Jordan is a country in Western Asia that is officially known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. On the East Bank of the Jordan River, it is at the intersection of Asia, Africa, and Europe in the Levant region. Jordan is bordered on the south and east by Saudi Arabia, on the northeast by Iraq, on the north by Syria, and on the west by the Palestinian West Bank, Israel, and the Dead Sea. Jordan and Egypt are separated by a 26-kilometer (16-mile) coastline in its southwest on the Red Sea of the Gulf of Aqaba. Amman is Jordan's economic, political, and cultural center, as well as its capital and largest city.
Since the Paleolithic era, humans have lived in Jordan today. At the end of the Bronze Age, there were three stable kingdoms there: Edom, Moab, and Ammon The Arab Nabataeans established their kingdom with Petra as its capital in the third century BC. The Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, Byzantine, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abassid, and Ottoman empires were all later rulers of the Transjordan region. Britain and France divided the Greater Syria region during World War I following the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in 1916. In 1921, Hashemite Abdullah I established the Emirate of Transjordan, which later became a British protectorate. Jordan gained independence in 1946 and became known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Arabic. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the nation annexed the West Bank before handing it over to Israel in 1967. Jordan became the second Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 after it renounced its claim to the territory in 1988.