By: Ammar Khammash
6-3-2002 |
| Burqu’ |
A full day trip and a good overnight destination
Tips: a 4x4 reliable car is needed. A lot of drinking water. Campus
and a good map of the eastern desert.
From Amman, it would take around 3 hours to get there, and this
destination might be tough for families with young children.
Special care should be taken on the Zarqa-Iraq highway, it is
extremely dangerous, and often slippery with petrol spilled from
trucks coming from Iraq.
How to get there
Drive to Azraq, continue on the road to Iraq, about 50 kilometer from
Azraq you should pass Safawi, drive on another 100 km and just before
you reach Ruwayshid turn left, exiting the highway to Baghdad and
drive north for about 18 km in the desert.
The landscape around should appear like a mudflat or wide riverbed.
The area to the west of this network of dirt roads is slightly
elevated as a plateau of black basalt stone.
The vicinity of Ghadeer Burqu’ has, usually, some Bedouin encampments
and some sheep and camel herding. If you don’t see the silhouette of
the castle after 15 to 17 km you should ask the first people you come
across, if any, make sure you do not keep driving north, since if you
cross another 40 km you will be approaching the borders with Syria. |
The castle is situated at the mouth of a wide shallow valley, which
makes it difficult to spot from a distance, as you get closed the
distinguished feature of the structure (part of the upper wall that
still stands almost to its original height) appears like a wide
chimney. The best approach to the structure is from the southeast, you
can then drive around and park just north of the castle.
The most stunning feature of Burqu’ is its relation with the lake. It
is an overwhelming feeling to find this amazing water surface in the
middle of the dry desert. In a good rainy season the water can touch
the walls of the castle, where mud has left horizontal marks as
records of good winters in the recent past.
The water, understandably, can explain the reason behind this location
of this structure. A good section of an old dam is still visible to
the north of the castle, and a contemporary earth dam further to the
north holding the water just like the ancient dam did in the past.
The structure itself is a rectangular box surrounded by partially
collapsed rooms outlining a courtyard. Burqu’ is basically Roman and
can be seen as of the same historical background as Azraq castle. It
is important to note here that this can be one of the last ”Roman”
structures in the eastern desert marking the end of one region and the
beginning of another. Just to the southeast of the high central
structure and |
among the stones of the collapsed courtyard walls is a stone with
impressive inscription in Arabic.
Burqu’ was occupied during the Byzantine period (possibly by monks)
and during the Islamic period an inscription with the date 1409 might
suggest an occupation till around that date.
To understand the bigger picture one has to think of caravan routs,
trade, and the securing of water along these long and hard journeys in
the past. This location does not only explain the need for humans to
stop for water and rest, but also for birds and many of the desert
animals, gazelles, orix, ostriches and others which use to be so
abundant in the eastern desert and now mostly extinct.
In some seasons, April in particular, the Qasr surrounding becomes a
picnic grounds for Bedouins arriving in their pickups to stay
overnight turning this isolated spot of Jordan into a night with
desert parties; if you like the desert in silence you might need to
drive some 4 to 5 km to the west, in the basalt landscape, for a
peaceful overnight camping location.
The Ghadeer Burqu’ destination might be combined with many other
desert attractions in locations such as Um-el-Jimal, Qasr Sikhism,
Dair al Kahf, and Dair Al-qinn; all in the black basalt Jordanian
desert. |
