93 Fun Facts About Jordan

Which Arabic word for 'hill' names the districts of Amman, a capital first built on seven of them?

Jabal means hill or mountain: Amman began on seven of them and has since spread over many more, so its neighbourhoods are still known by their hill, as in Jabal al-Luweibdeh; a wadi is the valley in between.

What is Jordan's ruling royal house, descended from the Sharif of Mecca, called?

The Hashemites trace their line to Hashim, great-grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad; the family ruled Mecca for centuries until the Saudi conquest of the Hejaz in 1924-25, soon after one of its sons took charge of Transjordan.

Visitors walk into Petra through the Siq; what is it?

A narrow gorge, the Siq is a natural cleft that winds between sheer sandstone walls before opening suddenly onto Petra's most famous facade; so tight an entrance made the city easy to defend.

Which Swiss traveller rediscovered the Nabataean rock-cut city for the Western world in 1812?

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, travelling disguised as a Muslim pilgrim, bluffed his way into the hidden city in 1812 by saying he wished to sacrifice a goat at a prophet's tomb on a nearby peak.

The Nabataeans who carved Petra grew rich on caravans carrying which goods?

Frankincense and myrrh, tree resins burned as incense, came north by caravan from southern Arabia; the Greek historian Diodorus wrote that carrying them to the sea made the Nabataeans far wealthier than other Arab tribes.

Which Roman emperor annexed the Nabataean kingdom in AD 106 and made it the province of Arabia?

Trajan claimed the kingdom in AD 106 when its last king, Rabbel II, died; his engineers then paved the Via Nova Traiana, a trunk road running the length of the new province.

Gerasa, Pella and other Greek cities of Transjordan formed which league of cities under Rome?

The Decapolis, often called a league, was a group of ten Greek-speaking cities that Pompey freed from the Hasmonean kingdom in the 60s BC and left self-governing under Rome; Pliny the Elder's list includes Gerasa, Pella and Damascus.

Which Jordanian city holds one of the world's best-preserved Roman provincial towns, with colonnaded streets and an oval forum?

Jerash, the Roman Gerasa, was wrecked by earthquakes in the 740s and then lay buried in sand for centuries, which is why its streets, plazas and theatres survive in such good condition.

What was Jordan's capital called after the Greeks conquered it in the 3rd century BC?

Philadelphia honoured Ptolemy II Philadelphus, whose dynasty held the city in the 3rd century BC; the name lasted through Roman times until Arab rule revived the older Semitic name.

Jordan's Zarqa River is the biblical Jabbok, where which figure wrestled until dawn with a mysterious stranger?

Jacob, on his way to a reunion with Esau, wrestled until daybreak at the ford of the Jabbok, says Genesis 32; his opponent could not beat him, and gave him the new name Israel.

The 'Ain Ghazal statues, among the oldest large human figures known, were made from what material?

Lime plaster was modelled over bundles of reeds about 9,000 years ago; some thirty figures turned up in the 1980s buried together in two pits, and why their makers put them underground is still unknown.

At which 636 battle just north of Transjordan did the Muslims decisively defeat the Byzantines?

Yarmuk, fought in 636 beside the river that now marks Jordan's northern border, broke Byzantine power in the region and opened the whole Levant to the Rashidun caliphate.

Al-Karak and Montreal castles were built in Transjordan by which power?

The Crusaders built Montreal (Shobak) in 1115 under Baldwin I and Kerak a generation later to hold their lordship of Oultrejordain; both castles fell to Saladin's armies in 1188-89.

Ajloun Castle was built in the 1180s by a commander of Saladin, the founder of which dynasty?

The Ayyubids, Saladin's dynasty, raised Ajloun Castle in 1184-85 to watch the Jordan Valley; the Mongols wrecked much of it in 1260, and the Mamluk sultan Baybars rebuilt it almost at once.

Which Muslim refugees from the Caucasus resettled the abandoned site of today's capital under Ottoman rule?

