Ammon News - AMMAN - Since 1948, Sahel Akhdar and its inventory of weaponry has been a cornerstone of downtown Amman and its epicentre, King Talal Street.

Although the capital was home to all sorts of trades and craftsmen, opening a gun store was unusual at the time, according to Mahmoud Al Tayeb, current owner of the family-run Sahel Akhdar.

“My father thought of the idea as a way to provide our family with a decent life,” Al Tayeb told The Jordan Times.

After obtaining a licence to sell weapons from then-minister of interior Hashem Khair in 1948, Sahel Akhdar opened its doors as the Kingdom’s first gun shop.

Tayeb explained that his father, Mohammad Al Tayeb, saw his business take off shortly after establishing the shop, when he won a contract to sell firearms to the Arab Army.

When the Public Security Department was formed in the 1950s, he recalled, the department floated a tender to buy weapons from Britain and the US, which his father also won, further establishing the shop as the major and most reliable source for firearms in the country.

But it was Jordanians’ zest for hunting that made Sahel Akhdar a popular stopover for people from all walks of life, he said.

“Jordanians like hunting. The shop has become a great place for people to buy their rifles to practise their favourite hobby,” Tayeb said, adding that when the shop first opened, the most popular hunting spots were Jabal Amman and Bayader, which at the time were sparsely populated.

During the 1940s and 1950s, he recounted, downtown Amman was a different world.

According to Tayeb, in the early 1950s, there were only 10 shops between Ras Al Ain and Al Husseini Mosque, most of which sold clothing.

As there was limited electricity at that time, shopkeepers used lanterns to light their stores in the evening.

“If people ran out of kerosene, they worked in the dark,” he said with a laugh.

In addition to hunting, many Amman residents fished in the streams that ran through Ras Al Ain and Mohajireen before these areas were developed, said the 83-year-old Tayeb, who like his father before him, is a sheikh.

Formerly nomadic, the Tayeb tribe settled near Madaba in the 1930s, where they established the town of Nittal 50 kilometres south of the capital.

During the 1940s and 1950s, when Sahel Akhdar took off, Tayeb said travelling between the town and the capital was quite the journey.

“We travelled on horseback to downtown Amman. It took all night to go from our town to the capital,” Tayeb explained, noting that today the trip between Amman and Nittal is a brisk 20 minutes.

At the time, the bus rides from Al Husseini Mosque to Maan, Karak and Madaba governorates were even more arduous treks, he said.

“The trip from Karak or Maan to Amman took one week,” he claimed.

Tayeb told The Jordan Times that being the son of a sheikh gave him the opportunity to meet many prominent figures in Jordan’s early years, including His Majesty the late King Abdullah I.

“Since my father was a sheikh, he used to go along with various prestigious people such as Mohammed Al Zahyer, Adloub Al Zaben and others, to congratulate the late King Abdullah for Eid,” Tayeb said, noting that the late monarch once received them in the Roman Amphitheatre in Amman.

According to the shop owner, anyone who wants to obtain a hunting weapon must meet several conditions such as holding Jordanian citizenship, undergoing a police background check and observing dozens of regulations governing hunting.

Tayeb, who has 19 children and 195 grandchildren, said although there are now 12 gun stores across the capital, Sahel Akhdar remains unique in its place in Amman’s history.

“Many of my clients’ sons come to visit me to learn the history of downtown Amman. They are really excited to find out what kind of life their grandfathers had,” he said, stressing that his shop is open for all to take a stroll through the Kingdom of old.


(By Muath Freij / Jordan Times)

*** For over half a century, Sahel Akhdar has been Jordan’s main source for guns and a window into the country’s early history (Photo by Muath Freij)