Jordan
- Capital:
- Amman
- Continent:
- Asia
- Region(s):
- Western Asia, The Middle East
- Abbreviation:
- JOR
* As of 6/9/2025
1 birth
Every 2.3 minutes
1 death
Every 14.3 minutes
1 emigrant
Every 1.7 minutes
1 person
Every 4.9 minutes
Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is an Arab kingdom in the Middle East bordered by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, and Palestine. This desert country came into existence after WWII when West Asia was divided and it gained independence in 1946. In its early history, the area was inhabited by many Semitic Canaanite-speaking kingdoms and it has been controlled by many empires, including the Akkadian Empire, Ancient Egypt, the Hittite Empire and Israelites.
In 2007, there were up to 1 million Iraqis in the country. Since the Iraq War, many Iraqi Christians have moved to Jordan and number up to 500,000. There are also about 500,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. In 2008, Jordan was home to 1.95 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom were Jordanian citizens. Jordan later revoked the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians to keep them from resettling West Bank residents.
It’s estimated that there are 1.2 million illegal migrant workers and 500,000 legal migrant workers in Jordan, and thousands of foreign women come to work in the nightclubs and hotels.
Muslims account for 82% of Jordan’s population, 93% of which are Sunni Muslims. This is the highest percentage of Sunni Muslims in the world. There is a Christian minority of about 6%.
The economy in Jordan is pretty well split up between different industries, with trade and finance accounting for 1/3 of the nation’s GDP, private enterprise and government spending making up 1/4, and both transportation, communication, public utilities, and construction as well as mining and manufacturing both accounting for roughly 1/5 of the GDP. Despite all of these relatively strong industries, Jordan has long struggled with recession, debt, and unemployment and relies heavily upon foreign aid, which is largely due to the presence of larges numbers of refugees in the country. The land is nearly all useless as far as growing agriculture, and Jordan has to import more all of their food. Water supply is also an issue in the region.
Jordan’s government operates as a parliamentary monarchy, where the prime minister is in charge of the government as well as the multi-party system. There is also a king in place, who can exercise his power through his appointments. The government has been under the process of decentralization under King Abdullah II, who succeeded his father in 1999, where the country will be divided into three regions: North, Central, and South; each of which will have its council to deal with their individual political, social, legal and economic issues.
Jordan wasn’t recognized as an independent country by The United Nations until 1946, and as such does not have much for a lengthy population history. Shortly after in 1948 thousands of Palestinian refugees came to the country when Israel created a British-mandate in Palestine. More refugees came to Jordan suddenly in 1967 when Israel took control of Jerusalem and West Bank during the Six-Day War.
Jordan signed a peace deal with Israel, ending a 46-year-old war with them, in 1994 and the population spiked during this time. In the early 2000s, Al-Queda exerted itself over the area planting explosives in cars and firing missiles at other countries from within Jordan.