“Conservation Management Plan for Ajloun’s Historic City Core: Adopting a Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) Approach”
Jordanian Graduate Student Scholarship, 2021–2022
German-Jordanian University, Amman (Jordan)
Architectural Conservation
Hala Samara is pursuing a master’s degree in architectural conservation at the German-Jordanian University’s School of Architecture and Built Environment (SABE) in Amman. In 2018, she graduated from Al-Balqa Applied University with a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering. She was awarded the ACOR Jordanian Graduate Student Scholarship for 2021–2022. She has had the honor of surveying and documenting a number of Islamic heritage sites in Jordan during her enrollment in the MA program, where, with other colleagues and under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Weber-Karyotakis and architect Ammar Khammash, she contributed to the great work that culminated in Islamic Heritage Sites in Jordan: A Student’s Gazetteer, a volume that has already become an important reference on this topic. Ms. Samara also participated in the Rihab project with Prof. Ignacio Arce. The town of Rihab, located 12 km from the city of Mafraq, is undergoing analysis, documentation, and exploration of adaptive reuse of its Ottoman-era houses.
Her thesis is devoted to a cultural management plan (CMP) of the Jordanian city of Ajloun in accordance with the innovative UNESCO approach to historic urban landscapes (HUL). The historic city center is occupied by the Ayyubid-era Grand Mosque, which was endowed in AH 645/AD 1247. It was destroyed by a flood on September 28, AD 1328, and subsequently restored several times. Ajloun is one of the most important urban communities of the Islamic Middle Ages in Jordan. Ms. Samara’s research will contribute to the preservation and sustainable protection of this city, whose importance has not yet been sufficiently appreciated.
