The ruins of Umm al-Rasas, lie 30 km south-east of Madaba on the edge of the steppe and the sown, halfway between Dihban on the king's highway and the Desert Road, and are famous for its churche's mosaics.

The ruins consist of a walled area forming a fortified camp, and an open quarter of roughly the same size to the north. About 1300 m to the north of the fort is still standing a 14 m high tower beside ruins of some edifices, stone quarries and water cisterns hewn in the rock.

The ruins of Umm al-Rasas have proven to be inhabited at least from the Iron Age II (seventh -sixth centuries BC) to the Abbasid period (Ninth Century A.D), with a flourish in the Byzantine- Umayyad period, when the town was inhabited by a prosperous Christian community. Ecclesiastically, It was part of the bishopric of Madaba.

Umm al-Rasas has been identified with Kastron Mefaa in 1986. The ancient name was read in the inscription of the mosaic floor of the church of Saint Stephen and in the church of the Lions.

Source: various