Jordan

Jordan

Jordan ( /ˈdʒɔrdən/; Arabic: اَلأُرْدُنّ‎, Al-ʾUrdunn), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Arabic: اَلمَمْلَكَة اَلأُرْدُنِيَّة اَلهَاشِمِيَّة‎, al-Mamlakah al-ʾUrdunniyyah al-Hāšimiyyah), is an Arab kingdom in Asia, on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country leader is Abdullah II. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing control of the Dead Sea with the latter. Jordan's only port is at its south-western tip, at the Gulf of Aqaba, which is shared with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Over half of Jordan is covered by the Arabian Desert. However, the western part of Jordan is arable land and forests. Jordan is part of the Fertile Crescent. The capital city is Amman. According to the CIA World Factbook, Jordan has the second highest life expectancy in West Asia, after Israel.

Read more about Jordan.

Famous quotes containing the word jordan:

    All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.
    —June Jordan (b. 1939)

    Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires ...
    —June Jordan (b. 1936)

    To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify. And we will have to allow them the choice, without fear of death: that they may come and do likewise or that they may come and that we will follow them, that a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.
    —June Jordan (b. 1939)