The Arts -Literature

The Arabic language is shared by many nations, and Arabic literature from these countries serves the whole of the Arab world. The Jordanian region itself has a long tradition of prose: the oldest example of a Semitic script, the Mesha Stele, was found in Karak. Unfortunately, few Jordanian works are translated into other languages and thus remain inaccessible to most foreigners.

Among English travel accounts, C. M. Doughty’s Arabia Deserta and Wilfred i Thesiger’s more recent Arabian Sands are powerful adventure stories inspired by a romanticized version of Bedouin lifestyle. T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom contains vivid descriptions of the battles fought and the territory explored during the Arab Revolt of 1916; even if you don’t reach Wadi Rum in the Jordanian desert, see David Lean’s magnificent Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen. King Abdal-lah’s two-volume Memoirs and King Hussein’s Uneasy Lies the Head are self-serving but dispel once and for all the myth that it’s good to be the king. The Arab Legion chief of the 1940s and 50s, John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha), wrote A Soldier With the Arabs and several books based on his life. A little less adventurous but more erudite is Jonathan Raban’s Arabia: A Journey through the Labyrinth. Gertrude Bell, one of the first female Western travelers in the region, writes of her journeys through Jordan and Syria in The Desert and the Sown.

For the archeologically and historically inclined there are G.L. Harding’s Antiquities of Jordan and Julian Huxley’s From an Antique Land. Ian Browning’s Petra is wonderfully comprehensive. Finally, Agatha Christie’s Argument with Death is a light introduction to the mesmerizing power of Petra.