The truth about Nicolas Flamel and the philosophers' stone

 'The legend is so strong': The truth about Nicolas Flamel and the philosophers' stone

Sophie Hardach

 

An artist's impression of Nicolas Flamel from 1754 (Credit: Getty Images)

The myth of Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel, medieval Parisians said to have made gold with a 'philosopher's stone', sparked a centuries-long obsession. Now a new examination of Flamel's centuries-old will has shed a light on how the legend emerged.

For 600 years, writers, artists and scientists have been fascinated by the legend of Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel: a medieval Parisian couple who were said to have created the mythical philosophers' stone, a mysterious substance that supposedly turned ordinary metals into gold.

Flamel, a real person who was born in the 1330s and died in 1418, in fact never had anything to do with the practice of alchemy, the ancient, mystical tradition which aimed to create gold, cure all diseases and bring immortality.

Still, Flamel's mythical reputation as an alchemist inspired generations of scientists and writers including Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and JK Rowling, who mentions Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

This autumn, the will of Nicolas Flamel is on public display for the first time at a new exhibition at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. Stored in a Parisian hospital archive for centuries, the document sheds a new light on how he ended up being revered as an alchemist, says Maëlys Bitouzet, one of the curators of the exhibition. "They were documents that had never been studied," until the museum evaluated them in 2024, says Bitouzet.

The quest to uncover why Flamel became known as an alchemist also sheds light on the enduring appeal of this ancient tradition, and its sometimes-overlooked place in the history of science.

The quest for the 'philosophers' stone'

The first alchemical writings appeared around 2,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. Through copies and translations, they spread to Europe in the 12th Century with the Islamic Conquest. The word "alchemy" is thought to be an Arabic-Greek hybrid, with an unclear meaning – it could refer to melting or to Egypt. Alchemy used routes which we now know are not scientifically viable, though some of the elusive aims have since been achieved in very fleeting, experimental set-ups.

Throughout its history, alchemists wrote about their efforts to create an enigmatic, powerful stone.

"The earliest reference to 'the stone of the philosophers' is in the 7th Century, in a Byzantine text," in the eastern Mediterranean, says Matteo Martelli, a professor in history of science at the University of Bologna in Italy and expert on ancient alchemical texts. "'The philosophers' were what alchemists called themselves."

 

A house built by Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel in 1407, in 51 rue de Montmorency, Paris (Credit: Romain Tach)

The concept of the stone appears even earlier, in a text dating from the 1st Century BC, where the author "refers to a stone that is not a stone", says Martelli. "There is this cryptic way of talking about this stone, which was later called the philosophers' stone," he adds, noting it wasn't literally a stone, but came in different forms such as a powder or liquid.

The stone was meant to turn other metals into gold or silver, not necessarily for personal gain, but as a way of perfecting nature, says Martelli. In medieval Europe, an additional belief grew that the stone would bring health benefits and even immortality.

This is where Flamel enters the history of alchemy.

A Parisian alchemist?

Traces of Flamel's real life are dotted around Paris, including his tombstone, which is a visitor magnet at the Musée de Cluny, France's National Museum of the Middle Ages. "In the [Harry Potter] book, Flamel is an alchemist, a sorcerer, so it's surprising to people that there's a real tombstone, and that Flamel was a real person," says Bitouzet.

In the late 15th Century, some 50-75 years after his death, an alchemical text known as Le Livre Flamel (The Flamel Book) was published in France – the first alchemical manuscript published under the name "Flamel". While it was actually by an anonymous author, not the real Nicolas Flamel, it became a huge success.

"[Le Livre Flamel] was very popular, it was re-copied, and then people really began to associate it with [the real] Nicolas Flamel," says Bitouzet. Over the centuries, other writings appeared under his name, sometimes including detailed real facts about Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel's life in Paris, such as where they had lived.

The first Livre Flamel, from the late 15th Century, describes a step-by-step alchemical procedure that results in a liquid, Bitouzet says. According to the book, immersing lead into this liquid transforms it into gold.

"It talks about the theory of alchemy, how one can help metals reach a purer state. And then it really gives you the practical recipe [for a philosophers' stone], as if Flamel is giving you little tips to make your philosophers' stone a success," says Bitouzet.

"Le Livre Flamel", an alchemical manuscript from the late 15th Century (Credit: Bibliothèque universitaire de Bologne)

Martelli, who has seen the original, 15th-Century Livre Flamel, notes that some of the procedures and ingredients are the same as those in the much older, Eastern manuscripts. In other words, while the attribution to Flamel was fake, the recipe did tap into genuine alchemical history.

So why did someone copy ancient alchemical instructions, then publish them under the name of a real, dead person? Flamel's will, and other documents and artefacts, have shed a new light on this mystery.

A real-estate empire

The last will and testament and related documents had been kept in the archive of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts in Paris, which specialises in eye disease and dates to 1260. Flamel was one of the hospital's benefactors and included it in his will. 

