Off beaten track May 2023 - Between Petra and Wadi Rum - Magnific Qasr Tuba

This time I made off beaten track between Petra and Wadi Rum visiting a rare ancient sites like you can see on the map here. 

I started in Udhruh where it is the Romanesque fortress what was once really big. Near the fortress is another but it is the Ottoman fortress. 

Unfortunately it was behind the fence and impossible to enter as there was no guard or open visitor center. I have to be content with watching through the net.

According to archaeological findings, Udhruh was a Nabatean settlement from at least the early 1st century BC. Settlement at Udhruh reached its peak under the Nabataean king Aretas IV who ruled ca. 9 BC–40 AD Thus, Udhruh developed at the same time as the Nabatean capital of Petra.

 

 

Later it became a Roman fort, probably built after the Roman annexation of the Nabatean Empire in AD 106. The fort may have been a continuation of a Nabatean military structure. In the late 3rd or early 5th century, Legio VI Ferrata was headquartered in Udhruh. By then the fort had long been sacked and neglected and it was rebuilt in 303 or 304. The Romans (and later the Greco-Byzantines) referred to the settlement in the Notitia Dignitatum as "Augustopolis"

During the Islamic era, Udhruh was a possession of the Banu Judham tribe. It was often visited by trade caravans from the Meccan tribe of Quraysh.

There, the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who belonged to the Quraysh, began his expedition to Tabuk in 631.

Finally, at an unknown date during the Ottoman era (1517–1917), a fort was built there and was roughly the same dimensions and design as the Ottoman fort at Ma'an, built in 1559.

It was impossible to take a better picture of this fortress because a 10-year-old boy came up and begged money from me, was quite rude, hung on the car, etc. I tried to talk calm with him, explain that he shall not do as he does, but it helped nothing so I just took this picture and had to go away instead.

Ottoman fortress

I continued further towards Khatt Shebib via the ancient village Basta with some house remains but there was not much to see actually so I took only this one picture.

Basta excavations

* Khatt Shebib, an ancient wall, the mysterious linear stone is 150 km long, but the date of its construction is still unknown (perhaps in the Iron Age or later during the Nabatean period) and also the purpose of why the wall was built. To protect the area from who? camels, sheep and goats from other tribes to enter that area? because on one side there were maybe fields and cultivated vegetables and so on? It was not used for military purposes but the old wall served as a border. When the wall was built, it was approximately no higher than one and a half meters high.

"The wall’s existence was first recorded in 1948, by Sir Alec Kirkbride, a British Ambassador to Jordan. While flying over the Ma’an district in the south of the country, he saw a “stone wall running, for no obvious purpose, across country.” A local inhabitant told him it was called Khatt Shebib (Shebib’s Wall)."

too bad those electric poles are in the way

 

Leaving Khatt Shebib continue then to Ras al Naqab where the old Hejaz railway station still exists.

It was built in the 1930s to transfer potash from railway cars to trucks. These trucks then transported the phosphate across the Naqab Escarpment to Dabat Hannout from where the trucks went via Humeima to Aqaba where the phosphate was loaded onto ships for export. The Ma'an to Ras al Naqab line was abandoned in the 1970s when the mining companies built a new train line that passed around the end of the Naqab escarpment and back through Wadi Rum and then into Aqaba. The railway lines to the Naqab were then removed, but the platform and warehouses remain in Ras al Naqab to this day.

Thus the claim about "the famous" Al Hijaz Steam Train ride in Wadi Rum bursts, i.e. that this train ride is absolutely not on the Hijaz Railway but on the new build railway tacking potash to Aqaba.

A few kilometers away there is an archeological site Khirbet al-Qurna but did not find much about the history. What remained was a stone wall in a large square and opposite on a small hill some building, probably from Nabatean times.

 

Nearby was the Necropolis but unfortunately the ancient tombs near the ancient Khirbet al-Qurna were tampered with by amateurs looking for burials.

From there I have been driving to the ancient Humayma archeological site, very interesting place with rich history and a lot to see - I have been there already a couple of times before, but here I attach the link for to see, what is to read about and see there - https://nabataea.net/explore/cities_and_sites/humeima/

At finish I can add to my off beaten tracks even the other desert castle, odd, Qasr Tuba, the excellent example of an Umayyad construction of brick vaults on brick walls. with several ruins around.

It is located southeast of Amman and other desert castles, between Desert Highway no. 15 and Highway no. 5.

One of the Umayyad desert castles is very difficult to find but we finally managed to find it.

I already had it on my list for many years but the first time I was going there, a couple of years ago, was not able to find it, google didn't really work and because the landscape is hilly it was difficult to find it. After a few kilometers of hiking in the stone desert, my friend and I gave up and said we'll try another time.

But now, finally, after hard driving in the stones desert with only the normal car we found it. It is necessary to have 4x4, but we had no possibility to rent it due expensive rates.

It was very windy but when I saw the outline of this castle through flying sand in the air, I almost cried with happiness, LOL. How fantastic it was there, to be there and find it, magnificent, stately.
It is an incredibly stately building and I highly recommend visiting it, even if it is hard to find this off the beaten track. It needs a whole day to find it and then admire it.

It's sad that no one takes care of this castle, they just let it deteriorate more and more. Even the sign in front of it is so faded you can barely read it.

The Qasr was never completed and it seems to have been abandoned some time after the assassination of Caliph al Walid II who had it built for his sons. You don't really know what it would be used for, if it was a hunter's castle or if it would also work as a caravan. It consists of a larger building and you can see remains of brick masonry and barrel-vaulted roofs. It is decorated with rosettes and plant leaves, which give the impression of fine lace work.

 

This Qasr became a historical site of attention after the Czech orientalist and explorer Alois Musil, who discovered it during his many travels in the 18th century in the Middle East. And it was he who discovered Qasr Amra and Al Harranah, among others.

By the way, he was very famous between Bedouin tribes so he was elected as a sheikh of one Madaba tribe.