The Jordan that Tourists Rarely See 1: Azraq Oasis

Driving east from Amman, the desert at first seemed flat, featureless, and empty. The bushes got smaller and the patches of grass more meagre until they disappeared entirely. I was glad for the air conditioner struggling to keep the 45 °C heat at bay, and the radio. One of my colleagues, a Jordanian ornithologist, called out the names of birds we passed. For such seemingly uniform country, there was an astonishing variety—nine species of wheatear, for example, a songbird that perches upright on the highest rock in its territory. This diversity implied a variety of habitats that was not at first obvious.
At intervals we stopped the car and took short hikes to examine the terrain. The ground was covered with black basalt stones big enough make walking difficult. This is the "Harra", the ancient outflow from an extinct volcano just over the border in Syria. Even so, there were flocks of sheep here and there, gleaning tufts of grass from crevices. A bright blue agama lizard sunned atop a rock. We saw a variety of Mourning Wheater, that, unlike the typical variety that has a white belly and crown, is entirely black except for under its tail, a colouring it evolved the better to hide among the black stones. On a later trip I saw a black variety of spiney mouse that only occurs in the Harra, in constrast to the normal red or tan ones.
Further along, there were no large stones, only reddish to grey, marble-sized flint pebbles that cover the ground. This is the Hammada, the typical surface of the Syrian Desert that covers southern Syria, eastern Jordan, western Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia. Over the eons, any loose soil has long since washed away, leaving a sort of pavement. It forms a vital ecological service by breaking up the raindrops that typically fall in only one or two torrential raisn per year, preventing erosion, while in spring it retards evaporation, giving life to the few shrubs and perennial grasses and other plants that can survive severe dessication by sending their roots deep. Meanwhile, the light soil washed from the Hammada accumulates in depressions and ephemeral runoff channels called "Wadis." There it provides a deep, soft bed for seeds of annual grasses and wildflowers that have lain waiting all year for a rain to burst them into bloom. In one such swale filled with grass, a shepherd grazed her sheep while a laden donkey followed, carrying lunch and water. The frequency of flocks of sheep made me realize another fact of the Jordanian desert: the Bedouin culture is alive and well. Although not easy to see because they spend most time far from towns in search of pasture, living in their traditional goat-hair tents, they remain a prominent part of the cultural and political life of Jordan. From a vendor by the road, I bought a beautifully woven, 4-metre long kilim, a narrow rug that they recline on in their tents.
Then we came to Azraq Oasis, a wetland nature reserve fringed with palm trees. Though now mostly dry, a 30 hectare lake remains, fed with springs is choked with cattails and reeds and raucous with the sound of birds. We passed through a village, South Azraq (formerly Shishan) and went into the Royal Conservation of Nature centre at the edge of Shishan Springs.
The Azraq Oasis has been famous for its wildlife since ancient times. It is fed by springs that formerly (before overpumping drained the aquifers) filled about 1,255 hectares with permanent, fresh water, and in winter by runoff that flooded a mudflat of about 12,000 hectares, and in wet years up to 30,000 hectares. Its ecological stems from two features: (1) it is on the migration routes for birds migrating between Eurasia and Africa, and (2) as a large oasis in a very arid desert, it provides a unique habitat essential to many resident species of birds, fish mammals, amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates and plants. Some 70 species of birds have bred at Azraq and 300 resident and migratory species have been recorded there. In the 1960s and 1970s, up to one million birds were using the oasis annually during spring migration, with up to 50,000 being present at any one time. Besides waterfowl, the waterbirds included up to 2,500 common cranes, thousands of shorebirds use the mudflats, passerines such as swallows, wagtails and warblers use the dense shrubs of the marsh edges, and preying on them were many species of hawks, falcons, harriers and eagles.
Roman use of the Azraq wetlands is still evident in a low wall that they constructed, apparently to facilitate boat launching, and also possibly to contain the wetlands. In prehistoric times Azraq was a wildlife paradise with lions hunting wild boar, Syrian wild ass, Arabian oryx, and aurochs, the progenitors of domestic cattle. Cheetahs chased gazelles in the surrounding desert, and a considerable array of medium-sized carnivores hunted hares, gerbils and jerboas. The lions and wild boar survived into the Byzantine period, the ass and cheetah until the 8th century (Umayyad period) and the oryx until about 1960. Predators that still occur in Jordan’s eastern desert include Syrian jackals, Arabian wolves, red foxes, Ruepelli’s foxes, caracals (a medium-sized cat), sand cats, wild cats, and Syrian striped hyaenas. 300 species of birds have been seen at Azraq, and for most of the last century it was internationally famous for waterfowl hunting. Under the Ramsar Convention ("Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat") Azraq was designated as a "Wetland of International Importance" in 1977. The same year an additional 1,245 ha surrounding the spring-fed marshes were declared Jordan’s first Wetland Reserve. But after it went dry in 1991 and was then partially restored by 1999, an ornithologist estimated 150,000 birds of which 39% were raptors, 30% waterbirds, and 31% songbirds.
We drove up a little ways to North Azraq (formerly Druze) for lunch of the ubiquitous hummus, a salad of cucumber, tomato, and herbs, and a roasted chicken in a shady, roadside restaurant. We took an hour to look around the castle, one of the largest and best preserved of its type in Jordan. It was probably built first by Nabateans, then enlarged or rebuilt by Romans, Byzantines, the Umayyad and Ayyubid Caliphates, and the Ottomans. Parts were crumbling by the time English archaeologist and adventurer Gertrude Bell photographed it in 1913. Later, her protégé, T. E. Lawrence, used it as a military base while fighting with the Arabs against the Ottomans during World War I.
Then we drove back south a few kilometers to the Shaumari Nature Reserve and saw Arabian oryxes, goitered gazelles, blue-necked ostriches, Persian onagers, a striped hyena, a crested porcupine, and other wildlife, all species native to the Jordan desert. The Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature is breeding the oryxes for reintroduction to the wild. Suddenly, the seemingly empty desert was coming alive.
Previously, I posted a note about Pella and one about the Bedouin coffee ritual. From time to time I'll post other notes about special places in Jordan.