"They were documents that had never been studied," until the museum evaluated them in 2024, says Bitouzet.

A man who was rich, who was not aristocratic, but who had a high social standing – people found that strange – Maëlys Bitouzet

Other historical records and monuments already painted a picture of Flamel as a wealthy property owner who donated to churches and charities. But the newly studied documents show that his investments and impact were far bigger than had previously been assumed, says Bitouzet.

"He really had a real-estate empire," says Bitouzet. "Before [the discovery of the will and related documents], we vaguely knew that he owned a lot of real estate, but we didn't know exactly what he owned and where these houses were." 

Flamel was the creditor of hundreds of property owners in and around Paris, and himself owned around 10 houses, according to the documents, Bitouzet says. His will stipulated various charitable donations and shows him making detailed arrangements for joint Masses to be read for him and his wife after his death (Pernelle had died earlier than him). These Masses continued for centuries, until the eve of the French Revolution in 1789.

Nicolas Flamel's testament from 1416 (Credit: Archives nationales de France)

After Flamel's death, a legal battle over his inheritance put his wealth in the spotlight. This combination of fame, wealth and philanthropy could explain why people thought Flamel was an alchemist, Bitouzet says.

"A man who was rich, who was not aristocratic, but who had a high social standing – people found that strange," Bitouzet says. Alchemy – seen then as a way of doing God's work – could have explained his wealth, charitable donations and seemingly blessed life, she adds.

Fake author, real history

As early as the 1700s, some questioned whether Flamel was really the author of the texts in his name, but it didn't stop the interest in him. Real-life reminders of Flamel may have helped keep the legend alive. A house built by the Flamels in 1407 and offered as shelter to the poor stands in the Rue Montmorency to this day – it's one of the oldest houses in Paris.

Recreating a 'philosophers' stone'

Scientists today are trying to replicate ancient alchemical recipes to shed a light on their real chemical processes. In 2024, Martelli and others reproduced one for a philosophers' stone: based on eggs, it resulted in a powder.

Lucia Maini, a professor in chemistry at the University of Bologna who collaborated on the project, points out that eggs, which contain sulphur, can react with silver and give it a golden sheen – which could explain why alchemists thought they had found a way to make gold. "They were trying to understand nature by observation," says Maini, who sees alchemy as a precursor to chemistry.

Pernelle is also mentioned in the writings published under Flamel's name as a virtuous woman who worked with Nicolas, and who would have also been able to create a philosophers' stone if she had wanted to, says Bitouzet.  

Martelli points out that publishing texts under the names of famous people, a phenomenon called pseudo-epigraphy, was common from the earliest days of alchemy. "Pseudo-epigraphy is a feature of the alchemical tradition," he says. "So what happens with Flamel is a mechanism that we can see in many moments in the history of alchemy. It's just to make a text more authoritative, more legitimate." 

The broader quest to produce the philosophers' stone did lead to scientific breakthroughs. For example, phosphorus was first isolated in the 17th Century by a German alchemist trying to find the philosophers' stone. 

Today, though, the main reason Flamel continues to fascinate people is his immortal life in books and art, says Bitouzet. "The legend of Flamel is so strong that people don't want to give up on it, even when they know he wasn't an alchemist," she says.

South Korea's approach to solving food waste...

New York has a food waste problem. South Korea has already solved it

Soo Min Kim

(Credit: BBC Serenity Strull/Getty Images)

South Korea has cut household food waste going to landfill from 97% to almost nothing. New York City has started sending its scraps the same way.

On a Saturday afternoon in Yeouido, Seoul, South Korea, Seunghwan Hong collects the week's vegetable trimmings, leftover rice and fruit peel, and heads downstairs to the food waste disposal unit in his apartment complex. He taps his card on the scanner, the lid pops up, the weight of the scraps is displayed, and a charge is added to his household account.

The transaction takes less than a minute. But behind it lies one of the most ambitious waste management experiments in the world.

South Korea has gone further than any other country in committing to solve the problem of household food waste. Today, New York is taking its first steps toward replicating its success.

South Korea's 30-year waste transformation

Food waste is an almost universal problem in developed countries. In the US, a family of four wastes around $56 a week (£42) in discarded food. Globally, more than a billion tonnes of food is wasted each year, making up 10% of the world's climate-warming emissions.

South Korea's answer was sparked by a waste crisis driven by rapid urbanisation in the 20th Century. Landfill and sanitation issues abounded where food scraps were discarded with general waste.

Seunghwan Hong empties a week's worth of household food waste into an RFID-enabled bin at his apartment complex in Seoul (Credit: Yeni Kim)

The cumulative effect of the changes to the country's food waste management since the 1990s (see below) has been remarkable: South Korea's food waste recycling rate rose from just 2.6% in 1996 to nearly 97% in 2023.

