Um-El Jimal (Gem of the black desert)

This curious place has extensive ruins of a roman – byzantine – Umayyad town built on an earlier Nabataean settlement and constructed entirely of black and steel gray basalt. It Flourished as a frontier city of the roman and byzantine empires and continued to prosper in the Umayyad period. It was destroyed by earthquake at the end of the Umayyad period.