Balqa (region)

The Balqa (Arabic: البلقاء; transliteration: al-Balqāʾ), known colloquially as the Balga, is a geographic region in central Jordan generally defined as the highlands east of the Jordan Valley in between the Zarqa River to the north and the Wadi Mujib gorge to the south.

The Balqa was part of the Byzantine province of Arabia Petraea and home to the Arab tribes of Judham, Lakhm and Bali. After the 630s Muslim conquest, it became part of Jund Dimashq (the military district of Damascus). The Umayyad family maintained interests in the region before the founding of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), a period in which the Balqa prospered. Starting from the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705), the Balqa was assigned its own sub-governor. The caliphs Yazid II and his son al-Walid II lived in the Balqa as princes and caliphs, building several palatial residences. In the 10th century the Balqa became subordinate to Jund Filastin (the military district of Palestine). Under the Ayyubids (1170s–1260) and Mamluks (1260–1516) the Balqa continued to function as a district, subordinate to Damascus, sometimes spanning the Sharat highlands to the south.

Amman had been the Balqa's traditional capital, but the capital shifted to Hisban under the Mamluks. The tribes of Banu Sakhr and Banu Mahdi, descendants of the Judham, lived there at the time. By the 16th century, during Ottoman rule, only four villages were recorded in the Balqa, along with the Bedouin tribe of Da'aja, still present in the region. In the late 18th–early 19th centuries, the only permanent settlement was the mixed Muslim and Christian town of Salt, the rest of the region being dominated by Bedouin tribes, the strongest of which was the Adwan. The Balqa had been outside Ottoman government control until the campaign of Rashid Pasha in the late 1860s, after which it was incorporated into the Nablus Sanjak. In the following years several settlements were established or re-established, including Amman and Madaba, by Christians from Salt and Karak, government-sponsored Circassian and Chechen refugees, and Bedouin chiefs.

The growing prosperity of the Balqa in the late Ottoman period was disrupted by the British occupation of the region in World War I. The paramountcy of the Banu Sakhr over the Adwan and other local tribes was sealed in the subsequent period, leading to the Adwan Rebellion. Amman became the capital of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1923 and continues to be the capital of the Emirate's successor state, the Kingdom of Jordan. The region is presently divided between the governorates of Balqa (centered in Salt), Amman, Zarqa and Madaba. Mainly due to the influx of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 Arab–Israeli wars, Palestinians and their descendants made up about 70% of the population of Amman, Zarqa and Balqa. Most of the preexisting population during the same period comprised the descendants of the formerly semi-nomadic Arab tribesmen of the Balqa, who continue to identify culturally as Bedouin.

According to J. Sourdel-Thomine, the Arabic etymology of al-Balqāʾ could be related to the feminine form of the Arabic word ablaq, meaning "variegated". The most popular etymology cited by the medieval Arabic geographers, however, was that Balqa was the name of a descendant of the Bani Amman ibn Lut, which conjures up the Ammonites and the biblical figure and Islamic prophet Lot.

The Balqa forms the central part of the Transjordanian highlands. It extends from the Zarqa River in the north to the Wadi Mujib gorge in the south. The southern limit of the Balqa is alternatively placed north of Wadi Mujib at Wadi Zarqa Ma'in, hence the colloquial description of the Balqa as "the land between the two Zarqas". The Zarqa River separates the Balqa from the Jabal Ajlun highlands, while the Wadi Mujib separates it from the Sharat highlands. To the west, the Balqa borders the lowlands of the Jordan Valley (called al-Ghor in Arabic), while the region borders the Syrian Desert in the east.

The entire Balqa is a limestone plateau, as compared to the gravel and basalt-covered plateau of the Syrian Desert that makes up over 75% of Jordan's land area. The western part of the Balqa, closer to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, is a relatively fertile zone characterized by its broken ground and deep gorges formed by precipitation-induced erosion. The eastern part of the Balqa sees little rainfall and is characterized by its tabular consistency. In general the Balqa is arid, though the western plains near the Jordan Valley and the depressions allow for some cultivation. This accounts for the ancient and medieval reports of the Balqa's fertility. Like Jabal Ajlun and the Sharat, the Balqa has a dry and temperate climate.

The average elevation of the Balqa is 700–800 meters (2,300–2,600 ft) above sea level. Among the tallest peaks are Tell Nabi Usha (1,096 meters (3,596 ft)) in the northern Balqa and Mount Nebo (835 meters (2,740 ft)) in the south.