A stone village on the edge of Jordan's largest nature reserve — Nabataean trade routes, wolf and sand cat territory, and the most dramatic valley view in the Levant
Dana is a stone village perched at the rim of the Wadi Dana, a canyon that drops 1,500 vertical metres from the Dana Biosphere Reserve's juniper forest plateau to the Wadi Araba (the extension of the Rift Valley) in a landscape of red sandstone, white limestone, and black granite. The Dana Biosphere Reserve — managed by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature — is Jordan's largest protected area and home to 38 species of mammals including wolves, hyenas, sand cats, and caracals, plus over 200 bird species on the East African-West Asian migration route. The village of Dana itself, aba…
The Dana area contains evidence of continuous human occupation spanning 6,000 years — Copper Age mines, Bronze Age settlements, Nabataean caravan routes, Byzantine churches, and early Islamic mining operations all survive in the canyon walls and plateaus. The copper mines at Feynan (Khirbet Fidan) were among the most productive in the ancient Near East from about 4500 BCE, supplying copper to Egypt and the wider Mediterranean world in periods predating the Exodus narrative. The modern conservation model at Dana has been internationally recognised as one of the best examples of community-based…