a British protectorate, in the early part of the 20th century, and then of the Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, an independent state, with a final Ar ...
.
Military career
The son of Lieutenant Colonel Walter Peake, of
Melton Mowbray
Melton Mowbray () is a market town in the Borough of Melton, Melton district in Leicestershire, England, north-east of Leicester and south-east of Nottingham. It lies on the River Eye, Leicestershire, River Eye, known below Melton as the Rive ...
, Peake was born at
Epsom
Epsom is a town in the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, England, about south of central London. The town is first recorded as ''Ebesham'' in the 10th century and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain ...
on 12 June 1886. He attended
Stubbington House School
Stubbington House School was founded in 1841 as a boys' preparatory school, originally located in the Hampshire village of Stubbington, around from the Solent. Stubbington House School was known by the sobriquet "the cradle of the Navy". The s ...
,
Fareham
Fareham ( ) is a market town at the north-west tip of Portsmouth Harbour, between the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton in south east Hampshire, England. It gives its name to the Borough of Fareham. It was historically an important manufac ...
,'PEAKE, Frederick Gerard', in ''Who Was Who'' (A. & C. Black); online edition, Oxford University Press, 2014 PEAKE, Frederick Gerard Retrieved 27 July 2016 (subscription site) and graduated from the
Royal Military College, Sandhurst
The Royal Military College (RMC) was a United Kingdom, British military academy for training infantry and cavalry Officer (armed forces), officers of the British Army, British and British Indian Army, Indian Armies. It was founded in 1801 at Gre ...
in 1906, being commissioned into the Duke of Wellington's Regiment. He served in India from 1908 to 1913.
During the
First World War
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, Peake served with the
Royal Flying Corps
The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was the air arm of the British Army before and during the First World War until it merged with the Royal Naval Air Service on 1 April 1918 to form the Royal Air Force. During the early part of the war, the RFC sup ...
in Salonica, and was also an officer serving with the Imperial Camel Corps, part of the British Imperial Egyptian Army, seeing action in the Darfur Expedition. In 1917 he was awarded the
Order of the Nile
The Order of the Nile (''Kiladat El Nil'') was established in 1915 and was one of the Kingdom of Egypt's principal orders until the monarchy was abolished in 1953. It was then reconstituted as the Republic of Egypt's highest state honor.
Sulta ...
, Fourth Class. He served for a time under Lawrence of Arabia.
In September 1920 Peake, then a captain, left the Imperial Camel Corps to report on the security situation in Transjordan. Security was found to be inadequate, and in October the same year Peake, by then promoted to lieutenant colonel, was ordered by the
High Commissioner of Palestine
High may refer to:
Science and technology
* Height
* High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area
* High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory
* High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift t ...
to form two small police forces:
# The Mobile Force, 100 men to guard the
Palestine
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
–
Amman
Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...
.
During the summers of 1921 and 1923, Peake organised the 150-man Reserve Mobile Force, which formed the nucleus of the
Arab Legion
The Arab Legion () was the police force, then regular army, of the Emirate of Transjordan, a British protectorate, in the early part of the 20th century, and then of the Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, an independent state, with a final Ar ...
. This force was made up of Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Chechens and Circassians, armed with German rifles. Due to increasing regional skirmishes, the Reserve Mobile Force was increased in strength to 750 officers and men. This reorganised force thwarted
Wahhabi
Wahhabism is an exonym for a Salafi revivalist movement within Sunni Islam named after the 18th-century Hanbali scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It was initially established in the central Arabian region of Najd and later spread to other ...
raids in 1922 and the Adwan Rebellion in 1923. Peake became a major general in the army of the
Emirate of Transjordan
The Emirate of Transjordan (), officially the Amirate of Trans-Jordan, was a British protectorate established on 11 April 1921,St Boswells, and they had one daughter.Frederick Peake at ThePeerage.com In 1939, he retired and was succeeded by
John Bagot Glubb
Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC, KStJ, KPM (16 April 1897 – 17 March 1986), known as Glubb Pasha (; and known as Abu Hunaik by the Jordanians), was a British military officer who led and trained Transj ...
. To the Jordanians he became known as "Peake Pasha".
In retirement, Peake settled at Hawkslee, St Boswells, Roxburghshire, his wife's home village. She died in 1967. His daughter, Julia Grace Peake, was born in 1941. She married firstly David Renwick Grant, and secondly the late Sir Hugh Arbuthnot, 7th Baronet.
Selected publications
*
*
* ''A History of Jordan and its Tribes'', University of Miami Press, 1958
* ''Change at St Boswells (the story of a border village)'', John McQueen and Son, 1961
* ''Arab Command. The Biography of Lieutenant-Colonel F. G. Peake Pasha C.M.G., C.B.E.'', Hutchinson & Co., 1942
References
*James Lunt ‘Peake, Frederick Gerard (1886–1970)’ ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005. Retrieved 4 June 2010