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ظل الأردن لفترة طويلة على الحواف الخارجية للإمبرطورية العثمانية ، وقد أهله ذلك للحفاظ على درجة معينة من الأصالة في الممارسات والشعائر الدينية مقارنة مع باقي بلاد الشام. كانت المواقع الدينية كثيرة تغلب عليها مقامات كرست للأولياء والأنبياء وصحابة الرسول محمد والشيوخ الصوفيين (حول عجلون وإربد) . لقد اعتبرت المجتمعات المحلية هذه الشخصيات أولياء الله وتوجهت إليهم كشفعاء . لقد احتلت قبورهم موقعاً مركزياً في الحياة الدينية المحلية ، وفي الوقت نفسه ، كانت مكاناً للعبادة ، وأسواقاً ، وأماكن تجمع . لقد...

ترافقت بدايات العصر الحديدي في الشرق الأدنى باضطرابات سياسية. فالإمبراطورية الحثّية في الشمال (الأناضول)، والإمبراطورية المصرية في الجنوب، فقدتا هيمنتهما على ساحل بلاد الشام بعد أن كانتا تسيطران على المنطقة خلال العصر البرونزي المتأخر. ووصلت شعوب من البحر إلى سواحل سوريا ومصر، واصطلح على تسميتهم مجتمعين "شعوب البحر"، ومنهم الفلسطينيون. واتفق وصول هؤلاء إلى الساحل الفلسطيني بتاريخ 1175 قبل الميلاد مع بداية العصر الحديدي في جنوب بلاد الشام. الشكل 18.II: نمطية المواقع الأثرية الرئيسية في العصر ...

لا تتوفر للأردن حتى الآن خريطة تربة موثوقة وشاملة ومحدّثة، على الرغم من إجراء عدة مسوحات للتربة. حيث أعدّت فاو (منظمة الأغذية اء والزراعة الدولية) (مورفن 1959) أول خريطة عامة لتربة الأردن. لكنها لا تُعدّ صالحة حاليا، وهي تستخدم مصطلحات قديمة ( أنظر رايفنبرغ، 1947). ثم نُفذت مسوحات أخرى للتربة، من قِبل « مسح تربة وادي زِقلاب» (فشر وآخرون، 1966)، ومسح وادي البقعة (وست 1970)، ومشروع سد نهر الزرقاء (GTZ، 1986)، ومشروع مسح خريطة التربة الوطنية ومشروع استخداموأستعمالات الأراضي، ومن قبل مسح تربة واد...

في عام 2006 أصدر المركز الجغرافي الملكي الأردني سلسلة من الخرائط لسطح الأرض باستخدام تفسير الصور الفضائية من لاندسات 5 (ميز 30 م)، بمقياس 1:250000. اعتمدت الخرائط نظام الإسقاط الوطني الأردني، جتم (اسقاط ميركاتور المستعرض الأردني JTM)، والنظام الجيوديزي (JGD82). تتبع فئات الغطاء الأرضي الثماني عشرة نظام تصنيف سطح الأرض الذي وضعته وكالة البيئة الأوربية (ENA). ضمن إطار التعاون بين المعهد الفرنسي للشرق الأدنى (Ifpo) والمركز الجغرافي الملكي (RJGC) لإنتاج الأطلس الوطني الأردني، أعددنا وثيقة خرائطية...

Broad economic development and high demographic growth during the second half of the 20th century have put increasing pressure on Jordan water resources. Per capita water availability is very low and a water crisis is looming. The lower Jordan river basin (see figure) is the most populated and economically active region of the county and is endowed with 80% of its water resources (Courcier et al., 2005). Around the year 2000, nearly all available water in the basin was used: this chapter sket...

“The main characteristics of Jordan’s climate reflect the transnational location of the country between the Mediterranean climate in the west and the arid climate in the east and the south” (RJGC 1984). The Mediterranean climate prevails in the Highlands region, where summer is moderate and dry and the winter cold and rainy. The desert climate prevails in the Badiya; the summer is hot and the winter is cold. The Ghor area has a semitropical climate with a hot summer and warm winter. Depressi...

The Exodus of Palestinian Refugees The first Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948 permanently transformed the territory and the demographics of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The conflict had started in May 1948 after the proclamation of the State of Israel, and ended in the victory of Israeli forces and the exodus of the Arab population of Palestine living within that State. According to the Economic Survey Mission, the body appointed by the UN General Assembly to find durable solutions for the i...

