Gadara (Hebrew גדרה‎, gad´a-ra or גדר‎, ga-der; Greek Γαδαρα; Arabic أم قيس‎, Umm Qais) is an ancient fortified city in Eastern Palestine, now the hill of Umm-Qais (Mukes) in Jordan.

History
In the III century BC. e. Greeks and local residents, Hellenized during the reign of the Seleucids, settled here. About 100 BC. e. the tyrants Zeno and his son Theodore are known here. In 93 BC. e. the city was conquered by the king of Judea, Alexander Jannai, and in 63 BC. e. it is transferred by Pompey to the Decapolis – the union of 10 Hellenized cities of Transjordan, which was under the supreme authority of Rome.

Гадара был родиной известных греческих поэтов Мениппа (III век до н. e.), Филодема и Мелеагра (I век до н. e.). The city was destroyed by an earthquake in the 8th century AD. e.

Since 2001, a special international archaeological program “Gadara Region Project” has been operating in the vicinity of Gadara, studying the pre-Greek and post-Greek cultural layers of this area, which has more than 5000 years of cultural life.