How South Korea got to almost-zero food waste

In 1995, the South Korean government introduces a volume-based waste fee

In 1997, food waste separation is made mandatory

In 2005, the government bans food waste from landfill altogether

In 2010, a pilot programme introduces smart bins

In 2013, the government prohibits dumping food waste leachate (the liquid released from food scraps) into the ocean

One of the most visible changes to residents has been the smart bins, like the one Hong uses for his weekly scraps, enabled with RFID (radio-frequency identification) scanners. Government figures for 2025 show 151,934 smart bins in use across the country, serving over 8.61 million households.

"Seeing the weight and the cost of my food waste made me more aware of how much I am throwing away," says Hong.

Not only does this cut emissions from household food going to landfill, but these scraps can become a source of energy and reduce the need for fossil fuels.

What happens to South Korea's food waste

Hong's food scraps, and those of millions like him, are among those that reach an energy facility that turns the waste into power.

It's a more climate-friendly answer than landfill. When organic waste is buried in landfill, it breaks down without oxygen and releases methane, a greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The waste also releases leachate – a dark, noxious liquid that can percolate through soil and contaminate groundwater.

When food waste is sent to a bioreactor, this methane can be collected and burned as fuel instead. Climate-warming carbon dioxide is produced as a result, but the potent methane is prevented from being released into the atmosphere.

The Daejeon Bio Energy Centre in central South Korea recycles 70-75% of what it receives into energy. It produces enough electricity to meet the daily needs of approximately 6,000 South Korean households, and there are more than 340 facilities like it across South Korea.

The Daejeon Bio Energy Centre processes both solid household food waste and food waste leachate collected from across Daejeon province (Credit: Daejeon Bio Energy Centre)

The energy produced from the plants reduces the need for fossil fuels. In 2024, the government aimed to displace fossil fuels valued at roughly 230 billion Korean won ($170m/£126m) by 2026.

Challenges remain. The cost of running the system is considerable. Despite household fees contributing to running costs, the government spends more than 600 billion Korean won ($430m/£319m) on managing municipal waste, including food waste.

"South Korea has made significant progress in food waste recycling, but we're now at a turning point, with new technologies and policies helping to take this progress even further," says Munsol Ju, a senior research fellow at the Korea Environment Institute.

New York's challenges: compliance and rats

New York City made food waste separation mandatory for residents in October 2024, citing South Korea as a model. Residents are required to separate food scraps into a designated bin or a labelled container with a secure lid, set out for curbside collection alongside recycling. The programme covers nearly 3.4 million households, making it the largest organics recovery effort in the United States. But compliance has been challenging, with many residents not consistently separating food waste.

Getting residents on board has been a considerable effort. The NYC Department of Sanitation carried out more than 60,000 conversations with residents in a recent door-to-door campaign across all five boroughs. Enforcement has been active too: the department has issued over 63,000 notices of violation to households failing to comply since the programme launched.

 

Smart Composting Bins are 24/7 drop-off sites where New Yorkers can bring food scraps and plant waste to be composted and reused (Credit: Getty Images)

In addition to the mandatory curbside composting programme, New York City has placed more than 400 smart composting bins across the five boroughs to make food composting more accessible. Unlike the designated bins collected weekly from homes, these solar-powered bins are accessible around the clock via mobile app and free to use.

"I love having these bins because it makes composting a lot more convenient," says Grace Fu, a resident of East Village, Manhattan.

The bins do come with practical challenges. "They have attracted so many rodents near our apartment that we had to move ours inside the building," Fu says. "More frequent clean-outs would help."

In 2025, New York City Department of Sanitation managed around 140,000 tonnes of the city's residential organic waste – roughly 9% of the approximately 1.5 million tonnes generated by households annually. That is a significant uptick on previous years, but still a long way off South Korea's 97%.

Once collected, household food waste is sent to one of two destinations, depending on the district: some goes to the Staten Island Compost Facility to become fertiliser, while the rest is co-digested with sewage sludge at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility in Brooklyn to produce biogas and biosolids.

As about 70% of New Yorkers live in apartments, the South Korean approach has potential, says Steven Cohen, director of the Sustainability Management programme at Columbia Climate School.

"South Korea's RFID bins could make each resident directly accountable for their own organic waste," says Cohen. "In a circular economy, organic waste needs to be separated, recycled and reused as energy."

New York still has an extremely long way to go. "The problem is that most people in this city still don't separate their organic waste properly," Cohen says, adding better education on why food waste recycling matters would boost participation, as could incentives.

Back in Yeouido, Seoul, Hong picks up his empty food waste bin and heads back upstairs to his apartment. The screen on the disposal unit has already gone dark. It's a chore that has simply become a part of life.

"Food waste is a collective responsibility," Hong says.

Russia and China turn Arctic into working trade corridor

 🇷🇺🇨🇳 How Russia and China turn Arctic into working trade corridor

Russia and China are giving the Arctic route something it has long lacked - regular commercial traffic.