Circassians, driven from the Caucasus after Russia's conquest, were settled by the Ottomans in the ruins of the ancient capital, founding the modern city that grew around their village.

The Hejaz Railway was built to carry pilgrims towards Mecca but never got past which other holy city?

Medina was as far as the line got when it opened from Damascus in 1908; the Ottomans also meant it to rush troops into Arabia, one reason many Arabs saw the railway as a threat.

Which future prime minister, as colonial secretary in 1921, offered Abdullah the emirate of Transjordan?

Winston Churchill met Abdullah in Jerusalem in March 1921; Abdullah had come north meaning to fight the French in Damascus, and dropped the plan in return for the emirate and a subsidy.

Which country's veto kept Jordan out of the United Nations until 1955?

The Soviet Union blocked the application on the grounds that the kingdom was still not truly independent of its former mandate power; Jordan finally joined in December 1955, when a batch of waiting states was let in together.

Jordan's first king was assassinated in 1951 at which holy site in Jerusalem?

Al-Aqsa Mosque was where a Palestinian gunman shot the king on 20 July 1951 as he arrived for Friday prayers; his 15-year-old grandson, a future king, survived at his side.

Which king ruled Jordan for 46 years until his death in 1999?

Hussein was a 16-year-old schoolboy in England when his father was made to abdicate in 1952; he went on to survive repeated coup plots and assassination attempts before his death in February 1999.

Jordan and which fellow Arab kingdom, ruled by a royal cousin, formed the 1958 Arab Federation?

Iraq, ruled by Faisal II, a cousin of Jordan's king, joined the Arab Federation in February 1958; it collapsed after the 14 July revolution killed Faisal in Baghdad.

In which war did Jordan lose control of the West Bank to Israel?

The Six-Day War of 1967 cost Jordan the West Bank and East Jerusalem within days in June; it had annexed the territory in 1950 and formally renounced its claim in 1988.

After Black September in 1970, Palestinian fighters were expelled from Jordan to which country?

Lebanon received the PLO leadership and thousands of fedayeen after the 1970-71 fighting; the organisation ran its operations from Beirut until it was forced to leave in 1982.

Before he took the throne in 1999, Abdullah II commanded which branch of Jordan's military?

Special forces: he took command in 1994 and was still a serving general in 1999, when his dying father named him heir to the throne only two weeks before the end.

Which militant led the al-Qaeda branch that bombed three hotels in Amman in November 2005?

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was himself Jordanian-born; his group claimed the suicide attacks, which killed about 60 people including guests at a wedding party, and a US air strike killed him in June 2006.

Jordan's only coastline lies on which body of water?

The Red Sea touches Jordan only at the head of its northeastern gulf; that short shore holds the country's one seaport, so all its seaborne trade funnels through a single town, beside coral reefs prized by divers.

A cave above the Dead Sea's southeastern shore is venerated as the refuge of which biblical figure after Sodom's destruction?

Lot sheltered in a cave after fleeing Sodom, says Genesis 19; Byzantine Christians built a church at the mouth of this one, and a salt pillar nearby is pointed out as his wife, who looked back.

Which ancient road, named in the Book of Numbers, runs the length of Jordan through Madaba, Karak and Petra?

The King's Highway is the road the Israelites ask to follow through Edom in Numbers 20, promising not to stray left or right, and are refused; traders, armies and pilgrims have used it ever since.

Which desert valley in southern Jordan provided locations for both Lawrence of Arabia and The Martian?

Wadi Rum is country the real T. E. Lawrence rode through and called 'vast, echoing and God-like', so the 1962 film shot his story on the actual ground; its red sands later stood in for Mars in The Martian.

A desert rock formation in southern Jordan is named after which book by T. E. Lawrence?

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's account of the desert war, took its title from the Book of Proverbs, not from any landmark; the rock was named after the book, not the other way round.

