A journey through the magical and ancient streets of Petra, the city of stone, revealing the centuries of history that are still alive on its walls.
Captive of its beauty; admired by the colors of its stones; Overwhelmed by the mysterious presence of his past carved into the mountain, this is how one looks when he converges from the Gorge of the Siq in front of Khazneh al Faroum, the Treasure of the Pharaoh , in Petra , an imposing facade up to 40 meters high that is carved in relief on the rock of the mountain.
In that situation, one can only try to imagine the first impression of who rediscovered it two centuries ago, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.This young Swiss intended to travel Egypt and it was being in Cairo when for the first time he heard of a hidden city in inaccessible mountains.His adventurous spirit and his eagerness to discover made him turn his investigation around and momentarily abandon the study he had been commissioned in Egyptian lands.It was such a courage and courage that even knowing that those m Ontanas were protected by Bedouin tribes who were very hostile, it was in their search.
I study the Coran, their customs and asked permission to access those mountains to sacrifice a goat in the place where they revered the grave Aaron, brother of Moises.Accompanied by the Bedouins, he entered that beautiful gorge and finally accessed the wonderful Petra .I traverse all that inner valley, admiring that monumental city, the graves that were, the streets, columns and how much I could take secret notes.And so I arrive at the nearby mountain of Jebel Haroum , where I sacrifice the goat.It was on August 22, 1812.
But what happened in that city to be abandoned? What was its history?
The story of Petra under the Nabateans
Certainly, the city is of Nabatean origin , but before, in that same area, in the nearby mountains of Umm al Biyara, there was a stable Another town was born, the Edomite .However, these were destroyed by a huge fire that swept through the town in the seventh century BC It is not known if some Edomite families stayed or not, even if they reached coincide with the Nabateans, but the truth is that the first record we have of the Nabatean city is from a text of Diodoro in which he mentions Jeronimo de Cardia , of the century IV who said he was present in a battle in the place between Nabateans and Greeks.
The Nabateans were a people with nomadic features, who lived outdoors and dedicated to raising cattle; they traded with betun from the Dead Sea, and with spices they brought from eastern routes.Over the years, Petra , the city excavated inside the Umm al Biyara mountains, became a city Very important caravan, since being located in the desert served as a rest to those caravans that stopped to refuel and rest. The Nabateans had devised a skillful water storage system, in hidden cisterns, with which they supplied them charging for it a fee, not only for that water, but for fixing the security in the area and allowing them to cross their territory.They also took advantage of the step to trade with their products.
They were the The beginning of a great city, which had to live years of greatness and years of continuous battles for its control.
These Nabateans who, supposedly, had arrived from the Arabian Peninsula (although there is no reliable record, it is estimated who probably did it from the Y emen), they were not very warriors, but as soon as they had a chance they were annexing surrounding territories and getting bigger and bigger.By the 1st century BC even the city of Damascus was within the Nabatean domain.
In such a terrible and hostile environment, in Petra , its only marketable force was water, so they had to sharpen their ingenuity to conserve it wisely.That is why the Nabateans have moved to history as great hydraulic engineers: they dug canals in the mountain, they built large-sized tanks, they devised filtering systems, and everything, solving the enormous orographic difficulties that those mountains supposed, they used the springs they found, they channeled them, they picked up the waters that came down from the mountains, cleaned the supply networks, filtered the water; a really impressive task considering the times we talked about and the means they had.
Their economic growth was so important thanks to the liquid element, that it helped them to grow in other fields: a Nabatean writing system , from the Aramaic and developed the architecture with those wonderful temples that have reached us until today day.
Petra after the Roman conquest
However, the Roman army, which led Pompey, defeated the Seleucida kingdom in Damascus, creating Syria.They attacked several times that impregnable fort that was Petra , and resisted as much as they could.Finally they were annexed by the Roman Empire in 106 AD, and it was renamed Arabia Petrea , whose capital was located in Bosra , within what are now the territorial limits of Syria.
In the fourth century AD, the entire region was administratively reorganized and Petra was named capital of a new region nascent: Palestine Tertia Salutaris .
Until the Roman Empire lost their possessions at the hands of Muslims in 636 AD the battle of Yarmuk.
Since then Petra has become a place desired by all the great empires for the strategic place where it is located and as a point of defense.during the Crusade s he fought for Petra, and falling into Christian hands, he changed his name to call her Valley of Moises (Wadi Musa) The monastery of San Aaron was built on top of that mountain that many years later I visit Burckhardt, Jebel Haroun, and the fortresses of al-Wueirah and al-Habis were created>.
Of n Again there was a confrontation between Crusaders and the great Saladin, and again, after the defeat of those Petra happened to manosarabes, although they left it abandoned.Of that original monastery of San Aaron, the remains that are today under the Muslim wali were left.today they contain Aaron's remains.
And so, for many centuries, Petra remained hidden in the mountains, forgotten and abandoned by the world, until that magical day of 1812 when Burckhardt rediscovered that mysterious city.
Continue touring the most fantastic architectural works of the past in the following articles:
- The Colosseum
- The Pyramids of Egypt
- The Ziggurats: bastions of Mesopotamia
- The Gardens Hanging of Babylon
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