Jordan Map

About Jordan

Jordan is a largely desert kingdom of 89,342 square kilometers between the Jordan Rift Valley and the Arabian Peninsula. It borders Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, and reaches the sea only at Aqaba, on about 26 km of coast at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. About 11.5 million people live here (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate). Most of them are concentrated in the northwest highlands, and around 2.4 million are registered with UNRWA as Palestine refugees, most of whom hold Jordanian citizenship. The country is a constitutional monarchy under King Abdullah II, who has reigned since 1999, and is divided into 12 governorates (muhafazat).

The Rift, the highlands and the desert

Jordan's map falls into three zones from west to east. The Jordan Rift Valley, part of the Great Rift system, runs from the Yarmouk River on the Syrian border down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea, whose shore, more than 430 m below sea level, is the lowest land on Earth. South of the Dead Sea the rift continues as the dry Wadi Araba to Aqaba. Above it rise the highlands, a plateau mostly 600-1,500 m high cut by deep gorges such as Wadi Mujib, and home to Amman, Irbid, Madaba, Karak and Petra. East of the highlands lies the Badia, the steppe and desert that covers about three-quarters of the country, with the black basalt Harrat al-Sham in the northeast. In the far south, the sandstone and granite mountains of Wadi Rum include Jabal Umm al-Dami (about 1,854 m), the country's highest point, near the Saudi border.

Water and climate

Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. The Jordan and Yarmouk rivers are shared with Israel and Syria and heavily dammed upstream; the Dead Sea is shrinking by about a meter a year as a result; and Amman now draws water pumped more than 300 km from the ancient Disi aquifer in the south. A large desalination and pipeline project, the Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance, is meant to pump Red Sea water north. The highlands have hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, with occasional snow in Amman and on the Shoubak and Karak plateaus. The Rift Valley and Aqaba are hot for most of the year and pleasant in winter. Spring (March-May) and autumn (September-November) are the best seasons for Petra and Wadi Rum; summer is very hot in the desert.

Major Cities

• Amman - The capital, built over many hills; Greater Amman has around 4 million people. Its Roman theater and Citadel recall ancient Philadelphia.
• Zarqa - The second city, just northeast of Amman, an industrial center with a large military presence and the country's oil refinery
• Irbid - The main city of the north, home to Yarmouk University and the Jordan University of Science and Technology, close to the Syrian border
• Aqaba - The only port and a special economic zone, also a base for Red Sea diving and the gateway to Wadi Rum
• Madaba - Known for its Byzantine mosaics, including the 6th-century Madaba Map of the Holy Land
• Salt - An Ottoman-era merchant town of yellow limestone houses, listed by UNESCO in 2021

How Jordan's borders formed

The Nabataeans carved Petra in the centuries around the start of the Common Era, and Roman Gerasa (Jerash) and the Decapolis cities followed. After World War I, Britain created the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921 under Emir Abdullah of the Hashemite family, and Jordan became fully independent on 25 May 1946. After the 1948 war Jordan held the West Bank and East Jerusalem, formally annexing them in 1950, and lost them to Israel in 1967. It gave up its claim to the West Bank in 1988 in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, which confirmed the border along the Jordan and Wadi Araba. The 1994 treaty recognized Jordan's special role at Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, and the Hashemite custodianship of the Al-Aqsa compound remains an important part of its foreign policy. The southern border with Saudi Arabia was adjusted in 1965, giving Jordan a longer coastline at Aqaba.

Jordan has also absorbed refugees from wars in Iraq and Syria; more than half a million Syrians were still registered with the UN refugee agency in 2025, although returns increased after the fall of the Assad government in December 2024. Arabic is the official language, and most Jordanians are Sunni Muslims, with a Christian minority of a few percent. The economy relies on services, tourism, phosphate and potash mining (potash from the Dead Sea), remittances and foreign aid. Jordan has seven UNESCO World Heritage sites: Petra, Quseir Amra, Um er-Rasas, Wadi Rum, the Baptism Site at Al-Maghtas on the Jordan River, Salt, and the basalt village of Umm el-Jimal, added in 2024.