Jordan

• 1. Introduction

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  Jordan sits at a crossroads few countries can claim: the meeting point of Asia, Africa, and Europe, bordered by Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Palestine. At its western edge runs the Jordan River, flowing down into the Dead Sea, the lowest land point on Earth at 420 metres below sea level. This small kingdom of 89,342 square kilometres holds within its borders some of the oldest evidence of human civilisation ever uncovered. Scientists have found the world's oldest known evidence of bread-making at a 14,500-year-old site in Jordan's northeastern desert. The question the land raises is not simply how old it is, but how a place so ancient, so scarce in water and natural resources, became one of the most stable countries in a profoundly unstable region. That stability has a price: Jordan has accepted refugees from multiple neighbouring conflicts since as early as 1948, and by 2015 hosted an estimated 2.1 million Palestinian refugees alongside 1.4 million Syrians. How a kingdom with limited land, almost no oil, and near-absolute water scarcity absorbed successive waves of displacement without collapse is the thread running through Jordan's modern story.

• 2. Ancient Foundations

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  At 'Ain Ghazal, a site within what is now eastern Amman, archaeologists uncovered dozens of plaster statues of the human form dating to 7,250 BC or earlier. They are among the oldest large-scale representations of humans ever found. The village itself was one of the largest known prehistoric settlements in the Near East, a product of the Neolithic transition from hunter-gatherer life to settled agriculture that took hold between 10,000 and 4,500 BC. By the Iron Age, three distinct kingdoms had taken shape in the land east of the Jordan River: Ammon on the Amman plateau, Moab in the highlands east of the Dead Sea, and Edom in the region around Wadi Araba. Their peoples spoke Semitic languages of the Canaanite group and their political structures were tribal kingdoms rather than formalised states. One physical record of their world survives in the Mesha Stele, erected by the Moabite king Mesha in 840 BC. In its inscription, Mesha celebrates his building works in Moab and his victories against the Israelites, making it one of the most significant archaeological parallels to accounts recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Around 740-720 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire swept through, conquering Israel and the kingdom of Aram-Damascus while subjugating Ammon, Edom, and Moab but permitting them some degree of self-governance. That partial autonomy eventually gave way: by the time Roman rule began around 63 BC, the three kingdoms had lost their distinct identities and been absorbed into Roman culture.

• 3. Nabataeans and Romans

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  Petra, the sandstone city carved into a cliff face in southern Jordan, reached its height in the first century AD. It was the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom, founded by nomadic Arabs who exploited a power vacuum between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria to establish an independent state in 169 BC. The Nabataeans were traders first. Their kingdom stretched south along the Red Sea coast into the Hejaz desert and north as far as Damascus, which they controlled for a period of roughly 85-71 BC. Their wealth came from mastery of the trade routes that ran across the region, and their engineering matched their commercial ambition: Petra's water irrigation systems supported a city in a near-desert environment. Their most elaborate construction, Al-Khazneh, was built in the first century AD and is believed to be the mausoleum of King Aretas IV. Roman legions under Pompey had already conquered much of the Levant in 63 BC, and in 106 AD Emperor Trajan annexed Nabataea without military resistance. Trajan rebuilt the King's Highway, renaming it the Via Traiana Nova. The Romans organised the Greek cities of Transjordan, including Philadelphia (today's Amman), Gerasa (Jerash), and others into the Decapolis, a league of ten cities granted a degree of self-governance. Jerash remains one of the best-preserved Roman cities in the eastern Mediterranean; Emperor Hadrian himself visited during his journey to Palestine. After Rome split in 324 AD, the Byzantine Empire that inherited the eastern half brought Christianity deeper into the region. The Aqaba Church in Ayla, built during this era, is considered the world's first purpose-built Christian church. Umm ar-Rasas in southern Amman preserves at least sixteen Byzantine churches. Petra's fate shifted as sea trade routes developed and a major earthquake in 363 damaged many of its structures; the city was eventually abandoned.

