avour the timeless beautyof Wadi Rum thatis virtually untouched by humanity and climate forces. Amman’s Roman Theatre was the centrepiece of Roman Philadelphia. As-Salt’s Ottoman past is clearly visible ints architecture.
The downtown area is much older and more traditional, with smaller businesse producing and everything from intricate gold andsilver jewellery, to that truly embodies the unique blend of
old and new that the city manifes!
uth from Amman along Highway and passing through string of ancient site:
ba. This known for spectacular Byzantine and Umayyad
mosaics and is home to the famous 6th entury mosaic mapofJerusalem and
the Holy Land. With two million pit
‘tone, the map depic valleys, villages and towns asfar as the Nile Delte
The ancient city of Petra is one of
national treasures and by far its
best known tourist at
Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled in southern Jordan more than
000 years ago. Admired then for
ingenious complex of dams and water channels, Petra is now UNESCO World Heritage Site that enchants visitors from all corners of the globe. Much of Petra’s
appeal comes from its spectacular setting deep inside narrow desert gorge. The site is accessed by walking through kilometre long chasm (or “Siq”), the walls of which soar 200 metres upwards. Petra’s most famous monument, the Treasury, appears dramatically at the end of the Siq.
Used in the final sequence of the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the towering facade of the Treasury is only one of myriad archaeological wonders to be explored at Petra. Various walks and climbs reveal literally hundreds of buildings, baths, arched gateways, colonnaded streets and haunting rock drawings, all of which can be explored at leisure.
Aclose second to Petra on the list of
city of Jerash boasts an unbroken chain of human occupation dating back more
than 6,500 years. The city’s golden age came under Roman rule and the site is now generally acknowledged to be one of the best-preserved Roman provincial towns in the world. Hidden for centuries in sand before being excavated and restored over the past 70 years, Jerash reveals fine example of the grand, formal provincial Roman urbanism that is found throughout the Middle East, comprising paved and colonnaded streets, handsome theatres, spacious public squares and plazas, baths, fountains and city walls pierced by towers and gates. Beneath its external Graeco- Roman veneer, Jerash also preserves subtle blend of east and west. Its architecture, religion and languages reflect process by which two powerful cultures meshed and coexisted: The Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean basin and the ancient traditions of the Arab Orient.
Don’t leave Jordan without visiting the Jordan Rift Valley, dramatic, beautiful landscape, which at the Dead Sea, is over 400 metres below sea level. The lowest point on the face of the earth, this vast stretch of water receives number of incoming rivers, including the River Jordan. Once the waters reach the Dead Sea they are land-locked and have nowhere to go, so they evaporate, leaving behind dense, rich, cocktail of salts and minerals that supply industry, agriculture and medicine with some of its finest products. The leading attraction at the Dead Sea is the warm, soothing, super salty water itself some ten times saltier than sea water, and rich in chloride salts of magnesium, sodium, potassium, bromine and several others.
The unusually warm, incredibly buoyant and mineral-rich waters have attracted visitors since ancient times, including King Herod the Great and the beautiful Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra. All of whom have luxuriated in the Dead Sea’s rich, black, stimulating mud and floated effortlessly on their backs while soaking up the water’s healthy minerals along with the gently diffused rays of the Jordanian sun. Royal Brunei Airlines flies Dubai daily for connections to Jordan. ine
The Burdah rock bridge at Wadi Rum is one of the highest arches in the world. Aqaba is Jordan’s window to the Red Sea. Transport yourselfto 2,000 years back in time in the marvellous ancient city of Jerash
Source: MUHIBAH, the Royal Brunei Airlines in-flight magazine, 2016 Nov-Dec, pages 46-49. Text recovered from the scanned page by OCR and lightly corrected; spelling may differ from the printed edition.
