| Domain Info
|
|---|
| |
| Map
|
|---|
| |
| AboutUs Badges
|
|---|
 |
Title edit
Desert Discoveries - ecotourism & travel to see Petra and the archaeology of Jordan and Saudi Arabian desert
Description edit
Jordan: History and Culture
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a relatively modern creation, carved out of the desert in the aftermath of the great Arab Revolt (ended 1918) and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. Its eastern and southern borders are wholly artificial; arbitrary lines, drawn in the sand, by the then colonial powers. Its King is only the fourth generation of his family to occupy the Hashemite throne.
The Kingdom itself may be young, but the people who inhabit it have, like their ruling family, an immensely long and distinguished past. The land that is now Jordan lies in a position of great strategic and geographic importance, a crossroads where the Spice and Silk Routes from eastern Asia to the Mediterranean met the north-south axis of the trade routes from Turkey and Syria down to Arabia and Yemen.
Jordan was home to the earliest Stone Age settled farming communities; to the great Bronze Age fortified cities whose distant memory comes down to us through the later Iron Age texts of the Bible; to the warring successors of Alexander the Great; to the Roman legions of Trajan and later Emperors; and most importantly, because of the unique position they occupy in world architectural history, to the Nabataeans. The remains of all these civilisations lie scattered around the deserts and mountains of Jordan, and can be found by anyone with open eyes and an enquiring mind.
Languages edit
English