• 4. Islamic Centuries

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  In 629, at the Battle of Mu'tah in what is today Karak Governorate, Byzantine forces and their Arab Christian allies the Ghassanids repelled a Muslim Rashidun army pushing north from the Hejaz. The victory was temporary. Seven years later, in 636, the Byzantines were decisively defeated at the Battle of the Yarmuk just north of Transjordan, and the region became central to the conquest of Damascus. The Umayyad Caliphate that followed left physical traces across the landscape, constructing desert castles including Qasr Al-Mshatta and Qasr Al-Hallabat. The Abbasids who overthrew them launched their campaign from a village in Transjordan called Humayma, and a powerful earthquake in 749 is thought to have contributed to the Umayyad collapse. The Abbasids moved the caliphate's capital from Damascus to Baghdad, and as maritime trade grew, Transjordan's position as a land crossroads became less economically significant. The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem controlled the region between 1115 and 1187, building castles as part of the Lordship of Oultrejordain, including Montreal and Al-Karak. Their hold ended at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 near Lake Tiberias, where Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, defeated them. The Ayyubids built Ajloun Castle and developed older fortifications into waypoints for Muslim pilgrims travelling from Syria to the Hejaz. The Mamluks who succeeded them repelled Mongol attacks, defeating them at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. When the Ottomans conquered the region in 1516, Transjordan was, by their own reckoning, a peripheral territory. Ottoman presence was largely reduced to annual tax collection visits, and the resulting absence of authority allowed competing Arab Bedouin tribes to fill the vacuum over the following centuries. A short-lived occupation by Wahhabi forces between 1803 and 1812 was eventually ended by Ibrahim Pasha, son of the governor of Egypt, acting on the Ottoman sultan's request.

• 5. Making a Kingdom

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  On the 5th of June 1916, Sharif Hussein of Mecca, a scion of the Hashemite family, launched the Arab Revolt from Medina. His sons Abdullah, Faisal, and Ali led forces that pushed northwards through Transjordan. The revolt reached the Battle of Aqaba on the 6th of July 1917, and its climax came when Faisal entered Damascus in October 1918 and established an Arab-led military administration. Those ambitions collided with two prior agreements the British had made without the Arabs' knowledge: the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the region into French and British spheres, and the 1917 Balfour Declaration committed Britain to supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine. The Hashemites and Arabs regarded both as a betrayal of the 1915 McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, in which Britain had indicated willingness to recognise an independent unified Arab state from Aleppo to Aden. French troops ended Hashemite rule over Syria at the Battle of Maysalun on the 24th of July 1920. Abdullah, the second son of Sharif Hussein, arrived by train in Ma'an in southern Transjordan on the 21st of November 1920 with the goal of reclaiming his brother's lost kingdom. The British, who found Transjordan ungovernable and in disarray, reluctantly accepted Abdullah as ruler after a six-month trial. On the 11th of April 1921, the Emirate of Transjordan was formally established with Abdullah as emir. The Treaty of London, signed on the 22nd of March 1946, recognised the state's full independence. On the 25th of May 1946, the day the Transjordan parliament ratified the treaty, the country was elevated to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan with Abdullah as its first king. That date is now celebrated as the nation's Independence Day.