It is in the Jordan Valley that the earliest Chalcolithic sites of Jordan were discovered and studied. In Tulaylat al-Ghassul, eight digs carried out from 1929 to 1938 by the Pontifical Biblical Institute, revealed traces of a culture yet unknown, whose origins stem from the Neolithic period. Since these initial discoveries, a high concentration of sites attributed to this period have been identified; along the Jordan Valley (Abu Hamid, Tabaqat Fahl (Pella) and North Tell al-Shuna), and on th...

The Department of Statistics (DoS) was created within the Ministry of the Interior in 1949. The DoS is thus one of the first governmental agencies created after the establishment of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The ‘General Statistics Act’ No. 24 of 1950 and its amendment of 2003 entrust it with the organization of a census every ten years and require that it collects, verifies, analyzes and publishes statistical data on the economy, society and demography in Jordan, to be used by policym...

Jordan Human Development Index (HDI) and Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) In 1990, the United Nations Development Programme designed a Human Development Index composed of life expectancy at birth, level of education and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. In 2011, the UNDP ranked Jordan 95th out of 187 countries with a human development index of 0.698, up from 0.591 in 1990, making it the leading medium-range country for human development (fig. VIII.1). In 2010, the inequality adj...

Total Fertility Rate Jordan is currently in the final phase of its demographic transition. The country first began controlling mortality rates and improving health conditions with foreign aid during the 1950s. In the 1930s, infant mortality affected approximately one quarter of live-born children. In 2007 the kingdom’s infant mortality rate was reduced to 19‰ (the average rate in the Western Asia region is 41‰) (table VI.2). Table VI.2 — Demographic Indicators from 1961 to 2010. 1961 1979 199...

Foreign trade and Jordan’s economic and financial partners Jordan’s current account shows a structural deficit since the country imports its raw materials, food products and everyday consumer goods. In 2011 the trade deficit amounted to US$ 6 billion, that was not offset by surplus transfers (US $ 3.3 billion), tourism revenues (US$ 2 billion) and services (US$ 705 million) (IMF 2011) (fig. VII.3). Figure VII.3 — Trade Balance Evolution 1989-2009. Jordan imports 96% of its energy in the form...

With the Muslim conquest, the territory of modern-day Jordan was for the first time in close proximity to the centre of an Empire; first Medina and then Damascus under the Umayyads. The Byzantine province of Arabia was replaced by the jund al-Urdunn (in the north-west of the country) and the jund dimashq (in the east and south). Amman and Aqaba were reorganised by the Umayyads, whose itinerant court built lavish residences along the wadis. However, in 750 the centre of power, now Abbasid, mov...

Mu’ta is situated 11 km to the south of al‑Kerak (longitude λ=35.68, latitude Ф= 31.20) at an elevation of about 1100 m asl. Mu’ta witnessed the confrontation of the first well-organized Muslim forces against the Byzantine army and its allied tribes. Islamic historical sources mention this battle under four different terms: Sariyya (brigade or company), which is a division of an army; ba’th (an army); ghazwa (invasion, incursion). The writers of the Sira (biography of Prophet Muhammad) refer ...

Located 70 km north of Petra along the King’s Highway, the site of Dharih was excavated and restored by the University of Yarmuk and University of Paris I from 1984 to 2008. Dharih was a stopping place on the caravan route from Petra to Bostra and an agricultural centre of the Laaban. The Dharih valley is adjacent to the Hasa canyon and provides a good example of discontinuous settlement, a feature common to the southern half of Jordan. Here we have sites from the Neolithic Pottery A (6th mil...

The last years of the first century AH/beginnings of 8th Century AD, witnessed the development of Abbasid political activity, which aimed at the destruction of the Umayyad Caliphate and the establishment of the Abbasid state in its place. This was realized in 132 AH/750 AD. The Abbasid state survived for more than five centuries, until it was destroyed by the Mongols in 656 AH/1258 AD. It represents the longest duration of any Islamic Caliphate system. The undercover phase of the political ac...

The economic boom of the 1970s The creation of the Kingdom in 1949 on both banks of the Jordan River led to the development of farming and industry in Jordan, bolstered by major hydraulic works in the Jordan Valley. However, after the 1967 defeat by Israel and the occupation of the West Bank, Jordan had to restructure its economy and move back to the East Bank of the Jordan River, with nearly 300,000 impoverished Jordanian refugees from the West Bank. The most highly educated refugees were ab...

Up to now, no nation-wide and reliable soil map exists for Jordan that is up-to-date although several soil surveys have been conducted. The first general soil map for Jordan – now outdated and using old terminology (see Reifenberg 1947) – was prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (Moorman 1959). Other soil surveys were done by the Wadi Ziqlab soil survey (Fisher et al. 1966), by the Baqa’a valley survey (West 1970), by the Zarqa river dam project (GTZ 1...

