Jordan Rift Valley in the context of "Southern Levant"

Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and both Israel and Palestine (West Bank) to the west. The Jordan River, flowing into the Dead Sea, is located along the country's western border within the Jordan Rift Valley. Jordan has a small coastline along the Red Sea in its southwest, separated by the Gulf of Aqaba from Egypt. Amman is the country's capital and largest city, as well as the most populous city in the Levant.

Inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic period, three kingdoms developed in Transjordan during the Iron Age: Ammon, Moab and Edom. In the third century BC, the Arab Nabataeans established their kingdom centered in Petra. The Greco-Roman period saw the establishment of several cities in Transjordan that comprised the Decapolis. After the end of Byzantine rule, the region became part of the Islamic caliphates of the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and the Ottoman. Following the 1916 Great Arab Revolt during World War I, former Ottoman Syria was partitioned, leading to the establishment of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921, which became a British protectorate. In 1946, Jordan gained independence and became officially known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan captured and annexed the West Bank during the 1948 Palestine war until it was occupied by Israel in 1967. Jordan renounced its claim to the territory to the Palestinians in 1988 and signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

The Dead Sea (Arabic: اَلْبَحْر الْمَيِّت, romanized: al-Baḥr al-Mayyit; or اَلْبَحْر الْمَيْت, al-Baḥr al-Mayt; Hebrew: יַם הַמֶּלַח, romanized: Yam hamMelaḥ), also known by other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

As of 2025, the lake's surface is 439.78 metres (1,443 ft) below sea level, making its shores the lowest land-based elevation on Earth. It is 304 m (997 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With a salinity of 342 g/kg, or 34.2% (in 2011), it is one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, 9.6 times as salty as the ocean—and has a density of 1.24 kg/litre, which makes swimming similar to floating. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea's main, northern basin is 50 kilometres (31 mi) long and 15 kilometres (9 mi) wide at its widest point.

The Decapolis (Greek: Δεκάπολις, Dekápolis, 'Ten Cities') was a group of ten Greek Hellenistic cities on the eastern frontier of the Greek and late Roman Empire in the Southern Levant in the first centuries BC and AD. Most of the cities were located to the east of the Jordan Rift Valley, between Judaea, Iturea, Nabataea, and Syria.

The Decapolis was a center of Hellenistic culture in a region which was otherwise populated by Jews, Arab Nabataeans and Arameans. The cities formed a group because of their language, culture, religion, location, and political status, with each functioning as an autonomous city-state dependent on Rome. They are sometimes described as a league of cities, although some scholars believe that they were never formally organized as a political unit.

Samaria (/səˈmæriə, -ˈmɛəriə/), the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Shomron (Hebrew: שֹׁמְרוֹן‎), is used as a historical and biblical name for the central region of the Land of Israel. It is bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The region is known in Arabic under two names, Samirah (Arabic: السَّامِرَة‎, as-Sāmira), and Mount Nablus (جَبَل نَابُلُس, Jabal Nābulus).

The first-century historian Josephus set the Mediterranean Sea as its limit to the west, and the Jordan River as its limit to the east. Its territory largely corresponds to the biblical allotments of the tribe of Ephraim and the western half of Manasseh. It includes most of the region of the ancient Kingdom of Israel, which was north of the Kingdom of Judah. The border between Samaria and Judea, while historically fluid, is set at the latitude of Ramallah.

The Lower Galilee (Hebrew: הגליל התחתון, romanized: hag-Galil hat-Taḥton; Arabic: الجليل الأسفل, romanized: al-Jalil al-Asfal) is a region within the Northern District of Israel. The Lower Galilee is bordered by the Jezreel Valley to the south; the Upper Galilee to the north, from which it is separated by the Beit HaKerem Valley; the Jordan Rift Valley with the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee to the east; and to the west, a segment of the Northern Coastal Plain known as the Zvulun Valley (Zebulon Valley), stretching between the Carmel ridge and Acre. The Lower Galilee is the southern part of the Galilee. In Josephus' time, it was known to stretch in breadth from Xaloth (Iksal) to Bersabe, and in length from Cabul to Tiberias, a region that contains around 470 km. It is called "Lower" since it is less mountainous than the Upper Galilee. The peaks of the Lower Galilee rise to 500 m (1,600 ft) above sea level. The tallest peaks are Mount Kamon (598 m (1,962 ft)) at the northern part of the Lower Galilee, and Mount Tabor (588 m (1,929 ft)) in the southern part.

