Zarqa, a gritty, industrial city infamous for producing Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the late al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, is the unlikely home of Jordan’s biggest new development project.

The $4bn scheme will be named after King Abdullah, the ruler of Saudi Arabia who is one of its principal financiers. It will ultimately house some 500,000 residents over an area the size of lower Manhattan, making it the largest real estate project in the Middle East outside the Gulf.