The beginnings of the 10th millennium BCE witnessed the peak of hunter-gatherers villages. A substantial transformation occurred in the lives of these human societies and their ways of life in this period. This transformation was materialized by the abandoning a life of hunting, gathering and foraging, and the adoption of farming, taming animals, specialized production and settling in permanent villages. Ayn Ghazal witnessed the establishment of an organized agricultural society 10,000 years ...

Jordan’s natural resources are very limited: water is scarce, there is little arable land and the country has few sources of energy (fig. I.11). Jordan’s mineral industry has a long history: flint was used in prehistoric times and early copper mining started in Wadi Faynan during the Chalcolithic Period. The following is a brief presentation of Jordan’s resources. Mining and investments will be studied in Part 3. Figure I.11 — Jordan Mineral Resources. NRA 2012 Phosphates The Jordanian Natur...

Groundwater This refers to available renewable groundwater resources (using safe extraction methods), estimated at 260 Mm3 per year for water strata that have been examined to date in all twelve basins. Quantities of available non-renewable groundwater were estimated at 118 Mm3 over a period of 100 years. These sources are found in the Disi-Mudawwara area and the Shadiya area in the Jafr Basin (fig. I.14). Figure 1.14 — Jordan Water Sources in 2008. Figure I.15— Flow Rate (Mm3/y). Surface W...

The extent, depth and profile of poverty have been the subject of much debate since poverty became an issue in Jordan in the late 1980s. Until then poverty among the general population was low (estimated at below 3%), and it was only within the realms of UNRWA and its Special Hardship Cases Program that it was discussed as an issue. However, since the economic crisis of the late 1980s and the IMF and WB-sponsored structural adjustment programs of the 1990s poverty has significantly risen and ...

Since the territory of contemporary Jordan remained for a long time on the fringes of the Ottoman Empire, there was a certain degree of originality in practices and religious rites compared with the rest of Bilad al-Sham. Local religious topology was very concentrated and dominated by sanctuaries dedicated to walis* (Muslim Saints), prophets, the companions of the Prophet and Sufi Sheikhs (around Ajlun and Irbid). These figures were considered holy saints and were called upon as intercessors ...

Classical Byzantine and Arab historical sources mention that the province of «Jund al-Urdunn», Jordan Legion, extended over the north of the actual Jordan and the north of Palestine. Its capital city was Tabariyya (Tiberias). It extended parallel to both legions of Palestine I and II, and all of them were perpendicular to the Mediterranean. This kind of division ended with the crusaders occupation of the Levant, (Bilad al-Sham) coasts in the early twelfth century. A new divisional system was ...

The Neolithic period is when people began the enormous process of change from relying on wild resources to manipulating and domesticating their world, the foundation on which all later civilizations are built. Jordan is one of the key places where these changes occurred. Some of the most visible changes that occurred were in the nature of settlements and their position in the landscape. In the earliest Neolithic age (the pre-Pottery Neolithic A, 10,000 – 8550 BC) people began to live in more ...

This chapter gives an overview of the first forms of occupation of the territory east of the Jordan River, from prehistoric times to the taking of Phoenicia by Alexander the Great in 333 BC. At that time, the climate was wetter and hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic period were widely scattered along wadis and temporary ponds. During the Neolithic period they developed new hunting techniques and built kites throughout the badiya; these were long funnel-shaped stone walls used to capture gaz...

An urban metabolism diagram provides a graphical representation of the inflows and outflows of a city. The urban metabolism diagram for Amman focuses on energy, water (blue), and waste (green). The majority of the energy supply is provided by fossil fuels (red), which are imported into the city for direct use or transformed into electricity (purple) (fig. X.20). In terms of greenhouse gas emissions (grey), electricity generation and road transport are responsible for the majority of emissions...

We do not know the exact origins of the Nabataeans; they are a nomadic people from Arabia who settled in present-day Jordan between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. In 312, they already occupied the former lands of the Edomites, between Wadi al-Hasa (Zered) and the Gulf of Aqaba (Aila), and resisted Antigone, one of Alexander’s successors. The control of trade routes ensured their wealth. During the Hellenistic period, Petra, a storage area and shelter, became the capital of a kingdom that exten...

