All About Jordan

History of Jordan

Jordan's landscape holds the layered record of thousands of years of human history. Long before Petra was carved by the Nabateans, the land that is now Jordan was home to some of the earliest known human communities in the Near East, and it went on to pass through the hands of Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, a succession of Islamic dynasties, the Ottomans, and finally the Hashemite family who founded the modern Kingdom of Jordan. The chronology below traces that history era by era.

Early Communities and the First Settlements

Paleolithic Period

During the Paleolithic period, roughly 500,000 to 17,000 BCE, the inhabitants of the land now known as Jordan hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants, likely following the seasonal movement of game and staying close to sources of water. The climate at the time was considerably wetter than it is today, so large areas that are now desert were then open plains well suited to hunting and gathering. Evidence of Paleolithic settlement has been found near the large body of water at Azraq. No architecture and no human skeletal remains survive from this period, but archaeologists have recovered flint and basalt tools, including hand-axes, knives and scrapers, which remain the main evidence of life in Jordan across the Paleolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras.

Neolithic Period

The Neolithic period, roughly 8500 to 4500 BCE, brought three major shifts to the region. People began settling into small permanent villages rather than following seasonal movements. This shift coincided with the introduction of cereal farming, domesticated peas and lentils, and goat herding, and the resulting food security allowed populations to grow into the tens of thousands. Second, the climate of the eastern desert grew warmer and drier, and by roughly 6500–5500 BCE the region had settled into the enduring divide between the arid desert to the east and the more fertile "sown" land to the west. Third, in the later Neolithic period, from around 5500–4500 BCE, people began systematically producing pottery from fired clay, a craft likely introduced from Mesopotamia to the northeast.

The largest known Neolithic site in Jordan is at Ein Ghazal, near modern Amman, where archaeologists have uncovered a large settlement divided into distinct districts of rectangular, multi-room houses, some with plastered floors. The stone tower and walls at Jericho suggest that defense was a concern for Neolithic communities as well. Plastered skulls found at Ein Ghazal, Beidha and other sites across Jordan, Palestine and Syria point to a practice of ancestor veneration. Among the most striking finds from Ein Ghazal are a set of plaster statues, thought to be around 8,000 years old, depicting a human figure with large eyes and carefully rendered features — among the oldest known statues in the world.

Chalcolithic Period

During the Chalcolithic period, roughly 4500 to 3200 BCE, copper was smelted for the first time and used to make axes, arrowheads and hooks, although flint tools remained in use for a long time alongside it. People relied less on hunting than before, focusing instead on sheep and goat herding and the cultivation of wheat, barley, dates, olives and lentils — a lifestyle in the desert areas that likely resembled that of modern Bedouin communities.

Toward the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BCE, a wave of destruction swept the Near East and eastern Mediterranean, bringing down many of the region's major kingdoms, including Mycenaean Greece, Hittite Anatolia, and Late Bronze Age cities across Syria, Palestine and Jordan. This upheaval is often attributed to seaborne raiders from the Aegean and Anatolia, referred to in Egyptian sources as the "Sea Peoples," who were eventually turned back by the Egyptian pharaohs Merenptah and Rameses III. One of these groups, the Philistines, settled on the southern coast of Palestine. The archaeological record does not always align neatly with the Biblical account of the Israelites' arrival in the region during this same period, but it is established that a number of Canaanite towns, including Jericho, Ai and Hazor, were destroyed around this time. This period of upheaval also marks the transition into the Iron Age, when the kingdoms of Edom, Moab and Ammon began to take shape in the land of Jordan.

Early Kingdoms and the Classical World

The Iron Age Kingdoms

The Iron Age, roughly 1200 to 332 BCE, saw the consolidation of three kingdoms within present-day Jordan: Edom in the south, Moab in the centre, and Ammon in the northern highlands, while the Aramaeans established their capital at Damascus to the north. Power shifted during this period from smaller city-states to these larger kingdoms, a change often linked to the growing importance of the overland trade route from Arabia, which carried gold, spices and precious metals through Amman and Damascus toward northern Syria.

