Jordan: landmarks, animals & facts for kids

Jordan is a country in the Middle East, bordered by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Israel and the West Bank. It is almost landlocked, with just a short coastline on the Red Sea at the port of Aqaba. Its capital is Amman. Jordan is a kingdom known for the rose-red rock city of Petra, the wide desert valley of Wadi Rum, the salty Dead Sea and the warm hospitality of its people.

On My Earth Toy you can visit Al-Khazneh, the Treasury of Petra, with its grand front carved straight into a sandstone cliff, and the well-preserved Roman city of Jerash with its columns and theatres. Look for the Eurasian hoopoe, a bird with a fan-shaped crest, and discover the shore of the Dead Sea, the lowest land on Earth.

Geography and nature

Most of Jordan is desert and dry plateau. In the west, the deep Jordan Rift Valley holds the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, whose water is so salty that people float easily. In the south, Wadi Rum is a landscape of red sand and towering rock mountains that has been used to film movies set on Mars. The highest point, Jabal Umm ad Dami, is 1,854 metres tall. At Aqaba, coral reefs in the Red Sea are full of colourful fish.

People, languages and culture

Arabic is the official language, and most Jordanians are Sunni Muslims, with a small Christian community that has lived here for many centuries. Hospitality is very important: guests are often welcomed with bitter coffee flavoured with cardamom. The national dish is mansaf, lamb cooked in a sauce of dried yogurt and served on rice, traditionally shared from one big platter. Bedouin traditions, such as tents woven from goat hair, are still part of life in the desert.

History in a nutshell

People have lived here since prehistoric times; at Ain Ghazal near Amman, plaster statues about 9,000 years old were found. The Nabataeans, traders who controlled incense routes, carved the city of Petra around 2,000 years ago. Later the region was ruled by the Romans, who built Jerash, and then by Byzantine, Islamic and Ottoman rulers. After the First World War it became the British-administered Emirate of Transjordan. Jordan became an independent kingdom on 25 May 1946.