A few dozen men and women huddle over blocks of limestone, delicately recreating the ancient masonry that once dotted their hometowns, now laid to rubble by seven years of war and the Islamic State’s assault on culture and history.

Once car salesmen, college students and housewives in places like Aleppo and Homs, they now study the art of restoration stonemasonry in northern Jordan.

In this hardscrabble desert city, the rebuilding of Syria has begun, one chisel blow at a time.

A year-long training program launched by the U.S.-based World Monuments Fund and the Petra National Trust of Jordan is teaching Syrian refugees how to rebuild the heritage sites and decorative architecture that once made their cities the jewels of the archaeological world.