Much of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible is set during this period, although archaeological evidence does not always confirm the Biblical account in detail; some cities said to have been taken by the Israelites were indeed destroyed in this era, but the destruction may equally be attributed to Egyptian military campaigns, and many historians view the process as a more gradual pattern of migration than a single military conquest. According to the Biblical narrative, the Israelites journeying from Egypt were refused passage through Edom and later fought and defeated the Amorite king Sihon before continuing north into Moab and eventually across the Jordan River into Palestine, where a united Kingdom of Israel was said to have formed under Saul and David around 1000 BCE, later dividing into Israel and Judah after the death of Solomon in 922 BCE.

Regional power continued to shift over the following centuries. Edom regained independence after David's death and became skilled in copper mining, with settlements near modern Petra and Aqaba. Moab is known from the ninth-century BCE Mesha Stele, which recounts a Moabite victory over Israelite forces, and its capitals were at Karak and Dhiban. Ammon, centred on the citadel of present-day Amman, prospered through agriculture and trade around 950 BCE. These kingdoms' wealth made them targets in turn for the Assyrians, who campaigned through the region from the ninth century BCE and captured Damascus and Samaria by the late eighth century, although Ammon, Moab and Edom preserved their independence for a time by paying tribute. The Assyrian Empire fell in 612 BCE, giving way to Babylonian rule under Nebuchadnezzar, whose defeat of the Egyptians at Carchemish in 605 BCE reshaped the region; in 587 BCE he destroyed Jerusalem and deported much of its population to Babylon. In 539 BCE, the Persians under Cyrus II ended Babylonian rule, established the largest empire the Near East had yet seen, and allowed the exiled Jewish community to return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, a move that led to friction with the Ammonite and Moabite governor Tobiah until the Persian king Darius I intervened. Persian rule over the region ended in 332 BCE when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian capital of Persepolis and brought Jordan under Greek control.

Hellenistic Jordan

Greek cultural influence, already present in the region, deepened significantly after Alexander's conquest. The Greeks founded new cities, such as Umm Qais (Gadara), and renamed existing ones — Amman became Philadelphia and Jerash became first Antioch and later Gerasa. Many of the structures built during this era were later rebuilt under Roman, Byzantine and Islamic rule, so relatively little survives intact from the Hellenistic period itself, though Greek became the official administrative language even as Aramaic remained the everyday spoken language.

Following Alexander's death, his generals contested control of the region for more than two decades. The Ptolemies, based in Egypt, ruled Jordan from roughly 301–198 BCE, after which the Syria-based Seleucids took control until 63 BCE. The most striking Hellenistic-era site in Jordan is Qasr al-Abd at 'Iraq al-Amir, west of modern Amman — a large stone structure, likely a temple or fortified residence, built in the late second century BCE by Hyrcanus, a governor of Ammon from the influential Tobiad family.

The Nabateans and Petra

Before Alexander's conquest, a new civilisation had already begun to take shape in southern Jordan. The Nabateans, originally a nomadic Arabian tribe, gradually settled from around the sixth century BCE in southern Jordan, the Naqab desert and northern Arabia, making their capital at Petra — a site earlier inhabited by the Edomites. The Nabateans carved elaborate buildings, temples and tombs into Petra's sandstone cliffs and fortified the naturally defensible city, while developing sophisticated water engineering, including dams, canals and reservoirs, to sustain life in the arid desert.

Skilled traders, the Nabateans facilitated commerce linking China, India, Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome, dealing in spices, incense, gold, metals, textiles and other goods, and Petra grew into a wealthy crossroads between Arabian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures. Comparatively little is known about Nabatean society directly, though the Roman writer Strabo recorded that it was governed by a royal family within a broadly democratic culture, without slavery, and that the chief deities worshipped were the sun god Dushara and the goddess Allat.

