The Politics and Practices of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East: Positioning the Material Past in Contemporary Societies 9780755699872, 9781848855359

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This book is dedicated in memory of our beloved friend ‘Ali Maher, the Sheikh of Amman

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List of Contr ibutor s

Domenico Copertino teaches Cultures and Societies of the Middle East at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy. He has carried out ethnographic research in Syria and Lebanon, focusing on the patrimonialisation of medinas and on transnational Islam. He is the editor of Le primavere arabe (2011), the author of Cantieri dell’immaginazione: Vita sociale e forme dello spazio in Medio Oriente (2010) and of Letture – Jack Goody: Il furto della storia (2008) as well as of Processi di patrimonializzazione delle antichità: La valorizzazione della Città Antica di Damasco (2008). Jean-Claude David is a researcher at France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and is associated with the Maison de l’Orient Méditerranéen in Lyon. He is a specialist in Middle Eastern cities and has been working for more than 30 years on urban landscape, public and private architecture, and the processes of patrimonialisation. He is co-author (with G. Degeorge) of Alep (2002) and (with C. Delpal) of Alep, Passage vers l’Orient (2003). Jala Makhzoumi is Professor of Landscape Architecture in the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. In research and professional practice, she adopts an ecological approach to landscape-planning, mediating community needs in the health of ecosystems, the protection of biodiversity and the conservation of landscape heritage. She serves as landscape-planning consultant on projects that include post-war recovery in Iraq and Lebanon, sustainable urban greening and the development of landscape master-plans for the cities of Damascus, Baghdad, Erbil and for the historic towns of Najaf and Karbala. Among her publications are Ecological Landscape Design and Planning: The Mediterranean Context (1999, with Gloria Pungetti) and The Right to Landscape: Contesting Landscape and Human Rights (2012, co-edited

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with Shelley Egoz and Gloria Pungetti). She is an Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for Landscape and People, UK. Silvia Naef is a Professor in the Arabic Studies Section of the University of Geneva, where she teaches the cultural history of the Arab World. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto (2007–09), lecturing on the modern art of the Middle East, and has taught at the Universities of Basel and Tübingen (1995–2000). Her research deals with modern art and visual representations in the Arab Islamic World, and she has published several books and articles on these topics. Dominique Poulot is a Professor at the University of Paris 1 (Sorbonne), and Director of the Graduate School of Art History and of its master’s degree course in the Politics and History of Museums and Heritage. He is particularly interested in the role of museums, galleries, monumentprotection offices and art academies in shaping and communicating ideas of national artistic heritage. As a partner in a European project, he has conducted research on the uses of the past in the Europe’s national museums. He has published widely in journals and edited collections, including Pierre Nora, Rethinking France, vol. 4 of Histories and Memories (2010). His most recent book is a study of Quatremère de Quincy’s opinions for and against museums in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Letters to Miranda and Canova on the Abduction of Antiquities from Rome and Athens (2012). Wendy M.K. Shaw holds a doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles (1999), and is the author of Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (2003) and of Ottoman Painting: Reflections on Modernity from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic (2011), as well as articles on museums, archaeology and artistic production in Turkey. She is currently co-director of the Program in World Arts at the Center for Cultural Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland. Lina G. Tahan holds a PhD in archaeology and museum studies from the University of Cambridge. She is currently a Visiting Research Associate at the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change at Leeds Metropolitan University, where until 2010 she held the position of Senior Research Fellow. Her research and teaching interests relate to: representation issues within Middle Eastern museum collections, exhibitions and visitors; the history of collections and museum development in Lebanon within a political context; the definition of heritage in Lebanon, and how this links to identity formation and to the creation of a sense of place; and the role of museums in fostering understanding in divided societies. She is an active member of

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the International Council of Museums (ICOM), working mainly to promote museums in the Arab World. Mercedes Volait is CNRS Research Professor at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris, where she heads a research unit devoted to architecture and antiquarianism in the modern Mediterranean. Her personal research focuses on the intersections between architecture, knowledge and heritage in nineteenth-century Cairo. Her latest publications include Fous du Caire: Architectes, excentriques et amateurs d’art en Egypte (1867–1914) (2009) and an edited volume (forthcoming) on the French artist and antiquarian Emile Prisse d’Avennes (1807–79). She is the current Chair (2010–14) of the European network on ‘European Architecture Beyond Europe: Sharing Research and Knowledge on Dissemination Processes, Historical Data and Material Legacy (19th–20th centuries)’. Sophie Wagenhofer studied History and Jewish and Islamic Studies in Vienna and Berlin. Her research interests centre on modern transnational history, museum studies and the history of the national socialist period in Europe and beyond. Since 2007 she has been a Research Fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and the Humboldt University. In April 2012 she completed a PhD from the Humboldt University of Berlin, on the Jewish Museum in Casablanca and its social and political function.

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LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS

1. The old Umayyad Mosque of Amman, taken by the traveler Phillips in 1867 2. Cover of the periodical Misr al-mahrusa 3. The Cairo Automobile Club 4. The National Museum of Beirut 5. Damascus – the restored walls of Nur al-Din 6. Looking for historical associations – jansin windows 7. Tea break at the Bayt Montlucon restoration site 8. Waiters at Bayt al-Mamlouka 9. Conceptual representation of rural landscape heritage 10. Poster celebrating the designation of Hima Ebel-es-Saqi as an Important Bird Area (SPNL, 2004) 11. Ebel-es-Saqi, Bayt al-Fallah Folkloric Museum

70 113 120 139 186 192 203 206 238 245 247

Unless otherwise credited, all images are the authors’ own.

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LIST OF TABLES

1. Nineteenth and twentieth century buildings registered as heritage in Egypt (1982–2002).

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LIST OF ABBR EVIATIONS

ADER FEZ AHROS AKAFA ASM AUB CSBE DGA DOA GTZ HW IBA JTS MAWARED MMQ NMB SPNL SSRC UNDP URBAMA USAID WEF WHL WTO

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Agency for the Development and Rehabilitation of the City of Fez Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies Agha Khan Award for Architecture Association de sauvegarde de la médina de Tunis American University of Beirut Centre for the Study of the Built Environment Directorate General of Antiquities (Lebanon) Department of Antiquities (Jordan) German Agency for Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit) Hamzet Wasel Important Bird Area Jordan Tourism Board National Resources Investment and Development Cooperation (Jordan) Directorate for the Old City of Damascus National Museum of Beirut Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon Social Science Research Council United Nations Development Programme Centre d’études et de recherches sur l’urbanisation du monde arabe United States Agency for International Development World Economic Forum World Heritage List World Trade Organization

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NOTE ON TR ANSLITER ATION

‘Ains (‘) and hamzas (’) are the only diacriticals included in the transliterations of Arabic terms, personal names, place names and sources. Commonly accepted English forms are used for some personal and place names. Words in colloquial Arabic are transliterated according to that pronunciation.

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ACK NOWLEDGMENTS

The idea for this book was suggested by an international symposium in Lausanne, during the summer of 2006. After a great deal of hard work, dedication and collaborative effort, the book now sees the light of day, giving much-needed coverage of a topic that is rarely addressed by researchers: the politics and practices of patrimonialisation in the Arab World. We (the editors of the volume) are sincerely appreciative of and indebted to several individuals and institutions for their genuine understanding of the topic’s significance, and also for their collaboration, which played a crucial role in the book’s publication. We are first indebted to the publishers, I.B.Tauris, for supporting the project, and also to their editorial staff, mainly Maria Marsh and Nadine El Hadi. We are also very grateful to the University of Lausanne, the Fondation du 450e and the Société Académique Vaudoise for their support in hosting the initial workshop that launched the idea of the book. Many individuals need to be acknowledged: first, we are very appreciative of the authors represented here for their most valuable contributions, which provided a rich spectrum of ideas and case-studies on the main topic addressed. We are also grateful to them for their sincere collaboration and patience during the various stages of visionary thinking, and then of writing and editing this volume. We also recognize the merit of Peter Barnes for his work in copy-editing the text and we sincerely thank Nick James for his careful preparation of the index. And finally, we must express our deep gratitude to our families, who supported us during the long period while the book was in the making.

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INTRODUCTION Rami Daher and Irene Maffi

Practices, politics and ‘poetic’ actors Michel de Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life (1988), writes that the individual’s ordinary actions constitute an extremely rich domain of investigation, as they are both creative and extremely complex. For him, culture – or better, social life – is formed by an intricate complex of everyday practices that he calls combinatoires d’opérations (‘combinatorial operations’) of which, he thinks, it is possible to unravel the inner model of action. All individuals act within their society by inventing, improvising and combining in different ways the material and symbolic resources at their disposal, manipulating the officially recognised rules of the group. De Certeau distinguishes between the everyday practices of the ordinary agent and the socio-economic and technocratic systems within which he/she operates. Though social and political systems are often described as completely dominating and determining the life of the individual, he argues that individuals and groups are to be considered less as passive receivers than as ‘poetic’ agents (in the sense of the Greek word poiesis meaning ‘the action of making’), since they fabricate or invent their own practices within or against the dominant rules. Hence it is possible to say that people’s ordinary practices do not represent a coherent and peaceful ensemble but a conflicting arena, the result of a transformative bricolage and an escape from the existing system of social constraints. The best way to understand these practices, suggests de Certeau, is to apply an analysis of conflict (analyse polémologique). Needless to say, this conflict has very evident political connotations, because, as several scholars long ago demonstrated, the social status and hierarchical

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position occupied by individuals in the system are clearly expressed by the typology of their ordinary actions, such as how they eat, walk and dress, as well as by the sphere in which these acts take place – the domestic sphere, the political arena, the ceremonial space, etc. (Bourdieu, 1977; Douglas and Isherwood, 1996). All these locations, and all the more or less trivial practices that are enacted within them, are extremely meaningful because they express, and contribute to building up, power relationships between the various categories of actors in the socio-political system. Therefore, when we speak about power we do not only mean local, national or trans-national institutions exercising political and economic power, but refer to a broader notion of power that emerges from the theories of Michel Foucault (1972). Our idea entails the concept of diffuse power acting at every level and in every location of society, a power that is not identifiable with a particular instance or individual. An individual or a group may exercise it for a while, and then lose it. This power crosses class, gender, race, age and hierarchical position, and has no specific places of application. It is a capillary power exerting its action everywhere in subtle and almost imperceptible ways. This is the power which characterises modern societies and the system of machinery and monitoring devices within which, and despite which, the practices of ordinary people are enacted. Even though these practices are shaped by the system of power, the constraints of society cannot prevent the existence of interstices where individuals act in unpredictable and creative ways. They thus reformulate, reinterpret and appropriate the rules, and in turn act on the social system to modify it. These concepts of practices and power are crucial to understanding the social phenomena described in this volume, where several typologies of actors and various kinds of relationship are considered. The chapters explore the politics and practices of cultural heritage in the Middle East, and consider how they have become ordinary for the vast majority of the people living in this area of the world. The definition of heritage and material culture, and the recent past in the region of the Middle East (regardless of how contested these geographical category is), and their links to place and identity construction have always been a highly politicised, contextualised and contested process. The material cultural heritage – which is conceptualised beyond the ‘edifice complex’, and is represented in various sites, social histories, urban and rural systems of governance, family histories and intra-regional networks of relationships – is the focus of the investigations in this book. Thus, when we speak about ordinary practices of patrimonialisation, we designate not only the state’s policies of heritage promotion, but more broadly the various types of publics, actors, and stakeholders

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(e.g. individuals, NGOs, families, institutions, donor agencies, specialists, investors, and other publics and actors) involved in the definition, production and consumption of heritage and its material culture. The book therefore aims to unravel and understand the various networks, communication structures and discourses that operate between and within such publics and actors. All these practices, official or unofficial, authorised or unauthorised, have therefore to be included in the broad arena of cultural heritage. The social actors’ practices considered are related to the presentation and manipulation of the material vestiges of the past in order to take a position in the present. What we call the practices of patrimonialisation are thus situated in the contemporary social life of the Arab countries, and constitute an interesting way of looking at how they conceive of their modern identities. This edited volume not only addresses cultural heritage practices in official, national, usually ‘top-down’ projects, but also investigates the influence of agents, actors and individuals on such practices in everyday life. Furthermore, the book looks at intersections of and relationships between local, national and transnational actors, in helping to understand the dynamics operating between the local and the global, the urban and the rural, old actors and new agents, and ourselves and others, with respect to forming an idea of cultural heritage in the Arab world. The objects, practices, representations and values at stake in this intricate space do not relate to dusty museum-like items and repetitive classificatory schemes but rather to meaningful objects and dynamic actions through which various categories of agents configure or reconfigure history, identity, culture and power. The transformative nature of cultural heritage practices derives from the fact that ‘interaction with a heritage continually alters its nature and context, whether by choice or by chance’ (Lowenthal, 1985, 263). The results of these manipulative acts can have various outcomes. Ancient or even ‘old’ objects can become valuable tools in the hands of those who want symbolically and politically to include some categories of citizens in the national community and thus accord them the rights and duties this belonging implies (Esman and Rabinowich, 1988). On the other hand, cultural heritage can be used as a weapon to attack groups or individuals in the name of their exogenous origin (Fabietti, 1995) Or it can become a powerful symbol for a community in its attempts to affirm its specificity and to obtain special privileges (Roosens, 1989). If in most countries the state is now, and may have been for a long time, the main actor in the field of cultural heritage – because in the majority of European countries as well as in their ex-colonies it has defined, classified and protected the places and objects considered as patrimoine – other agencies have appeared within civil society that have promoted different and sometimes diverging definitions

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and practices of cultural heritage (Babelon and Chastel, 2000; Choay, 1992; Poulot, 1997). As Michael Herzfeld has put it, if the ‘inexorable categorical logic of the bureaucratic nation-state’ has a very strong impact on society by imposing a unified version of the monumental past, ‘the construction of a unified past does not necessarily consist in unified efforts’ since it can be ‘a competition to define history writ large’ (1991, 47).

The birth of cultural heritage in the Middle East, and the Orientalist gaze We now discuss the second part of the volume’s title, which entails the idea of defining the relationship between present Middle Eastern societies and the past that their cultural heritage represents. First of all, it should be made clear that this book deals with the geographical region known as the Arab world, which also could be referred to as the Middle East, the Levant, or the Mashreq and the Maghreb; even though these categories mainly refer to parts of the Arab world in its entirety. In order to understand the genealogy of such geopolitical and geographical categories, one needs to understand and research the moments of transformation and rarity that the Middle East region has witnessed over the last two centuries, such as the destruction of a dynastic religious realm (the Ottoman Empire) and its replacement by the various post-mandate nation states of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and several others during the first half of the twentieth century; and the consequences of such moments and transformations on the definition and practices of nationhood and heritage (Daher, 2007, 2–4). The work of Edward Said in general, and Orientalism (1979) in particular, will help us understand such processes of constructing or registering a specific ‘Orient’ in the minds of Europeans, citizens of the local nation states, and the world at large. Registering mechanisms (surveys, documentation, military surveys, travel literature, etc.) work to create the ‘Other’, the opposite of Europe, which led, through direct imperialist methods, to the legitimisation of control, exploitation and hegemony. Europe was made to appear rational, scientific, virtuous, mature and ‘normal’, while the ‘Orient’ (its antithesis) was imagined as irrational, depraved, childlike, nonscientific, but exotic and ‘different’. This had considerable ramifications on how the past and tradition were viewed by the community and by the state institutions, and also on how heritage was defined or marginalised. Furthermore, this also affected how the image of each of the nations in the region was constructed to fit a particular desired reality, through discursive practices such as heritage

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definition by institutions of the state or academia, through education and schooling, archaeology, museums, and tourism (Daher, 2007). According to Said: Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’. Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind’, destiny, and so on (1979, 2–3). Orientalism for Said was a whole discourse, a ‘corporate institution’ for dealing with the Orient and making statements about it, describing it, and ruling over it’ (ibid, 3). Tourists coming to the constructed Levant in the nineteenth century imagined themselves coming to a cultural landscape that had not changed since antiquity, or since ancient Biblical and Byzantine times. Tourism posters, and advertisements in general, emphasised the antiquities of the region, and furthermore, romanticised an unchanged village life in Palestine and Syria. Fuchs (1998) elaborates on what he terms the ‘timeless paradigm’ of Orientalists who portrayed a region unchanged for millennia, thus marginalising centuries of change and transformation, particularly the period immediately preceding the ‘European discovery of the Orient’. In his studies of the Palestinian Arab house in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Fuchs pointed out that: One problematic aspect of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century descriptive literature is its predominantly biblical – archaeological inspiration: many authors regarded the landscapes of Palestine as illustrations of the Scriptures, and their texts are frustratingly burdened with biblical quotations. Behind this attitude, lay the assumption, often taken for granted, that traditional life in Palestine had remained unchanged for millennia (ibid, 156–7). As a consequence, urban and rural realities were either marginalised or even omitted altogether in this imagined discourse of the Levant and the whole region, and as a consequence this affected how heritage was defined, and furthermore incorporated into state and local practices. This did not only

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take place in Palestine and Syria but in several other regions of the Arab world, including Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and North Africa. If we examine the various countries concerned, we are confronted with multiple pasts and with a great diversity of attitudes towards them. Perceptions of the past vary according to the actors we take into consideration, to the historical period we analyse, to the economic, political and cultural contexts in which the practices of cultural heritage take place. There are official culturalheritage practices and notions, which are recognised and supported by the state or other local or international bodies, as well as unauthorised practices that represent the concerns of specific groups or individuals. In addition, there are various ways of defining and nurturing cultural heritage according to how it is conceptualised locally, which determines different practices related to the conservation of what is classified as such. One important marginalised reality relating to the politics of defining heritage in the Arab world was that associated with the recent past, such as the urban heritage of several newly-emerging cities in the region – Amman, Manama and Masqat in the Arab east (the Mashreq) and Tripoli and Casablanca in the Arab west (the Maghreb), to mention a few. This marginalised reality was not incorporated into the formal definition of heritage, or even into local practices of patrimonialisation through tourism and cultural events. For example, the urban heritage of Amman, dating to the first half of the twentieth century, was discredited by Orientalist/academic discourses, which disqualified it as insignificant and marginal (Daher, 2008a, 38–40). Amman as a city in general, and its urban heritage in particular, had to conform to the stereotypical models of what an ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab’ city should look like. The Orientalist discourse had constructed models and typologies of such cities, which had also been adopted and perpetuated by some contemporary academic discourses. Such stereotypical and typological images work to discredit any reality that does not fit such criteria and models. Consequently, the application of such models to a more controversial city like Amman, an urban centre of more recent origin grounded in multiracial origins in the nineteenth century, becomes very problematic, particularly when such cities are compared and contrasted with others like Damascus, Cairo or Jerusalem, which more or less fit the constructed model, the stereotype. One of the early scholars to criticise and censure the stereotypical and monolithic model based on a body of literature produced by Western Orientalists was the renowned scholar Janet Abu-Lughod (1987, 155). According to her, such generalisations were built on limited examples, mainly Fez in North Africa and Damascus and Aleppo in Bilad al-Sham: In short, just as we find the first isnad to be based chiefly on French North African sources/studies, particularly focusing on the city of Fez,

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so we find a second isnad based upon the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Damascus, as studied physically by Sauvaget and socio-politically by Lapidus. In each case, a very tentative set of place-specific comments and descriptions appears. These enter the literature and take on the quality of abstractions. With each telling, the tale of authority grows broader in its application. Forgotten is the fact that only a handful of cities are actually described. Forgotten is the fact that only certain legal codes – on which the Islamic form of city is presumed to be based – have been studied. Forgotten is the fact that Islamic cities have evolved over time and that the socio-political system in Damascus and Aleppo in the 14th century under Mamluk rule cannot possibly provide a convincing description of how Islamic cities sui generis were governed (ibid, 160). What was very valuable about Abu-Lughod’s attempt to deconstruct Orientalist thinking about the Islamic city is the fact that she had illustrated ‘not only that the idea itself was “created” on the basis of too few cases but, even worse, was a model of outcomes rather than one of process’ (ibid, 172). Many years later, after colonialism ended in the Middle East around the middle of the twentieth century, and nation states emerged in a grand attempt to forge national identities and images for themselves, it is ironic that the same Orientalist and colonial discourses are perpetuated (Daher, 2007). One only has to look at any tourism brochure or poster, or watch any promotional video, that defines and promotes each of the countries within the Middle East to find out that government practices in the region, through their ministries of culture, education or tourism, work to define the region mainly through its classical traditions, thus marginalising local and regional realities of the recent past. Certain local and subordinate practices of heritage might seek to resist this process, or establish alternatives to the dominant official versions of history and heritage. But unfortunately most studies of and investigations into the production, shaping and transmission of heritage are dependent on official, formal agencies, where heritage is defined ‘from above’ (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996, 3). Also, several numerous scholarly/academic attempts of rewriting history and re-conceptualising heritage from the ‘bottom up’ have failed to reflect on the power networks, mechanisms and discursive practices of heritage production. Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) works both to expose such unitary and dominant discourses and to reveal and qualify disguised and subjugated ‘local’ knowledge and realities. According to Foucault, such ‘local’ knowledge is unlikely to exist apart from official histories, but is more likely to become an aspect of them.

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This introductory chapter analyses such discursive practices, and concerns itself with both official and popular discourses of heritage, and with the power mechanisms constituted between agencies, whether bottom-up or top-down.

Terminological digression: cultural heritage, waqfs and habous The vocabulary used to designate cultural heritage is in itself an interesting subject of enquiry. In the countries from Egypt to Iraq and in the Gulf region the Arabic word used is usually turath, although the same categories of what we designate by the term cultural heritage may be classified as athar or turath sha‘bi. The first term designates a vast category of things, tangible and intangible, and comes from the Arabic root w-r-th, that covers the semantic area of the English ‘inheritance’ or ‘heritage’. Although the term turath already existed in Arabic, only in recent times has it been adopted to designate the (modern) notion of cultural heritage. Indeed in ancient times Arab geographers and travellers designated the monuments of the past as ‘ajaib, or ‘wonders’. The category of ‘ajaib included various types of building dating back to Islamic and pre-Islamic times as well as certain animals like crocodiles and hippopotamus (Miquel, 1988). On the other hand, the term athar, referring to ruins and material traces of the past, has been used in its modern sense at least since colonial times, when local departments of antiquities or services des antiquités were created by the occupiers in the various colonies (Dakhlia, 1998). Finally, the term turath sha‘bi began to be widely used during the 1950s and 1960s, when in many countries of the region, Arab nationalist ideology reached its peak. In their efforts to build a national community and emphasise its strong Arab character many states fabricated a variety of Arab (qawmi) and at the same time national (watani) folkloric traditions, including intangible items such as songs, poems, dances and skills, but also tangible objects like costumes, rugs, handicrafts, etc. (Al-Sayyad, 2001; Baram, 1991; Davis and Gavrielides, 1991; Massad, 2001; Valter, 2002). We may legitimately ask how the modern notion of cultural heritage was integrated into Arab-Islamic culture since, as we know, exogenous institutions and ideas are not automatically accepted, but are rather subject to a process of selection and re-elaboration (Appadurai, 1996). What facilitated the appropriation of the notion of cultural heritage was probably that in many ways it was consistent with indigenous attitudes towards the past. In unique research on the meaning of the past in Islam, Hodjat (1995) studies the extent and type of attention the Holy Quran focused on the past and history, in order to demonstrate that not only does the text consider the

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past relevant but develops a particular point of view towards and proposes a use for it. He explains how the past offers valuable lessons for society, through histories of previous peoples and civilisations, or other forms of message. Certain verses of the Holy Quran (those pertaining to the past) intend to show the instructive aspects of history and its vestiges. Several verses encourage people to travel over the earth and to learn from the remains of previous civilisations and peoples. One extremely significant example of how the past is being valued not for its relics and physical remains per se, but rather for the different types of messages they convey to future generations, is elaborated upon by Faroqhi (1994) in discussing the practices of patrimonialisation in the holy city of Medina in the Hijaz, during the early period of Islam, when The pious people of Medina reacted to the decision of the caliph Walid b. ‘Abd al-Malik [reigned 705–15] who had the modest habitations of the Prophet’s wives torn down to make room for the enlargement of the mosque. Apparently many devout people felt that these dwellings should have been preserved to exemplify the extreme modesty and lack of ostentation practised by the Prophet, at a time when all the treasures of this world were readily accessible to him (ibid, 27). In North Africa cultural heritage is sometimes designated habous, which is a synonym of waqf, the term normally used in the Near East and the Gulf region. Both words refer to religious endowments, which originally did not have the historical or artistic value of their equivalent modern cultural heritage (Deguilhem, 1996; Denoix, 1996; Meier, 2002). They were inalienable goods that were to be preserved in their physical integrity, in their form and function. Indeed Islam had put forward a management system that prioritised the protection of shared and significant societal resources, such as the waqf (charitable foundations initiated for the benefit of society at large) or the hima (protected natural areas and resources benefiting society and nature reserves). Many private waqfs for example were set up for the purpose of restoring significant buildings in the city, building a much needed new school or mosque, or even cleaning a particular urban environment. Today, habous and even waqfs tend to cover a domain which is at least partly the same as that of cultural heritage.1 In some Arab countries there seems to exist a division between a religious Islamic heritage, which should be protected by the ministry of waqfs, and a secular cultural heritage – which remains the domain of the ministry of tourism, culture or education according to the country concerned. The existence of recurrent conflicts between the ministry of habous or waqfs and the institutions in charge of

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cultural heritage shows that in several countries their remits overlap. As a result, each ministry seeks to impose its own authority over objects, buildings and sites that have both the status of cultural heritage and religious endowments, or simply that of Islamic heritage. This is often the case when we consider buildings dating back to the Arab-Islamic period, which may be legitimately classified as at once religious and secular heritage – even if they are not waqfs – and become bones of contention. The categorical disjunction between these two heritages originates in specific historical circumstances. On the one hand, cultural heritage is an imported concept introduced to the Middle East during the nineteenth century by European diplomats, officers and functionaries who were mainly interested in pre-Islamic monuments and sites. The majority of these people were not concerned with the ArabIslamic built heritage, which they perceived as exogenous and exotic; they were looking for the roots of Western civilisation (King, 1983; Meskell, 1998; Oulebsir, 2004; Bernhardsson, 2005; Said, 2007). It was the ruins left by the ancient peoples of the Near East – Sumerians, Acadians, Babylonians – well as the numerous Roman, Hellenic and Byzantine remains still present in the Mediterranean coastal areas of North Africa and the Levant that were usually the targets of the surveys, excavations and sometimes restorations undertaken by the Europeans. Hence the colonisers’ definition of cultural heritage was extremely ethnocentric, and did not include the notion of an Arab-Islamic heritage. While there were some exceptions to this attitude, as for example in Syria and Egypt (Gelin, 2002; Reid, 2002; Volait, 2002), European concern for the Arab-Islamic past was insignificant compared to that for the remains of the pre-Islamic past (Goode, 2007). During the second half of the nineteenth century the European archaeological and historical agenda was so strong that even the Ottoman Sultan collected and exhibited Greco-Roman and Byzantine antiquities in the Imperial Museum (Deringil, 1998), and only very limited space was allocated to Islamic collections (Shaw 2003). On the other hand, the long institutional history of waqfs or habous in the Arab-Islamic world has contributed to maintaining a separate administration for various buildings and spaces classified as religious foundations. There were Islamic, Jewish and Christian waqfs that constituted particular spaces related to each religious community, which in a way projected their existence and their power onto the social space (David, 1996; Oulebsir, 2004; Van Leeuwen, 1996). During the colonial period the separate administration of these spaces and buildings was often maintained, and the majority of the post-colonial states in the region still have a ministry of religious affairs in charge of religious sites and edifices. If these institutions are also concerned with the administration of religious endowments, they build mosques, renovate old religious buildings and can

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establish museums documenting Islamic history, as it is the case in Jordan (Addison, 2004; Katz, 2005; Maffi, 2004).

The legacy of the Ottomans The Western and colonial origin of cultural heritage has had a long-standing influence on the processes of patrimonialisation promoted in the postcolonial period by independent Arab governments. Indeed, the recent past as cultural heritage – which is conceptualised beyond the edifice complex and is represented by various rural and urban sites, social histories, urban and rural systems of governance, family histories and intra-regional networks of identity construction – was subjugated, and forced into a state of regression, by the official national discourse and by the literal and inappropriate ideological/procedural transfer of experts and expertise to various venues, which in turn affected concepts of development, planning and construction (e.g. embracing the project of modernity). National visions of modernity and progress rationalised the excessive ‘govermentalisation’ of social life (Rabinow, 1989), manifested for example in the dismantling and nationalisation of traditional urban-management systems such as the waqfs, the sunna’ (guilds), and the pious religious foundations and institutions. Bianca (1997, 27–8) shows how, over the past 50 years – with the rise of national governments and Western administrative systems, which have led to the incorporation of several of these practices into the systems of the nation state – many waqf properties have been ‘nationalised’, or handed over to central government, in turn leading to the dismantling of urban-management systems in the Arab world. A contested and politicised interpretation of the recent past has affected how heritage is identified, defined and managed in the Arab world. The politics of defining heritage in the Arab world – and particularly the heritage of the recent past, such as the legacy of the Ottomans – is a complex and emotionally charged process due to recent ideological and socio-economic transformations within the region and also to how that particular heritage is characterised and evaluated from outside the region. Many historians and researchers assume that events within the Ottoman Empire derive their significance only from the impact they had on developments in Europe. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this Eurocentric and politically charged perspective marginalised urban and rural transformations and building activities in the Middle East, acting to render a whole part of the region’s history insignificant and thus having an impact on the definition of heritage and its incorporation in everyday practices. Faroqhi believes that many historians and researchers share this

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perspective: ‘It should be the aim of any historical work concerning the Middle East to counteract the unfortunate tendency to regard EuropeanAmerican history as the only “real” history, to which everything else is merely an adjunct. Admittedly many historians do not see it that way, and when an effort is made to present Middle Eastern history in its own terms, the attempt is not always successful’ (1994, 175). More recently, Arab countries are witnessing a period (including the Ottoman Empire, the transition to a post-traditional stage, and colonialism) in which their recent past is being critically re-evaluated, and are questioning the processes by which that particular part of the region’s heritage was rejected – treated as obsolete. Such paradigm shifts in the critical understanding of the recent past are working to reinterpret the Ottoman legacy, away from Euro-centric perspectives and even from Arab-nationalist views. One observes the emergence within the last two decades of several academic journals and associations dedicated to the research and study of Ottoman history and heritage, such as the Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies (AHROS), edited and published by Abdeljelil Temimi of the University of Tunis; the Ottoman Studies Association of Beirut, founded in 1986, with members drawn from several religious-ethnic communities; the Centre for Turkish Studies at the University of Mosul, Iraq, founded in 1988; the Moroccan Association of Ottoman Studies, founded in 1989; and the Egyptian Centre of Ottoman Studies, founded in 1990 (Barbir, 1996, 108–9). There have also been noteworthy attempts by several Arab scholars to initiate local research programmes on Ottoman heritage and history in the Middle East; Mohammad Adnan al-Bakhit, for instance, has established a significant nucleus of researchers on Ottoman resources, history and politics at Al al-Bayt University in Mafraq, Jordan, together with Khaled Ziyadah, of the Lebanese University in Beirut. This paradigm shift is also shared by Western publications on the region, in an attempt to rediscover and provide a critical analysis of its recent past. Significant works include Eugene Rogan on Salt, (1999), and Bishara Doumani on Jabal Nablus (1995), where he focuses on rural and urban social space and history, addressing issues related to family, culture, and regional and local trade networks, while giving a voice to local realities that have only recently become the focus of scholarly work, such as the political economy of olive oil and the production of soap in the city. Also, several of these attempts by historians are characterised by a shift from a political focus to an emphasis on the social history of these places and regions and on the politics of everyday life. The Ottoman architectural and urban heritage in the Middle East is characterised by a harmonious unity, while managing to accommodate regional diversity. Ottoman architectural works vary greatly, in both quality

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and quantity, between the various provinces, and can be seen as a testimony to the Ottomans’ attention to and incorporation of contextual spatial and historic specificities. Kafescioglu, through her work on the Ottoman architectural legacies in Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, describes how in general Ottoman buildings in the Arab provinces exhibited ‘characteristics of the local tradition’, through their overall massing, utilisation of structural elements, relation to their surroundings and most of all their decorative features, and how ‘adapting to and absorbing aspects of the Islamic legacy were integral to the establishment of Ottoman rule in the Arab provinces, and architecture was part of that legacy’ (1999, 81–3). The Ottoman legacy in the region reveals an active programme of public works, including infrastructure and transportation e.g. the Hijaz Railway (with its stations and water supplies), caravanserais and forts, waterworks and sabils, ports and bridges, schools, mosques and colleges, souks and bazaars, barracks, police stations and customs offices, in addition to civic buildings such as baths, hospitals and residential quarters (ibid, 1999, 70–7; Daher, 2000). Furthermore, heritage conservation in the Middle East during the Ottoman period in general and in Bilad al-Sham in particular was part of a serious public-works agenda, linked to high levels of public responsibility. Examples include the restoration of the sabil and madrasa of Qaytbay, Jerusalem, and the consolidation of fortifications in Jerusalem and Akka (Walls, 1993, 85–97). Barbir (1996) adds that the urban fabric we see in Bilad al-Sham today, and the continuity of Mamluk splendour, is to a considerable extent due to the building activities, urban services, developments and restorations of the Ottoman period. That period in Bilad al-Sham witnessed extensive public-works undertakings that have produced an urban and rural vocabulary still prevailing today in most cities of the region, such as in Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, Cairo in Egypt, Tripoli and Saida in Lebanon, Nablus and Akka in Palestine, and Salt in Jordan.

Memory, history and cultural heritage: a complex nexus We have been mentioning history, memory and cultural heritage without specifying the links between them. It has already been shown how the modern notion of cultural heritage emerged in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Babelon and Chastel, 2000; Choay, 1992; Poulot, 1997; Pomian, 1996), and how it developed into a state-centred enterprise during the twentieth. Starting from the work of Anderson (1991) and Trigger (1984), an important number of studies have been published which analyse the way archaeology – and more broadly, processes of patrimonialisation – have contributed to the foundation and reinforcement of

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modern nation-states in Europe as well as in their colonial domains (Abu el-Haj, 2001; Diaz-Andreu and Champion, 1996; Handler, 1985; Kohl and Fawcett, 1985; Silberman, 1981). These studies focus particularly on the relationships between cultural heritage, considered as the materialisation of the past, and the history, memory and identity of a particular community, whether national, local, ethnic or religious. In Europe, at least since the end of the eighteenth century, cultural heritage has become a tool in the hands of the state, used to legitimate its claims and to create a shared memory for the national imagined community (Anderson, 1991; Diaz-Andreu and Champion, 1996). The existence of a national community depends on its recognition of a common memory, which results from a process of selection between all possible pasts (since, as Ernest Renan argued in 1882, oblivion is a fundamental component of national and community belonging). Cultural heritage, and especially its materialisation in objects, buildings and sites, are major references for individuals and communities who can attach meaningful memories to and identify feelings towards these physical traces. As shown by the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1976), urban landscapes and material objects play a very important role in social groups, allowing them to remember their past and thus to maintain their own identity. Although material objects and physical landscapes are not the only sources of memories or of feelings of social continuity – since in many societies oral genealogies, epic or mythological narrations, songs, poems, skills and general know-how can have a similar function – they are often particularly meaningful for people familiar with them. If social and cultural belonging are related to material objects, however, this does not mean that memories, histories and identities are unchanging and rigid entities. On the contrary, they are subject to transformation, modification and adjustment in relation to the present, involving the incessant reshaping of the past as well as of the future. Thus objects of memory are always reinterpreted and reconfigured, to adjust to the present and act as a reference for the future (Slyomovics, 1998). Indeed, according to Poulot, if cultural heritage ‘makes understandable the truth of the past’, it also ‘appeals to the future in order to affirm its victory’ (1997, 17). To sum up, practices of cultural heritage are dynamic phenomena related to a vision of the past, whether personal, local, national or regional, as well as to specific (though changing) identities connected with the future. The element of change in cultural-heritage practices is very appropriately expressed by a word already used above, ‘patrimonialisation’. Relationships between individual, local and national memories are complex, and often contradictory. The arena of cultural heritage is situated at the crossroads of different logics, and inhabited by various actors; it is

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thus always subject to reconfiguration. It is for this reason that when we speak of cultural heritage we have to consider its very nature – a changing constellation crossed by multiple fluxes of interests, claims and values. In addition, we have to focus on another crucial aspect of patrimonialisation, covering an area that has recently begun to be rigidly organised by the Unesco Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003); this is the distinction between ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ cultural heritage, which is highly contested and does not correspond to our understanding of current cultural-heritage practices (Bortolotto, 2007; Herzfeld, 2005; Kirsheblatt-Gimblett, 2004). The notion is indeed a paradoxical one – it classifies and crystallises living processes which, once turned into cultural heritage, become lifeless and removed from their social contexts. Hence, the disjunction between living social and cultural processes and intangible cultural heritage cannot produce but a collection of mummified items alien to what Herzfeld calls ‘cultural intimacy’, a cultural identity that provides ‘insiders with their assurance of common sociality’ (2005, 3). Cultural intimacy underpins the shared sense of belonging within each human group, and is partly made up of embarrassing traits that tend to be kept secret. Since the inclusion of intangible cultural heritage in the Unesco list is a state-dominated procedure, and states try to display in this international showcase only positive aspects of their official culture, it is very likely that traits of cultural intimacy will not be selected to represent the country – not to mention the fact that various groups of the population will not be represented, because they fail to accord with the official narrative of national identity (Clifford, 1997; Simpson, 1996). Furthermore, the artificial separation between tangible and intangible cultural heritage ignores the fact that material objects are meaningful, and can thus become cultural heritage only because they are part of narrations, memories and pasts. Hence sites, buildings, and objects cannot be considered as cultural heritage if they do not feature in a non-material context made up of historical narratives and memories, as well as of habits, gestures and feelings.

Ethnography as methodological tool We need to emphasise another element that is crucial in our approach to cultural heritage practices: the ethnographic dimension of the studies collected in this volume. Although the contributors belong to different disciplines, they all have a very deep knowledge of the societies and geographical areas they focus on. They have a long acquaintance with the political and social contexts in question, they know the language of the country they are studying, they have shared the daily life of the actors they

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deal with, they know the local state bureaucracy, they are familiar with the political discourses of the cultural heritage arena, and so on. This is particularly important since ethnography is a very rich method and rooted in the particular, which allows a very concrete understanding of why actors think and act as they do (Abu Lughod, 1991; Herzfeld, 2005). It allows researchers to dispense with abstract considerations and to found their understanding of social phenomena on ordinary discourses, actions and interactions. It is only by applying the ethnographic method that we can avoid those theoretical traps that Pierre Bourdieu stigmatised in his Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977). Criticising traditional anthropological approaches to kinship, he draws our attention to the fact that anthropologists attempt to extract the principles of kinship production from its product, which consists in a synoptic and static view of kinship elaborated by the observer. On the contrary, in order to gain a full understanding of kinship the researcher must observe social actors’ strategies and follow up their actions as they unfold over time. This example from Bourdieu shows that specific time and place are inescapable dimensions of ethnography, allowing the understanding of processes that cannot be removed from their context without losing their social meaning. The complexity and richness of ethnography also derives from the necessity of doing research in multiple sites (Marcus, 1995). The several locations chosen induce researchers to change their own way of doing fieldwork according to the position they adopt or are forced to adopt in talking to their interlocutors. Among the effects of multi-site ethnography is the creation of connections between sites, places, milieux that are usually separate, or perceived as such. Unpredictable heuristic outcomes can thus emerge, and illuminate the meanings of some of the practices or discourses of those whom the researcher is dealing with. Needless to say, part of this ethnographic dimension is necessarily absent in some of the chapters in this volume, i.e. those taking a historical approach to the topic, or attempting to identify historical connections between various social and cultural contexts in different epochs.

The colonial past of cultural heritage The historical analysis of how cultural heritage has evolved in Europe and North America is today well known (Babelon and Chastel, 1994; Choay, 1992; Diaz-Andreu and Champion, 1996; Fabre, 1993; Kockel and Craith, 2007; Handler, 1985; Herzfeld, 1991; Jeudy, 1990; Nora, 1997; Poulot, 1997; Rautenberg, 2003). Much less attention has been paid to the cultural heritage practices of other regions, despite the existence of a very rich vein of such practices. This volume aims to help fill this gap.

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Although since the 1990s a significant number of monographs on the topic of cultural heritage in the Middle East have been published (Abu el-Haj, 2001; Baram, 1991; Bernhardsson, 2005; Kaufman, 2004; Maffi, 2004; Oulebsir, 2004; Reid, 2002; Ricca, 2007; Saidi, 2007; Salamandra, 2004; Shaw, 2003; Silberman, 1981; 1989; Tahan, 2004; Valter, 2002), comprehensive studies of the region which compare different countries and use various disciplinary approaches are still rare (Meskell, 1998; Al-Sayyad, 2001; Goode, 2007; Silberman, 1989). However, we should recognise the valuable studies carried on in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly in North Africa, by the geographers of URBAMA (Centre d’études et de recherches sur l’urbanisation du monde arabe), published in the journal Les Cahiers d’Urbama as well as in other collected volumes. While extremely rich, these studies are unfortunately not very well known in the Anglo-Saxon world because most of them are written in French. Finally, we should not forget the existence of lively debates among architects, urban planners, historians and archaeologists within the Arab-Islamic world, which are often ignored, carried out as they are at the margins of Western-dominated institutions. This volume seeks to help widen and support the theoretical discussion on the historical changes which the notion of cultural heritage, and the practices related to it, have been going through since their introduction to the Middle East during the nineteenth century. The focus is therefore not on the history of cultural heritage but on present practices. At the same time we are convinced that current attitudes towards cultural heritage can be better understood if they are situated in a historical perspective. We have mentioned above the attitudes and concepts of conservation that existed in the Arab-Islamic tradition. However, the modern concept of cultural heritage was introduced during the colonial period, when most territories of the Middle East and North Africa were under the rule of France or Great Britain. It was at this time that the first systematic projects of classification, excavation, collection and restoration began to be implemented; in fact, the policies behind them can be considered as an integral part of the overall re-organisation of the colonised space. The strong links between control of the territory and the process of building cultural heritage explains why the army played a major role, in many colonies, in excavating and protecting archaeological sites (Benvenisti, 2000; Elon, 1971; Gelin, 2002; Oulebsir, 2004). In each country the colonial enterprise of defining, studying and protecting local cultural heritage began at different times. After the 1798 expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt, during which the country was transformed into the object of a vast military and scientific campaign, the first Arab country to inspire aesthetic and historical interest in the European colonisers was Algeria: as early as the 1840s the French

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state dispatched an architect to carry out the first architectural survey of local monuments (Oulebsir, 2004). Indeed, in the 1830s, during the French conquest of Algeria, archaeologists, geographers and historians began paying attention to the country’s architectural landscape and especially to its ancient history. As at the time of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, an important apparatus was set up to proceed to a scientific as well as a military conquest. A similar enterprise was undertaken in the area of ancient Palestine, though at least until the end of the First World War the archaeological exploration of the area was not state-led (Glock, 1994; 1995; King, 1983; Laurence, 1999; 2002; Silberman, 1981; 1989). Various institutions and individuals motivated by more or less religious concerns were seeking evidence to prove the veracity of the Biblical narration. Only at the beginning of the 1920s did the British establish a local department of antiquities and launch a systematic and organised policy of excavations. While some areas, such as ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, had already been explored and partly excavated before the beginning of direct colonisation, in many countries only the colonial administration undertook the classification and preservation of cultural heritage (Bernhardsson, 2005; Reid, 2002). In other countries, such as modern Iran, archaeological interest emerged as a consequence of European expeditions; in the 1830s and 1840s fascinated European travellers came in search of archaeological sites related to the ancient Persian empires (Abdi, 2001). National interest in archaeology and the pre-Islamic past developed only later, and was to become an important component of Persian nationalism (Goode, 2007). The beginning of systematic archaeological policies in the various countries brought about new concepts and practices related to the material vestiges of the past. Indeed, as mentioned above, if an equivalent of cultural heritage existed at all, it was related to the notion of athar or traces of the past. The Arab-Islamic notion of cultural heritage was rather related to forms of knowledge, texts and oral narratives (ibid; Dakhlia, 1998; Oulebsir, 2004). The fact of attributing historical and artistic value to material vestiges, and thus the idea of preserving them because of their cultural importance for modern societies, was foreign to the Arab-Islamic cultures. Even in Europe, the cradle of cultural heritage, ancient remains were still being used in the nineteenth century as quarries for building materials (Choay, 1992; Pomian, 1996). What makes the analysis of cultural heritage’s emergence in the Middle East extremely interesting is that the transformations the notion was undergoing reflected the complex relationships linking Europe and this area of the world. The practices of patrimonialisation were evolving in the metropolitan nations as well as in their colonies, and the two processes were interacting, to produce new representations of the past. For example,

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as Reid puts it: ‘The appreciation of Islamic art and architecture could not flourish until they [the Europeans] had historicized it and reconceived it as “medieval”.’ However, the same value was not placed on all vestiges of the past: some remains were more appreciated than others, being assigned to different cultural categories. European scholars deemed Arab, Turkish and Persian art foreign and exotic, while Pharaonic, ‘Biblical’ and Greco-Roman remains were considered part of the Western heritage. Sometimes the colonies witnessed the emergence of ground-breaking ideas and policies that were to reach the metropole decades later. For instance, during the French protectorate in Morocco, Lyautey pioneered urban-planning policies inspired by innovative concepts of urban-heritage protection which had yet to be formulated in France (Rabinow, 1989; Arrif, 1994). In the Arab colonies the process of heritage-building thus generated very complex landscapes, not only because the various European states applied divergent paradigms of patrimonialisation, but also because the policies adopted in the colonies were often original attempts to implement new ideas and practices. Furthermore, each colonial state had its specific history, which could not (and cannot) be equated to that of another without losing the richness and diversity of the local situation. While each context has to be studied separately, the relationships among the various paths followed in the processes of cultural-heritage formation can enrich our knowledge of the multiple forms the notion can take and the numerous practices it elicits. Aside from the Western European states, during the second half of the nineteenth century another actor appeared on the Middle Eastern archaeological scene, and more broadly on that of its cultural heritage: the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, during that period an Ottoman archaeology emerged, which is to be understood as a reaction against the European practices of excavating and looting the ancient sites situated within the Empire’s territories (Shaw, 2003). The political stakes involved in the archaeological enterprise was clear to the Ottoman Sultan, as was the related idea that safeguarding the cultural heritage was synonymous with those of modernity and progress. Indeed, as Oulebsir put it, in Europe ‘to be modern in the nineteenth century means to go back to the medieval past and interpret it as valuable to the present society’ (2004, 296). However, the Empire centralised all archaeological activities in Istanbul and Anatolia, so that all other provinces were excluded from the archaeological initiatives. This explains why the notion and practices of cultural heritage failed to penetrate Arab societies until the colonial period. In fact, before the 1920s the majority of the Empire’s population was excluded from the archaeological enterprise, and very often it was not until several decades of European presence that in some colonies only a few local individuals, mostly from the

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elite, were educated as archaeologists or museum curators (Bernhardsson, 2005; Glock, 1994; Tahan, 2004; Maffi, 2004; Reid, 2002). The latter were usually sent to Europe or to local (missionary) European schools for training, or acquired their knowledge and skills while working with European architects, archaeologists and art historians in charge of cultural-heritage affairs in the colonies (Goode, 2007). Some local archaeologists or museum curators were met with resistance and even opposition by European officials who sought to exclude them from the circle of experts, as the biography of Ahmad Kamal, the first Egyptian Egyptologist, illustrates (Reid, 2002, 186–7). However, the colonised who played a role in the domain of archaeology were mostly workers digging in the excavations, museum keepers, or civil servants employed in the lower ranks of the colonial administration (Glock, 1994). Only a very few of those competent in archaeology and/ or history were able to reach important positions in the various countries’ departments of antiquities, and they were often members of minorities such as Armenians and Copts in Khedival Egypt or Maronites in Lebanon (Gelin, 2002; Reid, 2002; Volait, this volume). Moreover, as we have already pointed out, the natives who became active in the domain of cultural heritage shared the ideas of their Western counterparts insofar as they had been educated in European institutions, and hence, at least at the beginning, failed to develop a local view of those past civilisations deemed important by the colonisers. Often it was only after independence that local historians and archaeologists were able to construct new versions of the past, ‘rediscovering’ historical periods neglected by the colonisers and underplaying or forgetting civilisations that had been cherished by the latter, in order to write a new ‘national biography’ (Anderson, 1991). Indeed, in most Arab countries national schools of archaeology and local versions of cultural heritage failed to develop before the end of the colonial period (Maffi, this volume). Only some states not under direct colonisation, or which had been able to achieve their independence earlier on, such as Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, opposed in the 1930s and 1940s the Western practice of looting their cultural heritage. In this inter-war period local nationalist elites in these countries struggled to protect their national heritage in the name of their own history and identity (Goode, 2007). When studying the formative influence of colonial encounters in the shaping of national cultures and nation-states (Anderson 1991; Daher 1997; Kandiyoti, 2002; Maffi, 2004) we need to understand how the various new political systems coming into being in the Middle East, in an attempt to legitimise their existence (represented as monarchies and republics), constructed several official representations and narrations of national pasts, at the expense of regional realities (Kandiyoti, 2002, 282). Such constructed

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histories were grounded in a search for distant and ancient origins, linked to a disassociation from and varying levels of rejection of their recent past (mainly Ottoman). Due to such ideological, territorial and cultural transformations, the process of image-building, of identifying and defining, became highly contested and problematic, especially when it was limited by the physical and political boundaries of the various nation states and the restrictive and exclusive dogmas of nationalism.

Postcolonial cultural heritages Despite the appearance in several countries of a national consciousness, postcolonial concepts and practices were still deeply embedded in the colonial vision of the local past (Anderson 1991). Political independence, which for several Middle Eastern states coincided with the end of the Second World War, marked the beginning of a new phase in the process of patrimonialisation in the region. As several scholars have noted, this period was characterised by the postcolonial states’ attempts to build specific national identities, which were to become the common reference for the independent populations (Al-Sayyad, 2001). The first phase of the postcolonial history of cultural heritage dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, formative years for the regional states and characterised by great instability. Arab nationalism, the dominant ideology in the region, brought about the ‘discovery’ or the fabrication of turath sha‘bi, that is folklore or popular traditions. Numerous Arab countries witnessed the emergence of a strong concern for popular cultural heritage, deemed the ‘authentic’ expression of the Arab essence which was to define these modern societies: costumes, objects and handicrafts, as well as songs, poetry and various oral traditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were collected as valuable items legitimising the postcolonial nation state. Government and private institutions promoted the publication of books and journals devoted to popular traditions, folkloric museums and archives aimed at preserving tangible and intangible heritage were founded, university departments of folkloric studies were inaugurated, and so on (Abdi, 2001; Baram, 1991; Davis and Gavrielides, 1991; Massad, 2001; Montigny, 1998). A multi-layered process through which nations, heritage and images were defined, produced and constructed took place, emerging with the circulation of official/dominant, popular (local), academic/elitist, and geo-political discursive practices (Daher, 2007). Mechanisms for such a construction included several discursive practices set up by different institutions of the state, such as ministries of education, culture and tourism, and ranged from school curricula to postage-stamps, the definition of heritage, museums, the promotion of tourism, and other areas

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of representation (Katz, 2005; Maffi, 2005; Copeaux, 1997). This process of construction resulted in manufactured images formulated by how each nation state conceptualised itself. In general, and throughout the Middle East, there were rejections of and disassociations from the recent past; this had its roots in the pre- and post-mandate and colonial periods, when modernity was introduced as ever-changing and progressive; and it was contrasted with tradition, which was presented as static, unchanging, anti-progress, unscientific and nonindividualistic (Horner, 1990). The separation between the recent past and the present led eventually to a dilution of people’s awareness and knowledge of the past, its various moments of transformation and change and the role it played in their everyday life. Given this separation, the past and heritage become moulded into constructed and esoteric periods of ‘then’ and ‘now’. This dichotomy between past and present also occurred elsewhere in the world. Graburn (1998) shows how history and heritage (the past) could be moulded into constructed periods of ‘then’ (distant) and ‘now’ (recent) in the interpretations of museums and collections, thus denying another interpretation of the past that could have addressed significant moments of discontinuities and transformations in Inuit history (a people of the Central and Eastern Canadian Arctic). He discusses the emergence of a ‘generalised’ and ‘total’ Inuit history, which is imagined, reproduced and constructed in most other museums in the region. The various political systems (nation states) of the current Middle East constructed official representations and narrations of national pasts and forged national identities, this at the expense of regional realities. In the process, the recent past and heritage of the region was led into a state of paralysis. Many historical studies on the Ottoman period in the Arab world uncritically lumped that era into one long stretch of time, labelling it as four centuries of alien domination, neglect and deterioration. Indeed according to Rogan, several national narratives attempted to incorporate the conviction that the Ottoman period was insignificant to the region and that it amounted to ‘four centuries of neglect’ (1999, 32). The official rhetoric of post-mandate nation states, in their desperate search for foundation, legitimacy and origins, attempted consciously to create links with the distant, antiquarian, ancient past, and several newly erected ‘national’ and foreign archaeological institutions facilitated the search for such distant origins. Archaeological museums flourished in the newly constructed ancient Levant, the official discourse highlighting the interconnections with such distant ‘constructed’ points of origin that were conceived to have figured in the past within an approximate territorial boundary similar to that of the contemporary national state (Daher, 2007).

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Maffi (2000; 2004) highlights one example: the Jordanian/Hashemite fascination, even obsession, with ancient Nabatean civilisations that operated in a geographic territory similar to that of modern Jordan. Ancient ruins (e.g. Egypt’s Pharaonic sites, or classical sites in Libya and Algeria) and biblical sites in Palestine represented the core focus of heritage definition in the Arab world, affecting other heritage practices such as in education, cultural manifestations and tourism. For example, and as far as tourism in concerned, a typical journey from Europe would include Egypt’s ancient monuments, the Nile, the holy sites in Palestine and prime locations in major cities such as Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus. Sites like the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the ruins of Palmyra, and the rose-red city of Petra were popular sites among tourists, and represented the most significant listed and registered sites for local government agencies dealing with heritage – which were predominantly departments of antiquities – in various places of the Arab world (Daher, 2007). Many years later, when colonisation had ended in the Middle East (around the middle of the twentieth century), and nation states emerged in a grand attempt to forge national identities and images, it is ironic that the same Orientalist and colonial discourses were perpetuated. One only has to look at any tourism brochure or poster, or watch any promotional video that defines and promotes each of the countries within the Middle East, to find that practices of governments in the region, through their ministries of tourism, education and culture, work to define the region mainly through its classical traditions, marginalising in particular local regional realities of the recent past. One example is the Jordan Tourism Board brochures, where sites like Petra and Jerash are still the highlights of any tourist itinerary; very little attention, and that only recently, has been given to promoting the realities of Jordan’s more recent heritage, such as agricultural villages in the north, the vernacular architecture, and urban and social heritage of various Jordanian cities, such as Salt or Amman. Publications of the Board such as the Map of Jordan (JTB, 1998), or the Visitors’ Guide: Welcome to Jordan (JTB, 2000) primarily feature Jordan’s ancient sites (such as Petra, Jerash, the Byzantine churches of Madaba, the Umayyad desert castles) and its significant natural attractions (such as Wadi Rum and Dana nature reserves, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea). Hobsbawm believes that ‘traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented: ‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic

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nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable past (1983, 1–2). Al-Sayyad believes that: We should not be misled by a curious, but understandable, paradox: modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities ‘natural’ as to require no definition other than self-assertion (2001, 14). He also believes that: ‘The national phenomenon cannot be adequately investigated without careful attention to the “invention of tradition”.’ (2001, 14). While in the 1950s and 1960s the state was a crucial actor in the process of building cultural heritage, in the same period several actors in civil society began to play a role in the enterprise of heritage preservation: private collections were constituted, clubs and associations of citizens concerned with preserving cultural heritage appeared in many countries, in some cases modelling their activities after those of the previous colonisers. Thus, after the Second World War larger categories of the local population became involved in the enterprise of cultural heritage construction. A new phase in the history of cultural heritage in the Middle East began in the 1980s, when the development of cultural tourism brought about a process of heritage marketing. At the same time, in many countries, school curricula integrated archaeological and museum visits, the number of museums in the region saw a very significant increase, and university departments of archaeology started to train a number of local archaeologists. Local institutions were finally able to create their own archaeological knowledge-base, and to elaborate their own concept of cultural heritage without depending on the Western world as strongly as had been the case before. This does not mean that Western scholars or institutions ceased to be an influence in the region, or that Western science did not play a very important role in shaping the ideas and practices of cultural heritage in the Middle East. Nonetheless, we are convinced that during the 1980s a clear trend towards autonomous development in the processes of patrimonialisation emerged locally, as did also a new awareness of the value of some periods of the past that had been neglected for a very long time (David, this volume; Maffi, this volume). An emblematic example is the idea of protecting modern urban heritage, which

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in many Middle Eastern countries was neglected by local institutions, especially when it dated back to the late Ottoman period. One of the reasons for this neglect was that in many countries antiquities law promulgated during the colonial period did not protect urban complexes or vestiges of the nineteenth century. In Jordan, for example, the antiquities law provides that ancient remains dating back to the period before 1700 AD must be protected. All more recent vestiges can be destroyed in the absence of a specific decision by the relevant authorities.2 Since the colonial regulations were retained almost unchanged for several decades after independence, part of the local heritage has been lost for ever. Various factors have contributed to continuing this situation, among which is the fact that, as we have already pointed out, the late Ottoman period was perceived of and represented as an era of decadence, stagnation, and decline by European scholars as well as by Arab nationalists (Tibi, 1981). Another contested area is the colonial built heritage, which in many countries was perceived as a symbol of European domination and oppression – a monument, as it were, reminding the local population of a historical period which they would prefer to forget (Oulebsir, 2004). In many countries which have witnessed a long and oppressive domination, the architectural heritage of the colonial era can become a burden, or even a target for destruction, as in Libya, where several colonial monuments have been demolished or abandoned. However, as several observers have pointed out, by the 1990s things had started to change. Reilly criticises those who speak of a decisive break between the past and the present, in his study of Bilad al-Sham during the Ottoman and contemporary periods. Instead, he believes his study shows that ‘elements of contemporary reality were present in the past’ (1999, 62). He feels that we are witnessing a critical paradigm shift in Arab historiography: in general, critical historians are turning away from political to social and economic history. The history of the Syrian lands does not ‘consist of a series of famous personalities’, they write but of ‘the people who produced nourishment and daily necessities for the inhabitants’ (ibid, 46). This shift emerged from socio-economic and ideological change, and is part of a larger transformation shared not only by some historians but also by a group of philosophers, critical thinkers and social scientists in general. This is gradually affecting how critically heritage is being redefined and how new sites are incorporated into practices of patrimonialisation within the region. One particular outcome is the incorporation in the ‘national definition’ of heritage – and in the promotion agendas of ministries of tourism and culture – of certain regional realities, such as the vernacular villages that transcend national boundaries in places such as the villages in the Hauran

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between Syria and Jordan. Other examples lies in tracing the heritage of domestic architecture and its evolution throughout the Eastern Mediterranean region; ‘sites’ that have largely stayed outside the category of popular sites promoted by the state, such as the social history of cities (as oppose to their official history); the urban heritage of the recent past, such as historic city cores – Salt in Jordan, Muharraq in Bahrain, or Tripoli in Lebanon; or the newly emerging sites of heritage, art and culture promoted by rich families evoking different forms of authority and patronage and tackling the social issues and the history of everyday, like the Soap Museum in Saida in Lebanon. Or Darat al-Funun (houses of the arts) in Amman. Furthermore, such sites also include ‘heritage corridors’ – travel and pilgrimage routes such as the Hijaz Railway across Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, with its variety of stations built at the turn of the twentieth century, and also Hajj forts dating from the beginning of the Ottoman period. Yet, this recent paradigm shift, with attention being newly granted to urban-heritage realities in different parts of the Arab world, is a later arrival, coming only after many of these cities had to pay a high price in return for failed attempts at urban-renewal programmes and modernisation projects in the second half of the last century. Examples of the destruction of valuable urban heritage in the Middle East are numerous; they include the demolition of large segments of historic Damascus, and of the whole historic city cores of several cities in the Gulf, such as Doha in Qatar, and the obliterating of huge parts of historic Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It should also be understood that such creative destruction (Harvey 1990) commenced during the colonial period, prior to national projects of urban modernisation. Nasr and Volait (2003, xii) describe how particular techniques and concepts of urban intervention filtered into the colonies of the Mashreq and the Maghreb, and were projected as spatial means of modernisation in the colonies; an example is the spread of ‘Haussmannism’ to the Garden City idealism of cities like Cairo, Beirut, Damascus and Casablanca. In the efforts of French and British mandate and post-mandate (i.e. nationstate) urban-planning interventions to embrace modernity, the separation between the past and the present was intensified in many parts of the Arab world. At the level of cities, several urban projects in places like Damascus, Aleppo, Amman and Beirut led to complete socio-economic and spatial segregation between the old historic parts of town and the newly-zoned parts to which the elite and upper-middle-class residents moved. The rich, with their businesses, left the traditional neighbourhoods for the new zones and were replaced by transient workers, rural migrants to the cities, the poor and minorities (Daher, 2005, 290). In Damascus, Beirut and several other cities, during the French mandate in the 1920s and 1930s, planners such

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as Ecochard imposed schemes on the old organic pattern of the traditional city, based on ‘Haussmannian’ principles (Degeorge 1995, 70–1). Several new modern plans introduced the construction of boulevards and avenues which sliced into traditional settings (e.g. the new avenue of al-Thawra in the historic neighbourhood of Saruja in Damascus), causing destruction and demolition of whole neighbourhoods and a dichotomy between the old, traditional parts of town on the one hand and newly-zoned areas on the other. Everything was sacrificed to the great transport infrastructure, with only fragments and isolated monuments retained for future generations. In reality, such urban interventions, were viewed as the best means of embracing the project of modernity. Throughout several colonial schemes in different places in the Middle East and North Africa, a politically driven evaluation of heritage and the past was conducted following the norms of a modern and progressive society. Al-Sayyad (1992), in his review of Rabinow’s critical essay on urban colonialism in Morocco, believes that the ‘Modernist discourse was more clearly articulated by the French in Morocco’. Rabinow depicted the construction of urban colonial Morocco as the result of experiments in urban planning, set in motion by Hubert Lyautey and later continued, albeit with important modifications, by Henri Prost and Michel Ecochard. Al-Sayyad coined the term ‘techno-cosmopolitanism’, understood as a movement to operationalise history, society and culture, where ‘tradition was evaluated from the perspective of the norms of orderly modern society, which Rabinow identifies as health, productivity and efficiency’ (ibid, 10). This creative destruction continued into the post-mandate period. The practice of modern urban planning continued to impose skeleton maps, zoning ordinances and planning schemes on historic city cores all over the region, embracing modernity and progress, actualised only in the laying-out of road networks (superimposed on historic cores without any consideration of their nature or dynamics), and the demolition of traditional settings based on the notion that such settings were obsolete and insignificant. The historic cores of several cities come to mind, such as Irbid in Jordan, Lattakia in Syria, and numerous smaller towns and villages all over the Arab world (Steinberg, 1996; Daher, 2005, 290). Notions of area conservation as heritage-related practices emerged much later in several cities of the Arab East (Mashreq) than in cities in the Maghreb – such as Fez in Morocco, through the work of the Agency for the Development and Rehabilitation of the City of Fez (ADER FEZ), or in Tunis through that of the Association de sauvegarde de la médina de Tunis (ASM), which adopted French principles of area conservation and of protected urban sectors as early as the 1970s, with projects addressing the

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conservation of historic city cores in these cities. The evolution of concepts of urban rehabilitation emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, when ideas of integrated conservation, centred on addressing larger areas of historic cities and involving local communities in the process, were starting to influence several city organisations and urban-heritage experts. Regulations concerning integrated conservation appeared in many European countries towards the 1960s. For example, the emergence of ‘protected sectors’ appeared in France with the putting forward of the Malraux Law, hence several urban quarters, such as Le Marais in Paris, were given such protection. Around the same time, Britain embraced the idea of conservation areas, where rural conservation also became a priority (Daher, 2009a, 29–38). In the Arab world today, despite the early awareness of urban rehabilitation and area conservation in cities of the Maghreb, and despite also successful attempts in some quarters within historic city cores in places like Cairo (e.g. the Darb al-Ahmar Project) or Aleppo (Sedky, 2009); historic city cores and old urban neighbourhoods face various challenges and obstacles that stand in the way of implementing a more integrated urban rehabilitation process. First, there is a crucial need for a critical definition and appreciation of the urban heritage. Second, there is too little incorporation of urban-heritage conservation and management into planning processes; in addition, there is a lack of leadership in those processes and in following them up. Even though, in many contexts, urban-heritage regulations and laws do exist, implementation falls short of achieving the desired outcomes. It is very obvious that several areas are not only suffering from deterioration, structural decay and neglect, but those that do receive attention, in the form of culturally-led urban rehabilitation, encounter different levels of gentrification and hence lose their functional and social diversity (Daher, 2009a, 29–38).

Actors in patrimonialisation One of the main objectives of this book is to understand the nature and dynamics of the various types of publics, actors and stakeholders (e.g. individuals, NGOs, families, institutions, donor agencies, specialists, investors and others) involved in the definition, production and consumption of heritage and its material culture. It therefore aims to unravel and understand the various networks, communication structures and discourses that operate between and within such publics and actors. Furthermore, the various contributors to the volume address the complexity and fluidity of patrimonialisation practices that are characterised by the interaction between many different actors, by the clash between conflicting discourses, and between

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different political and economic agendas – local, regional, national, and transnational. In the years 2002–03, and facilitated by an international collaborative research grant from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Programme on the Middle East and North Africa, a group of researchers, including Rami Daher, Xavier Guillot, Mike Robinson and Jamal Al-Abed, set out on a research endeavour. This took the form of a travelling workshop which sought to investigate the politics of heritage practices between the diverse publics and counter-publics (Arendt, 1958) involved in the definition, production and consumption of heritage, and to examine their links to issues of identity construction and community development within the Bilad al-Sham region. The following discussion is largely based on the outcome of that research, and on subsequent fieldwork conducted by Daher on the practices of patrimonialisation in other places of the Arab world, such as Bahrain, Egypt and Morocco. A diverse group of actors and agents, such as urban designers and architects, local community groups and urban activists, or even philanthropists with a genuine social agenda, are continuously being involved in the definition, production and consumption of heritage in the Arab world. More recently, urbanism research and the relevant literature addressed the rise of city-based creative class focusing on diversity and creativity as basic drivers of innovations and of regional and national growth. This urban grouping includes architects, scientists, engineers, university professors, philosophers, artists and novelists, to mention only some (Florida, 2003). Whether it is al-Hariri, Debbaneh or Audi in Lebanon; Shoman, Tell, Bataineh or Bisharat in Jordan; Toukan, Khouri, Qattan or Husseini in Palestine; Ayidi, Jabry or Azem in Syria, many of Bilad al-Sham’s notable families and cultural and political elites are re-emerging to introduce themselves to the public as patrons of art, heritage and culture. Family estates, historic mansions and heritage sites are being conserved, rehabilitated and adapted into centres of culture, history/heritage museums, art galleries and themed restaurants that are appreciated by a wider spectrum of society, specially young people, or adults between 35 and 45 years of age, who share a sense of belonging and an appreciation of historic parts of towns and cities (Daher, 2004b). These heritage patrons are reclaiming their position in different places in the region through the appropriation of heritage and through an appeal to culture, art and the intelligentsia. It is very interesting to notice that some of these heritage patrons are the same urban elite who emerged in Bilad al-Sham during the nineteenth century (and were defined by the term ‘notables’ by scholars and historians), and are reinstating their position within society as active supporters of culture and critical public debate within civil society.

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Sidon (Saida) in Lebanon represents a perfect example of local families involvement in the local cultural scene. While the Debbaneh family are restoring and adapting their old residence into the new Debbaneh Palace and Saida History Museum, other notable families in Saida, like the Audis, have also adapted their old residence, into the famous Soap Museum, and have been heavily involved through the Audi Foundation in urbanregeneration activity in the city (Daher, 2007, 46–8). The Abdul-Hameed Shoman Foundation, established by the Arab Bank in Jordan, is another example of family/corporate philanthropy in the region that has supported the transformative changes in contemporary Arab cultural discourse. The Shoman Foundation, and through its different cultural activities such as the Shoman Forum (a series of public lectures by local Arab social critics and critical thinkers) has provided a different alternate voice for the sake of dialogue in a time of crisis. The Khalid Shoman Foundation had been extensively involved in the conservation and protection of the architectural heritage of the city of Amman, through the Darat al-Funun Project: an old, deserted housing complex built on ancient ruins and converted into a nexus of art and culture accessible to all groups of society, and thus serving the Jordanian public (Daher, 2004b; 2007). In the Arabian Gulf state of Bahrain, individuals such as Sheikha Mai Al-Khalifah are becoming heavily involved not only in creating awareness about the heritage of the cities of Manama and Muharraq; she also serves as a patron of several urban rehabilitation and adaptation projects, such as the adaptive reuse of Sheikh Zayed house in the historic core of Muharraq as a cultural centre and museum that narrates the history of journalism in the country.1 Regardless of the differences between these various local-family heritage projects, they offer an important opportunity and a new accessibility for the re-reading of the history and memory of the region’s recent past. This is part of a new paradigm in scholarly Arab historiography, characterised by a shift of focus from the grand narratives of national/formal history to the local, granting a voice to social and urban history, the ordinary and everyday life. These projects offer an ethnographic approach to the understanding of local history and the role of different families and foundations, and provide a chance to investigate and research intersections and mediations between state and society today. Finally, these projects not only represent a way of asserting the role of such families and foundations in the public sphere, but also of giving a voice to re-articulated memories on the regional scale that is Bilad al-Sham, focusing on patterns, interconnections, regional mobility, and moments of change and transformation.

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In Beirut (which once was considered the intellectual capital of the Arab world), the area of Hamra in Ras Beirut can today be considered – together with its small and medium-sized businesses, such as shops, restaurants, hotels and alternative cafés (e.g. ta-marbouta, Ziko House, Café Younis) – as an arena in the city for the daily demonstration of heritage practices, and might also represent a mild but yet important form of urban and social resistance against global/local urban transformations privileging a more neo-liberal, capitalist approach to urban investment and development in the area. Hamra is actually in danger, as global capital originating in the Gulf is gradually targeting the area; empty buildings with absentee owners are being sold one after another. Yet many owners are still resisting sale; the area still retains part of its competitive edge, enough for major hotels to stay and to multiply. Hamra has also witnessed during the past decade some genuine interventions within its public domain, such as the creation of Masrah al-Madina, an adaptive reuse of an old cinema as a public theatre, championed by a locally famous actress and urban activist. Other forms of urban activism and patrimonialisation practices, orchestrated by the rising urban creative class in Beirut, includes the work of professors from AUB (American University of Beirut) in leading planning and conservation efforts during reconstruction after the last Israeli war on villages in Southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. A significant but little-known group of actors and agents in the Arab world involved in the production and consumption of heritage is constituted by activists and individuals, from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon, who are concerned with the documentation and protection of the culture and architecture of modernity. They attempt to understand the meaning and essence of modernity as a major cultural change encompassing ideological, territorial and socio-economic transformation, which Europe went through at the turn of the twentieth century and which several decades later filtered into the Arab world through life-styles, city planning and architecture (Daher, 2009b, 22–6). Local attempts to research, document and conserve the heritage of modernity in the Arab world include Daher’s several research endeavours and adaptive reuse projects in Amman (for instance the Electricity Hangar, and researching and documenting the city’s cinemas, inter alia), George Arbid’s documentation of the architecture of modernity in Beirut, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s efforts (under the supervision of Ismail Serrageldin) to document and understand modernity in Egypt through its quarterly publication Dhakirat Misr al-Mu‘asirah, and the efforts of the Casamémoire2 society in Casablanca to research and document its modernist architectural heritage in the city, to mention a few.3

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Cultural tourism and heritage as economic resources The political stake-holding embedded in cultural-heritage promotion has recently made room for economic concerns, which have become particularly important in the last 15 years. In the late 1990s a new phase in the history of cultural heritage began (Al-Sayyad, 2001; Rowan and Baram, 2004), with the market dimension as its main feature. In many Middle Eastern countries today, local and foreign tourists are offered handicraft products, landscapes and even people as cultural heritage, which has become a business under the label of ‘cultural tourism’ (Daher, 2007). It is a product to be consumed, by looking, listening, eating, touching and even smelling. Cultural heritage entails various categories of things: archaeological remains, museum objects, as well as other more ‘traditional’ things such as houses, souks, food, textiles, etc. The universe of cultural heritage has become a kind of theatre where ‘traditions’ are performed and recreated according to the consumers’ current taste and to representations of the past. Furthermore, as noted above, local ‘traditions’ in the Middle East are often the outcome of a very long cultural process modelled by the Orientalist gaze (Mitchell, 1988; Said, 1978). Nevertheless, these traditions have been assimilated and reworked by local actors for their own purposes and using their own categories. Today, for numerous government institutions and private actors, preserving and emphasising cultural heritage has become a national mission – to promote tourism in the country, and to enhance national or family prestige. It is no longer the historical or artistic value of the items and places classified as cultural heritage, which prevail, but the economic and political benefits to be obtained from them. Needless to say, this trend does not represent all the actors in the cultural heritage arena; there exist many private and public agents who work and struggle to protect cultural heritage in order to reinforce historical awareness among the people, to enrich knowledge of the past and to establish memories of it that can help in shaping present societies and configuring their future. Heritage and cultural tourists are drawn to historic villages, in search of authentic rural experience; all over the Middle East they seek contact with living communities near ancient sites, where local communities have lived for centuries within or next to such ancient ruins as Luxor in Egypt, Petra and Mkies in Jordan, or Bosra in Syria. The combination of an ancient site dating back thousands of years and, intertwined with it, a traditional living community is extremely attractive from the heritage industry’s point of view. Several of these places have been used as stages for local culture and tradition coupled with entertainment and excessive consumption (often to ‘sugar-coat’ an oppressed society), producing ‘historic villages’, ‘festive

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markets’ or ‘heritage centres’ dominated by investors’ attempts to package culture and heritage as commodities, ready for consumption by an uncritical audience, where the line between cultural experiences and pure entertainment becomes blurred. Britton asserts that ‘as far as tourism is concerned, leisure activities have become increasingly commodified as a “culture of consumption” has evolved’ (1991, 453). The historic urban environment, with all its exoticism, vitality and variety, is also being incorporated into places of heritage production and consumption. The popularity of urban living and an ever-growing café society are redirecting attention to historic parts of Damascus, Aleppo or Amman that had long been forgotten, and had even fallen into neglect. Old cafes, warehouses, historic houses and the like are being adapted and rehabilitated into boutique hotels, restaurants and cafés to cater for a growing tourist demand, both local and foreign. One particular historic neighbourhood undergoing extensive structural transformation and demographic change is Hamrawi, next to the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. The neighbourhood is famous for its magnificent courtyard houses with iwans overlooking the central courtyard space, which itself is usually endowed with a water feature. These houses are simple on the outside but once one enters into the main courtyard, the decorations, water, vegetation and exquisite spatial arrangement make it a pleasurable and relaxing place to rest, contemplate and regenerate. Narrow alleys with speciality markets connect the neighbourhood, which is also close to major tourist monuments, not only the Umayyad mosque but also other places such as historic madrasas (schools) and khans (e.g. the khan of As‘ad Pasha).4 Bayt Jabry (Jabry house) is one of the places within the historic Hamrawi neighbourhood that is becoming very popular amongst the café society of Damascus. In Bayt Jabry, a Damascene individual changed his grandfather’s house into a coffee house and cultural centre, after it had been used for storage.5 In the midst of such large-scale tourism developments and the excessive commercialisation of the tourist’s experience there has emerged a genuine and authentic partnership between tourism and heritage in the Bilad al-Sham region, represented by family-owned and run small hotels, owned and run by families, in Damascus, Aleppo, Amman and Beirut, offering an alternative to grand, luxury establishments. Hotels such as the historic al-Rabi‘a in an old Damascene courtyard house, or the Baron Hotel in an early twentieth-century Aleppo neighbourhood, not only ensure that more revenue from tourism stays in the country and leakages to the outside are kept to a minimum, but also provide a different experience for the tourist or traveller willing to explore the wonders of the city and the social realities of

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its everyday life, as opposed to a rapid, ‘iconographic’ experience, restricted to buildings and places selected for a pre-planned itinerary (Daher, this volume).