Chinese shipping companies are expanding operations along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, with at least six operators reportedly planning more than 50 voyages this season, mostly between Russian and Chinese ports.

🚢 Sea Legend is preparing a seasonal China-Europe container service with an advertised transit time of around 20 days, while New New Shipping has opened a route linking Tianjin with Murmansk.

Energy is part of the same picture. Russian LNG is increasingly moving through the route toward Chinese markets.

China heads north

Beijing’s Arctic interest is not new. Under its “Polar Silk Road” concept, China has long viewed northern shipping lanes as a possible extension of its trade network, while Chinese companies invested in projects such as Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2.

❌ For years, however, harsh conditions, high costs and limited traffic kept those ambitions modest.

That started to change after 2022, when Western companies pulled back from several Russian Arctic projects. Russia needed new buyers, capital and logistics partners; China wanted secure energy supplies and greater access to northern routes.

New Arctic landscape

👉 China is no longer simply buying Russian resources. Its shipping companies are gaining practical experience operating along the NSR, building knowledge of Arctic navigation, logistics and seasonal trade. At the same time, the route is beginning to support two-way trade: Chinese goods are moving north toward Russia while Russian raw materials travel in the opposite direction, gradually turning the Northern Sea Route into a more integrated trade corridor.

Disruptions around the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz have shown how quickly conflict can interfere with global energy and shipping flows, giving Russia and China another reason to develop alternative routes outside the most exposed regions.

While traffic along the Northern Sea Route remains small compared with established global routes, the direction of change is clear - Chinese and Russian economic interests are increasingly intertwined.

Smuggling V2 rocket out of Nazi-occupied Poland

'One of the Third Reich's most fearsome weapons': The daring mission to smuggle a V2 rocket out of Nazi-occupied Poland

Fiona Macdonald

Getty Images

In 1977, the BBC looked back at the summer of 1944, when Allied agents spirited away pieces of Hitler's "wonder weapon" – by hiding them in the apartment of a German officer.

On 6 August 1944, the Soviet Union's Red Army reached the village of Blizna, northwest of Rzeszów in Poland, liberating it from Nazi occupation. A remote rural settlement surrounded by agricultural fields and dense pine forest, it might have seemed to be of little military significance. Yet deep craters on the woodland floor, metal debris and fake farmhouses hinted at its secret purpose. 

Before the Nazis had retreated a few days before, Blizna had been the test launch site for a new weapon, one that Adolf Hitler hoped would turn the tide of the war against the Western Allies. Known by the Germans as the Vergeltungswaffe (Vengeance Weapon) 2, the V2 rocket was the world's first modern ballistic weapon. Designed by the engineer Wernher von Braun, with a range of approximately 170 miles (280km) and a warhead weighing one tonne, the rocket's supersonic speed and high flight altitude made it a "wonder weapon", capable of exploding without warning in the cities it targeted.

But in the summer of 1944, parts of the V2 were smuggled from Poland to Britain in one of World War Two's most audacious covert missions.

The Nazis began developing the V2 in 1936. However, British intelligence hadn't been aware of the rocket's existence until early 1943, as experts told the BBC in the 1977 documentary The Secret War. "There'd been a little information before 1939 that the Germans might be developing long-range rockets," said Dr RV Jones, the Chief of Scientific Air Intelligence. "Then we heard nothing more until December 1942, when a new agent, who turned out to be a Danish chemical engineer, told us he'd overheard a conversation in Berlin between two engineers who said that there was a new weapon being developed and tried up on the Baltic coast." 

The turning point came in 1943, when two German generals who had been captured separately were brought to Britain for interrogation – and then allowed to talk alone together, not suspecting that the room was bugged. They debated why the rockets hadn't been used yet, saying that something must have gone wrong because they'd been told more than a year earlier that the weapons would be ready in only a few months. According to Jones, one of them said, "Well, we're somewhere near London, and we've heard no bang, so nothing could have happened." 

As Jones recalled in 1977, "[Intelligence analyst] Charles Frank… was just sitting opposite me, and he suddenly looked up from reading the interrogation report and said, 'Look, we'd better take those rockets seriously.'"

The British discovered the Nazis' secret V2 research centre at Peenemünde, on an island close to the Baltic coast, and bombed it in August 1943. After the air raid, the Nazis moved their testing, training, and launch site for the V2 rocket away from Germany. They chose a location further east in Poland, about 150 miles (240km) south of Warsaw, protected by forest cover. Blizna was considered so strategically important that it was visited in the following months by both Hitler and his architect of the Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler. 

Yet there was a flaw in the V2 test weapons that was to delay their deployment by almost a year. Most of them broke up in mid-air, just short of their target 200 miles (320km) away, near the river Bug in East Poland. A special detachment of German troops was stationed there to recover the pieces of the fallen rockets for analysis by scientists.

