The castles of Kharrana, Quseir Amra and Azraq sit in the vastness of Jordan'’s Eastern Black Desert off the main highway from Amman to Azraq. The Romans had built desert outposts across Jordan, and while many fell into ruin, some were restored by the Umayyad rulers in the 8th century.
These are not castles in the traditional European sense, but meeting places and trading posts where the Umayyads could make contact with the local Bedouin tribes on neutral ground. Quseir Amra was a bath house fed by the waters of a nearby spring, and the interior is decorated with magnificent frescoes which somehow survived an edict by Caliph Yazid in Damascus to have them destroyed 1300 years ago. Kharrana certainly looks like a castle, with towers and a large entrance, but the interior is surprisingly small given the imposing facade. Several rooms have retained their original decoration, with Kufic inscriptions still visible.
Further to the east lies Azraq castle, constructed of black basalt - the front door is a single basalt slab weighing 3 tons, and when Lawrence of Arabia used the castle as a base during the years of the Arab Revolt, he recalled it shaking the whole of the western wall of the building when it was closed.
Within the Eastern Black Desert lies the oasis of Azaraq Wetlands Reserve and the desert wildlife of Shawmari National Park which can easily be combined with a visit to the castles of the region.
