37 Interesting Facts About Jordan the Country

Jordan is a small Arab kingdom with an outsized share of the world’s history: the lowest dry land on the planet, a rock-cut city carved by the Nabataeans, the best-preserved Roman provincial town outside Italy, and a desert that has stood in for Mars in half a dozen films. It manages all of that on an area smaller than Portugal and with almost no oil.

The 37 facts below cover Jordan’s geography, history, food, language and everyday customs, with the practical ones first.

Planning the trip rather than the quiz? Our Jordan travel guide has the visa rules, the Jordan Pass and what Petra actually costs.

37 interesting facts about Jordan

1. Jordan is an Arab kingdom in Western Asia, on the East Bank of the Jordan River, with a population of roughly 11.6 million. That figure includes one of the largest refugee populations in the world relative to national size.
2. Jordan’s official name is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Hashemites are the royal family, who trace their descent to the Prophet Muhammad, and the country has been a kingdom since independence in 1946.
3. Jordan has almost no oil, which makes it unusual among its neighbours. It imports the overwhelming majority of its energy, and that import bill shapes the national budget more than any other single number. Jordan does hold very large oil shale deposits, but extracting them has never been commercially straightforward.
4. Jordan was the second Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, in 1994, fifteen years after Egypt. Several more Arab states normalised relations in 2020, so the old line about Jordan being one of only two no longer holds.
5. Amman is the capital and by far the largest city, and it is the country’s economic, political and cultural centre. Roughly four million people live in the Amman governorate, more than a third of the country. Find activities in Amman here.
6. Amman was built across seven hills, exactly like Rome, and the hills are called jabals. The city has since spread across around nineteen of them, which is why Amman feels like a series of separate neighbourhoods stacked on slopes.
7. Amman was once called Philadelphia. Ptolemy II Philadelphus rebuilt the city during his reign between 283 and 246 BC and named it after himself, and it kept the name through the Roman period.
8. Amman has a 6,000-seat Roman theatre in the middle of the modern city. It was cut into the hillside in the second century AD, when the city was Roman Philadelphia, and it still hosts performances.
9. Arabic is the official language and English is widely spoken, particularly in Amman, in the tourism industry and among the middle and upper classes. Road signs on main routes are bilingual.
10. Jordan’s currency is the Jordanian dinar (JOD), and it is pegged to the US dollar, which is why the rate barely moves from year to year. One dinar is worth noticeably more than one dollar, which catches visitors out when they read a price.
11. The lowest dry land on Earth is the Dead Sea shore, and most of it is in Jordan. The surface sat about 440 m (1,443 ft) below sea level in 2025 and it is falling by more than a metre a year, so any figure you read in an older guide, including the long-quoted 420 m, is already out of date. Book a day tour to the Dead Sea from Amman if you want to float in it.
12. The Dead Sea is about 9.6 times as salty as the ocean. Salinity measured around 34 per cent, against roughly 3.5 per cent for seawater, and that density is why you float rather than swim. It also means you must not put your head under or shave beforehand.
13. Jordan is not landlocked, but only just. It has 26 km (16.2 mi) of coastline, and that coastline is on the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea, not on the Dead Sea. Aqaba is the country’s only port and its only beach resort. Look here for activities and tours in Aqaba.
14. Petra is Jordan’s most famous site and one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, and the Nabataeans who carved it controlled the incense trade routes from Arabia. Find tours and activities in Petra here.
15. Petra holds more than 800 registered monuments, cut into sandstone cliffs across a site large enough to need days rather than hours. Tombs make up several hundred of them, and the famous Treasury is one facade among many.
16. The final scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were filmed at Petra, at the Treasury facade. It remains the single most recognisable image of Jordan worldwide.
17. Wadi Rum has played Mars repeatedly on screen. The Martian, Red Planet, Dune, Rogue One and The Rise of Skywalker all used it, and so did Lawrence of Arabia decades earlier, for the place rather than the planet. Check the many things you can book for Wadi Rum.
18. Wadi Rum is a protected area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed in 2011 for both its landscape and its rock inscriptions rather than as a national park. Bedouin camps in the valley let you sleep under the stars.
19. Jerash is one of the best-preserved Roman provincial cities anywhere, and it is often described as the finest outside Italy. The Temple of Artemis, the South Theatre, the hippodrome, Hadrian’s Arch and the Nymphaeum all still stand.
20. T. E. Lawrence advised the leaders of the Arab Revolt during the First World War. The British officer, archaeologist and writer better known as Lawrence of Arabia fought alongside Hashemite forces in the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918, and the campaign runs straight through Jordan’s founding story.
21. Mansaf is the national dish, and it is lamb cooked in jameed, a fermented dried yoghurt, served over rice and thin flatbread and eaten from a communal platter. UNESCO added it to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2022.
22. Guests are expected to refuse a meal three times before accepting. The refusals are politeness, not reluctance, and the host is expected to insist. Accepting immediately reads as greedy; refusing three times and then accepting is the whole dance.
23. Shake your coffee cup from side to side when you have had enough. Arabic coffee is poured in small quantities and refilled indefinitely until you give that signal, so a guest who does not know it drinks a great deal of coffee.
24. Eating and drinking with the left hand is considered unclean. Use your right hand for food, for handing things over and for greeting, which is a rule across the Arab world rather than a Jordanian quirk.
25. Praising something too warmly can get it given to you. Compliment a host’s rug, watch or ornament with real enthusiasm and it may arrive at your hotel later. Admire things mildly, and insist on returning anything that turns up.
26. Parents avoid overpraising their children in public, because of a widely held belief that excessive praise attracts bad luck or the evil eye. Compliments about children are usually deflected rather than accepted.
27. Ahlan wa sahlan is the word you will hear most. It means “welcome”, it is used constantly, and Jordan’s reputation for hospitality is the thing returning visitors mention first.
28. Sunni Islam is the dominant religion, practised by the large majority of Jordanians, with a long-established Christian minority of a few per cent concentrated in Amman, Madaba, Fuheis and Kerak. Islam is the state religion and the constitution provides for freedom of worship.
29. Jordan’s national flower is the black iris, Iris nigricans, a blackish-purple flower found nowhere else on Earth. It grows in the hills of northern and central Jordan, around Madaba and Kerak, and flowers in spring. It does not grow in Wadi Rum, which is a common mistake, and it is classed as threatened.
30. The olive is Jordan’s most widely planted tree, and olive groves cover the majority of the country’s fruit-tree acreage. Jordanian olive oil is a national staple rather than a luxury.
31. Jordan holds some of the most significant biblical sites anywhere. Bethany Beyond the Jordan, on the east bank of the Jordan River, is recognised by UNESCO as the place where Jesus was baptised. Mount Nebo is where Moses is said to have seen the Promised Land and died. The sites traditionally identified with Sodom and Gomorrah lie south of the Dead Sea, though their identification is debated.
32. The Jordan River runs about 251 km (156 mi), flowing from the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea and forming part of Jordan’s western border. Heavy water extraction upstream has reduced its flow drastically, which is the main reason the Dead Sea is shrinking.
33. Jordan’s climate is Mediterranean in the north and west and desert everywhere else. Around three quarters of the country is arid, and the populated highlands in the north-west get almost all of the rainfall.
34. The flag’s four colours each stand for a dynasty or an event. Black is the Abbasid Caliphate, white the Umayyad, green the Fatimid, and the red triangle represents the Arab Revolt of 1916. The seven-pointed white star stands for the seven verses of Al-Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Qur’an.
35. The West Bank was part of Jordan for nearly twenty years. Jordan annexed it in 1950 after the 1948 war, lost control of it to Israel in the 1967 war, and formally renounced its claim in 1988.
36. Humans have been in Jordan since the Palaeolithic. Stone tools and occupation sites date back hundreds of thousands of years, and the country sits on some of the oldest continuously inhabited ground on Earth.
37. Jordan is part of the Fertile Crescent, one of the regions where farming began in the Neolithic period. Archaeologists working in Jordan’s eastern desert have found charred bread crumbs roughly 14,400 years old, which predate agriculture and are among the oldest direct evidence of bread anywhere.

