Sahab () is a municipality in

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

located southeast of the capital

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

. It is the only locality in the Sahab District of the Amman Governorate. Modern Sahab began as a

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

-owned plantation village in the late 19th century during Ottoman rule. The plantation was originally worked by Egyptian migrant farmers who purchased and permanently settled the lands in 1894 and developed Sahab into an agricultural estate. Sahab became its own municipality in 1962 and today is a densely populated industrial hub. It is home to the country's largest industrial city, the Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein Industrial Estate, and the largest cemetery in greater Amman, as well as the Caves of Raqeem site mentioned in the

Qur'an The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...

( Surat al-Kahf). The population of Sahab in 2015 was 169,434.

History

Beginning in the 1870s, Egyptian families mostly from the eastern villages of Egypt migrated to Transjordan to avoid corvée labor for the digging of the

Suez Canal The Suez Canal (; , ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, Indo-Mediterranean, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest ...

. Initially they worked as seasonal farmers in the

-owned plantation villages which began springing up in the Balqa (central Transjordan) during this period. Sahab (then known as Sahab wa Salbud) was one of nine tax-paying, Bedouin plantation villages listed in the

kaza A kaza (, "judgment" or "jurisdiction") was an administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire, administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. It is also discussed in English under the names district, subdistrict, and juridical district. Kazas co ...

(district) of

Salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

in an Ottoman administrative document from 1883. The village's owners were the Bedouin of the Shararat tribe, who owed taxes in arrears to the government. Eventually, the Egyptian families permanently settled and intermarried with the local inhabitants. In 1894, three of the Egyptian clans, the Zyoud, Maharmah and Taharwah, purchased the fields around the ''khirba'' (ruined or abandoned village) of Sahab and turned the site into a major farming estate. The population of Sahab was 549 in the 1915 Ottoman census. The clans of Sahab, collectively known as "Masarwat Sahab" (the Egyptians of Sahab), ultimately became fully integrated into Jordanian society and since the 1950s they have gained electoral influence by dint of their numbers. In the 2000s or before, a representative of the community gained a seat in the country's parliament. In 1961 the population of Sahab was 2,580 inhabitants. Sahab had been part of

's city limits but became its own municipality in 1962. It serves as marketplace for the villages in the eastern Amman Governorate. Its population in 1994 was about 20,000, rising to over 43,000 in 2004. In the 2015 census, Sahab had a population over 169,000, of whom 76,000 were Jordanian citizens, 40,000 were Syrian refugees, 20,000 were migrant laborers from Southeast Asia and 15,000 were

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

ian expatriate workers. In 1984 the Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein Industrial Estate (AIE) was established in Sahab. It is the largest

industrial city An industrial city or industrial town is a town or city in which the municipal economy, at least historically, is centered around industry, with important factories or other production facilities in the town. It has been part of most countries' ...

in Jordan, covering 253 hectares, hosting 457 industries and employing 15,675 employees. Sahab contains the largest cemetery in greater Amman. The city has become known in Jordan mainly as an industrial hub, as well as for its overpopulation and pollution, prompting a 2016 initiative by its mayor Abbas Maharmeh, elected in 2013, to beautify and develop the city into a tourist destination. The initiative envisions eleven projects, among which are the transition to solar energy for electricity needs, the establishment of a museum, the creation of green areas, the painting of the city's buildings and the erection of an arabesque gate at the entrance of the town.

References

{{Amman Governorate, sahab 1894 establishments Districts of Amman Egyptian diaspora in the Middle East Populated places in Amman Governorate