Ethnic groups
The overwhelming majority of the people are Arabs, principally Jordanians and Palestinians; there is also a significant minority of Bedouin, who were by far the largest indigenous group before the influx of Palestinians following the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948–49 and 1967. Jordanians of Bedouin heritage remain committed to the Hashimite regime, which has ruled the country since 1923, despite having become a minority there. Although the Palestinian population is often critical of the monarchy, Jordan is the only Arab country to grant wide-scale citizenship to Palestinian refugees. Other minorities include a number of Iraqis who fled to Jordan as a result of the Persian Gulf War and Iraq War. There are also smaller Circassian (known locally as Cherkess or Jarkas) and Armenian communities. A small number of Turkmen (who speak either an ancient form of the Turkmen language or the Azeri language) also reside in Jordan.
The indigenous Arabs, whether Muslim or Christian, used to trace their ancestry from the northern Arabian Qaysi (Ma'ddi, Nizari, 'Adnani, or Isma'ili) tribes or from the southern Arabian Yamani (Banu Kalb or Qahtani) groups. Only a few tribes and towns have continued to observe this Qaysi-Yamani division—a pre-Islamic split that was once an important, although broad, source of social identity as well as a point of social friction and conflict.
Languages
Nearly all the people speak Arabic, the country's official language. There are various dialects spoken, with local inflections and accents, but these are mutually intelligible and similar to the type of Levantine Arabic spoken in parts of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. There is, as in all parts of the Arab world, a significant difference between the written language—known as Modern Standard Arabic—and the colloquial, spoken form. The former is similar to Classical Arabic and is taught in school. Most Circassians have adopted Arabic in daily life, though some continue to speak Adyghe (one of the Caucasian languages). Armenian is also spoken in pockets, but bilingualism or outright assimilation to the Arabic language is common among all minorities.
Religion
Virtually the entire population is Sunni Muslim; Christians constitute most of the rest, of whom two-thirds adhere to the Greek Orthodox church. Other Christian groups include the Greek Catholics, also called the Melchites, or Catholics of the Byzantine rite, who recognize the supremacy of the Roman pope; the Roman Catholic community, headed by a pope-appointed patriarch; and the small Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, or Syrian Jacobite Church, whose members use Syriac in their liturgy. Most non-Arab Christians are Armenians, and the majority belong to the Gregorian, or Armenian, Orthodox church, while the rest attend the Armenian Catholic Church. There are several Protestant denominations representing communities whose converts came almost entirely from other Christian sects.
The Druz, an offshoot of the Ismaili Shite sect, number a few hundred and reside in and around Amman. About 1,000 Baha'i—who in the 19th century also split off from Shi'ite Islam—live in Al-Adasiyyah in the Jordan Valley. The Armenians, Druz, and Bahai are both religious and ethnic communities. The Circassians are mostly Sunni, and they, along with the closely related Chechens group, numbering about 1,000, who are descendants of 19th-century immigrants from the Caucasus Mountains—make up the most important non-Arab minority.
