BBC (22/12/2021)
The dawn call to prayer echoed through a still sleepy valley before the first rays of sun started illuminating golden limestone houses clustered on the slopes of three mountains.
“Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”), the voice of the muezzin rose up above the domes of the city. “Hayya ‘ala-s-salah” (“Hurry to the prayer”), called loudspeakers from the minarets that dot the rugged landscape.
Moments later, the city’s winding streets filled with the ring of church bells announcing the morning mass.
We were in As-Salt, the Middle East’s newest Unesco World Heritage site. This small Jordanian city where minarets and church towers share the skyline was deemed a “place of tolerance and urban hospitality”.
Located at the crossroads of trade and pilgrimage between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Peninsula, As-Salt grew into a thriving town in the late 19th Century during a period of reforms intended to “modernise” the Ottoman Empire.
In the city’s historic centre, hundreds of heritage limestone buildings – dating to the late 19th and the early 20th Centuries – with arched doorways, carved columns and high windows glowed in the sun.
“The yellow stone buildings are important, but they’re not the reason why As-Salt is so unique,” said Thaira Arabiyat, a shop owner who trains local women in traditional needlework, as she poured me a cup of coffee fragrant with cardamom.
We sat surrounded by embroidered dresses and scarves at her small shop in the city centre, where I first found her sewing the knotted fringes of a shemagh, a traditional Jordanian scarf. She interrupted her work to tell me more about her hometown (…)