chapter 9 East of the River Jordan Several architectural characteristics (such as stone doors and re-used Roman monuments) found just to the north, in the Hauran, were also to be found further to the south, in what is now northern Jordan, where the cadence of settlement also seems to match.1 The area was still awaiting comprehensive archaeological investigation at the beginning of the 20th century,[1] but schol- ars such as David Kennedy have illuminated Jordan’s military history, as have others her legacy of churches.2 Irbid Oliphant (who largely parrotted Seetzen[2]) visited one house at Irbid / Abila, which was missing the actual door: “the framework of the door was all carved stone; and there were sockets in the lintels and thresholds for pivots to work in, showing that formerly the door was a slab of stone turning on a stone hinge.”[3] More might have survived in 1810, when Seetzen visited the town, finding it deserted: Some beautiful remains of the ancient walls are to be discovered, together with a number of arches, and of columns of marble, basalt, and grey granite. On the outside of these ancient walls I found also a great many columns, two of which were of extraordinary magnitude, from which I concluded that there must have been formerly in this spot a considerable temple.[4] Merrill saw “fine Roman ruins, and some evident marks of very great antiquity” at Irbid in 1881, including “a small, well-preserved Roman building, which may have been a temple or a tomb, was an inscription within a nicely carved wreath, perfectly round.”[5] He questioned people about Roman roads and antiquities in the vicinity, and was told what they said was the road: 1 El-Khouri 2009: the archaeological landscape in north-west Jordan, including (27–60) sites, roads and agriculture, and 61–139 for catalogue of Roman sites. 142–143 concludes that Roman sites were intensively occupied in Byzantine and early Umayyad periods, then declined, to grow again only in the 20thC. 2 Hamarneth 2003: Christian settlement in Byzantine & Islamic Jordan. © Michael Greenhalgh, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004334601_011 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.Michael Greenhalgh - 9789004334601 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 06:32:40AM via free access 332 CHAPTER 9 This is on arches, and is for water; that Pharaoh brought water by this road. I suppose that these men were confounding two things. Both a road and an aqueduct existed here in former times; a road led from Gadara to the east, as they testify; also an aqueduct started from near Dilli.[6] Little of antiquity remains at Irbid, which is today the second largest city in Jordan, after Amman. However, not far away was El Husn (“the castle”), where the local villagers led Merrill to extensive ruins: “Those on the surface are largely of Arab origin, but about the brow of the hill is a wall constructed of older materials, and the stones in some portions of it antedate the Roman occupation of the country.”[7] Pella We found ourselves among the veritable remains of an ancient and important city. Not only are large stones scattered about, but portions of the walls are still standing, and the line of streets is here and there traceable.[8] [1854] One of the cities of the Decapolis, now in Jordan, in the Jordan Valley, NW of Jerash, this town prospered especially in the Byzantine period, but the great earthquake of 747AD diminished its population, and few lived there until the end of the 19th century. Tristram was rushed away by his colleagues, and “all that I possess as memorials of my visit are a few pieces of Mosaic pavement, some fragments of Roman pottery, and a piece of the calcareous deposit.”[9] Le Strange, travelling in 1884, thought the site would “doubtless yield a rich archaeological harvest to anyone who could spend some days among the ruins, and carefully examine the very large number of broken cornices and other carved stones which lie about on every hand.”[10] Perhaps not knowing about the 747 earthquake, he thought that Pella, like Jerash and other centres, was abandoned shortly after the Muslim conquest.[11] Digging was evidently desir- able, but a crowbar would do, by turning over the drums and the cornices which, to all appearances, have lain in their present position since the days of the Arab invasion; and greatly do I regret that, in our hurried visit, I had not the tools with me nor the leisure-time that was required for a detailed examination of this little-visited ruin.