Jordan's Shaumari reserve breeds which animal, once extinct in the wild?

Oryx: overhunting had wiped the Arabian oryx out of the wild by the early 1970s; Shaumari bred up a protected herd so that the white antelope could be returned to the desert.

What is the currency of Jordan?

The Dinar divides into 1,000 fils; because it is pegged to the US dollar, one dinar stays worth about $1.41, more than the dollar itself.

More than nine in ten Jordanians follow which branch of Islam?

Sunni Islam is the faith of the great majority, yet the royal family traces its descent from the Prophet through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the figure Shia Muslims hold to be his rightful successor.

Since 2011 Jordan has taken in well over a million people fleeing the civil war in which country?

Syria's war drove so many south that Jordan's government counted about 1.4 million Syrians by 2015; fewer than half had registered with the UN, and most settled in ordinary towns and cities.

What is mansaf, Jordan's national dish?

Lamb in fermented dried yogurt sauce, heaped on rice and thin shrak bread and eaten by hand from one shared platter, is mansaf; hosts bring it out for weddings, holidays and honoured guests.

Jordan's flag is adapted from the banner of which 1916 uprising against Ottoman rule?

The Arab Revolt flew the same black, white and green bands with a red triangle; Jordan kept the banner because its first ruler, Abdullah, was a son of the revolt's leader, the Sharif of Mecca.

Al-Maghtas on the east bank of the Jordan River is venerated as the site of what event?

The baptism of Jesus by John is placed here, at the Gospel's 'Bethany beyond the Jordan'; it is a different Bethany from the village near Jerusalem where Lazarus was raised.

Which biblical figure viewed the Promised Land from a mountaintop east of the Jordan before dying?

Moses was barred from the land for striking the rock at Meribah instead of speaking to it, says Numbers 20; so in Deuteronomy 34 he climbs the peak opposite Jericho, looks across, and dies there.

The 6th-century Madaba Map, the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land, is made of what?

Floor mosaic is the medium: the map, with a walled Jerusalem at its centre, lay forgotten for centuries until Christian settlers rebuilding the abandoned town in the 1880s uncovered it while raising a new church.

Ahmad Abughaush won Jordan's first-ever Olympic medal, a gold at Rio 2016, in which sport?

Taekwondo gave Jordan its first Olympic medal through an outsider: Ahmad Abughaush was seeded only tenth of sixteen in Rio, and knocked out South Korea's second seed on his way to the title.

Jordan lost the final of the 2023 AFC Asian Cup to which team?

Qatar, the hosts and holders, beat Jordan 3-1 in the final in Lusail on 10 February 2024, with Akram Afif scoring a hat-trick of penalties.

Jordan missed the 2014 World Cup after losing a two-legged play-off to which country?

Uruguay crushed Jordan 5-0 in the first leg in November 2013 and drew 0-0 in Montevideo, ending the kingdom's deepest-ever run in World Cup qualifying at that time.

Jordan's first organised army, raised under British officers in the early 1920s, was known by what name?

The Arab Legion grew out of a small force raised by the British officer Frederick Peake in the early 1920s; under Glubb Pasha it became the army that took and held East Jerusalem in 1948.

Which airline is Jordan's national flag carrier, based at Queen Alia International Airport?

Royal Jordanian began in 1963 as Alia, named for the king's eldest daughter, Princess Alia, and not for the later Queen Alia whose name the airport carries; it took its present name in the 1980s.

Which two minerals are Jordan's leading mining exports?

Potash and phosphates dominate mining: the Arab Potash Company evaporates brine from the southern end of the salt lake, while phosphate rock is dug at Eshidiya and Al-Hasa.

Which city stands at Jordan's southernmost tip?

Aqaba, Jordan's only seaport, was taken from the Ottomans in July 1917 by Arab forces riding with T. E. Lawrence, who reached it by a long march through the desert.

Umm al-Jimal, a ruined town of black basalt in northern Jordan, has a name meaning 'Mother of' what?

