Jordan

Why Jordan works

Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia, bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and Palestine to the west. The Jordan River, flowing into the Dead Sea, runs along the country's western border within the Jordan Rift Valley, and Jordan holds a small coastline on the Red Sea in its southwest, separated by the Gulf of Aqaba from Egypt. Amman is the country's capital and largest city, and the most populous city in the Levant.

Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire in 332 BC brought Hellenistic culture to the region, and after his death in 323 BC his empire split among his generals, leaving much of Transjordan disputed between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria. The Nabataeans, nomadic Arabs based south of Edom, exploited that rivalry to establish an independent kingdom in 169 BC, one that came to control much of the region's trade routes, stretching south along the Red Sea coast into the Hejaz desert and briefly north to Damascus between 85 and 71 BC; their capital, Petra, flourished in the 1st century AD on the strength of extensive water engineering. Centuries later, in 629, Byzantine forces and their Ghassanid Arab Christian allies repelled a Muslim Rashidun advance at the Battle of Mu'tah, but the Byzantines were decisively defeated by the Muslims at the Battle of the Yarmuk in 636, just north of Transjordan, opening the way for the region's role in the Muslim conquest of Damascus under the Rashidun and later Umayyad caliphates.

Jordan sits at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe within the Levant area of the Fertile Crescent, covering 89,341 square kilometres and stretching 400 kilometres between its northernmost point, Umm Qais, and its southernmost, Aqaba. The kingdom lies between latitudes 29° and 34° N, bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south and east, Iraq to the northeast, Syria to the north, and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its eastern territory is an arid plateau watered by oases and seasonal streams, while major cities cluster in the northwest, where soils are more fertile and rainfall relatively more abundant, including Irbid, Jerash, and Zarqa in the northwest, Amman and As-Salt in the central west, and Madaba, Al-Karak, and Aqaba further south. Over 2,000 plant species have been recorded across the kingdom, many flowering in spring after the winter rains, with vegetation type shaped largely by precipitation: the mountainous northwest carries forest cover, while further south and east the landscape turns to scrub and steppe. Forests cover about 1,500 square kilometres, under 2% of Jordan's territory, making the country among the world's least forested, against an international average of around 15%.

Under Umayyad rule, several desert castles were built across Transjordan, including Qasr Al-Mshatta and Qasr Al-Hallabat, and the Abbasid campaign that eventually displaced the Umayyads began in the Transjordanian village of Humayma, with a powerful earthquake in 749 thought to have contributed to the Umayyads' fall and the subsequent move of the caliphate's capital away from Damascus.

Jordan ranks as the eighth-largest producer of olives in the world, and olive oil is the country's main cooking oil, used in staples such as hummus, a puree of chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon, and garlic, and ful medames, an appetiser that began as a typical worker's meal before spreading to wider tables. A typical meze spread includes koubba maqliya, labaneh, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh, olives, and pickles, often served with arak, a Levantine grape-and-aniseed spirit similar to ouzo, rakı, and pastis, or with Jordanian wine or beer; served without alcohol, the same dishes are termed muqabbilat, or starters, in Arabic. Mansaf, the national dish, shaped by Bedouin culture, remains the most distinctive dish in Jordanian cuisine.

• Jordan — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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