As Nabatean wealth and influence grew, it drew the attention of neighbouring powers. The Seleucid king Antigonus attacked Petra in 312 BCE and sacked the city, but his heavily laden army was destroyed by the Nabateans during its return march. Nabatea remained largely independent through the following centuries of Ptolemaic-Seleucid rivalry, though it absorbed considerable Hellenistic influence in its art and architecture. Rome's growing power eventually brought the Nabateans into direct contact with Roman authority: in 65 BCE Rome ordered a Nabatean withdrawal from Damascus, and two years later a Roman force under Pompey moved against Petra, with King Aretas III either repelling the Romans or paying tribute to preserve peace. Following the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Nabateans sided with the Parthians against Rome and, after the Parthian defeat, were required to pay tribute to Rome and were twice invaded by the Roman client king Herod the Great, losing territory including their northern trade routes in 31 BCE.

Despite these setbacks, the Nabatean kingdom continued to prosper under King Aretas IV (9 BCE–40 CE), who expanded the network of settlements supporting the incense trade, and later allied with Rome. The final Nabatean king, Rabbel II, arranged for the kingdom to pass to Roman control upon his death; when he died in 106 CE, Rome annexed the territory as the province of Arabia Petraea, and Petra was redesigned along Roman architectural lines, entering a period of prosperity under the Pax Romana. Petra may have housed 20,000 to 30,000 people at its height, though the city's fortunes declined as trade routes shifted toward Palmyra in Syria and toward maritime trade routes around Arabia. The Nabateans appear to have gradually and peacefully left Petra sometime around the fourth century CE, for reasons that remain unclear.

Roman Jordan

Pompey's conquest of the region in 63 BCE opened four centuries of Roman rule. In the north, the Greek cities of Philadelphia (Amman), Gerasa (Jerash), Gadara (Umm Qais), Pella and Arbila (Irbid) joined cities in Palestine and southern Syria to form the Decapolis League, a confederation linked by shared economic and cultural interests. Jerash was among the grandest of these cities and was visited by the Emperor Hadrian in 130 CE. Nabatea in the south retained its independence until Emperor Trajan's forces annexed it in 106 CE.

Roman engineers followed the military, and in 111 CE completed the Via Nova Traiana, a road running from Aqaba in the south to Bosra in Syria, protected by forts and watchtowers. Amman, Jerash and Umm Qais were laid out with colonnaded streets and theatres. Latin was imposed as the official language even though Greek remained widely spoken, creating a degree of cultural tension, but the period was on the whole a peaceful one marked by substantial infrastructure development.

Byzantine Jordan

The Byzantine period is generally dated from 324 CE, when the Emperor Constantine founded Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire; he converted to Christianity in 333 CE, although a Christian community had already existed in Jordan for some time, with Pella serving as a refuge for Christians fleeing persecution in Rome as early as the first century CE. Substantial construction took place across Jordan during this period, and the region's population grew as Christianity became the dominant religion through the fourth century, with churches and chapels built across many former Roman settlements, sometimes reusing pagan temple sites. Church-building reached a peak under Emperor Justinian (527–565 CE), producing basilica-style churches with semi-circular apses and colonnaded naves.

The prosperity of the period is visible in the elaborate mosaic floors of many Byzantine churches, portraying towns, people and animals; the most celebrated example is the sixth-century Madaba Map, a mosaic depiction of the Holy Land. In the sixth and seventh centuries, Jordan suffered significant depopulation, driven in part by the plague of 542 CE and by the Sassanian Persian invasion of 614 CE, which held the region for around fifteen years until Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered it in 629 CE — gains that would prove short-lived.

Islamic Dynasties, Crusaders and Ottoman Rule

The Early Islamic Conquest

Byzantine attention, absorbed by the conflict with the Sassanians, was diverted from developments in the Arabian desert, where Bedouin tribes had long carried out periodic raids northward. What changed in the early seventh century was that the tribes moving north were now united by a shared faith, Islam. After receiving what Muslims hold to be divine revelation, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) first sought to convert the people of Mecca; facing opposition, he and his followers migrated to Medina in 622 CE, an event known as the Hijra that marks the start of the Islamic calendar. Eight years later he returned to Mecca, and the new faith spread rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa in the years that followed.

