Umm Al-Jimal is Jordan’s seventh historical site on Unesco’s World Heritage List. — Handout
Jordan's Umm al-Jimal village has been added to Unesco’s World Heritage List, in a move hailed by the country’s tourism and antiquities minister as a “great achievement”.
Unesco, which hosted a meeting of its World Heritage Committee in New Delhi, India from July 21 to 31, said on X last week that the earliest structures uncovered at Umm al-Jimal date back to the first century CE, “... when the area formed part of the Nabataean Kingdom”.
It added that inscriptions in “Greek, Nabataean, Safaitic, Latin and Arabic uncovered on the site ... sheds light on the changes in its inhabitants’ religious beliefs”.
The village is near the Jordanian-Syrian border, 86km north of the capital Amman, and is known as “the black oasis” due to the prevalence of black volcanic rock in the area.
Jordan’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Makram al-Qaisi said in a press conference that the inclusion of Umm al-Jimal on the World Heritage List is a “great achievement we should be proud of”.
He said the ministry hoped to invite local and international investors to the site and “present Umm al-Jimal as an attractive tourist destination”.
The name Umm al-Jimal comes from the use of camels as part of trade caravans in the village. The village was first settled by the Nabataean peoples in the first century AD and later occupied by the Romans, becoming an important agricultural and commercial village.
Umm al-Jimal is the seventh historical site in Jordan to be added to Unesco’s World Heritage List, along with Petra, Quseir Amra, Umm al-Rasas, Wadi Rum, Mughatas and Salt.
Tourism contributes between 12% and 14% of GDP in the kingdom, whose 10 million inhabitants rely heavily on the sector. Qaisi said that Jordan welcomed more than six million tourists in 2023.
But tourism has started to feel the effects of the war raging in nearby Gaza. Qaisi said the kingdom saw a 4.9% drop in tourism revenue so far in 2024, and a 7.9% drop in visitors.
A file picture of Lencois Maranhenses National Park in Maranhao, Brazil from April 2000. The park is known for its endless dunes and dazzling natural pools. — AFP
Brazil dunes included
In Brazil’s Lencois Maranhenses National Park, famed for its white dunes that fill with blue and emerald lagoons in the rainy season, was also declared a Unesco World Heritage Site last week during the meeting in New Delhi.
The vast park, named for the dunes’ resemblance to a bedsheet spread across the landscape – lencois means sheets in Portuguese – is located in the northeastern state of Maranhao, in a transition zone between the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes.
Lencois Maranhenses is the 24th site in Brazil to make it onto the list of places of significant cultural or natural significance.
The national park was created in June 1981 and covers an area of 156,000ha, more than half of which offers a landscape of dunes and multi-coloured lagoons, which attract more than 100,000 tourists each year.
According to Unesco, it is the largest expanse of dunes in South America.
The Lencois Maranhenses are a protected area “where the desert meets the sea, creating a unique landscape”, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a letter sent in early 2023 to Unesco to urge the site’s inscription as a World Heritage Site.
The park has also hosted several Hollywood film shoots.
A file picture from 2010 of a mosaic at the Saint Hilarion complex in the Gaza Strip, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East. — AFP
Protection needed
Meanwhile, the Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on Unesco’s World Heritage List, as well as on the list of World Heritage Sites in danger due to the war in Gaza.
Unesco said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the “imminent threats” it faced.
“It’s the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context,” said Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the Unesco World Heritage Centre, referring to the war that started on Oct 7 last year.
In December, the Unesco Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict decided to grant “provisional enhanced protection” – the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention – to the Saint Hilarion complex, which is also known as Tell Umm Amer.
Unesco had then said it was “already concerned about the state of conservation of sites, before Oct 7, due to the lack of adequate policies to protect heritage and culture” in Gaza. – AFP
