Duration
Full day (9 hours)
Group size
Up to 8
Language
English, Arabic
Pick-up in Amman at 07:30, back by about 16:30. Three hours in Jerash first, the full circuit, while the light is still low and the limestone is still cool enough to sit on. Then 30 kilometres west through olive terraces to Qal'at ar-Rabad — the castle Izz al-Din Usama built in 1184 for Salah ad-Din, at around 1,100 metres, watching the Jordan Valley and the roads the Crusaders used from Belvoir. It is a Muslim castle built against Crusaders, which is the reverse of what most visitors assume, and we spend proper time on why the arrow slits face where they do. Lunch is at a family kitchen in Ajloun town: galayet bandora, taboon bread, olive oil pressed from trees you can see from the table. What you should know. It is a nine-hour day with roughly two and a half hours in the car, and by three in the afternoon most people have stopped absorbing anything, so we plan for that and stop talking. The castle is stairs — narrow spiral flights, low doorways, unlit passages, no step-free route above the entrance bridge.
We are four guides from Jerash town, and we all grew up on the wrong side of the wadi from the ruins, close enough to hear the bagpipes drifting out of the South Theatre on a still afternoon. Between us we have about sixty years of walking the Cardo. We do one thing: Roman Jerash, properly. That means the drainage under the paving stones and the ruts cut by chariot wheels, not only the postcard columns. We keep groups small, we start early because the limestone throws heat like a griddle by eleven, and we will tell you plainly when something is not worth your entry fee. We also run the Ajloun day, because that castle deserves more than a photo stop.
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