The the Jordan is a river of the the Middle East, which gave its name to the Jordan and the the West Bank. Mount Hermon with the Dead Sea, the Jordan runs out on 360 km and its valley is lowest of the world since it joined the Dead Sea with the altitude of 392 m under the level of the oceans.

Geography

Born in the Lebanese mountains from the Hermon, it crosses the lakes Houlé and of Tibériade then throws in the Dead Sea. Its course follows an almost rectilinear North-South direction, corresponding to the depression of Ghor. Little before its mouth, it sprinkles the town of Jericho. It is the only notable river of this area. Since 1948, it is used as border between Israel and the Jordan. The Jordan is 320 km long.

Its principal affluent, the Yarmuk , separates the Syria from the Jordan.

In the Bible

In the Hebraic Bible, the Jordan delimits the entry of the Pays of Canaan and for this reason plays an important symbolic system part before and after the entry of the Enfants of Israel out of Promised land. In the Book of the Numbers, it is several times associated with the plain with Moab and with Jericho, for example in Nb 33,48 to 51 it makes:

Left the Avarim mounts, they (Children of Israel) camped in the plain of Moab, at the edge of the the Jordan , with the height of Jericho. They camped at the edge of the the Jordan since Beth-Yeshimoth until Avel-Shittim, in the plain of Moab. The Lord called to Moïse in the plain of Moab, at the edge of the the Jordan with the height of Jericho: “Speaks with wire about Israel and say to them: when you pass the the Jordan to enter the country of Canaan (...)

In the New Testament, it is in its water that Saint Jean Baptiste manages the Baptême with the Christ. The Evangiles according to Midsummer's Day indicate: " That occurred to Béthanie, beyond the Jordan where Jean baptisait."

Place of pilgrimage for the Christian , it was in the time of the Croisades (XIIe and XIIe century), kept by the knights of the Ordre of the Temple.

Archeology

In 2000, Jordanian archeologists could locate the probable place of the baptism of Christ. They updated the vestiges of three churches. One of them comprised a staircase which went down in water.

Installations

The water of the river is used in particular for the irrigation of the Negev. A stopping was established downstream from the Lake Tibériade, which feeds a powerplant and controls the course of the river. The use increasingly larger of the water of the river at ends of irrigation is at the origin of a major reduction in its flow, reduction which is one of the main causes of the reduction of the surface of the Dead Sea, which lost nearly the third of its surface during the 50 last years.

The continuation of this reduction poses a main risk, as well ecological as geostrategic, in an area with the already agitated history.

Internal bond

External bonds

  • water and international law: selective bibliography See the Jordan (river); Israeli-Arab conflicts . Library of the Palate of Peace

Simple: Jordan To rivet

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