Until the early 20th century, Jordan was part of Palestine, most of which is now the State of Israel. The area is home to one of the oldest civilisations in the world - archaelogical finds from the west bank of the Jordan River have been dated at around 9000 BC. From 3000 BC the area was inhabited by the Canaanites and Amorites, and after them the armies of Sargon, king of Sumer and Akkad. Around 1800 BC Abraham led a group of nomads from Mesopotamia and settled in the mountains of Canaan (which roughly corresponds to present-day Israel). By 1023 BC the Israelites had formed a kingdom, led by Saul and then David, who captured Jerusalem and made it his capital. The unstoppable Roman Empire took Israel in 63 BC and placed it under the control of a series of consuls, including Herod the Great and Pontius Pilate. It was at this time that Jesus was believed to have lived and preached in the area. The increasing insanity of the Empire under Caligula prompted a series of Jewish uprisings, which lasted for years but were finally crushed when Jerusalem was razed and the province of Palestine decreed. This defeat marked the end of the Jewish state and the beginning of the Diaspora, the scattering of the Jewish people.

In 331 AD Emperor Constantine became a Christian and gave his official stamp of approval to the previously illegal religion. Suddenly everyone wanted to know about the Holy Land, and a rash of buildings, including the churches of the Holy Sepulchre and the Nativity, sprang up all over Palestine to mark sites of religious importance. But Christianity's hold over the country was not to last long - in 638 AD Jerusalem fell to Caliph Omar and was declared a Holy City of Islam, on the grounds that the Prophet Mohammed had ascended to heaven from atop the Temple Mount. Christians around the world raised their hackles at this desecration, and by 1099 they'd scrounged together a crusading army and occupied Jerusalem, murdering everyone they could get their hands on and beginning nearly 100 years of Christian rule. But by 1187 the Muslims again had the upper hand - after decades of Christian/Muslim scuffling, the Islamic Mamluks knocked over the last Crusader stronghold in 1291.

The next 500 years were some of the quietest Palestine has seen. Empires rose and fell, and control of the country changed hands with monotonous regularity, eventually coming to rest in the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Much of desert Jordan sidestepped all this change and remained a Bedouin stronghold.