Histories II – As-Salt

After my last post where I plucked at the tapestry of world history with an imprecise enthusiasm, one would think that the lack of food content and the need for exhaustive research would dissuade me from another flailing jump into the past. However, my uninformed intrigue nags at me still, so here I am on my way to another historically focussed post. I warn you now that if you can’t be bothered to read about the intertwined lives of conquerers and slaves, empires and a bloke called “Qdog” then this post might not be for you.

This post will be a history of the Levant and the surrounding lands but centred around the globally insignificant city of As-Salt (a small city tucked away in the hills that bound the magnificent Jordan Valley). Nobody asked for this, very few people probably even care and I may take a few millennia to get to where I need to be. Nevertheless, I’ll continue my saunter through labyrinthine halls of history. So, sit back and learn about the events that shaped this beautiful city into what it is today. 

A Historical Prelude

Greeks vs Persians – Part 1

This story begins with the Ancient Persians of the Achaemenid Empire (who I mentioned in my last post concerning the spread of Zoroastrianism). As well as spreading a snazzy new religion, they had created the largest empire the world had ever seen. Under the watchful eye of the Empire’s founder Cyrus the Great, their power spread from the Indus valley (on India’s border) to the Mediterranean Sea. And later, after his death in 530 BC, it continued expanding as far as the Balkans and Libya. The empire was notable for many things including: its advanced bureaucratic administration, multicultural policies, building an empire-wide road system, a postal network, civil services and, perhaps most importantly, a large professional army. You can’t create a 5.5 million square kilometre empire without some sword swinging. The first incursion, and eventual conquering of Greek region of Ionia (in present day Turkey) towards the end of Cyrus the Great’s life, marked a turning point in the future of the Achaemenid Empire, but also the stability of the entire region and indeed the future endeavours of world powers to come. The political and intellectual heartland of the Western Hemisphere (that was the combined power of the city states of Ancient Greece) was drawing closer to war with the vast cultural influence and military might of the Achaemenid Empire. After the Persian invasion into Greek Ionia there was a revolt where the Athenians and Eretrians burnt the city of Sardis to the ground before retreating. Darius I (the king of the Achaemenid Empire at the time) was royally pissed. That conspicuous affront to his power would have to be remedied with the only known cure for a damaged ego, toasting marshmallows over the burning remains of a city. The fiery salve for Darius’ damaged self-esteem would be the destruction of Eretria and Athens and they were firmly in his sights as he began the first invasion of Greece. After a faltering first attempt, the second try saw the Persian army sail over the Aegean sea, subjugate an island chain and then capture Eretria. Sure enough, Eretria was turned into a city-size bonfire and after the obligatory smouldering city selfies, the Persian army moved on towards Athens, landing near the town of Marathon in 490 BC. With Sparta and Athens being the biggest city states in Greece at the time and with the military prowess of Sparta being relied upon heavily, Athens sent for Sparta’s aid against the oncoming Persian masses. The Spartan’s were totally booked up so couldn’t make it but the Athenians pulled out a tactically sound battle plan nonetheless. They blocked the exits from the plain of Marathon and chose a marshy and mountainous terrain which prevented the Persian cavalry and infantry from joining forces. In the battle the Athenians trapped and outflanked the overwhelming force of Persians who broke formation and rushed back to their ships which caused a mass slaughter of the retreating army. This battle was a decisive moment in the Greco-Persian wars as it showed that the Persians could be defeated in the field of battle even without one of Ancient World’s greatest fighting forces, the Spartans (forever immortalised by that film where Gerard Butler kicks a man down a well).

