Jordan River in the context of "Dead Sea"

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.

Biblical Hebrew (Hebrew: עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית, romanized: ʿiḇrîṯ miqrāʾîṯ or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא, ləšôn ham-miqrāʾ ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term ʿiḇrîṯ 'Hebrew' was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible, which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן śəp̄aṯ kənaʿan 'language of Canaan' or יְהוּדִית Yəhûḏîṯ 'Judean', but it was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts.

Paleo-Hebrew is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted as a first language through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem. It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was employed as a second language until the 5th century.

The Herodian tetrarchy was a regional division of a client state of Rome, formed following the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE. The client kingdom was divided between Herod's sister Salome I and his sons Herod Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philip. Upon the deposition of Herod Archelaus in 6 CE, his territories were transformed into a Roman province. With the death of Salome I in 10 CE, her domain was also incorporated into a province.

Other parts of the Herodian tetrarchy continued to function under Herodians. Philip ruled over territories north and east of the Jordan River until 34 CE. His domain was later incorporated into the Province of Syria. Herod Antipas ruled Galilee and Perea until 39 CE. The last notable Herodian ruler with some level of independence was King Herod Agrippa I. He was given the territory of Judea with its capital Jerusalem. With his death in 44 CE, the provincial status of Judea was restored for good.

Baptism (from Koine Greek: βάπτισμα, romanized: váptisma, lit. 'immersion, dipping in water') is a Christian rite of initiation almost invariably with the use of water. It may be performed by sprinkling or pouring water on the head, or immersing in water (partially or completely), traditionally three times for each person of the Trinity. It is also called christening, although this is typically reserved for the baptism of infants. Baptism is regarded as a sacrament in most churches and an ordinance in others, with the synoptic gospels recounting that John the Baptist baptized Jesus.

Baptism according to the Trinitarian formula, which is done in most mainstream Christian denominations, is seen as being a basis for Christian ecumenism, the concept of unity amongst Christians. In certain Christian denominations, such as the Catholic Churches, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Oriental Orthodox Churches, Assyrian Church of the East, and Lutheran Churches, baptism is the door to church membership, with candidates taking baptismal vows. It has also given its name to the Baptist churches and denominations.

John the Baptist (c. 6 BC – c. AD 30) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, Saint John the Immerser in the Baptist tradition, and as the prophet Yahya ibn Zakariya in Islam. He is sometimes referred to as John the Baptiser.

John is mentioned by the Roman Jewish historian Josephus, and he is revered as a major religious figure in Christianity, Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, the Druze faith, and Mandaeism; in the last of these he is considered to be the final and most vital prophet. He is considered to be a prophet of God by all of the aforementioned faiths, and is honoured as a saint in many Christian denominations. According to the New Testament, John anticipated a messianic figure greater than himself; in the Gospels, he is portrayed as the precursor or forerunner of Jesus. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself identifies John as "Elijah who is to come", which is a direct reference to the Book of Malachi (Malachi 4:5), as confirmed by the angel Gabriel, who announced John's birth to his father Zechariah. According to the Gospel of Luke, John and Jesus were relatives.

A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank (cut bank or river cliff) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex bank which is typically a point bar. The result of this coupled erosion and sedimentation is the formation of a sinuous course as the channel migrates back and forth across the axis of a floodplain.

The zone within which a meandering stream periodically shifts its channel is known as a meander belt. It typically ranges from 15 to 18 times the width of the channel. Over time, meanders migrate downstream, sometimes in such a short time as to create civil engineering challenges for local municipalities attempting to maintain stable roads and bridges.

The Southern Levant is a geographical region that corresponds approximately to present-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southern Syria and the Sinai Peninsula. As a strictly geographical description, it is sometimes used by archaeologists and historians to avoid the religious and political connotations of other names for this area.

Like much of Southwestern Asia, the Southern Levant is an arid region consisting mostly of desert and dry steppe, with a thin strip of wetter, temperate climate along the Mediterranean coast. Geographically it is dominated by the Jordan Valley, a section of the Great Rift Valley bisecting the region from north to south, and containing the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea—the lowest point on the Earth's land surface.

The West Bank is on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia's Levant region, it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (via the Green Line) to the south, west, and north. Since 1967, the territory has been under Israeli occupation, which has been regarded as illegal under the law of the international community.

The territory first emerged in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War as a region occupied and subsequently annexed by Jordan. Jordan ruled the territory until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was occupied by Israel. Since then, Israel has administered the West Bank (except for East Jerusalem, which was effectively annexed in 1980) as the Judea and Samaria Area. Jordan continued to claim the territory as its own until 1988. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords split the West Bank into three regional levels of Palestinian sovereignty, via the Palestinian National Authority (PNA): Area A (PNA), Area B (PNA and Israel), and Area C (Israel, comprising 60% of the West Bank). The PNA exercises total or partial civil administration over 165 Palestinian enclaves across the three areas.

The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan, is a basaltic plateau at the southwest corner of Syria. It is bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon mountains with Mount Hermon in the north and Wadi Raqqad in the east. It hosts vital water sources that feed the Hasbani River and the Jordan River. Two thirds of the area was depopulated and occupied by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and then effectively annexed in 1981. The international community largely considers the area Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. The United States recognized it as part of Israel in 2019 during the first Trump administration. In 2024, Israel occupied parts of the remaining one third of the area.

The earliest evidence of human habitation on the Golan dates to the Upper Paleolithic period. It was home to the biblical Geshur, and was later incorporated into Aram-Damascus, before being ruled by several foreign and domestic powers, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Itureans, Hasmoneans, Romans, Ghassanids, several caliphates, and the Mamluk Sultanate. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century until its collapse, and subsequently became part of the French Mandate in Syria and the State of Damascus in 1923. When the mandate terminated in 1946, it became part of the newly independent Syrian Arab Republic, spanning about 1,800 km (690 sq mi).