I travelled into the remote deserts of eastern Jordan in search of a vanishing oasis that once teemed with life. And to learn how conservationists are clawing this wetland back from the engulfing sands.
Driving east from Amman, the sun beating down on the dark tarmac, it felt as if we were leaving civilization in the dust trails behind us. Petrol stations became rarer, road signs pointed towards distant border checkpoints with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and the basalt desert became even starker.
100 kilometres east of the Jordanian capital, the highway abruptly entered a desert town on the nation’s fringe. A vast air base, surrounded by watchtowers and barbed wire, overlooked a sprawling mass of truck stops and low-rise buildings. With the buzz of fighter jets overhead, we’d arrived in Azraq, the last city in eastern Jordan. Amongst ancient desert castles and military checkpoints, somehow, a small wetland oasis glimmers emerald blue in the sunshine.
For centuries, Azraq was a desert oasis of strategic, ecological and cultural importance. A watering hole for empires, armies, revolutionaries, buffalo and birds. But the water is retreating, and this improbable corner of eastern Jordan – hidden behind plumes of dust and the incessant clank of frontier industry – is fighting to hold back the relentless tide of desertification.
The Azraq Wetland Reserve feels like a place that shouldn’t exist. And in some ways, it barely does. Once a vast oasis that sustained human settlement for millennia, the wetlands are now a shadow of what they were. Reeds still ripple in the wind. Water buffalo still wallow in shallow pools. Migratory birds still pass through. But it’s all under threat. And the fight to preserve what remains has become a quiet, ongoing struggle.
I came to Azraq not to see what was left, though, but to understand how Jordanian conservationists are protecting this vital oasis in an otherwise parched country.
Watch the video here:
Azraq Wetlands: An oasis on the edge
I arrived in Azraq after travelling Jordan’s eastern frontier. Following ancient nomadic trade routes now transformed into desert highways, tracing colonial borders, visiting Umayyad castles and watching the map twist itself into cartographic contortions like Winston’s Hiccup. But Azraq was different. Less about lines on the map; more about what used to be between them.
The Azraq Wetland Reserve, managed by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), is the last surviving trace of what was once a vast, thriving oasis. Today, it’s modest — about 12 square kilometres — but it remains one of Jordan’s most significant ecological sites, and a vital source of fresh water.
The RSCN ranger at the entrance gave me the usual trail briefing — a short walk, a loop around the water, no smoking, and no picnicking on the boardwalk. “You’ll see the water buffalo maybe,” he added. “But fewer now. There used to be many more.” He spoke with quiet urgency about the reserve’s plight. “People need water. Amman is thirsty. But this place is dying.”
It’s difficult to grasp how much Azraq has changed without seeing the photos. There’s one image from 1966, on display in the visitor centre, showing a man waist-deep in water, fishing beneath a reed canopy. Today, that same spot is cracked earth. The fish are gone. The water has sunk below the surface, or been pumped westward to thirsty population centres, including Amman, the capital.
Azraq’s aquifers once covered 12,000 hectares, feeding springs that supported a unique ecosystem in the heart of Jordan’s basalt desert. The wetland is a major stopover on the African-Eurasian migratory bird route, hosting over 300 species, as well as wild cats, amphibians, and grazing animals. Bedouin herders, traders, and nomads relied on it as a reliable source of fresh water and forage. For centuries, Azraq was a vital stop on trading and pilgrimage routes linking the Levant with Arabia and Iraq. Roman legions passed through here. So did Umayyad caliphs, Ottoman caravans, and, in the 20th century, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) himself.
But in the 1980s, with Amman’s population surging, Azraq’s groundwater became a national resource. Wells were drilled. Pipelines laid. The water flowed west. Within a decade, 90% of the wetland had vanished. By 1992, the springs stopped flowing altogether. The migratory bird population collapsed. Water buffalo died or were relocated. What had once been a rich, self-sustaining ecosystem became a dust bowl, the victim of slow extraction and mismanagement.
To visit Azraq today is to witness the consequences of that collapse, but also to see the cautious signs of recovery.
Read more: Jordan’s Forgotten Panhandle (A Cartographical Curiosity in the Eastern Desert)
A meeting place of people
Today, the RSCN pumps a small amount of water back into the reserve to preserve the wetlands. It’s a ghost of the oasis that once was. Those ghosts linger in the very place names, too. The name ‘Azraq’ means ‘blue’ in Arabic — a reference to the shimmering water that once stretched across this part of the desert like an inland sea.
Azraq’s significance has never been just ecological. The wetland also shaped human settlement and resettlement. For centuries, the region was visited seasonally by Bedouin tribes. But permanent habitation began in earnest in the early 20th century, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the region absorbed waves of displaced communities.
One of the first to arrive were the Chechens — Muslim refugees from the Caucasus who fled Russian expansion and were resettled in Jordan by the Ottomans. They brought with them customs, language, and even water buffalo, which they introduced to the Azraq basin. The animals thrived, for a while.