In 2006, the Royal Jordanian Geographic Center released a series of land cover Maps interpreting Landsat 5 Satellite Images (30 m resolution), at a scale of 250,000. These maps were projected using the Jordan Transverse Mercator projection and the geodesic system JGD 82. The 18 land cover categories follow the Corine (Coordination of information on the environment) land cover classification system developed by the European Environment Agency. As part of Ifpo’s collaboration with the RJGC for ...

The Emirate of Transjordan | Nadine Méouchy After the withdrawal of the Ottoman troops from Syria and Palestine, in October 1918, the Arab nationalists set up an Arab government in Damascus, whose authority was to include all the Syrian provinces of Bilad al-Sham, from the Taurus Mountains to the Red Sea. From the outset, the occupation of these provinces by British and French troops jeopardised the smooth running of the government, under the leadership of the Hashemite Emir Faysal b. Hussein...

In search of the middle classes In 2008, the Economic and Social Council (ESC), a national institution composed of members of civil society and government, and responsible for informing and advising the relevant authorities on economic and social matters, published a study of social groups in Jordan. The results of this study indicate that, contrary to widespread belief that the middle class had become part of the poor classes, it still forms 41% of the population and participates fully in it...

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, Transjordan was a marginal province of the Ottoman Empire with a local mode of governance. For years, the main concern of the Ottoman Porte in Transjordan was to ensure the safety of the Hajj caravan by paying the Bedouin tribes of the regions it passed through (eg. Bani Sakhr and Huwaytat). Tanzimat, administrative boundaries and Ottoman cadastre According to Eugene Rogan, the two major reforms of Tanzimat* (reorganization of the Ottoman Empir...

Local governance operates on two complementary administrative levels in Jordan: administrative levels in Jordan : governorates under the Ministry of Interior, and Municipalities under the Ministry of Municipalities. The Greater Amman Municipality, created in 1963 and revised in 1985, and the Aqaba Special Economic Zone are managed independently, under the Prime Minister. The Joint Service Councils were created to provide services (especially waste collection) for several groups of municipalit...

The tourism sector accounted for 13% of GDP in 2010 and employs nearly a quarter of the workforce, placing Jordan just after Lebanon in tourism receipts as % of GDP, but far ahead of Morocco, Syria and Egypt (fig. VII.29). The bulk of tourism comes from the Arab world, mainly the Gulf, followed by Asia, Europe and the Americas (fig. VII.30). Out of the 9.5 million people who entered Jordan in 2009 (a figure that includes tourism, but also business tourism), 8 million people came from Arab cou...

In 2011, Jordan imported 97% of its energy, mostly in the form of oil (61%) and natural gas (36%), mainly from Iraq and Egypt (fig. X.14). However, since February 2011 there has been an increase in acts of sabotage against the pipelines from Egypt that supply Israel and Jordan, creating a climate of insecurity in the field of energy supply and, above all, forcing the Jordanian government to invest massively to import Iraqi oil instead of Egyptian gas (about $ 3 million per day). In addition, ...

In 2011 Amman used 16.4% (148 million m3) of the country’s water resources due to its population and industry. Internal sources supplied only 38 million m3 while external sources provided 110 million m3 (fig. X.6). Until the 1950s, the city was famous for its Sayl river and its tributaries, whose plentiful source flowed at a rate of 100 m3/h. In 1975, Jordan had a population of about 2 million, including 600,000 in the city of Amman alone. The demographic and economic pressures on water reso...

Jordan is poor in natural resources and has repeatedly suffered from demographic surges caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. The country’s economic survival is due in large to external sources of income: international financial aid - especially from America and Europe, financial aid from the Gulf countries and remittances sent home by Jordanian migrant workers. Foreign aid and remittances account for nearly one third of the income of Jordanian households, while food accounts on average for on...

While Jordan’s urban growth reflects the country’s geopolitical situation, with every war in the Middle East resulting in the arrival of large waves of refugees, the country’s urban policies testify to changes in economic models over the past fifty years: a welfare state, structural adjustments and economic liberalization. During the 1980s bold policies were pursued to renovate informal settlements with the participation of residents, the Palestinian camps were included from 1997 onwards. How...

In 2007, 40-50% of Amman’s water came from the Jordan Valley (pumped through the King Abdullah Canal), the rest was taken from aquifers in Zarqa and Mafraq or new aquifers in the South, such as in Lajoun (Van Aken, Courcier, Venot and Molle, 2007). The government’s decision to exploit the strategic Disi fossil water aquifer (Mudawarra) to ensure the supply to Amman illustrates the impending water crisis. The project includes the construction of a pipeline to carry water pumped from the Disi a...

