Umm Qais Workshops: Cook, Weave, Keep Bees
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It would be easy to assume a village of roughly 6,000 people with no craft district has nothing hands-on to offer. That assumption is wrong here: Umm Qais earned a UNWTO Best Tourism Village recognition in December 2022 specifically for a community tourism model built around exactly these workshops, run out of homes rather than storefronts.
Learn to build a Makmoura
Galsoum Al-Sayyah runs a 3-to-4-hour cooking class from her home kitchen: rolling paper-thin pastry dough by hand, braising chicken with caramelized onion and cumin, and layering it all in a heavy pan before baking. Guests sit down afterward to eat what they made. Browse the traditional cooking class with local women on GetYourGuide to see how a booked session runs, or arrange Galsoum’s class directly through Baraka Destinations .
Weave, then keep the basket
Um Mustafa’s 2-hour basket weaving session teaches the regional craft of preparing dried banana fiber and river reeds and weaving them into a circular bread basket or wall tray. It is a genuinely vanishing skill outside a handful of northern villages, not a tourist simplification of one.
Suit up for the hives
Yousef Al-Sayyah’s 1.5-to-2-hour beekeeping session covers hive frames, queen identification, and honey extraction, ending with a side-by-side tasting of spring wildflower honey against autumn oak and thistle honey. Full protective gear is provided.
Tassel a keffiyeh the traditional way
Local village women teach Tahdeeb, the fine hand-knotting technique used to finish the white silk tassels on Jordan’s red-and-white shemagh. It is slower and more intricate than it looks from across the room, and worth the hour it takes to get even one corner right.
Autumn brings the olive press
In late October and November, visitors can join the olive harvest, hand-picking fruit from centuries-old trees and following it to the village press to watch cold-pressed extra virgin oil come out the other end, with tastings comparing local Nabali and Rasie varietals. This one is seasonal only; outside harvest season, the press itself is not the draw.
The border, briefly
The road up passes routine military checkpoints, since Umm Qais sits under 2 kilometers from the Syrian and Golan Heights frontiers. The site itself is explicitly excepted from the wider US and Canadian border-proximity travel restriction and functions as a normal, visited destination, an exception that covers the village and ruins, not any unofficial ground nearer the fence.
Booking and money basics
Workshops are cash businesses almost without exception; the nearest reliable ATM is back in Irbid, so withdraw what you need before driving north. Browse the wider list of Umm Qais activities on GetYourGuide if you want to see what else is bookable around a workshop day. None of this is covered by the Jordan Pass , which handles Gadara’s admission fee and the Beit Rousan Museum but not the village experiences layered on top. If you want to see the wider ruins the same day, our group activities guide covers pairing a workshop with the Makmoura feast for a party of several people, and our family activities guide covers child-sized versions of the beekeeping and weaving sessions. For dinner afterward, Romero Umm Qais Resthouse sits a short walk from most of the workshop hosts.
Book at least a day ahead through Baraka Destinations rather than showing up at a host’s door. These are working households, not open-hours storefronts, and an unannounced visit can simply find nobody home.