Jordan

Discover Jordan

Fun Foods

Falafel, Hummus, Manakish, Mansaf, Maqluba, Zarb, Knafeh

In 1812, a Swiss explorer named Johann Ludwig Burckhardt disguised himself as a Muslim traveler and talked a local guide into leading him through a narrow, winding canyon in Jordan.

At the end, a giant temple-like building, carved straight into a pink cliff, appeared out of the rock.

He had found Petra, a city that people in Europe had heard about in old stories but hadn’t seen in centuries. Local Bedouin families had known it all along.

More than 2,000 years ago, an Arab people called the Nabataeans built Petra as a rich trading city. Instead of stacking stones, they carved homes, temples, and more than 600 tombs right into the red sandstone mountains.

The most famous carving, called the Treasury, rises about 40 meters (130 feet) high. It was actually a tomb, but local legends said thieves had hidden treasure inside, and the name stuck.

You may have seen it in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Modern Jordan began after World War I, when Britain controlled the land. Jordan became an independent kingdom in 1946, ruled by kings from the Hashemite family, and King Abdullah II has ruled since 1999.

Jordan sits in a region with many conflicts. Wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including Jordan, in 1948 and 1967 forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and many settled in Jordan.

In 1970, fighting between Jordan’s army and armed Palestinian groups, known as Black September, left thousands dead.

More recently, the war in neighboring Syria sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into Jordan. Few countries have taken in so many people for their size.

For adventures, float in the Dead Sea, the lowest place on land on Earth, about 430 meters (1,410 feet) below sea level. The water is so salty that you bob on top like a cork, and kids love smearing on the gooey mineral mud.

In Wadi Rum, a desert of red sand and towering cliffs, filmmakers shot scenes of Mars for the movie The Martian. Down south in Aqaba, snorkel the Red Sea’s coral reefs among clownfish and moray eels.

For food, start with mezze, small plates like hummus and crispy falafel with warm flatbread. The national dish is mansaf, lamb cooked in a tangy yogurt sauce and piled on rice for everyone to share.

In Wadi Rum, Bedouin cooks make zarb, meat and vegetables slow-cooked in an oven buried under the desert sand.

Sources: CIA World Factbook: Jordan, National Geographic: Petra, and Lonely Planet: Jordan’s Life Aquatic.