In 1967, my family was in Jerusalem, and I got stuck in Amman after they closed the borders. I was just a kid alone at the bookstore—and I’ve been here ever since.” - Nabeel Al-Muhtaseb
In downtown Amman, Jordan, Nabil’s father founded Al-Muhtaseb Bookstore. Originally began in Jerusalem, then expanded to its second branch in its current location in downtown Amman in 1963. At that time, books used to be transported from Beirut and Cairo to Palestine through Qalandia Airport, then carried overland to Amman.
Although the bookstore’s founder had twenty-four sons and daughters, Uncle Nabil was the only one who cared to keep the bookstore alive and continued its legacy.Uncle Nabil says about his father:“My father was illiterate—he couldn’t write and could barely read. He used to travel to Egypt and order between five and twenty-five copies of every new book released to the market. He always insisted that every book had its reader, and if a book sold well, he’d go back and order a thousand copies.”
Between 1980 and 1985, Al-Muhtaseb Bookstore completely stopped publishing due to the changing cultural conditions in the Arab world. Uncle Nabil attributes the decline in reading due to the period before technological expansion and to the fundamental shift in the role once played by the Ministry of Education until the 1990s in supporting libraries and the education sector. The ministry used to ensure that every classroom had a small library and regularly supplied school libraries with books—what was then known as the “school basket. “We had an employee whose only job was to go to the Ministry of Education and bid for contracts alongside other bookstores, and students used to line up to do their research.”
Now, only a few regular customers and some curious passersby visit the bookstore. Yet many remain unaware of the hidden treasures it holds—first editions of famous books, others forgotten by history, and many rare gems found nowhere else in Amman.