Arab Muslim forces dismantled Byzantine control of Jordan, Palestine and Syria within roughly a decade. After two unsuccessful engagements near Mu'ta, south of Amman, in 629 CE, Muslim forces won a decisive victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of the Yarmouk River in 636 CE — a river that today forms part of the border between Jordan and Syria — opening the way to the conquest of Syria and pushing the remaining Byzantine forces back into Anatolia.

The Umayyads

Damascus became the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 CE, and Jordan prospered during Umayyad rule (661–750 CE) due to its proximity to the capital and its position along pilgrimage routes to the holy cities of Arabia. Arabic gradually replaced Greek as the dominant language, although Christianity remained widely practised into the eighth century. The Umayyads, at home in the desert, allowed the old Roman fortifications to fall into disrepair, but left a distinctive legacy of desert palaces, bathhouses and hunting lodges — the so-called "Desert Castles" — including the frescoed Qusayr 'Amra and the imposing Qasr al-Kharana. The greatest Umayyad monument, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, was completed by Caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 691 CE.

The Abbasids

A powerful earthquake struck Jordan in 747 CE, and three years later the Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasids, who established their capital at Baghdad. Jordan became a provincial region far from the centre of the new empire; the Desert Castles were abandoned, and the region experienced neglect more than active conflict, though recent excavations suggest population levels continued to grow into the early ninth century.

The Fatimids and the Crusades

In 969 CE the Fatimids of Egypt took control of Jordan, contesting the territory with various Syrian factions for roughly two centuries. At the start of the twelfth century, the Crusades brought a new period of conflict to the region, prompted by an appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexius for support against the Seljuk Turks and by Pope Urban II's subsequent call in 1095 to retake Jerusalem. Fighting began in earnest in 1096 and led to the capture of Jerusalem by Crusader forces and the establishment of a Crusader kingdom there. To secure the route to Jerusalem, the Crusader king Baldwin I built a line of fortresses through Jordan, the most substantial at Karak and Shobak. Crusader control was ended when the Muslim commander Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin), having unified Syria and Egypt, defeated the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 CE, opening the way to the recapture of Jerusalem.

The Ayyubids and Mamluks

Saladin founded the Ayyubid dynasty, which governed much of Syria, Egypt and Jordan for the following eighty years. A Mongol invasion swept through the region in 1258 CE and was turned back in 1260 CE by the Mamluk sultan Baybars at the Battle of Ain Jalut. The Mamluks, originally from Central Asia and the Caucasus, subsequently ruled Egypt, Jordan and Syria from Cairo. Under Ayyubid and Mamluk rule, castles were built or restored, caravanserais supported pilgrims and trade, and sugar refining flourished in the Jordan Valley, although a further Mongol incursion in 1401 CE, combined with weak governance and disease, weakened the region. In 1516 CE the Mamluks were defeated by the Ottoman Turks, and Jordan entered four centuries of Ottoman rule.

Ottoman Rule

Ottoman rule, from 1516 to 1918, was largely a period of stagnation for Jordan. The Ottomans were chiefly concerned with the region's role along the pilgrimage route to Mecca, building fortresses at sites such as Qasr al-Dab'a, Qasr Qatraneh and Qal'at Hasa to protect and supply pilgrims. Ottoman administration was comparatively weak, and many towns and villages were abandoned over the centuries as populations shifted. Population began to recover in the late nineteenth century as Syrians and Palestinians migrated to Jordan and Muslim Circassian and Chechen communities, fleeing Russian persecution, settled in Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Most Ottoman-era construction served a religious or pilgrimage-related purpose, and the most significant infrastructure project of the period was the Hijaz Railway, completed from Damascus to Medina in 1908 to carry pilgrims and, later, Ottoman troops and supplies — a role that made it a frequent target during the Great Arab Revolt of the First World War.

