Umm Al Jimal

Umm Al Jimal (Mother of Camels) is an extensive black basalt city that lies like a dark encrustation on the flat desert of northern Jordan.

The ruins reveal a wide range of structures typical of a modest provincial town that lacked formal urban planning.

The Nabataeans established a settlement here in the 1st century BC during their northerly expansion, perhaps as a staging post on the trade route between Damascus and the south.

As there are no springs or wells, the entire water supply had to be collected during the rainy season in hundreds of cisterns.

Umm Al Jimal was greatly enlarged from the 2nd Century AD onwards and became an important military base: it was enclosed within walls; a new reservoir was built outside of the city, as well as a sophisticated hydraulic system, and water purification system to supply its cisterns, and reservoirs.

A vast, but now ruinous, fort was constructed to be replaced under the Byzantine Empire in the early 5th century with a much smaller barracks. Under the Byzantines Umm Al Jimal continued to grow, many houses were built as well as 14 churches, and a cathedral.

It also flourished under the Umayyads, but earthquakes caused considerable damage and the Abbasid removal to Baghdad ensured that the city was never fully rebuilt.