Jordan

Petra

The spectacular rose red city

 

Your Ultimate destination is the astonishing rose red city of Petra. Once the stronghold of the gifted Nabateans, an early Arab people, Petra was renowned for its massive architecture and the ingenuity of its pools, dam, and water channels. Today, thread your way through a narrow gorge until you come upon colossal ruins cut into the rock magnificent, silent, and unchanged.

The most famous attraction in Jordan is the Nabatean city of Petra, some 262 kilometers or 160 miles south of Amman. The Victorian traveler and poet, Dean Burgeon, gave Petra a description which holds to this day "Match me such a marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose red city half as old as time."

More than 2,000 years ago Petra was used as a temporary refuge by nomadic Nabatean Arabs, Bedouins who came north out of Arabia. From a few caves in a rocky outcrop, easy to defend, the nabateans created Petra as a fortress city.

Petra still forms part of the domain of the Bedouin. The visitor finds them with their horses and camels for the unforgettable trip into the rose red city.

To reach the city the visitor travels on foot, on horse-back, or by horse drawn carriage through the awesome "Siq", an immense crack in the Nubian sandstone. It is a winding, one kilometer long fissure between overhanging cliffs that seem to meet more than 300 feet overhead.

Near the end of the passage, the Siq, with great style, makes one last turn and out of the gloom in the towering brightness appears Petra's most impressive monument el Khazneh - The Treasury. This, one of the most elegant remains of antiquity, carved out of the solid rock from the mountain, is nearly 140 feet high and 90 feet wide.

Beyond el Khazneh the visitor surrounded on both sides by hundreds of Petra's curved and built structures, soaring temples, elaborate royal tombs, a curved Roman theater (seating 3,000), large and small houses, burial chambers, banquet halls, water channels and reservoirs, bathes, monumental staircases, cultic installations, markets, arched gates public buildings and paved streets. But Petra is not only about the Nabateans.

within a fifteen minuet drive of Petra the visitor can walk through 8,000 year old excavated Stone Age village sat Beidha and Basta, wander among the ruins of settlements of the biblical Edomites, or explore the sprawling remains of the Roman legionary fortress at Udruh.

Thetown of Salt was of great importance in the 19th and early 20th century, during the time of Turkish rule in Jordan. It was the chief administrative center for the surrounding area and, in the 1920s, it seemed the likely choice for the capital of the newly- independents state of Transjordan. However, Salt was bypassed in favor of the more centrally located village of Amman. The result is that Amman has been transformed nto a thriving modern city, while Salt has retained its small town charm.

Due to its history as an Ottoman center of government, Salt is filled with wonderful Ottoman architecture in the classical style. Immediately recognizable are the Ottoman houses with their long-arched windows. An array of tall Ottoman minarets towers over the village, along with church steeples, as Salt is also known for its Christian community. A morning or evening spent strolling through the picturesque streets of this charming hill village is time well spent. Salt is also the final resting place of the Prophet Ayyoub (Job), whose legendary patience and faith gave him strength to endure tremendous hardships and ultimately be rewarded with blessings (Job 1-3, Quran 38: 41-44). Another prophet—Shu'ayb (Jethro), the Midianite fatherin- law of Prophet Musa (Moses)—is said to be buried in a tomb near Salt in Wadi Shu'ayb. Salt is about thirty kilometers northwest of Amman. Just before you enter the main part of the city (from Amman), you will see the Department of Antiquities Museum and the Tourist Office on the left. The museum houses an assortment of pottery and coins dating from the Chalcolithic period (4500 BCE) through the Mamluk period (1516 CE), as well as Byzantine mosaic panels and early photographs of Salt. Just off the main street is the Salt Cultural Center. This complex, which opened in 1989, houses another museum, a library, a handicraft school and Salt’s main hall. The handicraft school teaches ceramics, weaving, silk screen printing and dyeing to students, who then sell their craftwork, making the project self-financing Al Salt is built on three mountains. These mountains are "Al Salam", "Jida'a", and "Al Kal'a" .The city is filled with trees and greenery. Its buildings are found where the three valleys meet. Its major buildings include the Mosque, the University, the Palace of leadership, the shopping center, the water springs, and others. Before 200 years the city was the governing center of the country. It was transformed from a rural to an urban setting by the beginning of the 20th century.

Al salt is known for the architectural genius seen its building. Some of its buildings are said to be over 100 years to 40 years old. Some buildings were built for commercial purposes, for as said above Al Salt used to be a commercial center mainly serving merchants in the area. Its people are known to demonstrate a high degree of hospitality for foreigners.