Transjordan, the East Bank, or the Transjordanian Highlands (Arabic: شرق الأردن), is the part of the Southern Levant east of the Jordan River, mostly contained in present-day Jordan .
What is the Transjordan plateau?
Transjordan (Hebrew: עבר הירדן, Ever HaYarden) is an area of land in the Southern Levant lying east of the Jordan River valley . It is also alternatively called Gilead.
What does Cisjordan mean?
Cisjordan. The neo-Latin name Cisjordan or Cis-Jordan ( literally “on this side of the River Jordan” ) is the usual name for the territory in the Romance languages and Hungarian.
What does Jordan symbolize in the Bible?
The Jordan was seen as the prototypical “river of life ,” but also the site of a divine manifestation of God, for just as water had been the primeval element that witnessed God's creation, the Jordan had witnessed the beginning of the Gospels.
What is the history of Jordan?
In 1946, Jordan became an independent state officially known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, but was renamed in 1949 to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after the country captured the West Bank during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and annexed it until it was lost to Israel in 1967.
Why was Jordan called Transjordan?
The regions of Ma'an and Tabuk were incorporated into the Kingdom of the Hijaz, ancestral home of the Hashemites. Faced with the determination of Emir Abdullah to unify Arab lands under the Hashemite banner , the British proclaimed Abdullah ruler of the three districts, known collectively as Transjordan.
Where did 12 tribes of Israel come from?
In the Bible, the twelve tribes of Israel are sons of a man called Jacob or Israel , as Edom or Esau is the brother of Jacob, and Ishmael and Isaac are the sons of Abraham. Elam and Ashur, names of two ancient nations, are sons of a man called Shem.
Is West Bank part of Israel?
The territory, excluding East Jerusalem, is also known within Israel by its biblical names, Judaea and Samaria. Within its present boundaries, the West Bank represents the portion of the former mandate retained in 1948 by the Arab forces that entered Palestine after the departure of the British.
Why is Israel occupying the West Bank?
Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as affirmed in the Balfour Declaration; security grounds, internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied .
Who owns Gaza Strip?
Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, as well as six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory.
What was Jordan called in biblical times?
The name ‘Petra' means ‘rock' in Greek; the city was originally called Raqmu (possibly after an early Nabatean king) and is mentioned in the Bible and in the works of writers such as Flavius Josephus (37-100 CE) and Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE).
Why did Jesus get baptized in the Jordan River?
One of their principal religious rituals was a daily immersion “tvilah” in the ritual bath “mikvah” to regain purity. Jordan river represented a perfect mikvah of continuously running water. Christ was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist .
What happened to the Jordan River?
The Jordan River itself has run dry ever since 1964, when Israel cornered sole use of Lake Tiberias (aka the Sea of Galilee, or Lake Kinneret) near the river's source . The Dead Sea at the river's endpoint has been (apologies) dying, ever since.
Is Jordan a poor country?
The absolute poverty rate in Jordan for all the population stood at 14.4 per cent in 2010, which increased to 15.7 per cent in 2018, whereas this poverty rate is only for Jordanians , meaning that more than 1 million Jordanian live below the poverty line (NSPS, 2019-2025)2.
What is the religion of Jordan?
Jordan is a tolerant, Islamic state that welcomes all religions. A majority of Jordanians are Muslim , about 92% are Sunni Muslim, and 1% are Shia or Sufi. Cities in the south of Jordan, have the highest percentage of Muslims.
Who built Petra?
Petra was built by the Nabateans in what is now southern Jordan, while the civilization was amassing great wealth trading with its Greek and Persian contemporaries around 150BC.
