Travel Guide Qasr Al-Kharranah

In the middle of a plain, 20 kilometers after Qusayr Amra, stands Qasr al-Kharranah, the most massive and also the best preserved of all these desert castles. It closes the loop of the Desert Castles Route and you are not far from Amman. The Umayyads were responsible for its construction: graffiti in kufic characters on one of the doors on the upper floor dates the building of this castle to around 710. Greek inscriptions found around the site indicate, moreover, that the place was already occupied by Roman or Byzantine armies.However, the opinions of researchers concerning its role are quite divergent. Given its massive appearance and the limited number of openings, one can assume that it was a fortress with a defensive purpose. However, archaeologists do not entirely agree and claim that the towers surrounding the building are not strong enough and that their foundations are not deep enough. Moreover, the fortress has no cistern or water pipe, which proves that it could not have been continuously occupied. Others argue that it was a khan (caravanserai), where merchants and their mounts stopped, but the site is not on any trade route. The final hypothesis is that the castle was a meeting place for the Bedouin chiefs of the region and the Umayyad rulers.