Darius the Arsonist was an accomplished man. He had expanded the Achaemenid Empire to its greatest extent, he had unified his Empire under a universal currency, a universal language (Aramaic) and he had introduced standard weights and measures across all territories. He had centralised and solidified the Achaemenid Empire. However, this defeat at Marathon did not sit well with him. All he wanted was to walk through the glowing embers of Athens laughing maniacally at the charred remains of Western civilisation. Was that really too much to ask? He poured money into making an enormous army with troops from every corner of the Empire trained with the mission to subjugate the whole of Greece. However, Egypt was having its own issues, so revolted against the Empire which halted Darius’ plans for Greece and then he died. Luckily, Darius’ dream lived on in his son Xerxes I. He continued the family tradition of trying to subjugate a nation and started to rebuild the army while swatting away revolts from Babylon with vicious efficiency. Eventually, Xerxes was ready to invade. He ordered the construction of two bridges across Hellespont (known as the Dardanelles) which separates Europe from Asia and has been the site of great importance for millennia. Everything from the siege of Troy to the Gallipoli campaign occurred by the narrow strategic waterway. Xerxes’ bridges were torn down in a storm and as you would expect he had those who built the bridges beheaded and then had the water of the strait whipped and verbally abused (standard despotic megalomania and also something I would pay to see). Eventually, they crossed in 480 BC and immediately were met at the Battle of Thermopylae. This battle pitched possibly the largest army ever amassed (originally thought to be 1 million Persian soldiers, modern estimates guess around 150,000) against 7000 Greek soldiers. 

Blocking the narrow coastal pass for two full days of battle, the small Greek force led by King Leonidas of Sparta were holding off the Persians by forcing them into a narrow natural passage (Hell’s Gate). Using their phalanx formation they formed a line the width of the pass with large overlapping shields and long spears protruding from the sides. This meant they easily avoided damage from the barrage of arrows fired by 5000 archers and then dealt with waves of 10,000 men at a time. The first wave of Persian infantry was slaughtered and so the next 10,000 sent into the melee were a professional elite corps of heavily armoured troops called “The Immortals”. However, they suffered the same fate, drawn to chase the Spartans in a feigned retreat only to be quickly turned upon and cut down. Xerxes watched tens of thousands of his best men cut to ribbons on the first and second day, with only couple of Spartan casualties taken in return. Utterly perplexed by the skill and lack of ground ground given by the Spartans, it was after the second day that the battle changed in his favour. A local resident betrayed the Greeks by showing the Persians a small path around used by shepherds. Aware that he was being flanked, Leonidas dismissed the majority of the Greek Army and stayed with his 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians to guard the retreat. After the Greek’s heroic last stand, the Persians pushed through much of Greece unobstructed, burning Athens (Darius the twisted firestarter’s unhinged dream was finally realised) and forcing a Greek retreat. The navy which retreated to the island of Salamis lured the Persians out to them in a last ditch attempt to save their land. They knew that the only way to beat the Persians was to draw out their campaign so that their enormous army could no longer be supported and to fight them where their numbers and advantages could be negated. The battle of Salamis was a perfect example of this. The better and more numerable ships of the Persians were lured into narrow straights where their manoeuvrability was lessened and the sheer number of Persian ships became a hinderance. The Persians were defeated and the following battles pushed the them out of Greece. Many historians believe that if it weren’t for the decisive win at Salamis, the total Persian conquest of Greece would’ve followed swiftly and the trajectory of human history would’ve changed forever. Western civilisation was born largely from the Ancient Greeks and their philosophy, science, personal freedom and democracy. So, be thankful for the greatly outnumbered Greeks and their last ditch attempt to free their home. 

After peace was established with Persia, after 100 years of war, the Achaemenid Empire decided to exploit a loophole in “peace” by making the Greeks fight themselves. They bribed Greek politicians and Greece tumbled into turmoil with Sparta and Athens clashing between 460 and 404 BC (in the two Peloponnese wars) and after that Greece was just a very intellectually accomplished political mess.

Greeks vs Persians – Part 2

In 356 BC Alexander the Great (the only person I can confidently say I know is from Macedonia) came into this world and the gears of global change began to creak into life. After a childhood learning from academics and philosophers (including Aristotle), he was trickle fed power and responsibility by his father, King Phillip II of Macedon. After Phil had reformed the Macedonian military by creating a uniquely flexible and effective army through the introduction of military service as a full time occupation and innovations in weaponry and tactics, the Macedonian army became one of the most formidable armies of the Ancient World. As well as introducing tactics such as an improved phalanx, they were the first army to perfect the idea of combined arms tactics, using each troop style (heavy infantry, skirmish infantry, archers, light cavalry, heavy calvary and siege engines) to exploit different weaknesses and combine to create a force of mutual support on the battlefield. Phil used this military power to create the League of Corinth (337 BC) which brought together all the Greek states (apart from Sparta) under one political entity for the first time in history and with this impetus of growing military power (with himself as the commander-in-chief), it seemed the tides had turned and the Achaemenid Empire looked ripe for some much needed conquering. However, Phil was assassinated the following year by one of his personal body guards which left Alexander in charge.

