Amman Jordan

Description: Amman is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country’s economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of 4,061,150 as of 2021, Amman is Jordan’s primate city and is the largest city in the Levant region, the fifth-largest city in the Arab world, and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the Middle East.

Population: 4,061,150

Demographics: Around 94% of are Arabs, while the remaining 6% belong to other ethnic minorities, including Circassians, Chechens, Armenians and Kurds.

History: The Neolithic site of ʿAin Ghazal today lies in the outskirts of Amman. At its height, around 7000 BC (9000 years ago), it had an area of 15 hectares (37 acres) and was inhabited by ca. 3000 people (four to five times the population of contemporary Jericho). At that time, the site was a typical aceramic Neolithic village. In the 13th century BC, Amman was the capital of the Ammonite Kingdom, and became known as “Rabat Amman”. Rabat Amman provided several natural resources to the region, including sandstone and limestone, along with a productive agricultural sector that made it a vital location along the ancient trade route connecting Egypt with Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia. Amman is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. According to the biblical narrative, the Ammonite king Hanun allied with Hadadezer, king of Aram-Zobah, against the United Kingdom of Israel. During the war, Joab, the captain of King David’s army, laid siege to Rabbah, Hanun’s royal capital, and destroyed it. The Romans conquered much of the Levant in 63 BC, inaugurating a period of Roman rule that lasted for four centuries. In the northern modern-day Jordan, the Greek cities of Philadelphia (Amman), Gerasa, Gedara, Pella and Arbila joined other cities Palestine and Syria; Scythopolis, Hippos, Capitolias, Canatha and Damascus to form the Decapolis League, a fabled confederation linked by bonds of economic and cultural interest. Philadelphia became a point along a road stretching from Ailah to Damascus that was built by Emperor Trajan in AD 106. This provided an economic boost for the city in a short period of time. In the 630s, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the region from the Byzantines, beginning the Islamic era in the Levant. Philadelphia was renamed “Amman” by the Muslims and became part of the district of Jund Dimashq. A large part of the population already spoke Arabic, which facilitated integration into the caliphate, as well as several conversions to Islam. Under the Umayyad caliphs who began their rule in 661 AD, numerous desert castles were established as a means to govern the desert area of modern-day Jordan, several of which are still well-preserved. Amman began to be resettled in 1878, when several hundred Muslim Circassians arrived following their expulsion from the formerly Ottoman Balkans. Between 1878 and 1910, tens of thousands of Circassians had relocated to Ottoman Syria after being displaced by the Russian Empire during the events of the Russo-Circassian War. The Ottoman authorities directed the Circassian, who were mainly of peasant stock, to settle in Amman, and distributed arable land among them. Their settlement was a partial manifestation of the Ottoman statesman Kamil Pasha’s project to establish a vilayet centered in Amman, which, along with other sites in its vicinity, would become Circassian-populated townships guaranteeing the security of the Damascus–Medina highway. In 1921, the Hashemite emir and later king Abdullah I designated Amman instead of al-Salt to be the capital of the newly created state, the Emirate of Transjordan, which became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1950. Its function as the capital of the country attracted immigrants from different Levantine areas, particularly from al-Salt, a nearby city that had been the largest urban settlement east of the Jordan River at the time. The early settlers who came from Palestine were overwhelmingly from Nablus, from which many of al-Salt’s inhabitants had originated. They were joined by other immigrants from Damascus. Amman later attracted people from the southern part of the country, particularly al-Karak and Madaba. The city’s population was around 10,000 in the 1930s. Jordan gained its independence in 1946 and Amman was designated the country’s capital. Amman received many refugees during wartime events in nearby countries, beginning with the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. A second wave arrived after the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1970, Amman was a battlefield during the conflict between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Jordanian Army known as Black September. The Jordanian Army defeated the PLO in 1971, and the latter were expelled to Lebanon. During the 2010s, the city has experienced an economic, cultural and urban boom. The large growth in population has significantly increased the need for new accommodation, and new districts of the city were established at a quick pace. This strained Jordan’s scarce water supply and exposed Amman to the dangers of quick expansion without careful municipal planning.

Elevation: 777 m

Climate: Hot summer Mediterranean climate. Average annual temperature in Amman is 17 C (63 F), the average for July is 25 C (77 F), the average for January is 8 C (46 F).

Attractions: The Citadel, Roman Theater, Jordan Museum, Al Balad, Qasr Al Karrana, Rainbow Street, Roman Temple Of Hercules