The Jordan Valley (Arabic: غَوْر الأُرْدُنّ, romanized: Ghawr al-Urdunn; Hebrew: עֵמֶק הַיַרְדֵּן, romanized: Emek HaYarden) forms part of the larger Jordan Rift Valley. Unlike most other river valleys, the term "Jordan Valley" often applies just to the lower course of the Jordan River, from the spot where it exits the Sea of Galilee in the north, to the end of its course where it flows into the Dead Sea in the south. In a wider sense, the term may also cover the Dead Sea basin and the Arabah valley, which is the rift valley segment beyond the Dead Sea and ending at Aqaba/Eilat, 155 km (96 mi) farther south.

The valley, in the common, narrow sense, is a long and narrow trough, 105 km (65 mi) long if measured "as the crow flies", with a width averaging 10 km (6.2 mi) with some points narrowing to 4 km (2.5 mi) over most of the course, before widening out to a 20 km (12 mi) delta when reaching the Dead Sea. Due to meandering, the length of the river itself is 220 km (140 mi). This is the valley with the lowest elevation in the world, beginning at −212 m (−696 ft) below sea level (BSL) and terminating at less than −400 m (−1,300 ft) BSL. On both sides, to the east and west, the valley is bordered by high, steep escarpments rising from the valley floor by between 1,200 m (3,900 ft) to 1,700 m (5,600 ft).

The Tulunid State, also known as the Tulunid Emirate or The State of Banu Tulun, and popularly referred to as the Tulunids (Arabic: الطولونيون) was a Mamluk dynasty of Turkic origin who was the first independent dynasty to rule Egypt, as well as much of Syria, since the Ptolemaic dynasty. They were independent from 868, when they broke away from the central authority of the Abbasid Caliphate, to 905, when the Abbasids restored the Tulunid domains to their control.

The Tulunid State emerged during a period marked by the growing power of the Turkic within the Abbasid Caliphate. This was a time when the Turkish guard exerted control over the empire's affairs, and when ethnic Shu'ubiyya and separatist tendencies began to emerge among the various peoples and governors of the vast Abbasid territories. The establishment of the Tulunid State was one of the inevitable outcomes of this growing sentiment. In the late 9th century, internal conflict amongst the Abbasids made control of the outlying areas of the empire increasingly tenuous, and in 868 the Turkic officer Ahmad ibn Tulun established himself as an independent governor of Egypt. He subsequently achieved nominal autonomy from the central Abbasid government. During his reign (868–884) and those of his successors, the Tulunid domains were expanded to include Jordan Rift Valley, as well as Hejaz, Cyprus and Crete. Ahmad was succeeded by his son Khumarawayh, whose military and diplomatic achievements made him a major player in the Middle Eastern political stage. The Abbasids affirmed their recognition of the Tulunids as legitimate rulers, and the dynasty's status as vassals to the caliphate. After Khumarawayh's death, his successor emirs were ineffectual rulers, allowing their Turkic and black slave-soldiers to run the affairs of the state. In 905, the Tulunids were unable to resist an invasion by the Abbasid troops, who restored direct caliphal rule in Syria and Egypt.

The Arabah/Araba (Arabic: وادي عربة, romanized: Wādī ʿAraba) or Aravah/Arava (Hebrew: הָעֲרָבָה, romanized: hāʿĂrāḇā, lit. 'dry area') is a loosely defined geographic area located south of the Dead Sea drainage basin and north of the Gulf of Aqaba in southeastern Israel and southwestern Jordan.

The old meaning, which was in use up to around the early 20th century, covered almost the entire length of what today is called the Jordan Rift Valley, running in a north–south orientation between the southern end of the Sea of Galilee and the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba of the Red Sea at Aqaba–Eilat. This included the Jordan Rift Valley between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea itself, and what today is commonly called the Arava Valley. The contemporary use of the term is restricted to this southern section alone.