Amman

Amman occupies a group of hills where the Levantine plateau opens toward the desert. Springs and arable valleys made the site suitable for settlement, while routes crossed the surrounding ridges between Syria, Palestine and Arabia. Its high position offered defence but divided the town into steep quarters and narrow wadis.

By the Iron Age the city was Rabat Aman, capital of the Ammonite kingdom. It controlled farmland, grazing and caravan roads; olive oil, grain and trade goods supported a fortified royal centre. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and Hellenistic kingdoms absorbed the region into wider empires.

Ptolemaic rule renamed the city Philadelphia, and the Romans incorporated it into the Decapolis. Colonnaded streets, theatres and baths were added around the old citadel. Control passed to the Byzantines and then to the Rashidun Caliphate in the seventh century, when the name Amman returned.

Earthquakes, changes in trade and the movement of imperial centres reduced the town to a small settlement during the later Islamic and Ottoman centuries. Villages and Bedouin groups still used nearby springs and pastures, but the ancient urban fabric lay largely abandoned. The earlier city remained visible in its citadel, theatre and fragments of monumental streets.