Cultural heritage as political arena The definition and the fabrication of cultural heritage is a complex and contested process, which operates in both a top-down and a bottom-up fashion. The medium through which the process takes place includes different places and sites of heritage production and consumption, with diverse stakeholders between whom a complicated mechanism of power operates. Spatial settings in which processes of patrimonialisation take place are difficult to define because they are multiple and made up of different components. Any particular geographical location always constitutes a nexus where very different agencies, fluxes and logics meet and interact. A good example showing the inherent complexity of the spaces of patrimonialisation is Ian Hodder’s analysis of the Çatalhöyük site (1998). In this Anatolian village local, national and international waves of interests, representations and practices intertwine and create changing configurations which shape the lives of many individuals living in different places: local officials, villagers, Turkish archaeologists, the Western archaeological community, the Istanbul elite, etc. Insofar as each category of actors attributes different meanings to the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, and uses it in a specific way, the same site entails multiple pasts and elicits various representations and narratives. A particular spatial setting is seldom a local space (Appadurai, 1996) because it is related to larger dynamics and subject to national, regional and transnational forces; a landscape, an archaeological site, a particular building or an object, and their related representations, memories and discourses can constitute the setting for fabricating and negotiating cultural heritage, or for contention and conflict. Even a room and a showcase in a museum are likely to become a spatial setting for cultural heritage. There are also intangible settings that intertwine and are embedded in the tangible contexts; cultural heritage, as we have already seen, cannot be divided into two separate realms – one intangible, one tangible – without losing its complexity and its internal logic. Architectural renovations, private collections, museum-like corners in private homes, guest-houses, memorials, Bedouin restaurants, ‘traditional’ coffee houses, Bedouin encampments for tourists – all are legitimate settings of patrimonialisation (Layne, 1994; Maffi, 2004; Salamandra, 2004). Intimately connected with such spatial settings are discourses, practices of hospitality, oral memories, gestures, specific sets of knowledge that constitute the intangible fabric lying behind and

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conferring meaning on physical places (Copertino, this volume; Pirinoli, 2006; Slyomovics, 1998; Zerubavel, 1995). The conflict over the production of heritage and appropriation of space for heritage practices is no longer an argument about vernacular architecture or a technical argument about conservation style. The arguments and conflict are also beyond the issues concerning the authenticity of conservation projects and the experiences of the various stakeholders (even though these are also important issues for observation, discussion and research). The argument is gradually developing into a socio-economic and political conflict over space, and over how and for whom it is appropriated for development, resulting in severe cases of gentrification and territorial dispossession. Patrimonialisation often has very high costs for some of the social groups that undergo it. Usually local communities have to adjust to the new symbolic narratives and the new spatial organisation decided from above, whether by municipal, regional, national or international authorities, with little opportunity to negotiate their position. This means that processes of cultural-heritage building can paradoxically destroy the living communities inhabiting a specific place and their social life (Daher, 1999; Handler, 1985; Herzfeld, 2009). Eviction, displacement, destruction of the links between the social organisation and the physical setting, these are common features of cultural-heritage building when it is not a bottom-up process. There are innumerable examples of sites that have become magnificent but empty scenarios once the previous inhabitants have been evicted. Gentrification processes are one of the most common consequences of patrimonialisation in urban contexts, implying the emergence of new categories of owners and tenants. Old inhabitants are evicted from their social and spatial setting to be replaced by new categories of actors and new kinds of social networks (Herzfeld, 2009; Salamandra, 2004). Economic, political and cultural factors may be at the origin of this shift since the reasons for the displacement of a community are complex, and can be the result of a plan imposed from above as well as of some specific economic and political transformations affecting a region of the world, a country, a city, etc. If it causes the displacement of a community, patrimonialisation implies the loss of memories, narratives and social practices carried by the groups being forced to move to another location (Slyomovics, 1998). Therefore, culturalheritage building always entails protecting a specific idea of the past, and excluding other pasts. The selection of a specific past among the many possible creates new stakeholdings and new relationships between the actors involved, and sometimes ends up in serious confrontations – particularly when the relationships among the actors are asymmetrical, so that one actor or a group has the power to impose its own idea of heritage preservation.

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Needless to say, the stronger agent can win the heritage war, leaving little chance of the weaker being able to interfere in the final decisions. This is the case of the old city of Jerusalem illustrated by Abu el-Haj (2001) and Ricca (2007), where the Israeli authorities decided to recreate an urban landscape which was both to show the immemorial presence of the Jews and to erase the Arab-Islamic features of the city (Whitelam, 1996; Karmi, 2007). In other circumstances it is possible for local communities, usually the weaker set of actors, to resist or at least to negotiate their position with the stronger power, such as in the case of the Pom Mahakan community in Bangkok illustrated by Herzfeld (2003). The following rural and urban case studies from various parts of the Arab world show that sites where patrimonialisation is in progress can become places of conflict – over how heritage is defined, and how these sites are appropriated for development. Mkies, which represents a severe case of rural gentrification, is a Jordanian village built during the Ottoman period (Daher, 1999; 2007). Just two decades ago Mkies, famous for its unique olive produce and strategic location, was a thriving village, built in the middle of the nineteenth century next to the classical (Greco-Roman) town of Gadara. It underwent a series of battles and conflicts over the rights to its development. From the late 1970s through to the late 1980s the local community was evacuated and housed in standardised units unsuited to village life and an agricultural community. The government’s acquisition of the land (justified by the rationale of eminent domain) was initially carried out in order to conduct archaeological excavations in ancient Gadara, leaving the empty village to fall into neglect and despair, and dismantling vital links between the villagers – who now depend on low-paying jobs in nearby urban centres – and their settlement and agricultural land. The evacuation dismantled the vital relationship between the village community and its local environment. Even though some of the courtyard houses in the village were conserved and adapted, by a wealthy investor, into tourist facilities (e.g. an archaeological museum, a rest-house and an Italian restaurant), the local community was marginalised and was never engaged in tourism development. By the end of the 1990s, given the lure of international investment, the government was contemplating selling the whole village to a large tourism company, which was planning to turn the historic village into a five-star hotel. What is interesting today is the collaboration between the local community, archaeologists, architects and anthropologists against the wealthy investors and the processes of capital accumulation. Continuous contestation by the local community and by local activists succeeded recently (2005) in convincing the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to launch a study that would come up with a

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solution to ensure the protection of the historic village and the genuine engagement of the local community in tourism development. Details of this project are yet to be seen. The world-famous site of Luxor in Upper Egypt has been known, for more than a century and a half, for its archaeological treasures, recognised in 1979 by Unesco and the international community and included in the category of world heritage. A small village at the end of the nineteenth century, Madinat al-Uqsur has grown into a strategic urban space. The village, with its proximity to the ancient ruins of Luxor (e.g. the temple of Karnak), became a major attraction for international experts in heritage-management and tourism-planning issues (Sandrine, 2005). Over the last 30 years, Luxor has been the focus of some ten different plans and projects, engaging the Egyptian government, local authorities and the main international development agencies, from Unesco in 1980 to UNDP more recently. Sandrine (2005) focuses on two periods in the recent history of Luxor: the first centres on the genesis of Luxor as a modern space. ‘In 1893, Maspero, head of the Antiquity department decided to excavate the temple of Luxor where the “Arab” village was located. In two decades, Luxor the “miserable village”, as it used to be qualified by travellers, became a modern and cosmopolitan town, thanks to its treasures and international tourism, intimately connected to the European colonial project in Egypt’ (Sandrine, 2005, unpublished paper). The second period centres on international agencies’ attempts to plan ideal redevelopment solutions for the city. From 1996 to 2002, UNDP and the Egyptian government implemented the ‘Comprehensive Plan of Luxor City Development Project’. According to the plan, Luxor would become an open-air museum, and two new settlements would be constructed in the desert, in order to relocate the population and to provide international tourists with adequate infrastructure. Sandrine is interested in addressing the issue of cultural-tourism development as a tool to shape and produce segregated spaces in Egypt, taking account of international norms, national constraints and local patterns. She believes that the ‘raison d’être of Luxor lies somehow in the hand of the Other (Egyptologist, expert, tourist), or on the perception he/she has on the region and its resources’. Despite the differences between the cases quoted above, some of these communities, such as Mkies and Pom Mahakan, were to a certain extent able to negotiate their position with the national or municipal authorities. Moreover, it is possible for local groups to mobilise local, national and even transnational forces to strengthen their position and their struggle to impose their own ideas and narratives of the past. In some circumstances symbolic quarrels degenerate into physical conflicts, even though they constitute

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the extreme manifestation of the relationships originated by the process of building cultural heritage. This happens when that process implies the violent physical eviction of a resident community and the destruction of its ordinary social life. In most cases, however, the process of patrimonialisation generates dialogue, where, if there is indeed a component of violence, it is often expressed in symbolic terms. This is the case when local versions of the past are put forward in response to official narratives, and a dialogue between the two groups of proponents is created. In fact, the weaker actors are never passive, but interact with the more powerful, shaping their representations and policies in various ways. An example are the madafas in Jordan, tribal guest-houses that have become places of memory where specific narratives of the past are exhibited through displays of objects, pictures and furniture (Husban, 1997; Maffi, 2010; Shryock, 1997). The patrimonialisation of these places is a recent phenomenon, and shows the creative agency of tribal leaders in adjusting to the national and local political logics. The madafas are thus places where multiple versions of the past are imagined and negotiated within a broader official representation which they help to reconfigure. A similar case of creative reconfiguration of the past by a non-governmental actor is illustrated by Sophia MiloŠevic´ Bijleveld (2006) in her analysis of the Jihad Museum in Herat, Afghanistan. This institution has been created under the auspices of the local warlord, Ismael Khan, to commemorate Afghan history over the last 30 years, and reflects his view of it. The extraordinary mural paintings in the museum illustrate a complex representation where the heroic life of Ismael Khan is intertwined with an emphasis on Islamic values and on jihad, the collective resistance of the Afghan population to foreign invaders. While the Afghan central state based in Kabul rules only formally on the various provinces, the choice of adopting and reconfiguring the museum, a Western institution, in order to illustrate the local version of the past shows clearly Ismael Khan’s wish to create a dialogue with transnational aspects. Moreover, the creation of the Jihad Museum shows the impossibility of reducing the complexity of contemporary Islamic attitudes towards cultural heritage. Indeed, while in 2001 the iconoclasm of the Taliban government brought about the destruction of the Bamiyan statues, the Jihad Museum is covered by figurative paintings illustrating the history of Afghan resistance since 1979 (Dupree, 2002; Flood, 2002).

Structure of the volume Despite the fact that not all countries of the Middle East nor of the Arab world are represented, we hope this volume will allow the reader to enter

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the arena of cultural heritage in the various states considered in order to unravel some of the important political and cultural aspects which characterise them. Some chapters focus on a specific national context (Copertino, David, Makhzoumi, Tahan, Volait, Wagenhofer), others adopt a comparative perspective (Daher, Naef), whereas some others are oriented towards historical analysis (Maffi, Poulot, Shaw). In her chapter, Wendy Shaw goes back to the late Ottoman period, when the notion of cultural heritage emerged in the empire as a reaction to the European practices of archaeology within its territory. Indeed the Ottoman elite perceived archaeology as another means of the European penetration into the territories of the state. The reactive configuration of the heritage practices the Ottoman authorities developed during the last third of the nineteenth century is apparent in the laws promulgated to protect local monuments and sites, in museography, as well as in the writings of several intellectuals. Shaw gives a very detailed description of the Ottoman literature of the last decades of the nineteenth century, in which the notion of cultural heritage was defined for the first time in an original way. The notions of art and cultural heritage were first linked to the modernisation of the state rather than to the identity and historical legitimacy of the empire. Only in the 1910s and 1920s, several works explicitly emphasised the value of past monuments per se: most of these books were devoted to Istanbul and its architectural heritage and were addressed to a small European-educated audience. Shaw sheds light on the ideas and practices of cultural heritage in the late Ottoman period that constitute the foundation on which the states that emerged after the First World War were to establish their heritage policies. As she clearly shows, the notion and practices of cultural heritage were meaningful only for an elite and no measures were taken to educate the empire’s diverse populations that were unable to understand the concern for preserving and exhibiting the material remains of previous civilisations. The chapter by Irene Maffi, entitled ‘The intricate life of cultural heritage: colonial and postcolonial processes of patrimonialisation in Jordan’, presents an examination and illustration of how the practices related to cultural heritage and archaeology in Jordan became a tool of the colonial power in order to impose its own cultural vision of history and culture. The author explicates the mechanisms of power exercised both by the British during the mandate period and by the local leaders of the country. Furthermore, the chapter shows how practices of cultural heritage or patrimonialisation became an important part of the political agenda of the Hashemites after independence and how archaeology and practices of cultural heritage had entered the Jordanian cultural scene and had shaped the local perception

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of the past. Maffi’s chapter explicates how the cultural heritage is always seen and orchestrated from the perspective of the author (the agency that is presenting and interpreting that heritage to the public). Therefore, processes of patrimonialisation could be viewed as discursive practices that are culturally and politically driven. The author also compares the situation in Jordan with that in Israel where, in addition to the military occupation of Palestine, the Israeli state had employed several symbolic strategies in order to appropriate the soil of historical Palestine of which archaeology played a crucial instrument by providing the material evidences in order to fabricate the historical depth necessary to justify the creation of the state of Israel. The chapter by Mercedes Volait on the emergence of a new historiography of the ‘Belle Epoque’ in Egypt reveals a seductive age and is rationalised by this narrative of loss centring on nostalgia for the monarchic regime, with its glamourous architecture and lifestyle, which was overturned in 1952 with the arrival of Nasser. This re-invention of the Belle Epoque has therefore opened the way to the re-appropriation of a historic past which had been concealed, disgraced and ignored until very recently. This rediscovery could be positioned together with a larger phenomenon in the Arab world – the re-reading of the recent past, of which the heritage of Modernity is a crucial part. This phenomenon takes shape in the production of literature on the Belle Epoque (novels, research, historiography, (auto)biographies, and so on), image production and cultural practices, as also through the preservation, listing and adaptive reuse of architectural examples from the Belle Epoque period centering on Khedivial Cairo, cosmopolitan Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, and multi-faith Heliopolis. Finally, this nostalgia could be understood as a way where it constitutes a roundabout manner of expressing the desires of today – for equality, order, civility, and quality of life- in reaction to experiences of social and economic instability and exploitation. In other words, this returning to Egypt’s recent past and invocation of the Belle Epoque culture manifested in an idealised cosmopolitan social model, could also be seen as a way of revisiting the national narrative bequeathed by the Nasser revolution, and the outcome and aftermath of that era. Lina Tahan’s analysis of Lebanese archaeological museums is centred on the heavy silence surrounding the country’s Arab-Islamic past. Paradoxically, in a state dominated by a Muslim majority, the pre-Islamic polytheistic Phoenician past constitutes the main reference in Lebanese history. In local museums, Phoenicians are represented as the ancestors of the modern Lebanese, conferring an original identity on the country and continuing to shape local culture and society. This specific configuration is rooted in the colonial period when the French administrators ‘invented’ a national past

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for the emerging Lebanese state in which the Christian majority could not identify, at least in the colonisers’ eyes, with the Arab-Islamic history of the region. Thus, the Phoenicians became the non-Muslim and pretended non-Arab ancestors of the modern Christian community that was to govern Lebanon. Tahan suggests that local museums ought to stand back from the French colonial historiographic paradigm, and become multicultural places showing other segments of local history and especially Lebanon’s Islamic past. In some way, Lebanese archaeological museums faithfully mirror the profound divisions characterising the population and the destiny of the National Museum is a tragic metaphor of the political and cultural story of the country, insofar as during the Civil War this institution became ‘a barrack for armed elements and a “strategic locale” for snipers’. Tahan suggests that, in light of the divisions and conflicts of the recent Lebanese history, museums curators shall carefully evaluate the messages that objects convey to visitors and take the responsibility for their civil and political role. Rami Daher’s chapter explores contemporary forms of patrimonialisation in the Bilad al-Sham region, focusing on the emergence of new categories of actors belonging to civil society who participate in the shaping of local heritage. Although these actors do not constitute a unitary group but are a complex galaxy characterised by multiple profiles, they produce and circulate social and cultural histories of their city and region that are different from the official versions sponsored by the nation states. Despite the difference of political regimes in the Mashreq area, the new actors of patrimonialisation show many similarities in their social, political and cultural features that unite them beyond state boundaries. Among the agents of these unofficial processes of patrimonialisation are prominent families of the region previously in the Ottoman administration and new urban elites that play an important role in promoting the rehabilitation of historical areas and the renovation of urban complexes and rural villages, transforming them into new kind of leisure places such as restaurants, hotels, bars, tourist shops, that attract locals and foreign tourists. ‘Urban activists’ and ‘urban artists’ ally in the countries of the region to promote various practices of patrimonialisation that do not coincide with state interests and have actively opposed ‘neo-liberal urban restructuring’, whose main effects are the widening of socio-economic gaps between different groups of the population, the gentrification of urban areas and the constitution of separate zones within the cities that are impossible to cross. Overall, Daher’s chapter constitutes a rich portrait of a lively social process that not only has cultural and historical ambitions but also shows the important political commitment of its agents.

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The chapter by Domenico Copertino on the recent practices of historichome restorations and conservations in Damascus presents a thorough examination of the various discursive practices of different actors and agents involved in this process. He also discusses the consequences of such cultural and economic transformations for the Old City and for different types of stakeholders. In more detail, the author examines the practices and imaginaries of six groups of gentrifiers: Syrians investing in the restoration and development of historic buildings; Unesco employees, both Syrian and European, as regulators of the Old City; Syrian and European architects putting forward plans for the conservation of these heritage houses; the new occupants or residents of the houses (the incomers), who usually belong to the affluent middle and upper-middle classes; and finally the master builders and craftsmen employed to carry out the various restoration works. Furthermore, the author discusses the various forms of specific capital associated with social, economic and institutional stakeholders and actors, including investors’ financial capital, institutions’ political capital (such as that of Unesco and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture), architects and designers’ scientific and educational capital, master builders’ and craftsmen’s knowledge and technical capital, and finally, the new residents’ symbolic capital. The chapter discusses processes of commodification and transformation of these different forms of specific capital into an exchange value/commodity that is subject to market forces in the context of the Old City of Damascus, resulting in an objectification of the tradition, history and culture of dwellings. The chapter by Jean-Claude David is an interesting one that brings the practices associated with the domestic heritage of Aleppo to the foreground, where the whole meaning of heritage or patrimony is scrutinised and a link between tangible and intangible heritage is created. He is concerned with the existence of a living, evolving heritage rather than a set, contemplated one – one that is situated in the intersections between material space and users. The first part of the chapter explores the politics, history, and evolution of inscription and designation of heritage in Aleppo. The second part of the chapter is interested in the changing and evolving local practices associated with that domestic heritage. He considers the discontinuity of occupation from one dweller to another (even with a more rural background) to be not an absolute obstacle to certain continuity and to the transmission of a memory. For the new inhabitants, the space of the houses in the old town may be suitable in several ways: its simplicity makes it adaptable and ideal to accommodate other, perhaps more simple practices where the habitat becomes their heritage, and the domestic memory they bring with them may develop with time. In fact the modifications brought in with the new inhabitants may be considered as an act of conservation, even if these

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interventions might be perceived in bad taste or to be unauthentic by some. The author believes that this transformation brought in by new inhabitants of the domestic space preserves the meaning of these spaces which could have been, otherwise, easily disfigured or destroyed by more official or formal restoration, such as their transformation into hotels or restaurants. Finally, David believes that these domestic heritage practices associated with the interiors of the houses seem far removed from the formal definitions of heritage, particularly in the importance given to the outside gaze and contemplation which does not recognize the local inhabitants practices of how this heritage is lived in an used over time. Therefore, a link between the tangible and more intangible attributes of that domestic heritage is called for. The chapter by Makhzoumi, on the discourses of landscape, rural culture and heritage in Lebanon’s Ebel-es-Saqi woodland and village, proposes ‘landscape’ as an expansive framework that can unfold the multiple meanings of heritage and guide the practices of patrimonialisation beyond the current focus on ‘product’ and the bias towards the built heritage. Makhzoumi calls for a recognition of rural culture as a unique historical repository of the region, and for an integration of natural and cultural heritage to include the entire rural landscape (natural, semi-natural, managed and manufactured, woodland, degraded scrubland, olive agriculture and built environment). Fieldwork at Ebel-es-Saqi’s woodland and village has demonstrated local preference for certain cultural landscapes, such as the favouring of the landscape of olive groves justified by the positive correlation between aesthetic preference and the fact that such trees are not only ‘productive’ and a valued source of income, but are also claimed by the village as the heritage of Roman Lebanon. Yet a perceptible shift was noted between senior community members who associate village identity and heritage with agricultural landscapes, and the young people, who associate village identity with woodlands. The focus on landscape processes therefore encourages an open-ended conception of heritage, one where product and production continue to interact and change throughout an intriguing interplay between the tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Sophie Wagenhofer’s chapter focuses on the Jewish heritage in Morocco. She examines it from two different perspectives. On the one hand, she investigates the role of the Moroccan Jewish community and other Jewish institutions, based in several countries, all of which are attempting to promote Jewish cultural tourism in the kingdom. The Casablanca-based Fondation du patrimoine judéo-marocain has collaborated with various government institutions and international organisations to restore and refurbish historical synagogues, renovate cemeteries and promote pilgrimages to the tombs of Moroccan rabbis. Thanks to the efforts of the Fondation, in 1998

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the Museum of Jewish heritage has been inaugurated in Casablanca – the only example in the Arab world – in the presence of the king. On the other hand, Wagenhofer explores the reasons that have led the Moroccan state to integrate the Jewish heritage as part of the national patrimony. She shows that since the mid-1970s the Moroccan authorities have sponsored, internationally, an image of local society as tolerant and plural. The king has presented himself as the mediator between Jews and Muslims and promoted the image of a Maroc pluriel, in which all minorities – including the Jewish community – have their place and are respected. Besides, strong economic concerns are behind the government support of the patrimonialisation of Jewish heritage, since tourism constitutes a main source of income for the country. Wagenhofer’s analysis illustrates clearly the complexity of the cultural-heritage arena, insofar as – in an Arab-Islamic country governed by a monarch who claims descent from the Prophet – Jewish heritage is emphasised and marketed, despite the hostile attitudes of most Arab countries towards Israel due to the occupation of historic Palestine and the apartheid regime policies implemented against Palestinian citizens. Silvia Naef, in her chapter, concentrates on a different aspect of cultural heritage: modern art. She shows that, like the notion of cultural heritage, modern art is a Western concept imported into the region during the nineteenth century, when the first collections of modern art were created. Egypt and Lebanon were among the first countries where art collections were formed by local members of the elite as well as by resident Europeans and where Arab artists trained locally and also in European schools became active. Naef’s analysis explores the history and cultural status of modern-art collections in several Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Irak, and the Gulf states as well as in Europe, and suggests that Arab societies have not fully integrated this part of cultural heritage, insofar as there are still very few modern-art museums. According to her, the reasons for that is the lack of interest shown by both local audiences and western tourists for modern artists coming from the Arab world. The absence of modern art museums in Lebanon and Syria and the scarce resources allocated to similar institutions by the Egyptian authorities and the present Iraqi government, despite their historical commitment to modern art, are meaningful examples. Indeed, despite the ancient origins of some collections, and the existence of outstanding projects in the Gulf area to create regional branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim Museum, modern art is conceived of as a marginal heritage, and does not seem to be much appreciated by the population of the Arab countries. A corresponding lack of attention exists in Europe, where the most important collection of modern Arab art, owned by the French Institut du monde arabe, does not attract

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many visitors and is seldom exhibited, despite the 1980s project of creating a permanent museum of modern Arab art in Paris. The concluding chapter of the volume is an attempt to reconsider the emergence and development of cultural heritage in the Middle East, taking into consideration its historical relationships with the European tradition and colonial practices. Dominique Poulot argues that Arab cultural heritage was born as a colonial invention, later to be appropriated by local societies. Its historical itinerary is tightly intertwined with the various phases cultural heritage has gone through in Europe, although in the Middle East the first period of the process of patrimonialisation was more a reaction to the imperial practices of Western powers than a spontaneous ‘rediscovery’ of the local material past. In many post-colonial countries, it was only after independence that local elites fully internalised and re-elaborated the idea of cultural heritage, turning it into an important component of the process of nation-building. Official and political use of cultural heritage did not hinder the development of various groups of ‘private’ actors who have contributed and still contribute in an important way to the construction and ‘territorialisation’ of the national heritage. Indeed, Poulot’s chapter illustrates the complexity of the cultural-heritage scene in the Arab world, showing the parallels that exist between the emergence of private actors of patrimonialisation in many countries of the area, and the formation of groups of amateurs, antiquarians and collectors in Europe. Finally, he focuses on current practices of patrimonialisation in the Arab world that he considers as part of a global flux, characterised by cultural consumption, tourism and the commodification of heritage.

Notes 1. The information collected here is based on fieldwork and research that Daher conducted in Bahrain on the practices of heritage in 2004–5. 2. Newsletter of the Association de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine Architectural du XXe siècle du Maroc, at , accessed 25 November 2010. 3. This information is based on research conducted by Daher between 2007 and 2010 in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco. 4. This information is based on fieldwork and research that Daher conducted in Damascus in the summer of 2004.

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Choay, Françoise (1992), L’allégorie du patrimoine, Paris: Seuil. Clifford, James (1997), Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Copeaux, Etienne (1997), Espace et temps de la nation turque. Analyse d’une historiographie nationaliste, 1931–1993, Paris: CNRS Editions. Daher, Rami (1999), ‘Gentrification and the politics of power, capital, and culture in an emerging Jordanian heritage industry’. Traditional Dwellings and Settlement Review, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 33–47. ——— (2000), ‘Heritage conservation in Jordan: the myth of equitable and sustainable development’. Les Documents du CERMOC, No. 10: Maffi, Irene and Daher (eds), Patrimony and Heritage Conservation in Jordan. Beirut and Amman: Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Moyen Orient Contemporain, pp. 17–42. ——— (2004a) ‘Saving Lebanon’s modernity: a campaign to save the International Fair Grounds of Tripoli’. Daily Star of the Herald Tribune, 8 November. ——— (2004b), ‘Notable families of Bilad al Sham as patrons of art, heritage, and culture’. Daily Star of the Herald Tribune, 3 July. ——— (2005), ‘Urban regeneration/heritage tourism endeavors: the case of Salt, Jordan: local actors, international donors, and the state’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 289–308. ——— (2007), ‘Re-conceptualizing tourism in the Middle East: place, heritage, mobility and competitiveness’. In Daher (ed.), Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity, Change and Transformation. Clevedon: Channel View, pp. 1–69. ——— (2008a), ‘Amman: disguised genealogy and recent urban restructuring and neoliberal threats’. In Elsheshtawy, Yasser (ed.), The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development. London: Routledge, pp. 37–68. ——— (2008b), ‘Amman’s vanishing legacy of modernity’. Jordan Property Magazine, No. 23 (October), pp. 10–21. ——— (2009a) ‘Overview and synthesis for the regional workshop: rehabilitation of historic towns and villages’. Euromed Heritage Workshop (programme funded by the EU), Rabat, Morocco, 8–9 December, pp 29–38. ——— (2009b), ‘Global capital, urban regeneration, and heritage conservation in the Levant’. In Calabrese, John (ed.), The Middle East Institute Viewpoints: Architecture and Urbanization in the Middle East, at , pp. 22–6. Dakhlia, Jocelyne (1998), Le divan des rois: le politique et le religieux dans l’Islam. Paris: Aubier. David, Jean-Claude (1996), ‘Les territoires des groupes à Alep à L’époque ottomane. Cohésion urbaine et formes d’exclusion’. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la méditerraneé vol. 79–80, pp. 225–254. Davis, E. and Gavrielides, N. (eds) (1991), Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory and Popular Culture. Miami, FL: Florida International University Press. De Certeau, Michel (1988), The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Degeorge, G. (1995), ‘The Damascus massacre’. Architectural Review, Vol. 197, No. 1178, pp. 70–1. Deguillhem, Randi (1996), ‘La gestion des biens communautaires chrétiens en SYRIE AU XIXe siècle. Politique ottoman et inérance française’. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, No. 79–80, pp. 215–224. Denoix, Sylvie (1996) ‘Formes juridiques, enjeux sociaux et strategies foncières’. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, No. 79–80, pp. 9–22.

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Derengil, Sulaiman (1998), The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909. London: I.B.Tauris. Diaz-Andreu, Margarita and Champion, Timothy, (eds) (1996), Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview. Douglas, Mary and Isherwood Barry (1996), The World of Goods. London: Routledge. Doumani, Beshara (1995), Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700–1900. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Dupree, Nancy H. (2002), ‘Cultural Heritage and National Identity in Afghanistan’. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 977–989. Elon, Amos (1971), The Israelis: Founders and Sons. New York: Holt Reinhart Winston. Esman, Jacob E. and Rabinovich, Itamar (1988), Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the Middle East. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fabietti, Ugo (1995), L’identità etnica: storia e critica di un concetto equivoco. Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica. Fabre, Daniel (1993), Domestiquer l’histoire.: Ethnologie des monuments historiques, Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. Faroqhi, Suraiya (1994), Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj Under the Ottomans 1517–1683. London: I.B.Tauris. Flood, Finbarr B. (2002), ‘Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum’. Art Bulletin, Vol. 84, No. 4, pp. 641–659. Florida, Richard (2003), ‘Cities and the creative class’. City and Community, Vol. 2 No. 1 (March), pp. 3–19. Foucault, Michel (1972), The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Random House. Fuchs, Ron (1998), ‘The Palestinian Arab house and the Islamic “primitive hut”’. Muqarnas, Vol. 15, pp. 157–77. Gelin, Mathilde (2002), L’archéologie en Syrie et au Liban à l’époque du mandat (1920–1946). Histoire et organisation. Paris : Editions Geuthner. Glock, A. (1994), ‘Archaeology and cultural survival: the future of the Palestinian past’. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 70–84. ——— (1995), ‘Cultural bias in the archaeology of Palestine’. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 48–59. Goode, James F. (2007), Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919–1941. Austin, TX: Texas University Press. Graburn, Nelson (1998), ‘Weirs in the river of time: the development of Canadian Inuit historical consciousness. Museum Anthropology, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 54–66. Halbwachs, Maurice (1976), Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Mouton. Handler, Richard (1985), ‘On having a culture: nationalism and the preservation of Quebec’s patrimoine’. In Stocking, George W. Jr. (ed), Objects and Others. Essays on Museums and Material Culture, History and Anthropology, vol 3. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 192–217. Harvey, David (1990), The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Herzfeld, Michael (1981), A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ——— (1991), A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——— (2003), ‘Pom Mahakan: humanity and order in the historic centre of Bangkok’. Thailand Human Rights Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 101–119.

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——— (2005), Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. London and New York: Routledge. ——— (2009), Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hobsbawm, E. (1983), ‘Introduction: inventing traditions’. In Hobsbawm and Ranger, T. (eds), The Invention of Tradition. London: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–14. Hodder, Ian (1998), ‘The Past as Passion and Play: Çatalhöyük as a Site of Conflict in the Construction of Multiple Pasts’. In Meskell, Lynn (ed), Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London: Routledge, pp. 124–39. Hodjat, M. (1995), Cultural Heritage in Iran: Policies for an Islamic Country. DPhil dissertation, University of York. Tehran: Municipality of Tehran. Horner, A. (1990), The Assumption of Tradition: Creating, Collecting, and Conserving Cultural Artifacts in the Cameroon Grassfields (West Africa). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Husban, Abdelhakim (1997), Le système de différenciation et les relations implicites du pouvoir comme producteurs de la tribu: une étude de cas de la ville d’Irbid en Jordanie. Doctoral thesis, Université de Bordeaux Victor Segalen. Jeudy, Henry Pierre (1990) (ed.), Patrimoines en folie, Cahier 5. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. Kafescioglu, Cigdem (1999), ‘In the image of rum: Ottoman architectural patronage in sixteenth-century Aleppo and Damascus’. In Necipoglu, Gurlu (ed.), Muqarnas, Vol. 16: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture. Leiden: Brill, pp. 70–97. Kandiyoti, D. (2002), ‘Post-colonialism compared: potentials and limitations in the Middle East and Central Asia’. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 279–97. Karmi, Omar (2007), ‘In the city of David: how Jerusalem of the Bible is reshaping the city of today’. Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 29, pp. 5–12. Kaufman, Asher (2004), Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for an Identity in Lebanon. London: I.B.Tauris. Katz, Kimberly (2005), Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. King, Philip (1983) American Archaeology in the Mideast. A History of the American School of Oriental Research, Philadelphia, American School of Oriental Research. Kirsheblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (2004), ‘Intangible heritage as metacultural production’. Museum International, Vol. 56, No, 1–2, pp. 52–65. Kockel, Ulrich and Craith, Mairéad Nic, (eds) (2007), Cultural Heritages as Reflexive Traditions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kohl, Philippe and Fawcett, Clara (1985) (eds), Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laurence, Henry (1999), La Question de Palestine. L’invention de la Terre sainte (1799–1922), Vol. 1, Fayard. ——— (2002), La Question de Palestine. Une mission sacrée de civilisation (1922–1947). Vol.2, Paris: Fayard. Layne, Linda (1994), The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Maffi, Irene (2000), ‘Le statut des objects dans la mise en scène muséographique du passé en Jordanie: le discours historique, la narration mythique et la tradition’. Les Documents du CERMOC No 10, pp. 3–16

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Rogan, Eugene (1999), Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Syndicate. Rowan, Yorke and Baram, Uzi (2004), Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past. Walnut, CA: Altamira. Said, E.W. (1978), Orientalism. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Said, Habib M. (2007), Sortir du regard colonial: politiques du patrimoine et du tourisme en Tunisie depuis l’indépendance. Doctoral thesis, University of Laval, Quebec. Salamandra, Christa (2004), The New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Sandrine, G. (2005), ‘Shaping the city for the other: tourism development, heritage management and the urban fabric in Luxor’. Paper presented at the Fourteenth Annual Social Science Symposium: The Transformation of Middle Eastern Urban Landscapes: From Modernism to Neoliberalism. American University in Cairo, 12–15 May 2005. Sedky, Ahmed (2009), Living with Heritage in Cairo: Area Conservation in the Arab-Islamic City. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Shaw, Wendy M.K. (2003), Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Shryock, Andrew (1997), Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Silberman, Neil A. (1981), Digging for God and the Country: Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799–1917. New York: Knopf. ——— (1989), Between Past and Present: Archaeology, Ideology and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East. New York: Holt. Simpson, Moira (1996), Making Representations. Museums in the Post-Colonial Era. London and New York: Routledge. Slyomovics, Susan (1998), The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Steinberg, F. (1996), ‘Conservation and rehabilitation of urban heritage in developing countries’. Habitat International, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 463–75. Tahan, Lina (2004), Archaeological Museums in Lebanon; A Stage for Colonial and PostColonial Allegories. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge. Tibi, Bassam (1981), Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State. New York: St Martin’s. Trigger, Bruce (1984), ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist’. Man, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 355–70. Tunbridge, J.E. and Ashworth, G.J. (1996), Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. London: Wiley. Valter, Stéphane (2002), La construction nationale syrienne: légitimation de la nature communautaire du pouvoir par le discours historique. Paris: Éditions CNRS. Van Leeuwen, Richard (1996), ‘The control of space and communal leadership: Maronite monasteries in Mount Lebanon’. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerraneé, Vol. 79–80, pp. 183–199. Volait, Mercedes (2002), ‘Amateurs français et dynamique patrimoniale: aux origines du comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe’. In Panzac, D. and Raymond, A. (eds.), La France et l’Egypte aux temps des vice-rois, 1805–1882, Cairo: Presses de l’IFAO, pp. 311–26.

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Walls, Archie (1993), ‘Ottoman restorations to the Sabil and to the Madrasa of Qaytbay in Jerusalem’. Muqarnas, Vol. X: Sevcenko, Margaret (ed.), An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture. Leiden: Brill, pp. 85–97. Whitelam, Keith W. (1996), The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. London and New York: Routledge. Yael, Zerubavel (1995), Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zerubavel, Yael (1995), Recovered Roots. Collective memory and the making of Israeli national tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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1 HER ITAGE AS CULTUR AL CAPITAL IN THE L ATE OTTOM AN EMPIR E Wendy M.K. Shaw

It is one thing to consider how the past is situated as heritage in the present, and quite another to project our contemporary understandings of heritage onto another culture and era. And yet, present notions of heritage are rooted in ideas of history as they have developed through many layers of preservation of those objects and places which have been perceived to have meaning for each present and which have actively enabled them to survive. Thus modern states that emerged from a past in the Ottoman Empire may share a history, but they only share heritage to the extent that they identify that past as part of an inheritance to be passed to the future, both during the Ottoman era and during subsequent eras of individual national development. How was this process related to, and differentiated from, their relationship with the West, and how was the production of heritage adapted to the Ottoman cultural environment? After a brief outline of the concept of heritage as understood in the contemporary West, this chapter will consider the development of an analogous drive towards preservation as reflected in Ottoman publications of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the word ‘heritage’, closely related to the verb ‘to inherit’, has been in use in English since the thirteenth century, ‘heritage’ as a noun conveying the connotations with which we associate it today – characterised by or pertaining to the preservation or exploitation of local and national features of historical, cultural, or scenic interest, especially as tourist attractions – only began to be used in the early 1970s. Indeed, there is a profound

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difference between an inheritance and a heritage, even though we can receive both from the past and can pass both on to the future. When we receive an inheritance in the usual sense of land, goods or money, we know what to do with it: we either use it as is, or convert it into something that has more value for us. In this sense, an inheritance is fungible in terms of the values of its times. In the case of inheritance, moreover, there is no expectation that we will necessarily pass it on; nobody likes a squandered inheritance, but what is money for if not to be enjoyed? In contrast, heritage is conceived as an inheritance which is supposed to maintain and even gain value under our stewardship. And yet, in the process heritage is not to be converted into something other than what it is – it must maintain its form in order to maintain its essence. But at the same time its meaning must change in order for its form to retain value, and thereby a relationship, with the present. Thus heritage must, on the one hand, be converted into something that is perceived as having current value, either one of use or one of meaning, and yet it must also stay the same. After all, that heritage is not an inheritance in itself, but a vehicle for an inheritance of which we are not owners, but stewards. And yet if that vehicle is not touched at all, if it is left in the bank vault of time, it loses value entirely; unlike land or money, an unused heritage is liable to decay. And yet unlike living beings subject to decay, an unused heritage can also be revived, pumped with new value even after its stewardship has been abandoned, even for countless generations, and revitalised with meanings, if not forms, entirely divorced from their original function. In this sense, heritage is like a ‘tessera’, a coin whose faces have been wiped away by use over time, and yet which can be given new meanings by each hand that holds it. It is also like a tessera in its other sense, of a stone in a mosaic, bearing no meaning in itself but only as part of a much larger, complex image. Seen in this light, heritage becomes an object (whether tangible or intangible) which retains its substance over time but whose value is subject to the flux of the values of its inheritors. While heritage pertains to the past, it is an inherently modern concept. Before the development of modern notions of the historic, surviving objects acquired value not for what they represented of the past, but for what they represented in the present. Thus Roman antiquities interpreted by Winkelmann could become signs of German identity via a literary Greek heritage, and the Laokoon in the eyes of Lessing could be an opportunity less for the understanding of the ancient world than for understanding the roles of art and literature in all times. With its rapid and accelerating pace of change, the modern era has been uniquely concerned with preserving rather than recycling elements of the past, remembering previous meanings in order to revalue them within the

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modern world. The Musée des monuments français, established soon after the French Revolution, is perhaps the best example of this sudden leap towards preservationism. Another example is the development of scientific archaeology during the nineteenth century; when that discipline first emerged, existing interest in classicism and in the Bible often gave intrinsic meaning to the process of designating heritage through the recovery of the material culture of the past. These interests fed both the growing ideologies of nationalism and those justifying imperialism. While these discourses remain at the root of many valuations of archaeological artifacts today, they have been overlaid with discourses of globalism, and enhanced by the financial exigencies of tourism, cited by Unesco as the third largest industry in the world today. Thus heritage is a central economic value in today’s world; but what else is it? Who is the inheritor of heritage, and what kind of values do they use in order to relate the present to the past? In order to understand the notion of heritage in the Ottoman Empire and in the states that emerged from it, one must look not only at the relationship between the works and their inheritors as that relationship developed over time, but also at the process of translation of the heritage concept itself as it became part of notions of national identity during the modern era. In the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, architectural preservation and archaeology were the loci through which heritage first emerged into public discourse. How were these given value, and to what extent was this value disseminated among the purported inheritors of the past? The relationship between the archaeological legacy and the present in the Ottoman Empire can only be understood in relation to the set of values which informed European archaeology, much of which took place in the empire. In Europe, the various forms of archaeology that developed in the nineteenth century emerged from deep-seated associations with the past, which both preceded and informed the developing sense of national identities. During this period, heritage entered public stewardship, along with the growth of the notion of the citizen as the bearer of a history not only of dynasties, but also of a shared national spirit. This spirit was not simply the bearer of a local inheritance, but one which bore the traces of a dual heritage: a secular heritage, derived from the Renaissance, which allowed Germany to trace its roots to Greece while France and England traced theirs to Rome; and a religious heritage, which allowed the Christian West also to trace its heritage to the Near East. As improved technologies of travel, increasing foreign power within Ottoman territories, and the independence or colonial domination of former territories enabled access to the physical sites of both legacies, heritage which had long been a literary commodity gained a physical dimension through the recovery of archaeological artifacts. The massive

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project of unearthing the material past of the classical age and transporting it to Europe made the notion of a heritage in previously exotic Ottoman lands all the more palpable. Rather than being seen as a formidable empire to the east, the Ottomans became usurpers of lands that held the heritage of the West. In this sense, the recovery of archaeological heritage was not simply a process of making the classical era tangible, but a means of legitimising the notion of a natural right to colonial territories that had once been under Ottoman rule. The motivation for incorporating these artifacts into European culture was intrinsic, in that even before their excavation, their meanings were deeply inscribed into the European sense of self through the prevalence of the Classics as the cornerstone of secular education. By the late nineteenth century, a second, and equally heartfelt motivation for archaeology emerged in resistance to the rise of Darwinian thought, which had begun to threaten literal understandings of the Bible. By the 1870s, organisations like the British Palestine Exploration Fund and the Palestine Exploration Society of New York had taken on the mission of excavating Palestine in the hope of proving the literal truth of the Bible. During the same era, the same technological and political changes which made the Ottoman hinterland more accessible to archaeologists also made possible the long-difficult pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which had become the imaginary model for spiritual exercises and local pilgrimages in Europe during earlier eras. As in the case of classical archaeology, deep-seated, intrinsic notions of collective identity informed the practice of Biblical archaeology, which in turn also informed much of Mesopotamian and Egyptian archaeological interest. Thus archaeological heritage was the material illustration for bodies of literature that were already deeply etched into the collective identities which were being harnessed under the rubric of the nation state in many parts of Europe. This was not the case in the Ottoman Empire, where archaeology and the museological display of archaeological artifacts emerged not within an intrinsic cultural discourse, but in response to European archaeological practice. Much as archaeology in Ottoman territories naturalised various European claims over Eastern lands, archaeology on Ottoman land was perceived by many as an incursion on imperial territories. Thus the collection of antiquities in the empire was informed not by meta-narratives such as classical studies and aesthetics, but by meta-narratives of territorial control. This can most easily be seen in the organisation of displays in the museum as it developed from its home in the former Church of Hagia Irene into first the Tiled Pavilion, and, after 1881, its permanent home in the purpose-built Imperial Museum, today the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. As early as 1868, when the French scholar Paul Dumont catalogued the

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collections housed in the former church, the poorly documented antiquities were labelled only in terms of their provenance. Likewise, the 1908 catalogue by Gustave Mendel emphasised the process of acquisition of objects, and thus the role of officials who had showed their loyalty to the sultan by hindering the illegal activities of foreign archaeologists and by sending artifacts to the museum. Often displayed according to their site of discovery rather than by the civilisational or developmental models developed in European museums, works in the Imperial Museum stood in a syntagmatic relationship to Ottoman territory rather than to Ottoman patrimony. The effort to form the past into a legacy for the present began in the 1870s, and was marked simultaneously by increasing legal protection for patrimony and by a small but growing discourse, in both books and magazines, on patrimony. Increasingly restrictive laws concerning the excavation, acquisition and export of antiquities were passed in 1874, 1884 and 1906. A Commission for Antiquities (Asar-ı Atika Encümeni), was established in 1917, strengthening governmental backing for preservationism. While such official efforts show a top-down interest in heritage preservation, they evidence little indication of an incipient perception, among the public during the same era, of antiquities as heritage. Yet during that same era, a new literature began to appear concerning the artistic patrimony of the Ottoman Empire and the notion of arts in general. In 1873, a set of volumes concerning Ottoman costume and architecture were prepared simultaneously in French, German and Turkish for the Vienna World Exposition, Les Costumes Populaires de la Turquie en 1873 and L’Architecture Ottomane (Usul-u Mimari-ye Osmani). While one of the volumes used studio photographs to document the living ethnographic cultures of the present, the other constructed the first systematic analysis of Ottoman architectural elements, using the catalogue to design a narrative of architectural innovation, classicism, decline and rebirth in line with current historiographies of the Ottoman state. The work emphasised the production of a canon, both a formal one of architectural orders and decorative patterns, and a historical survey, beginning with the architecture of Bursa and reaching its apogee with the architect Sinan. Despite the historical focus of the book, its overt programme was to advertise the success of neo-Ottoman architecture as a revivalist style, as well as to provide a catalogue which broke down the elements of that architecture so that they could be used in modern architectural movements. In looking at the book and its structure, it is important to remember that while it reflected the mentality of the very few foreign-educated Ottomans involved in its preparation, its concerns and structure reflected contemporary European modes of understanding architecture.

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It was not until the early 1890s that the next wave of books concerning the arts appeared. Published in 1889, Mahmud Esad’s History of Art introduced the public to a linear world art-history, identifying nations by styles and describing patterns of influence over time. While his description of European practices clearly references an Ottoman audience, his subject is simply art, with no concern for patrimony. On the contrary, in this work art serves as a means of introducing a final chapter on the innovations of the nineteenth century, ranging from museums and philosophy to steam engines, electricity and modern agriculture. While he begins the work by associating arts with nationhood, thus implying a notion of heritage, he ends it not with a discussion of Ottoman arts, but with a discussion of nineteenth-century artistic and scientific innovations, reflecting how the subjects of art and science were closely wedded in the Ottoman zeal for innovation. Likewise, only two years later, the young teacher Mehmed Ziya wrote another book with the same title, Tarih-i Sanayi, which, despite his education at the Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1876, made brief mention of the fine arts in favour of the practical arts, ranging from sugar production to medicine, metallurgy and navigation, each of which he traces from ancient times in the attempt to show that Islamic civilisation was the carrier of ancient knowledge to the modern world, while also introducing the Ottoman public to contemporary industries. It was only much later, during the trying war years extending from 1911 to 1923, that he wrote works concerning various sites in the city. Also among the early publications on the arts, in 1892, statesman and economist Sakızlı Ohannes Pasha published his collected lectures in art history at the École des Beaux Arts of Istanbul, founded in 1876. While partially grounded in the Ottoman experience, his lectures were strongly influenced by the thought of the French art critic Hyppolite Taine and focused on aesthetic theory as it pertained to Western aesthetics, with no consideration for issues of Ottoman patrimony. It would seem that in the absence of a clearly-established national identity, consideration of the arts was only possible as a reflection of a foreign set of practices, and useful primarily in its ability to engender modernisation within the empire. This emphasis on modernity over patrimony had changed by the time the second wave of publications on the arts emerged after the second constitutional revolution of 1909. The Ottoman Artists Association Journal appeared regularly between 1911 and 1914, including issues on topics ranging from painting and printing techniques, Ottoman calligraphy and urban planning to Western art history and aesthetics. In 1914, Mehmet Vahit published a translation of Apollo by Salomon Reinach, head of the Louvre Museum, superseding earlier, less programmatic histories of art.

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This work was accompanied by a dictionary of art terminology, published in 1915, which strengthened the effort to enable educated Ottomans to participate in Western notions of art. However, the vast majority of publications during this era concerned a growing awareness of the heritage vested in the city itself. In 1911, Mehmet Raif published the Wonders of Istanbul, a two-volume exploration of the city. In 1912, Celal Esad Arseven published Old Istanbul, from Byzantium to Constantinople, which had already appeared in French three years earlier. The following year, he continued the work with a second volume on the Galatea area. Mehmed Ziya published a work on the Mosque of Chora in 1910, and Mehmed Raif one on Topkapı Palace in 1914. In 1919 the court painter Hüseyin Zekai Pasha published Holiday Gift: the Aesthetics of Antiquities, providing detailed descriptions of the major mosques of Istanbul to provide a measure of comfort during the troubled years of war and invasion. Finally, in 1922, Mehmed Ziya published Concise Information about Antiquities in Istanbul. As this list of publications make clear, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries evidenced a growing concern for the visual legacy of the past, particularly in the form of architecture. However, the formulation of heritage involves more than preservationism: it is a relationship between the past and its inheritors. The scope of these publications was limited, rendering the patrimony of a nation part of the actual consciousness of a very small elite. Members of the population with an education grounded in European culture, particularly those of France and Germany, could partake intellectually of European heritage, which was then as it were translated onto Ottoman lands. However, for the rest of the population, there was little means of contextualising archaeological heritage, or even the heritage of living culture, as part of patrimony. As a result, a great divide emerged between the literature of patrimony cited above and the relationship between the people and the works of heritage surrounding them. It is in this regard that the first book by the court painter Hüseyin Zekai Pasha, published in 1913 and entitled Holy Treasures (Mübeccel Hazineler), stands out from the the general run of works describing places and histories, but not contemporary relationships with them. Writing in an often anecdotal mode, Hüseyin Zekai employs a very personal exploration of sites of historical importance, beginning with those in his home neighborhood of Üsküdar, then broadening his search to all the rest of Istanbul and ultimately beyond Istanbul to various parts of the empire. He not only explains the historical significance of the works, but describes and criticises the public’s general lack of awareness concerning their importance as heritage sites. His anecdotes provide a glimpse of the vast disconnection between the ideology of heritage preservation enacted by European urbanists and archaeologists, and emulated by an educated Ottoman elite, and the

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actual state of affairs within the empire. Through his stories, it becomes clear that rather than being attracted by intrinsic, preexisting values that were becoming materially embodied in new practices of preservation, Ottoman subjects were rarely exposed to the notion of preservation, and on the rare occasions they were, saw it as a puzzling command to preserve old objects of little apparent worth. Near the beginning of his work, Hüseyin Zekai Pasha identifies the libraries and the various industrial and decorated institutions not only as activities in the life of our ancestors, but also as signs of contemporary civilisations. He brings together consideration of the lofty buildings, holy places and tombs that are the apogees of the ascent of Islam with that of all kinds of ancient works as part of the treasure of mankind. In this respect, he takes the lead in constructing a legal framework relating to antiquities, using a (somewhat haphazard) listing of various types of antiquities in order to emphasise the breadth of the concept. However, rather than leaving the list as a bald definition, Hüseyin Zekai Pasha designates a value for it, expressing Islamic, ancient and modern cultures alike as part of the treasure of humanity, and in so doing begins to denote heritage rather than signs of history. Indeed, his subject is the lack of recognition of this heritage rather than an exposition of the history behind it, and he bemoans the lack of knowledge that leads not only to its decay and to the absence of preservation, but to the active destruction of those works which come to light. Through the exposition of the value of the works, he hopes to render each individual capable of carrying the legacy on to the best of his ability, in the hope of revealing the Ottomans, to those other nations which are actors on the stage of civilisation, as a nation that recognises value. Two elements are thus at stake in the work: on the one hand, his mission identifies a wide public as the steward of a shared legacy to be identified with the modernity of the Ottoman nation. On the other hand, his concern is less immediately with a shared responsibility to the future citizens of that nation than with the recognition of the Ottoman state as part of a set of values emerging from outside the nation. Thus it is not the works that represent heritage as much as a concern for heritage that represents modernity. However, in order to attain this recognition, preservation must become a value and a practice among the people. He recognises that it is not sufficient to have an informed elite when people interact with the historical legacy every day. Particularly in an era of rapid modernisation, decisions on preservation have constantly to be made, and even a brief lapse in judgment leads to loss. Thus he begins with a description of several sites in his own neighborhood of Üsküdar, and then moves to a discussion of the New

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Mosque in Eminonu. In both discussions, he uses the observations of foreign visitors as foils for the necessity of preservation. Thus the tiled mosque of Üsküdar needs to be preserved in order to save it from the predatory behaviour of foreigners who, seeing its dilapidation, seek to preserve its tiles in their own museums. Similarly, he mentions the comment of a visiting Swiss architect (presumably the not-yet-famous Le Corbusier), who admired Ottoman architecture but waxed critical at the sight of plant growth on the mosque and its minaret which was advancing their deterioration. Thus from the beginning, and even when considering the Islamic legacy, it is the voice of the foreigner which addresses the issue of preservation, and points to the lack of value-attribution on the part of Ottoman citizens. Hüseyin Zekai then proceeds with a lament concerning the neglect of the arabesque in favour of the fashionable, but derivative, art-nouveau style of his era. Likewise, he laments the loss of traditional Ottoman interior designs, both earlier ones of plaster and later ones of paint on wood, in favour of more modern practices such as the painting of landscapes along the borders of ceilings. He immediately provides an example of a ceiling, which he had sought to purchase, from an old mansion under demolition. However, before he could arrange for its transportation, the construction chief had sold it to recyclers, who had burned the wood in order to melt and then sell the gold leaf. He notes that had they known the value of the ceiling, they could have obtained many times the 50 liras they got from its gold. The same types of consideration inform his concern for antiquities. He notes that despite the apparent abundance of antiquities, their perpetual collection by foreigners will ultimately make them rarities within the empire, despite the best efforts of the Imperial Museum. He cites the devotion of Flinders Petrie, who had recently discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Sestrosis, and in order to protect it from robbers or from collapse, had remained in its narrow spaces for eight straight days in order painstakingly to remove every item from its floor. In contrast, he notes both the abundance of treasures on Ottoman soil and their neglect by their unwitting discoverers. He uses a recent example from the village of Ümraniye, where Byzantine carved stones had recently been discovered while the foundations of a new mosque were being dug. The stones had been reused both in the foundations of the building and in its fountain. Thus they had been destroyed during an age when preservation was the order of the day. From this discussion, he proceeds to an ever-expanding list of sites which need excavation or which, since they were not attended to in time, had been excavated by foreigners and thereby lost. Thus he identifies the walls of Istanbul, the fortresses of Rumeli and Anatolia flanking the Bosporus, and the fortresses of Lurus and Yurus at the entry to the Black Sea as in dire

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need of attention. From there, he leaps first to Troy, and then to Baalbeck, the two sites that had been most recently and completely excavated by foreign archaeologists. His long discussions of these two sites, both of which were among the first to be made accessible to tourists through the growing network of railways across the country, focuses on the ignorance which allows signs of the brilliance of past Anatolian civilisations to return to nature rather than inform the peoples of the present. He notes that though history itself can act as a guide to past civilisations, it is through the physical remains of the past that we can best understand the knowledge of the ancients, and emphasises that this physical history, while attractive to the Europeans, is unique to Ottoman lands, where it is allowed to decay solely because of ignorance. For him, the impetus behind the science of antiquities is to separate the successful from the failures among the civilisations of ancient history, and to learn to emulate the past properly. However, the ignorance of the public stood as an obstacle to acquiring even the basic information which Europeans were so alert in collecting through their excavations. Indeed, he explains that the strength of a museum in collecting works of the past and explaining their historical significance is a sign of the strength of the nation’s ability to learn from that past. For him, it is the act of collection and exhibition, indeed the competition among European archaeologists for antiquities, which is the sign of contemporary power, not the antiquities themselves which are of value. In other words, he seems to read the meta-discourse of archaeology more naively, but perhaps more accurately, than the archaeologists of the day would have been able to express themselves. He sees archaeology not simply as a science of knowing the past, but as a means of measuring the present. As such, he comes closer to addressing the modern function of heritage than his contemporaries. What could be done to stem the tide of this insouciant destruction? The remedy Hüseyin Zekai Pasha suggests is not only remarkably different from its European counterparts, but largely stems from his misapprehension of the ideology behind preservation as it is emerging as a value in Europe. For rather than providing historical information identifying the public with the works of heritage they are to preserve, he cites an improved education in drawing and painting as the best remedy. He points to the students of the Academy of Fine Arts who, having become attuned to aesthetics through their education, gain a desire for preservation, and suggests that similar schools must extend throughout the empire. Indeed, even as a painter he sees the primary benefit of drawing as an act of writing, useful for recording the present for the future. Thus his notion of preservation, while based in a

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nationalism of displaying the empire as modern through the act of preservation itself, was not based on constructing that nationalism by providing heritage with intrinsic worth, as related to the collective identity of a people. Rather, his work reflects an understanding of heritage reflective less of an integration of history with modern identity than of a negative reaction to colonialism and a habit of the modern. Unlike many of the other, more positive works listed above, his work is often noted but rarely read, and has not yet been translated into modern Turkish. However, his wandering opinions reflect a translation not of heritage preservation simply as part of the formulation of national identity, but as a form of cultural capital to be utilised by modern nation-states.

Bibliography Cezar, Mustafa (1995), Sanatta Batı’ya Açılıs¸ ve Osman Hamdi. Istanbul: Erol Kerim Aksoy Kültür, Eg˘itim, Spor ve Sag˘lık vakfı yayını. Celal Esad (Arseven) (1907), Istilahat-ı Mimariyye. Istanbul ——— (1909), Constantınople, De Byzanse a Stamboul Eski Istanbul. Abidat ve Mebanisi. Istanbul. Çelik, Zeynep (1986), The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century. Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press. Eldem, Sedad H. and Feridun Akozan (1981), Topkapi Sarayi: Bir Mimari Arastirma. Ankara: Kultur ve Turizm Bakanligi Eski Eserler ve Muzeler Genel Mudurlugu. Ersoy, Ahmet (2007), ‘Architecture and the search for Ottoman origins in the Tanzimat Period’. Muqarnas, Vol. 24, pp. 117–40. Hüseyin Zekai Pasha (1914), Mübeccel Hazineler. Istanbul ——— (1919), Bedaiye Asar-e Atika. Istanbul . Ibrahim Edhem Pasha (1873), L’ Architecture Ottomane; Die Ottomanische Baukunst; Usul-i mimari-i Osmani, trans. de Launey. Constantinople: Imprimerie et Lithographie Centrales. Mahmud Esad (1889), Tarih-i Sanayi. Izmir: Nuri Efendi Matbaası. Marchand, Suzanne (1996), Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mehmet Raif (1914), Topkapı Sarayı Humayunu ve Parkının tarihi. Istanbul: Matbaa-i Hayriye Ve S¸ürekâsı. Mehmet Vahit (1915), Bazi Istilahat-ı Mühimme-i Sına’ıyye Hakkında Mütala’at. Istanbul: Matbaa-i Amire. Mehmed Ziya (1891), Tarih-i Sanayi. Istanbul: Karabet Matbaası. ——— (1910), Kariye Cami-i s¸erifi. Istanbul: s¸ems Matbaası. ——— (1922), Istanbul’daki asâr-ı atika hakkında muhtasar malumat. Istanbul: Matbaa-i Ahmed Ihsan ve s¸ürekası. Sakızlı Ohannes Pasha (1892), Funun-ı Nefise Tarihi Medhali. Istanbul: Karabet Matbaası. Shaw, Wendy M.K. (2003), Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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2 THE INTR ICATE LIFE OF CULTUR AL HER ITAGE: COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL PROCESSES OF PATR IMONIALISATION IN JOR DAN1 Irene Maffi

Prologue: the seeds of discord At the beginning of the twentieth century Sultan Abdulhamid II gave the German Emperor, then visiting the Ottoman Empire, the marvellous façade of the Mshatta castle as a present. The site is an important example of Umayyad architecture, situated about 25 miles south of Amman, the capital of modern Jordan. At the time, the area east of the Jordan River, often called Transjordan, was a part of the Ottoman Empire, though it did not constitute an administrative unity. Its territory was under the jurisdiction of different districts and provinces, and was mainly inhabited by nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes, by peasants and by a very small urban population (Rogan and Tell, 1995; Wilson, 1987). Despite the fact that for many centuries the area had been only under the nominal authority of the Sultan, in the second half of the nineteenth century several military campaigns contributed to the re-entry of the Transjordan region into the sphere of his effective power. During the last decades of Ottoman rule a new interest in archaeology had emerged in the Empire, mainly as a reaction to the aggressive policy

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of the European states that were trying to impose their influence on the Near East, using various religious, cultural and commercial means. The Ottoman elite soon became aware of the political stake in the historical and archaeological interests of the European governments, and started to develop a counter-policy aimed at limiting the effects of their enterprises (Deringil, 1998; Potts, 1998; Shaw, 2003). The interest in cultural heritage was reinforced by the idea that to be modern entailed protecting the cultural heritage of the nation state and thus searching for its ancient roots. Moreover, the Near East was a place of particular symbolic significance for the Christian European countries that were seeking the origins of the Judeo-Christian civilisation of the Fertile Crescent. As a consequence, by the second half of the nineteenth century a group of Ottoman archaeologists, trained mainly in Europe, had begun to develop a defensive archaeology and a local conception of Ottoman cultural heritage. A state apparatus responsible for antiquities was set up and in 1884 the pre-existing law on antiquities was amended in order to prevent the various European representatives from plundering the rich Ottoman heritage. The new law established that antiquities found in the Empire’s territory were the legitimate property of the state, and that it was forbidden to export them abroad. The principle of the inalienability of the Ottoman cultural heritage was thus established, and European museums, universities and diplomats had to cease their appropriation of the rich archaeological heritage of the Empire’s Arab provinces. Although the law on antiquities was to be implemented in all parts of the Ottoman state, museums and other archaeological institutions were mainly concentrated in Istanbul and Anatolia: the Sultan showed no real interest in the antiquities of the Arab provinces. This was the origin of the practice of preserving and exhibiting in the Ottoman capital the more interesting objects found during excavations. Indeed, as D.T. Potts reports, Osman Hamdy-Bey, General Director of the Imperial Museum in Istanbul, recommended that Ottoman provincial officials ‘guard carefully all the antiquities that may exist, to report to the Ministry of Public Instruction all new discoveries, and, when required, to transport them safely to Constantinople’ (Potts, 1998, 190). Therefore, no excavations were started by Ottoman archaeologists in the Near East, and no special concern for archaeology was shown by the state’s administrators. Thus, at that time there was no diffuse awareness of the importance of the physical remains of the past civilisations among the Ottoman subjects since, as Wendy Shaw has shown, the Ottoman archaeological policy had mostly a defensive character and developed in relation to the cultural and political practices of the European states (Shaw, 2003). Nevertheless, in their effort to protect the objects and buildings included in the new established

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legal category of antiquities, the Ottoman authorities took some measures in order to stop what ‘were common practices, such as removing the stones of tumbled down ancient monuments . . . appropriating or restoring old buildings and making use of them in part or in all; or . . . [using] them for deposits of grain, straw or hay, or . . . for other purposes’ (Abu el-Haj, 2001, 43). This explains why when the façade of the Mshatta castle was removed from the site and sent to Germany, the local population did not show any form of concern, since, regardless of their Islamic and Arab character, nobody seemed to be interested in the preservation of the castle’s ruins. Yet, only some years later, a much more trivial matter was at the origin of a scandal in the newly created Emirate of Transjordan.2 The Jordanian historian Ma’an Abu Nuwwar has designated this episode the ‘Basilica Affair’.3 The event took place in 1923 and deeply affected the relations between Emir Abdullah, the Arab prince in power, and Sir John Philby, the British representative in Transjordan. The analysis of this apparently insignificant conflict reveals very interesting cultural and political aspects, strongly connected with the colonial situation. It shows the elements at stake in the practices and discourses of cultural heritage during a sensitive period in Jordanian history revealing, the concerns and interests of the coloniser as well as of the colonised. Moreover, it allows us to explore the seminal processes that brought about the development of the notion of cultural heritage in the country. In this chapter I will first examine the context of the Basilica Affair and its political and cultural implications. I will then illustrate how the practices and discourses related to cultural heritage became the tools of the colonial power in imposing its domination on the autochthonous population. Finally, I hope to show how these practices became an important part of the political agenda of the Hashemites, the ruling dynasty in Jordan, after that country reached independence. The analysis will point out the continuity and the fractures that characterised archaeological practices during the colonial and postcolonial periods in the Hashemite kingdom. At the same time it will show the inventiveness and creativity of the local discourses, and of the agencies connected with cultural heritage.

The Basilica Affair: from the Umayyad façade to the Byzantine wall The basis of the Basilica Affair can be seen in the decision of Emir Abdullah to build a mosque in Amman, the new capital of the Emirate.4 This act was very significant, in the context both of the political situation in Transjordan

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and of Amman’s status at the beginning of the 1920s. Indeed, during this period the power of the Hashemite dynasty was far from being recognised by the whole population. Several tribal revolts broke out during the 1920s, and were suppressed only with the intervention of the British army. It is to be remembered that the Hashemites were not a Transjordanian family – they came from Hejaz – and that they had attained power in the country only because of the British decision to confer it upon them (Wilson, 1987). Moreover, Transjordan had never been a single political and geographical entity before 1921, as its territory was divided into several administrative districts (Hütteroth, 1995; Rogan, 1999). If we look at the situation of Amman when it was chosen to become the capital of the newly founded colonial entity, it was only a small village inhabited by a community of Circassians, sent to settle in the area by the Ottoman Sultan some decades before (Shami, 1996). Though the city had been an important urban centre between the Bronze Age and the Abbasid period, later on it had lost its importance and been gradually abandoned by its inhabitants. Thus, in 1923 Amman was no more than a village, with a population of between 2,500 and 5,000 and with no important public or religious buildings (Rogan, 1996; Wilson, 1987). The decision of the Hashemite prince to erect a mosque in this new Transjordanian capital was thus important since it was intended both to mark the new status of Amman and at the same time to confirm the Hashemite political and religious role in the country. In fact, the Hashemites were descendants of the Prophet, and until the end of the First World War were considered as protectors of the holiest sites in Islam. They resided in Mecca and had been responsible for the pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city since the Middle Ages (Salibi 1996).5 It was only in 1925 that the Saud defeated the Hashemite army and forced the members of the dynasty to leave the Hejaz, so that their authority was tremendously weakened. The legitimisation of their power in other regions of the Mashreq (Near East) could only be based on their active role in the struggle against the Ottoman Sultan during the First World War, and their noble and pious origins connected with their traditional religious function in Mecca. For this reason, when Emir Abdullah decided to build the Amman mosque he was undertaking a very significant action aimed at legitimising his authority (Rogan, 1996). The site chosen for the mosque was in a central area near the small river traversing the village, where there were already ruins dating from several historical periods. Among these vestiges there was a wall of an ancient Byzantine basilica on which an Umayyad mosque had already been constructed after the Arab conquest of the city (Figure 1). Moreover, according to the Jordanian historian Noufan R. Hmoud, in the last decades of

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Figure 1. The old Umayyad Mosque of Amman, taken by the traveler Phillips in 1867 Ottoman rule a mosque had been erected on the very same site (Hmoud, 1996). The building was called the ‘Umari mosque because of its similarity to a mosque of the same name in Damascus, and was used by the Circassian inhabitants of Amman (ibid, 79). Yet when Abdallah settled there, the mosque was in very bad condition so that, as writes Rogan writes, ‘he preferred to lead prayers on public occasions in front of his saray’ (1996, 102). The version given by Rogan is mainly based on Philby’s record of events, where the British official writes that he first approved the Emir’s project and then helped him to trace the qibla for the new mosque, since he considered that the old one was incorrectly oriented, the reason for which was that the ‘Umari mosque had been built against the wall of an ancient Byzantine basilica. Although I was unable to find sources reporting explicitly why this site was chosen, it is probable that it was because of its central position and above all because of the presence of the necessary building material. Indeed, as mentioned above, it was common in the region to reuse the stone blocks of old or even antique edifices to erect new buildings, since it was more practical and less expensive. Mary Wilson reports that according to Philby the material of the old mosque and of the Byzantine wall was to be used not only for the construction of the new mosque but also for a house being built ‘for one of the Amir’s minions’ (Wilson, 1987, 77). When Philby learned of the destruction of the sixth-century wall of the basilica, he had a violent dispute with Emir Abdullah. If the political

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component of his reaction is evident, it is true that he was interested in archaeology – he had previously conducted some excavations in the Arabian Peninsula (Potts, 1998). The British representative in Transjordan was not willing to compromise merely to support the political and religious role Abdullah was trying to play in the Emirate; he was interested only in preserving a Byzantine monument he regarded as part of the West’s cultural heritage. The destruction of the Byzantine wall of the basilica became an event out of proportion to the value of the remains. Relations between Philby and the Emir Abdullah became so strained that the two personages decided to turn to Sir Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner for Palestine. According to Abu Nuwwar, the Hashemite prince wrote him a letter in which he affirmed: ‘I cannot accept any interference as regards religious buildings that belong to any of the communities under my control. I therefore protest against this interference which is undesirable to me as well as to all Moslims’ (Abu Nuwwar, 1989, 93). The words used by the Emir in his letter to Samuel are very significant, indicating as they do that he interpreted Philby’s intervention not as a matter concerning cultural heritage but rather as an intrusion in the religious affairs of the Emirate. Samuel asked John Garstang, who at the time was Director of Antiquities in Palestine, to go to Amman and report on the situation of the contested site. In his report Garstang minimised the artistic and historical importance of the demolished wall, since the Byzantine basilica had already been destroyed several times and its structure transformed. If we compare the opinion of Garstang, a well-known archaeologist of the time, with Philby’s reaction, the whole incident seems even more out of proportion. Nevertheless, I think it important to examine the reasons behind Philby’s and the Emir’s reactions, as they demonstrate major aspects of the colonial situation and of the cultural play among the different actors on the stage. Although the British representative in Transjordan was apparently concerned by the preservation of cultural heritage, the conflict seems to derive less from Philby’s preoccupation with the destruction of the Byzantine wall than from his desire to impose his authority over Emir Abdullah. Indeed, the Basilica Affair was mostly the expression of the power struggle between the British official and the Hashemite prince. This is apparent if we assume that, given the expert testimony of Garstang, the archaeological value of the Byzantine wall was tenuous and that Emir Abdullah immediately requested the intervention of Sir Herbert Samuel, the higher authority in the area. After all, the matter was a dispute between a colonial official and a local ruler who was subject to British authority; and one of these asked the supreme local authority to intervene and solve the conflict. Wilson’s description of the

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incident seems to confirm this, since she stresses the fact that before the Basilica Affair relations between Abdullah and Philby were already very tense. The reasons were manifold; one of these was that Philby was pushing for the establishment of a constitutional regime in the new Emirate, whereas the Hashemite prince was unwilling to accept an official representative body. Furthermore, the British representative wanted Abdullah to get rid of the numerous Arab nationalists who surrounded the Emir and would take any opportunity to start a campaign against him. According to Wilson, the basilica affair was indeed the opportunity Philby was waiting for. The political nature of the incident became even more evident when Philby raised the issue of Abdullah’s financial mismanagement, which in his opinion had involved ‘irregular financial dealing’ such as giving ‘gifts to favourites’, ‘giving away of state land to pay creditors’ in order to ‘bind the indigenous leaders of Transjordan, mainly tribal shaykhs, to him more securely’ (Wilson, 1987, 77). Similarly, Rogan emphasises the presence of two poles of power in Amman during the first years of its history as the capital of the Emirate. Both the British and the Emir tried to use the city as a stage for symbolic ceremonies aimed at legitimising their respective power. Among these rituals he cites the ‘Emir’s procession from his palace to the centre of town to attend Friday prayers in the ‘Umari mosque’ (Rogan, 1996, 103). The mosque was later to change its name to the Husayni mosque in honour of Sheriff Hussein, Abdullah’s father. Despite the manifest political nature of the event, the cultural aspect of the Basilica Affair is also worth mentioning. I find particularly interesting that Philby justified his interference by employing the idiom of cultural heritage, whereas the Hashemite prince used religious language to legitimise and defend the construction of the mosque. We might think that, in addition to the political conflict, there had also been a cultural misunderstanding between the British representative and Prince Abdullah. Yet I think that it is possible to interpret the different language used by the two men in another way. If we follow the version given by the Jordanian historian Ma’an Abu Nuwwar, when the Basilica Affair took place the Emir informed the High Commissioner of Palestine that the Transjordanian government had taken steps to clean the ancient Roman theatre in Amman by removing the various materials it contained. In this way, Abdullah6 had shown that he had a clear awareness of the historical and artistic value of ancient monuments, and therefore was concerned by matters related to cultural heritage. If this is true, the preoccupation expressed by the Hashemite prince with the Roman theatre would show that at the time of the Basilica Affair he had perfectly understood the importance of cultural heritage, but had chosen to interpret it in another way. In fact, he had chosen to prioritise

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religion over cultural heritage in order to have more chances of establishing his authority without surrendering himself to the power of the British representative in Transjordan. We should not forget how sensitive the religious issues were during the Mandate period in Palestine, and the concern already shown by the British about the danger Islam posed to some of their colonies – as for example in India, where they had been trying to downplay the importance of the Islamic component of the local history and culture (Cohn, 1983). If my interpretation is correct, Abdullah had voluntarily abandoned the idiom of cultural heritage and adopted the religious one, pretending not to understand Philby’s arguments. Abdullah’s refusal to consider the Basilica Affair to be a matter of cultural heritage was also the expression of his resistance to a practice typical of the colonial power. Indeed, the progressive process of transforming ancient local sites (or at least some of them) into cultural heritage might have been perceived as a way sought by the colonial power to impose itself on the autochthonous population. Emphasising the value of ancient buildings and objects by first selecting them, then restoring or renovating and protecting them could have been interpreted by the colonised as an imposition by the colonisers of a severe limitation on the use local people could make of them. The process of creating a cultural heritage imposed from above, and from abroad, signified equally the local population’s obligation to accept an interpretation of their indigenous past and identity provided by their colonisers (Anderson, 1991). The local inhabitants were thus forced to accept the narrative of their history created by foreign scholars and imposed by alien rulers. To put it in a more explicit way, they were faced with what Bruce Trigger among others has called ‘colonial archaeology’, which was nothing other than a practice oriented towards imposing the physical and symbolic presence of the colonisers on the colonised population and their land. In every colonised region this kind of archaeology produced a discourse, in Michel Foucault’s sense, which legitimised the superiority of the colonisers over the colonised and completely cut the latter off from their past, relegating them to a different spatial and temporal dimension. The colonised were to be studied, if they were to be studied at all, by employing different forms of knowledge, such as ethnography or folklore that tended to exclude them from history and force them into an unchanging time and another stage of human development (Fabian, 1983; Trigger, 1984). As a consequence, the colonised not only had to recognise the selection of those civilisations the colonisers considered as more important and more worthy of study, but they also had to accept the expropriation of their past by the ruling foreigners. Over several decades in Transjordan only very limited attention was paid to Arab-Islamic history, and the value of its remains was down-played,

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whereas several pre-Islamic civilisations – such as the kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom, Hellenic and Roman culture, and the Nabataeans – were studied and their historical value emphasised. This is apparent when we look at the sites chosen for excavation in the Emirate during the Mandate period and immediately after Independence. Western archaeologists were mostly concerned with Iron Age sites and with Greek, Roman and Nabataean remains (Dever, 1985; Hadidi, 1987; Ibrahim, 1973; King, 1983). This was because they were not interested in the contemporary local population and in the latter’s perception of the past. Indeed if the Arab-Islamic period was crucial for the local inhabitants, it was excluded from the genealogy of the Euro-American and Judeo-Christian historical narration, and therefore far less interesting than more ancient periods for the Western archaeologists seeking the roots of their own civilisation. The persistence of colonial interests in Jordanian archaeology and the cultural paradigm they entail is striking, when we consider that in the collective volume published in 1973 by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, The Archaeological Heritage of Jordan, they are still very strong. In this work only two pages deal with the ancient Islamic period and two with the Ottoman era, although they lasted for more than a millennium; whereas, for example, five pages are devoted to the Stone Age and almost seven to the Bronze Age. Even in the proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the History of Bilad al-Sham, which was dedicated to the Umayyad period and published in 1989, only one article is written by a Jordanian archaeologist (Bakhit and Shick, 1989).