Hidden under vegetables

As the narrator of The Secret War William Woollard recounted in 1977, however, "The main disadvantage of this new location was that the local civilian population was less than enthusiastic about German secret weapons falling on them from out of the sky. They'd been asked by the Polish resistance movement to try to collect the wreckage before the Germans got to it."

In May 1944, a V2 rocket crashed – relatively intact – into the marshy banks of the river Bug. Local villagers covered it with reeds and called in a Polish resistance leader, Lieutenant Tadeusz Jakobski. "It was here that the rocket landed without exploding," he told the BBC from the site 33 years later. "The Germans failed to find it, and after a few days they stopped looking altogether. We then pulled the rocket up to the bank, and the team of experts came from Warsaw to dismantle it." 

The parts were loaded into sacks, which were hidden under vegetables and transported on carts to Warsaw along little-used country roads – shadowed by armed partisans in the woods. Despite constant security checks in the Polish capital, the rocket fragments were successfully smuggled into the city, and the scientists tasked with analysing electronic components included the physicist, Professor Janusz Groszkowski. With fears that his laboratory at the university might be searched by the Gestapo, the resistance decided that a private apartment would be better suited for his work – the apartment of an unsuspecting German officer.

Once the cargo was loaded, the plane was unable to take off

The electronic units were hidden by night in one of the officer's own suitcases. "Before my visit, this case was taken from the room of the officers to the special room prepared for me to make [my] investigation," Groshkowski told the BBC. He worked for hours at a time in the small room, with the constant danger of the officer returning unexpectedly.

Yet, Groszkowski recounted, "[That] never happened during my stay there." Resistance agents were monitoring the German officer. "The servant asked him by telephone what he wished to have for the dinner… to make sure that he was at that time in his office in the airport," said the physicist. "But if he said, for instance, that he's ready to come earlier, I would [disappear]." 

The subterfuge in Warsaw was followed by a top-secret operation to extract the components, codenamed Wildhorn III (or Operation Most III). On the night of 25 July, an RAF Dakota transport plane fitted with additional fuel tanks to allow for a flight time of 18 hours landed at an abandoned airfield near the Polish village of Wał-Ruda – in territory surrounded by German military units. It was to be loaded with 19 suitcases containing key V2 fragments, technical blueprints, and scientific reports.

Informed about the operation through encrypted codes broadcast over BBC radio, the partisans emerged from nearby woods as the Dakota landed just after midnight. However, once the cargo was loaded, the plane was unable to take off, its wheels stuck in the muddy ground. Twice everything was unloaded, and attempts were made to wedge straw and planks under the wheels to add traction, some partisans digging the mud away from the wheels with their bare hands. At one point, the operation's commanders believed they would have to evacuate the passengers and burn the aircraft. The crew even splashed gasoline on the landing gear. But the plane finally succeeded in taking off.

The only way to beat the V2 

The daring Allied airlift had allowed one of the Third Reich's most fearsome weapons to be spirited out of Nazi-occupied Europe, from right under the noses of the German army. The V2 rocket arrived safely in London on 28 July 1944, and British intelligence began to analyse Hitler's "wonder weapon".

"Moving the whole rocket was unnecessary and impossible – V2s weighed about 12.5 tonnes and were 14m (46ft) long – but the Poles meticulously stripped it down so that all the essential components were included on the flight back to Britain," Guy Walters, the historian and author of Stealing Hitler's Rocket, tells the BBC. "These pieces were absolutely vital because for the first time the British scientists were able to get their hands on parts that hadn't been partially destroyed."

The covert mission had provided crucial information about a terror weapon that was to strike London for the first time less than six weeks later. "What the British didn't know was whether the rocket had a guidance system. If it had a guidance system, then work could be done to jam it remotely, thereby causing the rockets to go off course. What the stolen rockets taught the Brits was that the rocket did not have a guidance system, which thereby saved British scientists oodles of time from trying to develop countermeasures. The only real way to beat the V2 therefore was to win the war."

OpenAI boss Sam Altman made dystopian prediction

‘No freedom’: OpenAI boss Sam Altman sparks frenzy after dystopian prediction

William Elliott

Aug 1, 2026 

OpenAI boss Sam Altman has warned people could be left with “no freedom”, “no agency” and “no privacy” in an AI-controlled future.

The 39-year-old tech mogul described the dystopian prediction during a conversation with Y Combinator’s Garry Tan at Startup School 2026 in San Francisco last weekend.

The two-day gathering was held on July 25 and 26 and brought together thousands of technology movers and shakers across the globe.

When asked what life could look like under superintelligence, Mr Altman - who co-founded the multibillion-dollar company behind ChatGPT - said humanity would “probably be mostly okay”, but warned of one outcome.

 “I’m particularly nervous about 10 years from now if we overreact to AI safety. And so we say, look, everyone, you’re going to get a cure for cancer, you’re going to have material abundance, but you will have no freedom, you will have no agency, it will be a perfect surveillance state.

