Jordan Culture & Language

Jordanian culture sits between the settled Levant and the desert, and both halves are live rather than historical.

The Bedouin inheritance

Perhaps a third of Jordanians claim Bedouin descent, and although few now live nomadically, the customary law, the poetry, the coffee ritual and the codes about guests and protection remain in force. Arabic coffee — cardamom-heavy, poured from a dallah into small cups — is UNESCO-listed and is the formal way a guest is received.

Mansaf and the table

Mansaf is the national dish and a ceremony: lamb in jameed, fermented dried yoghurt, over rice and shrak bread, eaten communally from a single tray with the right hand. Alongside it sit mezze, zarb cooked in a pit in Wadi Rum, and knafeh, the cheese and syrup pastry that Jordanians and Palestinians both claim.

Mosaic

Madaba has been a mosaic town since the Byzantine period, and the sixth-century map of the Holy Land on the floor of St George’s church is the oldest surviving cartographic depiction of Jerusalem. A school in the town still trains restorers.

Craft and textile

Weaving, embroidery and silverwork are strong traditions, much of it now produced through cooperatives that employ Jordanian, Palestinian and Syrian women. Jordanian embroidery patterns are village-specific and readable to those who know them.

Dress and identity

The red-and-white chequered shemagh is Jordanian; the black-and-white one is Palestinian, and in a country where a large share of the population is of Palestinian origin, which one a man wears is read. Women’s embroidered thobes carry village-specific patterns that anyone who knows them can place, which is why the surviving pieces are collected and why the cooperatives reproducing them matter culturally as well as economically.

Music and poetry

Nabati poetry, composed and performed in Bedouin dialect, is a living competitive form, and the rababa, a single-stringed fiddle, still accompanies it around a fire.

Arabic is the official language, and the Jordanian dialect is Levantine, close to Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese Arabic and generally easy for speakers of those to follow.

English is widely spoken in Amman, throughout the tourism industry, in hotels and among educated and younger Jordanians. Road signs are bilingual, and a visitor will very rarely be stuck.

Bedouin dialect in the desert differs noticeably from Amman speech, and Circassian and Chechen are still spoken within those communities.

A handful of Arabic words go a long way and are warmly received: as-salamu alaykum as a greeting, shukran for thank you, min fadlak for please, yalla for let’s go, and habibi, which is used constantly and covers everything from affection to mild exasperation.