The second act: the restoration of the Holy Sepulchre during Jordanian rule The fact that the practices of cultural heritage can be used by a colonial administration as instruments for imposing its power on the local population has been shown by many authors in several contexts (Abu el-Haj, 2001; Anderson, 1991; Trigger, 1984; Silberman, 1982; Shaw, 2003). In the case of Jordan the political stakes in the archaeological discourses and practices (and more generally in cultural heritage) are confirmed by another more recent incident, which shows some elements in common with the Basilica Affair. The new incident took place in the 1950s when the Jordanian government decided to restore the complex of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.7 Since the history of this restoration is extremely complex, and rich in religious and political implications, I will not be able to dwell on all of them in this chapter and will therefore limit my analysis to some of its main features.8

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If we look back at the recent past, the deteriorated condition of the Holy Sepulchre was already a fact during the Mandate period, but many obstacles had hindered the British in carrying out the necessary renovation. The main difficulty was by the old and relentless rivalries between the Christian communities traditionally responsible for the church, and between the European states behind them. As Beatrice St. Laurent and András Riedlmayer have illustrated, the struggle among the Christian churches and the European powers supporting them for control of the Holy Sepulchre dates back to the beginning of the eighteenth century, as does the practice of restoring important religious buildings, Islamic and Christian, as ‘a part of the Ottoman government’s centralization of military and administrative control over the provinces of the empire’ (St. Laurent and Riedlmayer, 1993, 81). During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the struggles around the restoration of the Holy Sepulchre already constituted a complex arena, where the Ottoman government was confronted on the one hand with European states such as France, Austria and Russia, and on the other with the representatives of the main Christian churches of the time: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox. According to the military alliances of the period, permission was given to the different European states to restore or repair some parts of the church, though Ottoman officials always maintained a strong hold on Jerusalem’s religious monuments. Returning to the twentieth century, when the French government was informed of the Jordanian intentions to restore the Holy Sepulchre, its representatives protested strongly, stating that no work could be started without their consent and their active participation. In this way, France was affirming its traditional role as protector of the Catholic population in the Near East and at the same time claiming its historic rights to the church (Katz, 2005). The French government affirmed that no restoration or repair of the Holy Sepulchre could be undertaken without its ‘participation and consent’ (idem, 2001, 181). It is of course not fortuitous that 30 years after the Basilica Affair, the Jordanian authorities used the same religious arguments employed earlier by Emir Abdullah in order to justify their actions in opposing French interference. These arguments were not only concerned with the colonial heritage but also, as St. Laurent and Riedlmayer have shown, a discourse used by the Ottoman Sultanate in order to reaffirm its authority over the provinces of the Empire. Thus in the 1950s the Jordanian mutasarrif (governor) of Jerusalem, Hasan al-Katib, reacted to the French protestations by affirming that the ‘policy of the Jordanian government aims not to permit any intervention on the part of foreign governments in Jordan’s religious affairs’ (ibid, 181–2).

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The British authorities were embarrassed by the situation, since at that time they, like other European governments, had not officially recognised Jordan’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. It is clear that the issue of the restoration of the Holy Sepulchre was less a matter related to cultural or religious heritage than to political control over a territory and its populace. For the Hashemite monarch the restoration of the church entailed also another important component: the reaffirmation of the dynasty’s role as protector of holy sites, Islamic and Christian, as well as a mediator between the different religious communities under its authority. As a consequence, the determination of the Jordanian government to restore the Holy Sepulchre was the metaphorical expression of its will to protect its right to rule and administer Jerusalem, which it considered a part of its kingdom. Therefore I think that the similarity between the arguments used in 1923 by Emir Abdullah and at the beginning of the 1950s by the Jordanian representative is not accidental, since the objectives of both statements are the same: their aim was to protect the independence of the Jordanian government against the violent intervention of a colonial power, in the case of Emir Abdullah and Sir John Philby, and of a previous colonial power in the case of France and the Jordanian governor. One important difference, however, lies in the fact that over the question of the Holy Sepulchre the French authorities did not mask their real concerns by employing the idiom of cultural heritage, but used religious and political arguments. In conclusion, if we go back to the Basilica Affair, my interpretation of Abdullah’s reaction seems to be confirmed by the facts set out above, as well as by the Jordanian historian Abu Nuwwar, who writes that the Department of Antiquities (DOA) was created in the Emirate as a consequence of Philby’s protestations. Indeed, the DOA was instituted in 1923 soon after the conclusion of the affair, and the British archaeologist George Horsfield, Director of Antiquities in Palestine, became its General Inspector. Hence the institution was the embodiment of the colonial power, since it institutionalised British sovereignty over a social and cultural domain, which before 1923 had not been controlled by the foreign occupier. The foundation of the DOA and the promulgation of the first law of antiquities in the Emirate marked the establishment of a new form of domination, and was the beginning of local archaeological history.

The development of Jordanian archaeology during the Mandate period As I have already noted, during the Ottoman era a state archaeological policy did not play a significant role in Transjordan. In order to understand

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the evolution of the archaeological discourses and practices in Jordan and the way they influenced the process of nation-building, we must examine the development of the archaeological discipline and of the local institutions in the country during the Mandate period. Despite the fact that during the first half of the twentieth century the local population were mostly indifferent to the activities of Western archaeologists in the Emirate, the excavations and historical studies produced during these formative years were to play an important role in the formation of the Jordanian school of archaeology. Yet, as noted by Wiliam Dever, a Jordanian national school of archaeology was not established until the 1970s, even if by the 1960s some local archaeologists trained in the West had already started to work, as for example Fawzi Zayadine, Awni Dajani, Mu’awiya Ibrahim and Adnan Hadidi (Dever, 1985). This means that the excavations conducted in Transjordan during the Mandate period were an entirely Western affair, and as a consequence the choice of the sites and the interpretation of the material were determined by the cultural agenda and the historical vision of nonindigenous archaeologists. The Arab presence in the DOA was very limited, though from 1928 until 1939 its official General Directors were all nonBritish: Ridha Tawfiq (1928–31), Adib Al-Kayed (1931–33) and Hashem Khair (1933–39). Their position was only an administrative one, however, since they had no competence in the field of archaeology (Zaghloul, 1987). The first Jordanian General Director of Antiquities with a archaeological training was Awni Dajani, who occupied the position from 1959 to 1968. It was during this decade that the first articles in Arabic were published in the Annals of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (ADAJ), and thus became more available to the public at large. After its foundation the DOA began to coordinate those excavations conducted in the Emirate that had previously been under the responsibility of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, based in Jerusalem. Between 1925 and 1930 new digs were started in the Citadel of Amman under the direction of the Italian archaeologist Bartoccini; in Petra, the famous Nabataean capital, under that of George Horsfield; and in Jerash (ancient Gerasa), one of the cities of the Hellenistic-Roman Decapolis,9 under that of Horsfield and John Garstang. Moreover, between 1919 and 1934 the Pontifical Biblical Institute of Jerusalem conducted an excavation in the Chalcholitic site of Tuleilat al-Ghassul (Ibrahim, 1973; King, 1983). During the 1930s Nelson Glueck, one of the more prominent American archaeologists in the region, undertook a comprehensive survey of Transjordanian territory and started two excavations, respectively at Tell al-Khalaifa in the Gulf of Aqaba, an Iron Age site he identified as the biblical Ezion-Geber, and at Khirbet al-Tannur, a Nabataean temple in the

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south of the Emirate (Dever, 2000). As mentioned above, all archaeologists taking part in the excavations in Transjordan came from Western countries: they were mainly British, Italian, German or American, and worked either for the colonial government or for the archaeological institutions active in the Near East. Among these latter, it is worth mentioning the Biblical Pontifical Institute, the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). Despite the fact that all these institutions were based in Jerusalem, they conducted excavations on both banks of the Jordan until the first Arab–Israeli war, when the area was separated by the foundation of the state of Israel. Other prominent archaeological institutions situated in Jerusalem were the Biblical School, founded by the French Dominicans in 1890, and the Deutsches Evangelisches Institut für Altertumswissenschaft, set up by the German Protestant churches in 1900 (Glock, 1994; King, 1983; Silberman, 1982). The religious nature of these institutions is clearly expressed in their names, and explains why the archaeologists working for them were mainly concerned with the historical periods in relation to the religious history of Judaism and Christianity. They oriented their studies mostly towards the Iron Age, a period that corresponds approximately to the events narrated in the Old Testament, in order to find the archaeological evidence confirming the veracity of the biblical text. There is today a general consensus that the quest for Judeo-Christian roots was at the origin of the Western states’ archaeological interest in the Near East. In fact, the period covering the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth was the golden age of what is usually called ‘biblical archaeology’, a discipline that affected the practice of a great number of archaeologists during this epoch (Dever, 1980; 1985; Glock, 1985; 1995; Whitelam, 1996; Silberman, 1982; 1998; 2001). Moreover, many of these scholars were religious men: Protestant pastors, Catholic priests, monks, and Jewish rabbis. The first systematic explorations aimed at identifying the material traces of the biblical narration had already started by the second half of the nineteenth century, with the surveys organised by the Palestine Exploration Fund, founded in 1865 and based in London. Their purpose was the geographical and historical mapping of ancient Palestine, in order to produce a discourse conferring historical credibility on the Bible. As Nadia Abu el-Haj puts it: ‘material objects, be they landscape, monuments, or artifacts . . . would serve as authentic and reliable historical witnesses in a manner that tradition never could’ (2001, 27). In fact, excavations were to be conducted in order to support the traditional textual foundation of the Christian faith. Though several surveys and excavations with a religious character had already taken place by the end of the nineteenth century,

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the institutionalisation of biblical archaeology was the work of William F. Albright during the 1930s (Dever, 1985).10 Dever (ibid) and Glock (1994) both make a distinction between biblical archaeology and Near Eastern or Syro-Palestinian archaeology, considering the latter as non-theological in its orientation, and the former as based on the assumption that the Bible is a reliable historical text. Although Syro-Palestinian was secular if compared with biblical archaeology, it also privileged particular periods of regional history, since it was mainly concerned with the great civilisations of the Bronze Age. In fact, Western archaeologists were interested in the ancient remains found in the Near East because they considered local civilisations such as the Babylonians and the Assyrians as their ancestors, and hence the material traces as their own heritage. Accordingly, they concentrated their efforts on excavating sites of several periods that had in common the fact of being considered as steps in the itinerary through which their own culture had passed (Bahrani, 1998; Silberman, 1982). Babylonian, Hellenic, Roman and Byzantine sites were thus regarded as places belonging not to the history of their modern local inhabitants but to the Western past. Both disciplines, the more secular (Syro-Palestinian) archaeology of the Near East and biblical archaeology dominated the interests of the scholars working in the region during the second part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, and determined the choice of the sites to be excavated. For a very long time, entire epochs of Near-Eastern history – such as the prehistoric period and the Islamic centuries – were almost completely neglected. There were of course some exceptions, as in the case of Cairo where by the 1870s important collections of Islamic art had already been amassed by several French amateurs (Volait, 2002). The European collectors, diplomats and scholars, mainly French and British, later convinced the Egyptian Khedive in 1881 to found a Committee for the Conservation of Monuments of Arab Art and to start a programme to preserve and restore buildings of the Islamic period (Reid, 1992). Yet in Transjordan and Palestine during the Mandate period very few excavations were directed towards the Islamic era (King, 1984). For example, in Jericho and the Citadel of Amman Islamic material was excavated but did not constitute the focus of interest for the archaeologists working there. Dimitri C. Baramki, one of the few Arab archaeologists working for the Palestine Department of Antiquities during the British Mandate, mentions very few excavations sponsored by the DAP and directed towards the exploration of the Islamic period. He cites the excavation of ‘an imposing Umayyad palace near Jericho’ and of a second Umayyad palace ‘discovered at Khirbat al Minieh on the Sea of Galilee’ by ‘Dr. Puttrich of the German Archaeological Institute’ (Baramki, 1969, 11).

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Thus in Jordan it was not until the 1970s that American and Spanish missions started systematically to develop the study of the Early Islamic period (Stager et al, 2000). The Islamic era was not the only neglected historical period, as extremely few excavations (and those non-methodical) were conducted at prehistoric sites in Transjordan during the British Mandate. Apart from the excavation already mentioned at Tuleilat al-Ghassul, conducted by the Biblical Pontifical Institute during the 1920s and 1930s, it was not until the 1960s that Diana Kirkbride of the British School of Archaeology started to dig at the neolithic site of Beidha near Petra. During the following two decades interest in the prehistoric era hugely increased, and today Jordan has become ‘a principal focus of prehistoric investigations in the Levant’ (Rollefson, 1997, 226). If we look more closely at the situation of the Emirate of Transjordan, it is clear that the choice of sites excavated by Western archaeologists mirrors the influence of the two branches of archaeology mentioned above. If on the one hand those who were members of the British School of Archaeology adhered mainly to the secular vision of Near-Eastern history (Glock, 1994); on the other hand the Franciscan monks of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum followed the religious interpretation of the past. Hence, the former excavated mostly Bronze-Age or Hellenic-Roman sites and monumental complexes like Petra, which were particularly appealing for their beauty or their extraordinary dimensions, whereas the monks were more interested in exploring places connected with the biblical narrative, such as Mount Nebo (where Moses was thought to have died). What of participation by the local population? During the Mandate period there were no Transjordanian archaeologists working in the Emirate, or so it appears from the official documents of the British administration and the scientific reports published in these years in the Quarter of the Department of Antiquities of Palestine (QDAP), the archaeological journal of the British administration in Palestine and Transjordan. The situation was somewhat different in Palestine, however, where some Arab individuals trained in archaeology were already working for the Department of Antiquities during the 1930s and 1940s. Yet even in the territory west of the Jordan, as Albert Glock has tried to demonstrate, Arab participation in the archaeological enterprise promoted by the colonial authorities was very limited. According to him, in 1947 ‘although the Palestinian employees greatly outnumbered the others . . . by and large they served as guardians at sites around the country, museum guards and attendants, messengers, and cleaners’ (Glock, 1994, 75). Among the 73 Arab employees working for the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, only four

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had scientific tasks (D. Baramki, S.A.S. Husseini, N. Makhouli and the librarian Stephan H. Stephan), and of them only two had university degrees. Glock shows clearly that the contribution of the resident Palestinians to the (re)construction of the ancient story of their land was extremely modest, as we see from the publications of the Department of Antiquities as well as from those of the Palestine Oriental Society, a cultural institution founded in 1920 (Glock, 1994, 75–6).11 Hence, during the Mandate period the Arab population of Palestine and Transjordan was almost excluded from the possibility of actively participating in the archaeological activities sponsored by the colonial institutions, because such people, except for the very few individuals who had studied in missionary schools or in Europe, had no training in the field. It is not fortuitous that the choice of the places to be excavated almost completely excluded Islamic sites from the Umayyad to the Ottoman era, as at that time these remains did not seem to attract either the colonisers or the colonised. The selection of the cultures regarded as worthy of study was based on the idea that human civilisation had followed a unique evolutionary path, the end of which was Western society. In this evolution the Near East played an essential role, since the Euro-American scholars considered the itinerary of human progress had started in Egypt and Mesopotamia, passed through ancient Greek and Roman civilisations and eventually reached modern Europe and the United States (Bahrani, 1998). The sites excavated were selected by Western archaeologists in accordance with this evolutionist schema. The superimposition of biblical archaeology on this general vision of human progress was typical of archaeological practice in Palestine and in the Emirate of Transjordan, as these two colonies occupied the territory of the ancient Holy Land.

The colonial archaeological heritage in the Near East The biblical and evolutionist paradigms were not the only determinants in the colonial period, but they were to leave a lasting intellectual heritage in the region, despite the fact that they were interpreted and developed in various ways by the post-colonial states that emerged after the Second World War. I am alluding to the development of archaeological studies in Israel, Jordan and among some Palestinian scholars. For example, if Israel provided a huge impetus to studies in the field of biblical archaeology, Jordan also built a strong discourse on the Christian geography and history of its territory as connected to the Bible (Addison, 2004; Katz, 2005; Maffi, 2004). This image was so strongly cultivated by the Jordanian authorities that in 2000, when the Pope visited the Holy Land, he officially recognised several

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Jordanian sites as crucial places for the history of Christianity, including the site where John is said to have baptised Jesus (Katz, 2003; Maffi, 2004). Other Arab countries developed a species of counter-discourse and archaeological counter-practice in order to oppose the Israeli version of regional history. These counter-narratives were mainly aimed at disavowing Israel’s version of the past and at questioning its right to occupy the territory of historical Palestine. An example of this counter-narration is a book by the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi, translated into several languages: The Bible Came from Arabia (1985). He demonstrates that the land that God promised to the Jewish people is in fact the region of Hejaz in the Arabian Peninsula, and not historical Palestine. Other examples of counter-narratives exist in Syria and Iraq, where government institutions have promoted the production of works aimed at rejecting the Israeli construction of the past (Baram, 1991; Valter, 2002). The Jordanian authorities (and more recently the Palestinian National Authority) have felt an intense need to counterbalance the nationalistic narrative fabricated in Israel during the first decades after the end of colonial rule (Abu el-Haj, 2001; Glock, 1995). Relations between Israeli archaeology and the national archaeological schools that developed in neighbouring Arab countries (and especially in Jordan) deserve to be briefly mentioned. As Philippe King and many others have shown, Jewish residents in Palestine started to be active in the field of archaeology in the 1920s. Most of them were trained in Europe and received support from the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, an institution established in 1914 and later to become the Israel Exploration Society. Among the pioneering Jewish archaeologists we can note Nahum Slousch, who was the first to conduct an excavation in Palestine and who in 1921 uncovered the Hammath synagogue on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and Eliezer Sukenik, whose ‘great ambition was the creation of a Jewish archaeology’ (Elon, 1997, 35) and who in 1958 became the first professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University (King, 1983). It is precisely because it preceded the birth of local archaeological traditions in neighbouring Arab countries that Israeli archaeology has become a model for other countries, and has exerted a very significant influence on the states that were most affected by the presence of Israel, such as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In fact, we can say roughly that after the Second World War there has been a dual trend in the region: on the one hand, there has been a progressive movement toward the creation of local archaeologies less dependent on the Western model, although the scholarly discourses produced in Europe and in the United States are still basic references; on the other hand, new relations have been established between the various national schools of the Arab countries and work published in Israel.

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Jordanian institutions, together with local archaeologists and historians, participate in this phenomenon and during the last decades have gradually become aware of the political stakes in the historical and archaeological discourses produced in the different countries. They know very well that for a long time, and still today, Europe and Israel have based their territorial and political claims on nationalist historical narratives developed for the purpose (Fowler, 1987; Gathercole and Lowenthal, 1989; Kohl and Fawcett, 1985; Poulot, 1997; Trigger, 1984) and in the last decades have produced a parallel, though specific, narrative (Maffi, 2004). Especially after the ArabIsraeli War of 1967, when the Likud party took power, the challenge became even more difficult to face for the Jordanian authorities, not only because of the military occupation of the West Bank but also because some Israeli representatives began to affirm that Jordan was a substitute homeland (watan al-badil) for the Palestinian people, implicitly denying the existence of a Jordanian entity or nation having its own identity and history.

The Jordanian counter-narrative The above very brief sketch of the situation shows clearly the crucial importance that history, and particularly ancient history, constitutes for the Jordanian authorities. In order to confront the danger represented by political and military events, as well as the discourse produced in Israel, it became crucial to establish a national history. It was necessary to claim the continuity of the geographical and cultural Jordanian entity and to make clear that its roots date back to prehistoric times. I can only mention as examples of this intellectual production, which is partly to be seen as a reaction to the Israeli narrative, the works published by the High Committee for the Writing of the History of Jordan (Maffi, 2004). Among them are the books of Zaydan Kafafi, Jordan in the Prehistoric Era (1990) and of Muhammad Abd-al-Qadir Khrayshat, The History of Jordan from the Islamic Conquest until the End of the Fourth Century of the Hegira/Tenth Century CE (1992). Both of them project the Jordanian nation’s past as a unitary cohesive entity which has always existed from prehistoric times to the modern era, even though Jordan is a colonial state created by the British after the First World War. I would also like to cite another text, one which I consider particularly significant for understanding Jordanian scholars’ awareness of the political stakes entailed in history and archaeology. This is an introduction written by Khayr Yasin, professor of archaeology at Jordan University, to the Arab translation of the work of A.H. Van Zyl, The Moabites (Yasin, 1990). I think the decision to translate into Arabic a book about the Kingdom of Moab is

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already meaningful, as it shows the Jordanian intent to emphasise this historical period (the Iron Age), and the importance of this polity considered as one of the ancestors of the modern Jordanian kingdom (Maffi, 1998). The importance attributed to this is justified by Yasin in several ways: the Arab kingdom was one of the first of its kind in the region, and its history helps us to understand the origins of the Arab–Israeli conflict. According to Yasin, ‘the kings and the people’ of Moab fought to defend Palestine against the Israeli invasion [sic], and this explains why the modern Israelis are so hostile to the Arabs. The Israelis’ hatred of the Arabs is thus regarded as dating back to this period and having its roots in regional history. Yasin considers that the Arabic translation of Van Zyl’s work will allow the Arab reader to understand the real origins of the modern Arab–Israeli conflict. Moreover, he observes that Van Zyl has given a very neutral and wellbalanced version of the historical facts, avoiding the deformations produced by biblical archaeology which has ignored the material evidence deriving from objective archaeological excavations, in order to prove the historical reliability of the Bible. If for a moment we ignore the author’s nationalist bias, which pushes him in to somewhat anachronistic explanations, his discourse reveals a very clear awareness of the distortions produced by a certain kind of archaeology (Abu el-Haj, 2001; Silberman, 1982; Whitelam, 1996). The same awareness is expressed in a 1978 article published in the Annals of the Department of Antiquities (ADAJ) by one of the more important Jordanian archaeologists: Adnan Hadidi. Hadidi, who became General Director of Antiquities in 1977, wrote a very interesting article entitled ‘Antiquities in the service of politics’, where he explicitly condemned the practices of biblical archaeologists, accusing them of falsifying historical truth both in the name of religion and for political ends. Indeed, he considers that their work mainly aimed to prove the historicity of the biblical narration, and to legitimise Zionists’ claims that they had a right to found ‘the Jewish homeland in the territory of Palestine through the revitalization of the ancient Jewish cultural heritage’ (Hadidi, 1978, 6). In his article, he examines in detail the case for Jordan having shown that for a long time studies on the history of the country have been heavily influenced by the biblical interpretation of the archaeological past. His analysis focuses particularly on the work of Nelson Glueck, who during the 1930s was one of the first Western scholars to make a comprehensive archaeological survey of the region (Glueck, 1945). Although Hadidi recognises the importance of Glueck’s work, he insists that the results of the excavations conducted by the American scholar were influenced by his biblical interpretation of the archaeological material. As a consequence, part of that work was not only characterised by a lack of ‘historical depth’ but was ‘useless for the

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historians’, since it was based on the Old Testament narrative rather than on scientific archaeological proofs (Hadidi, 1978, 9). In the last section of the article Hadidi considers the most important excavations conducted both in Jordan and in historical Palestine by several Western archaeologists; these demonstrate that serious archaeological work cannot be based on the Bible if the results are to be scientifically valid. In fact, he explains that the excavations of Kathleen Kenyon, James Callaway and others have showed the impossibility of considering the Bible as a reliable historical source, and that it is simply unscientific, at the most basic level, to distort the results of excavations in order to reconcile the Old Testament narrative with the historical reality to which the archaeological remains bear witness (ibid, 1978, 10). Finally, I would like to remember a speech by Prince Hasan,12 who in 1987 at the opening of the third International Conference on the History of Jordan officially stated that with respect to historical and archaeological studies Jordan was making all possible efforts ‘to redress the balance, especially in the area of the so-called biblical periods’ since, according to the Hashemite prince, archaeology has been transformed into a political weapon by the Israeli archaeological school with the aim of discrediting Jordan’s past. He also added that in Jordan ‘we should promote research that concentrates on typical Jordanian characteristics’ in order to give a more objective image of the past (Hasan bin Talal, 1987, 14). His words are particularly meaningful since they can be regarded as expressing the official Jordanian position on the role and function of archaeology.

Biblical history: a controversial period in Jordanian national history These quotations confirm that, despite the influence exerted by biblical archaeology on historical and archaeological studies in Jordan, local scholars have been able to take a critical stand towards it. Nevertheless, some elements of Western archaeological vision have been integrated into the new scholarly tradition resulting from encounters with different Euro-American and Arab complexes of ideas. I think that the prominence attributed to the Christian character of Jordanian history is one of these inherited elements. The Jordanian authorities have nurtured this image, particularly in two different periods: during the 1950s and 1960s, after the annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and until the papal visit of Paul VI (1964); and later during the 1990s, in preparation for the Christian Jubilee of 2000 that culminated with the papal visit of John-Paul II (Katz, 2003). In both these periods

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many initiatives were undertaken by the Jordanian authorities to promote the image of Jordan as the Holy Land, such as the renovation of monuments and places related to the Christian tradition, the establishment of new religious holidays, participation in international events and exhibitions, and the organisation of the papal pilgrimage (Katz, 2001). All these acts were aimed at establishing the political and cultural image of Jordan as a place of religious and cultural encounter between different civilisations, while at the same time promoting tourism. As Kimberly Katz has clearly shown, already in the 1950s ‘representations of Jerusalem and holy places in brochures and newsletters, and in official speeches, became a crucial part of Jordan’s tourism policy’ (ibid, 2001, 192). According to her, the construction of Jerusalem and other holy places as national spaces had both a political goal, as it contributed to the legitimisation of the Hashemites’ power in the country, and the aim, for economic reasons, of promoting tourism. During the 1960s several special institutions, supported by the US government, were established to take charge of religious tourism in the kingdom. As a result, religious tourism, both Christian and Islamic, developed steadily between 1950 and 1967, when a new Arab–Israeli war put an end to a relatively peaceful period, and led to major changes in the country’s internal situation. More recently, during the 1990s, religious tourism (again both Christian and Islamic) has once more become a priority for the Jordanian government, although Jerusalem and the holy places situated west of the Jordan had been irrevocably lost (Addison, 2004; Maffi, 2004). Preparation for the Christian Jubilee in 2000 was been one of the main factors in the revitalisation of Christian tourism in the kingdom. As demonstrated by Pope Paul VI’s visit to Jordan in 1964, the symbolic, political and economic aspects of the new papal pilgrimage have been clearly understood by the Jordanian government, as well as by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The political implications of the papal visit are particularly important if we consider the difficult relations between the different Christian churches, and the very fragile equilibrium at the time between Israel, the Palestinians and the neighbouring Arab countries. Since the papal pilgrimage of 2000 was an event fraught with complex meanings whose analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter, I will focus only on the domestic implications of John Paul II’s visit for the Jordanian authorities. The revival of the Christian heritage in Jordan was made easier by the fact that, as mentioned above, the emphasis on biblical sites already had a long tradition in the country: there existed numerous brochures, books, cards, postage stamps and so on dating back to the 1950s and 1960s that reminded Western visitors and pilgrims of the holy nature of Jordanian

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soil (Katz, 1999). Indeed, despite the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and the official interruption of juridical and administrative relations between the Jordanian government and that territory in 1988, the approaching Christian Jubilee of 2000 reactivated the political and religious traditions relating to the Holy Land. As in the 1950s and 1960s, the operation, aimed at emphasising the biblical heritage of Jordan, carried multiple implications. A short citation from the tourist brochure Biblical Sites of Jordan (1999, 2) might be illuminating: Jordan is a modern country, a holy river, and an ancient culture – a timeless physical and spiritual panorama of prophets, miracles, and human faith . . . For a religious pilgrimage or touristic visit to the holy land of Jordan, the Bible is more than a document of faith – it is also a gazetteer and a virtual road map of ancient places, people and events associated with this serene and spiritual land. First of all it is interesting to note that the Bible does not seem to be perceived in contradiction to the Islamic character of the Jordanian state. This is due in part to the fact that the prophets of the Old Testament, as well as Jesus, are accepted by Islam, and thus both Jewish and Christian traditions are present in the Quran. Jesus and the biblical prophets are regarded as predecessors of the Prophet Mohammad, who is known, significantly, as the ‘seal of the prophets’, i.e. the last prophet. In the same publication we read that Jordan is ‘the River and the land of the Baptism’, and that Mohammad followed in a line of prophets after Abraham, Moses, Lot et al. who walked the land and ‘crossed the river during their missions on earth’. We have here a clear example of the way the Jordanian authorities try to find a compromise between the Christian identity of the kingdom and the fundamental Islamic character of the Hashemite monarchy. During the papal visit, commentators in the local press – Christian and Muslim – stressed the fact that Jordan is the Holy Land, since its territory constitutes the cradle of the three religions of the Book. This character confers upon Jordan a strong spirituality and allows for unity between Muslim and Christian believers. In many articles and speeches of members of the Hashemite family, Jordan is presented as the land of tolerance, of equality, of religious freedom and of peace. Therefore the Pope, one of the highest representatives of Christian spirituality and a man of peace, will feel at home in a kingdom where the main values he promotes are cherished by the local population. Furthermore, according to local commentators, Jordan is not only the place the religions of the Book originated, but also the cradle of human civilisation as witnessed by the numerous monuments of different historical

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epochs scattered throughout the country. If we read the press more carefully from the time immediately before, during, and after the visit of John Paul II, it is clear that beside the local history of the country and the character of its inhabitants, it is the Hashemite dynasty which contributes to the kingdom’s particular identity. The history of the relationship between the Vatican and the dynasty is mentioned in many articles, as are the efforts made by the Al al-bayt Foundation in the field of interfaith dialogue during the 1990s (Al-Asad, 2000). The Hashemites, through this foundation as well as through other institutions such as the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, present themselves as spiritual representatives of the Arab-Islamic world (Chatelard, 1997). This role goes far beyond that of political representatives of the Jordanian people, so that the official meetings between King Hussein and Paul VI in 1964, and between King Abdallah II and John Paul II in 2000, are to be regarded as gatherings not only of two political chiefs but also of two supreme spiritual authorities (Katz, 2003). The papal visits have given the opportunity to the Hashemites to stress the religious role to which they aspire. We have thus to remember that the monarchy aspires to become the principal mediator between the Christian world and the Arab-Islamic countries, without forgetting that in Jordan there is also a Christian minority that identifies with the Christian past of the kingdom (Muhammad bin Ghazi, 1996; Hussein bin Talal, 1970; Maffi, 2004; Nour al-Hussein, 1997; Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan, 1982). This explains why the official narrative presents the biblical sites as a shared historical heritage with which Western tourists, the local Christian minority and Muslims, Jordanian or not, can identify. We also have to take into consideration the fact that there are many elements possibly shared by Christian and Muslim believers: ancient pre-Christian and pre-Islamic history, the holy and spiritual nature of the territory, and the veneration for certain sites (Addison, 2004; Muhammad bin Ghazi, 1996). Concerning the spiritual (or even holy) nature of Jordanian soil, on the one hand the Bible is a main source for the Christian pilgrims coming to the kingdom; on the other, the official narrative presents Jordan as the gateway to the Arab-Islamic conquest, reminding visitors that the Byzantine army was defeated near the Yarmouk river in the north of the kingdom, that several companions of the Prophet died during the military campaign and that they were buried in actual Jordanian territory, as many official publications stress (Maffi, 2004). Pre-Christian and pre-Islamic history is another important element that contributes to the construction of a common area, where Muslim and Christian believers can meet. Indeed the religions of the Book – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – share the belief, as already mentioned, in the historical reliability of the Old Testament. Sites and remains dating back to

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biblical times confer the necessary historical depth on the modern kingdom and confirm the antiquity of the local civilisation, implicitly legitimising the existence of the modern nation state.13 The process of institutionalisation of the Christian geography of the kingdom is illustrated in the official publication of the Amman dioceses, Biblical Jordan, which was sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the Jordan Tourism Board and Royal Jordanian, the national airline company. This booklet illustrates the itinerary of the papal pilgrimage in Jordan in 2000 and the sites that the Vatican officially recognised as Christian holy places. If John Paul II visited five sites – Mount Nebo, Mukawer (where the Herodian Fortress of Macherus is situated), the Catholic shrine in the Church of Anjara, Tell Mar Elias, and al-Maghtas (the Baptism site) – the Vatican recognised six holy sites to be visited by Christian pilgrims during their journey to the Hashemite Kingdom, since the Citadel of Amman was later added to these five sites. Thus, the papal pilgrimage has legitimated the international role of Jordan, allowing the official recognition of six holy sites by the Vatican, and at the same time legitimising (and to an extent sanctifying) the claims of the local authorities to define Jordan as the Holy Land. I think that the inclusion of the Citadel of Amman in the list of the Christian holy places is particularly significant, since it clearly shows the arbitrary and political nature of this process. Officially the place was included in the list because the Citadel was the site of the ancient capital of the kingdom of Ammon, which is mentioned several times in the Old Testament (Sayegh, 2000). Moreover, Selim Sayegh emphasises the fact that in Philadelphia – the Latin name of the ancient Ammonite city – two officers of the Roman army who converted to Christianity at the beginning of the fourth century were tortured in the name of religion. The presence of the vestiges of several Byzantine churches is the third element determining the inclusion of the Citadel in the list of the Christian holy sites. This inclusion had taken place even though nothing in the actual landscape reminds of its Christian character, since it is much more its Islamic and Hellenic/Roman remains that have been stressed by the DOA. In fact, the main reason for its inclusion is not related to its peculiar religious importance, but to the political intent of giving central importance to the Jordanian capital. Another interesting booklet published on the occasion of the Christian Jubilee is the work (already mentioned) of Selim Sayegh, who was the Latin bishop of Amman at the time. It contains a detailed description of 20 holy sites in Jordan, of which the bishop traces the history using excerpts from the Old and New Testament, as well as the written records of the first travellers of the Christian era. The 20 sites include of course the six places officially recognised by the Vatican, plus the following: Ramtha (Ramoth Gilead), Umm Qaïs (Gadara), Mahanaym, Gilead, Rihab Bani Hassan (Beth Rehob),

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Madaba, Dhiban (Dibon), wadi al-Moujib (Arnon), Tell Hesban (Heshbon), Umm al-Rassas, Kérak, Tell al-Khalifa (Eziongeber), and Ma‘in, Ayn Abata (shrine of Lot) – a list that is clearly intented to emphasise the Biblical and Christian character of Jordanian soil. As well as Biblical Jordan, articles published in local newspapers and other publications relating to the holy places devote a great deal of attention to the scientific and historical identification of each site. Some of this published material14 explicitly mentions the history of the Israelites, as well as the political and military events in which the Ammonites and the Moabites were involved against the kingdoms of Israel and Judah (Liverani, 1988). Yet the majority of the Jordanian publications do not mention the Israelites, since they have no wish to evoke the fact that part of modern Jordan’s territory was once administered by Jewish dynasties. This act of censorship justifies itself in the necessity of reacting to the official Israeli rhetoric aimed at legitimising the territorial claims of the Jewish state, using ancient history and particularly the biblical narrative.15

A Holy Land without Jewish people Despite the representation of Jordan as the Holy Land, the Jewish population is almost absent from the tourist brochures and guide-books and from the signage for Western visitors to archaeological sites, as well as from text books used in local schools and from the academic literature (Addison 2004; Maffi 2004). Jewish history is virtually ignored, and if the word al-Yahud (Jewish people) is mentioned at all it is often in a pejorative context (Maffi 2005). This omission is doubly paradoxical: on the one hand, although Jordan is identified with the Holy Land, the history of the Jewish people goes unmentioned; and on the other, because the Quran narrates the history of the exodus of the Jewish people and of many prophets of the Old Testament. The neglect of these passages is even more surprising when we think that in schoolbooks the Quranic text is considered as an indisputable historical source and is often used to underpin the narrative (Maffi, 2003). This lacuna in the Jordanian discourse on Jewish history is accompanied by the effacement of material traces left by the Jewish people in the Kingdom’s archaeological landscape. This effacement of Jewish remains was achieved in several ways: by deliberate destruction of sites, by equally deliberate neglect or a by distorted presentation of the traces. For example, in the book Mosaics of Jordan (1993), written by the Italian archaeologist Michele Piccirillo, the author describes an ancient synagogue excavated and photographed by a group of American archaeologists at the beginning of the twentieth century that today has completely disappeared. If it is true that

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the Jordanian authorities did not usually practise the systematic destruction of Jewish remains – preferring to avoid emphasising their existence – nevertheless they have tried to downplay their significance for local history. Either they did not excavate the sites related to Jewish history, or they failed to restore them or to put them on a tourist itinerary. But the DOA could not always adopt the strategy of neglect, since the importance of several biblical sites had to be stressed if Jordan was to be presented as the Holy Land. The authorities concerned, therefore, have chosen to omit references to Jewish history and to stress their connection only with the Christian tradition. This explains why the palace of Herod, where Salome is thought to have danced to obtain the head of John the Baptist, and Mount Nebo where Moses is said to have died after having conducted his people to the Promised Land, are presented exclusively as Christian religious places. The fact that these sites are presented as related to the biblical narrative shows that the Jordanian authorities are willing to integrate into their discourse part of the mythical narrative elaborated by the Western tradition, if this can contribute to the tourist promotion of the Kingdom as the Holy Land. This fact confirms what I have already stressed, that some aspects of the biblical archaeological tradition have been accepted and reused by Jordanian scholars and authorities. Also, we should not forget that the Islamic tradition considers Jerusalem as the third most holy place after Mecca and Medina, and that an important part of the Old Testament’s narrative was integrated into the Quran. Thus it is significant that in a collected volume published in 1999 on the occasion of the Madaba Map Centenary,16 Crown Prince Hasan designated the territory of the Holy Land (of which Jordan is a part) as the Promised Land for which the hearts and minds of millions of believers from all over the world have yearned, be they Christians, Jews or Muslims, having common values stemming from their faith in the God of Abraham who revealed himself in this land (Hasan bin Talal, 1999, 10).

Israeli tourism and the ‘judaisation’ of the territory A slightly different case is that of the site of Iraq al-Amir, situated some miles west of Amman, where the Hellenic palace of Hyrcanus is situated. Hyrcanus was a member of a Jewish family, the Tobiads, who were tax collectors in the region on behalf of Ptolemy’s dynasty. The bilingual tourist sign in Arabic and English at the site, placed there by the Department of Antiquities, says in the English version: ‘Qasr Iraq al-Amir, construed by Herkanus the Ammonite [sic], of the Tobiad family in the second century

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B.C., reused extensively in the Byzantine period’. The Arabic version states that the Tobiads were Ammonites, which means that they were inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ammon. If it is true that Hyrcanus became tax collector in a region which coincided partly with the ancient kingdom of Ammon,17 the Tobiads were a Jewish family coming from the other side of the Jordan River. Besides, we have to mention that there exists an ancient source on Hyrcanus’s life, a text by the Jewish historian Josephus in which he describes the biography of this Jewish noble and his palace at Iraq al-Amir (Flavius Josephus, 1984). The French archaeologists of IFAPO (Institut français d’archéologie au Proche-Orient), who worked on the site from the beginning of the 1970s to restore the palace, put up signs and built a small museum to transform the site into a tourist destination. Despite their valuable work, the beauty of the site (situated in a very green valley) and its proximity to Amman, the Department of Antiquities has not included it in the tourist itineraries promoted by local authorities. The site is now virtually abandoned, and the museum that was created only a few years ago is already falling into ruin. In fact, the political implications of any attention paid to Iraq al-Amir are so sensitive that the Jordanian authorities cannot recognise its proper value, despite the fact that it might well deserve to be visited by foreign as well as local tourists. The possible repercussions of any such attention do not directly concern the domestic situation but rather relations between Jordan and Israel. To understand the importance of the Jordanian authorities’ attitude towards an apparently innocuous archaeological site, we need to take into account events that took place during the 1990s. After the peace agreements of 1994 between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom, the borders were opened and groups of Israeli tourists began to visit Jordanian archaeological sites. As Paul Sham and Russell Lucas stress, after the signing of the peace treaty Jordanian citizens were expecting important economic benefits to ensue from the new commercial relationships with Israel – which were heavily supported by the United States government (2001). Tourism was regarded as one of the more important sources of income for the country ‘in expectation of tourists who would divide their time between Israel and Jordan’ (ibid, 7). Yet, if during the first post-treaty years the number of Israeli and Western tourists, as well as of pilgrims, travelling to the Jordanian Holy Land increased, the economic benefits were limited since ‘most tourists came either for day trips, to see only Petra and two or three major sites, or stayed only a short time’ (ibid, 8), and in any case privileged Israel as their main destination (Addison, 2004). Furthermore, the Jordanians ‘seemed to know that Israeli tourists brought their lunches with them and bought no souvenirs’ (Sham and Lucas, 2001, 8).

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At the beginning of 1996, the process of normalisation occurring in Jordan, expressed through the transformation of prior hostility towards Israel into more cordial attitudes among the local population, began to deteriorate after a series of violent episodes that took place in the region (ibid). As a consequence of these, and after the earlier period when relations between Israel and the Kingdom seemed to be evolving positively, strong anti-normalisation forces developed in local society. In these new political and social circumstances the initially welcome presence of Israeli tourists began to evoke negative reactions among the Jordanian population, since a part of the citizenry did not accept the normalisation of relations with Israel. At the end of the 1990s, by which time these relations had already taken a turn for the worse, rumours started to spread that the attitude of Israeli tourists during their visits to some sites was ambiguous. The local press gave prominence to these rumours, amplifying their importance and thus further influencing public opinion.18 The articles stressing illegal activities by Israeli visitors became more and more numerous, and such accusations more explicit. Israeli tourists were alleged to be praying at some archaeological sites, and even in some mosques that they were said to consider Jewish holy places, such as Mount Nebo, Salt and Petra. Without dwelling on the issue of the reliability of this information, the reaction of Jordanian public opinion shows that among the local population there was widespread awareness of the potential dangers that the mention of biblical sites situated in the Kingdom’s territory entailed, as well as of the threatening Israeli discourse regarding ‘Greater Israel’.19 The fear expressed by the local press and the archaeological preoccupations of the Jordanian authorities seem to be justified if we consider what happened in the territory of historical Palestine during the second half of the twentieth century. Beside its military occupation and the process of intensive colonisation of the land, the Israeli state has employed several symbolic strategies in order to appropriate the territory of historical Palestine, as Meron Benvenisti has very well illustrated (Benvenisti, 2000). He calls these practices the ‘judaisation’ of the history and geography of the Palestinian territory, and shows that archaeology has played a major role in this field in providing the material evidence to fabricate historical depth, necessary to justify the creation of the state of Israel (Abu el-Haj, 2001; Benvenisti, 1996; Elon, 1971; 1997). We have to remember the huge campaigns of archaeological excavation, conducted particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, by Israeli authorities seeking for a past tailored to the legitimisation of the new Jewish state. The insistence on biblical history and on the Hellenic-Roman period produced a justification, after more than two millennia, for the Jewish people’s return to their original homeland. Indeed,

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the official Israeli narrative justifies the right to settle in Palestine using a historical argument, namely the antiquity of the Jewish presence – or better, its priority in relation to the Arab population – is demonstrated by the archaeological remains left by the ancestors of modern Israelis. During the first decades of Israel’s existence archaeology thus became a crucial theme of the national political debate (Shavit, 1997; Silberman, 1982; 1998). In his book Israelis: Founders and Sons Amos Elon explains that Israeli archaeologists did not conduct excavations merely to understand the past and to find ancient objects, but rather to discover Jewish remains so as to prove Israelis’ origins (Elon, 1971). After the foundation of Israel, archaeology thus became a patriotic duty, and so important that it constituted a sort of popular movement involving the entire population. According to Nadia Abu el-Haj the excavation, restorations and promotion of ancient Jewish sites have enabled the Israeli state to create a visible materialisation of the Jewish presence in historical Palestine. This visibility has been obtained also by destroying or scattering of any Arab-Islamic remains that could prove the long centuries of Arab presence in the country. For instance, the old city of Jaffa and the historical centre of Jerusalem have been transformed, and partly destroyed, in order to diminish their Arab-Islamic character, and thus become vestiges of Jewish history (Benvenisti, 1996; 1999; Dumper, 1997; Herzog, 1999; Ricca, 2007). Confronted with Israeli policies in historical Palestine, and the reaction of local public opinion when the first Israeli tourists started to visit the Kingdom,20 it is not surprising that the DOA has adopted a very cautious attitude towards all remains which refer to Jewish history.21 The Jordanian authorities’ general distrust became even stronger when, in the name of biblical history, some Israeli archaeologists and religious men began to claim Israeli rights over some localities situated in the Hashemite Kingdom.22 To sum up, all these elements allow us to understand why, though Jordan presents its territory as the Holy Land, local authorities are very careful exclusively to stress the Christian nature of this heritage, while most of the time suppressing references to Jewish history.

An Islamic state emphasising Christian heritage Finally, the fact that the official Islamic State of Jordan stresses the importance of its Christian past merits consideration. There are several reasons for this policy, which, as we have seen, dates back to the first decades after Independence. These reasons are political, strategic, religious and economic. Since their arrival in the country, the Hashemite monarchs have tried to play the role of political mediators between the West and the Arab

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countries. They have thus tried to present themselves as the representatives of the Arab-Islamic world leading a political as well as religious dialogue, one which may encourage the establishment of closer relationships not only between the Christian and Islamic worlds, but also among the different tendencies coexisting in Islam (Katz, 2005; Maffi, 2004; Massad, 2001). If we look at the internal political arena, the Hashemites have retained, with only minor modifications, the electoral system put in place by the British colonisers; this allocated a fixed number of deputies to local minorities, whether ethnic or religious. The Christian component of the local population, which in pre-colonial time was already integrated into the local tribal system, became an important component of the new political order imposed by the Hashemites. Christian politicians and army officers have played a significant role in Jordanian political history, and some Christian families have become loyal supporters of the monarchy. In other words, from a domestic as well as an international point of view, for the Hashemites it is a strategic choice to emphasise the Christian archaeological heritage, as it permits them to show their respectful attitude towards Christianity and the Western world. Furthermore, Jordan is usually presented as a country at the crossroads of different civilisations. Its history has been affected by the encounter of different cultures, religions and peoples. The emphasis put on these various components of the national history is used to show the tolerant nature of the Jordanian population. To illustrate this aspect, we can turn to the official discourse on the transition of the region from Byzantine domination to the Umayyad conquest. If, in some contexts, the Arab conquest is presented as liberation from the oppressive presence of the Byzantines, who were regarded as foreigners – as seen in some school textbooks (Maffi, 2005) – in other discourses the same period is represented in a very different way. On many official occasions Jordanian archaeologists have stressed the continuity of local culture and the tolerance shown by the Arab conquerors towards the Christian population. These statements are justified by the presence of archaeological remains which show that Christian churches were not destroyed or abandoned after the Islamic conquest, but coexisted with mosques for more than a century. This stress laid on cultural and religious continuity is also a way of integrating different cultural elements in the Jordanian tradition, which is said to be the result of a ‘melting-pot’ of different cultures, religions and peoples. There is also an economic rationale justifying the Jordanian archaeological policy concerning the Christian heritage; this is related to the promotion of tourism in the Kingdom. Being a country without important natural resources, Jordan has tried to develop its economy in several other

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fields, among which tourism plays a major role (Hazbun, 2002). Indeed, as I have already stressed, since the 1950s the Hashemite kingdom has promoted Western tourism by trying to attract pilgrims willing to go back to the origins of Christianity and to visit holy places mentioned in the Bible. In choosing to promote Christian tourism the Jordanian authorities were keeping alive a very long tradition which, though developed in a modern form during colonial time, dates back to the first centuries of the Christian era. The Israeli annexation of the West Bank helped the Hashemites to develop Christian religious tourism, since the most famous Christian sites were situated west of the Jordan River. The campaigns aimed at promoting Christian pilgrimage to Jordan culminated with the first papal visit in 1964, when Paul VI was received with full honours by the young King Hussein. Despite the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Jordan did not stop presenting its territory as the Holy Land and, as remembered above, Christian tourism in the Kingdom was bolstered on the occasion of the Christian Jubilee of 2000, when John-Paul II visited the Kingdom and officially recognised seven holy sites in the territory east of the Jordan (Sayegh, 2000). This papal recognition was very important, since Jordan is not the only country in the area claiming to be the Holy Land. The state of Israel and the Palestinian Authority23 equally promote a biblical image of their territory, and hence take part in the competition for a monopoly of Christian tourism. The quarrel over the identification of the Baptism site’s real location, which involves Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, is a clear example of this symbolic, political and religious competition (Maffi, 2004). In other words, biblical tourist itineraries are an important element in the official policy of the DOA, and remain so despite the loss of the West Bank. However, they are only one element in a larger portfolio of tourist strategies implemented by Jordan’s authorities, which have gone to some lengths to develop its cultural and historical heritages (ibid).

Conclusion To recapitulate the argument I have been following in this chapter, I hope I have shown how archaeology has entered the Jordanian cultural scene and shaped local perceptions of the past. The practice of archaeology started as an instrument employed by the colonisers to control local territory and population, and to impose their own cultural vision of history and culture. The Basilica Affair discussed above is an illustration of the colonial uses of archaeology as well as the expression of the colonised’s resistance. Later on, in the postcolonial period, the practices and discourses of archaeology have become a much more complex political and cultural arena, where several

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agencies and powers meet and dispute. If, on the one hand, archaeology can still be considered part of the colonial heritage, which local rulers have used to legitimise their power as well as to build a national history (as the Hashemite use of biblical archaeology shows), on the other hand the archaeological field has also witnessed the development of original phenomena resulting from processes of hybridisation and of adaptation to new social and political contexts. The emergence of a national school of archaeology in Jordan is an example of these new practices, as are the relations that have developed between Israeli archaeology and the several local schools in neighbouring Arab countries. If these new archaeological schools in the Near East might be seen as having to an extent distanced themselves from Western traditions, nevertheless they have kept some characteristics of the latter, being still related to the political arena and revealing spatial and symbolic stakes very much like those associated with Euro-American practices and discourses. Two significant expressions of this are the Jordanian preoccupation with legitimising the existence of the modern kingdom through its ancient past, and the official policy aimed at emphasising the Christian heritage so as to strengthen Hashemite power. Moreover, contemporary Jordanian archaeology shows the economic importance of tourism, which was already present during colonial times and of course is today common to the majority of countries (Rowan and Baram, 2004; Daher, 2007).

Notes 1. A slightly different version of this chapter was published in The Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 5–34. 2. The British created the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921, when they decided to entrust Emir Abdullah with the administration of a new entity which was to be separated from Palestine. Although the Emirate had an autonomous administration, its government was put under the authority of the Palestinian colonial government, as technically Palestine and Transjordan came under one Mandate. 3. Both Mary Wilson and Ma’an Abu Nuwwar describe this event, respectively in Wilson 1987: 76–7 and Abu Nuwwar 1989: 95–6. Abu Nuwwar also published an article on the same issue in the Jordan Times, the main Englishlanguage newspaper in Jordan, of 2 September 1996. 4. The most important city in northern Jordan was Salt, a relatively old urban centre already used by the Ottoman administration. Yet several reasons that cannot be explored here impelled Emir Abdullah to choose a new capital for the newly-established Emirate (Rogan, 1996). 5. Since the Middle Ages the Hashemites, who are descendants of the Prophet, were regarded as the most pious family of Mecca, and therefore exerted a moral authority on Arabs as well as on Muslims (Salibi, 1996). During the last

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7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

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decades of the Ottoman Empire they took part in the Arab nationalist movement, opposing the policy of ‘turkisation’ (in Arabic, tatrik) promoted by the Young Turks. Sheriff Hussein, the father of Prince Abdullah, was the leader of the Great Arab Revolt, which took place during the First World War, against the Ottoman Sultan. We should remember that during his youth Abdullah lived for some years in Istanbul, and was well educated. Since the second half of the nineteenth century the Sultan had already adopted a policy aiming at protecting the Ottoman cultural heritage against the looting perpetrated in several of its provinces by European archaeologists (Deringil 1998; Shaw 2003). From 1950 to 1967 the Old City of Jerusalem was under the jurisdiction of the Jordanian State. More details on the history of this monument during Jordanian rule in East Jerusalem are provided by the American historian Kimberly Katz (2005). The Decapolis was a league of ten cities situated between northern Jordan and southern Syria. These cities were relatively independent during the end of the Hellenic period and until the beginning of the Roman era. Gerasa is one of the most beautiful and well-preserved cities of the League. As William Dever writes: ‘The technical use of this term to denote a branch of Near Eastern archaeology relating to biblical studies, as well as a certain theological concept of the field, was an innovation of W.F. Albright and his protégé G.E. Wright’ (Dever, 1985, 53). The very few Arab Palestinians who were members of the Society had no background education in archaeology (Glock, 1994). Dr Tawfiq Canaan, who had a Doctorate in Medicine from the American University of Beirut, made an important contribution to knowledge of Palestinian popular culture, collecting objects and information around the country (Kanaana, 1994). Prince Hasan bin Talal was for more than 30 years the designated successor of his brother, King Hussein. He has always played a very important role in the field of cultural and religious dialogue with other Islamic countries as well as with the West. See for example the weekly articles of Rami Khouri published in the Jordan Times, in a series entitled ‘From Our Ancient Heritage’, in the years 1997–2000. See for example ‘Al-Urdun yastaqbil al-ba¯ba¯ Yu¯ha¯nnan Bawlu¯s al-tha¯ni alyawm’, Al-Ray, 20 March 2000; or ‘Al-Vatika¯n ya‘tamid 5 mawa¯qi‘ dı¯niyya ması¯Îiyya lil-hajj’, Al-Ray, 9 February 2000. A very interesting case is that of the Baptism site, around which there exists a conflict between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan (Maffi, 2004). The Madaba Map is a Byzantine mosaic that represents the Holy Land. It is kept in the Church of St George in the city of Madaba, south of Amman. The kingdom of Ammon dates back to the Iron Age, and is mentioned in the Bible.

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18. See the main Jordanian newspapers in Arabic and English of the period 1997–99: Al-Ray, al-Dustur and the Jordan Times. 19. According to some interpretations, ‘Greater Israel’ should include the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates, and hence include the territory of Jordan. 20. Unfortunately there have been also some physical attacks against Israeli tourists. Each time this has happened, local authorities have carefully avoided recognising the political nature of these actions, and have treated the Jordanian citizens responsible for the aggression as insane individuals. 21. In 2000 the French archaeologists responsible for the site of Iraq al-Amir told me that more than half of the tourists visiting the site are Israeli. They are persuaded that these Israeli visitors consider Iraq al-Amir as a place related to their national history. 22. This information was given to me by Jordanian archaeologists working at the DOA in 1999 and 2000. 23. I am referring to the period before the electoral victory of Hamas.

Bibliography Abu el-Haj, Nadia (2001), Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial SelfFashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Abu Nuwwar, M. (1989), The History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: The Creation and Development of Transjordan. Oxford: Ithaca. ——— (1996), ‘The Basilica Affair’. Jordan Times, 2 September. Addison, Erin (2004), ‘The roads to ruins: accessing Islamic heritage in Jordan’. In Rowan, Y. and Baram, U. (eds), Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past, pp. 229–48. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. Al-Asad, N. (2000), ‘Jordan and the Vatican share the religious dialogue’. Al-Ray, 20 March (in Arabic). Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities. London and New York: Verso. Bahrani, Z. (1998), ‘Conjuring Mesopotamia: imaginative geography and a world past’. In Meskell, L. (ed.), Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, pp. 159–74. London: Routledge. Bakhit, Adnan and Shick, R. (eds) (1989), Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on the History of Bilad al-Sham. Amman: University of Jordan Press Baram, Amatzia (1991), Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba’thist Iraq, 1968–89. New York: St. Martin’s. Baramki, Dimitri C. (1969), The Art and Architecture of Ancient Palestine. Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center. Benvenisti, Meron (1996), City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. ——— (1999), ‘Crusading against the historical truth’. Ha’aretz, 24 June. ——— (2000), Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

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Chatelard, Géraldine (1997), ‘Interfaith dialogue in Jordan: a display of Hashemite moderation’. Jordanies, Vol. 4, pp. 115–30. Cohn, David (1983), ‘Representing authority in Victorian India’. In Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds), The Invention of Tradition, pp. 165–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daher, Rami (ed.) (2007), Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity, Change, and Transformation. Clevedon: Channel View. Deringil, Sulaiman (1998), The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909. London: I.B.Tauris. Dever, William G. (1980), ‘Biblical theology and biblical archaeology: an appreciation of G. Ernest Wright’. Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 73, No. 1/2, pp. 1–15. ——— (1985), ‘Syro-Palestinian and biblical archaeology’. In Knight, D.A. and Tucker, G.M. (eds), The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, pp. 31–64. Philadelphia-Chico, PA Fortress/Scholars. ——— (2000), ‘Nelson Glueck and the other half of the Holy Land’. In Stager, L.E., Greene, J.E. and Coogan, M.D. (eds), The Archaeology of Jordan and Beyond: Essays in Honor of James A. Sauer, pp. 114–19. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Dumper, Michael (1997), The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967. New York: Columbia University Press. Elon, Amos (1971), The Israelis: Founders and Sons. New York: Holt Reinhart Winston. ——— (1997), ‘Politics and archaeology’. In Silberman, N.A. and Small, D. (eds), The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present, pp. 34–47. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Fabian, Johannes (1983), Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Flavius Josephus (1984), The Jewish War. London: Penguin Classics. Fowler, Don D. (1987), ‘Uses of the past: archaeology in the service of the state’. American Antiquity, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 229–48. Gathercole, Peter and Lowenthal, David (1989), The Politics of the Past. London: Unwin Hyman. Glock, Albert (1985), ‘Tradition and change in two archaeologies’. American Antiquity, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 464–77. ——— (1994), ‘Archaeology and cultural survival: the future of the Palestinian past’. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 70–84. ——— (1995), ‘Cultural bias in the archaeology of Palestine’. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 48–59. Glueck, Nelson (1945), The Other Side of the Jordan. New Haven, CT: American Schools of Oriental Research. Hadidi, Adnan (1978), ‘Archaeology in the service of politics’. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Vol. 6–11 (in Arabic). ——— (1987), ‘La recherche archéologique en Jordanie’. In La voie royale: 9000 ans d’art au Royaume de Jordanie. Catalogue de l’exposition, pp. 25–7. Paris. Hannoyer, Jean and Shami, Seteney (eds) (1996), Amman, ville et société. Beirut and Amman: CERMOC. Hartog, François and Revel, Jacques (eds) (2001), Les usages politiques du passé. Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Etudes. Hasan bin Talal (1987), ‘Opening address’. In Hadidi, A. (ed.), Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan, Vol. III, pp. 12–15. Amman: Department of Antiquities.

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——— (1999), ‘Introduction’. In Piccirillo, M. and Alliata, E. (eds), The Madaba Map Centenary 1897–1997: Traveling through the Byzantine and Umayyad Period, pp. 10–11. Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum. Hazbun, Walid (2002), ‘Mapping the landscape of the new Middle East: politics of tourism development and the peace process in Jordan.’ In Joffé, J. (ed.), Jordan in Transition, 1990–2000, pp. 330–45. London: Hurst. Herzog, Z. (1999), ‘Deconstructing the walls of Jericho’. Ha’aretz, 29 October. Hmoud, Noufan R. (1996), ‘Amman à la fin de la période ottomane’. In Hannoyer and Shami (eds), Amman, ville et société, pp. 72–87 (in Arabic). Hussein bin Talal (1970), Foreword to Fistere I. and Fistere, J., Jordan. The Holy Land. Beirut: Middle East Export. Hütteroth, W. (1995), ‘La zone de peuplement arabe en Palestine et Transjordanie à l’époque ottomane’. In Mémoire de soie, pp. 36–44. Paris: IMA. Ibrahim, Mu’awyia (ed.) (1973), The Archaeological Heritage of Jordan. Amman: Department of Antiquities. Joffé, George (ed.) (2002), Jordan in Transition, 1990–2000. London: Hurst. Kafafi, Zaydan (1990), Jordan in the Stone Age. Amman: High Committee for the Writing of the History of Jordan (in Arabic). Kanaana, Sharif (ed.) (1994), Folk Heritage of Palestine. Ramallah: Research Center for Arab Heritage. Katz, Kimberly (1999), ‘Jordanian Jerusalem: postal stamps and identity construction’. Jerusalem Quarterly File. No. 5, pp. 17–27. ——— (2001), Holy Places and National Spaces: Jerusalem under Jordanian Rule.PhD thesis, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University. ——— (2003), ‘Legitimizing Jordan as the Holy Land: papal pilgrimages’. Comparative Studies in South Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Vol. 23, pp. 181–9. ——— (2005), Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Khrayshat, Muhammad (1992), History of Jordan from the Islamic Conquest until the End of the Fourth Century of the Hegira/Twentieth Century of the Christian Era. Amman: High Committee for the Writing of the History of Jordan (in Arabic). King, Philip (1983), American Archaeology in the Mideast: A History of the American School of Oriental Research. Philadelphia, PA: American School of Oriental Research. Knight, Douglas A. and Tucker, Gene M. (eds) (1985), The Hebrew Bible and its Modern Interpreters. Philadelphia-Chico, PA: Fortress/Scholars. Kohl, Philip and Fawcett, C. (eds) (1985), Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liverani, Mario (1988), Antico Oriente: storia, società, economia. Bari: Laterza. Maffi, Irene (1998), ‘On the usage of history by the state power: the museums and the building of national identity after 1967’. Jordanies, Vol. 5–6, pp. 84–97. ——— (2003), La politique des objets: discours et pratiques du patrimoine dans la construction de l’identité jordanienne. PhD thesis, Institut d’anthropologie et de sociologie, Université de Lausanne. ——— (2004), Pratiques du patrimoine et politiques de la mémoire en Jordanie: entre histoire dynastique et récits communautaires. Lausanne: Payot. ——— (2005), ‘La fabrication des frontières nationales dans les manuels scolaires jordaniens’. A Contrario, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 26–44. Massad, Joseph (2001), Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Mémoire de soie: costumes et parures de Palestine et de Jordanie (1995). Paris: IMA. Meskell, Lynn, (ed.) (1998), Archaeology under Fire. Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London and New York: Routledge. Muhammad bin Ghazi (1996), The Holy Sites of Jordan. Amman: Turab. Nour al-Hussein (1997), ‘Avant-propos’. In Voyage en Jordanie: art contemporain et traditions culturelles. Catalogue de l’exposition présentée à l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris, pp. 15–17. Paris. Piccirillo, Michele (1993), The Mosaics of Jordan. Amman: ASOR Potts, David T. (1998), ‘The Gulf Arab states and their archaeology’. In Meskell (ed.), Archaeology Under Fire, pp. 189–99. Poulot, Dominique (1997), Musée, nation, patrimoine, 1789–1815. Paris: Gallimard. Reid, Donald M. (1992), ‘Cultural imperialism and nationalism: the struggle to define and control the heritage of Arab art in Egypt’. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 57–76. Ricca, Simone (2007), Reinventing Jerusalem: Israel’s Reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter after 1967. London: I.B.Tauris. Rogan, Eugene (1996), ‘La naissance d’une capitale: Amman 1918–1928’. In Hannoyer and Shami (eds), Amman, ville et société, pp. 91–107. ——— (1999), Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rogan, Eugene and Tell, Tariq (1995), Village, Steppe and the State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan. London: I.B.Tauris. Rollefson, G.O. (1997), ‘Prehistoric Transjordan’. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Vol. 5, pp. 226–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rowan, Y. and Baram, U. (eds) (2004), Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. Salibi, Kamal (1985), The Bible Came from Arabia. London: Cape. ——— (1996), Histoire de la Jordanie. Paris: Naufal. Sayegh, S. (2000), Biblical Jordan. Rome: Plurigraf, and Amman: Department of Antiquities. Sham, Paul L. and Lucas, Russell E. (2001), ‘ “Normalization” and “anti-normalization” in Jordan: the public debate’. Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3. Shami, Seteney (1996), ‘The Circassians of Amman: historical narratives, urban dwelling and the construction of identity’. In Hannoyer and Shami (eds), Amman, ville et société, pp. 303–21. Shavit, Yaacov (1997), ‘Archaeology, political culture, and culture in Israel’. In Silberman and Small (eds), The Archaeology of Israel, pp. 48–61. Shaw, Wendy M.K. (2003), Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press. Silberman, Neil A. (1982), Digging for God and the Country: Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799–1917. New York: Knopf. ——— (1998), ‘Whose game is it anyway? The political and social transformations of American biblical archaeology’. In Meskell (ed.), Archaeology under Fire, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 175–88. ——— (2001), ‘Structurer le passé: les Israéliens, les Palestiniens et l’autorité symbolique des monuments archéologiques’. In Hartog and Revel (eds), Les usages politiques du passé, Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, pp. 99–116. Silberman, Neil, Small, David (eds) (1997), The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the past interpreting the present. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

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Stager, Laurence E., Greene, Joseph E. and Coogan, Michael D. (eds) (2000), The Archaeology of Jordan and Beyond: Essays in Honor of James A. Sauer. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. St. Laurent, Beatrice and Riedlmayer, Andras (1993), ‘Restorations of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock and their political significance, 1537–1928. Muqarnas, Vol. 10, pp. 76–84. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan (1982), Amman: Department of Antiquities. Trigger, Bruce G. (1984), ‘Alternative archaeologies: nationalist, colonialist, imperialist’. Man, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 355–70. Valter, Stéphane (2002), La construction nationale syrienne: légitimation de la nature communautaire du pouvoir par le discours historique. Paris: Éditions CNRS. Van Zyl, A.H. (1990), The Moabites. Amman: University of Jordan (in Arabic). Volait, Mercedes (2002), ‘Amateurs français et dynamique patrimoniale: aux origines du comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe’. In Panzac, D. and Raymond, A. (eds), La France et l’Egypte aux temps des vice-rois, 1805–1882, pp. 311–26. Cairo: Presses de l’IFAO. Wilson, Mary (1987), King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whitelam, Keith W. (1996), The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. London and New York: Routledge. Yasin, K. (1990), ‘Introduction’. In Van Zyl, The Moabites, pp. 7–11. Zaghloul, Muna (1987), ‘The Department of Antiquities of Jordan: directors and main events’. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, pp. 15–19.

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3 THE ‘BELLE EPOQUE’ IN EGYPT: R EGISTER S, R HETOR ICS AND MECHANISMS OF HER ITAGE INVENTION Mercedes Volait

It was a different age. Cairo was like Europe. It was clean and smart and the people were well mannered and respectable and everyone knew his place exactly ... What times! Every night was filled with laughter and parties and drinking and singing. There were lots of foreigners in Cairo. Most of the people living downtown were foreigners, until Abd el Nasser threw them out in 1956. From Zaki bey el-Dessouki’s Imarat Yacoubian (original version, 2002) (Al Aswany, 2004) The political and social agendas animating phenomena of heritage fervour or distinction are generally multiple, and often overlapping; they may make the mechanisms of heritage-making paradoxical, or even baffling (Volait, 2004). The heritage invention of ‘Belle Epoque’ Egypt offers an opportunity to ascertain this. Examining registers, rhetorics and mechanisms also makes it possible to question the role of marginal identities in the processes of heritage fabrication (Volait, 2007).

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A newcomer to the spectrum of the Egyptian heritage The irruption of the ‘Belle Epoque’ in Egyptian historical representations may be dated approximately to the 1990s. This decade saw the forceful arising of the formula ‘in French in the text’ in conversations and the media to describe a bygone period in the country’s modern history, which had recently been passed over in silence but was henceforth to be celebrated as le bon vieux temps, ‘the good old days’, L’Egypte d’antan or Misr zaman (‘the Egypt of yesteryear’), while an entire iconography and literature were used to give it life in words and images. The run-back of time again fails to take full measure of a phenomenon which apparently affects only limited segments of Egyptian society, but the trend is sufficiently striking for anyone with a long acquaintance with Egypt – and with the amnesia or covering-up which have long prevailed there – for us to examine it more closely. It must first be stated that, while the Egyptian ‘Belle Epoque’ borrows the phrase used to refer to the first decade of the twentieth century in France, it has deployed it in a distinctive way. As used of Egypt, it relates to a period of much longer duration, although when attempts are made to make an oral enquiry about the label or to trace written accounts of it, the borders of the time it refers to appear blurred, elastic and above all fluctuating from one speaker to another and from one occurrence to another. The Belle Epoque may therefore be spontaneously associated with the reign of King Farouk (from 1936 to 1952), which in turn is thought of as being situated, in a perfectly anachronistic fashion, in the early twentieth century; for others, this golden age corresponds to a Khedival era which may also be summarily identified. A billboard advertising ‘unforgettable cruises on the Nile’ mentions King Fuad (who reigned from 1918 to 1936) as being alive in 1855 (Goldschmidt et al, 2006)! When a speaker evokes the ‘time of the English’ (ayyam al-Ingliz) as a time of musical modernity, anyone slightly familiar with the history of modern Egypt fairly quickly realises that the memory belongs in fact to the years of the Second World War, when entire battalions of New Zealand and Australian soldiers were stationed in Egypt and popularised American jazz there. What is at stake with such evocations of a Belle Epoque is obviously not, primarily, historical accuracy, but in the spheres where the label is used everyone clearly understands that it refers to pre-Nasser Egypt, to the time preceding the post-colonial period, to a past which has become idealised, and simultaneously an object of historiographical re-assessment.1 A book (Mostyn, 1989) published under the title Egypt’s Belle Epoque: Cairo 1869–1952 offers a significant milestone for the phenomenon. A collection of stories edited by a British journalist specialising in the

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contemporary Middle East after being posted in Cairo for several years, the volume gives a condensed view of the social vulgate, then circulating in Cairene drawing-rooms, on the Khedival period – the supposed love story between the Viceroy Ismail and Empress Eugénie (sic), evenings at the Cairo Opera House, the pageantry for the inauguration of the Suez Canal, and so on – and gives it a public character, among the first of its kind. Mostyn evokes the regret in Egyptian high society about the disappearance of the city landscape which formed its backcloth (Mostyn, 1989), while drawing a parallel between the 1870s and the decade following the infitah (the policy of economic liberalisation carried out by Sadat after 1973). Mostyn’s book was coolly received in Western academic circles, where it was seen to contain the misplaced manifestation of an ‘imperial nostalgia’ stretching to the Middle East, after it had targeted the Indian Raj and following the celebrations in 1988 marking the centenary of the birth of Laurence of Arabia (Beinin, 1990). In Egypt, on the contrary, the book’s success has been overwhelming, not so much perhaps for its (rather weak) contents, as for the new horizons its title offers. Its original formula was so successful that it soon entered the everyday vocabulary of a significant and powerful segment of Egyptian society: the well-off middle classes, with their penchant for the international, familiar with foreign languages, readers of the Egyptian press in English or French (Al-Ahram Hebdo and Weekly, Egypt Today, the late Cairo Times and Revue d’Egypte, etc.), users of satellite networks and the Internet. The book came out in a new edition in 2006, with a significantly modified sub-title.2 The label ‘Belle Epoque’ has since made its way into the global media.3 One may gloss over the dating of a period (1869–1952), stretching from a date in economic history (the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869) to a landmark in the country’s political chronology (the arrival in power of the Free Officers in 1952), and in so doing include the British occupation (1882–1922) within a longer time-span. In contrast to post-colonial conventions, this vision of Egyptian history chooses to highlight the economic variable (a period of prosperity) rather than a political one (a period of domination) in a context in which the colonial reality has since become just one component among many. The book’s chronological haziness is accentuated in its second edition, whose title has lost all direct time-reference in favour of a somewhat sensationalist sub-title, Cairo and the Age of the Hedonists. Here again, the fantasy of the journalistic prose cannot fail to intrigue and amuse historians (was pre-Nasser Cairo so Epicurean?), but it gives a clear account of a social reality, a shared imaginary, making the ‘Belle Epoque’ a seductive age. The title also refers in reverse to the growing rigour of Egyptian society.

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In any event, this representation has hit the local bulls-eye, and does so even more since it harmonises with an old idea, still pregnant with meaning in contemporary Egyptian discourse: ‘Egypt, the tomb of invaders’,4 a country able to domesticate everything and everyone which comes to it from outside, and drawing strength and advantage from the encounter.5 One presumes that it was also reinforced by what some have called ‘the narrative of loss’, the rhetoric of lament, a more general discourse turning the ancient splendours of civilisation and cities in the Arab world into an unsurpassed and unsurpassable period – although the idea of the ‘Belle Epoque’ does not completely tally with the causes normally blamed (colonisation, the opening-up to the West) for the decline perceived today (Elshestawy, 2004) – unless it is even more simply a question of the effect of the ‘beauty of death’, a law established by Michel de Certeau regarding ‘popular culture’; this states that an object is more moving and celebrated when enclosed in a tomb (de Certeau et al, 1993), a paradox which David Lowenthal, the author of the notorious The Past is a Foreign Country (1985), chose to sum up, in one of his first writings on this subject, in an axiom: ‘Nostalgia requires a situation of estrangement; the object of the quest must be anachronistic’ (Lowenthal, 1975). The invention of the Belle Epoque has therefore opened the way to the re-appropriation of a historic past which had been concealed, disgraced and ignored until then. The issue touches upon a crucial matter, which is that of the power of words, the importance of naming in the processes of heritagemaking, since in a way it is by ‘baptising’ an object, by offering it a name, that we give it life – and if needs be a second life.