• 6. Wars, Refugees, and Peace

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  King Abdullah I was assassinated at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1951 by a Palestinian militant, amid reports he intended to sign a peace treaty with Israel. His son Talal drafted the country's modern constitution in 1952 before illness forced his abdication. Talal's eldest son Hussein ascended the throne in 1953 at age 17 and would rule for nearly fifty years. The decades of his reign were shaped by repeated conflict. Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War. The 1968 Battle of Karameh, in which Jordanian and Palestinian Liberation Organisation forces repelled an Israeli attack on the Karameh camp, was celebrated across the Arab world, which in turn fuelled support for Palestinian paramilitary groups inside Jordan. In September 1970, the Jordanian army moved against those groups, expelling Palestinian fighters into Lebanon in what became known as Black September. Jordan renounced its claim to the West Bank entirely in 1988. At the 1991 Madrid Conference, Jordan agreed to negotiate a formal peace. The Israel-Jordan peace treaty was signed on the 26th of October 1994, making Jordan one of only three Arab nations to have reached such an agreement with Israel. Relations were tested in 1997, when Israeli agents using Canadian passports entered Jordan and poisoned Khaled Mashal, a senior Hamas leader. King Hussein threatened to annul the peace treaty, and under intense international pressure Israel provided an antidote and released dozens of political prisoners including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. When Hussein died on the 7th of February 1999, his son Abdullah II took the throne and immediately reaffirmed the peace treaty. On the 9th of November 2005, al-Qaeda coordinated explosions in three hotel lobbies in Amman, killing 60 people and injuring 115. The attack was widely condemned by Jordanians, and the country's internal security was substantially strengthened in the aftermath.

• 7. Water, Resources, and Energy

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  At 97 cubic metres of water per person per year, Jordan meets the Falkenmark Classification's threshold for absolute water scarcity. It is among the most water-scarce nations on Earth. The country's two main surface water sources, the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers, are shared with neighbouring countries, complicating any domestic water policy. The Jawa Dam in northeastern Jordan, which dates to the fourth millennium BC, is the world's oldest known dam, illustrating how long the inhabitants of this land have been engineering around water shortage. Natural gas was discovered in 1987, but the reserve found at the Risha field in the eastern desert is modest by regional standards, producing roughly 35 million cubic feet per day and supplying only a small fraction of Jordan's electricity. Between 2011 and 2016, the natural gas pipeline from Egypt was attacked 32 times by Islamic State affiliates, forcing Jordan to substitute expensive heavy-fuel oils at a cost of billions of dollars. Jordan receives 330 days of sunshine per year and wind speeds in its mountainous areas exceed 7 metres per second, making renewable energy a practical avenue. King Abdullah inaugurated large-scale renewable projects in the 2010s, including the 117 MW Tafila Wind Farm, the 53 MW Shams Ma'an solar plant, and the 103 MW Quweira solar facility. By early 2019, more than 1,090 MW of renewable energy projects had been completed, supplying 8% of Jordan's electricity, up from 3% in 2011. Jordan also holds the fifth-largest oil-shale reserves in the world, estimated at more than 70 billion tonnes, with its first oil-shale power plant, the 470 MW Attarat Power Plant, commissioned in 2023.

• 8. Society and Stability

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  Jordan's 2015 census recorded a population of 9,531,712, of whom roughly 30% were non-citizens, a figure encompassing refugees and undocumented immigrants. Christians today make up about 4% of the population, a decline from 20% in 1930, though their absolute numbers have grown. Jordan holds some of the oldest Christian communities in the world, with roots dating to the first century AD. Minimum quotas in the elected House of Representatives guarantee 15 seats for women (though 20 were won in the 2016 election), 9 for Christians, and 3 for Circassians and Chechens. Arabic is the official language, with English serving as the de facto language of commerce, banking, and higher education; almost all university-level classes are conducted in English. Life expectancy was around 74.8 years in 2017. In 1950, water and sanitation was available to only 10% of the population; by 2015, that figure had reached 98%. Jordan has been a medical tourism destination since the 1970s, and a study by Jordan's Private Hospitals Association found that 250,000 patients from 102 countries received treatment there in 2010, bringing over one billion dollars in revenue. Jordan is rated the region's top medical tourism destination by the World Bank, and fifth globally. SESAME, the only particle accelerator in the Middle East and one of sixty synchrotron radiation facilities worldwide, opened in Jordan in 2017 with support from UNESCO and CERN, enabling scientific collaboration among researchers from countries that are otherwise rivals. The Jordan Trail, a 650-kilometre hiking path stretching the length of the country from north to south, was established in 2015 as a way to revive tourism and connect the country's archaeological and natural landscapes.