Umm Qais: Antiquity below the Golan Heights
On my last day in Amman, I decided to go on a mini adventure to the north. I happened to find “Umm Qais” on Wikivoyage, an important city in Antiquity located in the north of Jordan, bordering Syria and Israel, right at the bottom of the Golan Heights. This day would be devoted to a trip to Umm Qais.
Rashik suggested we go somewhere together, but at the end I still opted to go by myself. Not that I didn’t enjoy his company — he was one of the best traveler I’ve traveled with on the road. But as a solotraveler, I had to admit I often prefer the solitude.
A typical way to start my day in Jordan: the cookies. First I hopped on a bus toward Irbid, where I changed to a bus toward Umm Qais. The change was smooth as I barely waited at all. Approaching the border with the war-torn Syria, I started to see signs of Refugee Camps.
Umm Qais is a small tranquil village that sees much fewer visitors than Jerash, Madaba and Mt Nebo, the big-name places I had visited so far. “Umm Qais” as we knew today was built on the ruins of Garada, a Greco-Roman city that once shined in Antiquity. It was one of the “Decapolis” (lit: the 10 cities), ten autonomous city states in Levant under Roman rule.
Compared to the nicely preserved and restored Jerash, Umm Qais felt more like what a ruin should be. Ongoing construction works seemed to have taken place in some parts of the archeological park (in 2017).
the colosseum: smaller, but still spectecular
A very unique feature of Umm Qais was those black columns, built with basalts, which I don’t remember seeing in Greco-Roman architecture anywhere else. There were even some “hybrid” columns, composed of both white and black stones.
In addition to the black columns, another highlight in Umm Qais was the unmatched viewpoint of the Golan Heights. The occupied Golan Heights looked like an absolutely intimidating wall sitting in front of the Sea of Galilee. Witnessing the Golan Heights by myself, it is not hard to imagine how strategically important it was to both parties of the conflict, and why Israel clings on it till this day (while it had returned Sinai, also captured in 1967, to Egypt). Whoever controls the height could easily storm Damascus with a torrent of tanks, with few if any geographical barriers to stop it.
In Umm Qais, what used to be temples, markets, cathedrals, plazas and forums, be it belonged to men or gods, had crumbled and made ways to resilient plants growing in the desert. Few tourists stopped at Umm Qais on their trips to Jordan, a place that might be overshadowed by Jerash (In fact I don’t remember seeing any foreign visitors on that day). There were no souvenir stores and vendors like in Jerash, but only a restaurant providing overpriced foods and drinks at the site.
But walking in Umm Qais, seeing the ruins of an ancient city, and overlooking one of the most strategic geopolitical hotspots in the world, offered perspectives. In the 7th century, the battle of Yarmouk, fought by “the Sword of God” Khalid bin Walid, took place in vicinity of today’s Umm Qais, marking the advance of Islam in the then Christian Levant. Fast forward more than a a millenium, in 1967, Umm Qais again became a strategic front, where heavy shelling from the Golan Heights damaged both the ancient and the contemporary villages.
Was the once prosperous city destroyed by the war in the past, or the war in the present? Or ultimately, it was time that reduced them to rubbles.
I headed back to Amman on the same bus route, with more thought yet to be processed. For some reasons, seeing the Golan Heights really made me miss home, and wanted to plan a trip in East Asia again. Did the place look so exotic that I actually started to miss what I was used to?
Last dinner in Amman, I went to the restaurant again. “The” outdoor restaurant in Amman. The next day, I would head to the nation’s south. Petra was finally going to reveal itself.