Substrata This renewed vision of Egypt’s recent history is stimulated by the wellanchored image of ‘glamour’6 associated with it. ‘Hedonism’, ‘extravagance’, ‘decadence’, ‘magnificence’, ‘splendour’ and ‘opulence’ are some of the epithets most frequently used in association with the Egyptian Belle Epoque. The image is fuelled by a mythicisation of the monarchic regime overturned in 1952, of a world imagined as powerful, glamorous and glowing with princes and princesses: the two phenomena (monarchist nostalgia and a fascination with glamour) also feeding each other. Lastly, architecture and the built environment, or rather the idea which one may make of them, give strength to the myth. Three urban images, three central figures, thus support, in a complementary fashion, the notion of the Belle Epoque and its supposed splendours: Khedival Cairo; cosmopolitan, Mediterranean Alexandria; and multi-faith Heliopolis. The first

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paradigm is even more interesting in that the material vestiges of this phase of the Egyptian capital’s expansion are today rare, not to say non-existent. Hardly any physical trace remains of that Cairo, made up of ‘new districts’ decreed by the Khedive Ismail (1863–79) after 1868, and initially called Ismailiya (with reference to the enterprising viceroy) which later became the present-day downtown area of Cairo. Affected by the building boom after the turn of the twentieth century, this part of the city has seen its former villas, and the green gardens by which they were surrounded, disappear in successive waves, first in the 1900s (Owen, 2007), then during the period between the wars, and again in and after the 1960s, when the agrarian reform shifted property investment from the land to buildings (Hanna, 1992). The places the sovereign had had built no longer stand: burned down in 1891, the Abdin Palace as it appears today is of a much later date, and the Qasr al-Nil palace was destroyed in 1947 after the evacuation of the British barracks. The famous Opera House, where the world premiere of Verdi’s Aida took place in 1871, perished in a fire 100 years later: a multi-story car park occupies the site today. The great Mattatias building, erected in 1872–74 (already replacing a very short-lived equestrian circus) and which occupied a whole block bordering the Azbakiya Gardens, was demolished in 1999 to give way to a garden (Hassan, 1999; Volait, 1998), and one of the last surviving vestiges of the Ismail years, the Villa Delort de Gléon in Chawarbi Street – the work of the architect Ambroise Baudry, completed in 1872 and subsequently occupied after 1884 by the Italian Legation, and then between the two world wars by the Liberal Constitutional party newspaper al-Siyasa – is so well hidden from view that almost nothing is known of its existence.7 And yet Khedival Cairo as a ‘dynastic’ capital, with the corresponding lustre commonly associated with it, as an avatar of the Ville-Lumière (Mintty, 1999; 2003), to borrow the title of one of the beaconworks of Belle Epoque literature, the metropolis of the ‘glorious years’, to paraphrase another recent publication (Raafat, 2003; Johnston, 2006), has become commonplace, ‘Colonial Cairo’, henceforth part of the lexis of its admirers. The idea of ‘Mediterranean Alexandria’,8 the cosmopolitan city and the locus of all romanticism – as the Quartet tells us – operates in a different register: that of the opening-up of local notables to the cultures on the other shore, of a tolerant conviviality. The exactness of the portrayal has again little importance: the realities of cosmopolitanism have, as we know, been questioned (Mabro, 2002). But the image is strong, continues to be used, and still seduces. In 1995 the local branch of the Rotary Club took the name of the ‘Alexandria Cosmopolitan Club’;9 and since its opening in 2001, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has been used to revive the idea of

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Egyptian multi-culturalism, with a view to opposing rival historical narratives founded on exclusionist identities (Islamist, nationalist, etc.) (Butler, 2001). Equally, contemporary Egyptian literature sweeps the myth along, with all its ambivalences, in such works as Edward al-Kharrat’s Girls of Alexandria (English translation 1993) or Ibrahim Abd al-Magid’s No One Sleeps in Alexandria (1996) (Starr, 2005). Here again, the myth relegates architectural reality to a secondary role: one is left wondering about the ‘nostalgia for the “Art Nouveau” facades’10 allegedly instigated by the city authorities, when such buildings are now in fact rare features of Alexandria’s architectural landscape, not to say absent from it, and at all events by no means one of its most salient features. Multi-faith Heliopolis constitutes a third shared image, the dream of a lost paradise in the eyes of former residents – most often Christians and today scattered outside Egypt – and a symbol of possible multi-cultural harmony for those living there today, as was strongly expressed on the occasion of the centenary of Heliopolis’ creation,11 to the great dismay, of course, of those (former Nasserites, critical intellectuals, Western orientalists) irritated by any positive evocation, which could only be backward-looking, of the ancien régime. The perception of harmonious co-existence is clearly not exempt from illusions, and outside scrutiny may easily see pure chimera there; it only makes sense, moreover, within narrow microcosms, but must no less be ‘taken seriously’, following Bernard Lepetit’s invitation formulated in one of his last articles (Lepetit, 1996), both as the tangible representation of a self-image and the manifestation of a desire to give voice to a clouded memory of Heliopolis, to its Levantine past, marked by the strong presence of shami (pl. shawam or Syrians) in this suburb, which has over the years become the main rival to Cairo proper. But in these three cases, architectural form, whether its traces are left in actual buildings or in illustrations on paper, sustains the mental image.

Private passions The registers of expression for the Belle Epoque craze are varied. Mixing the spheres of writing, image, architecture, cultural practices and heritage policy in the same movement, they encompass both private passions and public action. The collection of Belle Epoque objects may be mentioned first. This ranges from old photographs to the ancient Rolls-Royces and Bentleys which may still be seen driving round Cairo, and which already are virtually priceless; old illustrated magazines, from the weekly Images, founded in 1929, to Femme Nouvelle, published between 1947 and 1952; and cinema posters (the local film industry has a long history, and is almost

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contemporary with the first-ever projections of animated images), are equally rising in price, as is the architectural material salvaged from grand homes due for demolition, then offered to dealers in the huge sheds of Cairo’s al-Sabtiya district. In 1990 one could procure neo-Egyptian decors (right down to door-knockers in the form of a Horus eye) from the drawing-rooms of the Giza villa of Bahi al-Din Barakat, a politician in the period between the wars, and a few years earlier the remains of feminist Hoda Chaarawi’s home; the marble mosaics stripped from the villa Delort de Gléon in 1995 were added to some already luxurious Cairene interiors. Generally speaking, any object marked as dating from the pre-1952 reign of the monarchy tends to become a cult. Now fully expanded, this commercial domain has its own specialised dealers and its ‘derived products’ – in graphics or contemporary furniture design, for example. In the same fashion, but with a more marked concern for engaging with the local public sphere, the Belle Epoque craze inspires all sorts of documentary enquiries, on the Khedive dynasty and its numerous ramifications, on this society of yesteryear – its elites and minorities, in particular Egyptian Jews or ‘Anglo-Egyptians’ (British people settled in Egypt and taking root there through mixed marriages) – on its urban linkages and favourite places. The phenomenon also generates considerable electronic literature, whose flagship is without doubt the Internet site maintained by the writer Samir Raafat, first under the name of The Egyptian Gazette in 1993, then (from 1998) Egy.com.12 Extremely well-supplied and regularly enriched and updated, the site offers a comprehensive collection of Raafat’s articles written for different publications (Cairo Times, Egyptian Mail, Revue d’Egypte) on the history of modern Cairo, its main suburbs (Raafat, 1994), Heliopolis, Garden City, Koubbeh Gardens, Zamalek, Giza and notable buildings, backed up by maps and by old photographs of its personalities of yesterday and today. The basis of the information offered is oral sources, memoirs and memories of times gone by, tirelessly collected by Samir Raafat in Cairo and abroad – in particular from those who chose exile after Nasser’s coming to power, or who were unable to remain. The site ceaselessly counters the oblivion into which this earlier world has slipped. The resources on line include the family trees of great Egyptian families (Cattaui, Chamsi, Jabès, Rossi ...) and of the once reigning dynasty; an entire section is devoted to the Jews of Egypt; and a rich golden book gives voice to the Egyptian diaspora scattered throughout the five continents. Links relate to similar sites, such as the one devoted to the family of Colonel Sèves, the French officer who entered the service of Muhammad Ali under the name of Sulayman Pacha al-Faransaw, by one of his descendants.

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A more recent site, set up in 2004 by an Egyptian settled in France for many years13 and called L’Egypte d’antan has an even more decided topographical vein (the articles are mostly geographical) and above all an iconographic objective – the site is exclusively composed of old photographs with more or less detailed captions. It also has a clear monarchist leaning: portraits of members of the old reigning family take up 17 pages, with the home page featuring the royal crest.14 The site’s rich resources are often completely original, such as the selection of plates from Richard Mosseri’s photographic collection, or very rare images from an album produced by the French photographer Emile Béchard in 1874, and never before publicly shown, on then-new districts of Cairo. The literature on memories of the ancien régime also adopts the more traditional form of print. The catalogue of the American University in Cairo Press alone gives a good insight. The memoirs of Prince Hassan Hassan, one of the last representatives of the royal family, who spent his whole life in Egypt, inaugurated the series in 2000 (Hassan, 2000). More recent releases include the account of a return to Cairo after decades of absence, or the history of the Zamalkawiyun – as the inhabitants of the privileged district of Zamalek, once a stronghold of the British, are familiarly called today (Gazele, 2004). The evocation of pre-Nasser Egypt may equally become fiction, as in the autobiographical novel by Samia Serageldine (2000), featuring a return to an unrecognisable country, and the memory of a happy childhood in the ‘glamorous Egypt of the pachas and monarchs’; the book denounces the disasters brought about by nationalisation and the confiscation of large Egyptian fortunes in 1960 (Abdel-Malek, 1962) – the author belongs to the clan which gave Egypt one of its great independence leaders, Muhammad Fuad Serageldine (1910–2000), who was also responsible for the 1977 reform of the old al-Wafd nationalist party, and other personalities still active in Egyptian public life, like the current president of the Alexandria Library, Ismaïl Serageldine. This memorial literature is also well represented in French, as in the autobiographical trilogy by Gulpérie Efflatoun-Abdalla with her sister, the painter Inji Efflatoun, a protagonist of the Egyptian communist left which sprang from Cairo’s haute bourgeoisie (Efflatoun-Abdulla, 2002). In a rather different genre – the rehabilitation of the Khedives – descendants of the dynasty have recently published, in Paris, Méhémet Ali le grand. Mémoires intimes d’une dynastie (1805–2005) (Prince Ibrahim et al, 2005), a portrait gallery of its eminent or more obscure members. What had for a very long time been discreetly kept silent, starting with Nasser’s violent repression of any dissidence, or the monarchical contribution to the institutional development of the country, is now stated openly.

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This self-examination, returning to a history long passed over in silence, is not however exclusively expressed in a foreign language – French or English – nor simply an exported product. Writers in Arabic were the first to take this path and open up access to it. The memoirs of the prominent leftist journalist and essayist Louis Awad (1915–90), published in Cairo in 1989 (Awad, 1989), are one example, as are those of a grand chamberlain to King Farouk which appeared some years earlier (Hasan, 1982). In her panorama of Egyptian historiography, written in the late 1980s, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot revealed the first lessening of restrictions, during the Sadat years (1971–81), on discussing the monarchic period (Lufti Al-Sayyid Marsot, 1991). For the political scientist Tewfiq Aclimandos, it was later, in the great accounts which appeared during the 1990s of the last monarch, or in the testimony of the latter’s secretary Husayn Husni, that the Egyptian public was able to discover a past which until then had been hidden from them (Aclimandos, 2007). The flood of autobiographies and memoirs is not specific to Egypt, however. Writings fuelled by exile or displacement, memoirs of compensation (Porter, 2001), translation from oral accounts to the authority of the written word (Shryock, 1997), a surge of subaltern or silenced voices, flourish in the whole region. In the Palestinian case, the beginnings of recognition act as a major determinant; this ‘irruption of life’ in texts, according to Elias Sanbar’s pleasant formula, is directly due to the allure of returning home after the Oslo agreements (Sanbar, 2001). The phenomenon recalls the memorial culture submerging the Western world from the 1970s onwards (Nora, 1992), in the wake of recognition for the Shoah, the social movements accompanying decolonisation, the end of the bipolarisation of the world and the loss of faith in modern progress (Huyssen, 2000). Personal witness is not however the only register for individuals for discussing the Belle Epoque in Egypt. Alongside the cyberspace projects of today, individual endeavours include another no less personal editorial enterprise in the publication of the review Misr al-mahrusa, in 29 issues between 2000 and 2003, by the advertiser Maged Farag (founder of the Max Group communication company). The cover of the periodical, which appeared irregularly, is in itself a programme: the title Misr (‘Cairo’, but also ‘Egypt’) – al-mahrusa (‘the protected, well-guarded’) refers to the classical description of the Egyptian capital, surviving in administrative sources, and probably in everyday language, throughout the nineteenth century. The sub-title is in English: Impressions of Egypt, and the logo is composed of three lotus flowers surmounting the monarchical crest (a crescent and three stars) – a graphic design borrowed from the review Egypt Today published between 1936 and 1960 by Demetrius Zoidès – and the words ‘Glory to Egypt’, in Italian! (Figure 2). ‘Eternal Egypt’, polyglot wording, royalty

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Figure 2. Cover of the periodical Misr al-mahrusa.

and a nod to the past here constitute a ‘Belle Epoque’ panoply deliberately rooted in Egyptianness. The contents of the periodical, largely based on privately-owned photographic archives, come mid-way between the magazine Points de vue et images du monde and a journal of historical popularisation. Thus volume VI (March 2001) has an article on King Fuad’s visit to Switzerland in 1929, a photographic feature on the Heliopolis Palace Hotel in the 1920s, and a portrait of the Princess Nazli Fadel; one issue is entirely devoted to the famous Cairo fire of 26 January 1952 which hastened the fall of the monarchy (volume XVI, January 2002), and contains the photographic coverage commissioned by the King from the Riad Shehata studios to document the damage, which involved above all cinemas, bars, hotels and department stores in downtown Cairo. Maged Farag has also edited the Royal Albums, a series of leather-bound volumes devoted to various aspects of the old dynastic

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life: the marriage of an Egyptian princess to the Shah of Iran, the protocol in force at the Egyptian court, or the Khedival Post.15 The development has its equivalent in local knowledge, as is testified by the encyclopaedic compendium devoted to Port-Said, the creation of the Compagnie universelle du canal de Suez, a Belle Epoque town and even more a colonial one, by an inhabitant. It reveals a desire to re-appropriate the history of this concession town, by showing its purely Egyptian face through its great men (sheiks and pachas of local fame) and its most important places (Al-Kadi et al, 1997; 2002) In respect of documentary works, we must mention finally the setting-up of architectural surveys of Belle Epoque Cairo. On the margin of research studies on the commercial architecture of Islamic Cairo (his specialised field), the art historian Mohamed Scharabi undertook, in the late 1980s and with the support of the German Archaeological Institute, a first attempt at a stylistic description and taxonomy of Cairo’s Belle Epoque architecture. This work, monumental and ground-breaking, selects and illustrates several hundred buildings in central Cairo (Scharabi, 1989). The dating, based on the analysis of historical cartography as well as on attributions of authorship from secondary sources, are mostly approximate and aleatory, but the study offers enormous empirical material and a first point d’appui for further study. Since 1997 the same downtown area has again become the subject of documentary enterprises, conducted almost simultaneously by three different teams. Ordered by the Egyptian Ministry for Housing, Utilities and Urban Development, the study conducted by a group of architectural students at Ein Shams University under the direction of Professor Soheir Zaki Hawas led to numerous surveys of architectural facades and details of buildings in the centre of Cairo, a selection of which were the subject of a lavish publication (Hawas, 2001). The ‘CultNat’ centre (the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage), now linked to the Alexandria Library and specialising in digital information relating to the Egyptian cultural and natural heritage, has undertaken to computerise the findings made by Mohamed Scharabi, has expanded its documentation, by exploiting in particular fiscal data, and is working on a geographical information system of the data collected with the mid-term objective of enabling online cross-searching of the material.16 An Egyptian–Syrian team has also studied the architecture of downtown Cairo within the framework of European collaborative research.17

Public action Government action has also been affected by the Belle Epoque fashion. The field of heritage protection was the first to be involved: buildings previously

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neglected have been classified. The law regulating antiquities (Law 117 of 1983) had already shown a certain opening-up on this subject. The definition of objects eligible for ‘antiquity’ status had in fact evolved since the previous legislation (Law 215 of 1951). Henceforth the following could be included: Any real-estate or chattel that was the product of the different civilisations, or was the creation of arts, sciences, literature and religion since the pre-historic age, and during the successive historic ages till before 100 years is considered an antiquity, provided that it is of value or of an archaeological or historical importance, as an aspect of the different aspects of civilisation which took place on the Egyptian lands, or was of a historical relation thereto, and also the mummies of human races and beings contemporary to them.18 Previously an object had to belong to a period before the end of the reign of the Khedive Ismaïl, in 1879, to claim heritage protection, although the law already foresaw the possibility of going beyond this time limit for ‘all property or buildings which the Council of Ministers decided that the State had a national interest in conserving’.19 This possibility was included in the new legislation. Article 2 states: Any real-estate or chattel of a historical, scientific, religious, artistic or literary value may be considered an antiquity by decree of the Prime Minister upon recommendation of the competent Minister in cultural affairs, whenever the State finds a national interest in keeping and preserving such real-estate or chattel, this without being bound with the time limit specified in the hereinbefore article.20 Between 1983 and 2002 this provision was used for some 80 contemporary buildings (list attached). The list is illuminating. Some of the buildings on it one would expect to see, but there are others which at first sight seem more ‘dissonant’.21 The former include numerous public buildings – museums, locations of state power (the People’s Assembly, Senate, State Council, presidential palaces), religious establishments (mosques, institutes) – or architecture described as in ‘Islamic style’ (the premises of the Misr Bank, the Institute for Oriental Music in Cairo), which have long enjoyed academic and public favour in Egypt (Sakr, 1992). The last illustrated book devoted to Belle Epoque architecture in Egypt opens significantly with a Neo-Moorish interior 22 which, while it might not be the most representative aspect of architectural production of the period, is certainly the one most widely praised in Egypt. This phenomenon is not unique to Egypt or architecture: the major

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buyers of Orientalist painting in the art market today also come from the Arab world, though above all from the Gulf states (Benjamin, 1997). The buildings on the list which may appear most paradoxical are a group of a number of the royal family’s ancient palaces (in particular of Prince Yusuf Kamal, a protector of the arts), almost all the synagogues in Cairo, or items linked to the history of the Suez Canal Company. It is the ownership status of the estates concerned, or the intention of their owners, which is the determinant here: the property of Prince Yusuf Kamal was confiscated by the state after 1952; the registering of the synagogues is a voluntary step by the last representatives of the Jewish community in Egypt, to ensure their inalienability; and the Suez Canal Authority is concerned with keeping intact the traces of the prestigious company of which it is proud to be the heir, and in a way the guardian of the heritage – the important property domain, of which it continues to be in charge, is impeccably maintained.23 Other, more neutral, items in the classification list for architectural production in the years 1850–1950 show a broadening of sensitivity to heritage, which, as elsewhere, has opened up to industrial heritage (works of art, factories) or to ‘places of memory’ (e.g. the villa of the poet Ahmad Shawqi). Some of these inclusions owe much to pressure groups, above all the press, as was the case for the Shinawi Palace at Mansoura, to which a full-page spread was devoted in the al-Ahram Weekly in May 1999. The campaigns which this magazine orchestrated in favour of the ‘architectural heritage of modern Egypt’ from 1997 on, with the support of the Fulbright Commission, played an important part in the recognition of Egypt’s modern heritage (Hassan, 1999). Certain buildings, however, were classified by sheer chance, or as a result of factors other than their claim to heritage status, and this represents another significant aspect of the issue. The listing of the second Villa Delort de Gléon in Cairo, for instance, owes more to the concern of its occupant to establish the legitimacy of his own presence in the house than to its artistic or historical value; based on customary practice (Wada’ al-yid, literally to ‘put one’s hand on something’), this occupancy became the subject of a lawsuit, where it was argued that there was a heritage value recognised abroad and emphasising that the baron had been a major donor to the Louvre.24 All these practices have nonetheless sketched a new heritage landscape, which is relayed down to the level of local communities. Following a press campaign encouraged by al-Ahram Weekly, and at the instigation of the Fulbright Commission, then headed by Ann Radwan, the Governor of Cairo set up a Consultative Committee in 1998 for the preservation of the architectural heritage of modern Egypt, including the salvation of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings. The committee was composed of different personalities from the world of architecture and

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heritage who were sensitised to the issues in question (the president of the association of Egyptian architects and town planners, the former editor in chief of Alam al-Bina magazine, lecturers in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Cairo).25 In particular the committee produced a list of the villas and buildings in modern Cairo deserving protection, as an in-principle guide for officials dealing with applications for demolition permits. Museum policy has been equally marked by the Belle Epoque fashion. In 1986 a presidential decree was issued for the transformation of a princely home in Alexandria, the palace of Fatma al-Zahra (granddaughter of Prince Mustafa Fadil, the brother of the Khedive Ismaïl), into a museum of royal jewellery.26 Inaugurated in October of that same year after a complete restoration of the building, the museum groups together items belonging to all the generations of the Khedive dynasty after Muhammad Ali, with pride of place given to the diamond necklaces of the daughters of King Farouk. In the late 1980s, Hosni Mubarak also ordered the restoration of the Abdine Palace in Cairo, the seat of Egyptian power from 1872 to 1952, with the prospect of re-opening part of it to the public. Made accessible to visitors in the revolutionary fervour of 1952, the doors of the palace had subsequently been closed. Complicated by the earthquake of 1992, which added to the work then planned, the restoration was only completed in 1998. The project included the transformation of one wing of the building into a museum complex, directly accessible through one of the entrances to the park, called the ‘Porte de Paris’ in honour of the Empress Eugénie on the occasion of her visit to Egypt in 1869. It groups together several separate collections. Apart from a room displaying the presents offered to the current President by government bodies or foreign visitors, it comprises a military section, mainly devoted to firearms belonging to various sovereigns, and a section dedicated to gold and silver work, porcelain and Khedival crystalware, dominated by a fine set of Gallé vases. The general philosophy behind the project is outlined in detail in the preface (written by President Hosni Mubarak) to the museum’s presentation booklet: The importance of preserving historic buildings is not restricted to the material aspects of protecting a country’s properties against deterioration through time, or even to keeping them for their architectural value, but is rather extended to maintaining the nation’s historical memory and its awareness of the events these buildings have witnessed through the ages. The Abdine palace is without doubt an important landmark in the history of Egypt which should never be effaced, particularly since

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its construction coincides with the establishment of modern Cairo. In 1872, after having it built, Khedive Ismaïl moved the ruler’s residence from the Citadel to ‘Abdine Palace, which then witnessed important events in Egypt’s history, until the Revolution of July 1952. Therefore, the country is keen on conserving this place at its best to maintain the setting of significant political and historical events, to dignify its architectural and cultural status, and to protect and display its important collections. The Palace, which has been restored according to the most up-to-date architectural methods, has regained its splendour and glory. Part of the Palace has been turned into a complex of museums for the exhibition of rare collections of weapons and artifacts. We are pleased to see the good condition the Palace has been returned to, rendering it worthy of Egyptian history, art and civilization, and giving it high status among similar palaces in the world. We hope that this edifice will remain a source of honour and pride for coming generations, and that it will attract the interest of scholars and researchers who study the history of Egypt.27 Apart from the patriotic tone, this manifesto text clearly reveals the change in the official position towards the history of modern Egypt, with a more distanced stance, anxious about its material inheritance and giving the public access to it, in a gesture which neglects none of the rule of ‘good governance’ taught by the ‘American friend’. The 1998 restoration of a small holy mausoleum in one of the Palace courtyards suggests that the aim of the current government is indeed to perform acts of architectural patronage, which in turn relates to a form of dynastic continuity. Dedicated to Sidi Badran, and preceding the building of the Palace itself, the mausoleum was first restored by Khedive Ismail, then by King Fuad, and lastly by Hosni Mubarak, whose action is duly credited by an inscription in classical calligraphy on one of the walls. The desire to figure in an international context is no less clear: the project explicitly targets foreign visibility, the labels and catalogue being written in both Arabic and English. We also owe the reconstitution and re-opening of the Muhammad Mahmud Khalil Museum in 1995 to the current government. Established in 1960 with a state donation of the collections of this great lover of Impressionist painting, the museum had been inaugurated on the tenth anniversary of the Nasser revolution (23 July 1962), but its premises had then been commandeered ten years later by President Anwar al-Sadat, and its works of art scattered in various warehouses, until the show by the Musée d’Orsay, Les oubliés du Caire (1994), brought them back to light. The museums devoted to the painter Muhammad Nagi (1888–1956), an Egyptian

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protagonist of Impressionism, or to the writer Taha Hussein (1889–1973), a major personality in the inter-war period (and one whose decided positions in favour of opening up to the West and on Egypt’s Mediterranean identity are today attacked by the Islamist movement) (Afifi, 2000), follow a similar perspective in taking account of the country’s pre-Nasser past.28 Attention to architectural heritage is equally visible in the management of the public domain. The restoration of existing, generally modern, buildings thus tends to replace new building when premises are needed. One of the first initiatives concerned the new Great Cairo library, which it was decided to house in an old late nineteenth-century palace, that of Princess Samiha Kamel, the daughter of the Sultan reigning between 1914 and 1917. The presidential decree turning the building (which had become public property after confiscation) into use as a public library was signed in 1986. An architectural competition for the restoration and conversion of the premises to their new function was held in 1991; major work was then undertaken, financed by the Cultural Development Fund, and the library was opened in 1995 (Al-Zuhayri, 1995). The Mubarak Library at Giza, inaugurated the same year, is another case of the re-use for cultural purposes of the residential architecture of modern Cairo, in this case a fine Art Deco villa designed by the French architects Georges Parcq and Jacques Hardy in 1931. There are many more examples in Cairo (Kerboeuf, 2003) and Alexandria (Awad, 1989), so much so that the practice spread outside the strictly cultural sphere to involve several other ministries, and to private institutions such as the Ruz al-Youssef publishing group, which in 2004 installed its headquarters in an 1870s villa restored for the purpose, while its remaining offices were housed in an adjacent building with three windows, each with columns. The urban environment itself was also no longer ignored. From buildings, interest spread to their surroundings, and then to the regular urban ensembles which the Khedival, and subsequently the monarchic period, had bequeathed to the major Egyptian cities. A dozen or so urban-district studies carried out at the turn of the twentieth century in Cairo were thus in 1997 entrusted to university teams by the General Organization for Physical Planning, an organisation in charge of urban planning and studies within the Egyptian Ministry for Housing, Utilities and Urban Development.29 One of these studies led to the centenary celebration of the Heliopolis district, a colonial suburban creation, and to the state’s acquisition of one of its most emblematic buildings (Volait, 2008).

Anchorages The return to the pre-Nasser past is indeed to be seen in the streets, through architectural design. Complete restoration schemes or new constructions

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are an opportunity to display Belle Epoque aesthetics – grooved columns, composite capitals, semi-circular arches, elaborately-worked wrought iron, gilding, and so on. A stroll round downtown Cairo shows that such architecture has multiplied in the last few years. It sometimes merely involves related elements on an existing façade – creating a somewhat unhappy effect when a Belle Epoque accessory, manufactured in poor-quality plaster, is imposed on a rationalist façade dressed in polished marble (e.g. the Bank of Alexandria branch in Qasr al-Nil Street, occupying the former Barclays Bank built in 1955 to the plans of the architect Henri Fresco). In the case of the Cairo Automobile Club – a notably exclusive institution – the neoclassical façade added in 2004 (Figure 3) eliminates almost all traces of the neo-Mameluke decor given to the building in 1935 by the architects Hasan and Mustafa Shafi. One can easily presume that there is more than a simple post-modern gesture in such architectural style. Lastly, the Belle Epoque does not escape the commodification which all heritage objects today seem to experience. The leisure sector offers some examples. A ‘Muhammad Ali’ club opened in Cairo in the late 1990s, where

Figure 3. The Cairo Automobile Club.

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aficionados may meet ‘among themselves’, thanks to the high subscriptionfees applying to anyone wishing to use the sports facilities on a daily or yearly basis. Hotels invite customers to undergo ‘the experience of the glorious history of Egypt’ – i.e. of its monarchical history, if one is to believe the visual discourse offered by the advertisements. Tourism has itself joined in: certain agencies, starting from the well-named Belle Epoque Travel, or other agencies (Oriensce, for example, in France), now offer Belle Epoque tours, which may, for instance, take the form of cruises on Lake Nasser in dahabiyya (sailing houseboats used in the nineteenth century for travel on the Nile). In 2003 the website of the Egyptian Tourism Office in France in 2003 proposed Belle Epoque walks in Alexandria – until the departure of its webmaster ended its presence on the Internet.30 This overview of the manifestations of the Belle Epoque vogue sketches a mosaic of heterogeneous initiatives, most often strongly individualised, and demonstrates frequent interaction, in various ways, with the international sphere. While the vogue is commonly referred to in everyday language, its gradual investment in the public sphere, through multiple media (from written texts to the Internet), actually engages a number of personal projects, from the journalistic writings of Trevor Mostyn, Samir Raafat or Fayza Hassan to the advertising initiatives of Maged Farag, and may prove in the end quite short-lived. The Misr al-mahrusa project is at present at a standstill. The same applies to the website of the Egyptian Tourism Office in Paris, which is no longer available. Is it thus a fragile, fleeting fashion? It may be. But by gaining institutional attention, and engaging with the built environment, the Belle Epoque heritage perspective has already left its mark on the major cities.

Levers and mechanisms of nostalgia Nostalgia, which is said to be a symptom of our times, might well have a particular acuteness and savour in former imperial contexts, as suggested by enquiries carried out in ex-Soviet countries (Boym, 2002) or in ex-British colonial Africa, each in its way remembered as an imperial culture which made groups and identities intermingle. In these settings, the phenomenon of nostalgia may, more than elsewhere, be characterised as engaging with the physical world, and not only with temporality. An ethnographic survey conducted in Zanzibar shows that the nostalgic lament for the 1990s embraces at the same time both the colonial past and the revolutionary post-colonial period, while strongly interacting with imperial melancholy. But it underlines that it is present aspirations which form its first horizon: ‘colonial nostalgia’ in no sense whatever – whether in Zanzibar, Cairo or Casablanca – yearns for any return to a situation of colonial subjection.

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In Zanzibar as elsewhere, such nostalgia constitutes a roundabout way of expressing the desires of today – for equality, order, civility, quality of life – in reaction to experiences of ‘social and economic dislocation’ (Bissell, 2005). A similar situation may be observed in Egypt. Periods of time overlap, and the possible engines of the Belle Epoque heritage invention are plural and entangled; perceptions of a lost urbanity and culture, in equal measure, make up their common foundation. Some reasons have already been evoked above: the country’s capacity to absorb and assimilate any intrusion, a more general rhetoric of lament, the irreplaceable splendour of a period definitively over, the power of words and of fiction. Contemporary perceptions of Alexandria are indisputably impacted by the myth of the cosmopolitan city created by Durrell, a model truer than reality, and the alleged incarnation of the ‘capital of memory’ (Haag, 2004). And there may be further dimensions of the nostalgic trend, based on personal observations or informal conversations held with lovers and protagonists of the Belle Epoque fashion. The period of infancy is always decisive. Questioned on the reasons for his interest in the Belle Epoque, when he was in charge of monuments dating from the Ottoman period, one inspector of Egyptian antiquities evoked the destruction of the kingdom of his childhood, and in particular of his primary school, as a fundamental event. Like many school buildings, this had been situated in an old, ‘magnificent’ nineteenth-century palace, built by a member of the Khedival dynasty. The transformation of the building into a school dated back to the Nasser period, as did the memory of his schooldays there. However, his nostalgia was for the earlier period, the supposed splendour and grandeur of Khedival Egypt; this was the explicit subject of regret, and Nasser’s socialism the subject of rejection. Such feelings may appear the more paradoxical given that it was the Nasser regime which opened many of these buildings (even though the policy of confiscating and occupying deserted palaces for public education had earlier precedents31), and the economic liberalisation policy launched by Sadat which brought about their disappearance. But it remains true that their aesthetics, the constructive ‘genius’ to which they bear witness, result from the grandeur of a much earlier time. Evoked in its material traces, and bewailed for their irremediable loss by the decomposition of the urban landscapes springing from them, the idea of grandeur largely supports the monarchist and Khedival fervour perceptible today in Egypt. This ‘monarchical ideal’ hardly applies to a restoration plan, but is rather based on criticism of the more immediate present. It is also a form of ultimate refuge to overcome difficulty – dreaming of past grandeur as a way of circumventing the present. In the words of the anthropologist William Bissell, ‘The past provides precisely an imaginative resource – a realm rich in invention, critical in possibility – for people struggling with

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the present and hoping to secure what can no longer be found in the future (2005, 240)’. In returning to the country’s recent past, the invocation of the Belle Epoque is above all perhaps a way of revisiting, from an indirect stance, the national narrative bequeathed by the Nasser revolution, of calling for an indirect re-reading.32 The historical vulgate brought by the government following the 1952 coup d’état belongs to a linear narration stretching right back to the Egyptian Expedition (1798–1801) for the liberation of the country (Di Capua, 2001). The linking of resistance episodes to the ‘occupiers’ (Bonaparte’s army, Mameluke militias, Khedival dynasty, British rule) forms the warp and weft of a national narrative, essentially revolutionary. The tale is largely based on the denial of memory on the part of different segments of Egyptian society (Christians, minorities, naturalised citizens, communist militants, the TurcoCircassian aristocracy, etc.); the ‘asperities’ of the cultural and social diversity in modern Egypt are thus erased. But above all, this revolutionary historiography has, at each change in regime, been radically re-adjusted, and this has engendered a degree of perplexity (Hasan, 1998). This in turn has stimulated a desire within the discipline of historians to re-think the history of modern Egypt. The path leading the historian Magda Baraka, for instance, to concern herself with Egyptian high society in the period between the wars is explicitly described in these terms. Her book starts with these words: My interest in class was initially sparked by an early need to know and re-evaluate the truth about the modern history of my country, as my passage from childhood to adolescence occurred at a particular juncture which I believe was conducive to serious questioning . . . I had spent my primary education under the total dominance of one influence, that of the Nasser regime, but was starting my secondary education under a new influence – of the Sadat regime – which seemed to throw everything I had learned earlier into doubt. Yesterday’s heroes were suspected of being today’s villains, while yesterday’s villains were somehow being gradually rehabilitated as the makers of an Egyptian belle époque for which a growing nostalgia is today in evidence (Baraka, 1998). This leads to the temptation to take a new look at contemporary historiography. While not always showing an urge for accurate knowledge, the Belle Epoque fashion does produce effects of knowledge indirectly – by encouraging the re-opening of historic buildings, and developing a climate conducive to welcoming the results. Issues previously treated with disdain (large landowners, the presence of foreigners, freemasonry – but also, for example, the conscious use of his legal rights by the ‘average citizen’ in the

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nineteenth century, studied from a non-victim perspective) thus make their way into academic history; ‘revisions’ are explicitly undertaken (Fahmy, 2005). This approach is more evident among ‘expatriate’ Egyptian historians (above all in the United States) than among those at home, but is nevertheless gaining ground even in Egypt. Belle Epoque architecture, for example, has now become the subject of dissertations in the archaeological departments of several Egyptian universities,33 whereas the contemporary period has long been out of bounds, and late periods belonged by convention to ‘Islamic archaeology’, traditionally seen as ending with the Egyptian Expedition of 1798–1801. These new scholarly writings undertake to visit the fields opened up by dissident interpretations of the modern Egyptian past, offered by novelists and amateur historians outside the establishment, who have thus been freed to produce narratives less constrained by the dominating ideology of Arabism or Nasserism (Gorman, 2003). We may even think that both historiographies, i.e. by academic and non-academic scholars, have undergone the effects of intersecting influences, in a way recalling the rediscovery of Islamic art in the nineteenth century through the interaction of ‘dilettante connoisseurship’, marginal positions and institutional recognition (Volait, 2009a). Lastly, the invention of the Belle Epoque heritage also brings into play some (re)-positionings within the Egyptian social order, whether through the former middle classes ill-treated by the 1952 revolution regaining a chosen place as the legitimate heirs and depositaries of Belle Epoque traditions, or through new, upwardly-mobile social sectors gaining ‘distinction’ (in both its usual meaning and Bourdieu’s interpretation of the term) by taking over the cult object and claiming it for themselves. It is, even more, the emblem of heterodox individual identities, of deviance from the increasingly rigorous social (and sexual) norms prevailing in the country. Marginal personalities and outsiders find in the mobilisation of the Belle Epoque, in the evocation of an idealised cosmopolitan social model, characterised by tolerance and conviviality, a means of attempting to make their difference accepted, or at least listened to. As in the other cases of colonial nostalgia, all the results of brutal transitions between one age and another, the Belle Epoque fashion appears as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon, blending a critical vision of the present and a desire to re-read the past, sweetened images of a time gone by and blurred portrayals of its history, social aspirations and claims for plurality. It also clearly reveals the issues and struggles shaking Egyptian society, although at first it cannot fail to embarrass the Western observer, spontaneously suspicious of such postures – as Bissell emphasises in prefacing his argument, while recalling that the nostalgia for times gone by is nevertheless constitutive of the very formation of anthropology, and deserves even more to be questioned as to the plurality of objects and reasons for its affects.34

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Table 1. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings registered as heritage in Egypt (1982–2002). Monument

Registering decree

1

Premises of the Islamic art Museum, Cairo (1892–99, A Manescalco, archit.)

PM Decree No. 273 of 19 October 1982

2

Chariots Museum, Bulaq, 82, 26 of July St., Cairo (old khedival stables)

MC Decree No. 283 of 20 November 1982

3

Egyptian Antiquities Museum, Cairo (1899–1902, Marcel Dourgnon, archit.)

PM Decree No. 703 of 2 August 1983

4

Greco-Roman Museum, Alexandria

PM Decree No. 822 of 28 August 1983

5

Manyal Palace Museum, former palace of Prince Muhammad ‘Ali, Manyal, Cairo (1901–29)

PM Decree No. 8 of 1 January 1984 PM Decree No. 3408 of 1997

6

Mausoleum of Muhammad ‘Ali family in the cemetery of Imam al-Shafi ’i, Cairo

MC Decree No. 273 of 4 October 1984

7

Ibrahim pasha Statue, Opera Square, Cairo (Alfred Jacquemart and Charles Cordier, sculptors, 1873)

MC Decree No. 278 of 4 October 1984

8

Muhammad Ali Citadel in Qusayr (1830s)

MC Decree No. 279 of 4 October 1984

9

Al-Rifa‘i mosque, Cairo, (1868–1911, Husayn Fahmi and Max Herz, archit.)

MC Decree No. 277 of 4 October 1984

10

Palace of ‘Umar Tusun, Shubra, Cairo (1846)

MC Decree No. 319 of 15 November 1984

11

Palace of Isma‘il Sadiq pasha al-Mufattish, Lazughli square, Cairo (c. 1875)

MC Decree No. 14 of 28 January 1986

12

Minaret of Sulayman pasha al-fransawi’s Mosque at Old-Cairo

MC Decree No. 145 of 13 August 1986

13

Palace of Habib Sakakini, al-Zahir, Cairo (1897)

MC Decree No. 143 of 13 August 1986, modified by PM Decree No. 1691 of 11 October 1987

14

Premises of the People Assembly and annexes, Cairo (1923, Bernard R. Hebblethwaite, archit.)

PM Decree No. 1237 of 11 October 1986

(Continued)

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Table 1. (Continued) Monument

Registering decree

15

Marble fountain, formerly in Princess Shawikar’s estate, Azbakiyya gardens, Cairo

MC Decree No. 210 of 30 November 1986

16

Synagogue of Eliahou Hanabi, Nabi Daniel St., Alexandria

MC Decree No. 16 of 19 January 1987

17

Mosque of Abu Mandur, Rosette

MC Decree No. 17 of 19 January 1987

18

Synagogue of Haim Kabous, Muski, Cairo

MC Decree No.18 of 19 January 1987

19

Maglis al-Shura premises, Cairo

PM Decree No. 910 of 26 July 1987

20

Council of Ministers’s premises

PM Decree No. 909 of 26 July 1987

21

Religious Institute in Assyut

PM Decree No. 1692 of 11 October 1987

22

Za‘faran Palace, at ‘Abbasiyya, Cairo, currently housing the Administrative headquarters of ‘Ayn Shams University (1902, Antonio Lasciac, archit.)

MC Decree No. 270 of 10 November 1987

23

Villa and its Islamic antiquities, 29, al-Ahram St., Giza (Villa Ispénian, Charles Aznavour, archit., 1929)

MC Decree No. 227 of 31 December 1987

24

Estate of prince Yusuf Kamal at Naga‘ Hamadi, province of Qena

PM Decree No. 95 of 18 January 1988 PM Decree No. 191 of 2002

25

Mosque of Imam al-Shaf‘i, Cairo (1886)

PM Decree No. 476 of 26 April 1988

26

Munastirli Pavilion, at Manyal, Cairo (1850)

MC Decree No. 130 of 10 April 1989

27

Muhammad ‘Ali’s Dam, Qanatir al-Khayriyya (1843–1900)

MC Decree No. 181 of 2 June 1989

28

Sabil-kuttab of the mother of prince MC Decree No. 188 of Muhammad ‘Ali, Ramsès square, Cairo (1868) 22 June 1989

29

Wooden dome of Muhammad ‘Ali pasha’s palace, Nabi Musa St., Khur district, in Suez

MC Decree No. 38 of 22 February 1990

30

Sayyid Darwish Theater, Alexandria (formerly Mohamed Ali theater, 1925, Georges Parcq, arch.)

PM Decree No. 449 of 15 April 1990

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Table 1. (Continued) Monument

Registering decree

31

Sabil Umm ‘Abbas, al-Saliba St., Cairo (1867)

MC Decree No. 110 of 6 July 1991

32

Institut of Oriental Music, Ramsès Av., Cairo (1929, Ernesto Verrucci, arch.)

PM Decree No. 245 of 2 March 1992

33

King Fu’ad Palace in Kafr al-Shaykh

MC Decree No.1490 of 20 August 1992

34

Council of State, Giza

PM Decree No. 1489 of 20 August 1992

35

‘Abdin

MC Decree No. 39 of 18 February 1993

36

Gate of the palace of Sulayman pasha al-Faransawi, relocated in the gardens of the Lycée français in Ma‘adi, Cairo (vers 1850)

MC Decree No. 115 of 12 May 1993

37

Bank Misr headquarters, Muhammad Farid St., Cairo (1924–27, Antonio Lasciac, arch.)

PM Decree No. 1776 of 7 October 1993

38

Pavilion of king Faruq in Helwan, known as mathaf rukn helwan (c. 1940)

PM Decree No. 1777 of 7 October 1993

39

Delort de Gléon’s house, Sherif Pasha St., Cairo (c. 1887)

PM Decree No. 59 of 12 March 1995

40

Institut d’Égypte, Sheikh Rihan St., Cairo (1919)

PM Decree No. 1611 of 5 July 1995

41

Synagogue of Nassim Ashkinazi, Zahir, Cairo

PM Decree No. 1612 of 5 July 1995

42

Geographical Society, Qasr al-‘Ayni St., Cairo (1875 and 1925)

PM Decree No. 1926 of 12 August 1995

43

Synagogue Kraim Isaac, Zahir, Cairo

MC Decree No. 73 of 17 January 1996

44

Palace of Alexan Pasha in Assiout

PM Decree No. 1931 of 12 July 1996

45

Villa ‘l’Atelier’, Victoria, Alexandra

MC Decree No. 538 of 29 December 1996

46

‘Uruba Palace, al-Mirghani St., Heliopolis, Cairo (1906–10, Ernest Jaspar and Alexandre Marcel, arch.)

Decree PM No. 112 of 17 January 1997

Palace, Cairo (1909–1911)

(Continued)

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Table 1. (Continued) Monument

Registering decree

47

Pedestal of Ferdinand De Lesseps statue in Port-Said (Emmanuel Frémiet, sculptor, 1899)

MC Decree No. 228 of 1997

48

Suez Canal Authority headquarters in Port-Said, (1893, Charles Marette, arch.)

MC Decree No. 229 of 1997

49

Mosque of ‘Abbas Hilmi II, Ismailia

PM Decree No. 1199 of 1997

50

Synagogue de Moise El-Darii, Cairo

PM Decree No. 2107 of 1997

51

Synagogue Haim (Baroukh Hanan), Zahir, Cairo

PM Decree No. 2112 of 1997

52

Ministry of Social Affairs, Maglis al-Sha‘b St., Cairo (1872, Ali Mubarak and Giacomo Lepori, arch.)

PM Decree No. 2113 of 1997

Synagogue Shaar Hashamayim, Pasha St., Cairo

PM Decree No. 3494 of 1997

Building 27, Al-Gumhuriyya St., Asyut

PM Decree No. 1226 of 1998

53

‘Adli

54

‘Ali

Ghoneim, Sammanud

PM Decree No. 2698 of 1998

55

Palace of

56

Building 18 a, Mazhar St., Darb al-Ahmar, Cairo

MC Decree No. 155 of 1999

57

Old Cataract Hotel, Assouan

MC Decree No. 362 of 1999

58

Cotton factory, al-Qanatir al-Khayriyya

MC Decree No. 485 of 1999

59

Palace of Princess Ferial, al-Madaris St., Tanta

PM Decree No. 617 of 1999

60

Salle à manger of palace of Prince Yusuf Kamal, Naga‘ Hammadi

PM Decree No. 619 of 1999

61

Cotton factory of Muhammad ‘Ali, Fuwwa

MC Decree No. 715 of 1999

62

Palace of Muhammad Bey El-Shinnawi, al-Gumhuriyya St., Mansoura

PM Decree No. 1548 of 1999

63

Fuad First dam, Naga‘ Hammadi

PM Decree No. 3147 of 1999

64

Mosque al-Thawra, formerly of Sultan Hussein Kamel, Heliopolis, Cairo (1932, Giuseppe Tavarelli, arch.)

PM Decree No. 3835 of 1999

65

Royal Jewelry Museum, formerly Palace of Fatma al-Zahra’, 27, Ahmad Pasha Yahia St., Zizinia, Alexandria

PM Decree No. 3884 of 1999

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Table 1. (Continued) Monument

Registering decree

66

Saray al-Gazira, currently Marriott Hotel, Zamalek, Cairo (1863–1869, Julius Franz, arch.)

MC Decree No. 319 of 2000

67

Building, 27 Mukhtar Pasha St., Al-Darb Al-Ahmar, Cairo

MC Decree No. 534 of 2000

68

‘Al-Azhar’ theological institute, Zagazig

PM Decree No. 1423 of 2000

69

Sultana Malak Palace, Heliopolis, Cairo (1909–1911, Alexandre Marcel, arch.)

PM Decree No. 1621 of 2000

70

Palace of Princess Samiha Kamel, Muhammad Mazhar St., Zamalek, Cairo

PM Decree No. 185 of 2001

71

Court of Justice, Manshiyya square, Alexandria

MC Decree No. 196 of 2001

72

Royal Palace, Edfina

PM Decree No. 233 of 2001

73

Mena House Hotel, Cairo, (1899, Henri Favarger, arch.)

MC Decree No. 449 of 2001

74

Pavilion of King Faruq, Esna

MC Decree No. 776 of 2001

75

Palace of Prince Said Halim, Champollion St., Cairo (1899–1901, Antonio Lasciac, arch.)

MC Decree No. 121 of 2002

76

Palace of Abdel Meguid Pasha, Malawwi

PM Decree No. 1200 of 2002

77

Villa, 2 Shagarrat Al-Durr St., Zamalek Cairo

PM Decree No. 1529 of 2002

78

Ahmad Shawki Villa, al-Nil St., Giza,

PM Decree No. 1719 of 2002

79

Ferdinand de Lesseps Pavilion, Ismailia

200335

MC: Minister of Culture PM: Prime Minister

Notes 1. In an exponential bibliography, see for example Goldschmidt, A., Johnson, A. J. (2006), Re-envisioning Egypt, 1919–1952. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. 2. The book, published by I.B.Tauris, was entitled Egypt’s Belle Epoque: Cairo and the Age of the Hedonists.

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3. See for instance BBC One-minute World News (2008), ‘Cairo to receive “facelift” ’, 9 September. At , accessed 23 October 2008. I am indebted to Maryse Helal for the reference. 4. This was even the subject of a postage stamp issued in 1957 by the Egyptian Post Office. 5. For current expressions from this point of view, see the debates on the e-forum El-shella: The Friendly Egyptian eCommunity, for example the message from Maged Farag dated 1 February 2002. 6. It is in these terms that I was interviewed in April 2005 by a reporter from Al-Ahram Weekly on the history of Heliopolis. Needless to say, Heliopolis – a suburb essentially inhabited by employees and workers – has nothing glamorous about it. 7. Ibid; with its grounds progressively amputated, the shops hemming in the villa effectively hide it from the view of passers-by. 8. Theme of the season organised in spring 2002 by the Centre culturel égyptien in Paris. 9. See at www.alexcosmo.org. 10. Billboard campaign by the Egyptian Tourism Office in 2000; see for example Le Monde, 15 March 2002. 11. Mémoires héliopolitaines, an exhibition set up under the direction of François Pradal (CFCC, Cairo) and a publication of the same name which appeared in September 2005. 12. See the feature ‘About us’ at www.egy.com. 13. Personal communication from the site’s creator. 14. At www.egyptedantan.com. 15. The Imperial Wedding, 1939 (1995). Cairo: Max Group; 1866, The Khedivial Post (1995). Cairo: Max Group; 1952, The Last Protocol (1996). Cairo: Max Group; National Bank of Egypt, 1896–1998 (1998). Cairo: Max Group. 16. At www.cultnat.org, headed ‘Architectural Heritage of Cairo’. 17. ‘Un patrimoine partagé’ (2005), Sciences au sud, le journal de l’IRD, No. 30 (May-July), pp. 8–9. 18. Law 117 of 1983, concerning the protection of antiquities, published in the Official Gazette on 11 August, p. 13. 19. Law 215 of 31 October 1951, on the protection of antiquities. Trans. Khater, Antoine (1960), as Le régime juridique des fouilles et des antiquités en Egypte. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, pp. 308–16. 20. Law 117 of 1983, p. 13. 21. The notion of ‘dissonant’ (or contested) heritage refers to a heritage conflicting with the desire to enhance the nation’s status; see Ashworth, Gregory John and Tunbridge, J.E. (1996), Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. Chichester: Wiley. The memory in France of the Vichy

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29. 30.

31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

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regime or the Algerian War and of apartheid in South Africa constitute typical cases of dissonant heritage. On the rise of this version of heritage, see Peckham, Robert S. (ed.) (2003), Rethinking Heritage: Cultures and Politics in Europe. London: I.B.Tauris, in particular the chapter ‘Mourning heritage: memory, trauma and restitution’. Johnston, Egyptian Palaces and Villas. Port-Said, architectures XIXe-XXe siècles (2005) Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Conversation with the occupants of the villa, April 1997. Decree 135 of 1988 by the Governor of Cairo, dated 5 April. Presidential decree 175 of 20 April 1986, published in the Official Gazette of 3 May 1986, p. 635. Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities (1998), Abdine Palace Museums. Cairo. For an overview of museum policy in Egypt in the last decade, see Doyon, Wendy (2008), ‘The poetics of Egyptian museum practice’. British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Vol. 10, pp. 1–37. A body within the Egyptian system whose functions are comparable to those of DATAR and IAURIF in France. The website was entitled www.ot-egype.com, and was set up on the initiative of Amr El-Ezabi, the director of the office; it disappeared at the end of his term in charge. The Egyptian tourist office in Montreal, where he is presently based, now also has a well-supplied site. The former Palace of Said Halim, in Champollion Street, Cairo, was already converted into a school in 1931; see al-Musawwar Weekly, No. 376 (25 December 1931). I owe this hypothesis to Nicolas Michel, a penetrating observer of contemporary Egyptian society. See for example the recent thesis of Magdi Alwan Uthman (University of Tanta, 2002) on the religious buildings constructed in the reign of Abbas Hilmi (1892–1914) in Cairo and Lower Egypt, or that of Muhammad Ali Hafiz (alAzhar University, 2003) on European architects in Egypt in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bissell, ‘Engaging colonial nostalgia’. Al-Ahram hebdo, 23–29 July 2003.

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Gorman, Anthony (2003), Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth-Century Egypt: Contesting the Nation. London and New York: Routledge. Haag, Michael (2004), Alexandria, City of Memory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hasan, Fekri A. (1998), ‘Memorabilia: archaeological materiality and national identity in Egypt’. In Meskell, L. (ed.), Archaeology under Fire; Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. New York: Routledge, pp. 200–216. Hasan, Yusuf (1982), Al-qasr wa dawruh fil-siyasa al-misriyya (‘The palace and its role in Egyptian politics’). Cairo. Hassan, Fayza (1999), ‘Well may they weep’. Al-Ahram Weekly, No. 437 (29 April– 5 May). Hassan, Hassan (2000), In the House of Muhammad Ali: A Family Album (1805–1952). Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Hamamsy, Chafika (2005), Zamalek: The Changing Life of a Cairo Elite, 1850–1945. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Hanna, Milad (1992), Le logement en Egypte. Cairo: Cedej. ——— (1999), ‘A new era’. Al-Ahram Weekly, No. 450 (7–13 October). Haag, Michael (2004), Alexandria, City of Memory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hawas, Soheir (2001), Khedivian Cairo: Identification and Documentation of Urban Architecture in Downtown Cairo. Cairo: Architectural Designs Center. Husseini Shahid, Sirine (2005), Souvenirs de Jérusalem. Paris: Fayard. Huyssen, Andrea (2000), ‘Present pasts: media, politics, amnesia’. Public Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 21–38. Johnston, Shirley (2006), Egyptian Palaces and Villas (1808–1960), photographs by Sherif Sonbol. New York: Abrams. Kerboeuf, Anne-Claire (2003), ‘La restauration du centre-ville du Caire: enjeux sociaux et historiques d’un projet urbain’. Lettre de l’Observatoire urbain du Caire contemporain, No. 4 (new series), (April), pp. 8–12. Lepetit, Bernard (1996), ‘Une autre histoire sociale’. Correspondances, No. 40 (April), pp. 3–9; (1995), ‘L’histoire prend-elle les acteurs au sérieux?’. Espaces-Temps, No. 59–60–61, pp. 112–22. Lowenthal, David (1975), ‘Past time, present place: landscape and memory’. Geographical Review, Vol. 65, No. 1 (January), pp. 1–36. Lufti Al-Sayyid Marsot, Afaf (1991), ‘Survey of Egyptian works of history’. American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 5 (December), pp. 1422–34. Mabro, Robert (2002), ‘Nostalgic literature on Alexandria’. In Edwards, J. (ed.), Historians in Cairo: Essays in Honour of George Scanlon. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, pp. 237–265. Mintty, Cynthia, (1999, 2nd edn. 2003), Paris along the Nile: Architecture in Cairo from the Belle Epoque. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Mostyn, Trevor (1989), Egypt’s Belle Epoque: Cairo 1869–1952. London and New York: Quartet Books. Nora, Pierre (1992), ‘L’ère de la commémoration’. In Les lieux de mémoire, Vol. III: Les Frances. Paris: Gallimard; Hartog, François (2003), Régimes d’historicité, présentisme et expérience du temps. Paris: Seuil, pp. 977–1012. Ostle, Robin (1991), ‘Review’. Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 130–1. Owen, Roger (1972), ‘The Cairo building industry and the building boom of 1897 to 1907’. Colloque International sur l’Histoire du Caire. Cairo: Ministry of

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Culture of the Arab Republic of Egypt, General Egyptian Book Organization, pp. 337–350. Picaudou, Nadine (2006), ‘Discours de mémoire: formes, signes, usages’. In Picaudou, N. (ed.), Territoires palestiniens de mémoire. Paris: Karthala, pp. 17–35. Porter, Roger (2001), ‘Autobiography, exile, home: the Egyptian memoirs of Gini Alhadeff, André Aciman and Edward Said’. Biography, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 302–13. Prince, Osman Ibrahim and Kurhan, Caroline and Ali (2005). Méhémet Ali le grand, Mémoires intimes d’une dynastie (1805–2005). Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Raafat, Samir (1994), Maadi 1904–1962: Society and History in a Cairo Suburb. Cairo: Palm Press. ——— (2003), Cairo, the Glory Years: Who Built What, When, Why and for Whom. Alexandria: Harpocrates. Sakr, Tarek Mohamed Refaat (1992), Early Twentieth-Century Islamic Architecture in Cairo. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Sanbar, Elias (2001), ‘Hors du lieu, hors du temps: pratiques palestiniennes de l’histoire’. In Hartog, F. and Revel, J. (eds), Les usages politiques du passé. Paris: Editions de la MSH, pp. 117–125. Scharabi, Mohamed (1989), Kairo, Stadt und Architektur im Zeitalter des Europäischen Kolonialismus. Tübingen: Wasmuth. Serageldine, Samia (2000), The Cairo House. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Shryock, Andrew (1997), Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Starr, Deborah (2005), ‘Recuperating cosmopolitan Alexandria: circulation of narratives and narratives of circulation’. Cities, Vol. 22, No. 3 (June), pp. 217–28. Volait, Mercedes, (1998), ‘Le séjour en Egypte’. In Crosnier Leconte, M.-L. and Volait, Mercedes (eds), L’Egypte d’un architecte, Ambroise Baudry (1838–1906). Paris: Somogy, pp. 56–107. ——— (2004), ‘Colonisation, mondialisation et patrimonialisation de l’espace bâti dans le Monde Arabe’. In Akl, Zyad and Davie, Michael (eds), Questions sur le patrimoine architectural et urbain au Liban. Beirut: Alba, Tours: Urbama, pp. 29–50. ——— (2007), ‘Du Caire “médiéval” à l’Egypte “Belle Epoque”: l’invention patrimoniale entre ingérences et dissonances’. In Khoury, G. and Meouchy, N. (eds), Etats et sociétés de l’Orient arabe en quête d’avenir (1945–2005). Paris: Geuthner, pp. 169–184. ——— (2008), ‘Passés et actualités d’un ensemble urbain d’origine coloniale: Heliopolis (1905–2005)’. ——— (2009a), Fous du Caire: antiquariat, architecture et orientalisme dans l’Egypte des khédives. Apt: Archange Minotaure. ——— (2009b), ‘La requalification d’un ensemble urbain créé au XXe siècle, Heliopolis (1905–2005)’. In Akl, Ziad and Beyhum, Nabil (eds), Conquérir et reconquérir la ville, Beirut: ALBA/IFPO, pp. 21–37. Wahba, Malak et al. (2005), ‘La protection et la gestion du patrimoine des XIXe et XXe siècles en Egypte: état des lieux’. In Abry, A. and Carabelli, R. (eds), Reconnaître et protéger l’architecture récente en Méditerranée. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. pp. 261–296.

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4 CHALLENGING MUSEUM SPACES: DANCING WITH ETHNIC AND CULTUR AL DIVER SIT Y IN LEBANON Lina Tahan

Neglecting whole periods of the country’s past while ‘highlighting’ others into legendary importance is a well attested course of making use of a ‘dead past’ for enforcing or upholding the privileges of a specific group. In the context of archaeology, the considerable Arab and Islamic part of the country’s past has often been ignored or largely underrated. (Seeden, quoted in Cumberpatch, 2000). The turn of the century has witnessed various phases of transformation within the museum field. Culture is to be understood as the basis of development and if it is absent in a particular society then the latter is deprived of a rich history and heritage. In this regard, museums must work to promote respect and understanding for cultural diversity in all spheres of their activities. Moreover, recognising that ‘cultural diversity is a historical and social reality at the local, regional and particularly global level’ (ICOM, 1997) is quite essential, since the role of a museum in general lies in shedding light on the cultural diversity of various existing communities. Within this context, Lebanese museums must explore new ways of relating the community’s cultural and economic development to its different peoples’ sense of place, identity and self-esteem. Hence, Lebanese museums ought to increase

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awareness when it comes to addressing the cultural needs of the local population, who have experienced a ravaging Civil War (1975–90) and whose cultural self-esteem is at risk because of a process of marginalisation in mainstream societies. Today, the Lebanese population is composed of two segments: Christians and Muslims, thus creating a two-fold identity. These are known as ‘Phoenician’ and ‘Arab’, with a complex history that goes back to the nineteenth century. This socio-political phenomenon has greatly influenced many aspects of Lebanon life, whether in literature, poetry, politics, archaeology and even museum representations (Kaufman, 2000, 2001). The Christian population have associated themselves with the Phoenicians, and the Muslim with the Arabs. This Phoenician/Arab rift became part of the Civil War, and indeed nurtured it. Lebanese archaeological museums today are more concerned with presenting to the rest of the world a Western image of the nation, thus promoting a Phoenician heritage and marginalising the Muslim one. This chapter attempts to investigate the above issues, while insisting on the fact that addressing the interface of ethnicity and religion is a concern that urgently needs to be examined in order to assess the planning and developmental processes of museums, thus turning them into sites of reconciliation rather than conflict.

The question of identity and multiculturalism: does cultural diversity exist in post-Civil War society? Lebanon is a newly created nation; it gained its independence from the French only in 1943. While it comprises both a Muslim and a Christian population, it has some 18 religious denominations. Lebanese society is thus very multicultural and diverse. The role of museums is generally seen as presenting this multiculturalism and diversity. Indeed, the museum has a more advanced role to play within Lebanese society as the carrier of a message which entails becoming responsible for ‘the efficient identification, anticipation and satisfaction of the needs of its users’ (Lewis, 1991, 26). It is through museums that an inclusive history of Lebanon could be achieved, where various people of different religious backgrounds can contribute their voice towards an understanding of the past. However, this is missing in Lebanese archaeological museums. ‘There has never been a “National History of Lebanon” accepted as such by all Lebanese’ (Naccache, 1998, 147). Such an account cannot be achieved by presenting conflicting views of the past, but by presenting one inclusive history.

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The neglect of more than a millennium of the Muslim past has been detrimental to all Lebanese archaeology; the emphasis given by the Maronites1 to a Phoenician heritage for the country has politicised the discourse of archaeology, and reflected sectarianism within society (Seeden, 1990, 146). What ruined the country during the Civil War was this Phoenician/Arab rift which became the basis of a doctrine shaping a Lebanese ethnic model of origin (Naccache, 1998, 146). This has affected museum representations, which focused exclusively on and emphasised the so-called ‘Phoenician/ Christian’ past (Seeden, 1990, 146). There is of course a distinction between Phoenician and Christian, but despite this the pagan Phoenician past was subsumed under Christian monotheism, to constitute an imagined ancestry or perhaps, to borrow a term from Benedict Anderson (1991), an ‘imagined community’. In an article, Seeden (1990, 146) asks ‘How can Muslim Lebanese develop an interest in a “national” past that excludes their cultural heritage?’ She further argues that since the Muslim population tends to ignore archaeology altogether, many local Muslim communities have accepted this without questioning these ‘dogmatically exclusive ideologies’. The body of Lebanese law reflects the sectarianism of society. The executive, legislative and judiciary powers, along with public office, are assigned to people according to religious sects. Sectarianism is present in the Lebanese constitution, and in governmental and even some private-sector employment. And while museums are seen to reflect societies and communities, in Lebanon museological narratives mirror this sectarianism. The Phoenician/Arab ethnic model of origin has always been an issue of controversy, and has infiltrated Lebanese socio-political life (Naccache, 1998). This leads us to wonder whether archaeological museums in Lebanon might play a very important role regarding these different concepts of ancestry which constitute the background of heritage representations. Does Lebanese society demand an inclusive history? How should an inclusive history be constructed, taking into account the country’s archaeological past? Lebanese museums today are making little effort to display the Islamic period, the problem being that the period is ill-studied in Lebanon. According to the curator of the National Museum of Beirut (NMB), there are not many archaeological artefacts that can represent this period (Hakimian, interview, 1999); according to other sources within the Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA), there are Islamic artefacts in storage (Seif, personal communication, 2000). On my last visit to Tripoli’s crusader fortress, I saw many Islamic stelae lying around at the entrance of the site. These could have been placed within the lapidary section of the ground floor of the NMB to illustrate the Islamic period.

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Curators nonetheless, have tried to remedy this problem in one regional institution, the Baalbek Museum, where Islamic art is exhibited through inscriptions, the architecture of mosques, ceramics, texts, and illustrations that explain the art in detail (Farchakh, 1999, 10). It must be noted, however, that at the time of its excavation Baalbek was an ‘Islamic’ site and had a medieval citadel. Yet, when German archaeologists came to excavate between 1898 and 1905, they destroyed the Islamic layer, despite recording it fully, in order to uncover the classical remains. Thus, today there exist only parts of medieval Baalbek, though these are of particular relevance to the modern inhabitants of the region (Seeden, 1993, 123). Operating within this situation, our main concern is to ensure objectivity when selecting artefacts, so as to avoid the trap of dissolving identities or fusing cultures that usually represent differences. Many problems can emerge on behalf of different groups who judge that their identity is not taken into consideration through the work of museology. In reality, multiculturalism is treated differently from country to country, and in Lebanon the problem lies in the politics of the government as well as in the minds of the people in charge of managing this culture. Our central focus concerns the cultural level, and more specifically the museum: how to resolve the question of multiculturalism and the problem of fully taking into account the identity of each person. It is our duty as museologists to bring out a diversity equivalent to cultural wealth. Thus we should not only engage in promoting the identity of each other, but also in representing the identity of all in a country of 18 denominations. Also, an effort is to be made when exhibiting the tangible and intangible heritage of two communities that are demographically disproportionate.

Museums facing multiculturalism: the opposing sides of the divide Governments have always had trouble in managing multicultural societies and in promoting the emancipation of each existing community, especially with regard to museum space. In this context however, solutions do exist – museums could be turned into zones of reconciliation. The values of Lebanese museums are based on an allegorical past; they are spaces in which the complex of identities is emphasised. And even though they preserve the past, they do still show that their stance is far more concerned with the Phoenician identity. This identity came into being through ‘the need to justify the existence of Lebanon as a viable national community’ (Kaufman, 2000, 2). Hence, it became a prevailing issue that not only gained national importance but also caused national contention among several communities in the country (ibid).

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It is perhaps worth pointing out at this stage that the history of marginalising the Muslim and favouring the Phoenician past in the Lebanese museum space goes back to 1921, soon after the French took over Lebanon as a mandated territory. Claude Prost, the official representative of the Antiquities Service in Syria and Lebanon, insisted that it was necessary to create three museums in ‘Greater Syria’: one in Beirut, one in Damascus and another in Aleppo. In Beirut, the museum would be entirely devoted to ‘Phoenician’ antiquities, in Damascus to the Arabic and Islamic periods and in Aleppo to the Christian and Byzantine periods. Greek and Roman periods would be distributed across the three museums depending on their provenance (Arch. IFAPO/SAHC).2 So one could already see that the French were concerned to create a purely ‘Phoenician’ identity for the Lebanese. The creation of the NMB (Figure 4) is an expression of the above issue. It opened its doors to the public in 1937, and was the main depository of archaeological objects excavated in the country (Chéhab, 1937). It was closed for a period of 20 years (1975–97), and Emir Maurice Chéhab, the Director General of Antiquities at that time, did his best to protect the artefacts. He successfully moved important portable antiquities to places of greater safety such as the Lebanese Central Bank, while the larger lapidary monuments were protected by sandbags and cement castings (Aboud Abi Akl, 1999, 7). The Museum received a large number of visitors until 1975, when its doors closed due to the outbreak of the Civil War (Short Guide to the NMB, 2001, 5–6). The advent of the ravaging Civil War greatly hampered the

Figure 4. The National Museum of Beirut.

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development of archaeology in the country and caused the cancellation of several planned archaeological expeditions by foreign institutions (Ward, 1994, 67). The NMB was heavily bombarded and damaged, located as it was on the ‘green line’ that divided Beirut into two conflicting parts, East and West.3 The main road – known as the ‘Damascus Road’ – on which it was located was nicknamed the ‘Museum Passage’ (Mathaf in Arabic). Thus, the NMB became not only a ‘witness’ but also a ‘victim’ of the bloody conflict, while carrying in its midst a number of political ideologies. As a result of those tragic events, both the DGA and the government of the time decided on the NMB’s temporary closure. The employees of the DGA and NMB had great expectations that the war would soon end, enabling them to reopen their doors to the public, but the country sank into a 16-year a cycle of bloodshed, violence, theft and vandalism, not to mention the looting of artefacts and pillaging of archaeological sites. Surviving 16 years of civil strife constituted a long struggle for an entire population, and to this the NMB was not immune – it was transformed from an institution exhibiting culture to a site of conflict, turned into a barracks for armed elements and a ‘strategic locale’ for snipers. When the cease-fire was declared on 13 October 1990, the NMB was in a terrible state of destruction; while its outer façade was peppered with shell and bullet holes, its inner walls were everywhere disfigured by graffiti and its floor flooded by rainwater. Hence one could say that Lebanon’s heritage was suffering from an ‘open wound’ that became the symbol of an ‘injured identity’ in which the cultural diversity of Lebanese society became an enemy subject, particularly in museum space. In what follows, I will attempt to examine why a healing discourse was not inserted into the Lebanese museum narratives, hence turning these museums into multicultural institutions. In 2002, I conducted a survey of visitors, interviewing them randomly in the NMB for an entire period of two months. The survey revealed that 72 per cent of the 79 Lebanese visitors that answered the questionnaire thought that the Islamic past was not well represented in the NMB (NMB visitors’ survey 2002, Q. 12). When I approached some visitors while they were looking at Islamic showcases and asked them what they thought, the following response gave me a particular overall impression that people were keen on demanding an ‘Inclusive History of Lebanon’: Our past is for all Lebanese regardless of faith. I feel that my past is being marginalised and it is not ethical on behalf of museums to exalt a ‘Phoenician’ past at the expense of a ‘Muslim’ one. How can we as Lebanese claim that we are one strong nation and make of our

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museums places of cultural diversity showing that our past is what shaped us into becoming the Lebanese of today? In this context however, it is worth considering two statements, from opposing sides of the Phoenician/Islamic divide. In 1960 the journalist Joseph Chami wrote in Le Jour, a local Lebanese French-language newspaper, that the NMB was a sanctuary of the Phoenician past: The Lebanese can be proud of their alphabet, one of the most ingenious inventions of the human spirit. The NMB is to be compared to a sanctuary . . . the sanctuary of the Phoenicians, the book of their history, the history of ancient Lebanon and its ancestors . . . What is wonderful is that the more we study the Phoenicians, the more we see common features, a hereditary resemblance in our habits, characters and way of thinking . . . What conclusion can we draw other than that the mentality of the Phoenicians through time and space was transmitted to their descendants, the Lebanese people? (Chami, 1960, 3).4 This article contained ethnic sentiments that were cherished by the Christian Lebanese. The author tried to establish parallels between the Phoenicians and the Lebanese. Yet in reality the Phoenician language is dead, replaced in modern times by Arabic. Chami emphasised the necessity of salvaging a national identity, that is, of defending a religious ideal. He most probably thought that the Christian religious ideal needed to be defended because Lebanon was at that time the only Middle Eastern country with a Christian majority, and therefore presented a particular face to the Western world. In 1977 a statement was formulated regarding the NMB, published by Dr Mustafa Khalidi in a pamphlet entitled Moslem Lebanon Today. It was written in Arabic, accompanied by an English translation, to make both Lebanese and foreign people aware of the seriousness of the sectarian situation and the urgency of taking action to remedy it (Khalidi, 1977, 47). Its aim was to be ‘a frank discussion of the struggle on the part of Lebanon’s non-Christian majority to secure a proportionate voice in the government in order to work effectively for the abolition of state sectarianism in the interests of national unity and equality for all citizens’ (ibid, 48). In the ‘manifesto’5 laid down in this pamphlet, one article attracted my attention: Article 11: Extension of the scope of the National Museum to give equal prominence to Arabic and Muslim antiquities and art works of Lebanon instead of restricting its displays to pre-Islamic pagan and Christian objects only (Khalidi, 1977, 46).

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This suggests that the Muslim community were quite conscious of the importance of representing this period in the NMB because it was part of the heritage of all Lebanese. The statement also reveals a feeling of injustice directed at the people in charge of the NMB at that time, who were accused of purposely minimising the history and archaeology of Islam in favour of Classical antiquities and Christian remains. Article 11 expresses the presence of an extreme gap in the historical representations within the museum arena, and leads one to wonder whether this was a deliberate act on behalf of the NMB and the DGA, being under the influence of some prominent Lebanese Christians with a primary interest in Phoenician and Classical antiquities. In my opinion and based on the surveys and visitor interviews conducted at the NMB, the Muslim sector of the population regards the ‘Phoenician myth of origin’ (Kaufman, 2001, 173) as anathema because it claims a special status for the territory of Lebanon. When the Civil War broke out in 1975, it carried all these issues with it. Lebanese identities were injured and it was no longer clear who was representing whom. As Salamé (1986, 2) commented: The war in Lebanon is to some extent a savage expression of this dilemma,6 of the deep frustrations it generates and the aggressiveness which these frustrations produce. There is, at times, a sort of refusal to acknowledge the Other, a tendency to regard his origins with haughtiness and disdain and at the same time reject his desired status of citizen. This constant flux regarding the issues of ethnicity and identity became a hot issue, and nurtured the Civil War by using archaeology as its tool. It seems that the NMB is oblivious of a process through which it could have established a relationship with audiences by constructing itself as part of a shared social fabric. Instead, it appears to evolve in a space of its own wherein a unique coherent cultural model for Lebanon is frozen. Moreover, in this context one must keep in mind that once museums become national, they have to take into account issues of nationalism and national identity (Boylan, 1995, 24), thus becoming fundamental in the expression of the cultural identity of the territory in which they are established (Boylan, 1990, 31). This does not seem to be the case for the NMB. The sudden end of exhibits at the Mamluk period is a brutal decapitation of the historical process that has ended with – or rather continues with – what we are today. The colonial period of our past is very important to understanding our present construction of identities.

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In post-Civil War Lebanon today, one cannot consider that ‘Phoenicianism’ replaces ‘Arabism’,7 since this is primarily a ‘taboo’ subject; nonetheless, the discourse is far from disappearing from Lebanese society (Kaufman, 2000, 418). It is also worth pointing out that the French action in establishing the Antiquities Service and the NMB did not appear to be entirely innocent, since these were conceived within ‘colonial settings’ (ibid, 224; Tahan, 2004). This is what Anderson (1991, 178–85) terms ‘political museumising’, and even though he applies this process to East Asia, there is no doubt that it overlaps with the situation of Lebanese museums today, since these were founded during the Mandate period. Museums are commonly known as institutions that collect, conserve, preserve, document, register, research, classify and diffuse the material culture of ‘others’, while mainly being concerned with the construction of representations in the present. Despite the number of case studies, Merriman (2000, 302) has argued that ‘the archaeological museums are facing a crisis of representations’. Museums produce knowledge, and this has been thoroughly discussed by various critical museologists (Hooper-Greenhill, 2000, 3; Macdonald, 1996, 7). However, how they produce such knowledge can have effects on meaning(s) that are not always made clear. It is certain that in the case of Lebanese museums, artefacts will play an active role via their ability to create and re-create meanings, and are actors in situations of conflict. The creation of meaning in the Lebanese museum space should be addressed, as it presents a continually unfolding process. Such an analysis seems to fit with the philosophy of Foucault (1966; 1969), which reminds us that the manner in which statements are constituted is as important as their propositional content (Tilley, 1990, 333). It has been acknowledged that the museum is probably the main institutional connection between archaeology, as a profession and a discipline, and wider society (Shanks and Tilley, 1992, 68). In Lebanon, museums are liable to ideological and political manipulation; what they present about the archaeological past or how they narrate and interpret their ‘story’ is never neutral. Exhibitions are considered to be a certain mode of ‘interpretation’ that may consciously or unconsciously carry an ideological and/or political message; thus they are transformed into a totally new ideological artefact that requires a thorough analysis on behalf of the archaeologists and museologists (Pearce, 1992, 136–43). Hence they become part of the social and cultural fabrics of the Lebanese present. It is important to bear in mind that this exhibition mode always involves a process of selection, and that this consists of choosing objects to be exhibited in the archaeological museum space, and is influenced by the political ideology/orientation(s) of the curators who, in turn, are conditioned by the specific ideological trends

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of their time, environment and society. One thus comes to the conclusion that exhibitions mirror not only the past, but also aspects of the present; as Pearce interestingly remarks (1990, 158): [B]ecause exhibitions have to be intelligible to the visitors in the most basic sense . . . they tend to take a comfortable choice from the range of contemporary options . . . [but] in this way, they usually end up preserving a stereotyped idea about the past, and confirming a particular political view of the nature of the present. The designing of an exhibition is an act of interpretation which opens up meaning, and in a political world this is a political act which needs to be handled with great care. Furthermore, it has been noted among contemporary museologists and archaeologists that the past is not universal, monolithic or undifferentiated; rather, its concepts vary according to cultural, ethnic, religious, gender and political orientations (Sørensen, 1999; Kreps, 2003; Shanks and Tilley, 1992, 11). Thus, the past has no fixed meaning(s); rather, meanings are always temporarily elaborated (ibid, 20). The museum object – selected, displayed and interpreted – has an extra layer added, fixing it within textual information and/or a guided interpretation or experience. The object in the museum is never ‘pure,’ unaffected by intentions. It is being spoken for at many levels, and it becomes imbued with meaning (Sørensen, 1999, 136). Museums have a responsibility: that of understanding more clearly what messages and meanings they are promulgating, and how these are being interpreted by the visiting public (Pearce, 1994, 1). During the last three decades or so, museums have increasingly been challenged – institutions where the representation of cultural diversity and the ways in which we perceive ourselves are played out (Kaplan, 1994). As audiences become more varied and notions about ‘culture’ more complex, so issues of multiculturalism become more acute, especially in today’s world.