“There will be no privacy. And that’s what you’re going to get. You’re going to get great comfort, but there will be nothing left in the world for you to really do. Nothing that really matters.

“You’ll just kind of live at the service of the AI giving you material wealth. I’d really like to avoid that,” he said.

Mr Altman added that societies could easily accept temporary trade-offs, arguing freedom and individual agency should increase each year as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful.

The remarks sparked widespread debate after segments of Mr Altman’s speech were shared online.

One clip attracted over 6000 comments, with many interpreting the comments as a prediction or endorsement of the future Mr Altman described.

“Notice how it’s all ‘you’ and not ‘we’?,” one comment, liked more than 100,000 times, read.

“I’m confused, is this a selling point or?” said another.

Others urged viewers to watch the conference in its entirety, noting Mr Altman had raised the scenario as an example of a future that should be prevented.

During the speech, Mr Altman further warned AI could distribute power more widely than ever before or concentrate it to an unprecedented degree.

OpenAI is one of the largest tech companies in the world and has catapulted the use of artificial intelligence. The CEO said it would be dangerous for one company, person or AI model to wield overwhelming power, arguing people should not be locked into a single organisation’s moral worldview.Mr Altman also predicted AI models would improve rapidly, saying progress over the next six months could feel comparable to that recorded over the previous two years.It comes just days after the billionaire was brutally roasted online after appearing to suggest parents turn to AI to help understand their children.“Connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests,” Mr Altman wrote to his audience.“Every morning on the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.”Within minutes, the comment section erupted with fed-up parents and critics offering the Silicon Valley pioneer a collective reality check – reminding him that a low-tech, time-tested solution already exists.“Children’s affairs require careful attention, and your current models cannot match children’s creative thinking,” echoed a third.Mr Altman, who welcomed his first child via surrogate with husband Oliver Mulherin earlier this year, has touted the revolutionary potential of AI across every facet of human life.However, child psychologists and parenting experts have frequently warned against relying on screens and algorithms to mediate parent-child relationships, emphasising that non-verbal cues, mistakes, and face-to-face connection are crucial for emotional development.

 

Ottoman-Era Hijaz Railway’s Legacy

 Ottoman-Era Hijaz Railway’s Legacy Endures, Chugging Toward Revival

The legacy of an Ottoman-era project to connect Damascus, Syria, to the holy site of Madinah in modern Saudi Arabia and beyond is breathing new life into today’ visions for rail in the region.

AramcoWorld July August 2026

Written and photographed by Leon McCarron

Tawfiq Al Juhani drove at great speed, though it was hard to tell exactly how fast because none of the dials in his battered old SUV worked. He rested one hand on the wheel, a ponytail poking out from beneath his cap. His feet danced back and forth between the clutch and the accelerator, rarely stepping over to the brake.

We were roughly 80 miles (129 km) south of AlUla in the west of Saudi Arabia. I traveled there in the spring of 2024 to research the Hijaz Railway, which, in the early years of the 20th century, ran for some 800 miles (1,287 km) from Damascus, Syria, to Madinah. On this day, looking at Hijaz, the rugged, mountainous region that extends in every direction, I found such a feat hard to imagine. Al Juhani, the head of his tribe in the area, had offered to show me what remained.

The ribbon of tarmac that we had started out on disappeared as the vehicle careered off-road, and Al Juhani swung us from one track to another. Eventually, at the edge of the wadi, or dry riverbed, he stopped and got out. There, nestled into the low, dark hills, was a two-story building made of black basalt. Red sandstone bricks lined the edges in decorative trim.

"This is the first railway station I remember," Al Juhani told me. It was called Mudarraj, and much of its structure has survived the intervening years impressively. "I was first shown this place by my grandfather," he continued. The old man had remembered the line and stations being built, and told his grandson stories of the Ottoman construction effort. "He was fascinated by the skill. And now I am too."

I discovered that the story Al Juhani was telling has been largely forgotten in Saudi Arabia. Yet the Hijaz (Hejaz) Railway helped shape the modern region. Over two years, while researching my forthcoming book on the railway, I traveled across the surviving route to understand what remains of that lost world.

What began as a journey into the region's past felt increasingly tied to its future.

Workers lay rails near Tabuk in 1906. Construction of the Hijaz Railway required thousands of military conscripts who toiled for eight years in varied landscapes.

For some time after the untimely demise of the Hijaz route following World War I, part of its legacy endured. In Syria the line continued to be part of a broader railway network. Until 2011, it still crossed into Jordan, where it remained operational, if rarely used, all the way to the south of the country.

Since opening fully in 2018, Saudi Arabia's Haramain high-speed railway has achieved what the Ottoman-era Hijaz Railway never did: a direct rail connection between Makkah and Madinah, dramatically reducing journey times for millions of Hajj pilgrims. In a very different technological and political era, it nevertheless echoes one of the central ambitions behind the original project: shrinking distance across the Hijaz.