Unlike his dad who loved meetings, boardrooms and diplomacy, Alexander loved a dirty great scrap with the lads. So, on the heels of the troops that Papa Phil had sent to Hellespont, Alex quickly amassed support. He showed his willingness to chop people in half and then threw a spear into Asia saying he accepted the continent as a gift from the Gods (a pretty bold claim by all accounts). Lapping up his spear throwing antics, the army followed him through today’s Turkey accepting the surrender of the provincial Achaemenid treasury and capital of Sardis (same place the Greeks burnt starting the Greco-Persian wars), then continued through the land granting autonomy and democracy to the cities that had been under the control of the Empire for centuries. Despite all these niceties, Alex did have some minor character flaws. One of which was after some tiring sieges he detoxed all the battle rage through the casual murder of every single fighting age man and selling women and children into slavery. Tut tut Alexander, both of those things are quite widely regarded as the hallmarks of a bad apple. This happened throughout his conquest of the Levant and into Egypt where he founded Alexandria and was named the son of Amun (an Egyptian deity).

The Persian Empire was being lost at a rate of knots and while Alexander was capturing cities like Babylon he was also managing to chase the King of the Persian Empire half way across the world. While this monumental game of cat and mouse was happening, Alexander reached the heartland of the Empire where he took the royal road towards Persepolis (the ceremonial capital of the entire Empire built by Darius I). He fought his way through the Battle of the Persian Gate in 330 BC (which is almost exactly analogous to the Battle of Thermopylae 150 years before) and then after flanking the opposition thanks to a tip from a local (honestly it’s exactly the same as Thermopylae) he made it to Persepolis. Looting the capital at will, a fire broke out and soon the city was ablaze. It’s reported that Alexander stood over a toppled statue to Xerxes I and said: 

“Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expeditions you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects”

Soon after the capture of Persepolis, the Persian King was captured and killed by his own kinsmen after evading Alexander for years, and thus the Achaemenid Empire fell. Alexander continued East and founded cities such as Kandahar and made forays into the Indian subcontinent. By this time, his troops had roamed so far from their homes and families that morale was low. Despite winning important battles in India and planning to reach the “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea” Alexander listened to his advisors and returned to Babylon. Happy enough with his Empire, he wanted to set up his capital in the ancient city but died soon after in 323 BC. At this point all of his best mates and military companions (Diadochi) scrambled for control of pieces of Alexander’s Empire. The big two winners were: Ptolemy I Soter who set himself up as Pharaoh in the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt (the longest but final dynasty in Ancient Egypt ending with Cleopatra) and Seleucus I Nicator who managed to grab pretty much all of Alexander’s Asian territory establishing the Seluccid Empire. Undefeated in battle and a genius tactician Alexander the Great’s military endeavours are still marvelled at and even taught in military academies today, but more than that he was responsible for the spread of Greek ideas and culture and is known as one of the most influential people ever to have lived.

During Alexander’s expansionist endeavours As-Salt (called Saltus) was established and flourished on the fertile East Bank of the river Jordan. There it stayed as a small village until it was added to and modernised by the Byzantine Empire who gave the town a bishop before Saladin rocked up in the late 1100s and said “Sorry fellas, looks like all of this land is mine now”. After the actions of Saladin and his gang of roguish Middle Eastern geezers in the last post, one of his descendants set up a fortress in As-Salt, increasing its importance in the region. Nearby, Jerusalem had relative peace until 1217 when a few more crusades by the French restored Christian power to the region. However, support for maintaining control of the region was waning and just at the wrong time because the Levant (and therefore Jordan) was soon to be the site of another clash of powerful military powers. 

