Jordan

From the Iron Age kingdoms east of the Jordan and the rose-red city of Petra to the Hashemite kingdom of Amman.

Jordan occupies the eastern bank of the Jordan River and the deserts beyond, a land crossed for millennia by caravan roads linking Arabia, Egypt and the Mediterranean. In antiquity it held the kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom, then the Nabataean trading city of Petra, the Roman cities of the Decapolis, and the desert palaces of the Umayyad caliphs. After four centuries of Ottoman rule, the Great Arab Revolt of 1916 brought the Hashemites west, and in 1921 Abdullah ibn Hussein founded the Emirate of Transjordan under British mandate. It became the fully independent Hashemite Kingdom on 25 May 1946 and has since absorbed waves of Palestinian refugees, fought and then made peace with Israel, and endured as one of the Arab world's most stable monarchies.