The Formation of Modern Jordan

The Great Arab Revolt

Much of the upheaval experienced across the Middle East in the twentieth century traces back to the First World War. The Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, and in the years leading up to it had shifted from a pluralistic, pan-Islamic policy toward a more assertive Turkish nationalism, restricting the use of Arabic and pursuing political and cultural measures against its Arab subjects. In this climate, Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the Emir of Mecca, launched the Great Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule in June 1916, in alliance with Britain and France, with the aim of establishing a unified Arab state. His sons, the emirs Abdullah and Faisal, led Arab forces in the field, and Faisal's forces entered Damascus in 1918. Although the post-war settlement fell well short of the single unified Arab state envisioned by Sharif Hussein, the revolt laid the groundwork for Hashemite rule over Transjordan and Iraq.

Britain's wartime commitments to the Arabs proved difficult to reconcile with agreements it made with other parties. In the 1915–16 Hussein–McMahon Correspondence, Britain indicated support for Arab independence in exchange for the revolt, though the correspondence excluded certain areas and its precise boundaries — particularly regarding Palestine — became a lasting source of dispute between British and Arab interpretations. The 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement between Britain, France and Russia meanwhile divided the region into zones of colonial influence, placing most of Palestine under a proposed international administration, in a manner that sat uneasily alongside the assurances given to Sharif Hussein. In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued a letter to Lord Rothschild, a prominent figure in the British Jewish community, expressing British support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, while stating that nothing should be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities already living there. This became known as the Balfour Declaration, and its implications would shape the region's politics for decades to come.

The Making of Transjordan

Near the end of 1918, Emir Faisal established an independent government in Damascus, but his call for Arab independence at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference was not accepted by the colonial powers. In 1920, Faisal briefly assumed the throne of Syria before the French, who had been awarded the mandate over Syria and Lebanon by the newly formed League of Nations, took Damascus by force and removed him. Britain, meanwhile, received the mandates over Transjordan, Palestine and Iraq; Faisal was later installed as king of Iraq, a Hashemite monarchy that continued until his grandson, King Faisal II, was killed in a military coup in 1958.

In November 1920, Emir Abdullah led a force north with the intention of restoring his brother's position in Syria, but with the French mandate already firmly established there, he turned instead to organising a government in Amman. Transjordan had, since the end of the war, been divided by the British into three locally administered districts; faced with Abdullah's determination to pursue a unified Arab political project, Britain recognised him as ruler of the combined territory, and he established the first centralised government of modern Jordan on 11 April 1921. Over the following years, a series of Anglo-Transjordanian treaties gradually expanded Transjordan's self-government, culminating in a March 1946 treaty that ended the British mandate and secured full independence; in May 1946 the Transjordanian parliament proclaimed Abdullah king, and the country was renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Palestine under the British Mandate

The commitments made in the Balfour Declaration regarding a Jewish national home in Palestine became a source of growing tension in the following decades. Arab communities in Palestine, who made up the substantial majority of the population at the time, viewed the framing of the declaration with alarm. Jewish immigration to Palestine during the 1920s drew relatively limited reaction, but the situation changed markedly as Nazi persecution intensified in Europe during the 1930s and immigration increased sharply, deepening concerns among Palestinian Arabs about the prospect of a Jewish-majority state. These tensions erupted into the Palestinian Arab revolt of 1936–1939, the first large-scale outbreak of sustained conflict between Palestinian and Zionist communities under the mandate.

Although the terms of Transjordan's arrangement with Britain limited Emir Abdullah's ability to establish formal ties with Palestinian Arab leaders, he gave refuge to Palestinian political figures and repeatedly warned British officials of the risks of continued Jewish immigration without a negotiated political settlement. Tensions between Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine continued to rise through the 1930s, though the outbreak of the Second World War brought a period of relative cooperation between both communities and the British administration; Transjordan's own Arab Legion fought alongside Allied forces, including operations against Vichy French forces in Syria.

