Jerash

People have lived on this small river, the Chrysorrhoas, since prehistory, but the city takes its shape from the Hellenistic foundation of Gerasa, which ancient inscriptions credit to Alexander and his general Perdiccas settling aged Macedonian soldiers there, while other accounts name the Seleucid king Antiochus IV or Ptolemy II. Pompey's campaigns brought it under Rome in 63 BC, and Gerasa became one of the Decapolis, the league of Greek-speaking cities east of the Jordan. Its wealth came from farming the surrounding hills and from the trade that crossed them, and it grew fastest after Rome annexed the Nabataean kingdom in 106 AD and routed caravan traffic through the province of Arabia.

The second and early third centuries were the high point. The temples of Zeus and Artemis, two theatres, the oval plaza, the long colonnaded cardo, baths, gates and the hippodrome all belong to that time; Hadrian's visit in 129–130 AD was marked with the arch that still stands south of the walls. Under Byzantine rule, churches were built with mosaic floors, many of them reusing older stone, and the city remained a bishopric after the Muslim conquest of the 630s.

Decline followed. Earthquakes, above all the great shock of 749, brought down much of the city, and the population dwindled until the site was farmland with ruins standing in it. Crusader and Ayyubid forces passed through, but no town was rebuilt. In 1885 the Ottoman authorities directed Circassian immigrants from the Caucasus to settle at Jerash and shared out farmland among them, founding the modern town on the eastern bank. Excavation has continued since 1925, uncovering one of the most complete Roman provincial cities in the Middle East.

Jerash has two identities that sit side by side. One is archaeological: the town has grown up as the gateway to the ruins, and guiding, ticketing, souvenir selling and restoration work employ many families. The other is agricultural and tribal, rooted in the olive groves and wheat fields of the surrounding governorate, where extended families and their elders still carry weight in local affairs.

The Circassian founders left a lasting mark. Their descendants, Muslims who came from the Caucasus in the 19th century, keep their own language among older relatives, their own dishes, and a tradition of dance and horsemanship that appears at weddings and public occasions. Later Palestinian arrivals, including the population of a long-established refugee camp near the town, add another layer, and there is a small Christian community with its own churches.

Since 1981 the Jerash Festival of Culture and Arts has brought Arab and international performers into the Roman theatres each summer, and it remains the event by which many Jordanians know the town. On ordinary days life is slower and conservative: men gather in coffee houses on the main street, weddings fill the road with car horns, and the week turns on Friday prayers and the family lunch that follows. The ruins are a constant presence: schoolchildren are taken round them, and the floodlit columns stand over the town at night.

The town had about 50,700 residents at the 2015 census, and Jerash Governorate — the smallest of Jordan's twelve by area, and the second most densely settled — about 237,000 in all. Much of the working population farms: olives above all, along with wheat, barley, tomatoes and stone fruit on terraced slopes, and the olive harvest in autumn draws whole families into the groves. Government employment, the army and the security services are the other mainstays, as across northern Jordan, and tourism supports hotels, restaurants, guides and craft shops concentrated near the site.

The main road through the town is the spine of daily life, carrying traffic between Amman and Irbid past vegetable stalls, bakeries, phone shops and mechanics. Newer housing climbs the ridges on both sides, and the long-established Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of the town is now an ordinary, if crowded, urban quarter. Unemployment among young people is high, and many commute to Amman or work abroad for periods.

Days begin early, with bread bought fresh and the first shift of the ruins' staff arriving before the coaches. Shops close for a few hours in the afternoon, then reopen into the evening. Water reaches houses on a weekly schedule and is stored in rooftop tanks. In spring and early summer, families drive out to the pine forest at Dibeen or the Ajloun hills to eat outdoors, and in winter the streets empty early in the rain.

The food of Jerash is the food of the northern hills: olive oil in quantity, bread, dairy and vegetables, with meat reserved for guests and occasions. Breakfast is hummus, foul — stewed fava beans with oil, lemon and cumin — and falafel, eaten with raw onion, mint and pickles, or else labneh, strained yoghurt, drizzled with oil and dusted with za'atar, the thyme and sumac mixture that also flavours the flat bread called manaqish baked in the town's ovens.

Mansaf, the national dish of lamb cooked in a sauce of jameed — hard dried fermented yoghurt — and served over rice and shrak bread, appears at weddings, funerals and Friday lunches. Maqluba, the upside-down pot of rice, aubergine and meat, and musakhan, chicken roasted on bread heaped with onions and sumac, come from the Palestinian kitchen and are cooked widely here. Galayet bandora, tomatoes fried hard with onion, chilli and oil, is the everyday standby, and mahshi, vegetables stuffed with rice and minced meat, the Sunday-best version.

Circassian families keep their own dishes, among them chicken served with garlic and soured-milk sauces. The olive oil pressed in the surrounding hills each November is a point of pride, sold in tins at the roadside along with olives, olive-oil soap and jars of wild honey. Sweets mean knafeh, cheese pastry in syrup, brought hot from Amman or made locally, and the drinks are strong tea with mint or sage and small cups of cardamom coffee.