| It is one of the world’s most spectacular sights, but the story behind the European rediscovery of the ancient city of Petra, writes Matthew Teller, is almost as extraordinary
In 1276, the Mamluk sultan Baybars – on his way from Cairo to suppress a minor local rebellion in the town of Karak – passed through the ancient ruins of Petra. A massive earthquake almost a thousand years before, in 363 AD, had levelled half of the city, and by the time another huge earthquake struck in 749, the fabled capital of the Nabateans was already more or less deserted.
When Baybars arrived, he reportedly entered the city from the west, through the mountains. He visited the recently built and not long abandoned Crusader fortress atop the Al-Habees mountain, before continuing eastwards, passing along the way the “most marvellous caves, the facades sculptured into the very rock face”. He emerged from the Siq, the canyon that forms the eastern entrance to the city, on 6 June 1276. Other than the local Bedouin, he was the last person to see Petra for another 500 years.
On 22 August 1812, a stranger arrived at the camp of the Liyathneh tribe beside the Ain Musa spring overlooking a rugged valley in southern Jordan. He identified himself as Shaikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah, and requested permission to fulfil a vow to sacrifice a goat at the shrine of Aaron.
Shaikh Ibrahim was in fact Jean-Louis Burckhardt, a Swiss explorer employed by the grandly named London Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa. His mission was to find the source of the River Niger. With Egypt standing as the gateway to Africa, Burckhardt had set about familiarising himself with Islam and Arab culture, taking crash courses in Arabic while still in England. In 1810 he set off on his mission, landing first in Aleppo, in Syria, where the locals immediately questioned the newcomer about his strange accent. Burckhardt told his interrogators he was a Muslim trader from India and that his mother tongue wasn’t Arabic, but Hindustani. Suspicion persisted, and he was pressed to say something in Hindustani – whereupon he let loose a volley of fluent Swiss German, which seemed to satisfy the doubters. Burckhardt spent over two years in Aleppo, perfecting his Arabic and becoming an expert in Quranic law.
Two years later, Burckhardt set off for Cairo, keeping a secret journal as he went. As he passed through southern Jordan, he heard talk of an ancient city locked away in the heart of an impenetrable mountain. His curiosity was aroused and he diverted from his route to find out more. Again he fell under suspicion, but he told local tribesmen it was his wish to visit the tomb of Aaron, which lay in the mountains nearby, and so the Liyathneh let the stranger pass. Burckhardt and his guide would then have begun the long walk down the steep hill from Ain Musa.
Though memory of Petra’s precise location had long since faded from historical record, Burckhardt would have been well aware of the lost city’s existence somewhere in ancient Syria or Palestine through classical texts, notably the 17-volume Geographica by the Greek geographer and historian Strabo. When Strabo was writing, in the first century AD, Petra was enjoying a golden age. He described a wealthy, cosmopolitan city, its streets thronged “by Romans and many other foreigners” alongside the native population of Nabateans, a tribe of nomads from the Arabian interior who had settled and come to control trade across the Middle East.
Petra’s story begins millennia before, when the two great powers of the ancient world – Mesopotamia and Egypt – were edging their way towards contact with each other. The great desert plateaux of Mesopotamia, to the east of modern Jordan, were cut off by high mountains from trade routes across both the Naqab (Negev) desert to Gaza and the Sinai desert to Egypt. Somehow, a caravan route across the barrier had to be found if contact were to be established. A narrow valley where abundant springs tumble down through natural faults in the mountains was a prime choice. Thus was Petra born, marking the spot on existing north-south trade routes where an east-west passage could connect the two empires.
By the time the wandering Nabateans arrived in about the fifth century BC, Petra was already a site of some distinction, hosting the tomb of Moses’ brother Aaron (known in Islam as the Prophet Haroun). The Nabateans quickly exploited Petra’s natural advantages, raiding camel caravans that were emerging from the Arabian deserts loaded with gold, silver and spices, bound for Damascus or the Mediterranean ports. They built villas of stone, set amid lush gardens that were made possible by Nabatean expertise in hydrology – elaborate networks of terracotta pipes and rock-cut channels were linked to cisterns dug in the mountains. These pipes drained virtually every drop of collectable rainfall down into the city, supporting at least one huge nymphaeum, or public display fountain, as well as pools and terraced fields.
