Salt, Jordan

Salt, Jordan

Anselm, Jo and Raya dropped me off at the bus station in Salt on their way to Amman on Thursday evening. We had a day off from permaculture class on Friday and Towfa invited me to visit her home in Salt. She picked me up at the station and took me to her mother's home where I had dinner. Later, her brother gave me a night tour of the city. It was almost 10 pm when Towfa's sister drove us to her home in the outskirts of town. The next day we went to the market, and visited a couple of museums.
I noticed Salt's ancient sites even before we got there, by the surrounding stone structures and ruins of Roman tombs as we drove up 3,000 feet above sea level. When I got to the town, I was surprised to see splendid yellow sandstone buildings, even though they were not well preserved.
It is believed that Salt was built by the Macedonian army during the reign of Alexander the Great. At this time the town was considered to be the principal settlement on the East Bank of the Jordan River. The settlement was destroyed by the Mongols and then rebuilt during the reign of the Mameluke sultan Baybar (1260–1277) and became a regional capital once more during the time of the Ottoman Empire . In the early 1830s, Salt was attacked again, this time being blown up during a raid by an Egyptian viceroy in his campaigns against the Ottomans in Palestine.
Salt's heyday was in the late 19th century when traders arrived from Nablus, to expand their trading network eastwards beyond the River Jordan. The city is built on a cluster of three hills, and the Citadel was built around 1198 AD. Towfa and I visited the Archaeological & Folklore Museum where we followed its Islamic and Bedouin history.
Around 5pm on Friday, Towfa, her son and I took the bus to South Shouna where we said good bye. I headed out to Karam Camp and they went to their second home in Al-Jawasresh.