A New Chapter

In 1206, a hairy man living in the backend of nowhere had just defeated some pesky tribes no one cared too much about and then united them around him under one state. This man (whose favourite Olympic event was dressage and whose favourite pastime was making babies) was Genghis Khan. Despite his terribly misguided Olympics viewing habits, he had his life together and it wasn’t long before he was sweeping across Asia with an army like the world had never seen. At the time of his death in 1227, his Empire was already twice the size of the Roman Empire at its height but the expansion was only just beginning. His sons led unstoppable armies through every country they could, but it was the displacement of the Khwarazmian Empire that affected the Levant in a big way. This Empire that straddled, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia had emerged from the Turkic Seljuks and then ruled for 200 years between the Caspian and Aral seas. But faced with the Mongol Empire the Khwarazmians stood no chance, so the huge Muslim population legged it south towards the Levant. Caught up in the fun and games of seeing your dynasty destroyed, an unlucky Khwarazmian prince was captured by the Mongols (but we’ll come back to him later) and while he was presumably having a pretty terrible time, Jerusalem was razed by the Khwarazmian clans in 1244 with an estimated 16,000 christian losses. 

Meanwhile, as the Mongols were charging east, west, up, down, left, right, in, out, wherever they damn pleased, a slowly rising power was emerging. Throughout the centuries straddling the start of the Second Millennium AD, Egypt had been ruled by various powers including the Fatimids and the Ayyubids, but behind the scenes were the Mumluks. An entrenched warrior class of slave soldiers, the Mamluks were used throughout the Islamic world as a basis of military power. Bought as slaves (as young boys) they were thoroughly trained in the arts of war, sciences and court etiquette before being freed (although they were still expected to remain loyal to their master and his household so… “freed” in the loosest, non free, still indentured sense of the word). With wide acclaim for their skill in battle which aided dynasties to power, the Mamluk regiments grew in status and constituted the backbone of military power under Ayyubid rule, starting with Saladin and continuing into the 13th century after his death. Despite the whole slave thing, the Mamluks were highly committed to their masters and were in turn treated as kinsmen. However, when 1249 came around the much loved Louis IX of France (who was widely respected as a morally just and effective leader both militarily and domestically) learned about the Khwarazmians doing a number on Jerusalem and decided to do a little crusade. By this time Jerusalem had swapped hands so many times between Christians and Muslims that European Christians had lost interest in the struggle for ownership of the far away land, but Louis was primed. So, after a nice winter break in Cyprus, where he did some negotiations with other powers and chopped pints at Aya Napa with the church gang, he invaded Egypt in 1249 so he could set up a base to attack Jerusalem. First, he found his way to Damietta on the Nile delta with little opposition. Unfortunately for him, his arrival had sparked a furious clash between the Ayyubid Sultan and his Mamluk military. The Mamluks came out on top, they pushed back the French and captured Louis not only thwarting the crusade (as they never made it to Jerusalem) but establishing the Mamluk Sultanate under the ex-cupbearer Aybak in 1250. In fact Jerusalem would not return to Christian rule until December 1917 when the Ottomans surrendered the city to the British Empire. David Lloyd George, a Welsh man with a terribly untrimmed moustache and prime minister of Britain at the time, remarked that Jerusalem’s capture was a ‘Christmas present for the British people’.

Anyway, back in 1250 the Mongol army was reaching one of its arms into Mesopotamia and they were rampant. The Mongol Empire controlled almost a fifth of the world’s surface and their vastly superior military was surging across the world with little resistance from the less equipped nations. The simple command of “surrender or die” was rung out across the world by those allowed to live by the Mongols. Therefore, when the leaders of a well trained, battle hardened army (reaching 2 million at its height), were at your front gates not too many places picked up the sword instead of the white flag. This being said, Baghdad decided that its great city (once housing a million people at the height of the Islamic Golden Age) would stand up against the glorified jockeys. In the previous century, the Caliphate in control of Baghdad had tried for an alliance with Genghis Khan, sending tributes in the form of Christian Crusaders (who had got a lot more adventure than they bargained for when they were captured and sent off as payment to appease the Mongols). However, after Genghis’ death, Baghdad was on his successors’ naughty list. Unfortunately for Baghdad, the similarities between Santa and the Mongols ended there. If you were a little naughty one year Santa would forgive and you could always, (bare with me here), try not slapping your brother in the face next year to avoid the stocking full of coal. Whereas with the Mongols, it was just the succinct macabre finality of “surrender or die”. No surrender was issued and so the destruction of Baghdad began in 1258. It was not only one of the most tragic losses of human life but also of cultural/intellectual history. The Mongols broke through the sturdy walls which had withstood centuries of sieges and laid waste to the ancient city. They looted and destroyed mosques, libraries, hospitals and palaces. Buildings that had been the work of several generations were burnt to the ground while priceless historical documents about medicine, astronomy and sciences were destroyed. With the caliph captured and forced to watch his citizens cut down by the Mongols, 90,000 people were thought to have been slaughtered in the siege and such was the scale of the ruin that, the Mongol leader set his camp upwind of the city to avoid the stench of death. Baghdad was to the medieval world what Athens was to the Ancient World 1000 years before, the centre of cultural and intellectual study in the Western Hemisphere. Made rich by the knowledge housed in the Great Libraries, as well as the Caliphs that called it their capital, the sacking of Baghdad was a tragedy that affected millions. Damascus (one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and the place where Saladin was interred) was next. However, it suffered a slightly less destructive fate but a defeat nonetheless, leaving Egypt as the last great power of the Muslim world and the next target of the Mongols.

