Umm Qais
The ancient city of Gadara
Umm Qais (Arabic: أم قيس, also transliterated as Umm Qays) is a town situated in the extreme north-west of the country, where the borders of Jordan, Israel and Syria meet, perched on a hilltop (378 meters above sea level), overlooking the sea of Tiberias, the Golan heights and the Yarmuk gorge. It is located on the site of the ruined Hellenistic-Roman city of Gadara. (The town was also sometimes called Antiochia or Antiochia Semiramis and Seleucia.) The ancient name, Gadara, seems Semitic and possibly derived from the Hebrew, meaning "fence" or "border". The name Gadara may still heard in 'Jedūr', the name of the ancient rock tombs and sarcophagi east of the present ruins. (These tombs are closed by carved stone doors, and are used as storehouses for grain, and as dwellings. The place is not mentioned till later times.)
The town is situated on a ridge, which falls gently to the east but steeply on its other three sides, so that it was regarded as a of strategic importance, By the third century BC the town was of some cultural importance. It was the birthplace of the slave, Menippos, who became a Cynic philosopher and satirised the follies of mankind in a mixture of prose and verse. His works have not survived, but were imitated by Varro and by Lucian.
The Greek historian Polybius describes Gadara as being in 218 BC the 'strongest of all places in the region'; nevertheless it capitulated shortly afterwards when besieged by the Seleucid king Antiochus III of Syria. The region passed in and out of the control of the Seleucid kings of Syria and the Ptolemies of Egypt. In 167 BC the Jews of Jerusalem rebelled against the Seleucids, and in the ensuing conflict in the region Gadara and other cities suffered severe damage.
The ancient city of Gadara is represented today by the ruins at Umm Qais on the heights south of el-Ḥummeh - the hot springs in the Yarmouk valley and about 6 miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee. It may be taken as certain that the jurisdiction of Gadara, as the chief city in these regions, extended over the country east of the Sea, including the lands of the subordinate town, Gerasa. The figure of a ship frequently appears on its coins: conclusive proof that its territory reached the sea. Josephus also makes reference to the territory of Gadara “which lay on the frontiers of Tiberius and formed the eastern boundary of Galilee,” again placing the region of Gadara along the coast of the Sea of Galilee (Laney 1977: 134). The place might therefore be called with propriety, either “land of the Gadarenes”, with reference to the local center, or “land of the Gerasenes”, with reference to the superior city.
Umm Qais has become a popular tourist attraction, a frequent destination for day trips from the capital, Amman, roughly 110 kilometers (68 mi) , It is popular not only because of the extensive ruins but because its position on a high hill near the northwestern corner of the country allows for panoramic views
According to the Bible, it was at Gadara that Jesus cast demons out of two men into a herd of pigs, and the site was an early Christian place of pilgrimage