Countless cultural assets were destroyed by the Syrian Civil War. The Syrian Heritage Archive Project in Berlin contributes to preserving their memory with an exhibition showing what has been lost — and what remains.
Image: Sultan Kitaz
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Syria's cultural heritage before and after the war
The Syrian Heritage Archive Project in Berlin collects photos of Syria before and after the country's civil war. The pictures are now on show at an exhibition at the Pergamon Museum.
Image: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst/E. Wirth
Rubble around the Citadel of Aleppo
The ancient Citadel of Aleppo, which rose to its peak during the 12th and 13th centuries, is one of the oldest fortresses in the world and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986. The war destroyed the surroundings and parts of the citadel. In the meantime, however, it can be visited again.
Image: Sultan Kitaz
Former glory
This photo shows the intact surroundings of the celebrated citadel complex — with origins going back to the 3rd millenium BC — before the war. The mosque complex dating from the 13th century, which is located directly in front of the Citadel of Aleppo, was heavily damaged when the Syrian Army used it as a military base.
Image: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst/E. Wirth
One of the most ancient mosques in the world
The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus is one of the oldest mosques in the world, having been built at the beginning of the 8th century. The mosque is located in the historic Old Town, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980.
Image: Issam Hajjar
Aleppo's world-famous bazaar
With more than 1,000 small shops, Aleppo's old bazaar, or souk, was the heart of the storied Syrian city — the largest by population in the country before the civil war began. But the Syrian conflict destroyed much of the old city where the bazaar is located, and large parts of the labyrinthine structure remain devastated today.
Image: Issam Hajjar
The ancient Temple of Bel
The more than 2,000-year-old temple that was consecrated in honor of the Mesopotamian god Bel was a highly preserved ruin in the oasis town of Palmyra before the war. However its central building, the cella, and its sanctuaries were blown up by the so-called Islamic State in 2015.
Image: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst/E. Wirth
Palmyra's Valley of the Tombs
Since the ancient cultural and trading city of Palmyra became a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in 1980, its primary temple became a major archaeological site. The reliefs and architectural elements pictured above are from a temple tomb excavated between 1981 and 1985 in a cooperation between the German Archaeological Institute and the Syrian Directorate of Antiquities.
Image: Sammlung M. Meinecke/A. Schmidt-Colinet
Aleppo before the war
A photo taken in 2001, when no one suspected the suffering and destruction the city would experience barely a decade later. It shows Aleppo's citadel peacefully overlooking the Old Town bathed in a golden light. At the time, the minaret of the Great Mosque had just been scaffolded for renovation.
Image: Peter Heiske
The ruins of the conflict
Aleppo has become a symbol of Syria's civil war. Large parts of the once flourishing metropolis, Syria's former economic powerhouse, are no longer recognizable. The large Waqf complex of the Abshir Pasha mosque (left), and the Behramiyah mosque (right) in the historic Al-Jdayde district suffered catastrophic damage during the conflict.
Image: Nabil Kasbo
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There's a clear blue sky on Issam Hajjar's photo of Aleppo's famous Umayyad Mosque from 2011. "It was a clear January day and I was on my way to the old town to take pictures," the Syrian photographer recalls. The photograph shows the inner courtyard of the mosque bustling with people, the impressive minaret of the prayer house in the background.
Issam Hajjar has taken countless such pictures of buildings and archaeological sites, but also of daily life in the province. His photos are of great value today, as they preserve the memory of a country that no longer exists.
In some locations, there are only bombed-out ruins left. Different world heritage sites have been badly damaged or completely destroyed — such as the minaret of the Umayyad Mosque, which collapsed in April 2013 after heavy fighting in the city.
A huge digital archive
The photographer, who now lives in Berlin, has therefore donated some of these images to the "Syrian Heritage Archive Project," conducted in cooperation with the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin and the German Archaeological Institute.
Since 2013, German and Syrian researchers have been collecting photographs, films and reports documenting Syria's cultural and natural treasures before digitizing them to create an archive. From old photos to archaeological research, all is systematically recorded and sorted.
The still-destroyed Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in February 2018Image: Getty Images/AFP/G. Ourfalian
"Over the past six years, we have collected an incredible volume of data," says Professor Stefan Weber of the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, who initiated the project six years ago. Around 340,000 documents have now been collected. It is the most comprehensive archive on Syria outside the country. "This is a unique treasure."
A selection of this archive is now on show at Berlin's Pergamon Museum, in the exhibition "The Cultural Landscape of Syria: Preservation and Archiving in Times of War."
The show is organized in five different sections, covering the old towns of Damascus and Aleppo, Palmyra and Raqqa, as well as the so-called Dead Cities — abandoned settlements from the late Roman and early Byzantine times.
Pairs of photographs showing a same location before and after the Syrian Civil War are particularly moving. A lively ancient bazaar street in Aleppo, for example, is reduced to a pile of rubble in the accompanying picture.
Nevertheless, the emphasis of the exhibition is not material losses; it rather shows what Syria still possesses — an outstanding, millennia-old cultural heritage.
Before and after: The ancient Aleppo Bazaar symbolizes the destruction wrought during the Syrian civil war Image: Imago/ZumaPress//picture-alliance/abaca
A template for reconstruction
"It's also about making that clear to the Syrians themselves," says Karin Pütt, who coordinates the Syrian Heritage Archive Project. It's a country that was and still is more than a devastating civil war, which will hopefully manage at some point to revive its past. That's another goal of the archive: to provide information to reconstruct the country when the war ends.
Photographer Issam Hajjar has also been involved in the Syrian Heritage Archive Project since 2015. That hasn't always been easy for him.
"A whole package of memories" are associated with the images from his home country, he says. But that doesn't stop him from contributing to the digital archive in Berlin: "To show Syria's diversity is a life mission for me."
Saving Syria’s cultural heritage
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The exhibition "The Cultural Landscape of Syria: Preservation and Archiving in Times of War" is on show until May 26, 2019.
