Jordan River

• 1. Introduction

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  The Jordan River runs for 251 kilometres through the Levant, and its water has no path to the sea. Geographers call it endorheic. It flows roughly north to south, passes through the Sea of Galilee, and drains into the Dead Sea. Along the way it touches Jordan, Syria, Israel, and Palestine.

  Few rivers of this length carry so much meaning. It matters deeply to Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Yet it also has a hard, practical side, because people on its banks need its water.

  Where does the Jordan begin, and how does it fall so far in so short a distance? What did prophets and Gospel writers say happened on its banks? Why did a river that once ran so full shrink to a trickle?

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• 2. Descent From Hermon

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  Near the kibbutz of Sde Nehemia in northern Israel, the Dan and the Hasbani meet and become the Jordan. The Dan is the largest of the upper streams, carrying roughly 240 to 252 million cubic metres a year. The Hasbani starts at the north-western foot of Mount Hermon in Lebanon and brings 118 million cubic metres annually. The Banias rises from a spring at Hermon's base, adds 106 million, and joins the Dan. The Iyyon stream drains the Merj 'Ayun area of southern Lebanon into the Hasbani.

  Over the next 75 km the young river drops quickly toward Lake Hula. That lake was once large and swampy, and it sits only slightly above sea level. From its outlet, the river plunges more steeply still over 25 km to reach the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. This upper stretch is traditionally called the Hula Valley. Inside the Sea of Galilee the river leaves much of its silt behind, and it exits near the southern tip at Degania Dam.

  North of the lake, the river lies within Israel and forms the western edge of the Golan Heights. South of it, the river becomes the border between the Kingdom of Jordan on the east and Israel on the west. Two crossings carry traffic over that border. The Sheikh Hussein Bridge, also called the Jordan River Crossing, stands near Beit She'an. The Allenby Bridge, also named for King Hussein, stands near Jericho.

  At the Sea of Galilee's southern exit, the river already lies about 210 metres below sea level. The final 120 km, known as the Jordan Valley, fall another 210 metres. The gentler slope lets the water meander. It ends at the Dead Sea, a lake about 422 metres below sea level with no outlet.

  Two major tributaries feed this lower stretch. The Yarmouk is the largest, and it marks the border between Syria and Jordan, then between Jordan and Israel. The Zarqa is the other. Smaller wadis add water as well, between six and ten of them from the east, including Wadi Ziqlab and Wadi al-Yabis. From the west, Wadi Qelt comes down from the Judean mountains and passes through Jericho.

  In 1835, Christopher Costigan explored the river and the Dead Sea by boat. Thomas Howard Molyneux followed in 1847, William Francis Lynch in 1848, and John MacGregor in 1869. Lynch published his account in 1849 as the Narrative of the United States' Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea.

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• 3. Names Across Languages

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  The earliest written form of the river's name is Yārdon, found in an Egyptian papyrus known as Anastasi I. Scholars think it probably dates to the time of Rameses II. Early Arab chroniclers called the river Al-Urdunn. Both the country of Jordan and the West Bank take their names from it.

  One hypothesis traces the name to a Semitic root meaning flow down, a nod to the river's steep fall. The same root may sit inside other regional names such as Yarkon and Yarmouk. A rival idea points to an Egyptian loanword meaning big river, the word used for the Nile. Under that reading, the ending might connect to the Akkadian word dannum, meaning powerful.

  Among the Mandaeans, the related word Yardena names the Jordan, but it also names any flowing water fit for their baptismal rituals, called masbuta.

  After the Crusades, another Arabic name took hold. Nahr Al Sharieat means the watering place, and medieval geographers such as Abu'l-Fida and Al-Dimashqi recorded it. Many notable 19th-century maps carried the name, and Edward Robinson discussed it in his Biblical Researches in Palestine. Some modern writers apply it only to the stretch above the Sea of Galilee, though the older sources draw no such line.

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• 4. Fish and Terrapins

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  The Levantine scraper is the most common native fish in the Jordan basin. The basin holds a surprising mix because it sits where four biogeographic regions meet: the northern Palearctic, the Afrotropics, East and South Asia, and the Mediterranean.

  The native list is long. It includes the Jordan himri, the red garra, the Damascus garra, the Palestine loach, the African sharptooth catfish, the blue tilapia, and the freshwater blenny. The Jordan bream and the Jordan barbel are thought to be endemic, found only in this basin. Researchers also suspect the basin served as a centre of diversification for several now-widespread Palearctic fish groups.

  The Balkan terrapin is the river's native freshwater reptile. It is thought to have been a food source for the earliest Neanderthal residents of the region.

  Newcomers have arrived too. Common carp, grass carp, black carp, rainbow trout, Nile tilapia, and sea mullet have all been introduced. Many of them prey on native fish or outcompete them, which threatens the more endangered species. Rainbow trout and sea mullet now swim in waters that also hold the Jordan barbel.

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• 5. Scripture's River

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  Genesis pictures the plain around the Jordan as a watered land, comparable to the garden of the LORD. Beyond that, the Hebrew Bible never describes the river in an orderly way. It offers only scattered references.

  Jacob crossed the Jordan and its tributary the Jabbok, today's Zarqa, on his way back from Haran. The river also served as a boundary. Two tribes and half a tribe settled to the east, while nine tribes and the half tribe of Manasseh settled to the west. Opposite Jericho, the text calls it the Jordan of Jericho.

