Amman: City of Multilayered Refuge

Abstract: Amman has been central to the experience of refugees in the Arab region from late Ottoman times to the present. Employing a method of site biography, this article writes refuge in Amman backward, peeling back the multiple layers of refuge from the newest to the oldest. It starts in the present, in the abandoned houses where Syrian refugees have found refuge in the wake of the Syrian uprising-turned-war. Then it opens onto an older layer, a refugee camp where Palestinian Nakba survivors forged their own refuge. Finally, it uncovers the Ottoman layer beneath the camp, the land grants through which North Caucasian Muslim refugees helped found the city itself. The layered spatial image presented here, which shows different histories coexisting architecturally within a single neighborhood, is an argument for understanding refuge and the city as multitemporal. At stake in putting down in writing ignored temporal sediments is a reclamation of the different hopes and desires that shaped such urban experiences of refuge, inhabitation, and solidarity during times of crisis.