Today, however, no passenger services in the Middle East cross an international border. That absence increasingly looks anomalous as Arabian Gulf governments revive plans for regional rail integration.

In December 2025, Saudi Arabia and Qatar signed an agreement for a high-speed electric railway linking Riyadh and Doha. In the spring of 2026, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia formally agreed to advance plans for a railway connecting the two countries through Jordan and Syria. More than a century later, some of the original ambitions behind the Hijaz Railway-including regional integration and the movement of people-are once again shaping infrastructure discussions across the region.

Tracks run through the countyside south of Daraa, Syria.

Origins of the Hijaz Railway

Construction of the Hijaz Railway began on September 1, 1900, on the orders of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, amid the waning years of the empire. The Ottomans had already lost the Balkans and North Africa and were faced with growing internal opposition.

The railway was expected to serve three functions. Politically, Abdul Hamid wanted to connect the periphery of Ottoman territory back to the center, where his control was strongest. Militarily, the railway would act as a bulwark against European imperialism, allowing for reinforcement of defensive positions on the Mediterranean and Red seas. Religiously, it would replace the traditional Hajj camel caravan to Makkah and Madinah. By reducing the pilgrimage from 40 days-one way-to as few as three in a carriage, the sultan stood to gain much-needed legitimacy in trying times.

All three aims were important, said professor Zekeriya Kurşun, a specialist on the subject whose expertise I sought out in Istanbul, "but the religious reason was elevated above the others." It was popular with a majority of Ottoman subjects, and being the leader behind a sacred project was useful for the sultan. Journeys that once consumed weeks of hardship suddenly became predictable and comparatively safe, reshaping the psychological geography of the region.

"The most unique aspect of all was how it was funded," Kurşun added. Abdul Hamid contributed personally, and taxes were levied within the empire, complemented by voluntary donations from the global Muslim community. Donations arrived from across the Muslim world, including British India, Singapore and South Africa, turning the railway into a rare pan-Islamic infrastructure project that extended far beyond Ottoman territory itself. The railway became the first in Ottoman territory that received no financing from foreign powers and was designated as waqf: an Islamic endowment whose assets could not be sold and charitable purpose not easily changed.

Ottoman authorities deployed thousands of military conscripts to build the railway, said Kurşun, and the landscapes in which they worked were fierce, varied and often far from urban centers. In his comprehensive 2005 history book The Hejaz Railway, author James Nicholson writes, "Winding its way through some of the most dramatic desert mountain scenery in the world...its construction was a tale of endurance and resolve made epic by the heat [and] the harsh conditions."

Another factor was the variation in terrain, which required very different skills for the construction. In Syria, the route passes through the volcanic plateau called the Hauran. There, some years can see vast quantities of rain, making the area green and fertile, and famed for its agricultural capacity-so much so that during Roman rule it was referred to as "the granary of Rome."

The Hijaz Railway passed through the station at Khirbet Samra in the north of Jordan, close to the city of Mafraq-whose name, coincidentally, means "crossroads" in Arabic.

The advancement of the line here required hundreds of bridges, aqueducts and culverts to manage the drainage. In the Yarmouk Valley-a stunning, steep cleavage in the earth (now the border between Syria and Jordan) and through which the railway passed on a slightly later branch line on the way to the Mediterranean Sea-a series of highly complex stone and iron bridges was required to navigate the gorge.

"The railway workers had to overcome many technical difficulties," writes Nicholson. These, ironically, also included a scarcity of water along much of the route south of the Hauran and a severe shortage of locally available fuel sources.

Even in this era, the journey along the route is challenging. I passed through Syria and northern Jordan in winter and spent nights shivering in temperatures that barely reached 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). South of Amman, Jordan's capital, where the desert and its dry mountains take over, it feels terribly exposed, and it's feasible to travel for scores of miles at a time without seeing another human. I thought often of the laborers who built it, who survived on a poor and limited diet and toiled through opposite extremes of temperature that climbed to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius).

By 1908 engineers had extended the rails to Madinah, and six years later they connected a branch line to the Mediterranean. But in the face of opposition from local tribes who were unwilling to cede their traditional role of transporting Hajj pilgrims, planners eventually abandoned proposals to extend the railway to Makkah.

Still, it was a great success for the ailing empire. In 1909 French explorer Charles-Eudes Bonin noted admiringly in the academic journal Annales de Géographie: "By reducing costs and journey times, and by protecting travellers ... the Hijaz Railway has restored the terrestrial pilgrimage to its former glory."

The optimism surrounding the railway did not last long. Less than a decade later, during World War I, the railway was repeatedly attacked. Raiding parties destroyed large sections of the route-including the stretch Al Juhani showed me in the desert south of AlUla. The war eventually led to the Ottoman Empire's collapse.

The last train on the Hijaz line in what is now Saudi Arabia departed in 1925. By the middle of the past century, it fell into disrepair; even the rails had been removed.