Now, opposing the Mongols and their plans for a cheeky all-inclusive to Sharm al-Shaikh were the two big players in the newly formed Mamluk Sultanate. They had big egos and even bigger names, the first mover and shaker was Al-Malik al-Muẓaffar Sayf ad-Dīn Quṭuz (a.k.a “Qutuz”, a.k.a “Qdog”) the captured prince of Khwarazmia. After his capture by the Mongols he had been sold as a slave multiple times and had found his way to power as a Mamluk warrior under Aybak (remember the first sultan of the Mamluk sultanate) and after Aybak’s death he served his teenage son. When the Mongols squared up with Egypt they sent envoys to Cairo to request a surrender. With that Qdog seized military power and deposed the teenage Sultan (Aybak’s son), readying himself for some sweet payback against those who had destroyed his home and sold him into slavery. He literally sliced the envoys in half and then mounted their heads on the gates of the city. This was his rough and ready battle cry. He would not wait for the Mongols to come to his front door, he was going to fight them on his own terms. This is where we come to the next big player, Al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baibars al-Bunduqdari (a.k.a “Baibars”, a.k.a “Babs”) who was also displaced from his home in the South of Russia by the Mongols. Fleeing to Bulgaria only to see his parents slaughtered, he was enslaved and sold (pretty standard backstory for the time it seems). After being sold to Egyptians he rose through the ranks as a Mamluk under the Ayyubids, staying as commander under the new Mamluk Sultans including Qdog. He was a successful military commander who’s battle tactics led to the comprehensive defeat of Louis IX and now he was to face a much more powerful threat, the Mongols. Qdog brokered a pact with the Crusaders (who were still desperately clinging onto some areas of the Levant) so he and Babs could move armies through Crusader territories unhindered. After a couple of days camping out, they heard that the Mongols had crossed the Jordan River (almost exactly by where we got water and ice cream on my Jordan Valley hike in this post), the Mamluks met them at Ain Jalut after trashing As-Salt and its Ayyubid Fortress in 1260.

Knowing the terrain well, Babs set out a strategy for the battle. He hid the majority of the Mamluk troops in the forested highlands and then lead the vanguard into the battle. Using a hit and run tactic, they managed to cause a few casualties to the Mongols but most importantly annoyed them enough so that when they feigned retreat the Mongols followed quickly on their tail. Drawn up to the highlands the Mongols were quickly surrounded and then the larger Mamluk force emerged from the forest. The trapped Mongols fought viciously to punch a hole in the Mamluk lines but Qdog rode in with his personal guard to make sure the lines held. With their defeat, the Mongols were on the back foot and soon began losing ground in the Levant. Disunity within the Mongol Empire left them more disjointed than before and their expansion started to creak to a halt. Ain Jalut, which means “Goliath’s spring” was supposedly the location of the fight between David and Goliath and as with the battles of Thermopalyae and Persian Gate it seems history repeats itself everywhere in some shape or form. Here at Ain Jalut the vast Mongol Empire was lapping on the shores of the Levant where it was met and defeated by the smaller power of the Mamluks. Tactics and bravery prevailed and while it was not the first significant loss of the Mongol Empire nor the most important battle in halting their westward expansion, it was the first time the Mongols had been defeated and not avenged by a larger victory. This marked the beginning of the end for the Mongol Empire which slowly fractured until the Empire was finished. But, by then, they had killed an estimated 11% of the world’s population and revolutionised every aspect of warfare: weaponry, training, intelligence and battlefield tactics to name a few. They were a cut above the rest and that’s why to this day the Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous empire the world has every seen.

