Prince Hassan bin Talal

In the early 1900s, the kingdom of Hejaz was set up in western Arabia by the Western powers in order to torment the Ottoman empire, and Hassan's great-grandfather, already Grand Sharif of Mecca, was made king of this state.

That kingdom did not last long, being soon conquered by Al Saud.

However, one of the sons of the Grand Sharif, Prince El Hassan's grandfather, King Abdullah I, became king of Transjordan in 1946.

Prince El Hassan bin Talal (الحسن بن طلال, born 20 March 1947) is a member of the Jordanian royal family who was previously Crown Prince from 1965 to 1999, being removed just three weeks before King Hussein's death.

He is now 20th in line to succeed his nephew King Abdullah II.

Prince El Hassan is a Prince of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

He is the third son of King Talal and Queen Zein.

He is thus a younger brother of late King Hussein and uncle of the present King Abdullah II.

Prince El Hassan is a descendant of Mohammed.

His family is descended in patrilineage from Hassan, the elder of the two sons of Fatima Zahra and Ali, the daughter and son-in-law of Mohammed.

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More recent male-line ancestors served as Sharifs of Mecca.

In 1949, after annexing the West Bank in Palestine, and "uniting" both banks of the Jordan River, it was constitutionally renamed the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan", commonly referred to nowadays as Kingdom of Jordan.

Prince El Hassan and Begum Sarvath Ikramullah first met in London in 1958, when they were both mere children.

Their families knew each other very well and they played together as children.

In the mid-1960s, they married with the full consent of their families.

They have four children together:

Prince El Hassan was educated first in Amman.

He then attended Sandroyd School in Wiltshire before going on to Summer Fields School, Oxford, followed by Harrow School in England, then Christ Church, a college of the University of Oxford, where he graduated BA with Honours in Oriental Studies and later proceeded to MA.

Hassan is fluent in Arabic, English, French and German.

He has a working knowledge of Turkish and Spanish, and studied Hebrew at university.

In 1965 Hassan was named as Crown Prince of Jordan after the constitution was amended.

He was frequently regent during his brother's absences from the country.

In 1968, Prince El Hassan married Sarvath Ikramullah, whose family belongs to the feudal aristocracy of Bhopal state in central India.

Her father, Mohammed Ikramullah, was an Indian politician who chose to move to Pakistan at Partition and became a diplomat there.

As King Hussein was undergoing cancer treatment in mid-1998, the King assigned Crown Prince El Hassan a range of powers and authority to act as regent.

With his newly gained powers, Hassan exercised a number of steps to consolidate his position as heir and future king, which included: (1) "orchestrating the removal of the [unpopular] government" of Abdelsalam Majali and appointing former Royal Court chief Fayez al-Tarawneh in his place, (2) organizing dialogue and reconciliation with opposition groups, most prominently the Muslim Brotherhood, and (3) attempting to effect changes at the top of the military.

Hassan's attempted changes to the top hierarchy of the military angered King Hussein and led him to resume full duties as king.

During Hussein's final illness in January 1999, he was replaced by his nephew Abdullah three weeks before the king died.

Abdullah subsequently inherited the throne of Jordan.

It is also a commonly cited reason for Hassan's removal as crown prince on 24 January 1999.

Hassan's removal took shape through a 14-page typed letter, described by American historian W. Andrew Terrill as "extremely harsh", in which King Hussein expressed "unmistakable disappointment in Crown Prince El Hassan" and ordered his replacement with Hussein's son Abdullah.

Terrill describes King Hussein as perhaps having felt that Hassan had "interest in shifting the line of succession to his own family", which led to his dismissal as Crown Prince three weeks before Hussein's death.

Crown Prince El Hassan's attempted consolidation of power led the sickly King Hussein to break off "intensive" treatments for lymphoma and fly back home to Jordan in order to address the issue.

At first, the King attempted to negotiate with Hassan, placing the King's younger son Hamzah as Hassan's crown prince to ensure that the line of succession would not switch to Hassan's line.

In 2009, he joined the project "Soldiers of Peace", a film against all wars and for global peace.

His brother (Princess Sarvath's uncle), Mohammad Hidayatullah, choosing to remain in India, rose to become the 11th Chief Justice of India and then, after retirement from the judiciary, became the 6th Vice President of India.

Princess Sarvath's mother, Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, came from the prominent Suhrawardy family of Undivided Bengal.

She was the daughter of Hassan Suhrawardy and first cousin of former Prime Minister of undivided Pakistan, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy.

On 10 June 2013, he was appointed as the chairman of the advisory board on water and sanitation (UNSGAB) by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.