But this remarkable world did not last. In 106 AD the Nabateans were forced to cede power to the Romans. Petra’s golden age continued, but the Romans supported the city only for as long as it remained useful to them. The discovery of the monsoon winds around this time had begun to cause a shift in trade patterns, with overland routes from Arabia being abandoned in favour of transport by sea.
Rome slowly began diverting Arabian trade away from Petra – across the Red Sea into Egypt, or through the deserts directly to Damascus, presaging the rise of Palmyra, a trading entrepot in Syria which began to eat away at Petra’s supremacy. Earthquakes during the Middle Ages placed the seal on Petra’s decline.
As Burckhardt walked on down the hill, he must have been wondering what awaited him.
The Swiss shaikh made his way into the narrow Siq gorge, ignoring his guide’s requests to stop and make his sacrifice there and then, with the white, domed tomb of Aaron in plain view on top of the distant Jabal Haroun. He emerged from the canyon to become the first European to set eyes on the magnificence of the Treasury, “one of the most elegant remains of antiquity existing in Syria… the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller.” Continuing through the deserted ruins, Burckhardt reached the foot of Jabal Haroun as dusk was falling; there, he finally submitted to his guide’s insistence that they make the sacrifice and turn back. He had seen enough.
He somehow contrived to make detailed notes and draw accurate sketches of the Treasury and several more of the monuments he saw in the hidden valley behind the mountains. As he wrote: “It appears very probable that the ruins in Wadi Musa are of the ancient Petra… a place which no European traveller has ever visited. I regret that I am not able to give a very complete account, but I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller had ever before been seen. A close examination of these works of the infidels [that is, Petra’s monuments] would have excited suspicions that I was a magician in search of treasures.”
Despite a further series of discoveries and adventures, including being perhaps the first Christian to enter Mecca – where he stayed for three months – Burckhardt never made it to the source of the Niger. He died in 1817 at the age of 32. His tomb is still visitable in a Muslim cemetery just outside the northern walls of old Cairo. His journals, though, containing news of the rediscovery of Petra, made it safely back to London, where they were published in 1822 to international acclaim, sparking a worldwide resurgence of interest in Petra that continues unabated to this day.
For the Bedouin, of course, the “lost city” of Petra had never been lost. The Liyathneh still reside in the valley below Ain Musa, just across the mountain barrier from Petra itself, nowadays controlling the area’s lucrative hotel and restaurant trade. Their neighbours tell another story of loss. Resident for centuries within the caves of Petra, in the 1980s the Bdul tribe were forced to leave, ostensibly in order to protect the crumbling site from further damage. Today they live nearby, working every day within Petra but commuting each evening back to their purpose-built village overlooking the site. Burckhardt’s intrepid adventure that day in 1812 helped the outside world to rediscover Petra – but it also helped the Bdul, at least, to lose it.
Matthew Teller is the author of the Rough Guide To Jordan
PETRA PRACTICALITIES
LOCATION About 250km south of the Jordanian capital, Amman n
OPENING HOURS: Daily, 6am to sunset ADMISSION Jordanians (and, in a 2009 summer promotion, all Arab nationals) pay JD1 per day. Other nationalities pay JD21 for one day, JD26 for two days, JD31 for three days n
HOTELS The Mövenpick (www.movenpick-petra.com) is a five-star hotel near the entrance to Petra, superbly designed in Damascene style with a soaring atrium, fountain and hand-carved wooden details. Up in the town, the Valley Stars Inn (www.valleystarsinn.com) is the closest Petra gets to a mid-range boutique hotel, with just eight rooms featuring stone-tiled floors and stylish interiors n ACTIVITIES Local tour company Petra Moon (www.petramoon.com) provides horse riding, trekking, camping and desert excursions n
WEBSITE www.petrapark.com |
ED FREEMAN/GETTY, PHOTOLIBRARY, SYLVESTER ADAMS
|
