Rehabilitation of a Historic Wetland - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 71

7 Rehabilitationofa

HistoricWetland
Jordan's Azraq Oasis *

CONTENTS
Introduction.............................................................................................................. 85
The Place.................................................................................................................. 87
Water in Jordan ........................................................................................................ 87
Rehabilitation Efforts............................................................................................... 90
Acknowledgment ................................................................................................... 115
References.............................................................................................................. 115

INTRODUCTION
In 1996 I visited the Azraq Oasis in western Jordan for the first time. I had been
attracted to the area to see the old Umayyad “castle” (really a desert fort) that had
housed T. T. E. Lawrence during his 1917 campaign on Damascus. He had written
quite favorably about the “magically haunted” area despite the harsh climatic con-
ditions that were experienced by his army during their winter stay there: “The blue
fort on its rock above the rustling palms, with fresh meadows and shining springs
of water” (Lawrence 1999). From background reading, I knew that Lawrence was
part of a long tradition of people (Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamlukes,
Ottomans, Druze, Chechens, etc.) who had been attracted to this crossroad oasis that
contained expansive freshwater pools and surrounding forests—the only perma-
nent such oasis within 30,000 km 2 of desert—and that had apparently been inhab-
ited since Paleolithic times, some two hundred thousand years ago (Figure 7.1). It
was a shock, then, to see the extent of wetland devastation that greeted me on that
first visit to this former cradle of life in the Syrian Desert through the near com-
plete absence of standing water (Figure 7.2). A few years later, a guide book quite
accurately described the situation: “Although ragged palms survive, the pools
are stagnant, the buffalo are dead and the migrating birds now head for Galilee
instead. Dust storms are more common today than ever before. The underground
reservoirs, exploited almost to exhaustion, are slowly turning brackish” (Teller
1998). By the time I returned to the area more than a decade later, I was greeted by

* Adapted by Robert L. France from Irani, K. 2004. Death and rebirth of Jordan's Azraq Oasis. Paper pre-
sented at the Mesopotamian Marshes and Modern Development: Practical Approaches for Sustaining
Ecological and Cultural Landscapes conference, Cambridge, MA, October.

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