A city in a place with no water

Start with geography

Defensible, spectacular, and dry

Petra sits in a basin among sandstone mountains in southern Jordan, reached through the Siq, a narrow gorge over a kilometre long and in places only a few metres wide. As a defensive approach it is close to ideal: a handful of people can control it.

The problem is that the region receives very little rain, concentrated in short winter downpours that arrive as flash floods rather than as usable supply. A site can be perfectly defensible and still be uninhabitable if the water question has no answer.

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