Conclusions: the urgent need to be multicultural Museums have a crucial role to play not only in preserving, managing, interpreting and diffusing cultural heritage, but also in building relationship strategies for the different communities. It is thus important that the profession avoids marginalising the past, while aiming to explore the full

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range of Lebanese experiences, including difficult, ambiguous and controversial episodes. The ultimate role and responsibilities of museums in Lebanon will be determined by how well they integrate the diverse cultural heritage of the society they represent with the vision the Lebanese community has of itself, its past and its future. Lebanese museums should constitute arenas where the identity of a single coherent society is shaped. They should also be theatre stages where multiculturalism is elevated as a healing instrument. At this point, the museologist’s role lies today in working for the establishment of harmonious, yet heterogeneous museums displaying the multicultural wealth of Lebanon.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Rami Daher and Irene Maffi for inviting me to present a paper, ‘Practices of cultural heritage in the Arab world’, at a conference held in Lausanne in June 2006. Their insights into the heritage field and the museum world have been an inspiration for this chapter, and I am grateful for the wise advice they have offered me. For reading and commenting on this chapter I am grateful to my sister Zeina. This chapter is dedicated to my dear brother Camil, who has encouraged me throughout the completion of my doctoral research.

Notes 1. The Maronite religious denomination refers to the ‘Oriental’ Catholic Church and community, found mainly in Lebanon. 2. Annual Report No. 527 from C. Prost to the High Commissioner of the French Republic in Syria and the Lebanon, dated Beirut, 11 August 1921. 3. The division between East and West Beirut created a division between Lebanese Christians and Lebanese Muslims. During the Civil War, the east was inhabited by the former and the west by the latter. 4. The statement was translated into English by the present author. 5. The ‘manifesto’ in the pamphlet Moslem Lebanon Today consisted of 13 articles describing the unsatisfactory position of the Muslim community and the efforts of the Maronite denomination to impose its own characteristics on the entire country. 6. The dilemma here refers to the religious cleavage (Christian/Muslim). 7. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, a new movement known as ‘Arabism’ started to evolve in the Middle East. It sought to unite all religious groups and countries of the Arab world to form one Arab nation. Later on, the movement lost its Arab Christian communities.

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Bibliography Primary sources: Archives: Annual Report No. 527 from C. Prost to the High Commissioner of the French Republic in Syria and the Lebanon, Beirut, 11 August 1921. Archives of the Institut Français d’Archéologie du Proche-Orient/Service des Antiquités du Haut-Commissariat (IFAPO/SAHC)

Interviews and Personal Communications: Hakimian, Suzy, Head Curator of the National Museum of Beirut, 7 April 1999. Beirut. Personal interviews and survey of visitors, conducted at the National Museum of Beirut in 2002. Seif, Assa’ad, archaeologist, DGA, Beirut-Lebanon.

Secondary Sources: Aboud Abi Akl, May (1999), ‘Olgua Chéhab: the Israelis occupied the site with their tanks. We hid the treasures on our own and built secret walls’. Al Nahar, 17 April, p. 7 (in Arabic). Anderson, Benedict (1991, rev. edn.), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Boylan, Patrick (1990), ‘Museums and cultural identity’. Museum Journal, Vol. 10, pp. 29–33. ——— (1995), ‘Reflecting the state of the nation’. Museum Journal, Vol. 95, No. 2, pp. 24–5. Chami, Joseph (1960), ‘Un livre-sanctuaire qui relate l’histoire des Phéniciens: Le Musée National de Beyrouth’. Le Jour, 28 March, p. 3. Chéhab, Maurice (n.d.), Le Musée National. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique. Cumberpatch, Chris G. (2000), ‘People, things and archaeological knowledge: an exploration of the significance of fetishism in archaeology’. Assemblage, No. 5, at , accessed 23 January 2010. Directorate General of Antiquities (2001), The Short Guide of the National Museum of Beirut, Lebanon. Beirut: Anis Commercial. Farchakh, Joanne (1999), ‘Patrimoine – un travail de spécialistes pour expliquer l’archéologie. Le site de Baalbeck s’enrichit de deux musées’. L’Orient-le-Jour, 6 May, pp. 10–11. Foucault, Michel (1966), Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard. ——— (1969), L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean (2000), Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. London: Routledge. International Council of Museums (1997), Museums and Cultural Diversity: Policy. Report of the ICOM working group on cross-cultural issues, at , accessed 6 February 2010. Kaufman, Asher (2000), Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for an Identity in Lebanon. Unpublished PhD thesis, Brandeis University.

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——— (2001), ‘Phoenicianism: the formation of an identity in Lebanon in 1920’. Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 173–94. Kaplan, Flora S. (ed.) (1994), Museums and the Making of ‘Ourselves’: The Role of Objects in National Identity. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Khalidi, Mustafa (1977), Moslem Lebanon Today. Beirut: Arabic University of Beirut. Kreps, Christina F. (2003), Liberating Culture: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation, and Heritage Preservation. London: Routledge. Lewis, Peter (1991), ‘The role of marketing’. In Ambrose, Timothy and Runyard, Sue (eds), Forward Planning: A Handbook of Business, Corporate and Development Planning for Museums and Galleries, pp. 26–9. London: Routledge/Museums and Galleries Commission. Macdonald, Sharon (1996), ‘Theorising museums: an introduction’. In Macdonald and Fyfe, Gordon (eds), Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World, pp. 1–18. Oxford: Blackwell/Sociological Review. Merriman, Nick (2000), ‘The crisis of representation in archaeological museums’. In McManomon, Francis P. and Hatton, Alf (eds), Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society: Perspectives on Managing and Presenting the Past, pp. 300–9. One World Archaeology, Vol. 33. London: Routledge. Naccache, Albert F.H. (1998), ‘Beirut’s memorycide: hear no evil, see no evil’. In Meskell, Lynn (ed.), Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, pp. 140–58. London: Routledge. Pearce, Susan M. (1990), Archaeological Curatorship. London: Leicester University Press. ——— (1992), Museums, Objects and Collections: A Cultural Study. Leicester: Leicester University Press. ——— (1994). ‘Editorial introduction’. In Pearce (ed.), Museums and the Appropriation of Culture, p. 1–2. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone. Salamé, Ghassan (1986), ‘Lebanon’s injured identities: who represents whom during a civil war?’. In Papers on Lebanon, Vol. 2, pp. 1–27. Oxford: Centre of Lebanese Studies. Seeden, Helga (1990), ‘Search for the missing link: archaeology and the public in Lebanon’. In Gathercole, Peter and Lowenthal, David (eds), The Politics of the Past. One World Archaeology, Vol. 12, pp. 141–59. London: Unwin Hyman. ——— (1993), ‘Lebanon’s archaeological heritage’. Beirut Review, Vol. 5 (Spring), pp. 115–30. Shanks, Michael and Tilley, Chris (1992, 2nd edn.), Reconstructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Sørensen, Marie-Louise S. (1999), ‘Archaeology, gender and the museum’. In Merriman, Nick (ed.), Making Early Histories in Museums, pp. 136–50. London: Leicester University Press. Tahan, Lina G. (2004), Archaeological Museums in Lebanon: A Stage for Colonial and Postcolonial Allegories. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge. Tilley, Chris (1990), ‘Michel Foucault: towards an archaeology of archaeology’. In Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-structuralism, pp. 281–347. Oxford: Blackwell. Ward, William A.(1994), ‘Archaeology in Lebanon in the twentieth century’. Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 66–85. Shryock, Andrew (1997), Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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5 FA MILIES AND UR BAN ACTIVISTS AS EMERGING LOCAL ACTOR S IN UR BAN R EHABILITATION IN THE M ASHR EQ: R E-DEFINING HER ITAGE/ R E-WR ITING THE CIT Y Rami Daher

Defining and choosing a geographical area for research and comparative analysis can sometimes be a difficult and growing task, due to continually shifting geographical and geopolitical categories, along with their associated meanings and perceptions (Daher, 2007a, 3). As critical political geographers have shown, it is important to move beyond the acceptance of geopolitics as a reality of world politics and to examine critically the ways in which geopolitical terms are defined and the significant social meanings they hold (Marston and Rouhani, 2001, 101–2). Nevertheless, the three geopolitical and geo-cultural categories of the Bilad al-Sham,1 the Mashreq2 and the Levant – though they differ in meaning, genealogy and connotations, according to the privileged standpoint and discursive practices that facilitated the founding of such categories – refer to generally the same geographical region, encompassing the countries of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine (the geographical focus of this paper). While all these geopolitical and geo-cultural categories have been constructed, and can thus be

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contested and become subject to scrutiny, some emerged from within the region (such as the Bilad al-Sham or al-Mashreq al-‘Arabi), while others – such as the Middle East or even the Levant – were part of colonial or neoimperial ‘imagineering’ of the region (Daher, 2007a, 3). The Middle East as a geographical term, according to Dalby (2003), suggests the historical legacy of imperial specifications of the region. The term comes from ‘earlier British designations of the world, which have been maintained on the maps and in the geopolitical imaginations of policy makers’ (ibid, 7–10). This chapter hopes to shed light on the role played by local actors, agents, families, foundations and urban activists who are emerging as patrons of art, heritage, urban rehabilitation and cultural production, with serious public and civic agendas that attempt to re-think the cities of the Mashreq in general, and Amman in particular. What is significant about this research is that it examines the practices and processes of ‘patrimonialisation’ on the part of these emerging groups of actors and agents, with significant consequences for urban spaces within these cities. Researching and theorising on the engagement of such groups becomes crucially important in a time of state and public-sector withdrawal. In the midst of both the dominant official discourses in the Arab world and the current neo-liberal withdrawal of the state from several previously active social and cultural agendas (involving diverse issues pertaining to social housing, the creation of public spaces and amenities and the patronage of culture and art, to mention only a few), such emerging actors and agents represent a local voice that is attempting to re-define heritage and to re-write the city, and to provide an alternative ‘space’ for self-expression and collectives in art and culture in cities today. Even though the chapter will focus on Amman, the diverse case studies cover a wide range of cities in the Mashreq, such as Damascus and Aleppo in Syria; Beirut, Sidon (Saida) and Tripoli (Trablus) in Lebanon; Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah in Palestine; and Amman, Salt and Irbid in Jordan. There is thus a good opportunity for regional comparisons.

Neoliberal3 urban restructuring and the crucial need for an alternative urban vision: the emerging role of the ‘creative urban class’ Prior to venturing into a discussion of how these various actors and agents engage in the cities of the Mashreq, it is important to shed light on current urban conditions and on the details of contemporary urban transformations. If the first oil boom of the 1970s in the Gulf facilitated the flow of petro-dollars to banks in places like Beirut and Amman and led then to a construction

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boom; more recently (towards the 1990s), and with the flow of a new wave of oil surplus capital from the Gulf; we have witnessed an obvious trend in the form of neoliberal urban restructuring and real-estate investments that led to more exclusive spaces in these cities. In Amman, urban dwellers have been noticing the proliferation of a new visual urban landscape, manifested in numerous enormous billboards promoting exclusive urban environments, in the form of gated communities and high-end business towers in different parts of the city, leading to more spatial and socio-economic divisions in the city. A stretch of billboard about the Abdali investment project is the only source of information for the community at large on this major neo-liberal urban restructuring project in the city. The slogans on these billboards (e.g. ‘Let’s start the pleasure of shopping’) seek to change society by introducing consumerism, where property is par excellence the new consumer good (Daher, 2011). It is interesting to understand the effects of circulating global capital (surplus oil revenues) – huge reserves of money in search of high-yielding and secure investments), of excessive privatisation and of urban flagship projects in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, all the Arab Gulf States, and indeed throughout the Arab world, transforming urban reality, property values, speculation and the very nature of public life in the cities. It has been estimated that over the period 2005–20 the Gulf States are likely to have invested some $3000 billion in the Middle East and North Africa (Elsheshtawy 2008). Citizens all over the Middle East are bombarded on a daily basis by the boom in real-estate development. Local newspapers, newly emerging property magazines, television advertisements and billboards all promote such development, in the form of exclusive business towers and high-end gated residential communities. It is very obvious that property is most notably the new consumer good in the Middle East, and real-estate development the region’s new religion. Middle Eastern cities are now competing to attract international investment, business and tourism. Currently, developments in Dubai in the UAE, such as the world’s two largest man-made islands (Palm Jumeirah and Palm Jebel Ali) and major skyscrapers and luxurious resorts in Sheikh Zayed Street, are becoming the precedents and models to follow in other cities of the region. This reality stands in sharp contrast to a previous time – around the 1960s – where cities like Cairo or Beirut represented cutting-edge urbanism for the rest of the Arab world. New emerging urban islands of excessive consumption for the chosen elite, together with the internationalisation of commercial real-estate companies and construction consultancies capable of providing high-quality services, signify this neo-liberal urban restructuring in places such as downtown Beirut, Abdali in Amman (Summer, 2005; Daher, 2007a; 2008a), Dreamland in Cairo (Adham, 2004), the financial district of Manama in

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Bahrain, the development of the Abu Ruqraiq river in Rabat,4 the Pearl Island reclamation project in Doha, and even in the heart of the Holy City of Mecca, through the Jabal Omar project.5 Cities are obliged to create the right milieu, a competitive business climate and first-class tourism attractions in order to lure people to come and live, invest and entertain there. Developments in Dubai and the current urban reconstruction of downtown Beirut (known as the Solidere Project) are becoming the models to follow in such developments. Adham (2004, 134–68) has noted that circulating images of such neo-liberal urban restructuring mimics developments in the West, and as such represents an ‘Oriental vision of the Occident’. There is a crucial need to understand contemporary urban transformations in cities of the Middle East, and elsewhere in the Arab world. Elsheshtawy (2004, 6) has elaborated on how the literature is filled with work examining the colonial impact on the urban spatial structure of Middle Eastern cities, yet there is a gap when it comes to studying the influence of contemporary global trends – namely globalisation. Amman represents a clear example of neoliberal urban restructuring and of emerging forms of spatial ordering and engineering, such as high-end and isolated urban development and regeneration (Abdali),6 upper-end residential gated communities all over the city (Green Land,7 Andalusia8), business towers that offer an exclusive concept of refuge and consumption; and even low-income residential cities (in Jizza9 and al-Zarqa10) that work to push the poorer segments of society to the outskirts of the city in newly zoned heterotopias. One prominent objective of this discursive mapping in Amman is to unpack and expose the rhetoric and to deconstruct the emancipatory discourse of these emerging landscapes of neoliberalism (Daher, 2008a). These endeavours all reflect the dominant political and ideological practices of power, regulated by neoliberal tropes, camouflaged in the legitimacy of the local (through promises of ‘job provision’, ‘new lifestyles’ and other emancipatory rhetoric), and manifested through spatially-engineered realities. In reality, several of these emerging neoliberal projects in cities are thought to be leading towards urban geographies of inequality and exclusion and of spatial/social displacement. The projects are operating in the midst of newly-emergent governing bodies in cities, such as MAWARED in Amman,11 which are replacing, manipulating, silencing or even replacing traditional governing bodies such as municipalities and governorates (Daher, 2011, 273–96). Furthermore, and in a global arena, neoliberalism has led to excessive privatisation, the withdrawal of the state from welfare programmes,12 the dominance of multi-national corporation politics and, as far as the Third World is concerned, changes in international aid, in the form of structural

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adjustments and policy prescriptions rather than project-oriented aid. This was coupled with the surfacing of several discursive tactics to accompany the neoliberal transformation, such as the dominance of the World Trade Organization (WTO), international gatherings such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), free-trade agreements with the USA, NAFTA and several other similar economic restructurings at the global level (Daher 2007b, 270). Needless to say, this transformation has a substantial impact not only on cities as a whole, but also on how and for whom urban investment projects are developed. In many cases, the outcome has intensified issues of social equity, inclusion-exclusion, and accountability. Rosemann (2009, 3) describes how one major shift in globalisation is the increasing competition between cities and regions, on both national and international levels. To facilitate economic development, cities are more or less forced to make themselves attractive to investors and enterprises by investing in infrastructure, facilities and the development of attractive sites for new business development. The withdrawal of the state from its previous engagement in public projects and infrastructure within the cities of the region, together with the scarcity of public-sector projects in the cities, make the different initiatives launched by various actors and agents which will be discussed throughout this chapter of utmost significance to the cities and their associated public life. The city is a complicated organism involving different power mechanisms and contested narratives; in the midst of major urban-restructuring projects, leading to a more exclusive urban life, there arise diverse alternative endeavours championed by creative agents and actors such as urban designers and architects, local community groups, urban activists, families, foundations and philanthropists, all with a genuine social agenda that attempts to counteract neoliberal urban policies and strives instead to create a more inclusive urban landscape. More recently, literature and research has addressed the rise of a creative class in cities which focuses on diversity and creativity as basic drivers of innovation and of regional and national growth (Florida, 2003). Amman is one place in the region where there has been a noticeable rise of such a class, which is attempting to make a difference in a socially, economically and spatially divided city.13

Emerging urban families, actors and agents This section of the chapter will attempt to identify these actors in more detail, together with new forms of public groupings and agents, all of whom

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present an alternative urban vision of the cities of the Mashreq, and will strive to understand their different discourses and levels of attachment to and engagement with their respective cities in terms of urban rehabilitation and activism.

Notable families and foundations The role played by families, local actors who are re-emerging as patrons of art, heritage or culture, or as philanthropists with serious public and civic agendas in the Arab East (al-Mashreq al-‘Arabi) – involving countries like Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Jordan – is very significant. In the midst of dominant ‘official’ discourses in the Arab world that work to define heritage and to write history from the top down, these emerging families represent a local voice that is attempting to re-write history, re-define heritage and re-position itself within current socio-economic and territorial transformations in the cities of the region. This voice is embodied in local families either who are politically or economically influential, or whose notable nineteenth-century ancestors acted during the Ottoman period as mediators between the central government in Istanbul and local regional authorities within one of the Ottoman provinces (Manna’, 1992, 70–1), but whose role markedly decreased during the mandate period in the first half of the twentieth century, and especially after the creation of nation states in the region during the second half (Daher, 2007b, 297–303). The culture ministries of many states all over the world are aware of the emergence of several private actors heavily involved in the creation of museums and the rehabilitation of urban heritage. Schuster (1998, 58) has described how, despite the historical tendency to create state museums and to treat heritage properties as the property of the state, the organisational restructuring of museums and the built heritage under the banner of privatisation is now quite common, and it has become incumbent on those who are connected with these state cultural policies to examine the institutional arrangements through which those policies are realised. Furthermore, and based on numerous examples in many Third World countries, it is evident that the work of emerging non-governmental organisations (NGOs), or even of private philanthropic initiatives, are achieving a widely-recognised impact on community development in certain urban and rural areas, and are even competing strongly with formal and conventional public-sector interventions. Whether in Hariri, Debbaneh or Audi in Lebanon, Shoman, Tell or Bisharat in Jordan, Toukan, Khouri, Qattan or Husseini in Palestine, or Ayidi, Jabry or Azem in Syria, many of the Bilad al-Sham’s notable families

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and elites are re-emerging into public life, reintroducing themselves as patrons of art, heritage and culture. Family estates, historic mansions and heritage sites are being conserved, rehabilitated and adapted into centres of culture, history/heritage museums, art galleries and themed restaurants, appreciated by a wider spectrum of society – particularly by young people and by adults aged 35–45 – who share a sense of belonging and an appreciation of these historic urban sites (Daher, 2004). The ‘patrons of heritage’ are reclaiming their position as public personae in various areas of the region, through their appropriation of heritage and their appeal to culture, art and the intelligentsia. Sidon (Saida) in Lebanon represents a perfect example of local families involved in the local cultural scene. While the Debbaneh family are restoring their old residence – it will be the new Debbaneh Palace and Saida History Museum – another notable family in Saida, the Audis, have also adapted their old residence, as a Soap Museum, and have been involved heavily through the Audi Foundation in urban regeneration in the city. The Debbaneh Palace was built in 1721 by the Hammoud family, and acquired by the Debbanehs in 1800. It has since undergone several periods of restoration, particularly after the war in 1999 when the descendants of Raphael Youssef Debbaneh set up the Debbaneh Foundation, which established the Palace and museum. The function of the latter is to represent and shed light on the city’s urban, socio-economic and political past, and with the aim of constantly renewing the visitor’s interest in those aspects of its history the project will not only include artifacts from the past but also focus heavily on the societies which produced them. This will involve explanations and descriptions of people’s daily lives, family social structures and political circumstances, not to mention construction, architecture and town planning.14 Meanwhile, the Audi family in Saida, through their foundation, have transformed the old family residence (once a soap factory) into the headquarters of the foundation and a thematic museum of hand-made soap. The museum seeks to show the history of soap in the region at large, stretching between Tripoli (in Lebanon), Aleppo (in Syria), Nablus (in Palestine) and Salt (in Jordan), and to show the various stages of its manufacture and the diversity of products. Furthermore, the family’s involvement in the city includes the renovation of building facades in a historic street nearby, Al-Shakriyya, and the rehabilitation of various traditional housing units in the same neighbourhood.15 The work of both families (Audis and Debbanehs) adds to their prestige and their sense of identity, in addition to strengthening their relationship with their home town. The Soap Museum marks one of the early examples of such projects, of which several have started to appear in

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Lebanon, such as the Bsous Museum, which narrates and displays the heritage of the silk industry in the country (Dahdah, 2004). Another type of family patronage which is more political in nature, taking the form of major charitable work, is undertaken by the Hariri Foundation, founded by the late Lebanese leader and Prime Minister Rafiq al Hariri. The Hariri family, for whom Saida is their home town, has concentrated on the restoration of major heritage monuments within the city, such as the Omari Mosque (an important twelfth-century building, which was shelled by Israeli aircraft in 1982) and Khan al-Franj, a historic urban hotel and inn which has supported business and trade since the seventeenth century. Bonne (1995, 103–4) sketches the Hariri Foundation’s contribution to the reconstruction and urban rehabilitation of the city of Saida. This also includes conducting studies and research on the City;16 urban restoration and rehabilitation projects, such as the restoration of historic houses in the Old City after the Israeli invasion; and the restoration of historic monuments in the same area, including Hammam al-Ward, Hammam al-Shaykh, the Sea Mosque and Khan al-Franj. Saida’s urban heritage has captured the interest of such members of the political elite as the Hariris; the reasons for their patronage could be multiple, but are all linked to creating legitimacy for a powerful family and to strengthening its elite networks and political power. Their foundation has also supported the upgrading of major streets through infrastructure development (e.g. water and sewage systems) in the Old City, in addition to the construction of several new public buildings – schools, municipal buildings and other public facilities, such as libraries and hospitals.17 On a regional scale, one very early example of notable family patronage in the field of heritage and culture comes from Jordan. Kan Zaman, dating from the late 1980s, is one of the very earliest examples of the heritage industry in the Middle East, coupling entertainment with heritage and tradition to promote a new heritage tourism product in the region (Daher, 2007a). It was set up to represent and display the image of a traditional Jordan in terms of setting, cuisine, arts and crafts, costumes and architecture (Maffi, 2004, 212). It represents the adaptation, in the Yadoudeh area outside Amman, of a khirbet (‘estate’, ‘farm’), belonging to a landowning family (the Abu Jabers), into a traditional restaurant and coffee-shop. The old stables, where the restaurant is located, and the landowners’ estate have become a popular tourist attraction for local and foreign visitors alike, where in addition to eating and drinking they can enjoy niche shopping at the different local craft and souvenir shops within the same premises. The project, financed in 1989 by Jordan Tourism Investment, became a model for similar adaptations all over the country and elsewhere in the Middle

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East as well, to the extent where similar places adopted the same name, such as Salt Zaman and Madaba Zaman in Jordan. (Zaman can be loosely translated into English as ‘bygone days’, and kan is the past tense of the verb meaning ‘be’, so Kan Zaman can be rendered as ‘existing in bygone days’.) The Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, established by the Arab Bank in Jordan in 1978, is another example of family/corporate philanthropy in the region; it has supported the transformational changes in contemporary Arab cultural discourses. The Shoman Foundation, through its different cultural activities (such as the Shoman Forum, a series of public lectures by local Arab social critics and critical thinkers) has provided an alternative voice to enter into dialogue at a time of crises. The Foundation had been extensively involved in the conservation and protection of Amman’s architectural heritage through the Darat al-Funun project: an old, once deserted complex built on ancient ruins and converted into a nexus of art and culture accessible to all strata of Jordanian society, and thus serving the public (Daher, 1999). In 1993, the complex was adapted in a way that allowed a panoply of cultural events and of periods in history (ancient Roman, Byzantine, early twentieth century) to coexist. The project seeks to connect with the community both physically, through its architecture and overall layout within the neighbourhood, and in other ways, through its transparency and accessibility (Daher, 1999, 35–6). In a meeting with Suha Shoman, she elaborated how Darat al-Funun ‘is a place where you can see art in progress, a place that hosts public events and lectures on art and on the city’. Rejecting expressions like ‘patron’ and ‘cultural centre’, she feels they have created a house of the arts, a place that facilitates dialogue and offers a chance to view art in progress, a refuge for Arab artists and an art library dedicated to the public (which was the first in Amman when it was created in the early 1990s). She added that ‘artists need a place to work, to discuss and to hold a dialogue: Al-Dara is a house on the hill surrounded by trees’.18 In Irbid, the family of the Jordanian poet Arar, the Tells, have been a continuous supporter of local art and of a rich cultural life in northern Jordan. They were the patrons of several heritage conservation and cultural projects in the city, such as the rehabilitation of their old madafa (a communal place for hosting family gatherings and events, and for receiving guests and travellers). The family also adapted Arar’s old house into a cultural centre, which they then offered as a gift to the city.19 Shami (1989, 451–77) emphasises the importance of such buildings as madafas, with their associated memories, since they document a significant part of the region’s history. Maffi (2004, 319–24) considers the Tell madafa in particular to be a ‘site of memory’, which not only has the potential to negotiate political space with respect to the state but is also a place that

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reaffirms the social status of this particular family in the context – both local and national – of other tribes and families. In Damascus, one of the families interested in the protection of cultural heritage who have supported several public projects related to the arts, heritage and culture is that of Ayidis. Othman Ayidi established the Ayidi Foundation in 1977, and since then it has not only sponsored several cultural initiatives in Damascus and elsewhere in Syria, but also financed archaeological excavations and architectural restoration work in places like Aphamia and the Citadel of Aleppo, in addition to several heritage conservation-projects in Damascus itself. Local families in Damascus share a keen interest and a strong sense of belonging and pride in their city. Bayt Jabry (‘Jabry house’) in Damascus is one of the places within the historic Hamrawi neighbourhood that is becoming very popular among the café society of Damascus. In Bayt Jabry a local Damascene individual has transformed his grandfather’s old house, which was being used for storage, into a coffee house and cultural centre. The house was originally built in the seventeenth century for the Jabry family, but by 1975 was deserted, as the family could no longer afford to keep it except as a storage space; in this it was typical of many historic courtyard houses in the Old City. In 1988, however, one of the Jabry grandsons had the idea of changing it into a restaurant, and now it is the haunt of politicians, artists, poets and tourists alike, and there are also plans to use it as an art gallery and a secondhand bookshop.20 What is interesting about this rehabilitation and adaptive re-use project is that it had succeeded in attracting a diverse audience of local Damascene families, from different social strata and age-groups, in addition to being a place very popular amongst expatriates who live in or are visiting Damascus (Daher, 2007a, 38–9). In the midst of such large-scale tourism developments and excessive commercialisation of visitors’ experiences there emerges a genuine and very authentic partnership between tourism and heritage in the Bilad al-Sham region, represented in small hotels, owned and run by a family, in Damascus, Aleppo, Amman and Beirut, offering an alternative alternative to grand luxurious hotels. Whether it is the historic al-Rabi‘a hotel located in an old Damascene courtyard house, or the early twentieth-century Le Baron hotel in Aleppo, such establishments not only help to ensure that revenue from tourism remains in Syria rather than being repatriated abroad, but also provides a different experience for the tourist or traveller who is willing to explore the city, with all its wonders and all the realities of its everyday social life, as opposed to a rapid and iconographic experience restricted to certain chosen buildings and places on a pre-planned itinerary (Daher, 2007a, 44–6). The families who run these old hotels and enterprises, which

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are becoming very popular amongst tourists, are very active in the definition and shaping of heritage, and provide their own different levels of connections to the city and its historic public places. In Palestine, and even with the severe conditions under the current occupation, philanthropists of different Palestinian families, such as the Qattans, Aqqads, Shomans, Sabbaghs and Khouris, have established the Jerusalem-based Welfare Association,21 a perfect example of family philanthropy aiming at supporting local Palestinian institutions and the general public. One of the Association’s main goals is the restoration of Jerusalem’s Old Town, and within this programme it has been able to complete some 22 projects, the most significant of which are the Dar al-Aytam al-Islamia, Al Madrasa Menjakiyya and Suq al-Qattanin. Since its establishment in 1984, the Association has in total accomplished some 400 projects in the conservation of historic monuments, construction, health, education and the rehabilitation of damaged buildings and infrastructure. These projects have provided 320,000 days of work for thousands of workers in the West Bank and Gaza (Daher, 2007b). It is of course almost impossible to study the social world and realities of urban activism, particularly in countries like the ones addressed in this article (such as Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) which show decreasing levels of state-funded intervention, without a full understanding of donor agencies’ policies, such as those of the Welfare Association, and the aid they make available. This is true simply because in many cases such sources of funding become the only possible way of accessing financial support for such urban activism. The patronage of families for heritage and urban rehabilitation projects works first to redefine heritage by concentrating on those marginalised local and regional realities that have previously been subject to and disguised by the formal state discourse on heritage and history. Second, such projects tend to concentrate on issues related to everyday life, such as soap production, silk, commerce, madafas (the architecture of hospitality), and urban social history; they provide a clear opportunity for a different and alternative reading of cities in the Mashreq. In the Mashreq, as in most of the developing world, local public-financing mechanisms are minimal. Furthermore, state funding of urban rehabilitation, heritage conservation or site management is at low levels. Hence the work of the families in question becomes of crucial importance, as in some cases it represents the only alternative to a different reading of history, of heritage and of place. The various examples so far presented are a testimonial to how such notable, elite families in the Bilad al-Sham are attempting to rewrite themselves into history and into contemporary society, at a time of different emerging public and counter-public groupings active in civil

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society. These families clearly represent an old/new group of ‘publics’ that is reintroducing itself into the region, not only through the patronage of heritage projects, the arts and culture, but also through socio-economic and political public life. Urry (1990, 84–5) has discussed the notion, when addressing cultural changes and the restructuring of cultural activities (such as cultural tourism) in a shift from modernity to post-modernity, of the former as involved in structural differentiation, and the latter, by contrast, in ‘de-differentiation’ where the borders between high and low culture, between scholarly or auratic art and popular pleasures, and between elite and mass forms of consumption are dissolved. Now we see the celebration of the ordinary and of everyday culture. One can easily situate the phenomenon in the region of notable families’ emerging patronage of the art, culture and heritage of everyday life (e.g. the museums of soap or silk production in Lebanon, or the house celebrating the life of a local poet in Jordan), within a post-modernism which is anti-hierarchical and opposed to vertical differentiation. In many of these ‘sites of memory’, the notion of place is central (memory as connected to places, hence this notion of urban social memory as opposed to national abstract history, which is mainly connected to grand narratives and events). Several participators in these processes of patrimonialisation have felt a social responsibility to document the various sites and their different interconnections in social and urban memory, especially given the absence of national heritage projects in such countries. During a meeting with Mrs Suha Shoman (who became director of the Khaled Shoman Foundation after her husband’s death), she explained how – being a Palestinian with strong feelings of loss – she considers that the need to document the site and memories of it, in addition to the experiences of different Arab artists, is a significant responsibility and a priority for her foundation.22 Yet, and most important of all, these local-family heritage projects have led to new accessibility and thus an important opportunity for a re-reading of the history and memories of the region’s recent past. This is part of a recent paradigm shift in scholarly Arab historiography, characterised by a change from focusing on the grand narratives of national/formal history to re-focusing on the local, and granting a voice to social and urban history, the ordinary and everyday life. These projects offer an ethnographic approach to the understanding of local history and the role of different families and foundations, and provide an opportunity to investigate and research intersections and mediations between contemporary state and society. Finally, the projects not only represent a form of assertion of such families’ (and their foundations’) role in the public sphere, but also give a voice to re-articulated memories at the regional level, i.e. in the Bilad al-Sham as a whole, looking

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at patterns, interconnections, regional mobility, and moments of change and transformation.

Urban activists Significant groups surfacing in many cities of the Mashreq are formed by urban activists seeking to critique contemporary urban transformations. One particular group in Amman is Hamzet Wasel (HW) which attempts to research, and to react against, the discrepancies between east and (affluent) west Amman. HW, a diverse community of Ammanis engaged in social activism and the building of public space and of authentic relationships across the city, work with individuals and communities to design and participate in activities and programmes that tackle the city’s complex challenges and explore its unique opportunities;23 on their website, HW define themselves as a platform for diversity, activism and inclusion. They envision inclusive Arab cities where diverse, active, engaged and responsible citizens work together to address the problems of their respective localities. Furthermore, they build authentic relationships with members of urban communities and work with them to create joint solutions that preserve and build on the human values of neighbourhoods and cities.24 One of HW’s most inspiring urban activities is entitled 7-Jar (‘7th neighbour’). It is an annual public event, a city exploration with various themes and focal points, examining communities and the specific challenges they face throughout the city. Such challenges are met by promoting community development and interaction between members of different neighbourhoods throughout Amman. In an interview, Raghda Butros added that: One issue facing the city is the lack of social contact between people of different neighbourhoods in Amman. 7-Jar, which includes participants from all areas of Amman, is designed to tackle this problem by encouraging teamwork and the use of collective problem-solving skills. The name 7-Jar refers to the ‘seven mountains’ of Amman and makes reference to the Prophet Mohammad’s call for people to ask after their seventh neighbour.25 Hamzet Wassel had been closely involved with the community of Jabal al Qala‘a, a middle-class quarter of historic Amman; this began when the Greater Amman Municipality, together with the USAID-funded project SIYAHA, started a ‘cultural site-management’ project in the ancient Citadel (Al-Qala‘a). The plan called for the walling-off of the area to prevent the children of the neighbourhood using part of the archaeological site as

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a park for leisure pursuits, including kite-flying. HW negotiated with the Greater Amman Municipality to make the site more inclusive and accessible to all, and also held several kite-flying events with participants from different parts of the city. Furthermore, HW also lobbied against an exclusive, neo-liberal real-estate project that was to be launched in the district and that would have caused the displacement of residents – and a severe case of gentrification – along with the demolition of several historic buildings.26 Other urban activists include the anthropologist Ahmad Abu Khalil, Editor-in-Chief of Mastour, a local magazine that addresses the conditions of the poor in the city and researches how they are affected by current masterplanning and neo-liberal urban transformations in Amman. Through the magazine and the contribution of several other writers, urban activists and anthropologists, attempts are being made, for example, to expose planning schemes that would lead to the displacement of major transportation hubs to the city’s outskirts, and to analyse the consequences of this on users of public transport. In Beirut, once thought of as the intellectual capital of the Arab world, the area of Hamra in Ras Beirut could today be considered – together with its small and medium-sized businesses, such as shops, restaurants, hotels and alternative cafés (like ta-marbouta, Ziko House, Café Younis), a mild yet important form of urban and social resistance to global/local urban transformations that might privilege a more neo-liberal, capitalist approach to investment and development. In the mid-1960s, Hamra Street was a vibrant and avant-garde quarter of the city, where not only cinemas, banks, newspapers, shops and eating outlets were numerous, but was also a hub for a critical society of poets, politicians, educators, novelists, artists, journalists and many others belonging to the muthaqqafin (‘intellectual’) strata of society, who populated Hamra’s different cafés and theatres and debated issues of public and social concern. Hamra, for Beirutis, was the centre of an active public sphere, and in the politically turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s pavement café-bars, notably Horse Shoe and the Café de Paris, became places of such active public consciousness in the city, for both Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world. Today Hamra is effectively in danger, as global capital, emanating from the Gulf, is gradually targeting the area, where empty buildings with absentee owners are being sold off one after another. Yet there remain many owners still resisting sale, and the area retains at least part of its competitive edge, enough for major hotels to stay and even to multiply. Hamra has also witnessed during the past decade some genuine interventions within its public space, such as the creation in 2005 of Masrah al-Madina, an adaptive re-use of an old cinema house as a public theatre, championed by a famous

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local actress, Nidal al-Ashkar, and by other urban activists.27 Several of the theatre’s activities and programmes address major cultural and socioeconomic transformations in Beirut. During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Masrah al-Madina offered a refuge for many of the displaced families in the city and organised programmes of relief and disaster mitigation.

Research centres with a focus on the city and on heritage Amman is also witnessing the emergence of several urban research centres and architectural offices – for instance the Centre for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE), and Metropolis: Cities Research Council, the research arm of Turath: Architecture and Urban Design Consultants – which attempt to engage in research and projects more integrated into urban life. The CBSE, established by Mohammad al Asad, is a non-profit, private study and research institution that aims to address challenges for the built environment, in Jordan and beyond. ‘The built environment’ is defined in a comprehensive manner to include all physical components of human settlements, such as buildings, streets, open spaces and infrastructure. CSBE is thus an interdisciplinary centre, covering environmental studies, urban design and planning, conservation, architecture, landscape architecture and construction technologies. One of CSBE’s projects, entitled Diwan al-Mimar, is a forum for architects, who invite speakers and researchers to lecture on issues related to transformations currently taking place in the city; many of the sessions have already been documented on the Centre’s website and are thus accessible to the general public. CSBE is also involved in a wide range of activities, including landscaping to conserve water, ‘grey’ water reuse projects, and energy-efficient design and construction. Turath/Metropolis has worked on several projects that seek to give a voice to the city, such as a comprehensive study on the identification, management and protection of the city’s architectural and urban heritage. The projects cater for the creation of inclusive public space in the city; Rainbow Street urban regeneration project is one example. The project’s objectives were to create more inclusive and more pedestrian-friendly public spaces in the area, while enhancing, protecting and conserving Amman’s distinctive urban heritage. Furthermore, the project works to sustain the current social mix in the area, thus counteracting the effects of current neo-liberal transformations and urban restructuring. The project was based on a careful design of eight urban nodes along the street, each with a distinctive character that emerges from existing realities and dynamics. Conserving,

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enhancing and complementing the qualities of place while maintaining diversity, and enhancing a sense of place by minimal intervention, were the principal objectives of the project, hence contributing to the creation of inclusive public spaces in the city, encouraging the formation of an active public life and hopefully a public sphere (Daher, 2008b, 14–21). In the adaptive reuse of a historic electricity shed from the 1930s, the main objective was to transform the building into a contemporary public space hosting public events, art exhibitions and other endeavours of a like nature. The project sought to critique and re-define urban heritage by acknowledging Amman’s heritage of modernity (of which this shed is an important example), and to showcase and narrate the story of the city’s electrification. This rehabilitation and adaptation of Amman’s rare industrial heritage is highly innovative, and falls within the broader attempts that Turath is undertaking to protect and conserve the city’s social and urban heritage. In Palestine, one significant research body active on the urban rehabilitation scene is Riwaq. Established in 1991, and with headquarters in Ramallah, the organisation is active all over Palestine in documenting and protecting the cultural heritage of the country, through several innovative projects centred on urban rehabilitation, the adaptive re-use of historic buildings, the regeneration of historic villages and city cores, and the researching and documentation of Palestine’s urban and cultural heritage. Harnessing the energy and skills of students, architects, archaeologists and historians, Riwaq took on the important work of compiling the National Register of Historic Buildings: a 13-year project (1994–2007) which resulted in the publication of three impressive volumes; these contain detailed information, including maps and photographs, on some 420 villages in 16 districts of the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The successes of Riwaq are attributed to its active and enthusiastic staff, and specifically to one particular urban and political activist and leader, Suad al-Amiry. Suad strives to shift the concept of conservation from an expensive and elitist activity to a meaningful skill that sustains livelihoods. Riwaq’s ‘job creation through conservation’ has successfully transformed cultural heritage into an important economic tool, notwithstanding a very challenging context of scarce human and financial resources, and the many obstacles resulting from Israel’s alarming destruction of Palestine’s cultural heritage.

Urban artists The last two decades have witnessed the rise of a critical and avant-garde art movement in the Arab world ranging from plastic arts, to performance,

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to urban art. The challenging question was how art could contribute to addressing social concerns and political issues at regional and global scales, and also social inequalities in cities and villages on a local scale. Baydoun (2003, 22–31) states that art should not exist outside culture and the political; he believes that: The transformation of art, itself, to a technical subject means taking it practically out of culture and causing it to exist without justification other than its own rules. In brief, it means a great schism between art and the outside. This is what an art that does not renew its protest and does not connect to a movement of protest ends like; and it lives in a time when culture becomes a secondary issue and perhaps, an additional credit for the politicians and the bureaucrats and even the priests and the mullahs. In Lebanon, and during and towards the end of the Civil War, performance and urban art assumed a political manifestation and purpose. The so called ‘post-war generation’ of Lebanese artists – like Ziad Abillama, Walid Sadeq, Akram Za’atari, Toni Chakar, Rabih Mroue and many others – expressed feelings of loss and historical displacement in the face of contemporary Lebanon; the aspirations towards modernisation and emancipation in the middle of the twentieth century had failed in Lebanon, and in the Arab world generally, leaving Arab culture as not quite of the present (Rogers 2007, 5–22). Meanwhile, each of these artists managed to provide a platform for experimental and philosophically engaged artistic practices. One prominent example of Lebanon’s art activism following the Civil War was its engagement with the city. In terms of creating a stage for critique and dialogue, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts (Ashkal Alwan), which was founded in 1994 by Christine Tohme as a platform for the creation and exchange of artistic practices, has made a notable contribution. Ashkal Alwan is committed to education, and to the production, support and circulation of creative and intellectual endeavours rooted in an engagement with civil society. Within the context of post-war Lebanon, Ashkal Alwan has introduced and promoted the work of artists engaged in critical art practices. In an interview with curator Christine Tohme, she explained how Ashkal Alwan is grounded in the exploration of public-space politics through urban art and public interventions that provoke critical thinking about the realities of cities today. It has recently moved to its new headquarters, appropriately an adaptive re-use of a pre-industrial workshop building in Jirs al-Wati, a rundown industrial area on the outskirts of the city. This new location will

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provide an opportunity to engage with parts of the city beyond its historic core, and will certainly pose more questions for artists on the function and meaning of public space, and hence of the public sphere. One significant activity for Ashkal Alwan is their bi-annual workshop, Home Works Forum, which started in 2002 and has evolved into one of the most vibrant platforms in the region and beyond for research and exchange on cultural practices. Artists, cultural practitioners, writers and thinkers gather for ten days in order to share their work; this takes the form of exhibitions, performances, lectures, video presentations, talks by artists, workshops and publications. What links the forum’s participants together is their approach to a common set of urgent, timely questions, and their work endeavours to create methods of critical inquiry into cultural and territorial transformation. In Jordan, one small yet significant manifestation of urban public art that engages with the city of Amman at different levels is Makan. Ola al Khalidi, its founder in 2003, described how she had felt that Amman was deprived of an alternative space for artists, and had therefore opened Makan as a space for expression, as an association to encourage all forms of art and as a place for people who had something to say in the areas of plastic arts, music, cinema, theatre and urban art (Ababsa, 2007, 214). Many of Makan’s projects and endeavours engage with the city at various levels, seeking to explore the realities of its heritage, its public spaces and places where inclusion or exclusion is the norm. Makan’s events focus on social issues which take art into the public sphere. It is located in one of Amman’s historic but inclusive neighbourhoods (Jabal al-Weibdeh) which Khalidi sees as an interesting vantage point from which to consider the city and the contemporary art scene that is taking root there. In a more recent (December 2010) urban art manifestation, organised by Makan and curated by a resident artist (Juliana Smith), a group of artists and urban activists were asked to come together and to pose individual questions on current urban transformations in Amman. Entitled ‘The Utopian Airport Lounge’, the initiative took place in different areas, in nonplaces and places in transition. One particular artist (Dina Haddadin) who participated in this event created a platform for critiquing the displacement of Amman’stransportation hubs to the outskirts of the city, caused by neoliberal investments and with consequences for the ordinary citizens who use such transportation hubs and for the socio-economic realities – the creation of geographies of inequality. In the several examples discussed above, of urban activists, research centres and urban artists, it is very clear that many of the projects attempt to address the socio-economic disparities in cities of the Mashreq like Beirut,

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Ramallah and Amman. Such initiatives are also involved in urban rehabilitation in the broader sense of the word – they are involved not only in the rehabilitation of the historic cores of these cities; but also in questioning and resisting contemporary neo-liberal urban restructuring and those emergent spaces which foster exclusion. Furthermore, they strive to address the absence or reduction of public space and even attempt to forge a non-physical space for self-expression and self-realisation. Furthermore, many of these activists warn that cities in the region are gradually developing patches of isolated, exclusive urban spaces, thus widening the gaps that already exist and leading to geographies of social inequality and exclusion.

In conclusion: the city in the age of disengagement At a time of the state’s withdrawal from public works and high-minded social agendas, it becomes crucial to research and understand the diversity of actors in the city. One of the main objectives the research project the present author conducted in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria between 2001 and 2011 was to understand the nature and dynamics of the various types of publics, actors and agents (e.g. individuals, families, urban activists, research bodies, urban artists and others) involved in reshaping the contemporary discourse in cities with respect to the politics of defining heritage, to the production and consumption of public space within the city, and to the structuring of a critical debate on current urban transformations. In studying urban culture, we are also interested in finding out the nature and level of civic engagement in today’s cities. ‘Drawing on evidence from both Europe and the United States, and without down-playing the importance of the issues of race and poverty’, Putnan (2007, 120–1) asked urban leaders and members of the urban middle class to confront the evident social reality that people are no longer as connected to the basic institutions of their communities – neighbourhood groups, fraternal organisations, even political parties – as they once were. Putnan attributes the growing lack of community participation – what he calls the decline in ‘social capital’ – and the consequent loss of civic engagement, to many factors: the movement of women into the work-force, increased social and geographical mobility, and ‘the technological transformation of leisure’. Another explanation might be that contemporary urban society is deeply divided and every major city has now become culturally contested terrain. ‘Whereas cities once held out the promise of a wider, higher form of human community’, Putnam argues that contemporary city dwellers now follow a path of less, not more, civic engagement and that our creative stock of ‘social capital’ – the meaningful human contacts of all

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kinds that characterise true communities – is so dangerously eroded that is verges on depletion. Urban dwellers are not connected to one another through collective action as they once were. One very important question to be asked here is that even in the light of the above review of the work of families and activists in the cities of the Mashreq, is the public sufficiently engaged? In the Arab world, issues of place, urban development and change, and heritage definition have predominantly remained outside the domains of politics and public consciousness. In the Arab world in general, politics – and other matters which ought to be subject to public debate and open to public scrutiny – are confined to the established view – matters concerned with Sharia, the Palestinian issue, Iraq and Afghanistan (in other words, politics with a capital P). Meanwhile, questions of the politics of place, issues of inclusion and exclusion in the city, contested pasts and appropriate models of development (politics with a lower-case p) have predominantly remained outside the domain of politics and critical, rational debate (Daher, 2008a). The present author strongly believes that regardless of the significance and importance of the work, and the dedicated enthusiasm of the actors, urban activists and family foundations in the city today, all this still does not culminate in collective action on the ground. With that said, the work is extremely important and must continue to go forward, especially at a time of general public disengagement and apathy where the city is concerned. Are we witnessing the end of the concept of collective public action in the city, and instead witnessing the increasingly significant role of agents and actors, especially in the absence of national social agendas on public space, infrastructure provision and heritage projects during this neoliberal era we are all living through? This question is left for further contemplation by the reader; yet the author feels that it is being validated on a daily basis in the Mashreq. The work of family foundations, urban activists and other actors in the region generates different city imaginaries and various possibilities for the understanding of ‘the public interest’. Furthermore, and based on these possibilities, research conducted on and beyond the different actors and agents helps to understand why and how these diverse publics, as social, spatial and ideological realities and entities, emerge from discursive practices, and how they continue to change with respect to local, national and global interconnections and transformations. The researcher cannot avoid noticing that urban rehabilitation in the broader meaning of the term – that is, understanding the city’s diverse pasts and memories, engaging in a critical definition of its urban heritage, counteracting current neo-liberal structural and urban transformations, and instead calling for more inclusive public space – is becoming the terrain in

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which these actors and agents engage while they try to establish a platform for critical debate. Here, urban cultural heritage becomes a crucial space, forming a critical alternative and thus a more inclusive urban vision of the city. One significant point which should be alluded to is the importance of the human dimension in these various engagements in urban rehabilitation across the cities of the Mashreq. By this is meant the passion, dedication, vision and perseverance shown by the individuals concerned. To explain, let us briefly review the various urban rehabilitation projects mentioned in this chapter, such as Darat al-Funun, Makan, and Hamzet Wasel’s work in Jabal al Qala‘a, all taking place in Amman; or the Soap Museum in Saida, the work of Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, or Riwaq in Palestine. It is very clear that behind the success of any of these projects lie the enthusiasm, vision and diligence of dedicated individuals who take pride in their work and are deeply committed to their project. In other words, if it was not for the dedication and perseverance of Suha Shouman in Darat al-Funun, or of Ola al Khalidi in Makan, or of Raghda Butros behind the work of Hamzet Wassel, or Christine Tohme behind that of Ashkal Alwan, or Suad al-Amiry in Riwaq, to mention a few examples, then the sustainability of such projects in the city would have been questionable. With this said, one should of course not underestimate the contributions of other actors and agents to these endeavours in the cities. In October 2009, at a public meeting held by the Greater Amman Municipality regarding the proposals for developing the historic area of Jabal Amman put forward by a major real-estate corporate developer – who had already purchased dozens of historic houses with the aim adapting and rehabilitating them into tourist and cultural destinations – the author of this chapter publically questioned the future sustainability of such projects, orchestrated as they were by corporate investment in urban heritage, simply because of the lack of dedicated individuals (the human dimension) behind each such project; not only would such people have made sure that it would be carried out with passion but they would also be willing to dedicate their time, and in certain cases their whole lives, to the work. While corporate organisations and the transnational capitalist class describe the city as an abstract space, and criticise it for its failure to provide urban infrastructure to support their large-scale investments, urban activists on the other hand view the city as a heterogeneous reality where different publics and counter-publics dwell, and civic culture and society operate. They in turn criticise the city’s failure (through its organising bodies) to provide social equity and social services, and to identify and recognise marginalised realities and groups. Resistance and activism, even at the individual level, is crucial in addressing the challenges of the city. Successful actors and agents strive to induce

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institutional and societal change through active networking, which operates by always taking up new positions. This new generation of activists refuses to create unbreakable relationships of dependency with local communities, and pragmatically recognise the fact that in a heterogeneous society dividing lines will always exist. Furthermore, the local voice of these diverse actors repositions itself within current socio-economic and territorial transformations in the city, which today is undergoing key socio-economic and spatial transformation. In addition, these local initiatives are in certain cases providing a forum for a critical social debate, one that addresses change and transformation in contemporary Arab cultural discourse. Such forums provide a different venue for dialogue at times of crisis. Yet, and most important of all, these local initiatives and projects (whether they centre on the urban and social heritage of the city, qualify and grant voice to marginalised urban realities, or even provide an alternative space for self-expression and critical debate in and on the city) offer an important opportunity and a new accessibility for the re-defining of urban heritage and for the re-reading of local history and urban memory in these various cities of the Mashreq.

Notes 1. ‘Bilad al-Sham’ is a very old (and now archaic) local geographical term denoting the land to the east of the Mediterranean, and has been in use for more than a thousand years. The concept of Bilad al-Sham introduced in this chapter is very different from the politically grounded concept of ‘Greater Syria’, which is linked to the ideology of pan-Arabism promoted by individuals like Antoun Saadeh or Nuri al Sai’d in the middle of the twentieth century. This chapter promotes a historical/cultural and popular/local concept of Bilad al-Sham from the bottom up, grounded in the ethnographic, cultural and regional realities of the area. As a concept/reality present in both popular and scholarly discourses, Bilad al-Sham exists beyond the limitations of national boundaries or discourses. Also, regardless of how contested this notion is in official historiographies, Bilad al-Sham is still a living and functioning reality. 2. Al-Mashreq-al Arabi is another local concept that has recently emerged during attempts at establishing unity within the Arab world, with its formally different cultural regions: first, al-Mashreq al-Arabi (the ‘Arab East’), which encompasses the current nation states of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine; second, Wadi al Neel (the Nile valley), which includes Egypt and Sudan; third, Al-Maghreb al-Arabi (the ‘Arab West’), which contains Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco; and fourth, the Arabian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Yemen.

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3. The eminent Marxist geographer David Harvey, in A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), elaborates on the theory of neoliberalism and adds that neoliberal economic thought emerged in the 1970s from a critique of and backlash against the welfare state, and from a push towards a new political economic order, giving rise to the political implementation of neoliberal thought (ibid, 1–5). Politicians of the late 1970s (e.g. Margaret Thatcher) established the basis of a new doctrine that went under the name of ‘neoliberalism’ and transformed it into the central guiding principle of economic thought and management. According to Harvey: ‘Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and stems within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free market, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices’ (ibid, 2). As a consequence of neoliberal socio-economics, and in countries like Jordan or Lebanon, the state finds itself gradually pulling out of its responsibilities to more fragile sectors, such as education, healthcare, social security and social housing, and instead becomes more involved as a facilitator of real-estate development, a provider of indirect subsidies and a regulator for multi-national corporations. 4. During a recent visit to Rabat (October 2009), the author was astonished by the similarities – in terms of investors, developers and even the rhetoric and discourses of development – between neoliberal investors in Beirut, Amman and elsewhere in the Mashreq and those in Rabat. Thus global capital is definitely circulating not only surplus oil wealth but also images and models of neoliberal development. 5. See at , accessed 23 April 2005. 6. Abdali is the major neoliberal real-estate development project currently under way in Amman. The project is promoted as ‘a new downtown’ for Amman, and is anticipated to include high-end office and residential space in addition to retail, commercial and other tourist activities. The remodelled area, previously the site of the General Jordan Armed Forces Headquarters, consist of 350,000 m2 in the heart of Amman and will contain a built-up area of approximately a million m2. 7. Green Land is a gated community development outside Amman, in an area called Marj al Hamam, near the Airport Highway. The main investors in the project are Jordan’s Kurdi Group. The properties are mostly villas, but apartments are also included; the cost per m2 reaches some 750 dinars for villas and 800 for apartments. 8. Andalusia is another high-end gated community being developed outside Amman, near the Airport Highway and on the road to the city of Madaba. The main developers are called TAAMEER Jordan, or the Jordan Company for Real-Estate Development; the primary source of funding is the United Arab Emirates. The cost per m2 is around 700 dinars for the villas, which include

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centralised under-floor heating, a maid’s room with a laundry, and interior customisation, with 24-hour security and maintenance, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, spa and health club. Jizza is the name of an area that has recently been added to and incorporated within the Greater Amman Municipality; there are general plans for lowincome housing projects there. Critics assume that several of these projects, which are sometimes financed by the same developers and investors responsible for high-end gated communities, are meant to cater for the poor and for lower-middle-class residents forced out of inner-city neighbourhoods in Amman. Zarqa is a city in north-easten Jordan, the second-largest city in the country and, by comparison with the capital Amman, generally considered an industrial area lacking in green open spaces. Several parcels of land that used to belong to the army have now been incorporated into new housing projects all around the city. Jordan’s MAWARED is the state-owned National Resources Investment and Development Cooperation. Established in 2000, the company’s original mandate was to redevelop several inner-city military plots and turn them into income-generating mixed-use sites, as well as to relocate the military out of densely populated areas that offered potential for investment in new facilities. Just five years after its inception, MAWARED has become the country’s leading urban-regeneration entity and its largest real-estate developer; it is the agency responsible for the Abadali project, and many others. It has several affiliates, including the Development and Investment Projects (DIP) fund, essentially the investment arm of the military; the Urban Workshop, a notfor-profit independent urban-studies centre; and the newly-established Amman Real-Estate Management & Services (AREMS), specialising in real-estate consultancy and management. The boundary between the state and the public good is becoming very blurred, with major consequences where the former is pulling out of support for vital sectors (e.g. education, agriculture, health and others), and coming to resemble another corporation or institution amongst many, making issues such as accountability very problematic. Al Asad, Mohammad, ‘The city’s creative energies’, at , accessed 21 July 2008. Meeting with Ms. Monique Aggiouri, Debbaneh Palace, Mutran Street, Saida, 18 February 2002. Meeting with George Audi and other Soap Museum staff, Audi Foundation, Saida, 18 February 2002. Examples of studies conducted by the Hariri Foundation include developing master-plans for the city and producing measured drawings for the sea-front façade, in addition to the historic monuments in the Old City.

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FAMILIES 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

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At , accessed 30 October 2005. Meeting with Suha Shouman, 6 June 2006. Meeting with Mustafa Wahbeh al Tell (grandson), May 2004. This information is based on several field visits to Bayt Jabry in the years 2002–05, and on an interview with the owner, Raed Jabry, in February 2002. The Welfare Association is a privately funded, non-profit organisation established in 1983 by a group of prominent Palestinian business and intellectual figures; it is registered in Switzerland (Hanafi and Tabar, 2005, 61). Meeting with Mrs Suha Shoman, on Tuesday 6 June 2006, at Darat al Funun, Jabal Weibdeh, Amman. Based on several interviews with HW’s founder, Raghda Butros, between 2008 and 2011. At , accessed 19 October 2011. See note 24 above. Seeley, Nicholas (2009), ‘Whose neighborhood is it?’ JO Magazine, 24 August, at. The information on Masrah al Madina is based on site visits and on interviews with Randa al Asmar, 27 June 2006.

Bibliography Ababsa, Myriam (2007), Amman, de pierre et de paix. Paris: Autrement. Adham, Khaled (2004), ‘Cairo’s urban déjà vu: globalization and urban fantasies’. In Elsheshtawy, Yasser (ed.), Planning Middle Eastern Cities: An Urban Kaleidoscope in a Globalizing World, pp. 134–68. New York: Routledge. Bassil, Karl and Zaatari, Akram (2007), Hashem El Madani Promenades: An Ongoing Project by Akram Zaatari. Beirut: Arab Image Foundation/Mind the Gap. Baydoun, Abbas (2003), ‘Culture and arts: re the actual’. In Tohme, Christine and Abu Rayyan, Mona (eds), Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices in the Region, pp. 22–31. Beirut: Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts/Ashkal Alwan. Bonne, Emmanuel (1995), Vie publique, patronage et clientèle: Rafic Hariri à Saida. Beirut: Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain. Dahdah, Linda (2004), ‘Bsous museum offers journey into Lebanon’s silk heritage’. Daily Star, 28 May 2004. Daher, Rami (1999), ‘Gentrification and the politics of power, capital, and culture in an emerging Jordanian heritage industry’. Traditional Dwellings and Settlement Review, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 33–47. ——— (2004), ‘Notable families of Bilad al Sham as patrons of art, heritage, and culture’. Daily Star of the Herald Tribune, 3 July. ——— (2005), ‘Urban regeneration/heritage tourism endeavours: the case of Salt, Jordan: local actors, international donors, and the state’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 289–308. ——— (2007a), ‘Re-conceptualizing tourism in the Middle East: place, heritage, mobility and competitiveness’. In Daher (ed.), Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity,

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Change and Transformation, pp. 1–69. Clevedon, England Channel View, pp. 1–69. ——— (2007b), ‘Tourism: heritage and urban transformations in Jordan and Lebanon: emerging actors and global-local juxtapositions’. In Daher (ed.), Tourism in the Middle East, Clevedon, England: Channel View, pp. 263–307. ——— (2008a), ‘Amman: disguised genealogy and recent urban restructuring and neoliberal threats.’ In Elsheshtawy, Yasser (ed.), The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development, pp. 37–68. London: Routledge. ——— (2008b), ‘The Rainbow Street urban regeneration project’. Jordan Property Magazine, June 2008, pp. 14–21. ——— (2009a), ‘Overview and synthesis for the regional workshop: rehabilitation of historic towns and villages.’ Euromed Heritage Workshop (programme funded by the European Union), Rabat, 8–9 December, pp 29–38. ——— (2009b), ‘Global capital, urban regeneration, and heritage conservation in the Levant’. In Calabrese, John (ed.), The Middle East Institute Viewpoints: Architecture and Urbanization in the Middle East, at , pp. 22–6, accessed 5/5/2011. ——— (2010), ‘Urban landscapes of neoliberalism: cranes, craters and an exclusive urbanity’. Jordan Business, October 2010, pp. 55–8. ——— (2011), ‘Discourses of neoliberalism and disparities in the city landscape: cranes, craters and an exclusive urbanity’. In Ababsa, Myriam and Daher (eds), Cities, Urban Practices, and Nation Building in Jordan, pp. 273–96. Beirut: Institut Français du Proche-Orient. Dalby, Simon (2003), ‘Geopolitics, the Bush doctrine, and war on Iraq’. Arab world Geographer, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 7–18 David, Catherine (2003), ‘Learning from Beirut: contemporary aesthetic practices in Lebanon’. In Tohme and Abu Rayyan (eds), Home Works, pp. 32–9. Elsheshtawy, Yasser (2004), ‘The Middle East city: moving beyond the narrative of loss’. In Elsheshtawy (ed.), Planning Middle Eastern Cities, pp. 1–21. ——— (2008), ‘The great divide: struggling and emerging cities in the Arab world’. In Elsheshtawy (ed.), The Evolving Arab City, pp. 1–26. Feldman, Hana and Zaatari, Akram (2007), ‘Mining war: fragments from a conversation already passed’. Art Journal, Summer, pp. 49–68. Florida, Richard (2003), ‘Cities and the creative class’. City and Community, Vol. 2, No. 1 (March), pp. 3–19. Hanafi, Sari and Tabar, Linda (2005), The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite: Donors, International Organizations and Local NGOs. Jerusalem: Institute of Palestinian Studies. Harvey, David, (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maffi, Irene (2000), ‘Le statut des objects dans la mise en scène muséographique du passé en Jordanie: le discours historique, la narration mythique et la tradition’. In Maffi and Daher, Rami (eds), Patrimony and Heritage Conservation in Jordan, pp. 3–16. Les Documents du CERMOC, No. 10. Beirut and Amman: Centre d’Etudes et de Reserches sur le Moyen Orient Contemporain, pp. 3–16 ——— (2002), ‘New museographic trends in Jordan: the strengthening of the nation’. In Joffe, George (ed.), Jordan in Transition 1990–2000, pp. 208–24. London: Hurst. ——— (2004), Pratiques du Patrimoine et Politiques de la Mémoire en Jordanie: entre histoire dynastique et récits communautaires. Lausanne: Payot.

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Manna’, Adel (1992), ‘Continuity and change in the socio-political elite in Palestine during the late Ottoman period’. In Philip, Thomas (ed.), The Syrian Land in the 18th and 19th Century: The Common and the Specific in the Historical Experience, pp. 69–90. Stuttgart: Steiner. Marston, S. and Rouhani, F. (2001), ‘Teaching and learning the lesson of complexity’. Arab World Geographer, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 100–2. Putnam, Robert (2007), ‘Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital’. In LeGates, Richard and Stout, Frederic (eds), The City Reader, pp. 105–113. London and New York: Routledge. Rodenbeck, Judith (2007), ‘In this issue: crossing memory’s green lane – contemporary art in Beirut’. Art Journal, Summer, pp. 5–7. Rogers, Sara (2007), ‘Out of history: postwar art in Beirut’. Art Journal, Summer, pp. 5–22. Rosemann, Jurgen, (2009), The New Urban Question: Urbanism beyond Neo-Liberalism. Rotterdam: International Forum on Urbanism. Said, E.W. (1979), Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Schuster, J. Mark (1998), ‘Beyond privatization: the hybridization of museums and the built heritage’. In Boosma, Peter, Van Hemel, Annemoon and Van der Wielen, Niki (eds), Privatization and Culture: Experiences in the Arts, Heritage, and Cultural Industries in Europe, pp. 58–81. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic, pp. 58–81. Shami, Seteney (1989), ‘Settlement and resettlement in Umm Qais: spatial organization of a Jordanian village’. In Bourdieu, Jean-Paul and Al Sayyad, Nezar (eds), Dwellings, Settlement, and Tradition: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, pp. 451–76. Boston, MA: University Press of America, pp. 451–76. ——— (1996), ‘Re-searching the city: urban space and its complexities’. In Hannoyer, Jean, and Shami (eds), pp. 37–54. Amman: The City and Its Society. Beirut: CERMOC, Summer, Doris (2005), Neo-Liberalizing the City: Transitional Investment Networks and the Circulation of Urban Images in Beirut and Amman. Unpublished Master’s thesis in Urban Planning, American University of Beirut. Urry, John (1990), The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. Walid, Sadek (2007), ‘Place at last’. Art Journal, Summer, pp. 35–48.

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6 ‘AL-M ADINA AL-QADIM A’ OF DA M ASCUS: PR ESERVATION OF THE CULTUR AL HER ITAGE, R EPR ESENTATIONS OF THE PAST, AND THE PRODUCTION OF A VALUABLE SPACE* Domenico Copertino

This chapter is concerned with the production of an urban arrière-pays, by means of state and private investments of capital and imagination, in the Old City (al-madina al-qadima) of Damascus, Syria. As Vincent Crapanzano (2004) has shown in his latest work, social actors use their individual and public to build their ‘elsewhere’, or arrière-pays, linked with past experiences and with future intentions. Imagination, as recent studies by Appadurai (1996; 2001a; 2001b), Hannerz (1980; 19911) and Anderson (1991) maintain, is a strong and effective means for people to interpret their social worlds and to drive their lives towards an expected future. In other terms, imagination produces reality: products of imagination are the real thing. I will argue that the investment of imagination, in addition to that of different forms of specific capital (Bourdieu, 1992), is leading social actors, economic investors, local authorities and international institutions towards the construction of an urban arrière-pays, called the Old City, in the centre of Damascus. Deeply involved in such process are Unesco policies aimed at building a world heritage of places and cultures, and promoting sitepreservation and development practices.

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The Old City of Damascus was long considered a deteriorating and marginalised area. Since the last period of Ottoman domination (Pellitteri 2004, 154–7, 162–4; Hudson, 2006), and in particular during the French mandate (1920–46), the modern districts developed separately from the ancient town. As in other French protectorates, urban designers experimented in Damascus with a possible form of modern hierarchy: they found this in the separation of the Old City from the ville nouvelle: French settlements, where Mandate administrators and European technicians would live and work (Issawi, 1969), were to be built close to the former city, but sharply split off from it (Rabinow, 1989). The image of the ville nouvelle would have faced the Syrian city, whose integrity the French designers, out of respect, forebore to undermine.2 The French administration banned building and reconstruction work in Syria’s ancient cities, and imposed some constraints on restoration work. While showing respect for local building traditions, the Mandate imposed the preservation of former settlements, where modernisation was banned (Wright 1991). This preserved the image of social hierarchy, dividing Syrians from the French.3 It was a principle of the French Mandate that France should not be considered a colonial power, but a protector country wielding its authority over local affairs on behalf of Syria’s Sunni majority. The Mandate showed respect for local culture yet it stressed – through building avenues and European-style buildings – the benefits of civilisation. In the Mandate period, Damascenes began to turn their backs on living in the Old City, because of the inadequacy of facilities (khadimat) there. According to the architectural historian Moafaq Dughman, former director of Mudiriyyat al-madina al-qadima (Directorate for the Old City, later MMQ), whom I interviewed several times in 2005, this situation led to well-off people buying property in other areas; as the underprivileged were unable to move out of the Old City (tla’), so the idea of it as a poor and marginal area caught on. However, in the 1990s the Old City of Damascus ‘came back’, as a result of different groups’ converging interests, and of an important development: in 1979 Unesco placed the ancient parts of Damascus on the World Heritage List (WHL), which stimulated capital investment in the area throughout the following decades – the Syrian government and the Damascus regional council (muhafaza) promoted investment in tourism and in the restoration of the principal monuments; potential land values rose, and many Syrian investors moved their capital from less safe sectors (e.g. foreign trade with Middle Eastern partners under embargo or at war, such as Iraq, Iran or Lebanon) to real estate and building restoration; damaged buildings were converted into hotels, houses, restaurants, coffee shops, ateliers, art galleries and cultural amenities.

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The verb phrase ‘come back’ is used here to translate the term by which the protection planners refer to the dynamics affecting the Old City: ‘come back’ (raj’a) is often related to other expressions such as sahwa (‘awakening’), wa’i (‘awareness’) and islah (‘gentrification’). As I will argue, these are not neutral terms: on the contrary, they show institutions’ specific stance in the socio-political arena concerned with the preservation of cultural heritage.

Gentrification The gentrification of the Old City of Damascus, namely the transformation of the area from a marginal district into a suitable area for the middle and upper classes (Smith 1982), started in the 1990s, as did a similar process in other Middle Eastern cities. On-going economic liberalisation (al-Hamwy, 1992; Wedeen, 1999; Kienle, 1994; Heydemann, 1999; George, 2003; Hinnebusch, 2001) has allowed many investors to enter the real-estate market. The rehabilitation of old houses did not require large capital investment, so it attracted many middle-class people, who bought cheap buildings and used them for work, to live in or as an investment. At the same time, former owners of the big Arab dwellings in the Old City returned to them, opening coffee shops, restaurants and hotels. Many were members of the rich and powerful politicians’ and traders’ families that built these luxurious dwellings, living in them until the end of the nineteenth century (Weber, 2004; 1997–98; 1999; Pellitteri, 2004). Over the first decades of the twentieth century, however, they moved away because of the deterioration and the overspill of the Old City, moving to other areas, chiefly in the suburbs. Since the 1990s (Wilson, 2004; Salamandra, 2004) large volumes of capital have been invested in the central urban districts, and as a result the latter’s economic value has risen; middle-upper income groups moved there to live and work, thus contributing to the rehabilitation of the area. Land values, real-estate prices and rents rose in turn, and this led many older residents to move out towards other urban areas, where costs were lower. I treat these ‘older residents’ as belonging to one of two groups: on the one hand those few people still living in the houses their ancestors built or bought in the nineteenth century and who managed to stay there until the 1990s, when the gentrification of the Old City started; and, on the other hand, low-income groups of so-called fellahin (peasants) from the countryside near Damascus, of migrants from other Syrian districts, and of refugees from Golan and Palestine after Arab-Israeli wars. During the twentieth century these groups moved to Damascus Old City, where they found free or cheap housing, occupying or often renting small sections of the houses from which

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wealthy families had fled with the sprawl of the ville nouvelle. The displacement of these low-income groups is the final and most dramatic outcome of gentrification. Here I examine the practices and imaginaries of five groups of gentrifiers: Syrian investors in the restoration and development of ancient buildings, often owners of restored venues, cultural amenities and tourist facilities in the Old City; Syrian and European employees of Unesco who, with political backing, strongly support the historical value of Damascus’ ancient buildings; Syrian officials and employees of bureaux supervising cultural heritage; highly educated Syrian and European architects, advocates of the value of authenticity; ‘new residents’ (illi bidakhkhalu, literally ‘incomers’), advocates of such qualities as ‘naturalness’, ‘habitability’ and the like, and often lovers of orientalist literature, who choose a lifestyle that provides them with status and self-esteem – they are an affluent group in terms of socio-economic status (middle and upper-middle class), employment and educational levels (intellectuals, artists, civil servants, small businessmen), as well as in their needs, wishes and habitus.4 They feel glad to be living away from other more chaotic districts, and united in the cause of rehabilitating decayed areas of the city; they gain economic benefits (the sharing of resources and labour, and, if they are in business, of customers) and political benefits (the making of common cause in petitioning for services and infrastructure); some are master masons (mu‘allimun) and carpenters, holders of technical knowledge and social relations, exploiting buildings and materials as their means of support. Different forms of specific capital are staked by social, economic and institutional actors in this arena: investors’ money; the political capital of international institutions (Unesco, the Agha Khan Award for Architecture, later AKAFA); master masons’ technical and social capital; architects’ scientific and educational capital; and new residents’ symbolic capital, linked with space and dwelling habits. Unanimously identified as stakeholders in the development of the cultural heritage, the five groups identified above (investors, Unesco employees, institutional actors, architects, new residents) are here taken together as mustathmarin (literally ‘developers’); with this term, indeed, Damascenes imply on the one hand the strict sense of the word and on the other the broad sense: those who contribute to the development of cultural heritage. Master masons and carpenters, although contributing to the development through their work, are not included in this category. An intrusive ethnographic glance at these groups’ values (part of their social imaginaries) and an analysis of the capital staked to enhance them, cast light over the ways these imaginaries are embodied in the lives and activities of different actors.

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All these actors cooperate in the construction of an actual arrière-pays, bringing to the process their specific capital and their public imaginaries. The latter are not simply mind constructs applied to the physical reality (i.e. the built environment; see Low, 1996; Lawrence and Low, 1990), as if it would exist before, after and in spite of them: as has been shown by Henry Lefebvre (1978) (and by studies drawing on his Production of the Space, such as Smith, 1982; 1987; Harvey, 1993; Zukin, 1987; Kaika, 2005), public imaginaries are among the building materials of the urban environment. Social actors involved in the construction, restoration and circulation of the spatial objects that make up the locality called the ‘Old City’ use building materials presented as ‘traditional’. They command, in addition to stone, wood, earth and sand, a set of values – exchange value, the values of tradition, historicity, identity and the like – nourished by public imaginaries and enhanced by specific types of capital, objectified and embedded in the space as though they were walls and beams, through social actors’ strategies, investments and working patterns.

