War ravages the historical heritage of the Middle East
War has taken hundreds of thousands of human lives in the last decade in the Middle East. But not only. It has also shattered a centuries-old historical heritage of incalculable value. Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya have suffered unprecedented urban devastation. Unique monuments in the world, sculptures, museums, palaces and historic centres are now a mountain of rubble, victims of unreason and brutality.
It is simply impossible to quantify the heritage damage caused in hundreds of cities. "It is an infinite purpose. Unfinished", admits the architect Xavier Casanovas, president of the Rehabimed association, which brings together specialists from all over the Mediterranean. "It is a very complex subject. It is very difficult to measure the level of destruction, but, of course, it has been very high," he said.
Rehabimed works on the ground with local associations, although the outbreak of the pandemic in mid-March has made travel in the area enormously complicated. At present it is focusing its activities on the Syrian city of Raqqa, which between 2013 and 2017 became the capital of the self-proclaimed Caliphate declared by the fundamentalist group Islamic State until it was liberated by the Kurdish forces.
Raqqa had a population of 225,000 before the war and, although it is not among the most important Syrian cities from the point of view of heritage, it has suffered a significant deterioration in its archaeological and monumental treasures. Rehabimed is now carrying out an inventory of the damage. "It is difficult to quantify the destruction caused by the Islamic state and as a result of the allied bombings", Casanovas stresses.
The damage caused by both is of a different nature. While the fundamentalist group perpetrated an intentional annihilation of the pre-Islamic heritage, the allied forces caused random destruction in their attempt to conquer the city. "The Islamic state has done the most damage to museums, because it has attacked figurative art that is forbidden by Islam," the president of Rehabimed said. Many Roman sculptures have been the object of fundamentalist fury, which has also taken its toll on the churches and their artistic treasures.
The allied forces, however, caused partial destruction to the ancient wall and the minaret of the main mosque, among other buildings of historical interest, due to the bombing of the former capital of the Caliphate. "These are localised damages that are easier to recover", Xavier Casanovas points out. Its archaeological sites do have a higher level of heritage significance, since Raqqa rises on the banks of the Euphrates, together with the Tigris, the two great Mesopotamian rivers.
Pío Cabanillas is one of the last photographers who had the privilege of immortalising Syria's immense cultural and architectural heritage. In 2009 he travelled around the country with a camera and captured its exceptional archaeological sites, historical cities and most relevant monuments. Just two years later the civil war broke out and today much of this unique stone treasure is a mountain of rubble. Cabanillas, who was a minister in Aznar's government, has just published a graphic book and is the star of an exhibition at Casa Árabe's Cordoba headquarters entitled 'Eternal Syria', which includes around thirty images from the almost 2,500 that make up his valuable collection on the Arab country.
"My exhibition is a tribute to barbarism," he explains by way of summary. Most of the snapshots he has brought to Cordoba belong to archaeological remains that were dynamited by the unreasonable Daesh and today are just a reminder of the infamy. "If there is one thing that cannot be destroyed, it is cultural memory," he says, with a hint of bitterness at the already irretrievable plundering of some of the world's most amazing stone beauties.
"Syria had the largest multicultural concentration on the planet," Cabanillas abounds. Thanks to the fact that its territory has been for centuries an obligatory passage from the caravan route, the silk route or the Crusades, the wealth of its heritage is unimaginable. Vestiges of Nabataean, Roman, Greek, Phoenician, Canaanite and Persian culture have been systematically pulverised by the irrational fundamentalism of the Islamic state. From this point of view, the graphic testimony of Pío Cabanillas is of immeasurable value as a sign of the enormous loss of heritage.
The photos recall, in black and white, the picture of the Castle of Saladin, the Temple of Baal, the Tetrapylon, the Basilica of St. Simon, the main road of Afamea or the Roman Theatre of Palmyra, where the terrorists of the Islamic State beheaded the director of the archaeological centre as a symbol of their delirious destructive project. The Pío Cabanillas exhibition opened in 2019 at the Casa Árabe in Madrid. Many members of the Spanish Syrian community came to the exhibition to thank the photographer for his contribution to the memory of their land. "You have done more for the culture of my country than many Syrians," they said as a sign of gratitude.
