Amman

Where it is

Amman sits on hills at the edge of the Jordanian plateau, around 800 to 1,100 metres up, where the cultivated highlands give way eastward to desert. The city was originally built across seven hills around a valley with a seasonal stream; it now covers many more, and the numbered circles along the ridge road are how people navigate. Water is the defining constraint: Jordan is among the most water-scarce countries in the world, and the city sits well above the rivers it might have drawn on.

The land and water around it

• The seven hillsmountains

  The original jabals around the downtown valley. Building across steep ground is why the city has stairways as streets and why its neighbourhoods are so socially legible by altitude — the higher ground is generally the wealthier.

• The Zarqa valleyriver

  The seasonal stream through the old centre, now largely culverted beneath the downtown. A city built around a watercourse that it then covered over.

• The desert edgedesert

  East of the city the rainfall drops away quickly and the badia begins. Amman is on the last line of ground where rain-fed farming works, which is exactly where you would expect a city.

Its history, in short

The citadel hill has been occupied for a very long time — Neolithic, then Ammonite Rabbath Ammon, then the Hellenistic and Roman city of Philadelphia, one of the Decapolis. It shrank to a village by the Ottoman period and was effectively refounded in 1878 when the Ottoman authorities settled Circassian refugees from the Caucasus there. The Hejaz Railway arrived in 1904, and Amman became the seat of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921 and the capital of Jordan in 1946. Its growth since has been driven overwhelmingly by displacement: Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, Iraqis after 1990 and 2003, and Syrians after 2011.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• The CitadelNeolithic onward

  One hill carrying Ammonite, Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad remains in a single stratigraphy, with the modern city visible in every direction from it.

• Quseir Amra8th century

  A small Umayyad bath-house in the desert east of Amman, painted inside with hunting scenes, bathers and a zodiac ceiling — figurative art in an early Islamic building, which is why it matters so much to art historians.

• As-SaltLate 19th–early 20th century

  A nearby town of yellow limestone houses, inscribed in 2021 for its record of Muslim–Christian and rural–urban coexistence during the late Ottoman period rather than for a monument.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereAmman is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest
2. 2Learn 11 phrasesCurated everyday phrases for Amman, with audio and a written form.Written by Globe Quest
3. 3Say them out loudSpeaking practice with pronunciation feedback, one phrase at a time.Globe Quest material, your own additions
4. 4Come back to themSpaced review, so what you learned this week is still there next month.Written by Globe Quest
5. 5Practise with people: Arabic practice · DohaAn in-person practice circle. It is a prepared plan and needs a host before it runs.Run by members

Check yourself

• How did modern Amman begin?

  As an 1878 Ottoman resettlement scheme for Circassian refugees

  The citadel is ancient, but the modern city was refounded by displaced people — the pattern its whole growth has followed since.

• Why does Quseir Amra matter to art historians?

  It carries figurative painting inside an early Islamic building

  Hunting scenes, bathers and a zodiac ceiling — evidence that early Islamic secular art was not what later assumptions suggest.

Worth arguing about

• A city built and rebuilt by successive waves of displaced people. What does that do to how it thinks about the next wave?
• Neighbourhood altitude tracks wealth here quite closely. Where else does topography sort a city, and can planning undo it?

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