Later, Druze families, fleeing conflict in Lebanon and Syria, settled in Azraq too. The town became a refuge for minorities — Chechens, Druze, Bedouin — each group drawn by water, each leaving their mark on the settlement that formed around the oasis.
In the town itself, I later met Rafat, a Druze guide at Azraq Castle, who walked me through the history of the site. “My family came here from Lebanon in 1925,” he told me. “There was water. So much water. It was a good place to keep cattle, sheep. Others came from Syria — Chechens, mountain people from the Caucasus. They all settled near the springs.”
He showed me the castle’s dry well — once fed by the oasis, now just a hole in the basalt floor. “All the fish, the birds, the green — it was here,” he said, gesturing at the dusty courtyard. “Now it’s finished.”
The town itself is now a curious place: part military outpost, part refugee host, part conservation hub. It’s still the largest town in Jordan’s east, and home to a massive air base that occasionally sends fighter jets roaring overhead. It also hosted, for a time, one of the world’s largest Syrian refugee camps, just outside town.
Despite its modest size, Azraq is layered with geopolitics. A Roman frontier. An Umayyad staging post. A First World War base of operations for T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt. A Cold War airstrip. A modern security zone. A collapsing ecosystem. It is, in the truest sense, a frontier town.
And yet, there’s something intimate about it. I stayed the night in the Azraq Lodge, a former British military hospital turned guesthouse, now run by the RSCN. The walls are made of dark basalt stone; the décor is modest but warm. The lodge is part of the same conservation effort as the wetland — an attempt to preserve the town’s history while anchoring it to a viable economic and ecological future.
Read more: Winston’s Hiccup: How a Cartographical Mishap Defined the Saudi-Jordanian Border
Walking the Wetland Trail
The walking trail through the wetland is short — about one kilometre — but revealing. Reeds still grow high along the boardwalk. Waterbirds flicker in and out of view. And in the deeper pools, if you’re lucky, you’ll spot the water buffalo — or what remains of a once-thriving population.
At one point, I paused at a bird hide built in the Chechen–Druze architectural style — a subtle tribute to the region’s settlers. From there, I watched a pair of ducks drift lazily through the reeds while fighter jets howled in the sky above.
The wetland is hanging on — but only just. RSCN staff told me that about 1 million cubic metres of water are pumped into the reserve each year from the wider stocks remaining in the Azraq Basin, a vast underground water reservoir which stretches across the border into Syria.
The RSCN’s work at Azraq has been quietly impressive. Since the reserve’s founding in 1978, they’ve developed water management strategies, removed invasive plant species, and begun reintroducing some native fauna, including buffalo and amphibians.
Pumping artificial water into the wetlands is far from ideal, but it’s the only way to preserve habitat while deeper water policy changes are debated. In a good year, the water table is just high enough to support key migratory birds: flamingos, herons, black-winged stilts, hoopoes, grebes, and warblers among them.
The work is enough to sustain some habitat, but not to restore the ecosystem to anything close to its original scale. Illegal wells continue to drain the aquifer. Climate change adds additional pressure. Meanwhile, Jordan — one of the world’s most water-poor countries — faces growing demand from its cities, agriculture, and refugee populations.
Efforts are underway to monitor and better regulate groundwater extraction. There are also talks about increasing wastewater recycling and developing more efficient irrigation. But without serious change, Azraq will remain a museum piece rather than a functioning ecosystem.
Still, it matters. Not just as a habitat or a refuge for birds. But as a reminder of how deeply the land shapes — and is shaped by — the choices we make. Azraq is both a cautionary tale and a quiet act of resistance: against forgetting, against decline, against the idea that deserts can’t sustain life. It’s also a glimpse of the future scarcity of water. As populations boom and reservoirs dwindle, what wars will be fought over cross-border water reserves like the Azraq Basin, in a land divided by old colonial borders?
Read more: The Hejaz Railway: A Plan to Unite the Middle East by Train
How to visit the Azraq Wetland Reserve
Azraq is a 1.5–2 hour drive east of Amman (approx 100 kilometres). I hired a car through Monte Carlo Car Rental, which I picked up on the highway outside the International Airport. I’d recommend taking Highway 40 from Amman, that way you can stop off at the UNESCO World Heritage Listed Desert Castles (which once protected the trade routes from Azraq) en route.
Accommodation is limited, so book in advance. The Azraq Lodge offers historical accommodation, located within a restored British Military Hospital. The lodge is run by the RSCN and supports the wetland conservation work. While you’re in town, visit the wetland reserve and explore the basalt ruins of Azraq Castle, thought to date back to Roman times when this was the empire’s eastern frontier.
Location of Azraq Wetland Reserve:
There you have it. The Azraq Wetland Reserve. Will you visit the dwindling desert oasis in Jordan? Let me know in the comments below.
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