Jerash

• 1. Introduction

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  Jerash sits 30 miles north of Amman, in the green hills of northern Jordan, and beneath its modern streets lies one of the most complete ancient cities on earth. Archaeologists call it the Pompeii of the Middle East. That nickname captures something true: this place was buried not by volcanic ash but by centuries of earthquake, abandonment, and sand, and what survived is extraordinary.

  The questions worth asking about Jerash are not simply about ruins. They are about a city that was founded, conquered, abandoned, and reborn so many times that its story stretches from Neolithic skulls buried around 7500 BC all the way to a mass grave uncovered in 2025. How did one city become so central to so many different civilizations? What happened when it was finally left to the desert? And what does it mean that today, roughly 330,000 visitors a year walk through streets that Roman citizens once paved?

• 2. Before the Romans

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  At a site called Tal Abu Sowan, two human skulls were unearthed in August 2015 by an excavation team from the University of Jordan. They date to the Neolithic period, roughly 7500 to 5500 BC, and archaeologists consider them rare finds: only around twelve sites worldwide contain comparable human remains from that era.

  By the Bronze Age, settlements had spread across the region. The city's Greek chapter is disputed in its origins. Ancient inscriptions suggest Alexander the Great and his general Perdiccas founded the city in the spring of 331 BC, settling aging Macedonian soldiers there as Alexander moved from Egypt through Syria toward Mesopotamia. But the city's former name, Antioch on the Chrysorrhoas, points toward a founding by Seleucid King Antiochus IV, and other sources credit Ptolemy II of Egypt. The competing claims tell us something about how Jerash sat at the crossroads of competing empires.

  In the early 80s BC, Hasmonean King Alexander Jannaeus besieged and conquered Gerasa, folding it into the Kingdom of Judea. Archaeological evidence suggests public buildings were destroyed during that period. Roman forces under Pompey ended Jewish rule in 63 BC, and Pompey attached the city to the Decapolis, a league of Hellenistic cities that enjoyed substantial autonomy under Roman protection.

• 3. The Roman City at Its Height

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  The historian Josephus described Gerasa as a city principally inhabited by Syrians, with a small Jewish community living alongside them. During the First Jewish-Roman War, Gerasa distinguished itself among non-Jewish cities in the region: rather than killing or imprisoning Jewish residents, the city's inhabitants escorted those who wished to leave safely to the border.

  In AD 106, the city was absorbed into the Roman province of Arabia, joining Philadelphia, Petra, and Bostra in a province that Emperor Trajan bound together with roads. Trade expanded. In AD 129-130, Emperor Hadrian visited in person, and a triumphal arch was built to mark the occasion. That arch still stands.

  The mathematician Nicomachus was born in Gerasa around AD 60. Scholars have also proposed identifying Gerasa with the birthplace of Simon bar Giora, a leader of the Jewish Zealots, though other scholars connect that birthplace to a different site.

  At the height of Roman building activity, the city was ringed by an almost complete circuit of walls, threaded by a long colonnaded street called the cardo and its cross streets, the decumani. A 300-foot-long oval forum surrounded by an Ionic colonnade anchored the city center. Two large sanctuaries honored Artemis and Zeus, and two theatres handled public entertainment. The south theatre was built with a focus point at the center of the pit before the stage, marked by a distinct stone from which a speaker's normal voice could be heard throughout the auditorium. Most of these monuments were funded not by imperial decree but by donations from the city's wealthy citizens.

• 4. Faith, Fire, and Earthquake

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  By AD 530, a mosaic floor was laid beneath a Byzantine church in Gerasa, and when archaeologists later dug beneath its foundations, they found ancient Greek and Hebrew-Aramaic inscriptions. The presence of Hebrew-Aramaic led scholars to conclude the building had likely begun as a synagogue before being converted into a church. That sequence in a single building captures what the city had become: a place where faiths layered over one another without entirely erasing what came before.

  A large cathedral was built in the 4th century, the first of at least fourteen churches constructed between the 4th and the 7th centuries, many featuring mosaic floors. Persian Sassanid forces invaded in AD 614, and in 636 the Byzantine army was defeated at the Battle of the Yarmuk, bringing these territories into the Rashidun Caliphate.