Sultans and Subterfuge

For the Mamluks it was a win and Qdog set off back to Egypt, pretty chuffed with the whole situation and ready to rule a less stressful Sultanate. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to sit with a nice cuppa and revel in his success back in Cairo, smiling at the revenge he had enacted on those who had enslaved him as a young prince. This is because, instead, Babs had him assassinated. Casual as you like, Babs returned to a pretty cheery Cairo (you’d be happy not to have been raped and murdered by the Mongol army too) and took the throne. People loved the war hero and he quickly got the message to the surrounding Ayyubid powers that he was the new BNOC. After firmly showing his power in the region he rebuilt the fortress at As-Salt and pushed through the Levant and the Middle East for the rest of his life until his death in 1277, retaking and securing land from the Mongols and fighting more of the bloody armoured God Squad. After a shift away from defence, As-Salt and other previously administrative and defensive regions in Jordan became thriving urban centres where agriculture and trading were encouraged to make money for the Mamluk Sultanate. However, with the Black Death in the 1340s followed by a century of repeated epidemics, droughts and civil wars the focus on a community economy lapsed alongside the financial collapse of the Mamluk state in Jordan. The Mamluks, after meddling in the affairs of the growing Ottoman Empire’s influence in Persia, started to lose favour with the local populations. Seeing this, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire worked his way through the Levant with an enormous army of elite soldiers and advanced artillery, to defeat the Mamluks and take over Egypt in 1517. 

At this time the Ottoman Empire was reaching its zenith under Suleiman the Magnificent (much better than “the Great” or “the Conqueror”, Suleiman was magnificent, totally fabulous and had a hat shaped like a bulb of garlic). The Ottomans had ended the Byzantine Empire in 1453 by taking Constantinople and making it their capital and soon had expanded to a transcontinental, multilingual empire. Suleiman’s navy dominated the Mediterranean and the Red Sea while he expanded the Ottoman Empire into the Christian strongholds of Central Europe and annexed vast areas of the Middle East. A poet and goldsmith, Suleiman oversaw and encouraged artistic, architectural and literary development in the Empire, ushering in the Ottoman Golden Age. Despite the Ottoman takeover and moving the power to Constantinople, the Mamluks retained significant power in Egypt as a largely Turkish speaking warrior/ruling class where they influenced politics across the country for a couple of centuries. Eventually, to spice things up a bit, Napoleon rocked up to do an occupation of Egypt however, it only lasted a measly 3 years from 1798 to 1801. He was trying to further French trade and establish alliances but all he managed to do was find the historically priceless Rosetta stone and piss off a Sultan. With Napoleon’s quick withdrawal a power vacuum remained in Egypt. The relatively new regional power of the Ottomans clashed with the Mamluks who wanted to control Egypt once again. One man sought to take advantage of the distanced centralised power of the Ottomans and the pride of the Mamluks. His name was Muhammad Ali (an Albanian born commander of a largely Albanian branch of the Ottoman Army) and he had grown discontented with the stagnation of the Ottoman Empire under the Sultans of the time. He had seen the European powers overtake them in military technology and assert their power in Ottoman territory. Ali carefully played both the Ottomans and the Mamluks taking advantage of the public’s fatigue with the power struggle and gained favour as the “people’s champion”. Consolidating power before the Ottoman’s had time to react, he rose to Viceroy of Egypt in 1805. That only left the Mamluks to dispose of and he targeted their leadership with ruthless efficiency. 

The first major action taken was to send a letter to the Mamluks about a ceremony happening on that day at the Cairo canal dam where Ali was going to oversee the event. The deception was that the ceremony had been conducted the day before and it was all a ploy to lure the Mamluks to the city they thought had been left unguarded. They walked in through the gates, cheerful at their return to their home but it wasn’t long before chaos broke out. The Mamluks found themselves under attack from all sides and they were funnelled into narrow alleys and their exits blocked by fires, those who hadn’t escaped sought refuge in the mosque on that street. In the mosque the men were trapped and captured. They were stripped naked and half were killed on the spot, the others were dragged away and chained to the wall in Ali’s court. The next day the captives were thrown the skinned heads of their fallen comrades which were then stuffed with straw in front of them. Once Ali started cutting off heads he couldn’t stop and unfortunately this is when the British arrived on his shore in 1807.

