PICS: Aleppo's citizens work to save its battered heritage

A view shows the damage in the Old City of Aleppo as seen from the city's ancient citadel, Syria. Photo: Omar Sanadiki/Reuters

A view shows the damage in the Old City of Aleppo as seen from the city's ancient citadel, Syria. Photo: Omar Sanadiki/Reuters

Published Feb 13, 2017

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Aleppo - In the rubble-strewn

square outside Aleppo's ancient citadel and under the scorched

vaults of its covered souk, workmen are starting to mend the

destruction of a war that has shattered the Syrian city's

priceless historical heritage.

About 20 volunteers sorted through the debris in Khan

al-Gumruk, one of the souk's great medieval inns, piling up the

stones from a fallen archway that can be used in its

restoration.

"I'm a son of this district. We're all from Aleppo and our

priority is to work here. We've been at it for a month in this

area since the fighters left," said Mohannad Hassari, a bearded

25-year-old.

About 30 percent of the Old City suffered "catastrophic"

damage in the fighting that ended there in December, said

Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria's director general of antiquities.

Speaking to Reuters after his first visit to the city since

the rebels were forced to surrender there, he said officials

were working on a plan to save what they can.

The Aga Khan Development Network's cultural arm, which was

behind a multi-million dollar restoration and urban development

project around the Citadel and nearby souks a decade ago, said

it was also looking at possible rehabilitation of the area.

Aleppo is one of the Middle East's great historic centres,

its ancient Citadel and medieval mosques and souks among the

region's finest buildings and a source of national pride - and

tourist revenue - for Syria.

Today, the lingering smell of burning is everywhere in its

Old City: under collapsed domes, in the soot-blackened souk and

in the cracked masonry, broken glass and discarded bullet

casings that litter the famous Umayyad Mosque.

A street vendor in gaudy folk costume accosted customers

with paper cups of cardamom-spiced tea and coffee outside the

Citadel. But the area's mood remained sombre compared with its

bustling pre-war gaiety.

Many of the cafes that lined the area, in old buildings with

arched facades, have been wrecked but a group of soldiers sat in

one, warming their hands around a stove that billowed black

smoke and listening to mournful Arabic music.

However, people are returning, some to live where homes are

still habitable and others to salvage possessions from their

shops. Many more simply want to enjoy places that were too

dangerous to visit during the fighting.

In the Umayyad Mosque's courtyard a group of teenage boys

huddled for a selfie in front of walls so peppered with bullets

that it was hard to find a smooth patch of stone larger than the

palm of one's hand. The 11th century minaret was destroyed by

shelling in 2013.

Under the arches inside the mosque, an old man in a bulky

greatcoat, woollen scarf wrapped around his head, stood sobbing

in the dark near a shrine, a barricade of oil drums and sandbags

still looming behind it.

FRONTLINE

When fighting erupted in Aleppo in 2012, a year after the

rising against President Bashar al-Assad had begun elsewhere in

Syria, rebels took its eastern districts and much of the Old

City.

Intense clashes in 2012 and 2013 made the souks and the area

around the Umayyad Mosque one of the fiercest front lines in

Syria, pounded by artillery and air strikes.

Under the painted cupola of the Mamlouk throne hall in the

Citadel, a heavy machine gun on a stand pointed towards a window

and out across a wasteland of smashed buildings.

The Citadel, a dramatic fortress on a hill, stands at the

centre of Aleppo, overlooking the city. It was held by the

government but surrounded by rebel territory. The area to its

south and west, near the Umayyad Mosque, is where the Old City

suffered most damage.

One stretch of the covered souk is now a dark tunnel,

pierced by beams of daylight from roof shafts, its entrance a

mass of stones and its shops clogged with rubble and weeds.

Oil drums and sandbags, topped by a cushion in traditional

fabric, gave fighters a firing position that commanded the souk

corridor leading towards the Citadel.

"The memory of Aleppo is very symbolic," said Abdulkarim,

Syria's antiquities director general. Restoration would meet the

requirements of international bodies, he added, and no modern

buildings would be put up in the Old City.

He said preservation of Syria's heritage should be treated

separately from the political issues surrounding the war.

RESTORATION

Both sides in the continuing war have accused each other of

targeting or damaging historical sites, which range from ancient

cities, temples, mosques and castles to the more recent relics

of Ottoman rule.

"Everybody realises we are working in difficult

circumstances," said Ali Esmaiel, head of the Aga Khan Cultural

Service in Syria, alluding to the fighting and other obstacles

to saving Aleppo's heritage.

However, he said the charity was looking at a framework for

the rehabilitation of the Old City and conservation of its

historic monuments "as conditions and resources allow".

The charity worked from 1999 to 2012 on restoring the area

around the Citadel, transforming it into a popular haunt for

Aleppans and tourists and the site of concerts and other

cultural activities.

But the fighting caused most to flee and its shops are now

closed. At the Bab Antakia souk, Heitham Ghanam, a middle-aged

trader in women's fashion accessories, was clearing rubble from

his shop with his wife and daughter.

"We are waiting for the electricity to come back and for

others to open their stores before we do," he said.

In Baron's Hotel, where Agatha Christie and T.E. Lawrence

stayed, the elegant tiles of the grand lobby, smoking room and

bar are hard to see in the unlit interior.

The only guests are three families of refugees from eastern

Aleppo districts damaged in the fighting, one living in a room

once occupied by Iraq's King Faisal.

At the top of the sloping causeway leading up to the

Citadel's entrance, wide enough for horses to ride abreast, four

soldiers scrolled through their phones under posters of Assad.

But many residents look forward to a time when the soldiers

manning gun positions in the Citadel's museum and stringing

laundry between the pillars of its Ayubid Mosque can be replaced

by tourists.

Reuters

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