Strategies of objectification: the WHL and the reification of experiences and relations Like building materials, public imaginaries are embedded in spaces; the public imaginary related to world heritage is incorporated in spaces through strategies of objectification and localisation. It is worth investigating such strategies in order to understand the ways imagination works in people’s daily lives, and how an imagined place – one site of the WHL – becomes the actual place in which people live and act. The ancient districts of Damascus officially became a ‘heritage’ (turath) site in 1979, when Unesco, after a survey by André Chastel, Henry Millon and Jean Taralon, decided to include the area in the WHL. The public imaginary of cultural heritage is grounded in ideas of history, authenticity and tradition (Clifford, 2002; Fischer, 1986; Palumbo, 2003), nostalgia (Bissell, 2005; Bettini, 1992; Herzfeld, 1991; Luz, 2006) and dwelling habits. These are fields of human experience and relations, of sentiments and social knowledge – realities that become ‘cultural goods’ only when they are recognised in certain items, objects on which one can gaze, which can be touched, tasted, handled. As a result, choice of dwelling, frequently found in certain areas inhabited by certain groups, become the latter’s ‘architectural traditions’. But are those groups united in choosing such settlement models? Do the choice of one model and the abandonment of another, the production and reproduction of models, the working patterns of model production, come through as linear phenomena, or do they introduce conflicts,

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exclusions, hierarchies? The objectification of experience, knowledge and sentiments is possible only when such internal distinctions and conflicts are set aside, and when those fields of experience, that knowledge and those sentiments are reified. Cultural goods, part of cultural heritage, are the result of the essentialisation of one group’s building practices and knowledge; the process involves the setting-aside of distinctions, hierarchies and internal conflicts in production processes. On a global scale, Unesco is the main institutional actor promoting the transformation of architectural, monumental and territorial products into cultural heritage. Buildings, monuments, urban and rural sites are products of social work; their objectification and transformation into cultural ‘goods’ requires the removal of the record of that work, the setting-aside of the internal distinctions, disputes, materiality and time peculiar to the production process. Buildings, monuments and sites are products of social work; through their transformation into cultural heritage, they become the creations of an abstract entity called ‘humanity’. Indeed, Unesco cooperates with other international organisations in the construction of an ideal human community grounded in cultural goods (monuments, groups of buildings, geological formations, natural sites) that are declared expressions of a ‘universal value’ (Palumbo, 2006, 344). Such cultural goods are inserted into the imaginary global space called WHL, where they become icons of humanity’s creative skill. After the first Unesco survey in Damascus, in 1953, envoys wrote that beside being a national heritage Damascus architectural sites were owned by humanity at large, which should treat them as goods deserving conservation and protection (Collart et al, 1954).5 The greatness of Syria’s history is visible and tangible in its monuments and objectified in its cultural goods and heritage. The value of such goods crosses national borders, becoming a quality that all humanity can appreciate.6 In order to be included in the WHL, an architectural object has to be an expression of the locality where it was produced and, at the same time, of the creative skill of the human spirit at large. As is shown by the passage referred to above, from the report by Collart et al, according to Unesco experts Damascus’ ancient districts meet such expectations. As will be shown below, a site’s and its buildings’ qualities of historicity and authenticity emerge from developers’ strategies – strategies of objectification (carried out to embody history and tradition within certain ‘authentic’ objects); strategies of localisation (to set the limits of areas to be preserved for their historical quality, and excluding areas lacking this quality); the investment of symbolic capital (to make certain materials ‘authentic’); working patterns of restoration and the production of cultural goods; administrative choices as to who qualify as authentic Old City inhabitants (called illi bidakhkhalu, ‘new residents’ by their older neighbours).

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Restorative architects in Damascus claim a concern for authenticity and an adhesion to Damascene building traditions: they put forward that claim as a factor in self-identification, in opposition to other architectural models such as those of the post-Mandate city. The AKAFA firmly upholds the adoption of ‘Arab-Islamic’ building traditions, to counter the damage done to the urban fabric by modernisation, and has funded a restoration project in Damascus Old City. Damascene architects involved in such projects claim their closeness to the principle the AKAFA has been supportingfor several years. According to that organisation, Muslim architects should avoid imitating the West; Fazlur Khan stresses that modern European and American methods, forms and technology are ‘so deceptively attractive to these countries . . . that it is almost impossible to resist the temptation to copy [them] by and large’ (1978, 32). As a consequence, according to Khan, glass, steel and concrete buildings quickly become ubiquitous; local culture, architecture and building traditions are disregarded. The AKAFA ranks local heritage qualities above emulation and proWestern leanings. A Damascene architect, supervisor of the AKAFA restoration project, told me an allegorical tale about imitation: A crow saw a peacock and tried to mimic its elegant walk. It tried so hard it achieved its goal, but its peacock-like walk was bound to appear awkward and ridiculous. In the meantime, the crow forgot the way its own kind walk, so it spent the rest of its life hideously walking like a crow imitating a peacock. At the first seminar on architectural transformations in the Islamic world, organised by the AKAFA in 1978 at Aiglemont, the participants (among whom were Sayyed Hossein Nasr, Jacques Berque, Zahir-ud Deen Khwaja and Janet Abu-Lughod) became aware that the urban Muslim world was going through a crisis, for which they held reformist movements, secular elites, Westernised architects and their customers responsible; they picked out (and to a certain extent essentialised) qualities of Muslim urban life that the crisis was destroying: harmony, space, sacredness, imagination, roots, origins, authenticity. Such qualities were met by their opposites – feelings of inferiority, attraction to the West – essentialised as modernisation and the loss of traditional values, acculturation, physical and spiritual deterioration. Twelve years later, at a seminar held in Indonesia, the AKAFA admitted that, although secularisation and modernisation were still dangerous, a powerful rising tide was claiming a ‘come-back to traditional values’ and stressing spiritual values over crude materialism (Serageldin, 1990, 12).

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The AKAFA’s project in Damascus Old City meets some of the proposals Janet Abu-Lughod outlined at the Aiglemont seminar in 1978, to restore and develop ancient towns by recreating an ‘architecture in the spirit of Islam’. According to her, this architecture has to be inspired by brotherhood, equity and mutual responsibility. Some of the principles Abu-Lughod put forward and the AKAFA accepted are that the restoration plan has to meet certain criteria: the site has to be empty, in a historically significant area, owned by the municipality and close to residential structures which need restoration; it must be established, by screening the population to be assisted, that residents have been living in the district for a long time, are eager to share in the experiment, the plan and the work, and that they include experts in building, carpentry and electrical work; the plan must take account of local population needs; public administration has to be involved; external funds may be raised by renting or selling premises to shopkeepers, warehouse-keepers and craftsmen. Having awarded a prize to a famous Syrian architect’s project for the development of the site, the AKAFA then organised the progress of the work. The main buildings being restored are Bayt (‘home’) Nizam and Bayt Siba’i, two huge nineteenth-century houses in the neighbourhood of Saghour; both buildings belong to the Syrian government, both are empty and stand in a damaged area of collapsed buildings. The AKAFA’s aim is to convert both houses into hotels, to make the whole area a tourist attraction managed by the local population. The project is indeed being carried out by exploiting local expertise: the project started with a phase of six months (archeological surveys and on-site studies) directed by architect al-Berry from MMQ, who moved his office to Bayt Siba’i hall, where he works cheek by jowl with AKAFA experts. This will be followed by a two-year phase to carry the project forward, during which interaction with the local population will become closer: local craftsmen will be sold premises near the main houses; craftsmen and carpenters capable of restoring buildings will be found locally, and will be asked to find suppliers of high-quality materials. In the third phase, the restoration itself will be carried out, and then in the final phase the hotels will be set up; the AKAFA is entrusting the task of managing these to experts in the hotel business who live in the area and have previous experience in the management of cultural amenities. Local experts are trusted by the AKAFA to act as authorities on authentic Damascene building traditions. They are in charge of reviving historical associations – or memories – of those traditions through the reproduction of a certain image of local architectural history. The owners of Old City buildings will draw on such images and memories to restore their premises. According to Michel Shatta, an informant interviewed in 2005 and an old

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resident of madina al-qadima: ‘People looking for ancient lifestyle in those venues don’t find just fake tourist places; they sit down, eat, smoke narghile, look at the stones supposed to be ancient, and then they go away’.

Strategies of localisation: the boundary of historical associations Unesco included the Old City of Damascus in the WHL after an inspection in 1978; its experts presented a report in which they stated the reasons of their choice (Chastel et al, 1979): the extraordinary artistic and aesthetic diversity of the Old City, the rarity and significance of its different structures, and the presence of ‘historical associations’. The authors of the report noted that Damascus had been inhabited continuously for several millennia: this was the conclusive point for the inclusion of the ‘Old City’ in the WHL. Unesco’s recognition led the Syrian government to take two important decisions, which have underscored subsequent developments in the Old City. The first was to fix the boundaries of the areas of greatest historical relevance; the second was to put a public corporation in charge of protecting these areas. (The decisions were based on one interpretation of the Unesco mandate, and have been the subject of controversy.) In the first place it was decided that the area of historical relevance was the part of the city enclosed by Nur al-Din’s walls (Figure 5); this part of

Figure 5. Damascus – the restored walls of Nur al-Din.

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the city, perceived as separate from the spreading ville nouvelle (Ecochard and Danger, 1936; Sauvaget, 1934; Thoumin, 1931), had already been cut off from the new city in the 1968 Banshoya-Ecochard urban plan (Ecochard, 1965a; 1965b; 1965c; Ecochard and Banshoya, 1968). The part of the city inside the Nur al-Din walls was designated as the madina al-qadima par excellence. Whole quarters, such as al-Midan, Suq Sarruja, Amara Barraniya and Salhiya, although dating back to before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, were left out of the areas acknowledged as of historical value.7 Nowadays many individuals and groups contest this decision, claiming that other pre-Mandate districts should also benefit from Unesco’s patronage. This is, for instance, the argument advanced by the Friends of Damascus Association (an NGO) in its campaign for the protection of the site where the huge Four Seasons Hotel stands. Further, a Damascene authoress, Siham Tergeman, stresses the historical value of the districts surrounding Suq Sarruja and Bahsa, to which she dedicated her 1994 novel Daughter of Damascus. A Unesco survey carried out in 2008 proposed enlarging the areas of historical relevance (Pini et al, 2008). Secondly, with regard to the duty of public corporations in charge of protecting the madina al-qadima (the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums and the MMQ), a contradiction arises from the friction between the Unesco acknowledgment of the unceasing evolution of the city through five millennia, and the decision to conserve the present historical architectural structure of the Old City. To put this another way, the safeguard model is at odds with the traditional practice of reconstruction, as unceasing evolution is ingrained in the social and architectural features of the environment. In the jargon of gentrification workers, the verbs rammama (‘restore’) and ammara (‘build’) are virtual synonyms. Two corollaries stem from these deliberations: the first is that construction works involving building structures are forbidden in the Old City; the second is that the only materials allowed in the restorations are ‘traditional’ materials (mawad taqlidiyya). The main feature of the traditional Damascene dwelling was the juxtaposition of different blocks or parts giving onto a courtyard, each detached from each other and easily separated or cut off. In this way the built environment could easily adapt to changes made by the groups who inhabited it: for instance, variations in the number of households were accompanied by the addition or removal and sale of blocks. A household’s decline in economic fortunes could be reversed by cutting out and selling off parts of the house; for instance in many iwan (the vault space which occupied the southern side of a Damascene house and overlooked the courtyard) the side overlooking the courtyard could be bricked up and the opposite side opened up onto the alley, so that the iwan could be turned into a workshop or store-room.

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The built environment accommodated wider population movements too: in the former Jewish quarter many houses were adapted, through dividing-up and partitioning, to accommodate Palestinian refugee groups that came to Syria after 1948 and evacuees from the Golan Heights after 1967. Such readjustments were hampered, however, by the ban on new buildings in the Old City. The second corollary leads to the enforcement of a law, brought in by the French Mandate administration in the 1920s, which forbids cement in building works in the ancient quarters. This law was widely ignored until 1996, when a new decision was issued to enforce the former; it regulates restoring and rebuilding activities in the Old City and is now a spectre haunting the madina al-qadima: police patrols and emissaries from MMQ ensure that this law is obeyed, and threaten transgressors with heavy fines or other disincentives. Local police patrols for the most part keep watch over continuous maintenance work on pre-gentrification properties, whereas employees from MMQ supervise the dwellings and other buildings of gentrifiers. The latter gain unhindered access to expensive traditional materials (lebn, kels, teben, qeneb, khashb), and using them becomes an integral part of their adhesion to the model of protecting building traditions. On the other hand, pre-gentrification inhabitants face difficulties in finding such materials (even if some of them find the idea of living in a fully ‘traditional’ environment attractive, according to gentrifiers’ image of tradition), and many of them use cement and other forbidden materials for the routine maintenance of their houses.

Mise en valeur: the production of a valuable space The foundation of the Old City’s restoration was laid by the 1953 Unesco survey in Damascus; the subsequent report suggested that to preserve the area three main paths should be followed: conservation, education and development (mise en valeur) (Collart et al, 1954, 12). As has been argued above, norms of conservation stand in sharp contradiction to inhabitants’ practices in transforming the built environment. Furthermore, such norms also contradict the will to develop the site – indeed, the main concern of the preservation authorities is to mediate between the need to protect a claimed architectural authenticity and the efforts of the chosen (or self-appointed) stakeholders of preservation to develop the site (again in the name of architectural authenticity). Until the 1990s, only the first of the three paths was followed. The General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, and (where the waqf properties were concerned) Protection Committees composed of authorities in antiquities, tourism, culture, the municipality and religious endowments,

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restored the main buildings and monuments, such as the Umayyad Mosque and ’Azem Palace. However, Unesco’s recommendation that the site should be developed remained on paper until the end of the 1980s, when several economic and political changes occurred, affecting the actions of both authorities and private citizens over the site. Economical liberalisation and the opening to the global market (George, 2003; Hinnebusch, 2001) are making private investors interested in the cultural heritage; further, the recent major shifts in the economic relations between the countries in the area (caused by wars in Iraq and the break with Lebanon)8 have deprived Syria of its main regional commercial partners. This has led to a switching of the capital previously invested in international trade into the building sector and real estate – particularly, for the Old City, into the restoration market and gentrification. Builders and other investors involved in this sector benefit from the development of the damaged heritage. Besides historicity, authenticity and tradition – necessary for turning buildings into cultural goods – a new value enters the scene: the exchange value of architectural products. Experience, relations, knowledge and social sentiments, already objectified in the form of cultural goods, undergo a further shift: to commodification. The transformation of cultural goods into commodities is not usually denounced by public opinion, except when cultural amenities are criminally mismanaged – after the plundering of the Baghdad Museum, for instance, the global sale of its Mesopotamian archeological objects, through the eBay virtual market, was roundly condemned in the mass media. Fortunately, no such delinquency has involved the groups of investors that contribute to the economic mise en valeur of the ancient Damascene districts. These investors are among those cooperating in the economic mise en valeur of the city’s past, i.e. transforming the madina al-qadima into a ‘valuable place’. In order to enhance the exchange value of the built environment, they stake specific capital, namely their money supply. Beside investors there exist other groups that own specific capital and refer to other values, nevertheless concurring in the development of the Old City and the increase of its value: these groups are Unesco employees, officials from Syrian government bureaux, restoration architects, master masons and carpenters. Investors ‘coming in’ (al-mustathmarin illi bidakhkhalu) to the Old City and old residents ‘getting out’ (al-sakinin illi bikhraju) are at opposite ends of an arena in which several groups of social actors live and act: new and old residents continuing to live in the Old City and accommodating themselves to changes – Damascenes becoming small hoteliers and real-estate entrepreneurs who carry out partial restorations, university students, civil servants

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and informal-sector workers moving to the Old City to live close to their place of work or study.

Investment of symbolic capital Madina al-qadima is in the south-east of Damascus, and extends out towards Ghouta, the oasis surrounding the Syrian capital. The fertile soil of the oasis is watered by the Barada river and by its canals, dug in far-off times, that are distinctive features of the Damascene urban and rural landscapes; such watercourses supply the main resource for Damascus’s agriculture. Ghouta has large numbers of poplars, olives, hazels, fruit trees (mainly apricots), vegetables, vineyards and cereals (Fisher, 1998; Bianquis, 1981). The Fije spring supplies urban households with water; the Barada valley and Ghouta supply wood in large amounts – poplar wood in particular was a building material until the late Ottoman era in the nineteenth century. The wood in an Arab home provides many mustathmarin with a strong symbolic basis for their self-identification with the space. Some mustathmarin groups stress the physical and symbolic properties of wood, among which is keeping temperatures cool in summer and warm in winter, while conveying sentiments of love and nostalgia to those living in the home. Considering that the Damascus region is marked by a continental climate, with very hot summers (above 38°C) and quite cold – often harsh – winters, one realises that the need for comfortable indoor temperatures leads people to emphasise the insulating properties of building materials. There is no suggestion here, however, of deterministically reducing the symbolic value of the space to the climatic features of the site: warmth, coolness, love and nostalgia are sensations and sentiments embedded in individuals’ relations with their space and contribute to the shaping of group self-representations. Living facilities in the Old City are commonly called buyut ‘arabin (‘Arab homes’): the term covers several products of social labour and several representations of a social world. An ‘Arab home’ is the objectification of such a world, and needs to be explained rather than accepted as an explicative category. For the physical description, in the following, of the most common living facilities in the Old City, I will use the terms ‘home’ and ‘Arab home’ to imply a general and quite abstract model, which includes some common physical features of the living facilities. Conspicuous symbolic capital has been invested in the restoration of Bayt Montlucon, an ancient house in the neighborhood of Qemariah, in the Old City. This house was bought by Jacques Montlucon, Unesco architect, a few years ago. Simone Ricca, Unesco’s contract architect charged with directing the restoration, intended to ‘bring the house back’ to its previous conditions,

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before the modernisation carried out by the former owners in the 1950s. In this restoring site, among the others, I spent several days of my fieldwork: in these sites I was introduced to different teams of restorers, I could observe their strategies and working patterns, and I could follow their work starting from the very fundamentals of houses to be restored or rebuilt. The internal walls of an Arab home are made by vertical beams called ‘columns’ standing on a horizontal one called ‘pillow’. This skeleton is held by clay bricks and a compound of hay and corn called lebn. The verticalhorizontal framework of beams may be repeated two times for each wall. The walls are faced with sun-dried earth and hay sheets (teben) and a layer of lime (kels). This layer is covered with a mixture of water and sand (raml), to absorb the humidity of lime. Once the wall has been smoothed, a layer of hemp fibre is placed over it as a thermal insulator. After that, the wall is painted with water-soluble distemper. Usually, old residents replace teben sheets with cement and face the walls with enamel paint. Such coatings are often removed by mustathmarin, looking for ‘authentic’ (asli) walls and claiming certain features as typical of Damascene houses. This is what happens at Bayt Montlucon, where specific capital (Montlucon’s money supply, Ricca’s high-education capital, master masons’ knowledge capital, MMQ supervisors’ legal capital) is invested to help bring out such qualities of the house as ‘traditionality’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘typicalness’. In accordance with the criteria set by Unesco – both Ricca and Montlucon work for the organisation – to add ancient districts of Damascus to the WHL, in this restoration site mustathmarin are trying to dig up historical association, or memories. Further, they abide by such criteria when they look for rare details in this house, and generally appreciate the quality of rarity, to be found in the architecture. At the top of the west wall of ataba there are two small windows of jansin, a mixture of chalk and coloured glass, which lets light shine through its stitch-work (Figure 6). These windows are damaged, but Ricca decided not to remove them, because of their age, rarity and value (estimated at thousands of dollars, according to master-mason Mohammed Nimr Mustapha); today only two craftsmen manufacture them in Syria. Authenticity, rarity, historicity: such qualities or values are embedded in the space, are mediated through the space and through the specific ways it is qualified and restored, and are expressed in the materials that compose the space. Those residents influenced by mustathmarin styles of restoration, whilst acknowledging the higher qualities of traditional materials, use more common materials such as enamel, cement and iron. Many of them indeed, whilst owning a remarkable ‘symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu, 1992) in

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Figure 6. Looking for historical associations – jansin windows.

the qualities, characteristics and needs of the homes, lack the capital of money and social relations– essential for restoring their houses according to MMQ rules. An old resident of the ancient neighbourhood of Bab Touma, Michel Shatta, recently restored his ghourfa al-douyouf (‘guest room’). To reach it one crosses a neat courtyard, full of plants and birds. Shatta often complains that after restoration the guest room became colder, because a layer of teben, serving as thermal insulator, was removed and replaced with cement. As Shatta – whom I interviewed in March 2005 – puts it: The ancient civilisation was built out of earth (teen) and wood (khashb): it had its roots (jzour) in the earth. What’s the difference between cement and earth (trab)?9 There’s quite a difference! Earth (trab) sends out heat (daf‘) and what sends out heat is called nostalgia (haneen) and love (hob). Cement sends out cold: it obstructs relations (‘alaqa) with love and with emotion (‘atif). Building materials mediate relations, and even convey emotions such as nostalgia and love. Nostalgia may be expressed as deprivation of an environment and certain domestic materials which one misses: according to many old residents, lebn, teben, keneb and kels are expensive materials and the experts in such materials are few and greedy. Recently many anthropologists have characterised nostalgia as the sentiment that motivates the move back to the places recognised or rebuilt like those of one’s own past. Cunningham Bissell (2005) invites us to

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study nostalgia as a specifically anthropological subject and a pivotal social phenomenon.10 According to him, although nostalgia is often treated as a homogeneous, unvarying phenomenon, ‘nostalgic discourses ... are anything but singular. In Zanzibar, as elsewhere, they circulate in a social terrain in which diverse forms of memory are at play’ (2005, 216). As with other memory practices, nostalgia is a social dynamic that can only be understood within specific historical and spatial contexts; further, nostalgia ‘requires an object world to seize on – buildings, fashion, images, and the ephemera of everyday life’ (ibid, 221). For instance, a former resident of the Old City, Khalil, is longing for the stones, the rooms, the walls of the home he sold to a mustathmar who restored it to make a hotel. One day Khalil took me to this home-hotel: I used to live here, I spent my childhood here. In the qa’a we used to receive guests. Over there was my grandmother’s room. My room was on the first floor as well; when I got married, my room became this one downstairs. This was my father’s and mother’s bedroom. This home reminds me of my childhood and of family life: in this home lived four families, not just one. We used to stay always together, for food, drinks, in the evening. Life was more attractive in the past. If a new resident owns the specific monetary capital needed for the orthodox restoration, his nostalgia may result in utopia: I decided to come back because I love the old city: I was born and grew up here; my family used to live here for a long time. In the past life was simple (baseeta), with small reason for worrying: one didn’t need much money, people were happier. Now there is much money, but people spend much and don’t enjoy life (ma bintmat ’bil-hayat). In the past you were sure that your family would help you if need be, but now everyone must fend for himself and face up to his responsibility. In the past there was no progress (hadara); nowadays despite the progress people are not happy, they want more and more.11 New residents own a specific capital of area studies, orientalist readings, historical knowledge. ‘Arab home’ is for them the seat of history, of building traditions, of the balance between man and nature. According to them, traditional materials are essential ways of improving relations between men and their living environment: as Luna Rajab, chairwoman of the ‘Friends of Damascus Association’, told me in an interview in April 2005: ‘Traditional

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materials are natural insulators; ancient houses are built with traditional materials, whereas cement is chemical: living in an ancient home is healthy’. And Ghaned, a film director who in 2005 bought and restored a house in the Qashla Jouaniye neighbourhood of the Old City, whom I interviewed at about the same time, said: I chose to live in the Old City because it’s quieter, far from cars; I love this lifestyle. I love high ceilings; if you live in an Arab home you have a piece of earth and a piece of sky. The Arab home allows you to live in contact with nature and the weather. Since I’ve lived here I feel cold and heat 100 per cent. I feel nature and sometimes it’s hard, but I like it. Since I’ve lived here I haven’t been ill, because my body has got used to weather changes. I’ve got closer relations with walls, wood, earth. Well-off Damascenes, nostalgic for the place former generations left behind, may realise their utopia: in many cases, this involves the ‘come-back’ of descendants of the families that fled (taraku) the Old City in the twentieth century; one of them, ’Abu Mohammed, told me that he was attracted by the charm (seher) of the ancient lifestyle. This is the case for Ra’ed Jabry too, owner of a fashionable coffee shop, Bayt Jabry, whom I interviewed several times in 2005–06; Ra’ed belongs to the family of Rashad Jabry, the first mayor of Damascus after independence from France, who lived in this courtyard home with his parents and his siblings’ households. The house, built by the Jabry family 300 years ago, was purchased by Ra’ed’s grandfather at the beginning of the twentieth century; he paid a considerable sum to the former owner, one of his relatives. When the last inhabitants, three of Ra’ed’s aunts, moved to Beirut in the 1970s, the huge building was rented to craftsmen and storemen, who set up their workshops and storehouses there, as often happens in Damascus Old City. In the mid-1980s almost the entire Jabry family lived outside the city and one wife of young Ra’ed’s grandfather was in charge of collecting rents and controlling the condition of the house. Ra’ed, in his thirties, was the only family member, of his generation, still living in Damascus; he decided to repossess the house and to get rid of the tenants. Rescuing the house was expensive; it took a great deal of time and, because of its dilapidated state, the advice of several lawyers and architects: The craftsmen didn’t look after it: they broke floors and walls; there was a paint workshop and they did paint tests on the walls. There

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were structural problems: there was a crack in the iwan wall from floor to ceiling. There were plenty of wild plants.12 Initially, Ra’ed carried out repairs to the drainage and wiring, and rebuilt the floors and the huge fountain in the middle of the courtyard. After that, doors and windows were restored and the walls were cleaned to reveal the stone’s natural colours. It took a long time to terminate rent contracts; once this was sorted out, the question arose of the huge number of owners, namely all Ra’ed’s grandfather’s cousins: ‘Many of them lived abroad; I spoke with everyone I could reach and said: “If you have money, come and restore the house, as it’s collapsing; otherwise, I’ll work it out by myself”.’13 Then the 35 cousins decided to share the property; but only Ra’ed intended to open and manage a coffee shop there. Part of the shop’s earnings are contractually set aside for the restoration of the house; the rest is divided among the cousins, with Ra’ed due the biggest share. A commitment to the protection of cultural heritage protection is likely to be Ra’ed’s main aim. Bayt Jabry was the first coffee shop to be opened in an ancient home: In 1996 a small coffee shop was opened, with 12 chairs, where you could just smoke narghile and drink tea and coffee. I used to work as a waiter, but with the passing of time the venue grew, we started to serve traditional cold dishes, and I employed three workers – now there are 65. The first customers were friends: I did no advertising.14 In the beginning the door was always closed: it wasn’t a restaurant, it was a home; there were restaurants and coffee shops in town, but none in an Arab home. When somebody knocked at the door, Ra’ed used to go and see who was there. It was a stirring experience for Damascenes coming here, sitting beside the fountain, smoking narghile and enjoying the home environment. Young people growing up in the 1970s and 1980s heard their parents speaking about this area and these homes. The young, seeing for the first time what was hidden in the Old City, cried: ‘Oh! In Damascus we have such things?’ Many of them thought the decorative masonry was false.15 Neighbours at first found a such a haunt in this area strange; after five in the evening, indeed, there was no activity in the Old City – suq and shops were closed. Neighbours were opposed to strangers going around the neighborhood: they thought they drank alcohol and had sex there. Then gradually, inviting them for dinner and showing

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them the activities in the home, I convinced them it was all good clean fun. I was a bit of a forerunner. Lunatics and brave men are the same.16 Ra’ed’s commitment to the protection of his part of the cultural heritage is visible in the words and images on Bayt Jabry’s cards. The cards of Old City haunts often have on the back cartographic representations of the area, with information necessary for customers to reach their destination. In the map of the Bayt Jabry area, drawn by architect Beshr al-Berry, streets and lanes leading to the restaurant are represented as paths through important places and monuments, such as Maktab ’Anbar (the seat of MMQ), a mosque, Nawfara coffee shop, (qahwa al-nafura), the Umayyad Mosque, the steps behind the latter, Suq Midhat al-Basha, Al-Azem palace (qasr), al-Hamrawi alley (zqaq) and Suq al-Bouzuriye. This provides Bayt Jabry – at the centre of the map – with a prominent place among such monuments. The designer’s reference to tradition and antiquity (in the way places and areas are termed, and in the icon reminiscent of the circular decorations of eighteenth-century Damascene houses) leads the walker a path through the cultural heritage of Damascus. In the upper part of the card is written a phrase extolling the house’s historical value: Ya‘ud bina’ hadha al-bayt ila ‘awa’il al-qarn al-thamin ‘ashr wa huwa min al-abniya al-athariyya wa al-marafiq al-tarikhiyya bi-Dimashq. (‘This house dates back to the beginning of the eighteenth century; it is counted among the archeological monuments and historical goods of Damascus’). This phrasing, suggested by architect al-Berry, expressly adds the house to the list of historical monuments in Damascus, and – the card ensures that customers are aware of this – states that it is a site of great archeological and cultural value. It is evident from Bayt Jabry’s card – although it is that of a restaurant – that the owner is concerned to impart information about the atmosphere of the establishment rather than to list the dishes available there. Here historical and archaeological research has been transposed to a consumerist context: the card seems to suggest that it is worthwhile to visit a historical place, eating in a home which is part of Syrian cultural heritage. We are here expressly facing a case of the commodification of Damascene cultural goods.

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Investment of knowledge capital Knowledge of restoration methods is an economic resource, ‘specific capital’ in Bourdieu’s terms. Mu‘allimun who own such capital guard such knowledge closely – almost obsessively – as the following occurrence shows (though I cannot swear that the story is true rather than apocryphal. I was told about the episode by Mohammed Nimr Mustapha Abu Shihab, the foreman at Montlucon’s restoration site; he is an expert in restoring ancient houses with traditional building materials. At Montlucon’s home Mohammed showed me a restored wall in the hall to the right of the iwan, and asked me proudly: ‘Have you ever seen a wall like this?’. This rhetorical question, anticipating a negative reply, implied knowledge of the secret kept by that wall. This secret lay in the mixture used to build it, called khabur, consisting of water, sand, lime, dried tar and ash. He told me that nobody could make a khabur like he does. His sand, indeed, is mined 1500 feet underground; it lacks salt and for this reason does not melt like normal sand – which is considered itchy to sleep on, unlike Mohammed’s sand. He does not reveal the secrets of his sand to workmates that he would not trust with his life: to keep the secret, he claims it is normal sand. The secret was discovered through a trick: he and his colleague Bilal ’Abd al-Rasal’ (known as Abu Bilal) entered the site of a house being restored. The master mason, who thought they were foreigners – Algerians or Moroccans, because of their dark-skin and black, bushy, curly hair – invited them to take a seat and some tea. They remained silent as they watched the master mason preparing his khabur and talking about the characteristics of the sand with his aides, thinking Mohammed and Bilal could not understand him (Syrian and Maghrebi dialects of Arabic are mutually incomprehensible). Mohammed sat observing, smoking and drinking his tea, and trying to commit the procedure to memory. After some time he stood up and greeted his host in perfect Syrian Arabic. The master mason, astonished, asked him about his origins and his occupation: Mohammed revealed that he was a Syrian mason and slipped away: ‘God gave us slyness, we have to use it!’ This episode highlights the absence of consistency in the communication of knowledge in the field of restoring ancient houses; Syrian universities do not offer courses in restoration, and relevant learning is thus confined to the experiential. Nevertheless, it is actually Mohammed’s experience that makes him a point of reference for the architects who direct the restorations. The lack of specific higher education in the field of restoration is strictly related to the question of nostalgia. As architect Luna Rajab puts it: ‘It’s difficult to know how to work traditional material. One must feel the material,

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one must know why it isused. We lack experts knowing how to develop traditional materials, how to help them evolve. We need research’.17 Michel Shatta, an old resident mentioned above, justified his decision to restore his guest room with cement by saying that there was a lack of experts in the restoration of ancient houses. It is indeed not easy to use traditional materials: ‘Had I left trab, the room would have crumbled. One can no longer do restorations as before, because there is nobody with a good knowledge of the Arab home. The old generation is dead’.18 Since Syrian university faculties of architecture do not offer postgraduate courses in the restoration of ancient buildings, many Damascene architects working in this sector attend such courses abroad. For instance, Luna Rajab holds a postgraduate qualification in the restoration and maintenance of historical monuments and archeological sites, earned at the Lebanese University, in collaboration with Chaillot University in France. It would be interesting to investigate the causes of this lacuna in Syrian university provision, all the more surprising in that the country has different sites of historico-cultural interest, among which as many as five are listed in the WHL (the ancient city of Damascus, the ancient city of Bosra, the Palmyra site, the ancient city of Aleppo, Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Din), and that reference to architectural traditions seems to be a constant feature in the discourses on the construction of a Syrian national identity in the wider context of the Mediterranean area or the Arab world (see for instance the preface to Traditional Syrian Architecture (2004) by Tammam Fakouch, DirectorGeneral of Antiquities and Museums of the Syrian Arab Republic). In the absence of adequate professional education in Syria, the transmission of restoration knowledge is through oral tradition passed on from generation to generation. Mohammed Nimr Mustapha was groomed for the restoration of ancient houses by Dawd ’Abu Shar, a Christian from Ma’loula, in 1991. At the time ’Abu Shar was restoring a convent in Damascus. As he said to Mohammed: ‘I’m not a master: somebody that knows more than me could come and teach me’;19 so whenever he sees a restoration site, he always takes the opportunity to look it over, ‘because there’s always something to learn’.20 The lack of a specific higher education need not embarrass Damascene architects: knowledge acquisition through experience may reflect well on them. According to architect Zabiyta (who nonetheless attended a postgraduate course in ancient-building restoration in Italy): ‘One must enhance one’s savoir-faire. I learned it all more by doing than by studying at the university. My workers have learned over time to be more and more precise, and now they have their own savoir-faire’.21 Mu‘allimun who own this knowledge capital can bring pressure on investors and on new residents; as specific capital, knowledge of traditional

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restoration techniques can place them in an ideal position to bargain with employers. Working hard, an expert mu‘allim’s wages can reach S£ (Syrian pounds) 35,000 (£470 sterling) monthly, well over the salary of a mediumlevel civil servant (who earns perhaps S£9,600). Mu‘allimun bargain over their workers’ wages with the employers; non-specialised masons earn some S£300 per diem, though usually mu‘allimun specialising in restoration obtain higher wages for their workers. They are charged with dividing the wages among the workers on Thursday, the last working day of the week. Such mu‘allimun can afford to choose whether to accept or to reject a job: if Mohammed does not like the architect in charge of the restoration, for instance, he refuses to work with him, ‘even if he fills the fountain with money for me!’22 Apart from the benefits that can derive from direct bargaining with employers, mu‘allimun often resort to other expedients to supplement their own salaries. As he is unique in knowing how to find raw materials to amalgamate khabur and to use other traditional materials, the mu‘allim often puts in higher estimates than what he expects to spend. For example, sufficient hay to face the walls of two rooms costs S£500–600: Mohammed often puts in a double estimate: ‘So, if there is any trouble during the work, everything is all right’.23 Sometimes he resorts to similar expedients to buy a new column or ‘pillow’. In this way workers obtain ownership of traditional materials: this often amounts to a re-appropriation of the means of production, over which they normally have no control. As Mohammed puts it: ‘My sons know how to read and write; I don’t: I prefer to write with my own material, lime [kels]. Lime and lebn course through my veins. I talk with the walls, and they tell me how to proceed with my work’. The product itself, a restored house, is out of workers’ reach: ‘If you consider that it takes at least 12 logs to build a wall, and each one costs S£1000, it takes S£12,000 for a wall. A new house is cheaper: a hammer costs S£10, and the wall is less thick’.24 Architects also establish a particular relation with the materials used. According to architect Na’im Zabiyta, the restoration of a Damascene house requires the constant presence of the architect on site: You must see, touch the stone to sort out what the house needs. For instance, we have a 35-inch wall and we have to build a window: how do we manage? To get such things one has to stay at the scene: you can’t draw a project and give it to the workers, as with new buildings. When you work at restoration inside a house, you feel what a house wants, what it tells you. It’s the house that decides. You find surprises at any time, unexpected things – so you have to change your mind

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and revise the project. I love working on ancient houses, because one understands how the architects used to think in the past.25 The architect in charge of the restoration, like the workers, does not usually own the finished product. When I asked Zabiyta why he didn’t live in a Damascene home, which he loves so much, he answered by shaking his head and saying he would like to, but it was too expensive. There is a general awareness that the production process has to take a long time: the longer the time spent in restoration, the better the outcome. According to one mustathmara (a female mustathmar) whom I interviewed in 2005: ‘If the landlord wants a hasty job, he gets by but the outcome is not good’. Usually on a restoration site workers say: ‘The work will be finished in two months’, but this is a way of indicating that no realistic estimate can be made at this stage: it is well known that a Damascene house requires patience and a lengthy period of time. According to Na‘im Zabiyta: Many landlords think that a restoration is a matter of rapid manual work. But it requires time, it requires the expert to spend hours watching and touching materials, guessing why a wall is made in a certain way, studying the reasons for a certain technique, and acting according to what he has understood.26

Production and working patterns As I have stressed above, cultural goods are fruits of specific production and working patterns, in which the different actors use strategies to enhance their specific capital and to improve their position in the production hierarchies. Although it seems trite to stress it, the gentrification (islah) of Damascus Old City is made possible by the working patterns on restoration sites. The concept Damascenes draw on to describe ongoing changes in the Old City is islah, (‘gentrification’), interpreted as architectonic and social improvement of the area. Many Damascenes believe that a space possesses its own qualities (salahiye); these qualities can get lost, in which case they have to be recovered – but what seems to be this retrieval of lost qualities is actually the production of new qualities and values, grounded in groups’ imaginative construction of the space. Encounters between different groups with active roles in islah, with different forms of imaginative constructs, different reference points as to values and qualities, give rise to compromises, controversies and adaptations; we need to observe the processes through which qualities and values

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are socially constructed, to look for the ways in which such qualities become as it were embedded in the space, and how the space itself, through restoration, increases in value. The general working pattern in the restoration of an Arab home is the following: a mustathmar purchases a house from the former owners, who cannot afford to spend capital (or see no point in doing so) for the maintenance of the building; they therefore seek to sell it, since also the price of buildings in the Old City is rising.27 The mustathmar may intend to use the house for living in or as a commercial venue (coffee shop, restaurant, hotel). He brings in an architect – an expert in the restoration of ancient buildings – who produces a plan for the proposed restoration. The architect expounds his project to the MMQ, which measures its adequacy against the two corollaries mentioned above; if the MMQ’s advice is favourable, the mustathmar pays a tax for the restoration. The architect then asks a mu‘allim (master mason) to form a team of carpenters; the mu‘allim brings his acquaintances in, often young men living in his district and, in the case of immigrants from other parts of Syria, from the same background. Once restoration has begun, the carpenters and the mu‘allim work on the site for eight hours every day. Among the mu‘allim’s tasks is opening the site in the morning – he therefore holds a key to the entrance door. Sometimes the architect stays away from the site to deal with the mustathmar and the MMQ; the latter sends an agent every two or three days to check if the work being done is in accordance with the plan previously agreed. MMQ inspectors have open access to restoration sites, where those in charge and the workers treat them in a familiar manner. Inspectors whom I followed could go round sites without arousing resentment: they were not seen as nit-picking supervisors who would stop the work if restoration norms were not followed. Indeed, at some sites it seemed to me that I was myself suspected by the workers of being an informer for some institution (though this mainly happened in the early stages of the fieldwork, when the director of the restoration still had not found the time to introduce me to the team). Very often at restoration sites MMQ inspectors become part of the workers’ network of friendly and familiar relations, though they are usually architects who stand out by their way of dressing, speaking and behaving. Architect al-Berry, for instance, always has a thin propelling pencil in his breast pocket, and inspects restoration directors’ drawings and designs, sometimes helping them to design small details. Architect Na‘im Zabiyta dresses informally, and often jots down his notes on a palmtop, which he also uses to take photographs. Workers address them as ustadh (‘professor’), a term widely used to address a graduate, acknowledging his or her authority in specific contexts.

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The architect and the mu‘allim play key roles in this situation. If the mustathmar is a foreigner, the Syrian architect – who usually speaks at least one language besides Arabic – is the only one who can mediate between his (the mustathmar’s) requirements and the workers. Usually the mustathmar does not deal with the mu‘allim and the carpenters, delegating this to the architect, to whom he allocates the money needed for the restorations. He then deducts his own fee, pays the mu‘allim and gives him the amount needed to buy building materials and to pay the workers. The workers weave solidarity networks, based on various factors but chiefly on common geographical origins, and consequently (following the general settlement pattern in many Middle Eastern cities) on common residence in a certain district of Damascus. Sometimes the architect has his own team; more often the director of the restoration gets the mu‘allim to pick a team from among his acquaintances, and very often from his own district. For instance, the workers restoring the former house of Khalil (mentioned above) are from the suburb of Tell. Architect Zabiyta’s workers are almost all of Palestinian origin, interrelated and from a Shiite town in Syria. Montlucon’s workers are from Golan, live in Berzeh district and have long known each other. Both mu‘allimun, Mohammed Nimr Mustapha Abu Shihaband and Bilal ’Abd al-Rasal ’Abu Bilal, were asked by architect Ricca to pick a team, in acknowledgement of their specific capital: their relations with other workers. Mohammed and Bilal have together restored several houses since 1992, and architect Zabiyta has entrusted them with many tasks. The two mu‘allimun are bound by fraternal fellowship – as they put it: ‘Me and Mohammed are one thing: one and one makes one. It takes few acts and words for us to understand each other. When I’m under the ceiling and he’s on the floor we look each other in the eye and immediately we know what to do’.28 In the team restoring Montlucon’s house a playful hierarchic distinction is in force according to skin colour: the pretence is that humbler tasks devolve on ‘blacks’ rather than ‘whites’. Making tea, on a portable gas cooker, is a task for the workers, who serve it to asatidh (plural of ustadh) and visitors (Figure 7). Very often directors and MMQ supervisors know each other – sometimes MMQ employees themselves direct restorations, in which case supervisors are their colleagues or their assistants. Officially, MMQ architects cannot direct private restorations, yet this rule is sometimes ignored. When the director of restoration is not an MMQ employee, behaving familiarly towards supervisors is a means of warding off their opposition to restorations which violate MMQ norms. (Making a Damascene house habitable, according to a new resident’s standards, entails building work that cannot accord with these norms.)29

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Figure 7. Tea break at the Bayt Montlucon restoration site. On my trip to Damascus in June 2004 my landlord was not in town, but I was able to see the room where he stayed during his visits to the city. There was a mattress resting on the roof, a small closet fitted into a recess in the wall, with a few clothes and books. This room was part of a mezzanine cutting the hall on the left of the iwan. In other restoration sites, the restorers construct small bathrooms and kitchens. As I have stressed above, architectonic operations that alter the frames of the buildings are forbidden in the Old City, but MMQ supervisors allow such operations as running plumbing and pipework through the walls or installing bathroom and kitchen fittings, provided they do not damage the building. However, architects cannot avoid transforming the space if the home is to be made habitable. According to Maria Kaika (2005), the transformation of raw materials (water, gas, etc.) into goods necessary to make the house habitable is one of the techniques through which modern individuality is built. Improvements carried out in the Old City’s buildings during the twentieth century provided old residents with direct access to resources such as electricity,

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drinking water, and water for other uses – brought to Damascus from different springs, and inside the home led to different taps; such work is the dowry of modernity, shared among Syrian cities during the decades of Ba’ath party government. This dowry – the concealment of cables and pipes underground or inside the walls that carry controlled and urbanized nature inside the home – are essential to new residents building their houses, and in particular show that they adhere to the development of cultural heritage – which paradoxically entails rejecting old residents’ earlier improvements. Where these are visible (such as plaster and enamel on the walls) new residents remove them, but leave the invisible ones (the infrastructures allowing the transformation of water and gas) beneath the surface, in order to make possible the so-called ‘contact with nature’ (earth, wood, the trees in the courtyard, the water of the fountain). It is possible that the functions of the rooms may change totally, for instance when a new owner installs plumbing and gas piping for a kitchen or bathroom. Basements (qabu) are normally used as larders by old inhabitants, as they remain cool throughout the year; Montlucon’s basement, however, will be the main kitchen. In June 2004 a plumber had installed marble sinks, and was trying to find a solution to the seepage of sewage from near drains, as the qabu is under the street surface. The space on the west side of the qa’a had originally been a hammam, but the former dwellers had stopped using it; here a small sauna will be attached. A dome with holes drilled to let the light in through coloured glass has been fitted on the ceiling, as in a public hammam. Thus a venue which in Middle Eastern cities is designed for public encounters of men and, on specific days, of women – by definition a place outside the home – may become, through restoration, a private domestic place. This shows that authenticity and tradition are negotiable concepts, emerging from strategies which social actors carry out to validate or contest norms and discourses of institutional actors acknowledged as authorities on cultural heritage. New residents, the stakeholders in the Old City’s development, negotiate with MMQ, the main such authority, over the criteria and techniques suitable for combining authenticity – a quality embedded in materials and building structures – with habitability.

Commodification A house restored following ‘traditional’ criteria (even if there is dispute about which authority is handing down the knowledge of such criteria), using ‘authentic’ materials and made habitable, is where the objectification of tradition, history and dwelling culture takes place: it becomes an

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‘Arab home’. As in other sites where cultural heritage is being developed, in Damascus the development field is occupied mainly by private persons (new residents and entrepreneurs), favoured (since the 1980s) by economic liberalisation and (in 2004) by the abolition of state control of investment in private tourism. They enter the development market with their own specific capital, made up of money and political support, and help to raise the exchange value of the built environment (to the detriment of other social actors’ values). Even the institutions in charge of protecting cultural heritage acknowledge these private actors as partners in the conservation and development of local resources, and ‘the seemingly “impassable divide” between growth and conservation is imagined to be bridged by marketoriented sustainable development’ (West, 2005, 635). Indeed, in the conceptual framework to which such institutions subscribe, the built environment is a capital to be developed; the same framework informs Unesco’s practices. As Collart, Abdul-Hak and Dillon, commissioned by Unesco and by the Syrian Ministry of National Education to carry out a survey on Damascene and Syrian monuments in 1954, stressed in their report, these monuments are a capital whose value may change with the passage of time, and this must be taken into account in their mise en valeur. The monuments may indeed ‘foster profitable economic activities’, yet they are ‘almost completely unexploited’ (Collart et al, 1954, 12). The latest Unesco report (Pini et al, 2008) stressed that the historic fabric of the Old City is attractive for tourists and visitors and is capable of offering expenditure and income possibilities for Syrians. In 2005 the first hotel in the madina al-qadima was opened; directly targeting international clients, it is named Bayt al-Mamlouka (‘Mameluke’s home’) after a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century arch discovered in the building, in which there are many similar historical associations. Maya, manager of the hotel and an art historian, whom I interviewed in 2005, said she ‘chose’ the Mameluke period and sought out historical associations of the same era; she chose certain spatial elements and emphasised them: doors (‘I did research on the Damascene doors in the sixteenth century’30) and windows; other elements are reminders of the past: a nineteenth-century tailor’s table, an old chair (Figure 8). Local architectural history is thus objectified: the Mameluke period becomes recognisable in a building or in certain objects. Reified, it can be ‘chosen’, touched, make to emerge from the past like an archeological find. As Berardino Palumbo stresses, the world of heritage is ‘objectified’, shaped by ‘cultural things’, items produced by history and kept, salvaged and exploited by our nostalgic and ‘fetishist’ contemporary world (2006, 58).

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Figure 8. Waiters at Bayt al-Mamlouka. The very phrase ‘Arab home’ seems the objectification of a vanished social world which developers seek to revitalise, the reification of the ‘ancient civilisation’ with which mustathmarin want to set up a new link. They summarise in the term ‘Arab home’ their ideas and representations of that social world. In the hotels and coffee shops of the Old City, ‘ancient civilisation’ can be bought and tasted. As Maya puts it: ‘Foreigners look for an idea (fikra) of an Arab home; why wouldn’t they be allowed to taste (istadhuq) an Arab home?’ Khalil himself, the informant I have several times mentioned, underlines the reasons why staying in a hotel in the Old City is so charming: ‘Ancient homes are rich in culture (ghaniye al-thaqafe): people love to come in, to observe, to touch. After staying here, one seeks (bitlub, literally ‘orders’) this way of living (q’ada)’.31 Thus tradition – objectified in the materials and forms of the Arab homes – is commodified: this is what happens when entrepreneurs enter the cultural heritage development business. Like food in a restaurant, ‘traditional’ structures can be ‘tasted’; the ‘way of living’ can be ‘ordered’ as in a coffee shop. Culture (thaqafa), once reified, can be sought out, observed, touched, like an object; commodified, it can be found and purchased. At this point the ‘Arab home’ commodity is ready to move up in the property market.32 Mustathmarin show the old residents what their buildings are worth, in a market hungry for their properties. The rise in Old City land values,33 the high cost of materials, the greed of experts and the high

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levels of restoration tax lead many residents of the Old City to dispose of their houses and move into apartments in the new city. The decline of the extended family as a living unit34 makes it impossible for old residents to look after such huge spaces in the absence of their sons’ families. As Moafaq Dughman, former director of MMQ, explained to me in an interview in 2004, ‘When the father dies and many children remain, problems arise and living together (ittifaq) becomes impossible’. Among the causes of the decline of the extended family are the emigration of younger people from Damascus to other muhafaza,35 or to Gulf countries (Fargues, 2006), Europe, North America and North Africa (UN Statistical Commission & Eurostat, 2001), and changes in new couples’ residential choices, living with mothers rather than fathers. Many old residents thus perceive their properties as useless, or even a drain on their finances, while aware that their area attracts mustathmarin and that land values are rising. The best option for them, therefore, is to sell their homes to well-off people. Also, the price of a house rises when the seller knows the buyer has a plan to attract tourists. For instance, there has recently been an exodus of old residents from the Qashla district to Abbaseen,36 outside the Old City, and from the Bab Touma district towards the neighbouring outer district of Qassa’.37 Khalil (already mentioned above) moved from Bab Touma to Qassa’, yet he remains thoroughly familiar with Bab Touma’s geography, and sees his former neighbours every day; he still thinks of it as his own neighborhood. Old Mr and Mrs Serji, former owners of the huge house which is now the Bayt al-Mamlouka hotel, in Bab Touma, have moved to an apartment in Qassa’. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Serji family, whose name many Bab Touma inhabitants know, lived in their home; when they sold it, the rising Serji generation had already moved: married children had left the Old City for other Damascus districts with their nuclear families, so the elderly parents decided to sell their property. The possibility cannot be ruled out that old residents may make capital out of the rising interest in the Old City: many of them, indeed, turn into semi-professionals in the hotel business and rent out rooms. For instance, Mr and Mrs Selloun, with whom I stayed for a considerable period of time, were offered a large sum of money for their house by a bidder who wanted to convert it into a coffee shop. Their only son lives in Guadeloupe and his remittances contribute to his parents’ means of support, yet over the past few years their main source of income has been renting out the firstfloor rooms to foreigners – mostly students attending Arabic courses at Damascus University or in language institutes. This income allowed them to turn down the offer and to stay in their home. It is generally admitted

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that selling one’s house is not for far-sighted persons – as the saying goes: ‘The one who sells his home gets rich for one year, the one who buys a house gets poor for one year’ (illi bibi‘u baythum bighanna sini wa illi bishtari bayt bifqar sini). Nevertheless, cultural amenities and the tourist sector in the Old City are tightly controlled by the mustathmarin: they are the main actors in the objectification of history, building traditions and identity, and the main stakeholders in the commodification of the products that incorporate such objectifications. The process of producing restored ‘Arab homes’ assigns these objects a surplus value that turns them into commodities in the property market and in the tourist sector. Restored houses are full of mysterious, floating qualities: culture, tradition, history, nature, mankind’s genius – an impression reinforced by the quotation reported above from the 1953 Unesco survey. New potential residents think that these qualities are what lend the spatial objects a higher value. They fail to realise that what enhances the value of restored houses is actually a process, involving physical and mental energy, time, imagination and specific capital. This process is one of social labour. The mystery surrounding a spatial object – which seems lifeless, but is a social product – makes it more attractive and raises its exchange value. According to Lefebvre: In the sensorial-sensual space (practical-sensible) one can’t see the very social relations, the relations of production. They are bypassed . . . Such sensorial-sensual space introduces itself inside the visible-readable, underestimating the issues that actually dominate the social practice (i.e. the labour, the division of labour, the organization of labour). The sensorial-sensual space . . . contains social relations (1978, 211). Marxist analysis, applied by Lefebvre to the space at large, casts light, in the case of cultural-heritage development, on the question of the higher, mysterious and fluid qualities attaching to the built environment in ancient districts. New and potential residents feel attracted to the old buildings, especially if the latter are rare, if they keep historical associations alive, and if at the same time they are fully habitable and have all modern conveniences installed. These people fail to discern the reasons for this attraction, which lies in the very mystery of the object: it is attractive because of its qualities (rarity, historical association, inhabitability, and the like). They realise that there must be a force out of which such qualities were created; but they hold that this force is ‘tradition’ (al-taqalid), ‘history’ (al-tarikh), ‘costume’ (al-‘adat), ‘origin’ (al-’asl) or ‘roots’ (al-jzour), rather than what

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it is – social labour. Interpreted from this perspective, discourses on antiquity, tradition, authenticity and cultural heritage come across as ideologies that, embedded in a space, prescribe the location of certain activities, establish ‘social standing’ (fashionable or ill-famed districts, districts to invest in and districts to leave) and explain the reasons for this state of affairs. As Berardino Palumbo puts it, ‘ “identities”, “cultures”, “traditions”, “localities”, “authenticity”, “typicalness” are essentialized and essentializing products of globalization’ (2006, 60) and they are caught inside mechanisms of objectification and of claim, of ideological and reflexive statement that, framed in the relations between powers, institutions and the actors of different political scenes, shape their status and very often transform them into commodities, properties exploited inside the market of differences. Once we go into all the details of such ideologies from a Marxist perspective, we realise that what shapes the social space are productive forces, working patterns and social relations. Traces of such forces are removed from the spatial objects, as are those of workers; ideologies that mask productive forces remain (Lefebvre, 1978, 210–12). Removing the traces of manufacturing processes on the one hand facilitates divorcing the product from the worker, and on the other hand makes the spatial object a commodity whose higher qualities people acknowledge. The more long and careful the development and restoration work, the more the value of the commodity rises on the property market. Thus the entity called an ‘Arab home’, produced by the objectification of a social world constructed out of antiquity, authenticity, rarity, historicity and typicalness, acquires another value – an exchange value – with which it is equipped for circulation in the cultural-heritage market.

Exclusions and threats The development of cultural heritage brings about both threats and exclusions. Indeed, rises in the value of land and buildings leads, on the one hand, to increases in rents: many tenants, up until recently protected by their agreement with owners for the setting of a fair rent,38 move from their homes. On the other hand, some owners, not commanding the capital needed for restoration, sell their houses to builders. Indeed, the price of restoration materials, the cost of employing experts in restoration techniques and the standard official procedures for carrying out restorations have deterred many old residents from restoring their houses. Since the 1980s, after Unesco’s endorsement, Damascus regional council ruled that the Old City’s built environment must be protected; as a consequence, residents were restrained from modernising, changing or extending their houses in the wake of the Damascus property boom and accompanying demographic increase.

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Demolitions, extensions, the dividing-up of rooms by the erection of interior walls, were forbidden or made hugely complex under the procedures brought in by the institutions in charge of protecting cultural heritage. From then on any restoration or change, even of minor importance, had to be carried out using expensive ‘traditional’ or ‘original’ materials; and structural changes were simply forbidden. For many old residents the solution was to get rid of their properties, often at a very low price, and to move to other urban areas, chiefly into modern apartments; others stayed in the Old City, carrying out ‘secondary adjustments’39 that allowed them to keep on living in situ, tailoring their lifestyle to the changes in the ‘image’ of the district and in the socio-cultural context introduced by new residents and mustathmarin. Carpenters and architects, though working on the restoration, do not own the product of their labour, namely the developed space launched onto the market; and former owners of cultural goods are excluded from their development. Damascenes of rural origins living in undeveloped neighbourhoods of the Old City, Palestinian refugees and other groups that had adapted houses to their needs were treated as threats to the development of cultural heritage. In the 1953 Unesco survey these groups were picked out as responsible for the deterioration of ancient districts: buildings were indeed being used for purposes other than those the builders had envisaged, and were badly altered and converted (Collart et al, 1954, 9). Collart and his colleagues deplored the fact that buildings were left totally without maintenance, because owners were ‘too poor to cover needed expenses’ (ibid, 10). These groups – ‘the poor and refugees’ (ibid, 11) – were responsible for erecting ‘unsalubrious and parasitical buildings’ and for turning monuments into dwellings: the real ‘diseases of an old city’ (ibid, 18). According to the Unesco survey, the protection of cultural heritage involves keeping the picturesque quality of ancient areas, their beauty and their tourist appeal (ibid, 20). Preserving residents’ needs was not among the aims; on the contrary, ‘the poor’, ‘refugees’, immigrants from the countryside living in ancient districts hindered the protection of monuments. Even in mustathmarin discourses, the groups that moved from the countryside to Damascus at the beginning of the twentieth century are picked out as mainly responsible for the deterioration of the Old City that drove well-off families to move to other urban areas. The latest Unesco report (Pini et al, 2008), although recognizing the importance of implementing the network of canalization (sewage, water supply and drainage), of renovating the electrical network and of repaving the streets, highlighted the deterioration of built environment and the overall lack of maintenance. The authors stressed that the poor resident population is responsible for such ‘pathologies’ (ibid, 14).

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Old residents’ house conversions seriously concern the MMQ. Architect al-Berry one day led me on a walk over the roofs of a suq, showing me what he called the ‘sprawling building’; he chiefly blamed the new rooms that old residents had built on the roofs. Such habits, according to al-Berry, show the insensitivity of the local population to the protection of cultural heritage, and contribute to the deterioration of the Old City. The practice of building closets, potting sheds and other rooms on roofs is widespread among old residents. They also store tools for maintaining the roof itself – paint rollers, sacks of lime and sometimes cement (a building material forbidden in the Old City) – since the roof has to be waterproofed periodically to avoid rain seepage damaging the frame of the house, which is made (as noted earlier) mostly of wooden beams and mud hammers (lebn). As many architects from the MMQ stress, ‘the Old City is growing upwards’. Although widespread, such practices are illegal and punishable, according to the 1978 corollaries. This is one of the reasons why the MMQ is perceived by old residents as an alien body; the norms it imposes are matters of general concern for old residents, who remain wary of MMQ employees. Not long ago an attempt was made to conduct a census of the Old City’s population and buildings; an MMQ team was sent to collect information on family members, their incomes, their level of education, their housing conditions and the layout of their houses. The work remained uncompleted, due to the difficulty the team found in winning the trust and cooperation of residents; the latter were suspicious, and found the inquiry an undue intrusion into their living space. Further, the alienation of old residents from cultural-heritage development is one ideological means which new residents exploit to justify their ‘come-back’ to the Old City: many stress the contrast between themselves and their social environment, and some consider purchasing a house in the Old City as in a sense reconquering a space taken away from the legal owner by people ‘from outside’. According to Porter (2003), the authorities in charge of protecting the Old City of Fez identify people from rural areas as responsible for the destruction of cultural heritage, and in doing so they are acting in accordance with the stereotypical setting of city (civilisation) against countryside (backwardness). Through protection projects such stereotypes can be institutionalised in an official, authoritarian and state-driven version of the past; thus development of cultural heritage becomes an ideological tool to discriminate between Fassi (Fez citizens) and new incomers. (Michael Herzfeld (1991) has studied similar dynamics in Crete.) The terms MMQ officers use, dealing with the current changes in the Old City, show their adherence to the mustathmarin perspective: in their idiom, districts under protection and development are presented as areas of distinction, places with lofty qualities related chiefly to the past. The sense

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of nostalgia for past qualities and values is nourished through various strategies, and remains in the concept of islah, or gentrification. The verb sallaha means ‘to improve’, implying ‘playing an active part in implementing something or somebody’s qualities’. The concept of islah, derived from the same root, implies an action carried out to raise the qualities of an object or an individual, to enhance or dignify.40 Besides islah, the terms MMQ officers use dealing with cultural heritage development are ‘awakening’ (sahwa), ‘awareness’ (wa‘i), and chiefly ‘the come-back to the Old City’ (ruju‘ li-l-madina al-qadima). The last of these refers back to its opposite, the ‘way out’ that occurred from the period of the French Mandate (1920–46) until the 1980s, when the wealthiest groups of Damascenes fled the Old City for more prestigious urban areas; the expansion of the districts of Mezze, ’Abu Rumaneh and Malki was mainly due to these new arrivals. The owners of buildings in the Old City rented them out cheaply to rural immigrants; large Arab houses, previously the home of a single extended family, were divided into flats for a number of families, with new structures then being added in the available spaces (courtyards, roofs). Many immigrants and Palestinian refugees still dwell in these houses. Increases in land values cause rents to rise,41 forcing old tenants to move from the Old City. While new residents and mustathmarin ‘come back’, old tenants and former owners move out. With respect to the ‘come-back’, the public authorities ignore this outbound flow, underrating the presence of people who have been living in these districts for many years and failing to notice that the ‘awakening’ and the ‘come-back’ produce an opposite effect: an exodus from the Old City. With respect to the ‘awakening’ (of interest in the Old City) the authorities suppose that previously the rule was neglect, as if people there were uninterested in living in a satisfying urban space and were instead the main reason for the deterioration of the built environment. The MMQ identifies mustathmarin and new residents as stakeholders in the Unesco-supported development of the Old City, as do the authors of the latest Unesco report, welcoming the relevant increase of restaurants and hotels as an important opportunity to ensure the economic vitality of the Ancient City and to provide the financial resources that are necessary to preserve the architectural heritage (Pini et al, 2008, 25). As Paige West stresses, when the free market is entrusted with the task of protecting cultural heritage, institutions acknowledge as main actors those stakeholders willing to turn protected sites into financial resources; people already living in these sites come to be seen as a threat to the cultural heritage and to the site itself (2005, 635).

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Conclusion The Damascus regional council’s decisions after the Unesco mandate on cultural-heritage protection have two objective corollaries: the safeguarding of the structures and the employment of traditional materials. Such decisions and their corollaries give rise to a further set of (subjective) corollaries, or ‘secondary adjustments’, through which social actors involved in culturalheritage development arrange to act and operate in their own environment, and at the same time to develop their own concepts and representations relating to the qualities of that environment. In this way an arena of action and debate emerges, in which the spatial object becomes a product and a producer of social values, which have to be understood from cultural, symbolic and economic perspectives. A remarkable investment of social actors’ imaginative and symbolic capital has turned the Old City of Damascus into a desirable and valuable arrière-pays. Such imaginative investment is carved into the shape of an ‘Arab home’ – the centre of the ‘elsewhere’ that the middle classes desire and restoration workers build. An ‘Arab home’ is an object built of wood and stone, but also with values embedded in it. When the exchange value outweighs other values, real-estate entrepreneurs become the main actors in cultural-heritage development; their role as cultural-heritage curators and as developers, beside their being economic actors, is more or less openly acknowledged by the institutions in charge of cultural-heritage protection. Turned into commodities – and handled by social actors who recognise Unesco values in themselves and who are acknowledged by institutions as the stakeholders of cultural-heritage development – buildings, monuments and the whole site gain in universally measurable exchange value. As a consequence, the ‘universal value’ mentioned in the 1954 Unesco report assumes concrete, measurable features. A space (a home, a neighborhood, an urban district) becomes an exchange value, and the developed spatial products become commodities to exchange in property and tourist markets. Cultural-heritage development drives land and building values up; rents rise, no longer kept down by state edict. A fair proportion of the resident population, lacking the wherewithal to restore and develop their cultural goods, are seen by protection institutions as a threat, and forced to flee the Old City for other urban districts. Forms of social unease appear among these displaced people, deprived of their familiar environment and set down in areas where they cannot rely on the neighbours, local solidarity and extended-family links which previously shaped their existence.

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Notes * This chapter focuses on the city of Damascus describing actors and agents involved in the conservation of its urban heritage before the beginning of the conflict there in early 2011. Although the social and material conditions of the Syrian people have changed dramatically, the author intends to leave a historical testimony of the recent past of the country. 1. I had a conversation on these issues with Ulf Hannerz during the seminar on The Geocultural Imagination: Scenarios and Storylines, at the University of MilanBicocca, 2007. 2. Urban designer Michel Ecochard, in the first urban plan, designed-in demolition and street-widening, but soon the mandatory authorities decided to safeguard ancient districts from major modernisation. The new mandatory tendency was to preserve ancient districts as relics of the local past: an irrational, traditionalist, exotic and sensuous past, according to Ecochard’s orientalist reading, in sharp contrast to the modern, progressive, rational and well-ordered new urban forms, according to theories Ecochard had studied at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris (Mazieres, 1985) 3. As Geoff Porter (2003) underlines in his sketch of the European cultural-heritage movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the first phase monuments were transformed to be symbols; in the second phase, architectural forms and the built environment were preserved together, including customs, habits and local activities, all invested with symbolic significance. 4. According to Bourdieu (2003), people’s practices, acts, thoughts, perceptions, expressions and utterances are regulated improvisations produced by habitus; they are limited by the material, historical and social conditions under which they were produced. Practices generated by habitus reproduce such objective conditions. 5. ‘Their influence crosses borders ... their protection is of interest to all civilized nations ... These monuments are part of humanity’s cultural treasure’ (Collart et al, 1954, 34). 6. On the post-colonial implications of such an approach to cultural heritage, see Maffi, 2006. 7. It even happens that people restoring listed buildings use materials from ruined homes in other ancient districts. 8. Corm, 1997; 2005; Kapeliouk, 1999; Gresh, 2000a; 2000b; 2005a; 2005b; Chesnot, 1993; Aronson, 2000; de la Gorce, 2001; 2004; Cahen, 2002; Laurens, 2002; George, 2003; Aita, 2005. 9. Many Damascenes with a partial knowledge of the techniques of restoration refer to traditional building materials in general as trab (‘earth’, ‘ash’) or teen (‘earth’, ‘mud’). Looking at a wall with a surface crack, where one can see the different layers out of which it is made, the unskilled eye sees merely earth and mud. Yet this is not an intentional undervaluation of these materials: on the contrary, the value of earth and wood is well recognised, as is shown in

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11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

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the saying ‘Take the earth, it becomes gold’ (tkmash al-trab yaqlab dhahab), and in the custom of considering wood a lucky material: as the saying goes, ‘beat the wood’ (duq‘ala al-khashb) to drive envy and bad luck away. However, I stress that a Damascene home is not built simply out of earth and wood. I enjoyed the privilege, which is not granted to all Damascenes, of observing the work of mo’allimoon in restoration sites, and of being introduced to the ‘specific capital’ of techniques often ignored by the residents themselves. The very orientalist stereotype of the ancient Arab home made of ‘mud and wood’ (Keenan, 2000) fails to take account of the richness of such capital. A spatial object as the seat of objectified and embedded sociality is a classic anthropological issue; the study of sociality embedded in architectonic objects, media and producers of meaning has been recently applied to the Middle East by, among others, Nadia Abu el-Haj (2001). Informant: Abu Mohammed, interview with the author, Damascus 2004. Recently Abu Mohammed bought back the home, in the ancient district of al-’Islah, which his grandparents had sold at the beginning of the twentieth century. Informant: Ra’ed Jabry, interview with the author, Damascus 2005. Ibid. Ibid 2004. Informant: architect Beshr al-Berry, interview with the author, Damascus 2004. Informant: Ra’ed Jabry, interview with the author, Damascus 2004. Informant: architect Luna Rajab, interview with the author, Damascus 2005. Informant: Michel Shatta, interview with the author, Damascus 2004. Informant: Mohammed Nimr Mustapha, interview with the author, Damascus 2004. Ibid. Informant: architect Na‘im Zabiyta, interview with the author, Damascus 2006. Informant: Mohammed Nimr Mustapha, interview with the author, Damascus 2004. Ibid. Ibid. Informant: architect Na‘im Zabiyta, interview with the author, Damascus 2005. Ibid. As an alternative, an owner can regain possession of his building by evicting tenants. Informant: Bilal ’Abd al-Rasal, interview with the author, Damascus 2004. Michel de Certeau (1990) suggests analysing urban life by starting from people’s everyday tactics in replying to the strategies of administrators and city planners. Urban systems should have managed or suppressed such tactics, yet they live on through the deterioration of urban systems; such practices, far from being controlled or cancelled out by the panoptical administration, are strengthened by illegitimacy and by slipping through the cracks in surveillance networks; these

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30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

40. 41.

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tactics themselves become systems of everyday regulation, forms of creativity concealed by operations and discourses of conservative organisation. Informant: Mrs Maya, manager and owner of the hotel, interview with the author, Damascus 2005. Informant: Mr Khalil, interview with the author, Damascus 2005. For a discussion of the space as an economic resource, see Lefebvre, 1978: Signorelli, 1996; Smith, 1982; 1987; Clark, 1988. Smith (1987) and Clark (1988) explain why areas chosen for rehabilitation are located in inner cities. They draw on rent-gap theory, i.e. the difference between actual and potential land values. Estate value is equal to the building value plus the actual land value. The latter is seldom equivalent to potential land value: this happens only when the land is used with maximum economic efficiency, in which case there is no rent gap. Building depreciation involves a fall in actual land value: in this case the rent gap widens to such an extent that the building’s owner no longer invests capital in its maintenance – as it is evidently not worth while – and makes little profit from it. The deterioration of the building then worsens. As the rent gap widens, investors’ interest in estate rehabilitation increases; land rehabilitation entails plugging the rent gap. If the potential land value in a certain area is determined by its attraction for people with strong purchasing power, then the result is gentrification. Namely, sons staying in the parental home after marriage, with their new family unit. According to Khawaja (2002, 27), between 1995 and 2000 almost 45,000 people moved from Damascus to other Syrian districts. I have already mentioned Ghaned, a film director who recently purchased and restored a house in Qashla; he paid S£2 million – some £27,000 sterling – for it. The former owners had used it as a storehouse and workshop. The cost of restoration was as much again as the purchase price. On the dislocation and resettlement of former inhabitants of the Old City of Fez, when protection plans started there, see Porter 2003, 127 – ‘Neighbourhoods ... would be “dedensified”.’ A fair rent is among the constraints on economic liberalisation which have been removed in the past few years. Erving Goffman (1961) terms ‘secondary adjustments’ those practices which individuals adopt when an entity, an institution or a politico-economic system tries to impose on them behavioural norms and existential models. ‘Primary adjustments’ are activities people carry out in conformity with institutional norms and models of self. Through secondary adjustments individuals propose alternative models of self, compromising or conflicting with institutional models. Salah, also derived from the same root as sallah, means ‘piety’ (from the Latin pietas, namely compliance with religious norms); see Eickelman 2002, 267. In 2000, in a bid to cut welfare expenditure, the Syrian government ended the policy, even in large Arab homes converted into private and state-owned condominiums, of fair rents for all.

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Khan, Fazlur R. (1978), ‘The Islamic environment: can the future learn from the past?’ In The Agha Khan Award for Architecture, Toward an Architecture in the Spirit of Islam. Proceedings of Seminar One in the series Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World. Aiglemont: Gouvieux. Khawaja, Marwan (2002), ‘Internal migration in Syria: findings from a national survey’. Fafo Report, No. 375. Kienle, Eberhard (1994), Contemporary Syria: Liberalization between Cold War and Peace. London: British Academic Press. Laurens, Henry (2002), La question de Palestine. Paris: Fayard. Lawrence, Denise L. and Low, Setha M. (1990), ‘The built environment and spatial form’. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 19, pp. 453–505. Lefebvre, Henri (1978), La produzione dello spazio. Milan: Moizzi. Low, Setha M. (1996), ‘The anthropology of cities: imagining and theorizing the city’. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 25, pp. 383–409. Luz, Nimrod (2006), ‘Restoration projects of Palestinian sacred places in Israel: national identity, nostalgia, and collective memory restored’. Paper presented at the Seventh Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting. Florence and Montecatini: European University Institute. Maffi, Irene (2006), ‘Introduzione’. Antropologia, Vol. 7, pp. 5–18. Mazieres, Nathalie de (1985), ‘Homage’. Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Centre, Vol. 1, pp. 22–5. Palumbo, Berardino (2003), L’Unesco e il campanile. Rome: Meltemi. ——— (2006), ‘Il vento del sud-est’. Antropologia, Vol. 7, pp. 43–92. Paul-Marie de la (2001), ‘Middle East: how the war cannot be won’. Le monde diplomatique, September. ——— (2004), ‘Syria surrounded’. Le monde diplomatique, July. Pellitteri, Antonio (2004), Damasco dal profumo soave: seduzione e poesia di una grande ccittà musulmana. Palermo: Sellerio. Pini, Daniele, Repellin, Didier and Miglioli, Franca (2008), Ancient City of Damascus (Syrian Arab Republic). Report of the 2008 Unesco mission. Paris: Unesco. Porter, Geoff D. (2003), ‘Unwitting actors: the preservation of Fez’s cultural heritage’. Radical History Review, No. 86, pp. 123–48. Rabinow, Paul (1989), French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Salamandra, Christa (2004), A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria. Bloomington and Indianopolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004. Sauvaget, Jean (1934), ‘Esquisse d’une histoire de la ville de Damas’. Revue des Etudes Islamiques, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 421–80. Serageldin, Ismail (1990), ‘Contemporary expressions of Islam in buildings: the religious and the secular’. In Agha Khan Award for Architecture and Indonesian Institute of Architects, Expressions of Islam in Buildings: Exploring Architecture in Islamic Cultures. Proceedings of an International Seminar in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 15–19 October 1990. Singapore: Agha Khan Trust for Culture and Agha Khan Award for Architecture. Signorelli, Amalia (1996), Antropologia urbana: introduzione alla ricerca in Italia. Milan: Guerini. Smith, Neil (1982), ‘Gentrification and uneven development’. Economic Geography, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1982), pp. 139–55.

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——— (1987), ‘Gentrification and the rent gap’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 77, No. 3, pp. 462–5. Tergeman, Siham (1994), Daughter of Damascus. Austin, TX: Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Thoumin, R. (1931), ‘Deux quartiers de Damas: le quartier chrétien de Bab Musalla et le quartier kurde’. Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales, Vol. 1, pp. 99–136. UN Statistical Commission (2001), Administrative and Statistical Sources of International Migration and Future Prospective Regarding Improvement of These Sources. Geneva: UN Economic Commission for Europe. Weber, Stefan (1997–98), ‘The creation of Ottoman Damascus’. Aram Periodical, Vols. 9–10, pp. 431–70. ——— (1999), ‘The transformation of an Arab-Ottoman Institution: the Suq of Damascus from the 16th to the 20th century’. In Akin N., Batur A. and Batur S. (eds), Seven Centuries of Ottoman Architecture, pp. 244–253. Istanbul: Yem Yayin. ——— (2004), ‘The reshaping of Damascus: architecture and identity in an ArabOttoman city’. Beiruter Texte und Studien, Vol. 96, pp. 41–58. Wedeen, Lisa (1999), Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. West, Paige (2005), ‘Translation, value, and space: theorizing an ethnographic and engaged environmental anthropology’. American Anthropologist, Vol. 107, No. 4, pp. 632–42. Wilson, Scott (2004), ‘In Damascus, the ancient is now the chic’. The Washington Post, 26 September. Wright, Gwendolyn (1991), The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zukin, Sharon (1987), ‘Gentrification: culture and capital in the urban core’. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 13, pp. 129–47.

