New visitors center, courtyard to enhance tourist experience

By Taylor Luck

UM AL JIMAL - Visitors to Um Al Jimal can expect a new experience by the end of the year.

A new visitors center and courtyard are almost ready to greet travelers at the southern entrance of the black basalt city.

Expected to be officially unveiled at the end of the year, the new facility will feature a museum, a gift shop and a rest area for tourists, according to the Department of Antiquities (DoA).

The center, which will be housed in renovated houses from the Byzantine era reconstructed out of cement and basalt, will also host a photo exhibition of the site, detailing how it has changed over the decades.

The renovation is seen as an essential step to better serve visitors as the town of Um Al Jimal currently hosts no lodging, two supermarkets and one falafel stand with varying open hours.

According to the DoA, the center will be integrated with the ongoing efforts of the Um Al Jimal Project, led by Bert de Vries of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In August, the project received a site preservation grant from the Archaeological Institute of America to utilize education and social awareness to preserve the site and develop a heritage center within the town.

To be designed and operated by a committee of citizens in partnership with the Um Al Jimal Municipality, the center will serve as a modern history museum, a lecture and video-presentation hall, a regional handicraft hub, an archaeological and cultural education center, a hostel and a community hall.

The development of Um Al Jimal is an essential part of promoting eastern desert tours, particularly due to its proximity to Qasr Halabat and the famed desert castle loop of Quseir Amra, Qasr Haranna and Qasr Azraq.

The new facility aims not only to encourage independent visitors and tour groups to visit the site, some 20km east of Mafraq, but also to create employment for residents in the area, considered one of the Kingdom’s poverty pockets, DoA officials previously told The Jordan Times.

Originally a Nabataean village built in the 1st century AD, the town became a military outpost along Via Nova Traiana after it was incorporated into the Roman Empire, serving as a series of fortifications defending Roman-occupied territory stretching to the borders of modern-day Saudi Arabia.

More than one dozen Byzantine churches were built on the site during the 5th and 6th centuries, while its stone barracks, water cisterns and administrative buildings were gradually converted back into a rural village under the Umayyad rule around the 7th century.

After an earthquake devastated the area in 749AD, the basalt fortifications were left abandoned for around 1,000 years.

At the turn of the 20th century, the site housed Druze families who resided in the ruins, some of which still stood over two storeys high, before the city fell into disrepair and obscurity.

In 2001, the DoA nominated Um Al Jimal to be added to the UNESCO World Heritage list.

15 November 2010

Source: The Jordan Times.
Link: http://jordantimes.com/?news=31855.