In the years immediately following the war, international sympathy for Jewish refugees in the aftermath of the Holocaust intensified pressure on Britain to permit large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine, while underground Jewish paramilitary groups carried out a campaign of attacks against British administration there. Britain announced in February 1947 that it would end its mandate over Palestine by May 1948, and the matter was referred to the United Nations, which voted in November 1947 for a plan to partition Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem placed under international administration. The plan allocated more than half of the territory, including the coastal areas, to the proposed Jewish state, a division that Arab leaders and much of the Palestinian Arab population rejected. When the British mandate ended on 14 May 1948, Jewish leaders declared the independence of the State of Israel, an event that both the Soviet Union and the United States recognised within a short time, and which set the stage for the war that followed.

Jordan in the Mid-Twentieth Century

The 1948 War and the Defense of Jerusalem

Even before the UN partition vote, King Abdullah had proposed sending the Arab Legion to defend the Arab population of Palestine, and following the declaration of Israeli independence, Jordan, along with Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iraq, sent forces into the conflict. Coordination among the Arab armies was limited, with each operating under separate command, while Israeli forces — which by most historical estimates grew from around 25,000 to closer to 80,000 troops over the course of 1948, a number of them experienced from service in the Second World War — were able to consolidate and, in a number of cases, expand beyond the territory allotted to the proposed Jewish state under the UN plan.

The war led more than half a million Palestinian Arabs to leave or flee their homes, many settling in what became known as the West Bank. Among the events of this period was the killing of a large number of Palestinian villagers by Irgun and Lehi paramilitary forces at Deir Yassin in April 1948; the precise death toll remains disputed among historians, with estimates lower than the figures originally reported at the time, but the event is widely documented as a significant factor in the wider Palestinian displacement of 1948. Of the Arab armies engaged in the conflict, Jordan's Arab Legion is generally regarded by historians as the most militarily effective, and — with some support from Iraqi forces — it succeeded in holding the territory that became known as the West Bank, together with the Old City of Jerusalem, despite facing a numerically and materially stronger opponent and operating under a UN arms embargo that left it short of ammunition.

Jerusalem, sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews alike, was the site of some of the most intense fighting of the war. The Battle of Jerusalem unfolded in stages: an early period of street clashes from December 1947 following the UN partition vote; the entry of Jewish militia forces into parts of the Old City in April 1948; the arrival of Jordan's Arab Legion in the city on 18 May 1948, after which ten days of fighting resulted in the Legion gaining control of the Old City; and a further Israeli offensive in early July that was unable to break through the Legion's positions before a UN-imposed cease-fire took hold on 19 July 1948. Jordanian forces also held a position at Latrun that blocked the main road linking Jerusalem to the coast, though Israeli forces built an alternate route (the "Burma Road") to sustain West Jerusalem. Efforts were made by both sides to limit damage to religious sites during the fighting. The war concluded through a series of 1949 armistice agreements; Jordan concluded its own armistice with Israel directly rather than through the Rhodes conference attended by other Arab states.

Unification of the Two Banks

In the war's aftermath, many Palestinian leaders in the Jordanian-held West Bank viewed union with Jordan as essential to preserving Arab control over the territory. A conference of Palestinian leaders held in Jericho in December 1948 called on King Abdullah to unite the two banks of the Jordan River under his rule. Elections for a new Jordanian parliament, with equal representation for West Bank Palestinians, were held in April 1950, and the parliament subsequently voted to formally unite the East and West Banks within the Hashemite Kingdom. The kingdom's population grew to roughly one and a half million people, more than a third of them refugees from the 1948 conflict, all of whom were offered Jordanian citizenship — a policy that set Jordan apart from other Arab states at the time and that offered a path out of statelessness for many refugees.

