Umm el-Jimal is an extensive rural settlement constructed of black basalt in the lava lands east of Mafraq, a seventy-minute drive northeast of Amman, Jordan. What survives above ground is an amazingly preserved Byzantine/Early Islamic town nearly a kilometer long and a half kilometer wide, with over a hundred and fifty buildings standing one to three stories above ground, with several towers up to five and six stories. As one approaches, the stark skyline of somber stone at first gives the impression of a war-torn modern town. Only close up does it become apparent that this is not a modern war casualty, but a complex of fifteen hundred year old ruins.

-- excerpted from "Umm el-Jimal." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East. Eric Myers, ed. Oxford University Press. 1997. Pg 276.