Journey through Jordan

1

• Journey through Jordan
• Ein Jaloot high school
• Made by
• EMAN.M. HELMY
• 1.IT.b
• supervision
• Mrs. Tahani Zaiter

2
Journey through Jordan
3

• As a modern state, the Hashemite kingdom of
  Jordan is little older than three score years and
  ten. But its inhabitants are the guardians of a
  heritage which stretches way back into the dawn
  of history.
• For Jordan geographically is the quintessence of
  the holy land. Indeed , its lineage goes even
  further. Spawned of this land are people from
  civilisations which span thousands of years.

4

• Its strategic location at one of the great
  crossroads of the world, where Asia meets Africa,
  has drawn invading peoples to this area since
  before records began. All have left their mark.
  Written in the sand and limestone of this
  fascinating hot spot is a story of turbulent
  times contrasting with cultural and economic
  prosperity.

5
On The Trail Of Kings

• I am from Gadara, fond of the muses, reads an
  inscription on the tombstone of Apion of Gadara,
  whose homesick death is recorded in a small town
  east of lake Tiberias.

6

• As a provincial outpost of the Greek and Roman
  empires, Gadara was a place for worship of the
  arts, blessed by a natural setting of exquisite
  beauty, on the top of a limestone and basalt hill
  overlooking the river Yarmouk and the hot springs
  of Hammeh.

7

• It is easy to understand how Apion must have
  longed for his home in what is now Umm Qais. At
  its height, Gadara boasted three theatres,
  including one at the thermal baths in the Yarmouk
  valley.

8

• It also had an unfinished hippodrome, as well
  as some of the finest wine to be tasted in the
  Byzantine empire. Even today, the fertile
  alkaline soil throws up a spring riot of wild
  flowers that carpet the escarpment to the bottom
  of the valley with deep-red poppies, dandelions,
  daisies, orchids, yellow-flowered shrubs and
  tulips.

9
In The Heart Of Jordan

• Amman is a confusing city. In winter and early
  spring the sun, hiding shyly on a low horizon,
  soothes the harsh white of limestone and modern
  concrete with a soft brushwork of light only seen
  elsewhere on still mornings in the European alps.

10

• In Summer, hundreds of thousands of white
  blocks, like giant Lego, reflect painfully into
  the eye as one struggles with unmarked streets
  and a shimmering landscape.

11

• American-style neon atop five-star hotels burns
  the night sky while the air is thick with the
  smell of cedar, pine, night-flowering jasmine and
  great monuments to the Roman and Greek
  Civilisations. It is exciting confusion.

12

• And in modern Amman one can sense the buzz of
  the computer-age against the glittering Souk in
  the middle of town, a pandemonium where plastic
  replicas of Mickey Mouse are hawked alongside
  peerless Bedouin rugs brightly patterned with
  organic dyes.

13
The Great High Ways
Sitting in pride of place in a small village
square on the ancient north-south route through
Jordan, a scaled-down model of a Soviet scud
missile, used by the Iraqi military to attack
Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf war of
1991, was aimed provocatively west towards
Israel. The home-made model with its red fins and
white body made from an old oil drum was as
much an insult as a joke.
14
Jewels In The Crown

• T E Lawrence, the cerebral fellow of all souls
  Oxford, the cold strategic planner who once had
  to shoot a man in the chest in the absence of an
  official executioner, was bewitched Day was
  still young as we rode between two great pikes of
  sandstone to the foot of a long, soft slope
  poured down from the domed hills in front of us.

15

• It was tamarisk covered the beginning of the
  valley of Rum, they said. We looked up on the
  left to a long wall of rock, sheering in like a
  thousand-foot wave towards the middle of the
  valley whose other arc, to the right , was an
  opposing line of steep, red broken hills We rode
  up the slope, crashing our way through the
  brittle undergrowth.

16
My Speech

• I chose to talk about Jordan in my project
  because Jordan is an economic country and it has
  a lot of historical places that the tourists come
  from all over the world to visit it.
• Thank You