Jordan in the 1950s

The 1950s brought considerable political turbulence across the Arab world, much of it linked to the aftermath of the 1948 war and continuing resentment of colonial-era influence. Pan-Arab political movements gained ground during this period, including the Ba'th Party, founded in Syria in the late 1940s, and the pan-Arabist leadership of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose popularity grew substantially following the 1956 Suez Crisis. Rivalry among pan-Arab leaders for regional influence at times deepened divisions between Arab states rather than fostering unity, including the short-lived United Arab Republic uniting Egypt and Syria from 1958 to 1961.

King Hussein, who came to the throne in 1953, pursued a distinct approach that emphasised respect for the sovereignty of individual Arab states. He introduced early liberal reforms, including greater freedom of speech and of the press, though the kingdom experienced periods of instability, including riots linked to regional broadcasts and a 1957 coup attempt that he personally intervened to stop, leading him to impose martial law that year. He also dismissed British officers from command of the Arab Legion in 1956 and ended the Anglo-Jordanian Treaty in 1957. A further crisis followed in July 1958, when a military coup in Iraq overthrew the Hashemite monarchy there and dissolved the short-lived Arab Federation between Jordan and Iraq, leaving Jordan diplomatically isolated; the kingdom weathered the crisis with British and American support.

Jordan in the 1960s

The 1960s were, for the most part, a period of steady economic development. Jordan's potash, phosphate and cement industries were developed during this decade, an oil refinery was built in Zarqa, a national highway network took shape, and Jordan University, the kingdom's first national university, was established at Jubeiha in 1962. Growth in construction and tourism, along with remittances from Jordanians working in the Gulf states, supported the emergence of an increasingly educated middle class.

Regional tensions nonetheless persisted. In 1964, Arab leaders responded to Israeli plans to divert Jordan River water by creating the Palestine Liberation Organisation and a joint Arab military command; King Hussein supported the PLO's creation while seeking to ensure its activities remained coordinated with other Arab states. Guerrilla raids by Palestinian groups based partly in Jordan drew sharp Israeli reprisals, including a major attack on the West Bank village of Samu in November 1966, which strained Jordan's relations with both Israel and other Arab governments. Tensions escalated further in the spring of 1967 as Egypt requested the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces from Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran; Jordan signed a mutual defence pact with Egypt shortly before the outbreak of war.

The June 1967 War began on 5 June with an Israeli strike that severely damaged the Egyptian air force. Jordanian forces launched an initial offensive but were pushed back as Israeli forces advanced into the West Bank and East Jerusalem. When a UN cease-fire took effect on 11 June, Israel held Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the remainder of historic Palestine, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Jordan bore heavy losses from the war: more than 300,000 additional Palestinian refugees arrived in Jordan, a substantial share of its agricultural and industrial base in the West Bank was lost, and the loss of Jerusalem devastated the tourism sector. The UN Security Council's Resolution 242, adopted that November and shaped in part by King Hussein's diplomacy, called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory and mutual recognition of secure borders, and remains a foundational reference point in Middle East peace negotiations; Jordan accepted it as a basis for talks. In March 1968, Jordanian forces repelled a major Israeli raid on the Jordan Valley village of Karama, a battle that became a significant moment in Jordan's post-1967 recovery of confidence.

Jordan from the 1970s to the 1990s

The 1970s

Cooperation between Jordan and armed Palestinian factions operating from its territory broke down in 1970, as some of these groups operated increasingly outside Jordanian law, leading to serious internal instability, including attempts on the king's life and a wave of hijackings. King Hussein ordered the army to restore order, and the resulting conflict, which included a brief incursion by Syrian forces that was repelled within days, continued intermittently until mid-1971. In the years that followed, domestic policy focused on national unity and, eventually, a gradual return toward broader political participation. The Jordanian economy grew strongly through the mid-to-late 1970s, aided by the regional oil boom, worker remittances from the Gulf, and the relocation of parts of Beirut's banking sector to Amman following the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975.

