Ajloun Castle and Calligraphy at Dusk

Qal'at ar-Rabad was built in 1184 by Izz ad-Din Usama, one of Saladin's commanders, to watch the iron mines and signal Damascus by pigeon and beacon fire. We walk the vaulted galleries, the reconstructed drawbridge and the tower where you can see four governorates on a clear evening, with a guide who is more interested in the water cisterns and the arrow-slit geometry than in Crusader legend. Afterwards we sit in a room below the castle with a calligrapher who works in Thuluth and Diwani. You get a reed qalam, walnut ink, and about ninety minutes to write your name in Arabic script badly, then slightly less badly. Take the sheet home. Two caveats: the castle is steep, uneven and mostly unlit, with no lift and some very tight spiral stairs, so it is a poor fit for limited mobility. And the calligrapher teaches through a translator, which slows the rhythm of the lesson.