  The river's fords carry grim and tense stories. Jephthah's men killed many Ephraimites at one of them. Near Beth-barah, Gideon lay in wait for the Midianites. In the plain between Succoth and Zarthan, the clay ground held Solomon's bronze foundries, according to 1 Kings 7:46.

  The valley is pictured as woodland in 2 Kings 6:1-4. The commentator Albert Barnes explained that "trees were rare in most parts of Palestine, but plentiful in the Jordan Valley".

  The Bible also treats the Jordan as a stage for miracles. The first came near Jericho, when the Israelites under Joshua crossed the river (Joshua 3:15-17). Afterward, the two tribes and the half tribe east of the river built a large altar on its bank as a witness between them and the other tribes. Elijah and Elisha each crossed on dry ground. Elisha healed Naaman's leprosy by sending him to bathe in the water. He also made a lost axe head float by throwing a piece of wood into the river.

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• 6. Baptism and Blessed Land

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  According to Matthew 3:5-6, crowds came to John the Baptist at the Jordan, where he baptised people unto repentance. The Gospels also place his baptising at Bethabara. Jesus came to be baptised by him there, and in John's Gospel the Baptist declared him the Son of God and Lamb of God. Matthew reports that this fulfilled a prophecy of Isaiah, which names the Jordan.

  The river appears again later in the story. Jesus crossed it several times during his ministry. Believers crossed it to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. When enemies sought to seize him, he took refuge beside the river, at the place where John had first baptised.

  Al-Maghtas, on the river's eastern side, has long been regarded as the site of the baptism of Jesus and as a place of pilgrimage. Scholars have reached that conclusion, and UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage site in 2015.

  In Islam, the Jordan belongs to a blessed land, called Ardh Mubaraka, mentioned in the Quran. That land is associated with the prophets Musa, Isa, and Yaqub. Battles were fought along the river in the past. Pilgrims visit the tombs of companions of the Prophet Muhammad, some of whom are thought to be buried on its banks.

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• 7. Freedom, Hymns, and Christenings

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  In Jewish tradition, the Israelites travelled a hard and dangerous road from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. The Jordan crossing was the final step. So the river came to stand for freedom.

  The lyric of Old Man River, from the musical Show Boat, uses it that way: "Let me go 'way from the Mississippi / Let me go 'way from the white man boss / Show me that stream called the River Jordan / That's the old stream that I long to cross".

  Martin Luther wrote a hymn about the baptism of Jesus in 1541, titled "Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam". Johann Sebastian Bach built a cantata on it in 1724, catalogued as BWV 7.

  The river runs through folk, gospel, and spiritual music. African-American spirituals include "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", "Deep River", and "Roll, Jordan, Roll". It is mentioned in "Eve of Destruction", "Will You Be There", and "The Wayfaring Stranger". Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash recorded "The Far Side Banks of Jordan" on June's Grammy Award-winning album Press On. The roots reggae artist Burning Spear wrote a song called "Jordan River". The Belarusian band Spasenie devoted a whole album, Crossing the Jordan, to the subject.

  The water itself has a place in royal ceremonies. Christian royal houses use it to christen heirs and princes, including Prince George of Wales, Simeon of Bulgaria, and James Ogilvy. The custom is old. On the 15th of May 1717 in Vienna, the Papal Nuntius Giorgio Spinola baptised the future Empress Maria Theresa, representing Pope Clement XI. Her baptismal water held a few drops from the Jordan.

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• 8. A River Drawn Down

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  The Jordan once delivered 1.3 billion cubic metres of water a year. Today up to 95 percent of it is diverted for human use, and the flow is less than a tenth of the old average. As of 2010, only 20 to 30 million cubic metres a year reached the Dead Sea. A 2010 study found the lower Jordan at just 2 percent of its historic flow. With fierce evaporation and industrial salt extraction in evaporation ponds, the Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly.

  The big diversions came in 1964. Israel began operating a pumping station that moved water from the Sea of Galilee into the National Water Carrier. That same year, Jordan built a channel taking Yarmouk water to the East Ghor Canal. Syria built reservoirs that catch Yarmouk water as well. Environmentalists blame all three countries for extensive damage to the river's ecosystem.

  For decades the Jordan was Israel's largest water resource. The National Water Carrier delivered Sea of Galilee water to the coastal plain for more than four decades. Prolonged drought ended that approach, and desalinated Mediterranean water took over. Jordan now receives 50 million cubic metres from the river, a quantity set by its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. That amount was meant to make up for the lost lower river.

  Water helped trigger a war. Starting in 1965, Syria tried to divert some of the headwaters, working with Lebanon and Jordan. The works would have cut the Israeli carrier's supply by about 35 percent, and Israel's total water by about 11 percent. Conflict over this contributed to the Six-Day War. The Arik Bridge, at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, opened access to the central Golan Heights and proved crucial in both the 1967 and 1973 wars.

  The river's condition has sunk with its flow. The first 3 km of the lower Jordan below the Sea of Galilee have been kept clean for baptism and local tourism. The worst-polluted section is the 100 km downstream stretch, from above the Yarmouk confluence to the Dead Sea. Sewage and brackish water poured into it. Salinity is high, with fertilizer runoff and untreated wastewater from upstream in Israel and the West Bank. Environmentalists say the ecosystem has been nearly destroyed, and recovery could take decades.

  In 2007, FoEME named the Jordan one of the world's 100 most endangered ecological sites. It cited, in part, the lack of cooperation between Israel and its neighbouring Arab states.

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