Hoping to secure a few port cities as bases of operations against the Ottomans, they rocked up to Alexandria and got in without an issue because the locals hated Ali. However, the British bit off a bit more than they could chew when they tried to secure two more cities. Ali, worried the British would aid the Mamluks, decided to oust them as quickly as possible. Over the course of a couple of months he made the lads from Blighty look utterly hopeless (and headless) over multiple failed sieges. After losing almost 1000 men, whose heads were unceremoniously plonked onto stakes in Cairo, the evacuation of Egypt followed pretty swiftly. After the British ran away, 1811 rolled around and Ali invited the Mumluk leadership to a celebration at the Cairo citadel in honour of his son’s military achievements abroad. Once they had been courteously received with coffee they were shown towards the reception but were quickly trapped in the citadel courtyard. Surrounded and penned in, every single one of the 470 Mamluk leaders was slaughtered which sent a signal to the rest of Egypt to kill every Mamluk.

The cunning of Qdog and Babs was gone and the Mamluks had become a very gullible and subsequently very dead dynasty. They had blindly trusted the cunning Albanian fox, even with his overt propensity for beheading and now they would never return to Egypt. Ali’s life was full of military success and social reform, focussing on education and a reduction in crime. With an eye for Constantinople, his armies flooded through the the Levant.

At the time As-Salt sat the fringes of Ottoman power, but emerged as the only permanent settlement within the region of Jordan. The town was a mix of Christian and Muslim households who lived in harmony and maintained an agrarian lifestyle. Having to deal with violent attacks from the Bedouin tribes in the area, the town’s location centred around the fort on a hill protected by two deep valleys. However, the inhabitants of the town negotiated with the Bedouin tribes so they could access the tribes’ wheat fields to the East and in return the tribesmen were granted access to the large markets. These extensive markets were the basis of their economy. The control of the surrounding open tracts of lands by Bedouin tribes, combined with the town’s defences meant that As-Salt could ignore the Ottoman’s impositions without consequence for centuries. Expanding the reach of their trading, As-Salt became closely tied to the Palestinian city of Nablus. However, being so unrestrained by the Ottomans made As-Salt vulnerable to attack, and it was the in the city that the first recorded fight in the Peasants Revolt (1834) against Ali’s son occurred. They were fighting the taxes and conscription imposed on them by Ali’s invading army and so Bedouins and townsfolk fought side by side. I mean they obviously lost but you’ve got to commend them for trying. Ali’s son, Ibrahim, marched south to Kerak where he besieged the castle for 2 weeks seeking the leader of the revolt who eventually got executed. This revolt was a minor bump in the road as the armies advanced onto the Anatolian peninsula where the European powers decided they would have to step into negotiations to prevent all out war. After obliterating the Ottomans on the field of battle and the subsequent death of the Ottoman Sultan, Constantinople was weak with a new 16 year old Sultan. This divided opinions between Ali and his son on what to do. With this small break in the fighting, the European powers decided to weigh in more heavily in order to bring Ali to the table. Scared about the combined military might of Europe, he agreed and in the end, like you would expect, he got what he wanted. In 1840, he agreed he would retreat from certain areas and downsize his navy but only if his descendants would enjoy hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan. This move ensured his family’s legacy. His descendants created a dynasty that ushered in a modern independent Egypt and survived until the revolution in 1952.

As-Salt returned to peace and prosperity when the Ottomans returned a few decades later. They brought plans to modernise Jordan, so the now dilapidated fort was repaired and an elective council of elite families from the town was formed. By the end of the 19th century As-Salt was expanding rapidly with traders from Nablus arriving and settling in the city, bringing not only wealth but also their style of architecture which is still around today with beautiful buildings built from the honey-coloured local stone. 