[12] Michael Greenhalgh - 9789004334601 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 06:32:40AM via free access East of the River Jordan 333 Yajuz Corinthian and other capitals, columns, large slabs of stone, lintels, squared blocks of the best Roman work, some bevelled stones, various kinds of ornamentation, rosettes, several different forms of crosses, and some carved figures and statues that have been mutilated. [1881] Several kilometres to the north west of Amman was Yajuz, on the Roman road from there to Jerash, and with a Roman garrison. Little survives today, but there were “fine ruins” to be seen in 1881, as Merrill relates, together with roofed res- ervoirs, the remains of a temple and a church, as well as traces of “many public buildings that were large and elegant.” Yet there was evidence that this site had been or was being (chronology is unclear) systematically dismantled: Near these quarries a great many squared stones had been laid out, as if they had been prepared ready for shipping or for use, and the owner hav- ing died, perhaps the demand having ceased, or for some other reason, they were left and remained untouched to the present day.[13] Schumacher, passing by eight years later in a survey on behalf of the PEF, found no settled inhabitants in the neighbourhood, but remarked on the “extensive remains of carved Byzantine capitals, squared blocks, and the foundations of numerous edifices.”[14] On his way to the site, he came across fragments of six broken columns, and concluded that these were on their way somewhere else, for “one is led to the supposition that these fragments have at some period been transported hither from the great centre of ruins at Yajuz.”[15] Umm al-Jimal The houses, which were built of stone, are not only the finest but the best preserved of any that I have seen in the Hauran, or in all the country east of the Jordan. This is the best place to study the architecture of private dwellings of an early period, because the houses were originally of a fine order, and because they have been so well preserved.[16] [1881] Close to the Syrian border, this basalt town, now in Jordan, was probably brought down by the earthquake of 747, then wracked by plague and famine. Merrill gives a good description in the above quote, but its wider contextual Michael Greenhalgh - 9789004334601 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 06:32:40AM via free access 334 CHAPTER 9 history has become clearer with recent investigation: as part of Rome’s frontier.3 It included a fortress and praetorium, the former of which housed squatters in later centuries, while the latter became housing and, together with another large house, was elaborately remodelled.4 Such use of fortresses as vil- lages was common,5 while large temple complexes (such as that at Palmyra) could also contain houses. The first Western traveller to visit this site6 was William John Bankes who, as we have already seen, made several important mistakes in the contentious travel-book stakes. He shared his information too freely; he did not publish his own book; and he put himself in the position of getting sued for plagiarism by Buckingham, who won. He was in the Orient 1815–1820, in Egypt, Nubia, Syria, Asia Minor and Greece, the first to make drawings of Petra and Jerash, and the first to visit Umm al-Jimal 39 years before Graham, the supposed discoverer of the site. Bankes was the unrecognised co-author of Irby & Mangles, published 1823, some of it dictated by Bankes to Irby, another part written by Bankes himself.7 Graham found the site “among the most perfect of the old cities which I saw,” with its town walls, paved streets, and “some very large public buildings.” And some of the houses were very large, consisting usually of three rooms on the ground floor, and two on the first story, the stairs being formed of large stones built into the house-walls, and leading up outside. The doors were, as usual, of stone: sometimes there were folding-doors, and some of them were highly ornamented.[17] 3 Kennedy 2000, 397: “Unexpectedly full steppe and desert landscape studded with villages and roads.” Peak settlement was in the Roman period, followed perhaps by sedentarisation of some nomads. 4 Vries 1998, 91–127 for the location, plan and design of the late-antique town; ibid., 229–241 “Towards a history of Umm-el-Jimal in late antiquity” – 2nd to 4th century town housed a Roman imperial administrative establishment, while a pre-existing civilian village (1st to 4th century) lay to the east; 236–240 for late antique prosperity; Brown 1998 for the praetorium. 5 Kennedy 2004, 72 for Deir El-Kahf: “At the beginning of this [20th] century the ruins were totally uninhabited; today the modern village has encroached on them and much stone has been removed including all of the inscribed blocks once visible.” 6 Kennedy 2004, 86 for Umm al-Jimal, its Nabatean, Roman and Early Islamic remains, with inscriptions, fortress and water supply.