On the outskirts of the city today, Ain Ghazal has provided archaeologists with the earliest confirmation of human habitation in the area, a civilisation that is though to have been very well developed and even indulged in art and other leisure pursuits. By the 13th century BC Amman, or Rabbat Amon as it was then known, entered a period of repeated invasions starting with the Assyrians, then the Persians closely followed by the Greeks. During the Roman period Amman flourished. It was immediately made part of the Decapolis, a series of ten of the leading Middle Eastern cities controlled by Rome, and prospered from increased trade as the population grew and buildings were constructed, including the theatre. By the beginning of the fourth century, Christianity had taken over this part of the world as it entered the Byzantine era, a legacy still in evidence today in Amman in the small church beside the citadel. Amman then entered a swift downturn suffering a series of natural disasters that reduced the city to rubble as it turned into a once mighty Roman city into little more than an anonymous village. Not until 1887 was it revived courtesy of the Circassians who were expelled from the southern satellite states of Russia around Abhkazia after challenging Russian imperial rule. In 1921, Amman became the capital of Transjordan under King Abdullah I and later the fully-ledged Hashemite State of Jordan soon after WWII. Immediately the city became flooded with Palestinian refugees fleeing the new state of Israel in 1948. The new country of Jordan with Amman as its capital then found itself at the centre of the Middle Eastern crisis that ensued as the region descended into war on numerous occasions, firstly over the Suez Canal and later over Jerusalem and other territories in and around Israel. By the mid-1990s though Jordan had managed to navigate the political minefield that meant keeping Israel, the other Arab states and the West happy by signing a number of agreements that eased the pressure and helped turn Amman and Jordan into one of the most stable areas of the Middle East. | 