A City Break From City Life

After that unnecessarily long prelude, we move to the main event; me. After catching the bus from Amman with the hostel squad, As-Salt’s hills and valleys greeted us in no time. A stark contrast to the other Jordanian cities (especially Amman), As-Salt was genuinely beautiful. The first thing we noticed as we headed up hill towards the small centre of the city was the honeyed stone. It’s odd how much the colour of the buildings can effect your perceptions of a place but the soft orange hue of As-Salt made it feel as though it was sunset every hour of the day. The next thing we noticed was the amount of green in the city. Trees grew on the streets and occupied the steep narrow alleyways that scaled the hills; in this ex-capital city I felt like I was in a small town. The charms of the old city centre beguiled us first. Old men sat playing Mancala in the small square, sipping tea unconcerned with the business of the day. Nearby, the bustling Hammam street buzzed with life, the narrow pedestrian alley seemed to intensify the fervour of life between its walls. People were selling fruit and vegetables from the shade of drooping multicoloured tarpaulins while children ran from their mothers’ grasp to play with their friends, it struck me as a place that hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years.

From there we nipped into an informative museum in a beautiful old building which kept out the growing heat of the day thanks to its thick walls. There’s only so much museuming I can do though, so after absorbing the final dregs of information almost against my will, we decided to bite the bullet and head up the hill to the qala’a (castle). At the top we had a quick look at the castle that we couldn’t enter and then sat down to complete a much more important task, eating. We munched on some amazing oranges and then we were joined by a local guy. Immediate suspicion was cast upon the man because we had all travelled and we were accustomed to ignoring the standard non-friendly friendly person that approaches you abroad. However, this man just seemed to be a much more rare find, a real life friendly person. He didn’t speak any English at all but loved football so we spent a good 20 minutes reeling off good football teams (which constitutes to a conversation when you are unable to be mutually intelligible). Happy with our encounter, we decided to head off towards some churches. The alleyways we ended up taking were probably my favourite part of the city, steep and winding there was no telling what you’d find around the next corner. We admired the arched windows and layered houses of the opposing hillside while skipping along narrow interconnecting paths. Each alley was uniquely interesting, maybe decorated by families, bare and unused or shaded by old trees. We made it to the orthodox church which venerated Saint George because he supposedly did various things in the church including leave his footprint in the floor. It was another refreshingly temperate building tucked away from the sun and with an austere reverent atmosphere. My uncharacteristic happiness was totally ruined by the two guys that ran the place being all friendly and helpful. They gave a tour in Arabic and I didn’t get to stand around in a church in silence (which I consider to be a hobby of mine) so, the whole place gets a 3/10.

Sebastian and I waited patiently outside the church for the tour to end and while we were waiting a group of teenage girls said hello to him. They of course followed with “Where are you from?”, Sebastian, in a flash replied with “Amman”. Now, its difficult for me to quantify or describe the level of disbelief that enveloped every facet of one girl’s appearance. She whipped her head around with vicious incredulity and with a punchy emphasis she said “Amman?!”, turning to her friends for back up they didn’t know quite what to do with his answer. Obviously confused but not wanting to call this hairy Belgian bloke a barefaced liar, one them put a hand on the shoulder of Sebastian’s lead interrogater and said in Arabic “He said he’s from Amman, so he’s from Amman” and then they walked off. A win for Sebastian and an utter spectacle for me, we were glad that we had left the stuffy church. 

Now we were in a quandary, we had to get the bus home but this being Jordan they are no timetables and compounded with this uncertainty was a deep desire for something to drink. I had spotted somewhere that looked cafe-like and so we headed there to see what it was and if we could scrounge a drink before legging it to the a place we hoped a bus would be. The place turned out to be a hostel/cafe called Beit Aziz. It had a beautiful semi open terrace where we sat and had some tea watching the hues of As-Salt intensify in the late afternoon light. With absolutely no idea if we had missed the bus, we quick marched down the hill and towards the buses. Luckily, we made it in time and squeezed ourselves into the last seats. 

Final Thoughts

Salt is without a doubt the friendliest city in Jordan, I felt welcomed and without wanting to push it, maybe even special in As-Salt (first time for everything, I blame my upbringing). People are chatty and genuine in most places in the country but here it just felt more friendly and casual. It could’ve been the people or it could’ve been the place but I think when it all coalesced it made for a trip to remember in a city moulded by the past but thriving in the present.

* * *

So, rewriting history is surprisingly fun. I guess I now understand the thrill of being the leader of an oppressive regime, I just hope I don’t discover a yearning for the more anti-human rightsy side of their lives, that would be an unforeseen and unwelcome byproduct to writing a travel blog. I’ve covered a lot of old stuff in the last two posts and unfortunately for you this is only the Two Towers of a historical tale of the Levant. Yes, that’s right, this is is trilogy.