Amman

is the capital and largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of 4 million as of 2021, Amman is the largest city in the Levant region, the fifth-largest city in the Arab world, and the ninth largest metropolitan area in the Middle East. The earliest evidence of settlement in Amman dates to the 8th millennium BC, in a Neolithic site known as 'Ain Ghazal, where the world's oldest statues of the human form have been unearthed. During the Iron Age, the city was known as Rabbath Ammon and served as the capital of the Ammonite Kingdom. In the 3rd century BC, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, rebuilt the city and renamed it "Philadelphia", making it a regional center of Hellenistic culture. Under Roman rule, Philadelphia was one of the ten Greco-Roman cities of the Decapolis before being directly ruled as part of Arabia Petraea province. The Rashidun Caliphate conquered the city from the Byzantines in the 7th century AD, restored its ancient Semitic name and called it Amman. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, the city alternated between periods of devastation and abandonment and periods of relative prosperity as the center of the Balqa region. Amman was largely abandoned from the 15th century until 1878, when Ottoman authorities began settling Circassians there.