www.the-tribes-foundation.org Petra is the architectural jewel of Jordan, immortalised in poetry as the أ¢â‚¬إ“rose red city half as old as timeأ¢â‚¬آ and in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as the resting place of the Holy Grail. Yet despite its fame, surprisingly little is known about its builders, the Nabateans.
The Nabateans were an enigmatic Arabic people who emerged seemingly from nowhere in the power vacuum that followed the death of Alexander the Great. Through the control of trade routes and water supplies, the Nabateans built an empire which spanned much of the Arabian Peninsular with Petra as its capital. After the Romans took control of the region in the 2nd century AD, Petra began to dwindle and was finally abandoned after a series of earthquakes in the 6th century.
Originally a nomadic people, once the Nabateans settled down they proved to be excellent engineers. They hid their capital city within a maze of ravines and constructed an elaborate system of channels to supply it with fresh water. While the most striking feature of modern Petra is its monumental tombs, it should be remembered that Petra was never designed to be a city of the dead but was a thriving capital with as many as 30,000 inhabitants at its height.
Although few of the free standing buildings where Petraأ¢â‚¬â„¢s citizens lived, worked and played have survived to the present, the scale of the remaining buildings give a good indication of the cityأ¢â‚¬â„¢s prosperity.
The surviving architecture of Petra is derived from the Hellenistic forms that were dominant at the time in the Eastern Mediterranean. The large theatre follows Greek designs, while the monumental tombs incorporate the same classical columns, pediments and motifs that can be found in Greek temples.
Yet what the architecture lacks in originality it more than makes up for in location and scale. Vastly oversized features are hewn into the red sandstone, half-glimpsed through narrow ravines before emerging in their full splendour to tower over visitors. Thanks to their sheltered position and durable construction, these monuments are incredibly well preserved and worth making a long detour to visit. Tribes Travel organizes trips to Petra. It is a registered UK charity (no: 1101766) whose principle aim is to relieve the poverty of indigenous communities in areas outside of the UK which are affected by tourism. The charity backs poverty alleviation, education, cultural preservation and conservation projects within these regions. |