Desert, valley and highlands
Jordan is a small, dry kingdom in the heart of the Middle East, bordered by Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Israel and the West Bank, with a short stretch of coast on the Red Sea at Aqaba. Along its western edge runs a deep valley holding the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, the lowest land on earth. East of the valley rise highlands where nearly all the towns lie, from Irbid in the north through Amman to Karak in the south. Beyond them, about three-quarters of the country is desert, the Badia, home of the Bedouin tribes, with the sandstone landscapes of Petra and Wadi Rum in the south.
Water is Jordan's greatest worry. It is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world, and a huge new project will take water from the Red Sea at Aqaba, remove the salt and pump it to Amman.
Tribes, towns and settlers
Long ago this was the land of the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites, then of the Nabataeans of Petra and of Roman cities such as Jerash. Under the Ottoman Turks the land east of the Jordan was barely governed, and powerful Bedouin tribes held the desert around a few small towns. From 1878 the Ottomans settled Circassians, refugees driven from the Caucasus by Russia, among the ruins of Amman, and Chechens followed. Britain created the emirate of Transjordan in 1921, and it became the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.
Jordanians whose families have deep roots east of the river, many of them from Bedouin tribes, form the backbone of the army and the state and are the king's firmest supporters. Smaller communities have their own place: Circassians and Chechens hold reserved seats in parliament, while Afro-Jordanians, many descended from people enslaved before 1929, and the Dom, sometimes called Nawar, face prejudice.
A land of refuge
Jordan has taken in wave after wave of people fleeing war. After 1948 it ruled the West Bank and gave its Palestinians citizenship; after 1967 more arrived, among them people from Gaza who were never given citizenship. Today about half of Jordan's people are of Palestinian origin, and 2.4 million are registered as Palestinian refugees. Iraqis came after the wars of 2003 and 2014, among them Assyrian and Chaldean Christians. From 2011 more than a million Syrians fled here; since the fall of the Assad government in December 2024, over 200,000 have gone home.
About 1.5 million migrant workers, most of them Egyptians, but also Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Indians and Sri Lankans, work on farms and building sites, in garment factories and in homes, many without proper papers. Domestic workers are especially open to abuse.
Life today
About 12 million people live in Jordan, nine in ten of them in towns and cities, most around Amman, Zarqa and Irbid. A new census began in October 2026.
Jordan has few natural resources. It lives on tourism, phosphate and potash mining, clothing factories, money sent home by Jordanians working in the Gulf, and foreign aid. About one worker in five is unemployed, and four in ten young people; only about one woman in seven is in the workforce. West Amman is wealthy, while desert towns and refugee camps are poor. Most adults can read, and Amman's hospitals draw patients from across the region.
King Abdullah II has reigned since 1999 and appoints the prime minister. The war in Gaza since 2023 brought large protests and hurt tourism, and in 2025 the government banned the Muslim Brotherhood.
Faith
Nearly all Jordanians are Sunni Muslims, and Islam is the religion of the state. Small communities of Druze and Baha'is live here too, and many migrant workers are Hindus or Buddhists. Muslims and the members of each recognised church settle marriage, divorce and inheritance in their own religious courts.
The church and freedom of belief
About two in every hundred Jordanians are Christians, most of them Greek Orthodox, with Catholic, Armenian, Syrian, Coptic and Protestant churches as well. Christians hold reserved seats in parliament, and eleven churches are officially recognised. Five evangelical churches have had a limited status since 2018 and cannot run their own courts.
Muslims who come to faith in Christ face the hardest road. Leaving Islam is not a crime, but Islamic courts treat converts as having abandoned their faith and can end their marriages and take away their inheritance. Many face threats or violence from their families, lose their jobs and worship in secret, and some are questioned and watched by security officers. Sharing the faith with Muslims can be prosecuted as stirring up conflict, with up to three years in prison.
