Administration officials said they could not comment on the specifics of the meeting between Mr. Bush and the Jordanian king.

"We would have the Shiite crescent that the Jordanian king warned against."

Some suggested that if anyone was being snubbed by Mr. Maliki, it was the Jordanian king, who had irritated the Iraqi leader by meeting with Sunni Arab leaders in Iraq before the summit meeting.

The Bush administration pressed both Mr. Mubarak and the Jordanian king to attend the Beirut meeting and lend support for the proposal, which both of them backed as a positive step.

Yet Mr. Khalidi scorns the notion that the Jordanian kings were heroes.

She is the half-sister of the present Jordanian king, Abdullah II.

Did the Jordanian kings have eunuchs in their harems?

On 2 and 3 September 2003, King Abdullah II visited Tehran, making him the first Jordanian king to visit "Tehran since the launching of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979".

"Syria had invaded Jordan and the Jordanian king, facing what he felt was a military rout, said please help us in any way possible."

The threat perceived by the Jordanian king, and his subsequent expulsion of the threatening elements, had ruined Badrayn's family, not that he'd especially cared at the time.