A man of the people, loved by the people

King Hussein, who has been declared clinically dead, survived nearly 47 years on the throne of Jordan. His destiny was not to die in exile, as did his great-grandfather, Sherif Hussein, the Hashemite ruler of Mecca, who died in Cyprus. Nor by assassination, like his grandfather, King Abdullah of Transjordan, and his cousin, King Faisal II of Iraq.

King Hussein's imminent death will be in his bed at home in Jordan, loved by his people, respected by antagonists, honoured by the international community and influential beyond the borders of his tiny kingdom with its population of 4.2 million.

Born in Amman in 1935, he grew up in straitened circumstances. So poor was he that his cousin, Prince Faisal, the future king of Iraq, sent the young Hussein a bicycle because the Jordanian branch of the family could not afford one.

Emir, or Prince, Hussein succeeded to the throne in August 1952 following the deposition of his father, King Talal, due to mental illness.

The schizophrenic King Talal had reigned briefly after his father, King Abdullah, the founder of Hashemite rule in Jordan, was murdered in 1951 by a Palestinian militant while praying at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

The young Hussein, standing next to his grandfather, was also hit by a bullet fired by the assassin but it was deflected by a medal pinned to the breast of his uniform.

There were many plots against King Hussein, hatched particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Arab nationalists inspired by the then Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to reunite the Arab world, divided by the colonial powers after the first World War.

At the beginning of his reign, King Hussein vowed to preserve Hashemite rule in Jordan at whatever cost to himself, his people and his allies. He was never diverted from this path during all his years in power.

In 1967, Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank were occupied by Israel.

King Hussein never recovered from this loss, neither as guardian of Jerusalem, the third-holiest shrine in the Muslim world, nor as temporal ruler of the West Bank.

His Hashemite credentials were damaged, his dynastic pride deeply wounded, never really to recover.

In 1970, the king faced new Arab challengers, leaders of Palestinian resistance groups who secured notoriety by launching largely pointless attacks against Israel.

His army won the battle but the war between the Hashemites and their Palestinian subjects continued until Mr Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, returned to his homeland in 1994.

His autocratic style and entourage of undemocratic, corrupt and inefficient expatriates forced Jordanian-domiciled Palestinians to recognise the king was a better ruler than the Palestinian President.

In 1973 King Hussein, fearing he might lose more land, took no part in the Egyptian-Syrian Ramadan war against Israel, alienating a considerable proportion of his subjects, but preserving both his throne and kingdom, his ultimate objectives as a member of the Hashemite dynasty.

The king's next major challenge arose when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Critical of Arab leaders who joined the US-led military campaign to drive Iraq from Kuwait, King Hussein braved Washington's disapproval to plead for a negotiated settlement.

During this period he adopted an "Arab line" because he could not do otherwise. His people were wholeheartedly with Iraq and against the US and its allies.

Following the 1991 onslaught against Iraq, the king pressed for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq and reconciliation between Baghdad and Washington, but he failed to achieve either before he died.

In 1994 he signed a highly unpopular peace treaty with Israel, a treaty which lost its viability when Israel failed to meet commitments made to the Palestinians in the Oslo peace process.

Political frustration over this, compounded by an economic slide, placed the king in a precarious position during the last seven months of his life as he fought cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

King Hussein married four times and divorced twice; his wives bore him six sons and six daughters and he adopted one more boy.

His first wife, Queen Dina, was a high-born Hashemite. His second was Toni Gardiner, daughter of a British officer attached to Jordan's Arab Legion. She became Princess Muna.

His third wife was a Palestinian, Alia, who died in a helicopter crash, and Lisa Halaby was the fourth. She became Queen Noor.

It is bitterly ironic that Muna may become "queen mother" because Prince Abdullah was named to succeed to the throne.

Small of stature, King Hussein almost certainly survived because he had a big heart. He was ready to forgive his enemies rather than persecute them, thereby creating eternal enemies.

His prisons did not transform them into martyrs but graduated loyalists. As a former jailbird who later became a minister said, "He slaps you in the face then pauses to straighten your hat."

A man who could count 42 generations in his descent from the Prophet Muhammad, King Hussein wore neither crown nor hat, but the traditional Bedouin hatta, the red and white checked headcloth.

During his long reign, the dusty desert backwater was transformed into a thriving modern state, although his brief experiment with democracy in the early 1990s did not produce government by the people.