Jordan continued to press diplomatically for a resolution to the Israeli occupation of Arab territory. In 1972, King Hussein proposed a federal "United Arab Kingdom" plan that would have given the West Bank and East Bank separate administrations under a shared central government, but the proposal drew insufficient support among both Jordanians and Palestinians to proceed. Jordan contributed troops in support of Syria during the October 1973 war, though it was not itself a direct combatant, and the war's outcome led to a series of disengagement agreements culminating in the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel — an agreement that Jordan, along with most other Arab states, viewed as falling short of a comprehensive settlement, since it did not address Israeli withdrawal from the other occupied territories. At the 1974 Arab League summit in Rabat, Arab states, including Jordan, recognised the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, transferring responsibility for negotiating the return of occupied Palestinian land from Jordan to the PLO.

The 1980s

Regional attention shifted to the Gulf in 1980 with the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War, an eight-year conflict in which historical estimates of the total loss of life vary widely, with commonly cited figures in the hundreds of thousands to around one million. Jordan supported Iraq during the war, and the overland trade route from the port of Aqaba into Iraq became strategically and economically significant for the kingdom during this period.

In February 1985, after concluding that continued deadlock in the peace process served no one's interests, King Hussein and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat agreed on a framework for joint Jordanian-Palestinian negotiations with Israel, envisioning a future confederation between Jordan and an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza; the initiative did not proceed, due to Israeli reluctance to negotiate on these terms and opposition from within the PLO. Domestically, Jordan's Parliament had not held full elections since 1967, since the West Bank and East Bank had held equal representation before the 1967 occupation. In July 1988, King Hussein announced the end of Jordan's development programme for the West Bank and the severance of Jordan's administrative and legal ties to the territory, transferring greater responsibility to the PLO and allowing electoral districts to be redrawn around the East Bank alone. Amid mounting economic difficulties, this period of transition culminated in Jordan's first general parliamentary elections since 1966, held in November 1989, marking the resumption of the kingdom's democratic process.

The Gulf Crisis

On 2 August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded and occupied Kuwait, an event that had a significant impact on Jordan given its proximity, its extensive trade relationship with Iraq, and the political position it took during the crisis. Jordan agreed with the international consensus that the invasion violated international law, but favoured a resolution reached through Arab diplomatic channels rather than international military intervention, and King Hussein made direct appeals to the Iraqi leadership to withdraw. This position was, at the time, widely criticised internationally, though it reflected the preference of much of the Jordanian public for a negotiated resolution.

Jordan absorbed the effects of the crisis more than almost any other country besides Iraq and Kuwait itself. With a population of around three and a half million at the time, the kingdom hosted over a million people fleeing the conflict, most in transit but an estimated 300,000 remaining as long-term returnees, many of them Palestinians who took up Jordan's long-standing offer of citizenship. This influx placed heavy strain on water supplies, infrastructure and employment, with unemployment climbing sharply. International sanctions against Iraq, meanwhile, disrupted the trade relationship that had developed between the two countries during the 1980s, at considerable cost to the Jordanian economy.

The 1990s and the Peace Process

The end of the Cold War and the changed regional balance of power following the Gulf Crisis created new conditions for pursuing Arab-Israeli peace. The United States and Russia co-sponsored the Madrid Peace Conference in October 1991, at which Jordan provided a diplomatic framework allowing a Palestinian delegation to negotiate directly with Israel for the first time. Nearly two years later, on 13 September 1993, the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo Declaration of Principles, which in turn opened the way for Jordan to pursue its own bilateral track with Israel. On 25 July 1994, King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Washington Declaration at the White House, formally ending the state of war between the two countries, and on 26 October 1994 the two countries signed the Jordan–Israel Peace Treaty at the Wadi Araba border crossing. The treaty restored a portion of previously disputed land to Jordan, established Jordan's share of water from the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers, and defined the kingdom's western border. It also set the framework for continued cooperation between the two countries in areas including trade, tourism, transport, energy, environment, health and agriculture.