Ghor es-Safi
Ghor es-Safi, also transliterated Ghawr as-Safi, is an area in the Jordan valley located in the Wadi al-Hasa. It is situated between the governorates of Karak and Tafilah, near the southern Dead Sea. The location is depicted on the 6th-century Madaba map as "Zoara."
Ghor as-Safi is perhaps best known for its historical sugar cane factories from the 11th century.
Archaeology
Many excavations were facilitated by the Hellenic Society for Near Eastern Studies and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan since the 1990s, and Dr. Konstantinos D. Politis directed most of these archaeological projects. Archaeological work was ongoing as of at least 2017.Archaeological investigation at Tawahin es-Sukkar and other sites in the area suggest "a population with a Nabataean character living on the south-eastern shores of the Dead Sea from the 1st-6th centuries A.D." Finds at the site suggest presence of human settlement for several different historical eras: 8th to 9th, 12th to 14th, 15th to 16th, and 20th centuries.
Tawahin es-Sukkar sugar cane factory
Efforts were mostly focused on learning about a sugar factory located at sub-site Tawahin as-Sukkar.Locally produced sugar would have been sold as an export throughout the world; sugar is considered by some scholars to have been the "cash crop" of the southern Levant during the medieval period.
There is both an eastern and western pressing room which helped archaeologists understand the settlement and agricultural patterns at the site since 12,000 years ago. The pressing rooms are accompanied by a penstock used for irrigation and water resource management. It is believed that a building nearby to the pressing rooms was used to boil the raw sugar cane in order to make refined sugar, based on sugar fragment evidence displayed at the site. Sugar and molasses pots were among the materials recovered during excavations.
Lot's Cave
Also near this location is Deir 'Ain 'Abata / Saint Lot's Cave, with the excavated ruins of the Byzantine Monastery of St Lot. The monastery consists of a triple-apsed basilical church, flanked by a large seven-metre deep arched reservoir to the south and a refectory and hostel to the north. Several hermit cells are found above and to the south of the monastery.The site has evidence of a fourth-century AD origin as a Christian place of pilgrimage, with Nabataean and Roman pottery suggesting earlier occupation. Early and Middle Bronze Age finds may indicate the site was considered sacred by later inhabitants. However, the sanctuary itself was constructed by April 606, as indicated by a Greek mosaic floor inscription, with a renovation dated Xanthikos 691. The place was visited by St. Stephen from Mar Saba Monastery in the late eighth century and by the Russian Abbot Daniel in 1106–1107. The final period of occupation is dated to the late eighth–early ninth century, evidenced by Abbasid-period pottery, glass, and inscriptions.