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7 THE DOMESTIC HER ITAGE: PUBLIC OR PR IVATE HER ITAGE? THE CASE OF ALEPPO Jean-Claude David

Several hundred hectares of districts in Damascus and Aleppo are classed as National Heritage and World Heritage sites. Over 100,000 people live in the old quarters of these two cities. The recognition of the heritage qualities of these districts seems to rest on exogenous criteria rather than on collective local recognition. In theory it implies a change in status, a transition from the value of use to contemplation. However, for the still-inhabited classified districts, the break can only be relative and partial. In ‘Oriental’ towns, the differentiation between public and private spheres, registered in the architecture and organisation of spaces, gives a paradoxical character to the classing of domestic ensembles (quarters) whose signs, decoration and identity, relating to the interior of the house, cannot only be perceived from the exterior. Of this domestic architecture without facades, whose lived interior is inaccessible, we only see the outside, from the street – which is only the reverse of the interior design. However, classifying and protecting a non-public heritage is not wholly without meaning, even if this measure is difficult to enact in practice: the identity evoked or represented by a heritage develops between the private and public spheres and is not only recorded in ‘monuments’, those public signs par excellence. Moreover, unlike appearances, the limits between private and public

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fluctuate, especially in these towns where they seem nonetheless perfectly clear-cut and watertight. Classifying a domestic heritage which is partially or essentially private implies taking its inhabitants into consideration. In the case of a functional change of an abode (into a school, club, restaurant, hotel, etc.) the inhabitants are disregarded, but in most cases where the house remains inhabited they are concerned and must be included in the plan, by concerting or by other means. They are therefore actually involved in the conservation of the heritage. In becoming aware of the existence of the inhabitants and their involvement as essential actors in the heritage through their daily practices, we see that the ‘heritage break’ is not achieved in spaces, despite the numerous micro-breaks corresponding to adaptation processes and hence to non-rupture. Lastly, I am concerned with the existence of a living, evolving heritage rather than a set, contemplated one, one which is situated in the interactions between material space and users, inhabitants/actors and spectators. This question is the subject of a research project which I have shared for several years with Christine Delpal, anthropologist and photographer, Touria Moutia, Moroccan architect and doctorate researcher, and Zoucca Karzoun, an architect from Aleppo. We have carried out several field missions in Aleppo and done considerable work, involving photographic surveys, interviews and surveys of domestic spaces. We seek first to understand the causes, meanings and consequences of the heritage classing of entire districts, starting from the Aleppo example, in outlining the history of management and protection schemes, their execution or abandonment, and then in more closely observing the behaviour of the inhabitants and its consequences on space.

From the historic monument to the listed old district The Mandate period and the first decade of independence: the Maghreb and Levant as fields of experimentation for urban planners The enhancement of a heritage depends on the era. During the Mandate period, the specialists (in particular, for Syria, the historian Jean Sauvaget and the architect Michel Ecochard) proposed the classing of isolated ‘representative’ monuments. This practice is no different from what was then happening in Europe. The list of monuments for the main historical towns included a few houses or palaces, whether inhabited or not. In the text accompanying the master plan for Aleppo proposed in 1953, after independence, by the French town planner André Gutton (pragmatically positioned between the culturalist and progressist streams), intervention on the ancient fabrics was vague and founded above all on nationalist and

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aesthetic considerations. There was a mention of aesthetic pleasure and profit from tourism, and reference to a glorious past Paradoxically, the old town was at that time considered a negative comparative feature, necessary for the enhancement of the image of modern districts. The life of the inhabitants was evoked in the frame of the then current hygienist theories: ‘respect (for ancient districts) must exist but it nevertheless must not impair the health of a population with its slums’, a highly significant observation showing a profound misconception of these districts, which are very seldom slums. A few more concrete propositions may however be found scattered in the report, above all in a paragraph entitled ‘Aleppo, a real-estate value’. Gutton extols the respect and enhancement for traditional trading areas: •

•

•

•

the wide new avenues (percées) must be cut through the mass of inhabited districts and not overlap the arteries of traditional traffic, the supports of trading activities (whose expropriation costs would be too high); the administration centre must develop on its millennia-old site at the foot of the Citadel; its access roads must be laid out through the ancient town fabric; the Mdiné – a traditional central area, above all suks and khans (bazaars and commercial courtyards) otherwise called the City – must be better served and made accessible for cars. This objective took concrete shape in the only material proposal specifically designed for an ancient district: a loop road linked to the general network, surrounding the entire district of the suks and khans, was planned to enable vehicle access to the old trading centre and hence to favour commercial activities in their traditional site, an idea which was also supported by Ecochard in Damascus. Gutton also planned for the old districts to be crossed by two east–west intersecting thoroughfares, called ‘from the sea to the desert’, designed for traffic in transit and between the new districts east and west of the ancient town. The plans for building or alignment were to be subsequently periodically taken up. They have still not been officially abandoned, to my knowledge, and contradict the subsequent measures to list and protect the fabric of the ancient town. One of the main arguments regularly brought up during the years 1970–80 was that of security: access to the old quarters had to be provided for fire-fighting and security vehicles in case of air raids, in a country which was ‘in a state of war’. It was also, or was rather, a question of political and ideological security and the rounding up of the Muslim Brotherhood during the years 1979 to 1981, and also covered interests in the real-estate speculation

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and investment operations linked to the increased value of the land due to the new thouroughfares in the old city. In Gutton’s view, the buildings along the planned avenues should not exceed the old size of ground floor plus one. Some of these thoroughfares were built between the years 1950 and 1960, but the municipality failed to take Gutton’s guidelines for the new development into account, and many buildings reached five or six storeys. During the 1960s, the desire to erase the ancient fabric, seen as aberrant and anachronistic, and considerations of security led the municipality to work out a widening and rectification plan through the alignment of the entire ancient street system of roads, lanes and no-through roads, which was to act as a reference for applications for building permission in these districts. If it had been carried out, this plan would have led to the demolition of almost all the ancient buildings and a considerable increase in the surface area occupied by an aberrant network of roads. On the request of the Syrian government, Unesco then entrusted to the Japanese architect Banshoya, a former collaborator of Ecochard’s in Damascus, studies for the drawing up of a new master plan, between 1969 and 1973. The enactment of the widening and rectification plan for the ancient street system was abandoned, with the exception of the major new avenues. A development plan for the old quarters inside the walls developed the first measures for the protection of these districts. A zoning plan defined and limited several categories in the ancient quarters: • • •

heritage-site districts, where any demolition was forbidden; areas subject to precise and highly restrictive building regulations; areas reserved for the provision of modern facilities for the inhabitants.

Most of the access roads proposed in these ancient quarters are cul-de-sacs, to which access is regulated. The proposals began to be put into practice only some 30 years later (e.g. the recent management of the Jdeidé square, Sahet al-Hatab).

1977–83: the national fight for modernity – effacing traditional city identities and dismantling their power networks In 1977, one year after Unesco World Heritage status was granted to Damascus, the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums classified the whole of the ancient town within the walls of Aleppo as a historic district, with the exception only of the ancient Jewish quarter, which was due

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for demolition as part of a major plan for a new town centre. This measure theoretically made it impossible for any urban-planning operations in the classified old quarters. The thoroughfare schemes were not abandoned, however, and in 1978 a new Muhafez (prefect) decided to carry them out. In April 1978, the old Christian quarter outside the walls was also classified by the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums, aiming to block the construction of a 110-metre opening for a 30-metre-wide road crossing the ancient quarter for almost a kilometre. In June–July 1978, the Director-General of Antiquities proposed for Aleppo, following Damascus, the formation of a committee for the protection of the old quarters, made up of representatives appointed by the Antiquities Office, the Municipality, the Executive Council (representing the Muhafez, the ‘Adiyat Archaeological Association and other experts), to give their opinion on the solution to problems concerning the ancient quarters and on all the applications for building permission in these districts. In June 1979 a period of violence broke out which affected the city for over two years. The army took control of Aleppo in April 1980, with periodical operations of troop occupations and house searches. The ancient Citadel was occupied by special-forces troops. Demolitions and the creation of avenues in the old town were demanded. The Muhafez had decided in April 1978 to construct the planned avenue through the old Christian quarter in the northern suburb, despite its status, but the expropriation process had barely started: it was slow and almost unachievable given the urgency of the situation. Two years later a less destructive plan was put forward, but this also was not to be carried out. At the end of winter 1981, the troops left the Citadel: the atmosphere was now one of détente and conciliation. The protection of the old town became the subject of public debates, between those in charge, specialists and lovers of antiquity, with the intervention of foreign experts, conferences and photographic exhibitions. In March 1982 a conference and public debate was organised at the Engineers Union by the municipal leader and president of the federation. There was a unanimous vote in favour of the protection of the old town. But who was then informed of these debates, and who felt involved, apart from the few dozen taking part (although the media had started to spread information)? These events took place one month after the bloody repression of the Hama uprising and the bombing of several dozen hectares in the ancient residential districts, the partial destruction of the Azzem palace and the total destruction of the Keylani palaces with the entire surrounding district. In September 1983 the Mayor of Aleppo organised an international debate on the management and conservation problems of the old quarters. A dossier requesting World Heritage status for the old

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town of Aleppo was presented to Unesco in 1982–83, and was granted a year later, a few years after such heritage status had been granted to Damascus.1 During these years of violence, the chronology of certain events of a cultural nature, and especially those relating to heritage status, corresponded fairly precisely with that of political events. The events relating to heritage in this period essentially affected the urban fabric. The inhabitants, and Syrian society in general, should have been directly concerned by what they might have considered interference by the administration or by the state in their private rights. In reality, they had no say in the matter, expressed few opinions and were not consulted. The confrontation was between two parties: on the one hand the representatives of the intelligentsia, including several personalities from the old aristocracy, lovers of antiquity and fairly Westernised milieux, with a liberal ideology but generally linked to conservative Sunni circles, searching for and obtaining the support of certain segments of power; on the other hand were ranged the direct representatives of repressive, anti-citizen forces, with little interest in a heritage which for them was unfamiliar, and who had also been responsible for the destruction of the centre of Hama.

After 1982, accelerated ‘heritagisation’ in Damascus and Aleppo: foreign cultural interference; the action of a local intelligentsia After being discredited and partially destroyed, the old quarters within the walls of Damascus, and then of Aleppo, were the subject of protection and classification measures at local and national level, and then were categorised as World Heritage sites by Unesco. This was the result of both local and regional joint action and of a movement of world opinion: a powerful wave of listing and protection measures for heritage threatened by natural cataclysms, by the attacks of modernisation and by demands for development, especially in technology, by political violence, civil wars and regional conflicts. The awareness of external scrutiny played an essential role in this process. On behalf of the German GTZ agency, the Aleppo architect Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj, responsible for pilot rehabilitation operations in the old quarters of Aleppo, and later for the restoration of Shibam in the Yemen, expressed this clearly in a communication to a conference entitled ‘States and Societies in Search of a Future’: ‘It was a time of enthusiastic search on the part of national governments for historic sites that could contribute to the presentation of local identities before the international community’ (Khoury and Meouchy, 2007) It was also a means of forcing the hand of local authorities and dominant political movements to dissuade them from carrying out certain destructive

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operations, and through legal processes backed up by international concern, to increase pressure on property owners and developers to dissuade them from further demolition. An internet petition from Chicago in September 1995 by an ‘international community of scholars concerned with the Syrian urban heritage’ was addressed to President Hafez al-Assad and the Minister for Culture. It protested against the demolition, in progress or planned, of the districts outside the walls of Damascus (particularly the suq district of Saruja), unprotected by the heritage status of the city within the walls. The extension of this protection to the districts outside the walls was demanded, justified by the equal importance of these districts, as an ‘irreplaceable heritage’ with its elements of ‘pre-modern Arab culture’. Appeal was firstly made to the interest of the Syrians themselves: If the future generations of Syrians are to understand and appreciate the quality of the centuries-old urban fabric of Syria which is part of their heritage, the conservation of large parts of these ancient quarters is necessary. We implore you to protect these magnificent districts from destruction and to preserve their integrity. The historic quarters of Damascus belong to all peoples. They are not only an irreplaceable part of Arab heritage, but also of the international heritage of humanity. This text poses the question of the ‘ownership’ of a heritage and of the nature of a cultural property, of its local recognition and lastly of a sort of right for international culture to intervene. But the way this appeal is expressed sounds rather like a slogan. In vaguely qualifying these districts as ‘magnificent’, it advances an aesthetic judgement which does not necessarily correspond with the criteria of their inhabitants; a judgement which partly refers to the picturesque, an essentially subjective criterion and still tainted with the cultural features of a Western tradition. The text reveals a difference in the perceptions of foreigners, on the one hand, and those of the city’s inhabitants and users on the other. That difference existed at the origin of the process, in the placing of the heritage concept and the practices accompanying it in the colonial context. Ideological concerns were thus not excluded, including the justification of the inequality in relations, an inequality more or less included in the perception. The justification for tourism and the search for the exotic and picturesque accompanying it imply unequal, unbalanced relationships. Heritage may be a demarcation line, a frontier, rather than a crossroads. Have the inhabitants and users of the ancient quarters in Damascus or Aleppo reached a similar perception? It is undeniable that a certain

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consensus has today replaced the indifference and conflicts opposing various forms of instrumentalisation in the old quarters.

How to live in a heritage site Is ‘heritagisation’, on the one hand signifying immobilisation, conservation and authenticity, compatible with the fact of inhabiting, meaning adapting, marking, personalising and transforming? And if one places oneself within this ‘law which wants the heritage to arise, in a certain way, when its initial usage, the first intentionality, is extinguished’ (I am quoting Françoise Choay), how can one live in a heritage? Links must exist through time, between spatial forms and inherited practices, on the one hand, and present-day domestic functions, attitudes and practices on the other. To specify the nature of what is transmitted by this material and non-material heritage, we must question the modifications made to the habitat, to its architecture and its functions, and hence to the ways of dwelling in it, and the behaviour and attitudes of those using its domestic space. The rules for protection, defined by regulations, are new, while the practices surrounding the rules may rest on a heritage of such practices, a sort of jurisprudence, which governs in an immemorial fashion the relations between public and private, the outlines of the right to ownership,2 the rights of each individual to his/her space in relation to others’ space.

The shapes of dwellings and the transformation of architecture The present-day interiors of ancient urban houses in Syria seem to be very different from traditional interiors. Comparing dated photographs and descriptions, the transformations may be pinpointed and classified, their relative chronology established, the continuities and ruptures highlighted, identifying the signs of modernity, as also those apparent changes which are often hybridisations and cross-breeding rather than ruptures. The ancient habitat currently conserved dates back to different periods, from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries, and is characterised by differences in styles, use of materials, forms and spaces. These heritages in part represent a continuous movement in harmony with the references of their time. Recent periods, above all the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are the most obvious. Even where the most recent transformations are currently in progress, it is still possible to find heritages and continuities. The population of the old quarters of Aleppo has almost entirely changed over the last century. The new inhabitants are, however, seldom recent rural

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immigrants, but more often come from other districts, old suburbs where they had sometimes lived for generations. These new inhabitants of the old town within the walls are in general less ‘modern’ than the old inhabitants who have left, precisely to show their modernity. The new inhabitants have settled in the old quarters either because they did not have the financial means to go elsewhere, or because they were looking for particular spaces whose features met their needs for a ‘traditional’, protected and introverted setting for their life. May these inhabited interiors be supports for a domestic memory, despite the almost complete change of the population? A fine-tuned observation shows that the discontinuity of occupation is not an absolute obstacle to a certain continuity and to the transmission of a memory. For the new inhabitants, the space of the houses in the old town may be suitable in several ways: its simplicity makes it adaptable, ideal to accommodate other, perhaps more simple, models. In the old town, the people from the old suburbs find a habitat of the same kind as their original one, a house with an inner courtyard, but of a better quality. This habitat which they take over may become their heritage, and the domestic memory they bring with them may develop. The new living spaces are occupied in a selective manner according to how well they suit their new inhabitants’ needs; some parts whose usefulness goes unperceived are left empty. On the other hand, spaces which send abundant signals of familiarity are highly valued. A memory developed in other places may thus be grafted onto places which are not those where it developed. The inhabitants actually establish a continuity by processing syntheses, by also integrating elements of modernity. This fashioning of the house where they settle, by memories and practices brought with them, which are in turn the reflection of practices from parent spaces, may perhaps be part of the heritage of ‘values’, of ‘cultural references [which] are incarnated in the house itself (Rautenberg, 2003),’ and which may be mobile rather than rooted within unmoveable walls. In these circumstances, may not the modifications brought about by the ‘new’ inhabitants, which give back a meaning to this heritage, be considered as conservation measures, even if they may be perceived in bad taste, unauthentic, destructive, etc? Are they the means to process a minimal common domestic memory? Does not the action of inhabitants make it possible to preserve the meaning of these spaces, easily disfigured or destroyed by more official restoration, such as their transformation into hotels or restaurants?

Is a dwelling a heritage? The present-day aesthetics of most of the original old interiors is immediately perceived to be very different from, indeed almost opposite to, the past.

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We must go beyond immediate perceptions to find signs of permanence. The most marked characteristics of the old habitat include the absence of furniture and the multi-functionality of the rooms, the ground marked out by differences in level and material. The easiest processes to implement, and also those most signifying a desire for change and modernisation, include the attribution of a single function for one room, a function signalled by its furniture. The bedroom’s and parlour’s are the two suites of furniture most often installed, while the kitchen is often the result of cross-breeding, while a dining-room is fairly rare in the houses in the old town. A precise field analysis, based on photographs, makes it possible to relativise this trend to instal mono-functional spaces, by stacking or juxtaposing furniture and objects with a different status and functions, which may be enacted simultaneously or separately, and the cohabitation in the same room, in a more or less tenuous, artful fashion, of materials, objects and arrangements, signifying different functions and different times in everyday life.3 Among the old spatial landmarks transposed into modern interiors, the arrangement of the parlour furniture is particularly significant. Seats and small round tables lined up along the walls on the edge of the room reinforce the empty centre, following a very old arrangement of assemblies, as in a madafa or a tent. The television set is often the essential hub of a living room. It stands in the centre of a large dresser while the other shelves hold knick-knacks, vases, etc. This dresser is generally situated in the middle of the short wall in the room, perhaps reproducing the sadr, the ancient benchmark of the hierarchisation of space. The room is then crossed by a symmetrical line defined by the television set, the same line that is found in traditional homes. The utilisation of the ‘atabé is generally abandoned and major differences in level between the threshold and the inside floor of the room are abandoned or no longer included. However, the inmates and visitors continue to leave their shoes at the entrance to the room and, despite the cumbersome presence of the chairs, the floor still remains a surface which is not only walked on but lived in; it is essential in poorer homes, whose inmates show the closest behaviour patterns to the old ones, without furniture or with a limited use of a few significant furnishings – couches, dressers/display cabinets, etc. In some homes objects are still placed on the floor. In what we may call the living-room, mattresses are still commonly placed there, for an afternoon nap or as beds in case of over-occupation. It is very common to take a short sleep lying on the floor, on a mat rather than on a bed, because it is cooler, but also because such naps are normally not taken on a bed. Photographs, surveys and conversations, rather than simply looking, enable us to ascertain the visible traces of behaviours, placings, camouflages and enactments which are very often marked by inherited tastes,

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in certain arrangements of the space, symmetries, a relationship with the ground, behaviours linked to cleanness and dirtiness, to dry and wet, to spaces which are swept and those which are washed, inside and outside. Memories are at work here, reconstructing suitable heritage spaces for present-day practices.

Conclusion This architectural domestic-heritage practice seems far removed from the definitions of heritage, particularly of the importance generally given to outside exterior appearance and to a contemplation which does not recognise the inmates’ aptitude to recognise their living space as a heritage. The architectural frame is, however, not perceived by its inmates as neutral and commonplace. There is a necessary, fundamental adaptation between the old space and the functions and activities which take place in it today: are these places in fact not doubly heritages, because not only the volumes, shapes, forms and architecture subsist, but because the very practices of these spaces are also transmitted, transformed and adapted? Is not this architectural and behavioural heritage the richer for the fact that it adapts and transforms without being destroyed, as the evolution of needs and practices? Would it not be more interesting to go back to the first meaning of the word patrimony, patrimonium ‘inheritance from one’s father’, ‘family assets, goods which one has inherited from one’s forefathers’, which may be conserved and venerated or on which one may construct a new life? Heritage is here therefore likely to lie as much in the practices, mentalities, ways of living, and above all the interaction of spaces/practices, as in the spaces themselves. In this context, methods of classifying and protecting should be redefined and made more specific, since the essence of this heritage lies in its living, dynamic nature, its capacity for evolution and adaptation: it is a question of finding the right medium between protective actions and the inhabitants’ own initiative, to the extent that the initiative modifies and adapts the space without destroying it. Is the awareness of heritage as the subject of distanced contemplation, as an aesthetic, cultural object, an essential element for the definition of heritage? Would certain cultures be more pre-disposed to different forms of contemplation, which others ignore or neglect? Is access to an awareness of heritage only a problem of education, thus of evolution, in a way of progress, or a problem of cultural difference, a profound cultural originality? To seek to answer these questions, we would have to move through a historical analysis of behaviours and theoretical positions belonging to a cultural context, beyond the framework of this work.

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Notes 1. We should also look at the differences in the inscription date and treatment of Damascus and Aleppo, linked to the capital status of Damascus, but also to a desire on the part of the citizens of Damascus to demonstrate more clearly its fidelity to power. 2. In this statement we should also envisage the cases of transformation of habitation into another function, close to that of a habitat or totally differing from it, such as the functions of hotels and restaurants, cafés, tea-rooms, clubs, including those of schools, association premises, local government and, lastly, workshops, emporia, retail activity, arcades and boutiques. Lastly, a type of transformation which in theory has become impossible in the heritage zones, is the construction of several-storey buildings after the destruction of the traditional courtyard house. 3. At times, the other functions cohabitating in a space occupied by a single suite of furniture are only indicated by the temporary activities and actions of its inhabitants. Modernity implies the installation of furniture with a single function, while multi-functionality and domestic nomadism, typical of a permanence of behaviours, persists.

Bibliography Khoury, G.D. and Meouchy, N. (eds) (2007), Etats et sociétés de l’Orient arabe, 1945–2005. Vol. II: Dynamiques et enjeux. Paris: Geuthner. Rautenberg, Michel (2003), La rupture patrimoniale. Paris: A la croisée, Aubenas.

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8 IS RUR AL HER ITAGE R ELEVANT IN AN UR BANISING M ASHR EQ? EXPLOR ING THE DISCOUR SE OF L ANDSCAPE HER ITAGE IN LEBANON Jala Makhzoumi

At a time when more than half the population of the Mashreq resides in cities, this chapter inquires whether the study of rural landscapes is of relevance to heritage studies in the region, whether the discourse of rural culture can contribute to the evolving construction of place and identity and whether the concept of landscape is of significance to the patrimonialisation practices of designers and planners. In seeking answers to these questions, I shall explore the concept of ‘landscape’, ‘rural culture’ and ‘heritage’, discussing their overlap in the context of Lebanon and the Mashreq. My aim is twofold: a) to propose ‘landscape’ as an expansive framework that can unfold the multiple meanings of heritage, breach the nature–culture dialectic and guide patrimonialisation practices beyond the current focus on product; and b) to call for the recognition of rural culture as a unique historical repository of the region, a natural and cultural heritage. I base my proposition on three arguments. First, embodying the co-evolution of people and their natural environment, rural landscapes embrace not only buildings but also open fields, woodland and extensive scrubland and rangeland. Their inclusion in the heritage discourse is more

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likely to integrate current categorisation of ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ wealth and steer the patrimonialisation practices beyond the prevailing focus on ‘product’ to include socio-cultural processes of ‘production’. Secondly, the dialectic of people–environment, overlap of cultural and natural processes is more readily discerned in rural cultures than in globalised urban ones. Their inclusion broadens the heritage discourse beyond prevailing elitist, professional discourse to embrace community practices of everyday living, constructing a sense of place and shared identity. Thirdly, rural traditional practices, whether nomadic pastoral, sedentary or agricultural, are of value in themselves as cultural heritage, but also as embodiment of sustainable use of resource scarcity that is characteristic of arid lands. Rural cultures can serve as exemplars of ecologically responsive management practices that are as relevant in the twenty-first century as they were in the past. To demonstrate these arguments, I shall draw on my engagement in Ebel-es-Saqi, a village in South Lebanon. Applying landscape design tools and qualitative research methods, I will discuss the discourse of rural landscape in the village, elaborating its relevance to identity construction and shared conception of heritage. I hope to demonstrate that landscape architects, inspired by the ecology of place and prudence of cultural practices can propose dynamic management practices that enable local community stewardship of rural landscape resources.

Background ‘Landscape’ implies the collective shaping of land over time. Landscape is a tangible product, the physical setting that results from the act of shaping, and intangible process of cultural production, entailing shared beliefs, collective values and meanings that inform and guide the production. Complexity of the dialectic discourse imbedded in ‘landscape’ has encouraged its use as a medium for an interpreting culture, identity and heritage (Bender, 1993; Hirsch and O’Hanlon, 1995; Duncan and Ley, 1997). In the first half of the twentieth century, the concept of ‘cultural landscape’ was advanced in reference to the ‘unique patterns’ created as ‘landscape shapes and is shaped by that particular social organization’ (Crang, 1998). Cultural landscapes embrace virtually all our surroundings, extending along a continuum that has at one extreme what is perceived as wilderness, untouched ‘nature’, and on the other the overwhelmingly humanized environment of cities. Rural cultural landscapes can be located in between the two extremes to include the vernacular landscapes of villages and fields, pastures and woodlands that are shaped as much by natural processes as they are by cultural ones. Cultural landscapes, whether rural or urban, are

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closely associated with vernacular and folk cultures, places that have not been designed or created by architect, engineer or planner, but that ‘evolve unintentionally’ as ‘multiple layers of time and cultural activity, (that) are fundamental to our very existence’ (Alanen and Melnick, 2000, 5). As the accumulation of physicalities and meanings superimposed over time in a specific place, cultural landscapes ‘encode values and fix memories to places’ that then become sites of historical identity and cultural heritage (Stewart and Strathern, 2003). Rural cultural landscapes are equally a heritage because they frame our relationship to the past and re-establish our connection to soil and, by extension, land, country and nation. Throughout, they serve as a medium for local/national/regional construction of identity. Accepting that ‘heritage’ is a complex concept that can imply ‘virtually anything by which some kind of link, however, tenuous or false, may be forged with the past’ (Lowenthal, quoted in Harvey, 2001, 319), rural cultural landscapes qualify as heritage by virtue of the temporal (historical), spatial (geographical) and social contexts within which they are produced. Still there are several obstacles that have hindered their recognition as heritage. On the one hand is a rigid categorization into ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ heritage (UNESCO, nd). Only one criterion out of four designating ‘natural heritage’ applies to rural landscapes. Categorisation fails to recognise that rural landscapes are of value precisely because they are part nature, part culture, ‘a sort of ecological-cultural unit’ (di Castri and Mooney, 1973). They are at once a natural and culture heritage. In Lebanon and the Mashreq, a region that has been continuously settled for millennia, the ‘natural’ landscape has long been replaced by a diversity of cultural landscapes in mountain terrain, coastal and inland plains, river valleys and the arid rangeland. Morphological diversity and landscape heterogeneity are sustained through agricultural, silvicultural and pastoral management practices that can be traced to the ancient civilisations of the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean. Nor is there a single state authority that is responsible for rural culture and rural landscapes. Their charge is split between various state agencies; for example agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry are the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture, biodiversity and nature conservation of the Ministry of Environment, and education and health of the Ministry of Social Affairs. Academics have similarly a compartmentalised perspective of the countryside, divided between scientists, who are concerned with the classification of land and ecosystems and managing environmental resources, social scientists, who are concerned with culture, social and economic betterment, and architects, who focus on the built heritage, generally in villages. The uniqueness of the ‘total’, the exceptional environmental, ecological and aesthetic role it plays as a foundation of national identity remains largely

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unrecognised. Rather, patrimonialisation practices in Lebanon follow the lead of international convention, where cultural heritage includes historical building and urban quarters (Solidere, nd), archaeological monuments and, more recently, vernacular buildings in rural culture (The Silk Museum, nd). A recent proposal for cultural heritage development in the Middle East and North Africa, while conceding that the value of patrimony extends beyond its materiality to include cultural, moral, spiritual, political and economic facts, nevertheless adopts Unesco’s three broad categories of ‘material culture’, namely, monuments, groups of buildings and sites (World Bank, 2001, 2). The bias towards built heritage is also the outcome of a colonial legacy that came to identify heritage with those monuments and sites that corroborated the Orientalist perception of the Near East as ‘biblical land’ and the ‘cradle of civilisation’ (Daher, 2007; AlSayyad, 2001). Another reason lies in the tangibility of ‘buildings’ and ‘sites’ as products that are readily perceived by all, professionals and the public at large, which in turn reinforces current practices and reaffirms the professional role in conserving material heritage in the region. The absence of a suitable Arabic term that corresponds to and embraces the complexity of the English word ‘landscape’ (Makhzoumi, 2002) is yet another factor that excludes rural culture from heritage practices. The accepted translation of ‘landscape’ is restricted to scenery, limiting the perception of landscape architecture to ‘beautification’ mainly of urban settings (ibid). In combination, these factors hinder efforts to realise the dynamic potential of rural landscapes as heritage. In the following part, I elaborate the discourse of rural cultural landscape, shortcomings and potentialities with special reference to the Mashreq. In the second and third I draw on a case study, Ebel-es-Saqi village in South Lebanon, to elaborate methods and approaches adopted and demonstrate the claims made that rural landscapes, not only urbanised ones, can provide insight into identity and heritage in the region.

Heritage practices, landscape and rural culture: shifting paradigms As discussed above, patrimonialisation practices the world over follow a predominantly Western discourse that interprets ‘heritage’ as a ‘product that can be mapped, studied, managed, preserved and/or conserved, its protection subject to national legislation and international agreements, conventions and charters’ (Smith, 2006, 3). These practices reduce heritage to the product of an unchanging monument and suspend ‘a whole range of questions to do with process’ (Ley and Duncan, 1997, 330). Such questions

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include the act of ‘production’, use, stewardship and meaning of heritage, which is as important as the product itself, but which expands heritage practices to include the communities whose heritage is being questioned. In the last few decades, post-modern, postcolonial and feminist thinkers have raised these questions challenging the prevailing heritage paradigm, proposing instead a dynamic, process-centred discourse (Bender, 1993; Hirsch and O’Hanlon, 1995; Smith, 2006). ‘Landscape’ has been at the centre of the new, process-centred discourse of heritage. On the one hand, the complexity and power of landscape makes it ‘both spatial and temporal’, a palimpsest of past activity, incorporating political action yet encompassing change, ‘half imagined and something held in the memory’ (Bender, 1993, 9). Landscapes are in flux, changing seasonally and over the years through geomorphic and climatic process and socio-economic and political ones. On the other hand, the specificity of landscapes as unique to the culture and place within which they evolve moves academic inquiry away from the ‘universal, valueneutral’ research model, towards recognition of the ‘dialogue between one’s data – other places and other people – and the researcher who is embedded within a particular intellectual and institutional context’ (Duncan and Ley, 1997, 3). In short, ‘landscape’ is likely to sensitise researchers and designers to the local nature of the discourse on place, identity and heritage and to encourage a contextual interpretation of global guidelines and international conventions. While geographers and post-processual archaeologists applied ‘landscape’ in the discourse of cultural heritage, landscape ecologists appropriated ‘landscape’ to the study of natural systems and resources, the ‘natural heritage’. As a young science, landscape ecology ‘deals with the interrelationships between man and his open and built-up landscapes’ (Makhzoumi and Pungetti, 1999), its concern is with spatial and temporal processes that ‘bind’ the components, natural and human made/managed into functioning resilient systems. The framework of landscape ecology is holistic, integrating visual, aesthetic, use and chorological aspects, and hierarchical, exploring patterns and processes across different levels of the spatial and temporal scale (Naveh and Lieberman, 1990; Farina, 1998). Landscape ecology continues to inform and guide nature conservation strategies but has indirectly influenced design and planning, fostering holistic, probabilistic and expansive methods and objectives (Makhzoumi and Pungetti, 2008). Bridging the disciplinary divide of the social sciences, science and design, ‘landscape’ is well suited to the study of rural heritage and the conservation of rural cultural landscapes. I shall demonstrate in the Ebel-es-Saqi case-study in Lebanon that a landscape framework draws on the methods and interpretations of all three disciplines in the process of interpreting and

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protecting rural heritage. I would like here to discuss regional applicability, namely the rural cultural landscape of the Mashreq.1 Spatial extent, the morphological, functional and cultural diversity of rural landscapes in the Mashreq makes them hard to conceptualise. Spatially, rural cultural landscapes stretch from urban peripheries to national borders and beyond. Geographical centrality, heterogeneous geomorphology and climate have over time formed natural enclaves, mosaics of habitats and ecosystems that shelter the region’s exceptional biological and ecological diversity. Successive peoples have inhabited these enclaves, managing them through traditional practices, whether silvicultural, agricultural and/ or pastoral nomadic. Rural landscapes include woodlands, scrublands, grasslands and arid lands, the desert, perennial cropping of olive trees and vineyards, fruit orchards, agricultural fields and villages. Rural communities are attached to the land, whether farmers or herders, sedentary or nomadic, stewards of the exceptional landscape they have shaped, as did their forefathers (Figure 9). They are custodians of the region’s historical legacy and wardens of its resources, which they manage through practices that are honed by the scarcity of natural resources. Rural landscapes in the Mashreq as such are a tangible narrative of the interface of nature and culture, a repository of its natural and cultural heritage.

Figure 9. Conceptual representation of rural landscape heritage.

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A landscape framing of the Mashreq makes for a complex, often contradictory reading of heritage. The spatial overlap between natural features, resources and processes (terrain, rainfall, natural vegetation) corresponds closely to the land-use map of the region (dry and irrigated farming, desert and oasis, villages and cities). Both lie in stark contrast to the arbitrariness of present day political divisions. This aim here is not to ignore the nuances within a broad mapping of cultural landscape in the region, but rather to de-privilege and overcome national boundaries. Reading the Mashreq through the perspective of the cultural landscape heritage of its countryside can lead to a number of challenging, long-term scenarios. Politically, ‘landscape’ is a charged term because it relates to the way in which identities are created and disputed by individuals, groups or nationstates (Bender, 1993). Landscapes have historically served as a foundation for defining ethnicity, to mark cultural distinction and as a medium for forging national identities (O’Shea, 2004; Germundsson, 2006; Mattless, 1998; Tannous, 1949). I have argued that landscapes, habitual environments and traditional milieux serve as a basis for identity construction, that their ‘disappearance spells not only loss of our natural/cultural heritage but threatens our very sense of being’ (Lowenthal, 2006, 80). However, while recognising the importance of physical landscape as material heritage, a landscape framework also recognises that the material and physical is the arena within which communities negotiate who they are – their past and also their future, social and cultural meaning, memories and experiences. A community and culture inclusive approach to patrimonialisation practices is all the more relevant in the Third World, where rural communities are marginalised politically, socially and economically (Makhzoumi, 2011). Recognising rural heritage serves to legitimise rural–urban differences, to accept and celebrate indigenous knowledge, rural identity and experiences, if only to balance the rapidly increasing prevalence of globalisation and the neoliberal vision in the Mashreq (Daher, 2008). Another scenario concerns the region’s natural heritage, more specifically water and biodiversity resources. With climate change and global warming in the forefront of the global agenda on environmental sustainability, water in the Mashreq is a key resource for survival. The MENA region as a whole ‘entered a phase of water deficit in about 1970’ (Amery and Wolf, 2000). This implies a scarcity in ‘water for drinking, domestic, municipal, and industrial uses’ let alone water to grow the food which is tenfold the per capita consumption (ibid). Traditional management practices provide exemplars for prudent water management that range from residential and communal rain harvesting in villages to the multifunctional landscape of oasis and wadis in the arid Mashreq. The archaeology of irrigation, argues

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Wilkinson (2003), has historically shaped the countryside in the Near East, forming alignments of water supply and irrigation channels making part of a ‘natural’ system of rivers. The tangible features of ancient systems (water wheels, canals and subterranean utilisation of dry water courses) and of traditional practices should be recognised, at times protected and in some cases re-conceptualised to suit contemporary needs. Biodiversity, like water, is a natural heritage of the region. Current practices to conserve biodiversity endure the indiscriminate application of north European and American strategies, which generally disregard ecological and cultural context. Context here implies the habitats that harbour wildlife, which differ in structure and management in the Mashreq from those of tropical rainforests. Nature in the Mediterranean, which is recognised as a world biodiversity hotspot, resides in traditional rural landscapes, protected through vernacular management practices. An ecological landscape approach, I have argued elsewhere (Makhzoumi et al, 2011; Makhzoumi and Hasan, 1988; Makhzoumi, 1987), has as a starting point physical landscape in vernacular management practices, recognising and utilising their potential to contextualise global conventions and strategies on nature/biodiversity conservation. Adopting a ‘landscape approach’ is gradually being recognised as fostering sound long-term conservation in the region (see Nature Conservation Center, nd). This is not to say ‘that indigenous knowledge must always be uncritically accepted or that it must always take precedence’, but rather to broaden the discourse of heritage, acknowledge and accept that different knowledge systems coexist and ‘understand the extended political and cultural consequences that will occur when one knowledge system is given greater authority and legitimacy over the other’ (Smith 2007, 163). To conclude, my vision is for ‘landscape’ to engender a new reading of the Mashreq, one that is based on the regional heritage, and for such a vision to inform and guide current patrimonialisation practices to new paradigms that acknowledge rural culture, recognises the stewardship of rural communities and through it their particular discourse of heritage. The European Landscape Convention (Council of Europe, 2000), the first to focus specifically on landscape, ‘dedicated to the protection, management and planning of European landscapes’, provides an appropriate model for the Mashreq. The convention defines ‘Landscape’ as an ‘area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the actions and interaction of natural and/or human factors’, highlights ‘the need to recognize landscape in law, to develop landscape policies dedicated to the protection,

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management and creation of landscapes’ and emphasizes ‘procedures for the participation of the general public and other stakeholders in the creation and implementation of landscape policies’.

The Ebel-es-Saqi case-study Sea and mountains have shaped history, land and culture in Lebanon. The sea is open to commerce and cultural exchange, and inaccessible mountains are a refuge from foreign occupiers and persecution. People and environment co-evolved in mountain terrain through forest clearing and terracing to reclaim cultivable land and places of habitation. Ebel-es-Saqi, with 3,448 inhabitants, is a small mountain village, some 44 miles east of the Mediterranean coast in South Lebanon. Biblical in origin, the village’s name (Arabic for ‘camel watering place’) reflects its role in servicing camel caravans moving along trade routes to the Mediterranean (Feghali, 2002). The village built-up area straddles one of two hilly peaks (684 metres above sea level), the other being occupied by the village woodland. Olive orchards cascade down from the peak to the Hasbani River valley that defines the south-eastern edge of the village. The rural landscape of Ebel-es-Saqi is typical of mountainous Lebanon, where people have reclaimed land by building stone terraces, domesticating the native olive, herded sheep and goats, and harvested natural plants for culinary and medicinal uses. The picturesque, distinctly Mediterranean landscape, however, has been riven by strife. Ebel-esSaqi, as indeed all of South Lebanon, endured 22 years of civil war and Israeli occupation that impacted environment and people alike. Woodlands were burnt, orchards cleared and agricultural livelihoods disrupted. Women, children and the elderly fled, leaving behind ruined villages. However, the Ebel-es-Saqi woodland survived the war intact, maturing into a visually prominent landscape. In 2002, it became the focus of a post-occupation recovery project. The aim of the Ebel-es-Saqi project was to assess the site and to propose a master-plan that would protect the woodland as an amenity landscape (Makhzoumi, 2003).2 The project marks the first phase in my work at Ebel-es-Saqi, namely as project leader and landscape architect. The landscape design approach, realised through the interdisciplinary project team, was instrumental in conceiving a dynamic master-plan that broadened project objectives beyond tangible woodland to provide for livelihoods and to address issues of identity and rural heritage, while expanding in area to include the entire village landscape, reconnecting its components into the regional ecology (Makhzoumi, 2003; Makhzoumi et al, 2011). The landscape master-plan was completed in March 2003 and launched with a

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national/international campaign to secure funding for design and implementation. Mercy Corps provided funds for developing architectural and site implementation documents and construction, which was completed in 2005. The completed buildings, though somewhat overpowering, nevertheless served as a basis for promoting awareness of nature and environment. My involvement continued by advising on the implementation of the master plan but also as an academic and researcher. In the course of assessing the woodland, informal meetings and focus groups were conducted. Considering the economic hardship that follows in the wake of war and occupation, the community was grateful that Ebel-esSaqi was at the centre of postwar recovery, but they nevertheless questioned the choice of landscape, i.e. the woodland. Repeated reference to olive landscapes reflected that local perception of village identity differed from that of the design team as outsiders and professionals. To explore the local discourse on landscape and village identity, participatory research was planned. The method was based on a user-dependent, quantitative technique that asked respondents to rank photographs of five key landscape components (the Ebel spring; olive landscapes; agricultural landscapes; Ebel-es-Saqi woodland; degraded scrubland) according to their aesthetic preference (Selwan, 2004). The target population included respondents from Ebel-es-Saqi and two other villages, Rachaya-el-Foukhar and Hebbariye, which are within sight of it. The scale of ranking was set from 1 to 5, each photograph obtaining a relative score. The survey included questions on background characteristics of respondents (gender, age, level of education, income and employment in agriculture) and additional ‘fringe’ questions on biodiversity evaluation. The survey revealed that it was the Ebel spring rather than the woodland that was aesthetically favoured by Ebel-es-Saqi inhabitants, which is understandable considering both the significance of water to agriculture in a semi-arid region and the Arabic meaning of the village name. In second place, aesthetic preference was for the landscape of olive groves, justified by the positive correlation between aesthetic preference and respondents’ background as farmers (ibid). Olive trees are not only ‘productive’, a valued source of income, but also claimed by the village as their heritage from Roman Lebanon. Although the woodland was increasingly associated with village identity following the UN-ESCWA project, it was far from being favoured aesthetically. This appears surprising, considering that the woodland was impressive to those from outside the village, but is explained by the fact that the state repossessed the woodland after reforestation, alienating the local community. The quantitative study gauging aesthetic perceptions encouraged another survey, one that explored cultural nuances embedded in the village

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landscape (Makhzoumi, 2004; 2009). In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand local community conceptions of the village landscape. The findings confirm that the latter, far from passive container or visual backdrop, is indeed an enabling medium through which traditional cultural practices are preserved, local identities constructed – ‘a tangible expression of rural culture’ (ibid, 329). The absence of a single Arabic term was compensated for by myriad vernacular words and place names that reflected the geographical diversity of rural landscapes and traditional agricultural practices. This confirms that rural landscape heritage includes both product and production, an ongoing process of defining and redefining of place and identity in surroundings that are changing through various local and regional influences.

Landscape and the discourse of rural heritage In this final section I explore whether the Ebel-es-Saqi case study supports the argument for rural heritage in the Lebanese context. Outcome and findings, respectively of the woodland project, photographic and qualitative surveys, are re-structured to reflect the three claims made at the beginning of this chapter.

Integrating natural and cultural heritage As a conceptual framework, ‘landscape’ broadens the reading of heritage at Ebel-es-Saqi beyond the woodland – the project focus – to include the entire rural landscape, natural, semi-natural, managed and manufactured, respectively woodland, degraded scrubland, olive agriculture and built settlement. Maquis scrublands constitute 44 per cent of the village cadastral area, of which the wooded part is very small. ‘Maquis scrubland’, a remnant of the original Mediterranean Sclerophyll Forest, forms a biodiversity-rich vegetative cover that includes lentisc shrubs, degraded oak stands, carob trees and aromatic herbs such as thyme, oregano and sage. Olive-cropping along stone-terraced slopes makes up another third of the Ebel-es-Saqi cadastral area. The olive tree is native to the region, domesticated and cultivated within complex agricultural ecosystems that are multifunctional, environmentally sustainable and ecologically significant (Makhzoumi, 1997). These cultural landscapes are increasingly being recognised as a valuable habitat for terrestrial and avifaunal life. Olive agriculture is also integral to the cultural history of the region, a ‘sacred’ tree in Islam, referenced in biblical accounts alongside cedar trees (Stordalen, 2000). More than any other, olive landscapes embody the essence of Mediterranean

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rural cultural landscapes as part nature, part culture, at once a natural and cultural heritage. The vernacular codes and practices for the management of traditional rural landscapes are as much a heritage as the resources they aim to conserve. They need to be recognised and documented. The hima (Arabic, ‘protected’) of Ebel-es-Saqi comprises maquis scrubland and the village woodland. The concept of hima can be traced to the early Islamic period where it was used to ensure the sustainable management of tribal rangelands. The hima is a living example of community-based nature conservation that aims to secure equitable distribution and sustainable use of scarce natural resources (Dutton, 1992; Llewellyn, 1992). Reviving the Ebel-es-Saqi hima is of value ‘not only because it is integral to Lebanon’s rural heritage but equally because community protection serves as an alternative to prevailing, top-heavy state dictated and managed nature conservation’ (Makhzoumi et al, 2011). Boldly marked on the old cadastral maps, ‘hima Ebel’ was uncovered while researching the landscape in 2002. Revival of the concept was advanced by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (SPNL, 2005), who were commissioned to develop nature-conservation management for the woodland. Drawing on the Ebel-es-Saqi case-study, the concept of hima came to be recognised by the International Union for Nature Conservation as representing sound, site-specific and community-based conservation (see at International Union for Nature Conservation, 2009).

From ‘product’ to ‘production’, process to network The focus on process was key in contributing to the framing of natural and cultural heritage at Ebel-es-Saqi. The ecological basis for reading the village landscape and developing the master-plan ensured a dynamic reconfiguration of the nature-conservation agenda. Woodland and the entire village landscape was conceptualised by considering the potential of ecological linkages to the surrounding landscape. Through a conscious effort to network natural heritage, the master-plan vision acknowledges the spatial and temporal contiguities of rural landscapes, on the one hand, and on the other their hierarchic constitution. Local landscapes constitute regional ones, which in turn make up national and transnational landscapes. Networking village landscapes with the ecological corridor of the Hasbani River is at once expansive, embracing the regional landscape, and dynamic, ensuring the ecological integrity of the rural landscape heritage (Jongman and Pungetti, 2004). The master-plan came to engender several offshoot initiatives. In 2004, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (SPNL) in consultation with Birdlife International declared Ebel-es-Saqi woodland a bird migration

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Figure 10. Poster celebrating the designation of Hima Ebel-es-Saqi as an Important Bird Area (SPNL, 2004). ‘hot spot’, recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA). Beyond woodland, it was the entire village landscape and the diversity of bird habitats it provides that made it a potential IBA (SPNL, 2004) (Figure 10). Time limitations invariably pushed the Ebel-es-Saqi woodland project to prioritise the tangible landscape heritage. This was compensated by the participatory assessment of local landscape aesthetic preferences undertaken in the year that followed (Selwan, 2004) and the qualitative research (Makhzoumi, 2009) that focused on local community interpretation of rural heritage. Underlying the findings is the complex overlap between tangible landscape and intangible conception, product and production. ‘Heritage’ and ‘identity’ were recurring themes in the interviews, as components of the village landscape, as experienced through traditional rural practices and social customs and as memories of both handed down from one generation to another. Privately owned olive orchards or commonly owned maquis scrubland were valued as experiences and memories. For example, a young girl speaks of how she values the olive harvest: ‘I loved going to the olive orchards with my grandparents. It is quiet and has clean refreshing air. Astamakh [‘it is inspiring’]’ (ibid, 325). Another respondent values learning the skills and pleasures of harvesting wild plants: ‘With the first rain

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we go to the olive orchards to collect snails and baqleh (‘cress’) – this is hindiba (‘chard’) this is habaq (‘basil’). This plant is poisonous, the other is not. Mother knows which is which. I often forget, but mother reminds me (ibid, 324). Significantly, the discourse of landscape was far from static. A perceptible shift was noted between senior community members, who associate village identity and heritage with agricultural landscapes, and young people, who associate village identity with the woodland. The shift is in part the outcome of declining revenues from agriculture but also the introduction of environmental awareness and biodiversity conservation in school curricula. The shift corroborates the view that, far from functioning merely as a passive container or visual backdrop, ‘the village landscape is an active, enabling medium through which traditional cultural practices are negotiated, contested, modified and/or reaffirmed’ (ibid, 330). The focus on landscape process therefore encourages an open-ended conception of heritage, one where product and production continue to interact and change.

Unfolding the community-based discourse of heritage Landscape, it was argued earlier, is a framework for political empowerment and heritage a means for contesting community/human rights (Bender and Winger, 2001; Silverman and Ruggles, 2007). In Ebel-es-Saqi the landscape master-plan served as a platform for two fruitful actions by the village community. The first was to recover stewardship of the village woodland from the state, namely the Ministry of Agriculture. The article pertaining to reforestation of village hima states that transfer of stewardship to the ministry is temporary, for a period of 15 years, to ensure protection of reforested land. Excluded from the initiative, their authority undermined and rights bypassed, the local community lost interest in the newly established woodland.3 Upon completion of the landscape master-plan, members from Ebel-es-Saqi municipality followed up with legal procedures to recover local community stewardship of the woodland. Stewardship was also a criterion for funding by Mercy Corps. Eventually, the state conceded to relinquishing its authority and returning the woodland to the village community. The village then pursued a further claim. They rallied for reconstruction of the bayt al-fallah (Arabic, ‘house of the farmer’), a vernacular building that served as a museum of rural folklore. The bayt al-fallah, destroyed during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), was of significance in itself but also reflected the Ebel-es-Saqi’s status as a model Lebanese village in the 1960s. Reconstructing the bayt al-fallah was therefore a matter of village pride. The president of the municipality, Riyadh Abu Samra, negotiated on behalf of the community, successfully securing funding for design and implementation. Though the

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Figure 11. Ebel-es-Saqi, Bayt al-Fallah Folkloric Museum. original location was in the village built-up area, changes in land ownership during the war made the choice difficult. On the other hand, the landscape master-plan had proposed ‘Ebel Market’ at the entrance to the woodland, conceived as a gateway into Ebel-es-Saqi’s cultural heritage and a venue for marketing local produce. The market was not implemented, but the location proved suitable for the bayt al-fallah, which was constructed reviving traditional building skills in stone, mud plastering and sod roofing (Figure 11).4

Conclusion Returning to the question posed at the beginning of this chapter: is rural heritage relevant to an urbanising Mashreq? I believe it is, not because of a romanticised view of shepherd and farmer, or quaint villages above terraced olive groves. Nor is the affirmation based on a conception that rural culture is ‘traditional’ – such culture changes much as urban culture does, albeit at a slower pace; it is relevant to the study and practice of heritage because of the dynamic heritage of discourse on place, identity and heritage. I have tried to conceptualise ‘landscape’, ‘rural culture’ and ‘heritage’, the underlying themes of this chapter, with the aim of broadening patrimonialisation practices in Lebanon and the region, focusing mainly on designers (architects, landscape architects and urban planners). Discussing the method, approach and findings of the Ebel-es-Saqi case-study, I have demonstrated the discursive elasticity of ‘landscape’, a) as an interpretive framework that is likely to explain the co-evolution of people and setting, cultures shaping geographies and geographies shaping cultures;

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and b) as a medium for action which is sustainable in that it addresses local and regional contexts, past as well as present and future, tangible, physical heritage and intangible community interpretation, needs and aspirations. By shifting position, from professional engagement to academic researcher, I have drawn on an eclectic choice of methods and outlooks, from the ecological sciences to consider ‘natural heritage’, and from the social sciences to interpret the ‘cultural heritage’. Throughout, my training in design was a source of creative, integrative and action-oriented skills, but also a means for bridging the science-arts disciplinary divide towards a holistic conception of rural culture and rural landscape as embracing natural and cultural heritage. Projecting these methods and findings to embrace the landscape contiguities that make up the Mashreq is a considerable task, but one worth exploring within the landscape vision proposed earlier. Such an undertaking becomes an opportunity to access the ‘bank of cultural memories – some still in use, others as residues of past practices and knowledges’ (Crang, 1998). More significantly, a landscape vision for rural areas is more likely to inspire alternatives to heritage management that address the underlying problem of rural heritage conservation: how can we conserve a dynamic entity that continues to evolve? How to address socio-cultural and political changes that impact rural heritage valuation by rural communities which invariably alter the physical landscapes? Drawing on the Ebel-esSaqi case study and other scenarios in rural south Lebanon (Makhzoumi, 2011) I would like to advocate that the management of heritage should be open-ended and developmental. Financial, statutory and scientific/technical resource limitations in the region favour such an approach as the only sustainable one for the management of rural heritage. Heritage practice will need to consider strategies for empowering rural communities and providing for alternative livelihoods – for example, by propagating and using native plants in forestation (see at Nature Conservation Center, nd), through nature and agro-tourism, by linking agricultural landscapes to the production of traditional foods (Zurayk et al, 2008), and by promoting traditional culinary culture (Hourani, 2006; Batal, 2008). If rural landscapes prove to be of economic value, local communities will continue to serve as custodians of our rural heritage, as they have from time immemorial.

Notes 1. In this chapter, Mashreq is used to refer to the Arab countries of the eastern Mediterranean (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt), Iraq and the Arabian countries.

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IS RURAL HERITAGE RELEVANT IN AN URBANISING M ASHREQ? 249 2. The project was initiated by United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA). I was consulted early in the inception of the project, which enabled application of a landscape approach. 3. Exclusion of herders from the woodland, in essence communal lands, was another factor, and equally reforestation with non-native species that were neither of use nor of sentimental value to the local community. 4. Mercy Corps allocated funds for the bayt al-fallah. Architect Hana Alamudin was commissioned to prepare the design, which was based on documentation of the bayt al-fallah, before its destruction, by F. Ragette.

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IS RURAL HERITAGE RELEVANT IN AN URBANISING M ASHREQ? 251 ——— and Hasan (2008), ‘Landscape strategies’. In Vogiatzakis, I., Pungetti G. and Mannion, A. (eds), Mediterranean Island Landscapes: Natural and Cultural Approaches. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, pp. 351–75. ———, Zurayk, R. and Talhouk, S. (forthcoming), ‘Landscape design approach in support of sustainable alternative for traditional Mediterranean rural landscapes in marginal Lebanon’. Landscape Research. Mattless, David (1998), Landscape and Englishness. London: Reaktion Books. Nature Conservation Center (nd), Programs at the American University of Beirut. Available at: http://www.aub.edu.Ib/units/natureconservation/programs/pages/ default.aspx. Last accessed: 29 January 2014. Naveh, Zev and Lieberman, Arthur S. (1990), Landscape Ecology. New York: Springer. Olwig, K. and Lowenthal, D. (eds) (2006) The Nature of Cultural Heritage and the Culture of Natural Heritage. Northern perspectives on a contested patrimony. Abingdon: Routledge. O’Shea, Maria T. (2004), Trapped Between the Map and Reality: Geography and Perception of Kurdistan. New York: Routledge. Selwan, Rhea (2004), Aesthetic Landscape Preferences and Nature Conservation: A Case Study in Rural South Lebanon. Unpublished MSc dissertation, American University of Beirut. Silk Museum, The (nd), Available at: http://www.thesilkmuseum.com. Last accessed: 29 January 2014. Silverman, Helaine and Ruggles, D. Fairchild (eds) (2007), Cultural Heritage and Human Rights. New York: Springer. Smith, Laurajane (2006), Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge. ——— (2007), ‘Empty gestures? Heritage and the politics of recognition’. In Silverman and Ruggles (eds), Cultural Heritage and Human Rights, pp. 159–71. Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (2004), Hima Ebel-es-Saqi. Unpublished report. Solidere (nd), Available at: http://www.solidere.com. Last accessed: 29 January 2014. Stewart, Pamela J. and Strathern, Andrew (eds) (2003), Landscape, Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto. Stordalen, Terje (2000), Echoes of Eden. Genesis 2–3 and Symbolism of the Eden Garden in Biblical Hebrew Literature. Leuven: Peeters. Tannous, Afif I. (1949), ‘The village in the national life of Lebanon’. Middle East Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 151–64. UNESCO (nd), World Heritage List. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list. Last accessed: 29 January 2014. Wilkinson, Tony J. (2003), Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. World Bank (2001), Cultural Heritage and Development: A Framework for Action in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. Zurayk, Rami, Abdul Rahman, Sami and Traboulsi, Tanya (2008), From ‘Akkar to ‘Amel: Lebanon’s Slow Food Trail. Bra and Beirut: Slow Food Institute for Biodiversity.

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9 MOROCCAN-JEWISH HER ITAGE R E-VISITED 1 Sophie Wagenhofer

Beginning in the late 1970s, after almost three decades of uneasy silence, Morocco has experienced a growing interest in Jewish places and ‘things Jewish’.2 This has been shown, for example, in an upsurge of media coverage, in an increase in scientific and literary publications, and in the restoration of old synagogues and cemeteries. In 1995 the Fondation du Patrimoine culturel judéo-marocain, a private organisation, was founded for ‘preserving, restoring and raising awareness of’ the Moroccan-Jewish patrimony’.3 The objectives of the Foundation are presented on its homepage and introduced with the following statement: In two millennia the Moroccan Jewish community accumulated a cultural patrimony that is highly significant for its authenticity and its role as one facet of the pluralistic Moroccan civilisation.4 This refers to the long Jewish presence in Morocco, and emphasises the importance of the Jewish heritage for the ‘pluralistic Moroccan civilisation’. But how is this statement to be contextualised? Who are the actors, inside and outside Morocco, who define what is considered to be ‘highly significant’ and ‘authentic’? What is their motivation in emphasising the Jewish component of the Moroccan heritage, and how are they related to one another? Heritage does not simply exist – rather, it is created, shaped and negotiated. It is, as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett put it, ‘a mode of cultural production in the present that has recourse to the past’ (1998). Agents

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declare certain objects, buildings, places and performances to be part of the heritage, depending on the cultural, social, political and economic needs of the self and the expectations of others. In doing so, objects or buildings are detached from their original function and re-defined as belonging to a heritage, and necessarily to be preserved (ibid, 3). This chapter focuses, therefore, on those actors who determine what Moroccan-Jewish heritage is or ought to be. Although the Foundation plays a central role in restoring and reconstructing what has been defined in this way, there are many more agents involved in the process of ‘patrimonialisation’. Considerable impact on the perception of Moroccan-Jewish heritage comes from international organisations like Unesco and the World Heritage Fund. Also, the activities of the many Moroccan Jews living abroad have to be taken into consideration, as they are influential in the process of shaping the Jewish heritage. Another significant factor here is the upswing in heritage tourism, and in cultural tourism generally, which stimulates interest in historical sites. Since dealing with heritage always has political significance, the political relevance of rediscovering the Moroccan-Jewish patrimony will be a fundamental issue in this analysis. I will take a closer look at places and practices that have been revitalised in the last decade, and thus become visible. Concrete examples of restoration projects, exhibitions of Jewish culture and history, and practices such as annual pilgrimages will show who is involved in the re-construction process and what is the motivation behind the rediscovery of Jewish places, objects and traditions.

Filling the gaps: the increasing interest in Moroccan-Jewish culture The statement by the Fondation du Patrimoine culturel judéo-marocain quoted above indicates the presence of Jews in Morocco for more than two millennia. Researchers tend to assume that the first Jews came to the region in the sixth century bc, even though only a few sources from antiquity have been preserved. Nevertheless, it is taken for granted that Jewish communities had already been established throughout the country in pre-Islamic times. Most studies on Jewry in Morocco, however, are concerned with the communities under Islamic rule, especially after 1492. The mass immigration from Andalusia in the aftermath of the Reconquista had a significant impact on Moroccan Jews, as the new immigrants replaced old rites and traditions with their own cultural and religious practices.5 Growing influences from Europe and the activities of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in the second half of the nineteenth century changed the situation of the

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Jewish community and its relations with the Muslim majority. Given the difficult economic situation, but also the immense political uncertainty brought about by the Second World War, many Jews took the opportunity of leaving the country. With the foundation of the state of Israel and the Arab-Israeli wars, emigration increased: some 250,000 Jews left Morocco in the second half of the twentieth century.6 With this mass emigration of Jews, mainly to Israel, France and Canada, their culture almost disappeared from everyday life in Morocco. The estimated number of the Jews remaining varies between 3,000 and 5,000, most of them living in Casablanca.7 Even though the Mellah8 is still referred to as the centre of Moroccan Jewry, it is now predominately inhabited by Muslim families. Most synagogues and community-service buildings are no longer in use as such: instead, they have been sold and transformed into private houses or shops. Religious items, collections of art and private libraries were sold to collectors or tourists, often very much undervalued (Levy, 1997, 6–7). Restoration projects, various publications and films, the marketing of specialised Jewish-heritage tours and the rediscovering of Jewish-Moroccan cuisine are all indicators of increasing attention to Jewish culture and history since the late 1970s. The phenomenon of a growing interest in Jewish places and objects is not unique to Morocco: since the 1990s there has been a major boom in Europe for the revival of Jewish places and culture.9 It is astonishing that this seems particularly evident in places where only a few or no Jews are living today, and where Jewish culture does not play any integral part in everyday life (Gruber, 2002, 127). Consequently, an interest in ‘things Jewish’ is not necessarily connected to existing communities and everyday culture, but addresses the expectations of non-Jews or of Jewish tourists. The Israeli anthropologist André Levy considers it ironic ‘that Morocco’s Jewish absentees remain present in the landscape, whereas present-day Jews appear to be absent’ (Levy, 2003, 366.). With regard to Europe, this phenomenon is explained by a conjunction of various developments in the 1990s: feelings of moral responsibility for the Shoa and of guilt in its aftermath, nostalgia and – as Diane Pinto put it – ‘multicultural trendiness’.10 In Morocco itself, however, the growing interest in the Jewish heritage cannot be explained as a consequence of the Shoa. Rather, it has to be seen with reference to conflict in the Middle East and also within the context of various local economic and political interests. Besides, and this is often underestimated, there is the impact of very personal efforts, based on individual biographical motives – though the first impulses initiating a debate on the Moroccan-Jewish past and present seem not to have derived from

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the personal nostalgia of individuals, but rather from the political context. In the 1970s Moroccan politicians, above all King Hassan II, were already trying to position their country as a partner in a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. In May 1984 Moroccan and Israeli politicians and activists met for a conference in Rabat, with the participation of Jewish representatives from the United States and Europe, the Moroccan Minister of State Ahmad Al-Alawi and the crown prince and present-day king Mohammed VI (Abul Nasr, 1984, 158). The Moroccan-Jewish community was made a point of reference for the role of Moroccan authorities as mediators between Arabs and Israelis. Moroccan Jews, and thus Moroccan society as a whole, served as a model for coexistence between Muslims and Jews.11 In order to document good relations with the Jewish minority in Morocco and with Moroccan Jews living abroad, the Moroccan Prime Minister Ahmed Osman announced in 1976 a right of return for all Moroccan Jews. Even though his speech did not initiate re-immigration to Morocco, it symbolised the recognition of Jewish culture as an integral part of the Moroccan heritage (Assaraf, 2005, 752). Although the political commitment to Moroccan Jews was only sporadic, and the Jewish presence in Morocco was clearly used for political ends, attention was still drawn to the Jewish community after decades of marginalisation, and a frame of reference for broader debates on the Moroccan-Jewish past and on the status quo of the dwindling Jewish community was established. Representatives of the Jewish community used the political attention for their own ends. Supported by the state authorities they played a considerable role in attempts to mediate in the Middle East conflict. In addition, new questions on the position of Jews within Moroccan society have been raised, such as how Jews are perceived by the Moroccan public, and how they position themselves in a predominantly Muslim-Arab country. These questions became especially acute in the aftermath of another political event: the so-called Marche Verte.12 This was a march of some 350,000 Moroccans, initiated by King Hassan II, to legitimise Moroccan claims to territory in the Western Sahara; it provoked a wave of patriotism and nationalism, amplified by broad media coverage. It became a symbol of Moroccan ‘national unity’ and is still annually commemorated as an ‘epic event’.13 Simon Lévy, director of the Jewish Museum in Casablanca, refers to the Green March as an initial point from which ‘Moroccan Judaism re-dynamised itself’ (Houfaïdi-Settar, 1994). While the participation of the Jews and their attitude towards the Green March is debatable, and was also debated within the Jewish community (Assaraf, 2005, 746–9), it raised discussions on their own standing within society. In 1976 the community established the Association Maïmonide14 as a body to hold debates on identity in a more institutional

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context. Muslim-Jewish relations in Morocco and in the Middle East were discussed, as well as Jewish history, culture, the living conditions of the remaining Moroccan Jews, and also the cultural heritage and measures for its protection. In the same year a group of political activists, intellectuals and researchers came together in Paris and formed a group, Identité et Dialogue, which was dedicated to similar topics but consisted of Jews of Moroccan origin living all over the world.15 This group, and to a greater extent the Rassemblement mondial du Judaïsme Marocain, founded in 1985 in Montreal, served as a means of strengthening relations between the global Moroccan-Jewish diaspora and the Jews in Morocco. In this view, the increasing interest in Moroccan Jews was neither reduced to political issues nor confined to the community in Morocco. The issue of Jewish culture and life in Morocco was debated in various contexts, such as academia and journalism. Ideas and concerns were spread via publications and other media, and consequently shaped debates on Jewish culture, life and history in Morocco and abroad.

Nostalgia and Jewish heritage tourism The work of various associations and groups linking Jews of Moroccan descent all over the world raised curiosity and interest in their former homeland. Jews who had emigrated in their childhood, as well as second- and thirdgeneration expatriates, wished to visit Morocco to search for places connected with their families, and to visit cemeteries, synagogues and Jewish quarters. Their interest in certain places, but also in Moroccan-Jewish culture as such, had a great impact on the reconstruction of their heritage. Many Jews of Moroccan origin took the initiative and launched and supported restoration projects like, for example, the Nahon synagogue in Tangier, which was restored mainly with money from expatriates in the United States (Levy, 1997, 5). However, this particular attachment to Morocco has not always been as strong as it is today. Henriette Dahan-Kalev described in an essay what many Moroccan emigrates experienced, especially in Israel but also in other countries, that their culture and habitus was mal vue: All that is Mizrakhi is retarded, degenerated, and primitive, and therefore I had to choose the Ashkenazi alternative – I had to Ashkenazi-size myself (become ‘white’). For me this meant establishing a modern, progressive, clean identity, and destroying the identity that my parents gave me. This meant rejecting everything: their past, their language, their values, their loves, their hates, their pains, and their joys.16

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In this situation memories and family traditions have been suppressed and the Moroccan identity has often been neglected, especially among those who left the country as children or were even born abroad and who sought to adopt the culture and language of their new homeland) (Berdugo-Cohen, 1987). But since the 1980s attitudes towards Moroccan roots seem to have changed, and this re-interpretation of self-identity paved the way for curiosity in tracing one’s own family story and for a certain nostalgia about Jewish life in Morocco. In the 1980s and 1990s many books, most of them autobiographical, were published by Jewish authors of Moroccan origin, concerned with either their own childhood in Morocco or memories passed on within their families (El Maleh, 1980; Bouganim, 1981; Delanoe, 1989; Gans Perez, 1996; Amar, 2001). Jewish tourists from America, Europe and even Israel started to visit this Muslim-Arab country. Besides their biographical interest, many Jews also came for religious reasons, to participate in hillulot, pilgrimages to the tombs of venerated rabbis buried on Moroccan soil. The tradition of hillulot can be seen as the beginning of Jewishheritage tourism in Morocco; since the late 1970s the Council of Jewish Communities has organised pilgrimages and printed brochures to attract Jews living abroad (Kosansky, 2002, 366). The potential for tourism, one of the country’s major economic sectors, was also recognised by the government (Lanfant, 1980). Political changes helped to provide the basis for increasing numbers of Jewish tourists visiting Morocco: the government’s economic interests led it to support Jewish-heritage tourism by simplifying formalities, financing the restoration of sites and even protecting Jewish pilgrims (Kosansky, 2002, 373). In the mid-1980s the Moroccan tourism minister gave an official reception to a group of Jews from France, who had come for the pilgrimage of Rabbi Yahia Lakhadar (ibid, 368.). With the nomination of Serge Berdugo, who is currently head of the Jewish Community in Morocco, as Minister of Tourism in 1993 (until 1995) Jewish-heritage tourism was even more enhanced. The majority of Jewish tourists still join organised tours, and the heritage business has expanded considerably over the past decade. Various touroperators outside and inside Morocco offer special Jewish-heritage tours with a very standardised itinerary, including the Jewish Museum in Casablanca, the Jewish quarters in Fez, and Marrakech with its restored synagogues and cemeteries. Also, encounters with community members and joint Shabbat evenings are often part of the programme.17 Most of the visitors come to see places connected with their own lives, such as family houses and graves, though some visiting Jews have no familial bonds to the country. Compared to other Arab countries tourism in Morocco is much more organised and convenient for Jewish and even Israeli visitors, who can travel much more

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easily since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Morocco in 1994 (Levy, 1997, 43; Kosansky, 2002, 21). Tourism focusing on the Jewish heritage has become big business. Moroccans working in the field of tourism respond to the increasing number of Jewish and Israeli tourists by preparing menus in Hebrew and learning Hebrew phrases to target Israeli customers. Tours focusing on the Jewish heritage do not visit exclusively Jewish sites. Tour operators include ‘highlights’ of Moroccan culture into their programmes – visits to Berber villages, a stop in an oasis or a camel ride in the dunes of Merzouga. On the other hand, Jewish sites are no longer attracting only Jewish expatriates longing to trace their family roots or to participate in a hillula. Other tourists are showing an increasing interest in the relics of Jewish life and culture in Morocco, and Jewish sites are nowadays part of almost every general sightseeing programme in Morocco.18 They are mentioned in every travel guide on Morocco, and as a consequence even individual tourists visit them.

Recovering, restoring and reconstructing the Moroccan-Jewish heritage Jewish heritage tours, as they are offered today, would not have been possible some decades ago. Many places and sites that are now part and parcel of every round trip focusing on Jewish culture could not then have been visited: synagogues were used as private houses or had not been maintained at all, cemeteries were abandoned and run-down, and Jewish quarters were crowded areas unattractive to tourists. A great deal has changed since the Fondation du Patrimoine culturel judéo-marocain initiated the extensive refurbishment of Jewish sites. The programme of the Foundation, which is based in Casablanca, includes the restoration of synagogues and cemeteries, the re-purchase and collection of books, religious objects, documents and objets d’art, fund-raising, and the spreading of information on Moroccan-Jewish culture and history.19 In addition to its restoration work, the Foundation opened a museum in Casablanca in 1998, the first and until now the only Jewish museum in the Arab world. In a predominantly ArabMuslim country the existence of a Jewish foundation and a Jewish museum against the backdrop of the Middle East conflict is a highly political issue. The Museum sees itself as a reference point for both the Moroccan-Jewish past and the presence of Jews and Jewish culture in Morocco today. The management stresses that it is a ‘vivid museum of a vivid community’.20 The museum is a fixed point on the itineraries of tourist groups as well as of individual visitors, and even more importantly has become a platform for various activities addressed mainly to Moroccans.21 Jewish culture has been

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neglected for a long time in national museums in Morocco,22 but with the Jewish Museum in Casablanca the community gained its own space within the fields of museology and heritage. Furthermore, a museum as an institution is a means for knowledge production, and can claim, by reference to its scientific character, a high level of credibility for its interpretative power. Even though the Casablanca museum sees itself as primarily ethnographic, its exhibition and supporting programme send a clear political message: that Jews are an integral part of Moroccan society. Thus the exhibition highlights the contribution of Moroccan Jews to the country’s cultural heritage.23 In an interview in the Moroccan daily Le Matin Simon Lévy stated: ‘We are Moroccan citizens, and we live our marocanité (‘Moroccan-ness’) in everyday life’ (Ziane, 2005). Serge Berdugo, head of the Moroccan Jewish Community, stresses the ‘attachment of Moroccan Jews to Moroccan national values’ (El Azizi, 1999). As the exhibition’s central message is the peaceful and fruitful coexistence of Muslims and Jews, contrary narratives like mass emigration or the fear of anti-Semitism remain undiscussed. With its emphasis on Jews as belonging within the Moroccan people and by stressing good relations with the Muslim majority, the Museum’s directorate fits in with the image propagated by the Moroccan authorities, as will be outlined in the following section of this chapter. However, it is not sufficient to characterise the exhibition’s design as political conformism alone. It is important for those members of the Jewish community who remained in Morocco to present their rich cultural heritage and their successful integration into society as legitimising their decision not to leave the country, as the majority did after independence in 1956. Thus references to cultural heritage serve as a means for the present-day self-characterisation of Moroccan Jews. Moreover, with its emphasis on cultural richness the Museum also addresses the expectations of most of its visitors, who are looking for positive references to the Jewish heritage rather than stories of loss and decline. Generating publicity for the Jewish heritage in Morocco and raising money to safeguard the patrimony are the central targets the Foundation sets itself.24 However, to reach these objectives it cannot work alone: only in the context of a broader interest in Jewish heritage can its work be noticed and consequently its further projects be financed. The Foundation benefits from a general rise of interest in the historical patrimony. The support of Unesco in Morocco helped to draw attention to Jewish sites, as did that of organisations like the World Monument Fund, in the cases of Essaouira, Tetouan, Marrakesh and Fez (Khouri-Dagher, 1999). The old city of Fez, the first Cultural Heritage Site in Morocco to be so designated by Unesco (in 1981), is a comprehensive example of how various interests are interlinked. In the context of a broad redevelopment programme launched by Unesco,

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the Foundation developed a plan for the restoration of four synagogues in the city, and international interest helped to call attention to the neglected Jewish component of the Moroccan patrimony. Already in 1993 a picture of the Danan synagogue appeared in a World Monument Fund publication, and three years later it was listed among 100 civil and religious monuments in urgent need of safeguarding.25 Under the patronage of Unesco the Foundation co-operated with the Moroccan Ministry of Culture and the Jewish community in Fez to begin the synagogue’s restoration (Levy, 1998, 25). The cumulative attention being paid to Jewish sites made it easier for the Foundation to find investors for its projects26 and, moreover, to gain the support of the Moroccan authorities. The Ministry of Culture granted financial support for the restoration of the synagogue, and the Minister, Mohammed Achaari, as well as the Crown Prince – now King Mohammed VI – attended the opening ceremony in spring 1999 and declared the synagogue a ‘historic monument’. The Danan synagogue was the first monument to be explicitly recognised as a specifically Jewish site.27With the support of national and international partners – among them many Jews of Moroccan origin – and in cooperation with regional community committees, the Foundation refurbished various other synagogues and cemeteries, and today the synagogues in d’Arazan and d’Ighli-n-Ogho, and the synagogue and cemetery in Ifrane in the Anti-Altas have all been restored.28 In the course of the various activities which the Foundation launched to reconstruct and restore the Jewish heritage, it gained more and more attention, reflected in an increase in newspaper and magazine articles dealing with the Foundation and its museum (Daïf, 2004; Hein, 2003; Karim, 2002). This growing interest, not only in the local media but also from abroad, increased the interest of the Moroccan authorities in the activities of the Foundation: not only was it declared a fondation utilité publique in 2001, thus being officially recognised as part of the Moroccan patrimony,29 but the King expressed his thanks to Simon Lévy in a personal letter, in which he honoured the latter’s achievements in the preservation of the Jewish heritage.30

Jewish culture and the idea of Maroc pluriel The paragraph quoted in the introduction to this chapter refers to a ‘pluralistic Moroccan civilisation’. In Morocco, the idea of a diverse and plural society has not always been as popular as it seems today. The constitution of 1962 defined the country as an Arab-Muslim state; and as in many other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Arab-Muslim dominance was stressed after independence, while the language, culture and religion of other groups, like Berbers, Jews and Sahraouis, were marginalised.