Camels: for all the name, it was chiefly a farming town that also traded; about 150 of its dark stone houses still stand, most of them built in the fifth and sixth centuries.

Which gorge, the Arnon of the Bible, separates the Madaba plateau from the Karak highlands?

Wadi Mujib, the Bible's Arnon, is a canyon about a kilometre deep in places; its lower gorge is a nature reserve running down to the salt-lake shore, famous for hikes that wade and swim through the river.

The Mesha Stele, set up in the 9th century BC, records the boasts of a king of which Transjordanian kingdom?

Moab's king Mesha set up the stone at his capital, Dibon, to boast of throwing off Israelite rule; the Bible tells the same revolt from the other side in 2 Kings 3.

A mud-brick ruin in Jordan from about AD 300 is held to be the oldest purpose-built house of worship of which faith?

Christianity is the faith: the building, unearthed in 1998, went up around AD 300, before the Roman Empire had even legalised the religion, which makes it older than Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Which dynasty, based at Humayma in southern Jordan, overthrew the Umayyads in 750?

The Abbasids made Humayma their family home, and early caliphs of their line were born there; once their revolt had won, they ruled from Baghdad, and Jordan was left a backwater far from power.

From a hill on the Jordan's east bank, which prophet is said to have risen to heaven in a chariot of fire?

Elijah crossed the river with his disciple and was swept up in a whirlwind as a chariot of fire parted them, says 2 Kings 2; a mound near the river is still called Elijah's Hill.

In 1997 Israeli agents entered Jordan on Canadian passports and poisoned which Hamas leader?

Khaled Mashal, then head of Hamas's political bureau, was poisoned outside his office in September 1997; the agents were caught, and Jordan's king forced Israel to hand over the antidote that saved him.

Which king established Jordan's modern constitution in 1952 before abdicating through illness?

Talal reigned for barely a year: he gave Jordan its 1952 constitution, then parliament asked him to step down as his mental illness worsened, and he lived out his days in Istanbul.

Why is the Dead Sea called 'dead'?

Too salty for fish or plants: with no outlet, the lake loses water only by evaporation, which leaves the salt behind and makes it many times saltier than the ocean.

The shore of the Dead Sea holds which world record?

Lowest land on Earth: the shore lies more than 400 metres below sea level, and because so much river water is now diverted before it arrives, the lake keeps shrinking and the shoreline keeps dropping.

What dried up most of Jordan's Azraq oasis, a stop for migrating birds, by the 1990s?

City water pumping: so much was drawn off for Amman that most of the marshes dried out, and many of the birds that crossed between Africa and Europe now pass the oasis by.

Which Petra monument stood in for the Grail temple in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?

The Treasury (Al-Khazneh) supplied the temple's exterior; behind the facade is only a plain chamber, and its name comes from a legend that treasure lay hidden in the stone urn on top.

The Jordan River flows through which lake before it drains into the Dead Sea?

Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Tiberias, takes in the upper river and lets out the lower; so much water is now diverted for farms and cities that only a fraction of the old flow reaches the end of the valley.

The King Abdullah I Mosque in Amman is capped by a mosaic dome of what colour?

Blue mosaic covers the great dome; the mosque was built in the 1980s by the first king's grandson as a memorial to him, and it is open to non-Muslim visitors.

What is the national flower of Jordan?

Black iris is not quite black: its petals are a purple so deep that they look it; the flower grows wild only in Jordan and blooms in drifts around Madaba each spring.

Queen Alia, the third wife of Jordan's king, died in 1977 in what kind of accident?

Helicopter crash: her aircraft came down in a rainstorm on 9 February 1977 while returning from a hospital visit in Tafilah; the king announced her death himself on the radio.

Queen Rania of Jordan was born in 1970 in which country?

Kuwait was home until the 1990 invasion, when her family, Palestinians originally from Tulkarm, moved to Jordan; she was working for Apple in the capital when she met the future king, and they married in 1993.