Frequently asked questions about Jordan

What is Jordan best known for?

Jordan is best known for Petra, the Nabataean city carved into sandstone cliffs and named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. After that come the Dead Sea, Wadi Rum and the Roman ruins at Jerash.

Is Jordan an Arab country?

Yes. Jordan is an Arab country in Western Asia, Arabic is its official language and the overwhelming majority of Jordanians are Arabs, including a large population of Palestinian origin.

What is the currency of Jordan?

The Jordanian dinar, abbreviated JOD or JD. It is pegged to the US dollar and one dinar is worth well over one dollar, so read prices carefully.

Does Jordan have a coastline?

Yes, 26 km (16.2 mi) of it, on the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. The city of Aqaba is Jordan’s only port and its only seaside resort. The Dead Sea is a lake, not a sea, and it does not give Jordan a coastline.

What language do they speak in Jordan?

Arabic is the official language, in a Levantine dialect for everyday speech and Modern Standard Arabic in writing and broadcasting. English is widely spoken in Amman and throughout the tourism industry.

What is the national dish of Jordan?

Mansaf: lamb cooked in fermented dried yoghurt, served over rice and flatbread on a shared platter. UNESCO listed it as intangible cultural heritage in 2022.

Want to know more about Jordan?

The books and films below go deeper than any list of facts can.

1. Lonely Planet Jordan is the standard guidebook, with maps, itineraries, cultural background and reviews of places to eat and stay across every budget.
2. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is T. E. Lawrence’s own account of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire between 1916 and 1918. It is also a close description of Bedouin life at the time and is read as an early study of guerrilla warfare.
3. Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia is Michael Korda’s biography, which treats Lawrence as a complicated person rather than a legend and runs to nearly 800 pages.
4. Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean’s 1962 film, is the shorter route to the same story, and much of it was shot in Wadi Rum.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Four things worth knowing before you use any of these facts on the ground are listed below.

1. Do not quote the 420 m figure for the Dead Sea. It was correct decades ago. The surface was about 440 m below sea level in 2025 and it drops by more than a metre a year, so the number is a moving target and every guide that prints it flat is out of date.
2. Look for the black iris in the northern hills, not in Wadi Rum. Iris nigricans is a highland flower found around Madaba and Kerak in spring. Travellers who go looking for Jordan’s national flower in the desert find nothing, because it has never grown there.
3. Learn the coffee-cup shake before your first Bedouin tea tent. A small side-to-side shake of the cup means “no more”. Handing the cup back still means “fill it up”, and Arabic coffee is poured until you signal otherwise.
4. Refuse the meal three times, then accept. The three refusals are the polite form and the host expects to overcome them. Say yes on the first offer and you have skipped the conversation.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the team researches and checks the country facts series against primary sources rather than recycling other lists. We cover Jordan for independent travellers, including the Petra, Wadi Rum and Dead Sea tours worth booking, and update this page when the facts behind it change.