GRIP, Internships Abroad Philadelphia - The City of Brotherly Love

Liwwa - Amman, Jordan

The old ruins of the citadel watch over the city from Jabal Al-Qaela, the highest hill in Amman. Its fortified walls look over the city's inhabitants and the half-toppled columns of the Temple of Hercules still loom of over all those who come to visit the citadel. The magnificence of the ruins mesmerizes all those who come to see the remains of the great empires that left their mark on this ancient city: The Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Umayyads. But what captures my curiosity are the three towering headstones at the entrance of the citadel giving us snippets of the city's history, particularly what the city was called in each period of its occupation. And the center headstone in all its glory, proclaims the name of 'Philadelphia'.

My initial glance at the headstones had left me confused--why was Philly here halfway across the world? As it turns out, Plotemey II Philadelphus had the honor of being the first individual to name a city Philadelphia when he first came to rebuild this beautiful city (then called Rabbathh- Ammon) sometime around 300BC.

Philadelphia: "The city of brotherly love", an apt moniker for a city that now is now host to people from several different countries and nationalities, people who have been allowed to make this city and this country their home after having to either flee from civil unrest in surrounding regions or otherwise. To walk downtown in Amman from the citadel to the souks (markets) is to experience the entire Arab world on one street, smelling the aromatic coffee from Turkey, tasting the salty tangy olives from Syria, and indulging in delicious dates from Saudi Arab and salty pistachios from Iran, although my roommate and I have developed a very strong affinity for local Jordanian cherries. This city is just as metropolitan as the Philly back home.

Unfortunately, the capture of the city by Umayyads resulted in the renaming of the city to Amman, which is what it is still called today but institutions like Philadelphia University keep its past reign as Philadelphia alive in the minds of all of its occupants. So even though I may be thousands of miles away from Penn, it still feels as if I am back home in Philly.