Zarqa

關於Zarqa

Zarqa (Arabic: الزرقاء) is the capital of Zarqa Governorate in Jordan. Its name means "the blue (city)". It had a population of 635,160 inhabitants in 2015, and is the second most populous city in Jordan after Amman.

Although the area has been inhabited since the 1st century, the city was only established in 1902. Chechen immigrants founded Zarqa because they had been displaced by the wars between the Ottoman and Russian Empires and the simultaneous Circassian genocide. They settled along the river. At that time, a station on the Hejaz railway was built in the new settlement. The railway station turned Zarqa into an important hub. On 10 April 1905, the Ottoman governor issued a decree authorizing Chechen immigrants to own the land on which they had settled. The population then grew rapidly. On 18 November 1928, the new Jordanian government issued a decree to establish the first municipal council for Zarqa.

After the Transjordan Frontier Force was formed in 1926, military bases were constructed in the city by the British Army, and the city later became known as the "military city". The headquarters of Jordan's Arab Legion were also located in Zarqa.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.