Jordan

The land east of the Jordan River has been a corridor between Arabia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia for millennia. Its most famous inhabitants were the Nabataeans, an Arab trading people who from around the fourth century BC grew rich controlling the incense routes and carved the temples and tombs of Petra into the rose-coloured sandstone. Rome absorbed the Nabataean kingdom in 106 AD and left the colonnaded streets of Jerash and other cities of the Decapolis.

For the next 1,500 years the region passed through Byzantine, early Islamic, Crusader, and Ottoman hands, its towns declining as the trade routes shifted. Modern Jordan was created after the First World War, when Britain carved the Emirate of Transjordan out of Ottoman territory and installed Abdullah, a prince of the Hashemite family that had led the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans. Independence came in 1946.

Jordan absorbed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees after the 1948 and 1967 wars, annexed and then lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel, and signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. King Hussein ruled from 1953 to 1999, steering the country through repeated regional crises; his son Abdullah II has continued a careful balancing act while Jordan has taken in further waves of Iraqi and Syrian refugees.

Jordanian identity blends a Bedouin heritage — hospitality, tribal loyalty, the desert, coffee poured for guests — with the settled life of the highland towns and a large population of Palestinian origin. Most Jordanians are Sunni Muslim, with a long-established Christian minority, and religious observance is widespread but generally relaxed toward visitors.

Hospitality is a genuine obligation: guests are pressed to eat and to stay, and refusing tea or coffee outright can cause offence. Family and the extended clan are central, and respect for elders and for the monarchy runs deep.

The east-bank tribes and the Palestinian-origin majority sit in a careful social and political balance that shapes everything from parliament to the civil service. Away from Amman's cosmopolitan neighbourhoods, dress and behaviour are more conservative, and modest clothing is appreciated at religious sites and in villages.

More than four million people — a large share of the country — live in Greater Amman, a city built across a series of hills, its older downtown of markets and Roman ruins overlooked by newer districts of malls and cafés. Irbid and Zarqa in the north, and Aqaba on the Red Sea, are the other main centres; the eastern three-quarters of the country is near-empty desert.

Jordan has almost no oil and very little water — it is among the most water-scarce countries in the world — and the economy leans on services, tourism, phosphates, remittances, and foreign aid from the United States and the Gulf. Youth unemployment is high, and the strain of hosting so many refugees on schools, hospitals, and jobs is a constant public concern.

Daily life runs on the shared taxi and the family gathering, the mosque or church, and a working week that ends on Friday. The influx of Iraqis and Syrians has reshaped whole neighbourhoods of Amman, adding restaurants, businesses, and accents from across the region.

Jordanian cooking is Levantine, built on bread, olive oil, yoghurt, pulses, and grilled meat. The national dish is mansaf — lamb slow-cooked in a sauce of fermented dried yoghurt (jameed), served over rice and flatbread and eaten communally, traditionally with the right hand, at weddings and feasts.

Meze fills the table: hummus, mutabbal, tabbouleh, fattoush, foul, and makdous, with fresh bread from the bakery. Maqluba ("upside down"), a pot of rice, meat, and fried vegetables inverted onto a platter, and grilled kebab and shish tawook are everyday mains, and knafeh — a warm cheese pastry soaked in syrup, best from Nablus-style shops — is the sweet everyone argues about.

Coffee, cardamom-scented and served in tiny cups, and sweet mint tea are the drinks of welcome. Alcohol is available in hotels, restaurants, and shops in Amman and the resorts but is not part of most people's lives.

Petra is the reason most people come: a walk through the narrow Siq gorge opens suddenly onto the Treasury facade, and beyond it lie a whole city of rock-cut tombs, a Roman theatre, a colonnaded street, and the long climb to the Monastery. It rewards at least a full day, and a second for the quieter high trails and the candle-lit "Petra by Night."

Wadi Rum, south of Petra, is a desert of red sand and towering sandstone "jebels," crossed by 4x4 or on camel and slept in at Bedouin camps under enormous skies; it stood in for Mars and other worlds in a string of films. The Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the Earth, lets you float on mineral-heavy water and coat yourself in black mud, with resorts and public beaches along the shore.

Elsewhere: Jerash, one of the best-preserved Roman provincial cities anywhere; Amman's citadel and Roman theatre; Madaba's sixth-century mosaic map of the Holy Land and nearby Mount Nebo; the Crusader castles of Karak and Shobak on the King's Highway; the Dana Biosphere Reserve for hiking; the baptism site of Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan; and Aqaba on the Red Sea for coral reefs and diving.