  During the Umayyad Caliphate, the city recovered. Coins were minted with the name Jerash in Arabic. Ceramic lamps carried inscriptions giving the potter's name and Jerash as the place of manufacture. A large mosque and several churches stood together, suggesting that a sizable Muslim community co-existed with Christian residents. Then, in 749, an earthquake struck. The 749 Galilee earthquake destroyed much of Jerash and the surrounding region, and subsequent earthquakes added to the damage. The city never recovered its former scale.

• 5. Crusaders, Desertion, and Rediscovery

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  In the early 12th century, Zahir ad-Din Toghtekin, atabeg of Damascus, ordered a garrison to build a fortress somewhere in the ruins of the ancient city, most likely at the highest point of the north-eastern city walls. In 1121, Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, captured and destroyed it. The Crusaders then withdrew to nearby Sakib and abandoned Jerash entirely.

  From that point, the city largely vanished from the historical record. When it reappears at the start of Ottoman rule in the early 16th century, it is as a near-empty place. The census of 1596 records Jerash, listed as Jaras, with a population of just twelve Muslim households. They paid a fixed tax rate of 25 percent on agricultural products including wheat, barley, olive trees, goats, and beehives, and their total tax liability came to 6,000 akce. A traveler in 1838 described the place simply as a ruin.

  Archaeologists later found a small Mamluk hamlet in the Northwest Quarter, suggesting that some habitation had persisted around the Temple of Zeus through the medieval period. The broader story of what happened between the Umayyad collapse and Ottoman times remained unclear until excavations conducted from 2011 onward began uncovering a large concentration of Middle Islamic and Mamluk structures and pottery. Systematic excavation of the ancient city itself began in 1925.

• 6. What the Excavations Found

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  In 2018, at least fourteen marble sculptures were discovered during excavation of the Eastern Baths of Gerasa, including images of Aphrodite and Zeus. The Jerash Archaeological Museum on Camp Hill, a mound just east of the cardo, holds a chronological display running from prehistoric to Islamic times. Among its holdings is a unique group of small statues identified as the Muses of the Olympic pantheon, found in fragmentary condition in 2016 and partially restored. The museum also contains a well-preserved lead sarcophagus dated to the late 4th or 5th century, combining Christian and pagan symbols in a single object.

  A marble head thought to represent the Roman Empress Julia Domna was found at Jerash and is now displayed at the Visitor Center, which takes a thematic approach: economy, technology, religion, and daily life across the city's many periods.

  In 2025, the most striking find in years came to light: a mass grave of around 230 people killed during the Plague of Justinian. Researchers described it as the first confirmed mass grave associated with that pandemic found in the eastern Mediterranean. The find was supported by both archaeological and genetic evidence, connecting Jerash directly to one of the deadliest disease events of the ancient world.

  The Roman-era sawmill, described at the Visitor Centre, offers a different kind of detail. The use of water power to convert rotary motion into a linear cutting motion via a crankshaft dates to an invention in the 3rd century BC; comparable examples are known from Hierapolis and Ephesus.

• 7. Modern City, Living Site

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  The Jordanian census of 1961 counted 3,796 people in Jerash, of whom 270 were Christians. By 2004 that figure had grown to 31,650, ranking the city fourteenth largest among Jordan's municipalities. The 2015 census put the population at 50,745, while the governorate as a whole held 237,059 people.

  The modern city's ethnic composition reflects its layered migration history. Circassian immigrants, mainly of peasant background, were directed by Ottoman authorities to settle in Jerash in 1885 and were given arable land. Palestinian refugees arrived in two waves, in 1948 and 1967, settling in two camps: Souf camp near the town of Souf, and Gaza camp at Al Haddadah village.

  Since 1981, the ancient city has hosted the Jerash Festival of Culture and Arts, a three-week summer program of dance, music, and theatrical performances. When authorities attempted to replace it with a nationwide Jordan Festival in 2008, the government eventually restored the Jerash Festival after concluding that its substitute was not meeting the same purpose. The festival today draws tens of thousands of visitors each year to performances held inside the ancient ruins.

  At the hippodrome, the Roman Army and Chariot Experience stages regular performances: forty-five legionaries in full armor demonstrating Roman battle drill, ten gladiators fighting to the outcome, and Roman chariots running a seven-lap race around the ancient track. Jerash Private University and Philadelphia University both operate in the city today, and the Jerash Sports Club, established in 1972 by Hisham Al-Zaghal, won the national chess championship in 1979 by defeating the Royal Chess Club.