But if there is one city that symbolises the devastation of Syria's architectural treasure and, by extension, the Middle East, it is Aleppo. With 4.6 million inhabitants before the war, it had become the most populous city in the country and was one of the historic jewels of the Middle East. Today that cultural enclave and tourist engine of Syria is a sea of ruins and rubble. "It was a permanent battleground for more than three years and, from a heritage point of view, it has been very badly damaged," laments Rehabimed's president.
"It's the flagship of the disaster," the expert notes. Palaces, houses, mosques, churches and one of the largest medieval souks in the world have been practically wiped out by the destructive action of bombs and artillery fire. It is also one of the most compact and best preserved historical centres, comparable only to cities of universal reference such as Cordoba or Fez. "And 80% of the great mosque is destroyed. It will have to be rebuilt almost entirely".
Hama and Homs have also suffered an extraordinary deterioration in the armed conflict, while Damascus, the capital of Syria, has managed to keep most of its monumental heritage safe. The outlook for the historic and artistic sites is now bleak. The desolation is absolute and the economic and human effort that will be required to minimally alleviate the catastrophe is gigantic.
"The destruction occurred on such a vast scale that it seems impossible at this point to have a detailed general report", says Sami Abdulac, chairman of the Icomos Working Group on the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq and one of the foremost experts in the field. "There are city-wide reports that are interesting. What we need to do now is to focus our attention on the reconstruction efforts".
That is the challenge for the future. But it is a colossal challenge. Xavier Casanovas himself estimates that it will take no less than 50 years to rehabilitate the worst affected areas. And many of them can only be an approximate replica of what they were. "The immense value of certain areas has been lost forever. And there will be areas that will be rebuilt where it is not known which part is original and which is not". The hecatomb is only comparable to that produced in the Second World War. Some cities, such as Warsaw or Dresden, were practically wiped off the map and had to be rebuilt almost in their entirety.
The Aga Khan Foundation is already working in the area, according to Rehabimed's president. The European Union is also helping with funding for the clearance and restoration work. "It is a long-distance race, because there is no capacity to rebuild immediately. The urgency is to eat and not to rehabilitate the heritage", admits the architect. The very association he presides over organised a meeting before the pandemic to raise funds to help restore the heritage. It also scheduled a seminar to train technicians, inventory the damage and prevent further deterioration.
Unesco has no funds of its own and its role is limited to promoting initiatives on the part of the parties. For example, in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which has been severely devastated by the successive armed conflicts the country has suffered over the last twenty years. The United Arab Emirates has invested tens of millions in restoring the main mosque of Mosul and a church. "The historic centre is in ruins," reports Casanovas.
The architect knows what he is talking about. After the war, he travelled through Iraq and knows first-hand the wounds left by the fighting on the monumental site. The situation is quite different from that in Syria. In Iraq, precision weapons were used and the damage is much more localised. "They were very selective attacks and this is not the case in Aleppo," he explains.
Less detailed information is available from Yemen. The country's heritage values are unique in the world. Its adobe and stone cities have remained intact for centuries, if not millennia, in an exceptional example of popular architecture that exists nowhere else on earth. Five years of bombing have decimated its historical heritage. "Destruction is significant because of war," warns Casanovas. "Many of these villages will never be rebuilt again".
The case of Yemen remains in the background in the pages of the international press. It is a poor, unknown and cornered country on the south-western fringe of the Arabian peninsula, whose uncertain future holds little interest for the world's centres of power. The postcard view of Sana'a, the capital at an altitude of over 2,000 metres, with its historic walled city and beautiful mud houses topped by whitewashed plinths, is a model of traditional architecture in danger of extinction. Saada, Taiz, Hodeida and Shibam, all of which are veritable urban museums, have been mutilated by the action of war and are in danger if the war is prolonged over time.