Wadi Rum
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Interesting facts
- Wadi Rum has stood in for several fictional worlds: Jedha in Rogue One, Pasaana in The Rise of Skywalker and Arrakis in Dune.
- The valley's name is traditionally linked to Iram of the Pillars, a lost city mentioned in the Quran.
- The massif now called the Seven Pillars of Wisdom was known before the 1980s as Jabal al-Mazmar, the Mountain of the Plague.
- From the summit of Jabal Umm ad Dami, Jordan's highest peak at about 1,850 metres, the Red Sea can be seen on a clear day.
- Jabal Rum and Jabal Umm Ishrin, facing each other across the valley, are so close in height that they may differ by only about a metre.
- The first recorded European ascent of Jabal Rum was made in November 1952 by two women, Charmian Longstaff and Sylvia Branford, guided by Sheikh Hamdan.
- Where the porous sandstone meets the older rock beneath, an aquifer forms, feeding springs on the eastern slopes of the mountains.
- The Nabataean temple near Rum village was discovered in 1933, but French archaeologists did not complete its excavation until 1997.
- Modern rock climbing here began in 1984, when English climbers started repeating the old Bedouin routes, many with local guides.
Why it is worth it
Wadi Rum is a desert valley in the far south of Jordan, east of Aqaba near the Saudi border, where sheer mountains of sandstone and granite rise out of flat floors of red and apricot sand. Covering about 720 square kilometres, it is the largest wadi in the country. The mountains are made of iron-rich sandstone laid down on ancient granite, and wind and water have carved them into domes, fins, natural arches and narrow canyons; sand dunes climb their flanks to the ridges. The highest peak in Jordan, Jabal Umm ad Dami, lies within reach to the south, and Jabal Rum rises straight above the valley village.
People have passed through here for thousands of years, and they have left their mark on the rock. Petroglyphs of hunters and antelope, inscriptions in the scripts of ancient Arabia, and a small Nabataean temple excavated near Rum village all testify to an old route between Arabia and the Levant. In 2025 a hieroglyphic inscription bearing the cartouches of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III was announced, the first royal inscription of its kind found in Wadi Rum. At the spring of Ain Shalaaleh, water still drips from a crevice beneath Nabataean carvings.
T. E. Lawrence rode through Wadi Rum several times during the Arab Revolt of 1917–18 and described its cliffs as a processional way greater than imagination; one massif was later named the Seven Pillars of Wisdom after his book, though it has no real link to the title. The 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia made the valley famous, and its Mars-like colours have since drawn many other productions, including The Martian. The protected area has been a World Heritage Site since 2011, and it is looked after largely by the Zalabia Bedouin, who guide visitors by jeep and camel, run desert camps, and have climbed these mountains by their own routes for generations.
Getting there
Wadi Rum lies about 40 km in a straight line from Aqaba; King Hussein International Airport (AQJ) at Aqaba is roughly 39 km away. Tours into the protected area start from Rum village, where local Bedouin guides and 4x4 transport are based.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Wadi Rum (Arabic: وادي رم Wādī Ramm, also Wādī al-Ramm, known also as the Valley of the Moon or Red mountains, is a valley cut into the sandstone and granite rock in southern Jordan, near the border with Saudi Arabia and about 60 km to the east of the city of Aqaba. With an area of 720 km2 it is the largest wadi in Jordan.
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