Day trip to Iraq al-Amir

The most famous set of ruins in Amman are the Citadel, Roman Odeon, and Nymphaeum – all of which I’ve blogged about previously (here and here). What many people fail to realize, is that Amman is home to a lot more ruins. There are active dig sites (archeologists actually excavating sites) in around the city.

For this entry, I want to show you an off-the-regular track place called Iraq al-Amir. Roughly translated, it means “Cave of the Prince”. But there’s more than caves! The village proper lies a scant 35 km or so from downtown Amman. That’s about a 40-minute drive from our house, depending on traffic. The road drives through Wadi As-Seer, a village originally settled by Circassians in the 19^th century, but that has since been usurped by Amman (a wadi, pronounced, wah-dee, is basically a catch-all term for a canyon of any size). Circassians are still prominent in Wadi as-Seer. You may know them from T.E. Lawrence (the Brit) tales: to initially gain the trust of Arabs, Lawrence said he was Circassian, since they are originally from the Caucus Mountains and can have blond hair and blue eyes – and no one questioned him.

Part of wadi as-Seer from the roadside. The white-colored rock is limestone. And look at that stratigraphy!

Another view from the road of the Wadi as-Seer. These white-colored rocks are limestone as well, and this is how stone forests are formed: one large stratum of limestone being decayed grain-by-grain. Crazy!

Driving through Wadi as-Seer in the spring is beautiful. Pink blossoms on the fruit trees contrasting with the green of olive groves, small wildflowers growing alongside the road. Apparently, this is one of the best places to see Jordan’s national flower, the black iris, when they bloom in April. It’s also a peaceful drive once you get out of the city. The smell of cow manure along the Wadi brought tears to my eyes. Let me explain. As a kid, my cousins and me used to play in my uncle’s haystack, right next to the cows and silage pit. We’d build forts with secret tunnels, seating areas, and landings that led to the adjacent silage pit where we’d pretend we were pirates and make each other walk the plank off into the sea of silage. It was fun. I have fond memories of that, mostly brought back to my brain by smell. Smell is a powerful memory-connector. So, whenever I smell cow manure – that great dairy farm smell – I get nostalgic.

The view from the cave spring down the Wadi as-Seer. The soil is great for agriculture and livestock.

Anyhow, along the Wadi, near the village of Iraq al-Amir, are a series of caves with Hebrew script linking them to the Tobaid dynasty in the Old Testament. The entrances are deliberately narrow, wrote the Jewish historian Josephus, to make them easier to defend. We pulled the car off the road and climbed the nice stairway to the caves, wandering along their entrances, peering into history and seeing its foundations – literally. They’re your run-of-the-mill previously-inhabited caves, with partially-excavated foundations and dead animal carcasses. But the view from them is quite the sight. One of them has a spring, creating a very cool breeze...I could totally see myself whiling away the day gazing over my lands from the spring.

Even in the dry season, this spring is active. The water is cool to the touch and potable. A cool breeze continually comes from it, the result of high-to-low air pressure exchange.

What really blew our minds though, was the rock itself. If you click on the images and see them full-size, you will notice it’s actually fossiliferous limestone – limestone that has fossils in it. And in this case, pretty large ones. Now, the fossils were kewl and all…but when Kaelin said, “These are beach fossils, right? That means they were laid down during Pangea times!” I stood there, mouth agape, looking at them. Hoe. Lee. Crap. That meant we were standing on the seabed of the Panthalassa and Tethys Seas! Hoe. Lee. Crap! Mind blown.

This layer of rock is loaded with fossils. The grey-colored areas behind Kaelin could be indicative of an anoxic environment (think of like a swampy patch along the seashore) or just a lump of sand, clay, or rock that solidified with the seabed or beach.

Notice the shell? This area is LOADED with fossils… Clam shells, tubes, small conch shells, brain coral… It’s quite the array of marine fossils!

Across from the caves is a local woman’s cooperative making great handicrafts: paper, pottery, and the ubiquitous rug. It’s part of the Queen Noor Foundation that helps women in local communities. And it’s quite the operation. For free, they will show you how they make paper using several different plant types, how they throw pots and make other ceramics, and even do a weaving demonstration. Unfortunately, like everywhere else in Jordan, there are no visitors. They have a very nice set-up that could seat 100 tourists at a time – they also serve a great traditional lunch for several JD – but we were the only people there. Supporting local trades is important to us, so we did purchase a few things. But we also noticed their prices were rather affordable for most traditional items. It’s a pretty neat place to visit.

A couple km further down the wadi brings you to the village’s highlight: Qasr al-Abd. “Castle of the Servant”, although once you see it, you might think, “Wow, if that’s the servant’s castle, I want to be a servant!” The Powers That be suggest this place was so named because Tobias, a servant mentioned in Nehemiah 2:10, was ruler over the region.

Archeological evidence shows occupation of this site from at least the Bronze Age (11,000 BC). Josephus also describes this castle, and it is thought that Hyrcanus built this palace on his return from Egypt, and called it Tyros (Wadi as-Seer is derived from “Tyros”, apparently).

The Qasr is important because it represents a rare example of Hellenistic Architecture in Jordan.

The Qasr itself was only part of a larger walled structure that include an artificial lake, fed by the spring up the wadi via aqueducts. There was also a large entrance gate a couple hundred meters from the palace, but we forget to look for it, so taken were we by the great reconstruction done by French archeologists in 1980. At 1JD/person, it’s a bargain site to visit, and a nice place to have a picnic lunch and survey the surroundings. Just peaceful.

The Qasr originally had five levels, with stairways leading to higher levels denoted by the zigzag patterns in the wall (this is where stairs used to be).

For the next month, we will be in the field with various folks, honing the Travelist Circuit with them, and discovering more amazing things over even shorter periods. When time allows, I will post about those adventures. In the meantime, Twitter will be my main social media outlet, so keep abreast of happenings there (@caseallen).