The Manara Clock Tower or al-Manura clock tower () is a

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure that house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another building ...

located in the middle of the central square (''casbah'') in the Old City of Nablus next to the An-Nasr Mosque in the

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

.Semplici, Andrea and Boccia, Mario
- Nablus, At the Foot of the Holy Mountain
Med Cooperation, p.17. Five stories high, it was erected in 1906 on the orders of the Ottoman sultan

Abdul Hamid II Abdulhamid II or Abdul Hamid II (; ; 21 September 184210 February 1918) was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1876 to 1909, and the last sultan to exert effective control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a Decline and modernizati ...

to celebrate 30 years of his reign. The tower is similar to those also built by Sultan Abdul Hamid in Tripoli (today in Lebanon) and

Jaffa Jaffa (, ; , ), also called Japho, Joppa or Joppe in English, is an ancient Levantine Sea, Levantine port city which is part of Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, located in its southern part. The city sits atop a naturally elevated outcrop on ...

. The Manara Clock Tower has an ode to the sultan in elaborate

Arabic calligraphy Arabic calligraphy is the artistic practice of penmanship, handwriting and calligraphy based on the Arabic alphabet. It is known in Arabic language, Arabic as ''khatt'' (), derived from the words 'line', 'design', or 'construction'. Kufic is the ...

.La Guardia, 2002, p.315. The Manara Clock Tower is currently a part of the symbol of the Municipality of Nablus.

References

Bibliography

* {{Citation, title=War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land, first1=Anton, last1=La Guardia, publisher=Macmillan, year=2002, ISBN=0-312-27669-9, url-access=registration, url=https://archive.org/details/warwithoutend00anto Towers completed in 1906 Clock towers Buildings and structures in Nablus Architecture in Palestine Ottoman clock towers 1906 establishments in the Ottoman Empire Old City (Nablus)