Which science-fiction series gave Jordan's future king a non-speaking cameo in 1996?

Star Trek: Voyager's second-season episode 'Investigations' (1996) features the then prince, a devoted fan, as an unnamed science officer; he got no lines because he was not a union actor.

Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh, killed by ISIL in 2015, was flying what aircraft when it crashed?

F-16 Fighting Falcon: his air force jet came down near Raqqa on 24 December 2014 during a coalition sortie; the kingdom answered his murder with airstrikes dubbed Operation Martyr Muath.

In March 2000 Pope John Paul II visited the summit of which biblical mountain in Jordan?

Mount Nebo, where tradition says the Israelites' leader looked out over the Promised Land, is where the Pope began his Holy Land pilgrimage on 20 March 2000; a monument by the entrance still recalls his visit.

How do the members of Jordan's Senate take their seats?

Appointed by the king is how every senator arrives, and the Senate can never exceed half the size of the elected house; yet a two-thirds vote of both houses can override the king's own veto.

The red-and-white checkered keffiyeh that symbolises Jordan is known by what name?

Shemagh is the Jordanian name for the red-and-white cotton scarf, a Bedouin headcloth that the British officer Glubb Pasha put into the uniform of his Jordanian soldiers.

A hilltop facade at Petra, reached by a climb of nearly 800 rock-cut steps, bears what English name?

The Monastery (Ad Deir) was probably carved for Nabataean worship in the first century AD, long before any monks; the name may reflect its later reuse as a church in Byzantine times.

An 1845 poem called Petra a city 'half as old as time' and what colour?

Rose-red is John William Burgon's phrase: he won an Oxford poetry prize with it in 1845 without ever having seen the place, and the label has clung to Petra's sandstone ever since.

Which northern Jordanian town sits on the ruins of Gadara, overlooking the Golan Heights?

Umm Qais stands on Gadara, where one Gospel tradition sets the miracle of the demons driven into a herd of pigs; its black basalt theatre looks out towards the Golan Heights.

Zarqa, Jordan's second-largest city, was founded in 1902 by immigrants from which people?

Chechens, refugees from the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, founded Zarqa as a village in 1902 and were granted the land by Ottoman decree in 1905; the city grew into Jordan's industrial hub.

Jordan's football nickname, Al Nashama, translates roughly as what?

The Chivalrous Ones is the usual rendering of Al Nashama, a word for gallant, generous men; the team took the name to the 2023 Asian Cup final, its best result.

Queen Noor, the American-born fourth wife of Jordan's king, was born under what name?

Lisa Halaby, an American planner, came to Jordan in the 1970s to work on airline facilities; she and the recently widowed king became friends, and she took the name Noor on marrying him in June 1978.

Which 2014 Bedouin coming-of-age film earned Jordan its first Academy Award nomination?

Theeb, Naji Abu Nowar's debut set among Bedouin in 1916, was acted by non-professionals from southern Jordan and won the Orizzonti directing prize at Venice before its 2016 Oscar nomination.

Which hill town, the region's chief centre before Amman was made capital, joined UNESCO's World Heritage list in 2021?

As-Salt had its richest years when the Ottomans made it a regional capital and merchants moved in from across the empire; they built its tall houses of yellow stone.

The Dead Sea Scroll displayed in Amman is unique for being written on what material?

Copper, rolled into two oxidised sheets, is the material of the scroll found in Qumran's Cave 3 in 1952; it lists hidden treasure and had to be sliced into strips in Manchester to be read.

Bedouin tents in Jordan, known as 'houses of hair', are traditionally woven from the hair of which animal?

Goats supply the black hair for a beit al-sha'ar, or 'house of hair'; the tents still dot Jordan's south and east, though only a small share of Bedouin families now live as full-time nomads.

The dome of Qusayr Amra, an early Islamic bathhouse, carries one of the oldest painted maps of what?

