Hebron glass

Between 1345 and 1350, Franciscan friar Niccolò da Poggibonsi noted that "they make great works of art in glass."

"[10] Ju'beh notes that an alternate theory assigns today's techniques to the Venetian glass tradition and that still other researchers claim they were already extant at the time of the Crusades and were carried back to Europe from Hebron, possibly originating in Syria.

Bedouins of the Negev (Naqab), the Arabian Desert, and Sinai were the primary purchasers of jewellery, but large exports of expensive Hebron glass items were sent by guarded camel caravans to Egypt, Syria, and the Transjordan.

Marketing communities of Hebron glass were established in al-Karak (Crac) in southern Jordan and Cairo in Egypt by the 16th century.

For example, Volney in the 1780s, wrote that: "They make there great quantity of coloured rings, bracelets for the wrists and legs, and for the arm above the elbows, besides a variety of other trinkets, which are sent even to Constantinople.

"[11] Ulrich Jasper Seetzen noted during his travels in Palestine in 1807–1809 that 150 persons were employed in the glass industry in Hebron,[12] while C.J.

A report from the French consul in 1886 suggests that glass-making remained an important source of income for Hebron with four factories making 60,000 francs per annum.

Today, however, due to ongoing export problems, the decline in tourism, and restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement in the aftermath of the Second Intifada, industry production has suffered.

According to Nazmi al-Ju'bah, the director of RIWAQ: Centre for Architectural Conservation, under these circumstances, the survival of the Hebron glass industry is in question.

[17][18] The precise production process is a trade secret maintained by the few Palestinian families who run the factories which continue to produce Hebron glass today,[2] passed through generations by apprenticing children.

Spread throughout West Africa, in Kano, Nigeria, they were grounded on the edges to make round beads fit together on a strand more suitably.