[1] The Decapolis was a center of Hellenistic and Roman culture in a region which was otherwise populated by Jews, Arab Nabataeans and Arameans.

[2] The cities formed a group because of their language, culture, religion, location, and political status, with each functioning as an autonomous city-state dependent on Rome.

The Decapolis region is located in modern-day Jordan (Philadelphia, Gerasa, Pella and Gadara), Israel (Scythopolis and Hippos) and Syria (Raphana, Dion, Canatha and Damascus).

When Pompey reorganized the region, he awarded a group of these cities with autonomy under Roman protection; this was the origin of the Decapolis.

The imperial cult, the worship of the Roman emperor, was a very common practice throughout the Decapolis and was one of the features that linked the cities.

The Decapolis was probably never an official political or economic union; most likely it signified the collection of city-states which enjoyed special autonomy during early Roman rule.

[11][12] The New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention that the Decapolis region was a location of the ministry of Jesus.

Mark 5:1-10 emphasizes the Decapolis' gentile character when Jesus encounters a herd of pigs, an animal forbidden by Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws.

[13] The Decapolis came under direct Roman rule in AD 106, when Arabia Petraea was annexed during the reign of the emperor Trajan.

[9] In the later Roman Empire, they were divided between Arabia and Palaestina Secunda, of which Scythopolis served as the provincial capital; while Damascus became part of Phoenice Libanensis.

Pella was a base for some of the earliest church leaders (Eusebius reports that the apostles fled there to escape the First Jewish–Roman War).

Some were abandoned in the years following Palestine's conquest by the Rashidun Caliphate in 641, but other cities continued to be inhabited long into the Islamic period.

Jerash (Gerasa) and Bet She'an (Scythopolis) survive as towns today, after periods of abandonment or serious decline.