AMMAN, Jordan – Dignitaries from around the world – including European royals and the wife of Egypt’s president – converged on Jordan on Thursday to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Hamzah, half-brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
More than 2,000 guests attended a state reception complete with a triple-decker cake marking the 24-year-old Hamzah’s wedding to his second cousin, Princess Noor, 22.
Hamzah and Noor sat in the back seat of a convertible sedan as it drove five miles across the capital Amman, surrounded by two dozen red Jeeps and motorcycles flashing their lights and sounding their sirens. Jordanians lined the street cheering, applauding and waving Jordanian flags and portraits of the king.
Hamzah and Noor were married in a private ceremony in August. King Abdullah II announced then that he would host state celebrations for his heir’s marriage in May. There was no explanation for the nine-month delay.
Abdullah named Hamzah crown prince hours after their father died of cancer on Feb. 7, 1999. Hussein, who had 11 children from four marriages, had often described Hamzah in public as the “delight of my eye.”
Hamzah, who resembles his father in looks, bearing and husky voice, is Hussein’s son from his fourth marriage to New York-born Lisa Halaby, who took the name Queen Noor when she converted to Islam upon her marriage to Hussein in 1978.
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