The night sky covers the dome, with the northern constellations and the signs of the zodiac; the walls below show hunters, bathers and foreign kings, figures that are rare in early Islamic buildings.

Whose dance at Machaerus, a fortress in Jordan, is said to have cost John the Baptist his head?

Salome is the name tradition gives the girl who danced for Herod Antipas and asked for the head on a platter; the historian Josephus, who sets the execution at Machaerus, says Antipas simply feared John's hold over the crowds.

Which city hosted Jordan's Olympic debut, at Games over 60 countries boycotted?

Moscow hosted the 1980 Games, which dozens of countries skipped in protest at the invasion of Afghanistan; Jordan's first Olympic team went anyway, and the country has sent one to every Summer Games since.

Which Amman club, rooted in one of the city's Palestinian neighbourhoods, is Al-Faisaly's fiercest rival?

Al-Wehdat was founded in 1956 in the Palestinian quarter of the capital whose name it bears; its meetings with Al-Faisaly are known as the Derby of Jordan, and feelings run high enough to have ended in riots.

A shrine on a mountaintop above Petra is revered as the tomb of which biblical high priest?

Aaron dies on Mount Hor in the Book of Numbers, and local tradition places that peak here: the mountain's Arabic name simply means Aaron's Mountain.

King's Academy, near Madaba, is modelled on Deerfield Academy, the king's old school in which country?

The United States: the king was a boarder at Deerfield in Massachusetts, and when he wanted a school like it at home he recruited Deerfield's own headmaster to found it.

Zaatari, opened in northern Jordan in 2012, is now one of the country's largest what?

Refugee camps: Zaatari opened in July 2012 for people fleeing the war across the border, and what began as a collection of tents has grown into a semi-permanent city of streets, shops and schools.

Hammamat Ma'in, in the hills between Madaba and the Dead Sea, has drawn visitors for thousands of years to what?

Hot springs spill over the cliffs here as steaming waterfalls; people have come to soak in the mineral-rich water for their health since ancient times, and a spa now surrounds the main cascade.

In 1965 Jordan agreed a land swap that lengthened its short coastline with which country?

Saudi Arabia signed the 1965 border treaty, under which Jordan gave up a wide stretch of inland desert for a few more kilometres of shore beside its only port, which then had room to expand.

What monument was built at Gerasa to celebrate Emperor Hadrian's visit in AD 129–130?

A triumphal arch, Hadrian's Arch, went up well south of the walls as the grand gate of an enlarged city; the expansion never happened, so it still stands on its own outside the ancient town.

Until the 1980s, Petra's Bedul Bedouin made their homes in what?

Tombs and caves: Bedul families lived among the monuments for generations, until the government, worried about damage to the site, moved them to a newly built village nearby in the mid-1980s.

A plaster inscription found at Deir Alla in 1967 names which biblical seer, known for his talking donkey?

Balaam son of Beor, the seer hired to curse the Israelites in Numbers, appears here as a 'seer of the gods' with a different story; painted in red and black ink on a wall, it shows he was famous outside the Bible too.

Jordan's prime minister Wasfi Tal was shot dead by Black September gunmen in 1971 at a hotel in which Arab capital?

Cairo was hosting an Arab League meeting when four gunmen shot Tal in his hotel lobby; their group had been formed to avenge the expulsion of Palestinian fighters from Jordan, which he had directed.

Ceiling paintings found in a Nabataean dining cave at Siq al-Barid likely honour which Greek god?

Dionysus, the wine god, fits the vines, grapes and putti revealed when conservators cleaned the 2,000-year-old biclinium ceiling in 2010; Nabataean traders likely drank there in his honour.

Glubb Pasha, who led Jordan's army until 1956, was nicknamed Abu Hunaik after a war wound to which part of his face?

His jaw was shattered on the Western Front in the First World War; the Bedouin soldiers he later led called him Abu Hunaik, 'father of the little jaw'.