Rough Guide to Jordan
4th edition, published 2009
Consistently overlooked and underrated by travellers to the Middle East, the Jordanian capital Amman stands in marked contrast to its raucous neighbours, with none of the grand history of Damascus, not a whiff of Jerusalem’s tension and just a tiny fraction of Cairo’s monuments.
It’s a civilized, genial city with unexpected charm – and is bathed in a new spirit of dynamism: investment is pouring in, new buildings are going up, neighbourhoods are being rejuvenated and the city is humming with cafés, galleries and commerce. If you’re dreaming of medieval mosques, gloomy spice bazaars and fading romance, go elsewhere; if you want a handle on how a young, buzzy Arab capital is making its way in the world, Amman is for you.
Amman is a thoroughly twentieth-century invention: it was no more than an unregarded, muddy farming village when Emir Abdullah chose it to be his new capital in 1921.
The sense of Amman being a village-made-good is highlighted when you spend some time on the busy Downtown streets. Here the weight of history that is a constant presence in the heart of many Middle Eastern cities is manifestly lacking, replaced instead by a quick-witted self-reliance. This energy stems in large part from displacement, with most Ammanis identifying themselves as originating somewhere else: Circassians, Iraqis and above all Palestinians have arrived in the city in large numbers, voluntarily or forcibly exiled from their homelands.
The distinctive cultures they have brought are still jostling for living space with the culture of the native bedouin. Indeed, scratching beneath Amman’s amiable surface reveals a whole cluster of multiple personalities jockeying for supremacy: Western-educated entrepreneurs make their fortunes cheek-by-jowl with poverty-stricken refugees, Christians live next door to Muslims, conservative Islamists and radical secularists tut at each other’s doings, Jordanians of Palestinian origin assert their identity in the face of nationalistic tendencies among “true” Jordanians, and so on.
What it is to be Ammani is an ongoing dispute that shows no signs of resolution.
[Taken from the Rough Guide to Jordan © Matthew Teller, 2009]