a Geographer's Place

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 Arab...

The last several days we have been exploring potential research sites in Amman itself in case we aren’t able to get to our intended research sites. And Amman has plenty to explore! Just look at the view from The Citadel: Looking southeast over Amman from Jabal al Qal'a , as it's called in Arabic The Citadel has a temple dedicated to Heracles (Hercules to Westerners), a Byzantine church, and an Umayyad palace. If you want more, the Wikipedia entry is good, although their first picture of “Amman Citadel Ruins” is NOT from the Citadel, but rather the city of Jerash (this is why ground-truthing is so important!) The large pillars represent what is thought to be the entrance into the Temple of Hercules. Apparently there was also a very large statue of him - they have the hand and elbow on display, just sitting out in the elements. The small-ish box-like structures in the foreground are (empty) sarcophogi. Notice the sprawl of Amman in the background. In a nut shel...