Umm el-Jimal is a large village located in northern Jordan less than 10 km (6.2 mi) from the Syrian border.

The village of Umm el-Jimal originated in the 1st century CE as a rural suburb of the ancient Nabataean capital of Bostra.

Upon the foundation of Provincia Arabia in 106, the Romans took over the village as Emperor Trajan incorporated the surrounding lands into the empire.

After the Rebellion of Queen Zenobia in 275, Roman countermeasures included the construction of a fort (Tetrarchic castellum) that housed a military garrison.

During the 5th and 6th centuries, Umm el-Jimal prospered as a farming and trading town in which the population jumped to an estimated 4,000–6,000 people.

However, after the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, the village population diminished even though building projects and renovations continued to take place.

The village remained uninhabited for nearly eleven hundred years until the modern community developed in the twentieth century.

Little is known of pre-historical times in Umm el-Jimal, aside from the few scattered remains of what appear to be settlements of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes.

The settlement was mainly a farming community and a trading outpost dependent on Bostra, the nearby capital of the Nabataeans.

The Romans named the newly acquired territory Provincia Arabia and promptly set up local governments.

Due to its location on the fringe of the Empire, Umm el-Jimal became a military outpost complete with a garrison and a new Tetrarchic-era fort.

As the local population gradually converted to Christianity the town reemerged as a prosperous agricultural and trading community.

Despite all of this, the population decreased and the site was slowly abandoned with the help of an earthquake in circa 749 that destroyed many buildings and set much of the architecture off balance.

Such incongruous buildings, in what was then and now a desert cockpit, accused their builders of insensitiveness; almost of a vulgar assertion of man's right (Roman right) to live unchanged in all his estate.

Both the Nabataean and Greek versions of his name can be seen inscribed on the die (middle section) of an altar, found in the western area of the ruins.

The doctrinal shift in clergy-laity (parishioner) relations is represented by the addition of altar screens in the front of the churches and narthexes to their entries.

The inscriptions give the impression that these successful residents relied for protection more directly on God, to whom they felt close, rather than on an emperor who seemed so far away.

Whether this is the case or not, it is more evident that two houses were converted to mosques with typically Umayyad plans and a small tower on the exterior of its west face indicating the presence of a minaret.

It is unknown as to why, but it was most likely due to the same reasons that the greater population of the wider region of Syria decreased; i.e., plague, drought, earthquakes, etc.

Aside from these basic numbers, the general range of poor to wealthy households is largely unknown for most of the different eras of occupation.

Howard Crosby Butler led the Princeton Expedition and his papers (PES II: 151) contain a more exhaustive account of those who came to Umm el-Jimal between 1818 and 1905.

G. Corbett came to Umm el-Jimal in 1956 to study the Julianos Church and much of his work corrected the mistakes made by Butler.

[7] A significant component of this effort is the development of a virtual museum with site tours, a compilation of the research and publications, and presentation of the heritage of the modern community and its relationship to the antiquities.

"The looters are looking not only for gold but for ceramics, glassware, lamps, masonry and bits of jewelry, all of which quickly find their way into the global antiquities trade.