was that the British government had at that point to find a role for Abdullah, after his brother Faisal had lost his control in Syria. Jordan had been a "staging area" for Faisal's and the Arab nationalists' attempted takeover of Syria in 1918, which was ultimately defeated by the French. Following this, Transjordan was left in a period of interregnum. A few months later, Abdullah, the second son of Sharif Hussein, arrived into Transjordan. Faisal was subsequently given the role of the king of Iraq and the British made Abdullah emir of the newly created Transjordanian state. At first, Abdullah was displeased with the territory given to him, and hoped it was only a temporary allocation, to be replaced by Syria or Palestine. Historian Joseph Massad has described the founding of Jordan as a state in 1921 as "a hesitant act by its architects, the British and the Hashemites." The Permanent Court of International Justice and an International Court of Arbitration established by the Council of the League of Nations handed down rulings in 1925 which determined that Palestine and Transjordan were newly created successor states of the Ottoman Empire as defined by international law. The most serious threats to Emir Abdullah's position in Transjordan were repeated Wahhabi incursions from Najd into southern parts of his territory. The emir was powerless to repel those raids by himself, thus the British maintained a military base, with a small air force, at Marka, close to Amman. In 1928, Britain officially provided King Abdullah with full autonomy, though the British RAF continued to provide security to the emirate. The Emirate of Transjordan had a population of 200,000 in 1920, 225,000 in 1922 and 400,000 (as Kingdom) in 1948. Almost half of the population in 1922 (around 103,000) was nomadic. Kingdom of Transjordan/Jordan Establishment On 17 January 1946 the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, announced in a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations that the British Government intended to take steps in the near future to establish Transjordan as a fully independent and sovereign state. The Treaty of London was signed by the British Government and the Emir of Transjordan on 22 March 1946 as a mechanism to recognise the full independence of Transjordan upon ratification by both countries' parliaments. Transjordan's impending independence was recognized on April 18, 1946 by the League of Nations during the last meeting of that organization.