Jordan has a long history dating back to more than 10,000 years ago, with evidence of human settlements found in several places including Jericho near the Dead Sea pointing to that period. In more recent times, the Egyptians conquered Palestine in the 16th century BC. It is a place of great significance to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Some sites of historical interest include:
- Amman, which is the ancient city of the Ammonites mentioned in the Bible and was where the Hebrew kings David and Solomon ruled. The Greeks and Romans called Amman Philadelphia (the word came from Greek, meaning city of brotherly love)
- Tell a-Kharrar and Elijah’s Hill near Amman, where the Bible said Jesus was baptised (called Bethany Beyond the Jordan), and which was John the Baptist’s settlement
- Umm Qays, which overlooks the Sea of Galilee where Jesus performed the miracle of the Gadarene wine. Located there now is a 4th century basilica and a Byzantine tomb
- Mount Nebo, where Moses viewed the Holy Land of Canaan and where Jeremiah was said to have hidden the Ark of the Covenant and other relics
- the Dead Sea and Lot’s Cave, where the stories about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were played out and where Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying God
Of course, there are also Petra, Jerash, Kark and much more.
Throughout its history, Jordan has mostly been dominated by outsiders.
In the 4th century BC, Jordan and other parts of the Middle East fell to Alexander the Great and his general, Seleucus, who took over that part of the empire when Alexander died in 323 BC.
The Romans replaced the Greeks from the 1st century AD onwards. Initially the Romans did not rule the entire area of Jordan. Instead, a local Arab kingdom called Nabataean with its capital in Petra (made well-known in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”) ruled an areas east of the Jordan River until it was annexed by the Roman emperor Trajan in 106 AD.
The Nabataean was a very rich kingdom as it controlled the trade route between the Arabian Peninsula and northern Asia Minor. They developed an alphabet which became the Arabic alphabet of today.
The Romans left behind impressive structures such as the Citadel and amphitheatre complex in present-day Amman, Petra and Jerash. They also brought Christianity into the region.
The Muslim invasion of 636 AD expelled the Byzantine Empire from the Middle East, and Jordan was converted to Islam. Muslim rule was interrupted by Christian Crusades in the 11th to 13th centuries, which for a while established the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Crusaders left behind several castles in Jordan, including an impressive one at Kerak.
Jordan was occupied by the Ottoman Empire from 1517 AD onwards when it prevailed over the Arabs in the Middle East and remained there for four centuries until the Great Arab Revolt of 1916, when Al-Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and King of the Arabs, with British encouragement, freed the Arabs from the Ottomans.
Al-Hussein bin Ali came from the Hashemite family who are direct descendents of Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali bin Abi Talib, the Prophet’s paternal first cousin. The Hashemites had ruled over western Arabia for over 1,000 years. After the defeat of the Ottomans in WW I, the British, who was given the Mandate to rule Palestine and Transjordan, installed Al-Hussein’s son Abdullah as the king of Emirate of Transjordan. In 1946, Jordan became independent and established the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The West Bank became part of Jordan when the latter annexed it after the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. At the same time, there was an influx of over 500,000 Palestinian refugees, who, together with other Palestinians in the country became the majority. This led to an unstable situation. In 1951, King Abdullah was assassinated by a Palestinian Arab at the al-Aqsa Mosque and was replaced by his son, Talal. As a result of illness, King Talal was soon replaced by his eldest son, Hussein bin Talal, who ruled the kingdom from 1953 to 1999. During his reign, the kingdom went through lots of turmoil, including the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and several Arab states, loss of the West Bank to the Israelis after the war, influx of more Palestinian refugees, war with the Palestinians in 1970 to drive them out of Jordan, just to name a few. In 1988, Jordan gave up its claim on the West Bank.
The present King Abdallah II came to power in 1999 after his father, King Hussein, died in 1999.
