Local travel tip: Short history of amman

Location: Amman, Jordan

Amman was known in the Old Testament as Rabbath-Ammon, the capital of the Ammonites around 1200 BC, it was also referred to as "the City of Waters". In Greco-Roman times in the 3rd century BC, the City was renamed Philadelphia (Greek for "The Brotherhood Love") after the Ptolemaic ruler Philadelphus (283-246 BC). The City later came under Seleucid as well as Nabataea rule until the Roman General Pompey annexed Syria and made Philadelphia part of the Decapolis League - a loose alliance of ten free city-states, bound by powerful commercial, political, and cultural interests under overall allegiance to Rome. Amman, the modern and ancient capital of Jordan, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the World. The city's modern buildings blend with the remnants of ancient civilizations. The profusion of gleaming white houses, kebab stalls with roasting meat, and tiny cafes where rich Arabian coffee is sipped in the afternoon sunshine, conjure a mood straight from a thousand and one nights. Recent excavations have uncovered homes and towers believed to have been built during the Stone Age with many references to it in the Bible. Under the influence of the Roman culture, Philadelphia was reconstructed in typically grand Roman style with colonnaded streets, baths, an Amphitheater, and impressive public buildings.During the Byzantine period, Philadelphia was the seat of a Christian Bishop, and therefore several churches were built. The city declined somewhat until the year 635 AD. As Islam spread northwards from the Arabian Peninsula, the land became part of its domain. Its original Semitic name Ammon or Amman was returned to it. Amman's modern history began in the late 19th Century, when the Ottomans resettled a colony of Circassian emigrants in 1878. As the Great Arab Revolt progressed and the State of Transjordan was established, Emir Abdullah ibn Al-Hussein founder of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan made Amman his capital in 1921. Since then, Amman has grown rapidly into a modern, thriving metropolis of well over two million people. Jordan has always fascinated me as an outsider. Every sound bite you get seems like a radical contradiction to the one before: A bilingual, globalized, tech savvy, highly educated, business oriented crowd responsible for some of the most successful Arab companies contrasts with a traditionalist, tribal culture notorious for one of the most archaic honor killing laws in the region. I decided to go see for myself, in hopes of understanding who our southern neighbors really are, the image of Jordan. Amman is a wonderful, vibrant place. You get the feeling that it has been going full speed ahead ever since conception, and shows no signs of stopping soon. At least four neighborhoods were described to me as the “it” place, usually with the sentence structure ” Well it used to be that other neighborhood five years ago, but it’s here now”. It feels fresh, polished. I fell in love with the youth culture: aware, opinionated, politically correct, creative, connected, aspirational, with direction. You feel it first online, with the sheer number of successful blogs, the tweeting public figures. But when you go there, you see it on the ground as well, the kids of West Amman may be the first in the region to have a significant voice. City tour in Amman (Visit the Citadel, Roman Theatre, Archeological museum, Folklore museums & Down Town) and then you will be driven to visit Jerash, which was known as the Pompeii of the east, and also known as the city of 1000 pillars, you will also visit the triple arched gate, the huge hippodrome, the theater and the only roman forum surrounded by 63 ionic columns. Jordan has invested so much in this group. It has provided them with a world class education, an amazing economic environment, and a foreign policy that works to their benefit. It now expects this group to start getting jobs locally and globally, and to form the core that Jordanian society thrives on. Yet therein lies the problem. West Amman is not the core of Jordan. It’s a fringe, a segment at best. Too much resources are being spent on this one group, too much focus is only on them. Too many other groups are excluded.