Umm el-Jimal is an extensive rural settlement constructed of black basalt in the lava lands east of Mafraq, a
seventy-minute drive northeast of Amman, Jordan (39°19'
N, 36°22' E). One of the largest and most spectacular archaeological sites in Jordan, Umm el-Jimal is located on tire
edge of a series of volcanically formed basalt flows that slope
down from the Jebel al-Druze, a mountain 50 Ion (31 mi.)
to the northeast. This sloping black bedrock provided ancient Umm el-Jimal with two basic resources:
stone for constructing sturdy houses and water for drinking and agriculture. The ancient name of the site is not known. David L.
Kennedy has argued convincingly that Thantia, Howard C.
Butler's suggested name (see below), is better located to the
west on the Via Nova (Kennedy and Riley, 1982, pp. 148-
152). Flenry I. MacAdam (1986) has put forward Surattha,
from Ptolemy's Geography, as an alternative.
What survives above ground is an amazingly well-preserved Byzantine/Early Islamic town nearly a kilometer long
and a half-kilometer wide, with 150 buildings standing one
to three stories high and several towers up to five and six
stories. The site's dramatic skyline of somber stone at first
gives the impression of a bombed-out modern town. Only
close up does it become apparent that this is not a modern
war casualty, but an agglomerate of fifteen-hundred-year old ruins. Inside, the visitor is plunged into a scene of eerie
beauty. Walls run in every direction, without apparent plan
or order. Neatly stacked courses of stone protrude from a
mad confusion of tumbled upper stories. The blue-gray basalt everywhere gives a somber and cool sense of shadow
that belies the blaze of bright desert sun. Here and there
pinnacles of wall extend their fingers of cantilevered roofing
beams to create gravity-defying silhouettes against the
cloudless sky. Doorways and alleys lead from room to room
and building to building. Large private houses predominate,
but there are also fifteen churches from the sixth and seventh
centuries, a praetorium, a barrack, gates, and numerous reservoirs.
Umm el-Jimal became known to travelers in the mid nineteenth century, but the first major work there was done
by the Princeton University Expedition to Southern Syria in
1905 and 1909, directed by Butler. Butler (1913) published
a list of early visitors to the site who had recorded their impressions. It was first reached in 1857 by Cyril Graham, who
published a brief description of the ruins the following year.
In 1861-1862 William H. Waddington copied several inscriptions and, more than a decade later, Charles Doughty
passed through the ruined city. At about the same time Selah
Merrill, then the American consul in Jerusalem, visited it.
Gottlieb Schumacher published the first architectural plans,
of a church and the city gates, in 1894. In 1901 Rene Dussaud and Frederic Macler copied several inscriptions. [See
the biographies of Butler, Merrill, Schumacher, and Dussaud,]
In winter 1904-1905, Butler's team made the first site
map, which included public buildings: the praetorium, barracks, 15 churches, reservoirs, gates, 20 houses, and monumental tombs. He published it with an excellent text and
restored plans of typical buildings (Butier, 1913). Enno Littmann cataloged numerous Greek, Latin, Nabatean, Safaitic,
and Arabic inscriptions (Littmann et al, 1913). George
Horsfield published early aerial photographs (Horsfield, 1937) and Nelson Glueck included Umm el-Jimal in his
assessment of Nabatean influences on southern Syria
(Glueck, 1951). In 1956, G. U. S. Corbett did exploratory
excavations of the Julianos church, from which he determined that Butler's founding date (fourth century) was erroneously based on a reused funerary text (Corbett, 1957).
[See the biographies of Horsfield and Glueck.]
