Madaba - City of Jordan

Madaba, is the capital city of Madaba Governorate of Jordan. Madaba is the fifth most populous town in Jordan. It is best known for its Byzantine and Umayyad mosaics, especially a large Byzantine-era mosaic map of Palestine and the Nile delta. Madaba is located 30 miles south-west of the capital Amman

Madaba has a very long history stretching from the Neolithic period. The town of Madaba was once a Moabite border city, mentioned in the Bible in Numbers 21:30 and Joshua 13:9. Madaba dates from the Middle Bronze Age.

During its rule by the Roman and Byzantine Empires from the second to the seventh centuries AD, the city formed part of the Provincia Arabia set up by the Roman Emperor Trajan to replace the Nabataean kingdom of Petra. During the rule of the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate, it was part of the southern Jund Filastin.

The first witness of a Christian community in the city, with its own bishop, is found in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, wherein Constantine, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bostra signed on behalf of Gaiano, "Bishop of the Medabeni."

The resettlement of the city ruins by 90 Arab Christian families from Kerak, in the south, led by two Italian priests from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem in 1880, saw the start of archaeological research. This in turn substantially supplemented the scant documentation available

Close to the Church of the Virgin is the Mosaic School of Madaba, which operates under the patronage of the Ministry of Tourism. The only project of its kind in the Middle East, the School trains artisans in the art of making, repairing and restoring mosaics.

The University of Toronto has been excavating in Madaba from 1996 until the present. Their efforts have focused on the west acropolis where an open field allowed access to uncover the entire sequence of occupation at Madaba from the modern period down to the Early Bronze Age. The most significant feature of this area is a 7.5 meter wide fortification wall built sometime in the 9th C. BCE, with subsequent rebuilds throughout its history.