Jordan is extraordinarily rich in archaeological remains of the Paleolithic periods, largely because deflation has concentrated stone artifacts derived from land surfaces that have long since disappeared from the modern landscape and because, in many parts of the country, remaining Pleistocene land surfaces have not been buried by Holocene deposition, as is the case in Europe. The Levant, in general, and Jordan, in particular, also lie at the cross-roads between Africa, Europe and Asia, so th...

The organization of Ayyubid (1188-1263) and Mamluk (1263-1516) governance in the territory that became modern Jordan grew out of the administrative and defensive structures developed under Frankish rule. Two of the Crusader castles of Outre-Jourdain (in today’s Kerak and Shawbak) continued to function as important military bases and administrative centres. Much of the economic and administrative restructuring of the region under Salah al-Din’s descendants, upon the return of Kerak to Muslim ...

In his lifetime, the Prophet Muhammad tried to rally to Islam the main Arab tribes of North-Eastern Arabia and the Near East, but had little success. In AH 8/AD 629, a raid led by Muslim forces reached Mu’ta, in central Jordan. The conquest of Bilad al-Sham was initiated under Abu Bakr, his first successor, and completed during the reign of ‘Umar b. al-Khattab. Three phases of conquest can be distinguished. A first phase, between 12/633 and 13/634, saw incursions in rural areas of Bilad al-S...

Despite relatively high GDP growth rates in the 2000s, (between 5% and 8% from 2000 to 2008 and 3 to 4% since the outbreak of the global economic crisis in late 2008 (World Bank d)), Jordan’s labour market indicators have been alarming. The participation rate of Jordan’s workforce has remained one of the lowest in the world at about 40%, and the country’s unemployment rate is high, stagnating at about 12 to 15% since the year 2000 (DOS 2000-2010). Data and predictions indicate that despite do...

During the private investment boom from 2006 to 2008, and as part of the Greater Amman master plan, the Jordanian government undertook a programme to modernize the country’s roads, ports and railways. The most costly project was the redevelopment of the port of Aqaba, at a cost of over a billion dollars, followed by the construction of Amman’s new international airport, under the supervision of Aéroports de Paris, with funding from Kuwait (Noor Financial Investment Company) and Jordan (EDGO G...

The period that historians call Hellenistic broadly extends from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC until the first century BC - approximately 66 to 30 BC - when the Romans gradually took control of the Near East. The term Hellenistic refers to a cultural phenomenon known as “Hellenization” i.e. the extensive dissemination (begun at least two centuries before Alexander) of the Greek language in the Near East, as well as a series of new customs and philosophical, political or religious...

The early Late Bronze Age (1500-1300 BCE) culture of Jordan is a direct continuation from the preceding Middle Bronze Age. However, the political world had been completely altered by the reunification of Egypt, and the conquest of much of the Southern Levant under the warrior pharaohs of the Imperial Eighteenth Dynasty. Initially Jordan stood outside the Egyptian orbit, but the Thutmosid conquerors probably brought the main Jordan valley settlements (Nimrin, Deir Alla and Pella) into the New ...

Jordan is a small country lacking in natural resources and with little useful land area. Since the 1970s the country has had a rentier economy. Its income is both direct, in the form of remittances from the hundreds of thousands of emigrants in the oil producing Gulf countries, and indirect, due to its geopolitical position as a pivotal country for peace in the Middle East, which guarantees generous international aid to ensure stability. Jordan is a developing country that aspires to become a...

The town of Aqaba is Jordan’s only port and its only coastline, with borders to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This unique geostrategic position has been used by the Jordanian government to stimulate international trade. In 2001, the city was given a huge free trade zone: ASEZ, Aqaba Special Economic Zone, which covers 375 km² and encompasses the town (fig. IX.41). It was designed as a hub to connect with global economic systems. International Gulf investors such as Saraya and Ayla Developme...

At the end of the eleventh century the current territory of the Kingdom of Jordan was the focus of bitter rivalry between the Fatimids and Seljuks from Damascus to control the Hijaz and Red Sea routes. The sudden emergence into the Near East political scene of a new power, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, permanently disrupted the balance of forces and resulted in a few years in the complete expulsion of Muslim powers. On July 15, 1099, Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders. Having driven back a rei...

In order to compete with Beirut and Dubai as a ‘global city’ that increasingly attracts foreign investment, in 2004 Amman launched a massive project to build a new Abdali downtown, including a new Parliament and courthouse, the American University and a dozen office towers. An equity joint venture, Mawared, is responsible for managing the $5 billion construction site. The project was soon criticised for its lack of road and transport networks. Abdali Bus Station was moved to Tabarbour, which ...