A Hijaz Railway bridge spans part of the Yarmouk Valley in Syria. More than a century later, some of the original ambitions of the railway are taking shape.

Steaming Ahead From Past to Future

Over the decades, various efforts were made to rehabilitate the Hijaz route. Most notably, in the 1960s, work in the north of Saudi Arabia involved rebuilding embankments and replacing dilapidated bridges and culverts. But cost spiraled, and that vision never fully materialized.

Yet traces of the Hijaz still survive across the region, scattered through deserts, cities, abandoned stations-and even make tourist attractions.

Since 2023 I have been exploring the route, returning multiple times to collect memories of a past era. Its starting point is marked by the grand Hijaz Railway Station in downtown Damascus, where a mixture of European and Ottoman influences is designed to make a suitably striking impression on those preparing to travel by rail.

It has now been 14 years since the last train from Damascus, and in some rural Syrian stations, employees have moved in, turning waiting rooms into divans. Others lie empty and have been targeted by looters. An enduring myth of the presence of buried Ottoman gold has led to stones being pulled from walls and doorways, and holes dug under the track, leaving sleepers sticking out like skeletal ribs.

But for many, it is still a source of pride, and there even lingers the hope of some kind of return.

With its grand façade, the station at Madinah, Saudi Arabia, marks the end point of the Hijaz Railway route.

"When we worked on this railway, we knew we were part of this long, rich history," said Mazen Malla, an engineer at Al Qadem station in Damascus. "It's like a vein for us," echoed Na'im Al Kharazai, an employee from Daraa in southwestern Syria.

I have heard similar sentiments hundreds of times. Much of the desire was for the return of the sense of connection as much as the physical infrastructure. In Mafraq, northern Jordan, the stationmaster Fawzi Al Khar'azeh told me, "There was movement and life back then. I wish for it to return, and I believe that it must."

"The Hijaz Railway was one of the earliest models of industrial architecture in the Holy Lands," said Raja Gargour, who oversaw the renovation and installation of a museum at Ma'an in Jordan. Like Amman and Tabuk, in Saudi Arabia, Ma'an was a small oasis town before the arrival of the railway. The Hijaz, said Gargour, contributed greatly to the development of all three cities.

For many Jordanians, the railway is also intrinsically connected to the foundation of their country. It was at Ma'an that Emir Abdullah, later King Abdullah I of Jordan, arrived by train and established his first royal palace in a railway building. "There's a lot here that is integral to this country's story," said Gargour, "and all of that in turn impacted the rest of the region in the years that followed."

South of Ma'an's new museum, the rails have long since been removed, and only the shape of the railway embankment remains.

In Saudi Arabia the project is furthest from living memory. Yet there is still a physical presence. Bridges, culverts and fortresslike stations survive in isolation in the desert, like islands left behind when a river stops flowing. For many long stretches, the only company is sporadic herds of grazing camels.

A refurbished locomotive from the original railway operations stands on display in the five-star Chedi hotel, which has repurposed the station buildings at Hegra (Mada'in Salih).

Another small but well-curated museum is housed inside an original building at Tabuk, and the extensive Hijaz station at Hegra, the archeological site also known as Mada'in Salih, has been refurbished spectacularly to find new life as a five-star Chedi hotel. What was once the maintenance depot is now a restaurant, and a restored locomotive takes pride of place alongside a section of original railing preserved under glass.

The resurgence of regional railway planning, including proposals for a new rail corridor linking Türkiye and Saudi Arabia via Jordan and Syria-often framed by commentators as a revival of the Hijaz Railway-suggests that regional leaders increasingly see railways as tools for economic integration and long-term infrastructure planning.

Although most of the original route survives only in fragments, the idea behind the Hijaz Railway continues to exert a powerful pull across the region.

As the British engineer Gareth Dennis puts it in his book, How the Railways Will Fix the Future: "Railways are both the past and future of human mobility. They are the safest and most energy efficient means of mass transport that we've conceived of and likely ever will conceive of."

For some though, regardless of modern developments, the audacity of the original story is itself essential to preserve. At the end of my journey with Al Juhani, we stopped at a remote Hijaz station called Bir Jdid, just over 137 miles (220 km) north of Madinah. It was one of four of which he was custodian. Close by was a pilgrimage fort, built to support the Hajj caravans a few hundred years before the railway, and behind both lay a deep well. Water sources like this made both early Hajj caravans and later the train journey possible.

In twilight, close to the lip of the well, Al Juhani set a fire and began making tea. The sky slipped away. "Imagine what it took to design a railway here," he implored of me. "Think about all the people who passed by this way." The world was reduced to glowing embers and cracking twigs. "I tell my kids about the railway," Al Juhani said.

"What happened here affected all Arabs. It's our heritage, and I keep it alive by protecting these buildings." Its true value today, he believes, is in showing what humans are capable of creating, especially against the odds. "It can inspire us. But if no one knows, then history is lost."