Wadi Rum, also called the Valley of the Moon, is a desert area in southern Jordan, close to the border with Saudi Arabia. It is about 60 kilometers northeast of the port city of Aqaba and about 290 kilometers south of Amman. It is known for its red sandstone mountains, natural arches, and narrow gorges. In 2011, UNESCO made the Wadi Rum Protected Area a World Heritage Site for both its nature and its culture.
The protected area is 74,200 hectares. It is about 42 kilometers long from north to south and about 33 kilometers wide from east to west. Wadi Rum is a major part of the Hisma desert. Its landforms were made in sandstone over millions of years by movements of the earth's crust, by weathering, and by erosion. It has the world's most spectacular networks of honeycomb weathering. These are patterns of small holes in the rock that are made by weathering and salt. Wadi Rum became famous partly because of the writings of the British officer T. E. Lawrence.
The area has 183 kinds of plants, 26 kinds of mammals, 34 kinds of reptiles, and 119 kinds of birds. Two of the plants live only in Jordan. Juniper trees grow high in the mountains, which are more than 1,700 meters above sea level. The Arabian oryx died out in Jordan because of hunting, and it is now being brought back. The Nubian ibex was close to dying out in Jordan, but programs to protect it and to breed it have saved it.
Wadi Rum has about 25,000 petroglyphs, which are pictures cut into rock, and about 20,000 inscriptions. They show human life over at least 12,000 years. The petroglyphs show people and animals, and they are cut into boulders, stones, and cliffs. The inscriptions are in four North Arabian scripts. UNESCO says that they show how early alphabets began and that many people in the herding societies of the Arabian Peninsula could read and write.
Experts have found 154 archaeological sites in the area, from the Neolithic to later times. Many of them are from the Nabataeans. One of them is a Nabataean temple near Rum village. Some inscriptions near the temple honor the goddess Allat, who was worshipped before Islam.
Six main Bedouin tribes live in Wadi Rum. They keep their traditional herding culture, including their knowledge of plants and animals, camel care, and tent-making. Their stories, poems, and songs are passed on by speaking, not by writing. Most local people in Rum village work for the protected area or earn money from tourism.
Wadi Rum became a protected area in 1997. It is part of the Aqaba Special Economic Zone, and management moved to the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority in 2003. The area has special rules that are the strongest protection of any protected area in Jordan.
In 2025, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) rated the outlook for Wadi Rum as good with some concerns. It said that tourism is the biggest threat. Desert camps grew very quickly between 2010 and 2023, and many drivers leave the roads and damage the plants. In 2019, there were more than 600,000 visitors, and an estimated 400 camps had no license. A count in December 2023 found 229 active desert camps.
Other problems are the growth of Rum village, rubbish and waste water, and camels that eat too many plants. Rock art has been damaged by graffiti, and bullet marks were found in 2018. Jordan has been preparing a new management plan for 2025 to 2030. Seven illegal camps were taken down in 2023.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)