The Umm el-Jimal Project (1972-1995) excavated for
eight field seasons over twenty-two years, under the direction of Bert de Vries, for Calvin College, Grand Rapids,
Michigan. The first phase of the project consisted of five
campaigns that ended in 1984. There is a current phase of
excavation that is a series of summer field seasons. The project's overarching purpose has been to understand rural life
on the Arabian desert frontier during the succession of Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic hegemonies. This began
with the study of what was visible above ground—tire Late
Antique town already described—but two major discoveries
forced a backward expansion of historical horizons. The first
was a fourth-century Roman fort (castellum) within the
town's perimeter wall that was ruined and abandoned as the
town grew around it. The second was a totally ruined village,
about half the size of the town and 200 m to its east, dated
to the heyday of Nabatean and Roman expansion in the
Hauran (first-third centuries CE) .
The 1972-1973 season was devoted to mapping the site,
to fill in details omitted from Butler's selective architectural
survey. In 1974 preliminary soundings were dug as a representative sampling, which determined that the basic stratigraphic profile ranged from Late Roman to Umayyad. In
1977 the focus was on four major sttuctures: the barrack,
praetorium, house XVIII, and the perimeter wall. It was
concluded that the town was continuously inhabited from
the Late Roman through the Umayyad periods; no Early
Nabatean Roman occupation levels were found. Fall 1977
was devoted to consolidating the barrack perimeter walls
with force-pumped aerated cement.
In 1981 new work included the excavation of the northeast
church, tire Numerianos church, various water channels,
and the Via Nova Traiana (6 km, or 4 mi., to the west). This
work confirmed that the standing buildings are mainly the
product of a rural agrarian culture that flourished in the
Hauran from the fourth to eighth centuries CE, A major discovery was the identification of the ruined area (100 X 100
m) between the Roman reservoir and the east church as a
castellum built in about 300 and used as part of the Roman
frontier defenses in the fourth century. In January 1983, the
gate of house XVIII was cleared and its walls consolidated.
In 1984 further work was done on the churches and the
castellum, while the focus shifted to activities outside the
walls of the Byzantine-Umayyad town. These included
completing a walking survey of terrain within 10 km (6 mi.)
of the town and excavating cemeteries and reservoirs east of
it. The major discovery in that season was the Nabatean/
Roman village (called al-Herri) buried under the rubble field
adjacent to the reservoirs. The village began in the late first
century CE, at the time of the last Nabatean expansion into
southern Syria, flourished in the second and third centuries,
and was destroyed during the turmoil of the late third century. The presence of this Nabatean/Roman site does much
to explain the lack of earlier occupation layers under the
Byzantine town. The numerous reused Nabatean and Greek
inscribed tombstones must have been robbed from the cemeteries of this earlier village.
In 1992 architectural studies of four Late Roman and
Early Byzantine structures (houses 35,49,119, and the praetorium) and detailed mapping of the castellum and
the Nabatean/Roman village were carried out, including low-altitude aerial photography by Wilson and Ellie Myers. These
survey data have been used to develop Geographic Information System (GIS) computer images and maps of the site.
The 1993 season focused on consolidation and site development, including stabilizing the high walls of the
praetorium and excavating house 119 in preparation for its adaptation as a museum and visitor center. House 11 9 proved to
be a completely Umayyad construction on a cleared Byzantine domestic site. Field research in the 1994
season concentrated on the systematic excavation of the Nabatean-Roman village and smdying the sixth-century burials outside
the later town.
In summary, from the first to the third centuries CE, a
small Arab village with both Nabatean and Roman features
flourished at al-Herri. A praetorium and a few other imperial
Roman sttuctures were erected 200 m to the west. In about
300, the castellum was built; it lost its military function late
in the fourth century. The much smaller barrack that replaced it was constructed early in the fifth century. As the
imperial military presence diminished, the Early Byzantine
town (fifth-sixth centuries), consisting of 129 houses and 15
churches, prospered, a product of a self-sufficient economy
and political security. This town survived in somewhat diminished form through the Umayyad period. Following
plague and earthquake in the mid-eighth century, the only
human presence at the site for the next century was squatters
in the ruins. Then, after centuries of inactivity, the town
enjoyed a brief revival when Druze resettled it between 1910
and 1935.
Umm al-Jimal