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In a Unesco report on cultural politics in Morocco, published in 1981, the ‘Moroccan civilisation’ was still described as a homogeneous Arab-Muslim society (Ben Bachir, 1981). Over the last two decades this Arab-Muslim focus has given way to cultural diversity and plurality, which are now at the centre of debates on Moroccan identity. Since the 1990s, and especially since the enthronement of Mohammed VI in 1999, the question of human rights has become an issue in Morocco, and within this context cultural and minority rights are also now discussed. Simon Levy has called it a ‘pluralism proclaimed by the state’, and pointed out that: ‘King Mohammed VI misses no opportunity to emphasise the religious, linguistic (this is new) and cultural pluralism of the country’.31 However, the start of this process has to be seen as the result of interaction between government representatives and committed individual activists, human-rights organisations and NGOs. The Berbers (Imazighen) in particular are fighting for recognition of their language and culture, while other groups are also claiming to be acknowledged as integral parts of Moroccan society.32 This is reflected, for example, by the foundation of new museums like the Musée du patrimoine Amazighin Agadir, the Musée des Arts Sahariens in Lâayoune or the Musée du patrimoine judéo-marocain, which mark the presence of particular cultures beside that of the dominant Arab-Muslims. The authorities are providing a frame of reference for those projects, as the idea of a Maroc pluriel has become politically important, projecting as it does the image of an open, tolerant and thus democratic state (Bensadoun, 2007, 13–35). References to the cultural, religious and linguistic diversity of the country can be seen as a reaction to domestic policy problems: plurality is presented as an integral component of Moroccan identity, an alternative to the increasing radicalisation of particular Islamic factions (Laskier, 2003). Especially in the aftermath of the Casablanca suicide-bombing in May 2003,33 the image of a tolerant society has become a central plank in the attempt to prevent any destabilisation. ‘This terrorist aggression is opposed to our tolerant and generous faith’,34 commented the King in a speech several days after the bombing, stressing the strong commitment of the Moroccan people to the different political, cultural and religious components of their society. The attacks in Casablanca forced Mohammed VI not only to react to terrorism in general, but also to reassert his stance vis-à-vis his Jewish subjects, who were among the targets of the attacks. Immediately after the bombing the King paid a visit to the damaged Jewish community centre, and showed his commitment not only to members of that community but also, via media coverage, to the broader public.35 Speeches and interviews transmitted in the media as well as occasions such as the reception of Jewish delegations in Morocco and the inauguration

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of the Institut royal de la culture amazigh are important means of spreading the idea of an open and diverse society. In a speech addressed to an interreligious meeting in Brussels, which was also published in Morocco, King Mohammed VI stated: I am happy to make the voice of Morocco and the voice of its King heard, who never doubted the true values propagated by Islam that are the basis of justice, respect for life, and mutual solidarity. This profession of faith, to speak for Morocco, is neither an academic proposition nor a theoretical dissertation. It is the expression of our everyday life. It is also an irrefragable characteristic of Moroccan society.36 Mutual respect is presented here as an inherent quality of the Moroccan people, part of their nature and their daily experience of life. In this context the existence of a Jewish community in a Muslim state can also be considered as natural. The cultural and religious diversity in the country is not referred to as disturbing Arab-Muslim society, but rather as enriching it; and indeed media coverage over the last decade has been reflecting those ideas. The Moroccan weekly Maroc Hebdo International wrote for example: For a better mutual understanding it has to be remembered that the presence and visibility of Jews in Morocco are constitutive elements of the common patrimony. The Moroccan Jewish culture is Moroccan culture. It was vivid, it is still alive and it will exist in the future.37 Media reports on Jewish culture, traditions and events are predominantly positive. While most Moroccan Muslims do not have personal contact with members of the Jewish community the media coverage greatly influences people’s attitudes. An annual report on anti-Semitism released by the US State Department stated: ‘Government officials and private citizens often cited the country’s [Morocco] tradition of religious tolerance as one of its strengths’.38 Indeed, statements by Muslim Moroccans about their Jewish fellow-citizens are mostly very positive, referring to images of tolerant coexistence. The question remains, however, whether such comments are tailored to the expectations of Westerners, and might differ in discussions between Muslim Moroccans. Anti-Semitic attacks are rare in Morocco and, as in the case of the bombings in Casablanca, are greeted by avowals of solidarity with the Jewish community. Synagogue-refurbishment projects or Jewish pilgrimages do not engender protests. To what extent this is the result of political pressure to eliminate all manifestations of anti-Semitism or whether it is based on real sympathy for Jewish citizens is not clear. The fact is that

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the Middle East conflict causes feelings of aggression towards Israel, but in what ways this is influencing how Jews in Morocco are perceived has not yet been investigated. Nevertheless, a survey on contemporary Islam conducted by Moroccan scholars showed that acceptance of Judaism as part of Moroccan identity is higher among the younger generation (i.e. 18–24 years) than among respondents aged 60 or older (Daoud et al, 2006, 131–2). The message of a tolerant and open country is not addressed only to Moroccans but also to the so-called ‘Western world’. The image of an Arab country seeking modernity, equality, human rights and the protection of minorities is of great importance to Morocco’s foreign policy. Particularly against the background of the Middle East conflict and criticism of increasing anti-Semitism in Arab and Muslim countries, the Jewish community plays a considerable role within this political strategy. Given the reform of women’s rights and the critical confrontation with the past in the frame of the Commission for Equity and Reconciliation (Dennerlein et al, 2007, 88–108), and also the image of tolerant coexistence between Muslims and Jews in Morocco, the country gets positive headlines in the European and American media. In a report by a German political foundation in Rabat it was stated that Morocco is committing itself to the values of democracy, pluralism and tolerance, and of dialogue between cultures – a development that should be honoured and supported by Western partner countries in an appropriate way.39

Jewish, Moroccan? Global, local? A summary The central aim of this chapter was to take a closer look at the various agents and their interests in rediscovering and reconstructing the Jewish heritage in Morocco. The analysis reinforced the argument that various motivations and initiatives of different groups and individuals are interlinked in this process. National and international, economic and political interests are interwoven with personal commitments, leading to the question: whose heritage is it? Should it be defined as Jewish, Moroccan or global? As the example of the Jewish museum and the refurbishment of the Danan Synagogue showed, the Jewish heritage is often considered part of a broader Moroccan patrimony; a point of view shared by the Moroccan authorities and representatives of the Jewish community alike. Positioning the Jewish heritage within Moroccan culture is first of all politically motivated: the Jewish component of Moroccan culture and identity is stressed by the government to prove its claim to be presiding over a tolerant, plural and democratic country. By contrast, for the Jewish community this means legitimising their affiliation with a homeland dominated by Muslim-Arabs – an affiliation that must be confirmed

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against the background of the Middle East conflict and the resulting tension between Jews and Muslims. However, it would be simplistic to explain the growing interest in the Jewish heritage exclusively in terms of political calculation. It is also part of a more global phenomenon: the increasing cultural self-expression of marginalised groups in general (Simpson, 2001, 7). The wish to preserve a dwindling culture, to rescue objects and buildings, sometimes has a very personal component: for some people it means dealing with their own past, their own family story. Curiosity, nostalgia and also a passion for certain types of object might be the motivation for preserving the cultural heritage, as well as for ‘consuming’ it. Political or economic interests are not always necessarily involved. There is no doubt that cultural tourism is an important driving force in the restoration and reconstruction of heritage sites, and the business resulting from Jewish-heritage tourism is considerable. Nevertheless, not all restoration projects are motivated by a desire to increase tourism, even though such an increase is often the unintended consequence. Judging from the work of the Foundation, attracting tourists and making money out of them seems not to be the central aim. Except for Danan, the refurbished synagogues are all off the classic tourist trails, and the entrance fee to the Museum is marginal and covers only a tiny percentage of the annual costs. Finally, the Museum’s cultural programme addresses Moroccans in particular. Besides the various factors shaping the interest in heritage that emerges from a specific socio-political context, one has to be aware of another component: so-called ‘global’ interest. Since 1976 the World Heritage Committee has defined world-wide what is worthy of protection and what is not. The guidelines are uniform, and seek to protect what might be regarded as valuable within the ‘spectrum of our world’s cultural and natural treasures’.40 The influence and impact of this global interest may not always be congruent with certain local concerns, but it can give a strong impulse to regional heritage policy. Having seen how various mechanisms work together in the process of ‘patrimonialisation’, the question arises of how sustainable the impact of this process is. In what way does the interest in heritage refer not only to the past but also to the everyday life of Moroccans – Jews and Muslims alike? Does the increasing presence of ‘things Jewish’ affect the mutual perception of Jews and Muslims? And finally one may ask to what extent the interest in Jewish heritage is helping to recreate a vital Jewish culture, as opposed to simply reconstructing images of a lost Jewish world. The Jewish heritage boom in Morocco is a quite recent phenomenon, and only time will tell whether it can help to shape and reinforce a Jewish-Arab identity, which could be enriching for the dwindling Jewish minorities in Arab countries as well as for Jewish-Arab communities elsewhere in the world.

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Notes 1. This chapter was written as part of a joint research project, ‘Representation of Changing Social Order’ (SFB 640), at the Humboldt University and the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. 2. This abstract term is used here to refer to the wide range of objects, symbols, folklore, cuisine, costumes and cultural practices attributed to Judaism. See for instance Schlör, Joachim (2003), ‘From remnants to realities: is there something beyond a “Jewish Disneyland” in Eastern Europe?’. Modern Jewish Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 149. 3. For more information about the objectives of the Foundation see Lévy, Simon (1997), Pour répondre à l’urgence: la Fondation du Patrimoine culturel judéomarocain. Casablanca: typescript. In the following I am using the terms ‘heritage’ and ‘patrimony’ as synonyms. For a profound discussion of the terminology see Swenson, Astrid (2007), ‘“Heritage”, “Patrimoine” und “Kulturerbe”’. In Bendix, R., Hemme, D. and Tauschek, M. (eds), Prädikat ‘Heritage’. Wertschöpfungen aus kulturellen Ressourcen. Berlin: Lit Verlag, pp. 53–74. 4. Quoted from the homepage of the Fondation du Patrimoine culturel judéomarocain, at http://www.casajewishmuseum.com/index.php?page=fondation. Accessed 25 June 2008. (Translation by the author.) 5. On the first traces of a Jewish presence in Morocco, see for instance Stern, Karen (2008), Inscribing Devotionand Death: Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Populations of North Africa. Leiden: Brill Academic Publisher; Hirschberg, Haim Zwi (1974), A History of the Jews in North Africa: From Antiquity to the Sixteenth Century. Leiden: Brill Academic Publisher. For a profound survey of Jewish culture and religion in Morocco, see Zafrani, Haïm (1998), Deux mille ans de vie juive au Maroc: histoire et culture, religion et magie. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. 6. The relations between Muslims and Jews in Morocco is the focus of an anthology: Abitbol, Michel (ed.) (1997), Relations judéo-musulmanes au Maroc: perceptions et réalités. Paris: Stavit Editions. For a brief overview of developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Simon, Reeva Spector (2003), The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times. New York: Columbia University Press. 7. More precise numbers are not available. The estimate of 3,000–5,000 corresponds with most of the research literature, with statements from representatives of the Jewish community and also with estimates used in the Moroccan media. See for instance Levy, André (2003), ‘Notes on Jewish-Muslim relationships: revisiting the vanishing Moroccan Jewish community’. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 370. 8. The term mellah derived from al-mallah (‘saline area’), a quarter in the Marinidian Fez, where the first Moroccan Jewish quarter was established in 1438. The term was subsequently applied to all Jewish quarters in Morocco. See Zafrani, Haim (1991), ‘Mallah’. In Bosworh, C.E., van Donzel, E., Lewis B. and Pelat, Ch. (eds), EI, Vol. VI. Leiden and Paris: Brill Academic Publisher, pp. 278–9. See also Rosen,

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9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

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Lawrence (1979), ‘Social identity and points of attachment: approaches to social organisation’. In Geertz, C., Geertz, H. and Rosen, L. (eds) Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19–122. For developments in Europe, see Gruber, Ruth Ellen (2002), Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; Offe, Sabine (2000), Ausstellungen, Einstellungen, Entstellungen: Jüdische Museen in Deutschland und Österreich. Berlin: Philo; Pinto, Diane (2004), ‘Jewish space versus Jewish place? On Jewish and non-Jewish interaction today’. In Kümper, M., Lipphardt, A., Neumann, J., Schwarz, J., Wallenborn, H. and Vassilikou, M. (eds), Der Ort des Judentums in der Gegenwart 1989–2002. Berlin: Sifria, pp. 15–25. In other Arab or Muslim countries – for example in Syria, where a publication of Syrian-Jewish history has recently been launched, or in Iraqi Kurdistan – one can also observe increasing interest in the Jewish past, though this is not as extensive as in Morocco. The break-up of the Soviet Union after 1989 led to a rediscovery of Jewish places and culture in Eastern Europe. In the countries of Central and Western Europe the marking of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War changed the way the Shoa was discussed, leading to an awareness of their own lost Jewish heritage. See Pinto, ‘Jewish space versus Jewish place’, p. 15. In 1978 the idea was discussed of holding the conference between Sadat and Begin (eventually to take place at Camp David) in Morocco rather than the US. See ibid p. 157. Today King Mohammed VI still stresses the important role of his country within the peace process. In an interview he stated, ‘. . . il me renforce dans la conviction que le Maroc peut jouer un rôle déterminant et unique parce que crédible des deux côtés, pour aider à reconstruire, entre Israéliens et Palestiniens, un contrat de confiance qui a disparu’. Interview in Le Figaro, 4 September 2001. In November 1975 thousands of Moroccans were mobilised to cross the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara to assert the former’s claims on territory in the south. For a brief overview of the continuing conflict in the Western Sahara and of the ‘Green March’, see Howe, Marvine (2005), Morocco: the Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 273–99. See also Assaraf, Une certaine histoire, pp. 746–9. See the speech of King Mohammed VI on the 31st anniversary of the Green March, MAP, at , accessed 20 July 2008. For information on the Association Maïmonide see the homepage of the Jewish community, at , accessed 18 July 2008. See (1980), ‘Identité et dialogue: Juifs du Maroc’. Actes du Colloque International sur la Communauté Juive Marocaine: vie culturelle, histoire sociale et évolution. Grenoble: Editions de la pensée sauvage. See also Assaraf, Une certaine histoire, pp. 753–55. Danan-Kalev, Henriette (2001)‚ ‘You are so pretty – you don’t look Moroccan’. Israel Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 4–5. On the traumatic experience of Moroccan immigrants in Israeli refugee camps, see also Lev-Wiesel, Rachel (2007),

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17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

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‘Intergenerational transmission of trauma across three generations: a preliminary study’. Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 75–94. See for example the itineraries at , or , accessed 25 June 2008. There is for example a Moroccan tour operator offering a tour of the imperial cities which also includes a visit to the Mellah in Fez, while a German tour operator offers a visit to the Jewish quarter in Meknes ; see at and respectively, accessed 25 June 2008. See the Foundation’s homepage, at , accessed 20 June 2008. See the information brochure of the Jewish Museum. Beside special exhibitions and cultural events the Foundation each year organises, in cooperation with other organisations like the forum Paix sans Frontières, a day of commemoration of the bomb attacks in Casablanca in May 2003. See the Bulletin d’Information de la Fondation, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2006), p. 3. Most of the national museums in Morocco have an archaeological or ethnographic focus, and were founded under the French Protectorate. Even though some Jewish objects are shown in the exhibitions, the Jewish place in Moroccan history is never explicitly discussed. The situation in private museums is different: some, like the Musée Belghazi near Rabat or the Musée de Marrakech dedicate a whole room and information panels to Jewish objects. The exhibition of the Jewish Museum was the subject of a talk by the author at a conference in Graz, organised by the University of Graz, under the title ‘Die Kategorie Raum im Kontext kultureller Identitäten’, in April 2005. My paper on ‘Parallelkonstruktionen von Jewish Space’ will be published in an anthology of the conference papers. See the Foundation’s homepage, at , accessed 23 June 2008. See Danan, Benjamin (1998), ‘The Danan Synagogue of Fez will be restored’. In Ettayeb, T. (ed.), Campagne internationale pour la sauvegarde de la médina de Fès. Paris: Unesco, Division du Patrimoine Culturel, p. 28. See also the homepage of the World Heritage Fund, at, accessed 13 July 2008. In May 1997 funding of US$30,000 was granted by the World Heritage Fund and the American Express Company; the Ministry of Culture and many private investors also supported the project. See Danan, p. 28; Berman, Bill (1997), ‘Restoration grant to Fez synagogue’. Jewish Heritage Report, Vol. 1, No. 2. By Zhor Rehihil, curator of the Jewish Museum in Casablanca, during a tour, 6 June 2006. See at . See at .

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30. Simon Lévy showed me the original letter in his office in March 2007. 31. Lévy, Simon (2003), ‘Il y a encore des juifs au Maroc’. In Balta, P. (ed.), La Méditerranée des Juifs: exodes et enracinement. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 195, 209. (Translation by the author.) 32. Janjar, M., Naciri, R. and Mouaquit, M. (eds) (2004), Droits culturels: À propos de la question amazighe. Report on ‘Développement démocratique et action associative au Maroc’, at , accessed 20 July 2008. 33. On 16 May 2003 14 suicide bombers attacked five targets in Casablanca simultaneously: a Spanish restaurant, a five-star hotel, the Belgium consulate, the Jewish community centre and a Jewish-run restaurant; another bomb was to have been detonated at a Jewish cemetery. 12 bombers died; two who were not involved in actually carrying out the attacks were arrested. 33 civilians were killed and more then 100 injured. See Senkyr, Jan (2003), ‘Marokko lanciert Kampagne gegen Islamismus’. Länderbericht der Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Rabat. At , accessed 20 June 2008. 34. Extraits de discours de Sa Majesté le Roi Mohammed VI. Annexe No. 1–1, ‘Les Attentats de Casablanca du 16 mai 2003’. In Ringa, Rachid (2006), Le Combat du Maroc contre le terrorisme, Vol. 1. Temara: p. 42. (Translation by the author.) 35. Le Maroc Hebdo International, No. 559, May 2003. 36. Speech by Mohammed VI on the occasion of an inter-religious meeting, ‘La paix de Dieu dans le monde’, in Brussels 18 December 2001. (Translation by the author.) 37. See at , accessed 12 June 2008. (Translation by the author.) 38. Report on Global Anti-Semitism, July 2003–December 2004, submitted by the US Department of State to the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on International Relations. At, accessed 30 August 2008. 39. See Senkyr, ‘Marokko lanciert Kampagne gegen Islamismus’. 40. See at .

Bibliography Abul-Nasr, Abdel Karim (1984), ‘Morocco and the Middle East conflict’. Journal of Palestinian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 157–161. Amar, Hanania Alain (2001), Une jeunesse juive au Maroc. Paris: L’Harmattan. Assaraf, Robert (2005), Une certaine historie des Juifs au Maroc. Paris: Editions JeanClaude Gawsewitch. Ben Bachir, Mohammed and Moulay Mohammed, Najib (1981), La politique culturelle au Maroc. Paris: Unesco. Bensadoun, Mickael (2007), ‘The (re)fashioning of Moroccan national identity’. In Maddy-Weitzman, B. and Zisenwine, D. (eds), The Maghrib in the New Century. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, pp. 13–35.

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Berdugo-Cohen, Marie (1987), Juifs marocains à Montréal: témoignages d’une immigration moderne. Montreal: VLB Editeur. Bouganim, Ami (1981), Récits du Mellah. Paris: J C. Lattes. Chankou, Abdelkarim, (2005), ‘Memoire: le musée judéo-marocain de Casablanca’. Medina, No. 33, pp. 98–101. Daı¯ f, Maria (2004), ‘Patrimoine judéo-marocain: un musée casablancais très discret’. Tel Quel, No. 119. Danan, Benjamin (1998), ‘La synagogue Danan de Fès sera sauvée’. In Ettayeb (ed.), Campagne internationale, pp. 27–30. Daoud, Zakya, El Ayadi, Mohamed, Rachik, Hassan and Tozy, Mohamed (2006), L’islam au quotidien: Enquête sur les valeurs et les pratique religieuses au Maroc. Casablanca: Editions Prologues, pp. 131–2. Delanoe, Nelcya (1989), La femme de Mazagan. Paris: EDDIF. Dennerlein, Bettina and Hegasy, Sonja (2007), ‘Wahrheitskommission und Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Marokko’. In Marx, C. (ed.), Bilder nach dem Sturm. Münster: Lit Verlag, pp. 88–108. EL Azizi, Abdellatif (1999), ‘La force d’une symbiose’. Interview in Maroc Hebdo International, No. 362, March. (Translation by the author.) El Maleh, Edmond Amran (1980), Parcours immobile. Paris: Maspero. Gans Perez, Hélène (1996), Marrakesh la Rouge. Paris: Metropolis Gruber, Ruth Ellen (2002), Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press Hein, Hilde (2003), ‘A Jewish museum in an Arab country’. Curator: The Museum Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3 Houfaïdi-Settar, Jamila (1994), ‘Le judaïsme marocain: une référence pour la coexistence judéo-arabe’. Interview with Simon Lévy, Confluences, No. 9, pp. 131–8. Karim, Mariam (2002), ‘Yahud al-maghrib’. Al-marrat al-yawm, No. 18, pp. 22–4. Khouri-Dagher, Nadia and Amara, Taïeb (1999), ‘Morocco: rebirth of a town’. Sources, No. 166, pp. 11–12. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (1998), Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kosansky, Oren (2002), ‘Tourism, charity, and profit: the movement of money in Moroccan Jewish pilgrimage’. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 359–400. Lanfant, Marie-Françoise (1980), ‘Introduction: tourism in the process of internationalisation’. International Social Science Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 14–43. Laskier, Michael (2003), ‘A difficult inheritance: Moroccan society under King Muhammad VI’. Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 1–20. Levy, André. (1997), ‘To Morocco and Back: Tourism and Pilgrimage among MoroccanBorn Israelis’. In Ben-Ari, E. and Bilu, Y. (eds), Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp, 25–46. Levy, André, (2003) ‘Notes on Jewish-Muslim relationships: revisiting the vanishing Moroccan Jewish community’. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 365–97. Simpson, Moira (2001), Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era. London: Routledge. Ziane, Nadine (2005), ‘Simon Lévy: “Le vrai Maroc, pluriel et tolérant, doit être reflété dans notre système éducatif ”.’ Interview in Le Matin du Sahara, 6 February.

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10 ‘HIDDEN TR EASUR ES’ ? MUSEUM COLLECTIONS OF MODER N ART FROM THE AR AB WOR LD (1891–2010) Silvia Naef

Introduction In the past few years, with the Gulf area aiming to become an international cultural hub, new museum projects in the Middle East are booming. The announcement made by Abu Dhabi of plans to build one of the world’s most prestigious cultural areas, including regional branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim Museum on the artificially-created Saadiyat Island, has been widely reported, and sometimes critically discussed, in the international media. Qatar, where the Pei-designed Islamic art museum – whose collection was shown at the Louvre in 2006 (Sabiha, 2006) – was inaugurated on 22 November 2008, is also aiming to turn its capital, Doha, into one of the cultural highlights on the global map. And on 26 March 2008 Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum had announced his Emirate’s intention of building a museum area from scratch at Khor Dubai, which would have comprised ten museums of international renown (Haupt and Binder, 2008). Both Dubai and Qatar had plans to open museums of modern Arab art. The project for a Museum of Middle East Modern Art (MOMEMA) in Dubai was launched in June 2008.1 Designed by the Dutch firm UNstudio in a shape that evoked a typical local dhow, it would have included, in

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addition to the museum, a hotel and several other facilities, covering in total an area of 25,000 square metres in Dubai’s Culture Village; it had been scheduled to open in January 2011, but work has been halted for the time being. The Qatari museum – which predated the Dubai project – is based on a collection of 5000 paintings, from all over the Arab world, belonging to Sheikh Hassan bin Muhammad Al Thani; the first project, of a 33,000 square-metre museum building, had been designed by the New York firm Rafael Viñoly Architects, authors of the Cleveland Museum extension in 2008; according to the firm’s website, the Doha museum was planned for completion in 2011, but never materialised.2 It was supplanted by the final project, called Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, housed in a former school building redesigned by French architect Jean-François Bodin, and opened in December 2010 after a world-wide media campaign.3 The planned Dubai MOMEMA had chiefly been celebrated in the local press for being the first museum in the region dedicated to modern and contemporary art from the Middle East, but the region’s history of museums and collections of modern art is much older, as this chapter will show. The awareness that modern art belongs to heritage arose only a few decades after the production of modern art itself; its patrimonialisation has been attempted in several places at several times, without always being successful, especially as far as public access to and presentation of the collections are concerned. The first museums created in the region under colonial rule or with Western advice were archaeological institutions, such as the Egyptian Museum opened in Cairo in 1835, or the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad in 1926: ancient Middle Eastern history was quintessential to the building of European nationalisms during the nineteenth century, hence the interest in archaeology. Local nationalisms, developing towards the end of the nineteenth century, often adopted this same vision of history, integrating the pre-Islamic heritage into their own narratives, as exemplified by the opening of a National Museum in Damascus in 1918 by the Arab government (Al-Ush et al, 1975). Islamic art museums, such as the Arab Museum (now the Museum of Islamic Art) in Cairo, founded in 1881, followed. Museums of modern art came later; nevertheless, most countries in the region set up a collection of modern art with public money, and some even erected specific museum buildings. Why these collections and their history are largely ignored is a question this chapter will try to answer. It constitutes a first attempt at retracing the quite complex history of the region’s public collections of modern art. The chapter will concentrate on the Arab East, the Mashreq, and will briefly discuss the only public collection of modern art

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from the Arab world outside the region, belonging to the Institut du monde arabe in Paris.

Defining the field The term ‘modern art’ (al-fann al-hadith, sometimes also al-fann al-mu‘asir ‘contemporary art’) covers the art form practised since the end of the nineteenth century in all countries in the region, and which derives from the adoption of Western art. Although attempts have been made since the 1940s, in the wake of nation-building, to introduce elements of the so called ‘heritage’ (turath), a return to previous art categories – ‘Islamic art’ for instance – has seldom been an option, in the Arab world at least.4 It thus appears clear that modern art is a recent phenomenon, although there are considerable differences from one country to another. In the Lebanon, modern art can be traced back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century; in Egypt, where the region’s first art school was created in 1908, the art scene developed from the 1920s onwards; in Syria, some artists were active at the beginning of the twentieth century, but an art movement was formed only in the 1920s and 1930s, as in Jordan, and in Iraq in the 1950s. Elsewhere, as in the Gulf region, the movement was slower, and goes back only to the 1970s. Roughly speaking, it can be affirmed that modern art in the region has a history of about 125 years.5

Collections of modern art in Egypt Egypt was the first Arabic-speaking country to build up an art-education system which addressed a local audience. The earlier institutions founded in Algeria (Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Algiers in 1881 and the Fine Arts Museum in 1896) were part of the colonial education-system, and for a long time excluded indigenous artists.6 The Egyptian art scene started with a first exhibition of Orientalist paintings held in 1891 at the Opera House, all executed by Western artists living in or visiting the country; other exhibitions followed in subsequent years, and the Egyptian upper classes and the numerous European expatriates started to coalesce into an art public. In 1908 the Fine Arts School (Madrasat al-funun al-jamila) opened its doors in Cairo, on the private initiative of Prince Yusuf Kamal, who had been strongly encouraged by a French sculptor living in Egypt, Guillaume Laplagne. The first students graduated in 1911; some, like the painter Yusuf Kamil and the sculptor Mahmud Mukhtar – who was later to become the first artist to embody

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national feelings in a monument – were sent to Europe on scholarships to complete their education. The art school was funded privately by the prince until 1928, when the Ministry of Education took it over and integrated it into the state school-system. Works by the 1910 Fine Arts School graduates were exhibited in January 1911 at the Cairo Automobile Club. This show can be considered the first exhibition by Egyptian artists. In March 1919, a group of art lovers and former art students founded the Egyptian Fine Arts Society, which organised three exhibitions, in 1919, 1920 and 1921. A fourth exhibition, in 1922, was held in the House of Arts and Crafts, which Fu’ad ‘Abd al-Malik, an early art sponsor, had created in 1920 to provide Egyptian arts and crafts with an exhibition space. It was called the Salon du Caire and displayed the works of 27 Egyptian and 15 foreign artists. In 1923, the Society of Friends of Fine Arts was created, in order to promote the arts and their appreciation through the organisation of exhibitions and conferences (Iskandar et al, 1991). Its president was the founder of the Fine Arts School, Prince Yusuf Kamal, and its vice-presidents Muhammad Mahmud Khalil, the first Egyptian collector of modern art, and Emile Miriel, President of the Egyptian Land Bank and a collector of mainly Orientalist painting.7 The Egyptian parliament discussed the situation of the fine arts in its first session in 1924; it was decided to create a Fine Arts Committee, composed of both Egyptians and foreigners, to promote the fine arts (Wassef, 1930, 554). Officials were convinced, as the Minister of Public Education Bahi Ed-Dine Barakat Bey stated in 1930, that Egypt had to re-conquer the place in the realm of fine arts that had been hers in the past, and obtain international recognition. Louis Hautecoeur, a Louvre curator, had been appointed Director of Fine Arts in Egypt from 1927 to 1930, followed from 1931 to 1935 by another Frenchman, the art historian Charles Terrasse. On the initiative of the then President of the Chamber of Deputies, Wissa Wassef, a Fine Arts City (Cité des Beaux-Arts) had been planned, designed by the French architects Parcq and Hardy, which was to have included, on a ten-hectare site, the Fine Arts School, a School of Applied Arts, a ‘Modern Museum’ (sic) and later on a Conservatory (ibid). The Fine Arts City was never built; however, a 1928 exhibition of French art showcased works by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas belonging to Muhammad Mahmud Khalil’s private collection (Vaucher-Zananiri, 1929, 92), organised at the request of the Friends of Fine Arts and managed by the Association française d’expansion et d’échanges artistiques, gave a first impetus to the project for a museum of modern art (Lacambre, 1994, 20–1).

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The Museum of Modern Art Acquisitions for the new museum of modern art, which was to include both Western and Egyptian works, started in 1925, when Muhammad Mahmud Khalil, seconded by other members of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts, bought at the Salon du Caire, for the sum of LE (Egyptian pounds) 504 allocated by the Ministry of Education, 29 oil and water-colour paintings and 11 locally-produced earthenware products (Iskandar et al, 1991, 165). The objects thus acquired were deposited in a room at the headquarters of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts, which constituted the projected museum in embryo. Egyptian officials in France contributed to the enrichment of the collection with European, mainly French works. The acquisition budget grew steadily: LE 707 in 1926–7, LE 931 in 1927–8, LE 7740 in 1928–29 and LE 16,319 in 1929–30 (ibid); in the following years, there was a slow decrease, though in 1934–5 an official acquisition committee was constituted.8 The museum was housed in several venues; in 1928 it was located at the Tigrane Palace, and in 1930 was transferred to the Musayri Palace (Ayyad, 1992, 29); the museum was completed in 1931 and an official inauguration, in the presence of King Fu’ad, was held on 8 February. There were 584 art works, by both Egyptian and foreign artists, including paintings, sculptures, ceramics and medals, as well as decorative and applied arts; a catalogue was published, in French and Arabic, followed by another in 1935.9 In 1936, the museum was transferred to the Bustan Palace, where the exhibits were displayed in 40 halls,10 and in 1939 to the Zughayb Palace, on Qasr el-Nil Street, a nineteenth-century orientalised building, which, in the words of its later director Salah Taher, was not really suitable as an exhibition venue (ibid). In spite of these frequent moves and inappropriate locations, in the 1950s the museum seems to have respected some basic museographical criteria: as the French 1950 Guide Bleu reported: ‘All the works are numbered and indicate the subject’ (Baud, 1950, 225). It also comprised a fine-arts library, with books mainly in French or English.11 The museum was at the time supposed to ‘convey a clear idea of the resurgence of Egyptian Art’ and ‘the choice of European masterpieces, acquired by the Government, is sufficient proof of the efforts made by the latter to promote the artistic formation of the artists and of the public as a whole’ (ibid). The catalogue acknowledged that, since the building had not been planned as a museum, it had not been easy to arrange the exhibition. Therefore only statuary had been placed in the large reception rooms, due to the light conditions; paintings were displayed in the smaller rooms (ibid). The art works were exhibited according to schools: Italian, Flemish, English and French, the

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last of these constituting the bulk of the collection; Egyptian artists and foreign artists living in Egypt were shown separately. There were a vaguely described landscape by Guardi, a copy of the Last Judgement by Hieronymus Bosch, and some minor Italian and English painters. The collection of nineteenth-century French painting is more impressive: Decamps’ The Sultan Leaving His Palace,12 two works by Delacroix,13 a small painting of a head by Ingres,14 The Tepidarium by Théodore Chassériau (ibid, cat. No. 40) and An Arab Horse, a drawing by Théodore Géricault (ibid, cat. No. 3), as well as a few works by Henri Regnault.15 The trends preceding and surrounding Impressionism were well represented: Courbet, Sisley,16 Monet,17 and some canvases by Marquet18 and André Lhote completed the whole. As for sculpture, we need mention only Rodin19 and Antoine Bourdelle’s The Stubborn Ram (1909).20 In 1963, the museum was closed down and the building that had housed it and the library was demolished to make room for a hotel (Iskandar et al, 1991, 167); in 196621 the modern Egyptian art-works were moved to a villa in Dokki, on Ismail Abu al-Futuh Street, which was to become the temporary location of the museum. This period was characterised by a policy of lending out the art works to ministerial offices and official buildings; several works by well-known artists like Mahmud Sa‘id, ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Gazzar or Tahya Halim disappeared in this way, although they left the museum’s premises legally (ibid, 168). The decision to open a new museum was finally taken; an already existing building was chosen in the Opera area in Zamalek. The building was restored and adapted to its new function, and (if we believe Sharuni, Iskandar and Mallakh) the Prado in Madrid was taken as a museological model (ibid). The Museum of Modern Egyptian Art (Mathaf al-fann al-misri al-hadith) was opened to the public in 1991; a catalogue in Arabic was published in 1992.22 In 2001, as stated on the website, the Head of the Plastic Arts Sector, Ahmad Nawar, formed a temporary committee. Its remit was: to study the state of the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art, since reports had uncovered significant gaps in the process of description, preservation and storage of artwork, as well as shortcomings in documentation, cataloging [sic], measurement, history and restoration, as well as the chronological order of artists’ works, not to mention traditional and non-traditional techniques of professional cataloguing of the artworks.23 The committee decided to change the earlier arrangement of the exhibits, where the ground floor was devoted to the pioneers of the Egyptian

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art movement, the second floor to the middle generation and the third floor to more contemporary works. The ground floor now shows works produced since 1975, in order, as the website explains, to give an overview of more recent trends, while the other floors follow a chronological display. The museum can be visited through its website, in Arabic and English.24 With this new organisation, the museum has radically improved its policies compared to the early years after its opening: except for the publication of a catalogue, no further efforts to make the museum known to wider audiences had been made for years – as stated in a previous article by the present author – (Naef, 2006, 85). The website, describing the aims and history of the museum, gives an exact description of each work, with author, date and material, and supplies much more information than the 1992 catalogue, where the works were only listed, without a reproduction, and were undated, although their dimensions were indicated. It seems therefore that the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art is at present following a more active policy, aimed at raising its visibility and making its collections known both nationally and internationally.

The Muhammad Mahmud Khalil Museum and the Gezira Museum Muhammad Mahmud Khalil (1877–1953) was not only an active member of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts and one of the main purchasers of works of art for the Cairo modern art museum, but over a 40-year period also built up his own collection, mainly of European art. He was married to a Frenchwoman, Emilienne Luce, but they had no children, and decided to bequeath their collection to the Egyptian state, on condition that the whole collection would be kept, and shown to the public, in their palace on the western bank of the Nile. Mahmud Khalil died in 1953, his wife in 1962, by which time the collection comprised 304 paintings by 43 artists – 30 of these by Egyptian artists – 50 sculptures by 14 artists, of whom three were Egyptian (Iskandar et al, 1991, 173). 191 paintings and 42 sculptures were on display when it was opened to the public in 1962 (ibid, 173). After the closure of the Modern Art Museum in 1963, the Egyptian and the European works were separated. The former were transferred to Dokki, as already mentioned, and some of the European works were displayed in the Gezira Museum, opened in 1957, together with the works previously owned by the Egyptian royal family.25 When, in 1967, a Rubens was stolen, President Gamal Abdel Nasser decided to build an ‘Arts Palace’, where fine arts could be exhibited safely and in conformity with international standards. The seven-storey building was to house a museum of universal art,

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showing copies of masterpieces from all over the world, the modern art museum, a library and a concert hall, a festival hall, a children’s centre, workshops, shops and cafeterias. However, by the time of Nasser’s death, only the first three storeys of the building had been completed, and his successor, Anwar el-Sadat, requisitioned it as a presidential residence (Iskandar et al, 1991, 173). The works were then transferred to the palace in Zamalek formerly belonging to Prince Amr Ibrahim, which was given the name ‘the Muhammad Mahmud Khalil Museum’ (ibid, 172–3). Serious measures to bring the building up to modern museum standards were taken after Van Gogh’s Poppies were stolen in 1977 (ibid, 173–4). The various collections owned by the Egyptian state were shown in 1994–95 in Paris, under the title Les Oubliés du Caire. As the Paris catalogue stated, most of the art works had seldom been shown outside Cairo (and were not easily seen even there). ‘The Muhammad Mahmoud Khalil and His Wife Museum’26 (the official name) reopened in 1995; a considerable part of its holdings had been shown in Paris, at the Musée d’Orsay, in 1994–95. The collection’s best pieces are by late nineteenth-century French painters; as the Paris exhibition showed, there are some remarkable works. In comparison to the acquisitions made by the Gezira Museum, for which Mahmud Khalil was a consultant, those he made for his own collection are more significant; this might be explained by budgetary considerations, since the Egyptian state’s funding allocation was probably less than what Khalil could afford from his own means. There are other museums of modern Egyptian art, for instance those dedicated to major artists like Mahmud Mukhtar and Muhammad Nagi, both in Cairo, and Alexandria has a Museum of Fine Arts, formerly named the Impressionists Museum in reference to the works of some of the Egyptian artists displayed there.

Modern art museums in the Near East Lebanon Modern art in Lebanon goes back to the end of the nineteenth century, when painters like Da’ud Corm and Khalil Salibi, trained in Rome and Edinburgh, opened portrait studios in Beirut. There was a substantial art movement in the 1920s and 1930s, when exhibitions first started to be held in university buildings or in clubs, but to this day, and in spite of an active art scene, Lebanon has no museum of modern art, either local or European, although well-known artists have lobbied for the creation of such an institution since the 1940s. The Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum, opened in

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1961, has a collection of modern Lebanese artists, as does the Lebanese state. In 2001 both these collections were on show at the museum, under the title Lebanese Art in the Collections of the Ministry of Culture and the Musée Sursock.27 Exhibiting Lebanese art is one of the aims of the Sursock Museum (ibid), which has held retrospectives of major Lebanese artists, sometimes accompanied by scientific catalogues – for instance ‘Umar Unsi (1997), Mustafa Farrukh (2003 and Georges Da’ud Corm (2007), (Agémian and Habache, 1997; Zghreib, 2002). There is no official website, but a book published by the museum in 2000 recounts its history.28 The Lebanese Heritage Museum, founded in 2003 and located in Jounieh, has the aim of ‘highlight[ing] the authentic historical, cultural and contemporary face of our dear homeland, Lebanon’; it is planning to open a Lebanese contemporary art museum, and a project has already been designed. However, the country’s situation does not allow of immediate action, and a website solicits donations. The museum already owns some works by Lebanese painters, like Da’ud Corm, Habib Surur, Khalil Salibi and César Gemayel, as well as a collection of 105 paintings, brochures and other documents by or having belonged to Saliba Douaihy.29

Syria Syria is similar to Lebanon in having no museum of modern art; however, some rooms in the archaeological museums in Damascus and Aleppo are dedicated to it. In Damascus, the Department of Modern Art of the National Museum was opened in 1953, in the new wing then being inaugurated, and in 1961 three halls were added (Al-Ush et al, 1975, 6–7). Although this is mentioned in the Damascus museum’s catalogue, none of the editions made available to us describes the works or publishes an illustration.30 The 1960 catalogue affirms: ‘I shall not talk of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Arts because it has only didactic and local interest. The works of artists exhibited in it reflect the tendencies of our artistic schools, which can be affiliated with those of Western Europe ‘(Abdul-Hak, 1960, 4)’. This statement was not reproduced in later catalogues, but it is easy to guess that it explains the lack of descriptions for the Department of Modern Art. Even the web remains silent: the site of the Syrian Ministry of Tourism only briefly mentions the existence of the department;31 and on the website Syria Gate the existence of a modern art exhibition is not even mentioned.32 It is therefore not surprising that to visit these rooms is something of an enterprise. Very often they are closed, for lack of personnel, as I was informed during my last visit to the Syrian capital in January 2006; however, a guardian kindly allowed me to visit the rooms. The paintings are hung on

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the walls without any exhibitional concept, whether chronological or otherwise; the labels contain little or no information; some sculptures occupy the central aisle. No recent acquisitions seem to have been added to the display. Although the museum shop does not sell reproductions of the modern-art works exhibited, or a catalogue, small books on some major Syrian artists, published by the Ministry of Culture, are available.

Jordan A relatively small country, Jordan has a modest art movement (Maffi, 2006); its art scene has been nourished in recent years by the huge number of Iraqi artists who have taken refuge in the Jordanian capital, and by the influx of art works produced in Iraq. Thus it is not surprising that the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman, initiated by the Royal Society of Fine Arts (RSFA)33 and opened to the public on 19 February 1980 in the presence of King Hussein and his wife Queen Alia, is not specifically dedicated to Jordanian art, but (as its website proclaims) to art from ‘developing countries’.34 Nevertheless, the collection’s main focus is on art from the Arab and Islamic Worlds. In 2002, during Amman’s time as the Arab Cultural Capital, an exhibition called From the Ocean to the Gulf and Beyond: Arab Modern Art displayed works in the Gallery’s possession by 223 artists from 18 countries in the Arab world. A catalogue was published (Ali, 2002), giving an overview of the museum’s holdings, which include works of the most significant artists in the Arab world ;35 currently, the Amman museum has an active policy of exhibitions, lectures and publications. The creation and uninterrupted activity of the Jordan National Gallery is largely due to the efforts of Princess Wijdan Ali, a member of the board, and herself an artist and scholar. Ali is one of the proponents of the concept of a ‘modern Islamic art’, which is considered as continuing, although in modern forms, an art specific to Islamic countries and largely based on their heritage (Ali, 1997). This concept is reflected in the acquisitions and exhibition policies of the museum. Under the patronage of the Royal Society of Fine Arts, whose committee is composed of members of the royal family or of personalities close to it, the Gallery’s policy is an expression of the country’s official cultural choices and has a considerable influence on art production, as Irene Maffi points out (2006, 311–2).

Iraq Iraq has had, since the 1950s, one of the most active and intellectually stimulating art movements in the region. Artists have often formed groups

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and theorised their work in manifestos, like for instance the Baghdad Group for Modern Art, founded in 1951 by Jawad Salim, or the group The One Dimension, which formed around Shakir Hasan Al Sa’id in 1971 and had an impact on art production in other Arab countries, through the movement known as hurufiyya. The National Museum of Modern Art (Al-mathaf al-watani li-l-fann al-hadith) opened in July 1962, for the fourth anniversary of the advent of the Republic. The project reached back to 1959, when the Baghdad municipality took the initiative of creating a new building to host modern-art collections (Al Sa‘id, 1988, 148); before that, modern art had been sporadically shown at the Iraqi Museum and in other locations. There was a large hall on the upper floor, displaying paintings and etchings, another large hall on the ground floor, where personal exhibitions of local and foreign artists were held, and the smaller ‘Jawad Salim hall’, dedicated to individual shows; the ‘Al-Wasiti hall’ was first used for exhibitions, then became a depository (ibid, 149). As Al Sa‘id reports, poor management made the life of the new museum a difficult one, despite the best efforts of some of its directors, like the well-known artist Nuri al-Rawi (ibid). The Baath regime that came to power in 1968 invested in the visual arts and in the acquisition of art works by local artists, in accordance with the 1971 National Charter, one of whose goals was the ‘establishment of advanced institutions for culture, the arts and information, and continual development and upgrading of these institutions’ (El-Basri, 1980, 14). The modern-art museum, which held 500 works in 1970, more than tripled its holdings within five years (Al Sa‘id, 1988, 152), and between 1974 and 1977 the museum was allocated 34,000 Iraqi dinars for new acquisitions (El-Basri, 1980, 34). It not only showed its Iraqi collection, but also mounted exhibitions from abroad: in 1974, it featured 16 Iraqi and nine foreign art exhibitions; by 1977, the figures had risen to 32 and 13 respectively (ibid, 33). The Iraqi state also created, in 1976, the National Archives of Visual Arts, where documentation concerning visual arts in the country – press articles, invitations, exhibition brochures, artists’ personal documents – were deposited; it was on these resources that Shakir Hasan Al Sa‘id was able to base his two-volume history of the country’s art movement, one of the best documented art-history books to be found in the region (ibid, 159–60). The Museum of the Pioneers (Mathaf al-Ruwwad) opened its doors on 6 April 1980; it contained all the works of the country’s first visual artists (the ‘pioneers’) (ibid, 156ff). In 1986, the Saddam Centre for the Arts (renamed the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art after 2003) was opened, with an exhibition hall for contemporary art. In 2003, at the same time as the Iraqi Museum was looted, 7,000 to 8,000 works of modern art disappeared from the Modern Art Museum; only 1,300

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were recovered, and entrusted to the Ministry of Culture (Shabout, 2006, 284–5). This looting has earned little media attention: with the exception of an article in the French magazine Marianne in July 2003 (Gozlan, 2003), the press has ignored it. Some individuals have since attempted to reconstruct the Modern Art Museum’s collection: the owner of the Baghdadi Athar gallery, Muhammad Znad, who in 2005–06 curated the exhibition Baghdad-Paris at the Musée du Montparnasse,36 which showed 90 paintings and sculptures partly saved from the looting, plans to reconstitute a representative collection of modern Iraqi art; or Qassim al-Sibti, the owner of another gallery, Hewar, who rescued several looted works of art.37 A group of Iraqi artists around the sculptor Muhammad Ghani were able to buy the 1950s sculpture Motherhood by Jawad Salim for US$200, but had to give up further research for lack of resources (Shabout, 2006, 3). The American Alexandria Archive Institute is funding the Iraqi Modern Art Archive (IMAA), whose purpose is to retrace, document and possibly recover the looted artefacts;38 500 works were authenticated in 2008.39 However, since the holdings of the museum had not been catalogued and the Visual Arts archives have been broken up, it is almost impossible to reconstitute the entire collection; many works have been spotted around the Middle East and elsewhere, where the market is very eager for them (Shabout, 2006). While the looted Iraqi National Museum reopened its doors on 23 February 2009, as the international press largely reported, no concrete plans for rebuilding and reconstituting the collections of the Modern Art Museum exist, although a new director was appointed after the fall of the Baath regime (Shabout, 2006, 286). This demonstrates once again the priority given to archaeological memory in comparison to the modern heritage: while ancient art has been integrated into the national narrative and constitutes an object of prestige at the international level, modern art has not yet reached the same consideration.

The Gulf region The Gulf region already has two existing museums of modern Arab art: the Sharjah Museum for Contemporary Arab Art40 and the Kuwaiti Museum of Modern Art. Between 1993 and 1997, Sharjah created the ‘Arts Area’ in Shuwaiheen. The Area comprises among others the Sharjah Art Museum, the Arab Art Centre and the Sharjah Art Institute, an art school for students aged 11–25. As the website of the Department of Culture and Information claims, this project came out of a ‘great vision’ which aims to make Sharjah one of the cultural centres of the Arab world,41 and resulted in the emirate being elected, in 1998, as the Unesco cultural capital of the Arab

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world. Sharjah describes itself as the ‘cultural capital of the United Arab Emirates’. The Sharjah Art Museum, where the Museum for Contemporary Arab Art has been housed since 2001, was established in 1995, and in 1997 its new building was inaugurated (Wallace-Thompson, 2009). It holds a collection of Orientalist paintings – with works by Ludwig Deutsch, Horace Van Ruih and W.H. Bartlett, as well as 200 drawings by David Roberts – belonging to Sharjah’s ruler, Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, and over 300 works by artists from all over the Arab world. The museum regularly sets up temporary exhibitions, often with the collaboration of foreign institutions or curators, but its main function seems to be the hosting of the Sharjah Biennale, whose ninth anniversary took place from March to May 2009. The museum’s curatorial team is aware of the necessity of educating the local public in regularly visiting museums; the lectures and talks given at the museum are intended to foster this, as are the 4000 titles in the Fine Arts library accessible at the museum, or the Children’s Biennale, first held in 2007 (ibid, 111, 114–15). In spite of these efforts, the Sharjah Art Museum has not yet succeeded in becoming a focus for visitors; as for the Arab art collection, it is often not on display, for instance during the Biennale. There is no printed catalogue, and only limited information is available on the web. The Kuwait Modern Art Museum, founded in 2004, shows Kuwaiti artists on the ground floor, and has a selection of the most renowned Arab artists of the last 30 years on the first floor. A small publication gives an account of the history of the collection and reproduces some exhibits, but this cannot be considered a catalogue, and no major university library has a copy of it.42 The museum has no website and does not have a widelyadvertised programme of temporary exhibitions, although it appears in the lists of ‘things to see’ addressed to tourists.

Outside the region: the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris The Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris has one of the most comprehensive collections of modern art from the Arab world. The collection was on permanent display in the first years after the institute opened; later on it was removed to make space for temporary exhibitions. Around 120 pieces by 80 artists, including recent acquisitions, were shown for the 20th anniversary of the Institute, from December 2007 to March 2008, under the title Modernité plurielle; a small brochure reproduced some of the exhibited works.43

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In 1987, the then President of the IMA, Bassem El-Jisr, wrote in the catalogue that the aim of the collection was to create a permanent museum of contemporary Arab art in Paris (El-Jisr, 1987, 5). The introduction by the former curator of contemporary art, Brahim Ben Hossain Alaoui, underlined that such a collection, comprising the most representative artists of the Arab world, was entirely new in France (ibid, 11). The catalogue, in French and Arabic, presented a work by every artist, with a description, and a short text on the artist by prominent Arab intellectuals. It also contained introductory texts on Arab art by the poet and intellectual Adonis, by the Moroccan writer Abdelkébir Khatibi, the Franco-Tunisian Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Iraqi writer Buland al-Haidari and the Moroccan Toni Maraïni. The catalogue did not say how the collection was constituted. The majority of the works date from the 1970s and 1980s, and thus give a good overview of this period; only a few older works are included, for instance The Popular Circus, painted by ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Gazzar in 1956 (ibid, 75), and an untitled sculpture by the Lebanese Michel Basbous dated 1959 (ibid, 87); three works by Baya (1966), Muhammad Khadda (1960) and Ahmed Cherkaoui (1966) go back to the 1960s. This can easily be explained by the fact that the collection was formed shortly before the opening of the institute in 1987.44 Further acquisitions, shown during the 2007–08 Modernité plurielle exhibition, are also mostly recent, with the exception of a work by Samir Rafi‘, The Green Valley (1947), acquired in 2004, and a 1943 painting by Ramsès Yunan, bought in 1993. It can thus be said that the IMA’s collection roughly covers the last 40 years of art production in the Arab world, and the recent exhibition gave the impression that there has been a concentration on alphabetic art (hurufiyya). A book by Abdelkébir Khatibi, co-published by the institute in 2001, gives a fair description of some of the major works contained in the collection (Khatibi, 2001). Contrary to the statement by the first president of the IMA, Basem El-Jisr, the collection has not become a permanent museum of contemporary Arab art in the French capital. Under new curator Mona Khazindar, initiator of several contemporary art exhibitions, it was shown in the already mentioned 2007–08 exhibition, but it has not circulated or been lent to other museums; even in Paris, no joint venture with one of the big modern art institutions has so far been held, in spite of the renewed interest shown by the art world in works from the Middle East. Like so many collections in the Middle East itself, it is accessible to the public only online; this is in spite of the fact that the IMA has become one of the favourite spots on the tourist map of the French capital and could therefore play a role not only in France, but at a European level.

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Middle Eastern modern-art museums and their audiences As we have shown, collecting and exhibiting modern art is not a new practice in the Middle East. However, while modern art has been considered part of the heritage for quite a long time, visiting modern-art museums holding collections of locally-produced art has not yet become a practice characteristic of the region; ‘love of art’, to use a notion created by Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel in 1966 (Bourdieu et al, 1997; 2002), seems to be expressed rather in private art-collecting than in visiting public exhibition-spaces.45 As a curator at the Sharjah Art Museum expressed it, Arab tourists would rather visit ‘shopping malls and other attractions’ than museums (Wallace-Thomson, 2009, 115). This rather consumption-oriented attitude might explain the huge success of Middle Eastern art works in galleries and in recent auctions, paralleled by a lack of visitors to the existing museums of modern art from the Arab world. Low-profile public-museum policies might also be held responsible for this situation: modern art from the Arab world does not attract tourists from abroad, and therefore the investment of generally limited resources is directed toward those institutions that represent sources of income for the country’s economy.46 Typically, a 2001 World Bank report on the Middle East, while stressing the importance of culture and museums for economic development, did not even mention museums of modern art.47 Thus the current situation is not dissimilar from that prevailing when museums were first created in the region: a strong presence of archaeological museums, some Islamic art museums with sometimes well-exhibited and well-advertised collections, and modern-art museums which, although they exist, remain – whether for lack of funding or because of consequent policies – fairly marginal. Would the new prestigious Gulf projects in Doha – which aim at becoming ‘a resource for scholars, artists and students’48 – and perhaps in Dubai be able to challenge existing cultural habits and attract local and foreign visitors, as has happened in Istanbul over the past few years? Until some years ago, Istanbul’s modern-art museum scene was comparable to the situation in Arab countries; projects for a modern-art museum never materialised, as Ali Artun has shown in a seminal article (2006, 115–28). However, the opening of the Istanbul Modern Art Museum (‘Istanbul Modern’) and Santralistanbul – both private initiatives – have radically changed the landscape in recent years, and audiences flock to the new facilities.49 However, the situation of Istanbul, a city of 12 million people and the cultural capital of Turkey, with strong ties to Europe and the rest of the world, is quite different from that of the Gulf countries, with their small and rather consumer-oriented population, and a very recent cultural scene. It is thus difficult to foresee whether or not the present top-down initiatives in the Gulf will be crowned with success.

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In Ian Rankin’s 2008 novel Doors Open, in which the whole plot hinges around hidden art-collections, a character asks: ‘Did it matter that art went unseen? In a generation’s time, it would still be there, awaiting rediscovery’.50 In the Middle East, only more ambitious museum policies will make the collections discussed above more accessible and, in the proper sense of the word, visible, transforming the already existing museums and those to come into something more than mere preservation sites. Initiatives like those in Sharjah and Cairo might constitute a beginning; the present boom in the art market, which creates a new interest in art from the region, might also help to revive the museum scene. All websites and URLs accessed correct at the time of research, last accessed between October and November 2010.

Notes 1. ‘Culture museum in Dubai will be first in the region’. At . See also the UN studio website at . In 2009 the project was halted. 2. . 3. . 4. The situation is slightly different in countries like Pakistan, where identity is based on ‘Islamicity’. See for instance the forthcoming book by Iftikhar Dadi on modernism in Muslim South Asian art, or, by the same author, ‘Ibrahim El Salahi and calligraphic modernism in a comparative perspective’. In Hassan, Salah (ed.) (forthcoming), Ibrahim El Salahi Catalogue. New York: Prestel. 5. For more information on this topic, see Naef, Silvia (1996), A la recherche d’une modernité arabe – l’évolution des arts plastiques en Egypte, au Liban et en Irak. Geneva: Slatkine, 1996. Arabic trans. (2008), Bahthan ‘an hadatha ‘arabiyya: Tatawwur al-funun al-tashkiliyya fi Misr, Lubnan wa-l-‘Iraq. Beirut: Agial li-l-funun al-tashkiliyya. 6. Mohammed Racim (1896–1975), a miniaturist, was the first Algerian to be admitted. See ‘Mohammed Racim: miniaturiste algérien: exposition organisée par le Musée de l’Institut du Monde Arabe, Unité Art contemporain et le Musée national des beaux-arts d’Alger’, du 3 au 29 mars 1992. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, 1992. 7. He donated his collection to the Egyptian state on his death. 8. For a more detailed listing of the Egyptian acquisition budgets up to the 1980s, see Iskandar et al 1991, pp. 165–8. 9. ‘Panorama ta‘rikhiyya’ (Ayyad 1935, p. 23). The ‘Introduction’, p. 185, mentions an undated catalogue which might have been published in 1930.

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10. Taher, Salah (n.d.), ‘The Museum of Modern Art’. In The Museum of Modern Art. Cairo: Editions Universitaires d’Egypte. Since Taher was director of the museum from 1954 to 1958, it is likely that the catalogue was printed during this period. 11. Taher, op cit. 12. Not shown at the Musée d’Orsay, it is one of the rare works reproduced in the Cairo catalogue. 13. Probably ‘Lion dévorant un cheval’, n.d.; ‘Bouquet de fleurs dans un vase de grès’. Les Oubliés du Caire, cat. nos. 13 and 15. 14. Probably ‘Portrait d’Isaure Leblanc’. Ibid, cat. no. 1. 15. ‘Patio à Tanger’, n.d. Ibid, cat. no. 108; ‘Juan Prim, 8 octobre 1868., n.d. Ibid, p. 200. 16. ‘Décembre, Bord de la forêt’, n.d. Ibid, cat. no. 94. 17. ‘Tête de sanglier’, 1870. Ibid, cat. no. 97. 18. In ibid two views of Assuan are listed, belonging to the Gezirah Museum, cat. no. 119, n.d., and p. 199 (1928). 19. In ibid several works by this artist are indicated, pp. 202–3. 20. Exceptionally reproduced in the Cairo catalogue. Ibid, cat. no. 115. 21. Other sources, such as the undated leaflet distributed by the Museum in 1995, indicate 1964; the Museum’s website however confirms the date given in Iskandar et al, 80 sana min al-fann. 22. Iskandar et al 1991. 23. . 24. . 25. . 26. . See also Salmawy, Mohamed and El-Razaz, Mustafa (1995), Mohamad Mahmoud Khalil, L’homme et le musée. Cairo: Ministère de la Culture, Centre National des Beaux-Arts (in French and Arabic). 27. No catalogue was published, only a six-page information leaflet being distributed, entitled Art libanais dans les collections du Ministère de la culture et du Musée Nicolas Sursock, written in French by Sylvia Agémian, curator at the Sursock Museum. 28. Musée Nicolas Sursock (2000), ‘Le livre’. Beirut: Musée Nicolas Sursock. 29. All this information is taken from the Museum’s website, at . 30. Abdul-Hak, Selim (1960?), The Treasures of the National Museum of Damascus. Trans. G. Haddad. Damascus: Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums; Al-Ush et al, A Concise Guide; Zouhdi, Bachir (1976), Musée National de Damas, Département des Antiquités Syriennes aux époques grecque, romaine et byzantine. Damascus: Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums; Al-Ush, M. Abu-l-Faraj (1976), Musée national de Damas, Département des Antiquités

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31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

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arabes islamiques. Damascus, Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums; Joundi, Adnan (1976), Musée National de Damas, Département des Antiquités syro-orientales. Damascus: Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums; Al-Ush, M. Abu-l-Faraj Joundi, Adnan and Zouhdi, Bachir (1999), Catalogue du Musée National de Damas. Damascus: Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums. .

. . An incomplete list – by country – of the artists whose works the Gallery owns is available online at . Bagdad-Paris, artistes d’Irak, 23 novembre 2005–26 février 2006. At . A catalogue with the same title has been published. Bagdad Renaissance: Contemporary Art in Iraq (2003). Paris: Galerie M/JeanMichel Place, p. 24. Under the supervision of the art historian Nada Shabout, University of North Texas. At . Stengle, Jamie (2008), ‘Texan helps document modern art looted from Iraq’. USA Today, 28 June. At , accessed 3 March 2009. . . Al-majlis al-watani li-l-thaqafa wa-l-funun wa-l-adab, Mathaf al-fann al-hadith (2004), Kuwait: Museum of Modern Art. Modernité Plurielle: Exposition d’art contemporain arabe, 8 December 2007–9 March 2008. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe. M. Kh. [Khazindar, Mona] (2007), ‘L’ouverture au monde, ou l’invention de la modernité’. In Modernité Plurielle. The Dubai art magazine Canvas devotes an article in each issue to an art patron (not necessarily a collector of modern art from the Arab world). In a recent issue, an article presented young collectors of the region: al-Sabah, Lulu (2008), ‘The young collectors, art patrons of the future’. Canvas, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 73–96. In 2005 a doctoral thesis – entitled Diversités culturelles et patrimoniales: une étude des musées au Maroc (XXIème siècle), and defended in 2005 by Francesca de Micheli at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris – showed that in Morocco the government improves museum policies and organises big exhibitions mainly to attract tourists from abroad.

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47. World Bank, Middle East and North Africa Region (2001), Cultural Heritage and Development: A Framework for Action in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. 48. ‘Mathaf plans to become a leading research facility’, Gulf Times, 26 October 2010, at , accessed 28 October 2010. 49. A doctoral thesis on this subject – entitled The Museum as a Medium for Rewriting History: The Development of Museology in Turkey in the Post-Republican Era – is currently being researched by Melis Seyhun at the University of Geneva. 50. London: Orion Books, p. 30.

Bibliography Agémian, Sylvia and Habache, Iskandar (eds) (1997), ‘Omar Onsi, 1901–1969: Exposition organisée par le Musée Nicolas Sursock du 14 février au 14 avril 1997. Beirut: Saad Kiwan (in French and Arabic). Ali, Wijdan (ed.) (2002), From the Ocean to the Gulf and Beyond: Arab Modern Art, an Exhibition of 223 Artists from the Permanent Collection of the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. Amman: Royal Society of Fine Arts. ——— (1997), Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press. Al Sa‘id, Shakir Hasan (1988), Fusul min ta’rikh al-haraka al-tashkiliyya fi-l-‘Iraq, Vol. II. Baghdad: Dar al-shu’un al-thaqafiyya al-‘amma. Al-Ush, M. Abu-l-Faraj, Joundi, Adnan and Zouhdi, Bachir (1975?), A Concise Guide to the National Museum of Damascus. Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums. Artun, Ali (2006), ‘The museum that cannot be’. In Dakhlia et al. (eds), Créations artistiques, pp. 115–28. Ayyad, Raghib (1992), ‘Mathaf al-fann al-hadith (Kalimat min katalog ‘am 1935)’. In Mathaf al-fann al-misri al-hadith. Cairo: Wizarat al-thaqafa, Al-markaz al-qawmi lil-l-funun al-tashkiliyya. Barakat Bey, Bahi Ed Dine, ‘La tradition de l’art égyptien’. L’Art vivant, No. 134, p. 553. Baud, Marcelle (1950), Egypte. Paris: Guides Bleus. Bourdieu, Pierre and Darbel, Alain, with Schnapper, Dominique (1997, 2002), The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public. Trans. Caroline Beattie and Nick Merriman. Cambridge: Polity. El-Basri, Abdel-Gawad Daoud (1980), Aspects of Iraqi Cultural Policy. Paris: Unesco. El-Jisr, Bassem (1987), text of presentation (no title). In Alaoui, Brahim Ben Hossain (ed.), Art contemporain arabe, Collection du musée. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe. Gozlan, Martine (2003), ‘Ces artistes qui veulent ressusciter un siècle d’art moderne à Bagdad’. Marianne, 14 July. At , accessed 10 March 2009. Haupt and Binder (2008), ‘Khor Dubai cultural project’. At .

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Nawar, Ahmad (1994), ‘Plan de rénovation des musées égyptiens’. Les Oubliés du Caire. Paris: Association française d’Action Artistique/Réunion des Musées Nationaux, pp. 25–26. Iskandar, Rushdi, al-Mallakh, Kamal and al-Sharuni, Subhi (1991), 80 sana min al-fann (1908–88). Cairo: Al-ha’ya al-misriyya al-‘amma li-l-kitab. Khatibi, Abdelkébir (2001), Art contemporain arabe: Prolégomènes. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe/Casablanca: Manar, 2001. Lacambre, Geneviève (1994), ‘Introduction’. Les Oubliés du Caire: Chefs-d’œuvre des musées du Caire. Paris: Association française d’Action Artistique/Réunion des Musées Nationaux. Maffi, Irene (2006), ‘Idées pour une recherche sur la formation du milieu artistique en Jordanie’. In Dakhlia et al (eds), Créations artistiques, pp. 309–21. Naef, Silvia (2006), ‘Entre mondialisation du champ artistique et recherche identitaire – Les arts plastiques contemporains dans la Méditerranée orientale’. In Dakhlia, J., Depaule, J.-Ch., Devictor, A., Ladkani, G., Naef, S., (eds), Créations artistiques contemporaines en pays d’Islam: Des arts en tension. Paris: Editions Kimé, pp. 71–96. Sabiha, Al Khemir (ed.) (2006), De Cordoue à Samarcande: chefs d’oeuvre du Musée d’art islamique de Doha. Paris: Musée du Louvre. Shabout, Nada (2006), ‘The forgotten era: modern and contemporary Iraqi art’. In Dakhlia et al (eds), Créations artistiques contemporaines en pays d’Islam: Des arts en tension, pp. 281–288. Shabout, Nada (2006), ‘Recovering Iraq’s modern heritage: constructing and digitally documenting the collection of the former Saddam Center for the Arts’. TAARII Newsletter, Nos. 1–2 (Autumn). Shabout, Nada (2006), ‘Cultural destruction and its implications’. 1 July, at . Vaucher-Zananiri, Nelly (1929), ‘Les grandes collections égyptiennes’. L’Art vivant, No. 5, pp. 92–95. Wallace-Thomson, Anna (2009), ‘Bastion of culture, Sharjah Art Museum’. Canvas, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 108–115. Wassef, Wissa (1930), ‘L’effort pour le développement des Beaux-Arts’. L’Art vivant, No. 134, pp. 554. Zghreib, Henri (ed.), ‘Moustafa Farroukh, 1901–1957’, Musée Nicolas Sursock, Janvier– février 2003, Beirut: Saad Kiwan (in French and Arabic).

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11 HISTORY AND HER ITAGE STUDIES: PASSING INTER EST OR EPISTEMOLOGICAL TUR N? WESTER N HISTOR ICAL AGENDA OR ANTHROPOLOGICAL PER SPECTIVE? Dominique Poulot

For a long time the heritage of the Arab world remained a topic of European discourse, whose variations followed those of the diversity of visitors and the typology of their accounts. In so doing, this heritage did not a priori offer any particular originality in its constitution. The heritage objects were in fact supported discursive conventions, themselves often linked to material or technical demands. The research guides or pedagogical handbooks, ministerial papers and official reports of learned societies – and more broadly the family novels of heritage supporters and all the literature attached to the relevant monuments – foster speculation on nomenclatures, the questioning of history, moralising statements and declinations of hierarchies. The details to be grasped relate to various types of inscription of the well-known and pertinent, within repertoires to be constructed. In all these cases, improvised or planned missions, visits and collections, compilations and surveys, restoration work and apprenticeships, together process and sanction procedures. Heritage journalism, if we may call it that, periodically announcing

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‘inventions’ and discoveries, is still working to adjust the meaning of a past with an awareness of the present – contributing equally to normalising the differences and to recording the singularity of a monument or an object for the preservation of history and collective pride. For an equally long time, overviews of the Arab world avoided any mention of contemporary populations, referring only to the Egyptians or Greeks, or to ancients in general, as in the classical itineraries of the journey to Jerusalem – for example in Chateaubriand. When, in his course on the chronology of architecture, held from 1823 onwards, the traveller Jean-Nicolas Huyot felt obliged to evoke contemporary populations, it was always to give an account of ancient monuments, as a faithful pupil of Winckelmann: I found myself obliged to speak about the physiognomy of Egypt and its inhabitants; we will see in the end to what extent it is essential in the works of invention and in those of imitation, by the influence which it brings to bear on the arts. During the nineteenth century, the journey to Constantinople shows us that the tourists and scholars revealed no interest in monuments dating from after the Byzantine period, perceiving in them only the height of bad taste, caprice or vanity. The prism of the ancient thus refracted in durable fashion a view of heritages seen within the Arab World. We may consequently witness an intimate overlapping of ancient references and colonial heritage. This is also true of the appropriation of Ancient Rome by French archaeologists and historians in Algeria in the late nineteenth century. Albert Ballu, architect of Algerian historical monuments, and Stéphane Gsell, archaeologist at the Collège de France and in Algiers, ‘were important contributors to the process of reclaiming the Western heritage of Algeria, which as a region of France was deemed to be a part of the patrimoine national’. In fact, in the colonial frame, Roman archaeology made it possible to construct a regional awareness and an adapted memory in Algeria. The archaeological activity, which had started under the military as a way of ‘accumulating information’ on Rome’s œuvre in Africa and had developed into an ongoing ‘regional’ activity, now acquired a commemorative dimension. Roman archaeological sites such as Tipasa were perceived as sites of ‘ancestral memory’ that linked Algeria to the Western tradition and reinforced its French regionality. We may consequently witness an intimate overlapping of ancient references and colonial heritage.

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In a general fashion, as Donald M. Reid, 1992 writes: Numerous studies have examined orientalism, Western imperialism, Egyptian and Arab nationalism, and the multifarious expressions of modern Islam. The picture is incomplete, however, unless it takes into account the classical mind-set which so many Westerners used to make sense of the Middle East. In the case of Palestine, this Arab heritage is still integrated into the cultural heritage, thanks to the biblical-archaeological filter: nourished by the Scriptures, the archaeologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the Palestinian landscape as an illustration of the Bible, and as a testimony to the life of the Ancients which had hardly changed over centuries, or even millennia. The biblical-archaeological perspective resulted in a tendency to emphasise the archaic, the primitive and the ‘pure’, a bias that may have been reinforced under the British mandate by colonial preservationist attitudes toward the ‘authentic’ aspects of native societies. These different biases are at the same time universalist: the history of the intimate link between the ideas of primitivism and universalism headed by Arthur O. Lovejoy revealed the strengths of a phenomenon in which Western heritage knowledge of the Arab world fully participates. On this construction the works of Edward Said have shed a harsh light, which is today widespread and even revisited by different specialists, and of which a recent, particularly fine-tuned balance-sheet gives a complex version. Nevertheless, the representation of orientalism continues – above all on the subject of heritage – for, as a recent statement of the topics of Islamic art history amusingly sums up, in its common shared representations the Arab heritage reveals a field of expertise for those specialists deemed ‘to be equally conversant with everything from pre-Islamic Arabian ceramics to mosque architecture in twenty-first-century Europe and America, speak several unfamiliar languages, and maintain sub-specialities in Orientalism, terrorism, and the role of women, in addition to being able to appraise Aunt Millie’s threadbare Persian carpet’ (Blair and Bloom, 2003, 175). On parallel lines, the Western hegemony over the technical knowledge of the exploitation economy or of enhancement is another factor to consider on the subject of post-colonial heritage management. This factor is even more apparent when the approach to or treatment of the heritage is the work of experts, whose legitimate knowledge in the framework of international recommendations is explained in the handbooks. As has been shown by Elazar Barkan, three historical outlines proved to be strategic in

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this respect: the question of the pillaging of objects related to high culture, opened during the revolutionary wars and of those, still pending, of the Empire and after; the question of native cultures, arising from decolonisation and the possible return of cultural property; and more recently, the question of property rights to non-material heritage, from popular cultures to practical knowledge, whose commercial aspects might be important. The notion of ‘just’ (or ‘justice’), to take up the formula used by Paul Ricoeur on the subject of mémoire juste, is thus henceforth largely present in reflecting on a new age of heritage.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be Today heritage occupies a choice position in the configurations of identity: after the appearance of the nation-state during the nineteenth century, it coincided with the affirmation of a collective, of an imaginary community, as Benedict Anderson called it.1 The educational and cultural policies of the providence-state, like its social and urban policies, from the Second World War up to the last few decades, made the cult of heritage the concern of a tiny elite in a collective commitment, if only by delegation. Apart from the traditional stakes of institutions, the phenomenon is part of a fundamental mutation: it is the definition of culture which has changed, from the 1960s onwards, henceforth encompassing the most varied aspects of social practices, mixing the sociologist’s ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture with the moment when the material and immaterial landscape underwent accelerated changes. Far from the accepted definition of a coherent cultural heritage to be handed down to the following generation, the anthropological definition of culture has joined forces with the material approach of the historiographer to give rise to new references.2 Heritage today, with the title of ‘heritage-scape’, is part of the panorama of multiple ‘scapes’: ‘ethnoscapes’, ‘mediascapes’, ‘technoscapes’, ‘financescapes’, ‘ideoscapes’.3 Arjun Addapurai invokes the idea of ‘imagined worlds’ to argue that we live in a universe of multiple imagined worlds constituted by ‘historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread across the globe’. In his view, the past is not a land to return to in a simple politics of memory. It has become a synchronic warehouse of cultural scenarios, a kind of temporal central casting, to which recourse can be taken as appropriate, depending on the movie to be made, the scene to be acted, the hostages to be rescued . . . the apparent increasing substitutability of whole periods and postures for one another, in the cultural styles of advanced capitalism, is tied to larger global forces which have done much to show Americans that the past is usually another country. If your present is their future (as in much

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modernisation theory and in many self-satisfied tourist fantasies) and their future is your past, then your own past can be made to appear as simply a normalised modality of your present. Thus, although some anthropologists may continue to relegate their Others to temporal spaces that they do not themselves occupy (Fabian, 1983), post-industrial cultural productions have entered a post-nostalgic phase. We might discuss this statement, as Mercedes Volait does elsewhere in this volume, by evoking the lost Belle Epoque of Egypt through the notion of ‘nostalgia’, a term stemming from a form of ‘condensation’, itself inspired by a book published in 1989 – a sort of collection of little stories (Mostyn, 1989; 2007). But it is true that it is a matter of questioning – as she says, ‘the role of marginal identities in the process of heritage manufacture’.4 It is also true of Damascus, on the subject of which Menico Copertino (in this volume) cites Cunningham Bissell for whom ‘nostalgic discourses are anything but singular . . . they circulate in a social terrain in which diverse forms of memory are at play’ and ‘require an object world to seize on – buildings, fashion, images, and the ephemera of everyday life’ (2005, 221). For all these reasons, heritage has become the object of what David Lowenthal has called a ‘popular crusade’. The feeling of urgency which has always nourished heritage awareness has recently been redoubled by certain processes of destruction (religious or ideological iconoclasm, collateral damage of conflicts, or ‘domicides’5) – but for others, destruction has largely disappeared from Europe since the end of the Second World War. The episode of the Muslim iconoclasm which led to the destruction of Buddhist images in Afghanistan seems to have rekindled memories of attacks on the work of European archaeologists in the 1920s (Flood, 2002). In other words – even in the ‘monumental hatreds’ it arouses in contemporary civil wars – heritage is part of a new political awareness. The heritage justification may provide a framework for initiatives to restore cultural assets, or for amnesties with respect to past pillage (as in the relations between a metropolis and its former colonies). The notion of heritage involves a set of possessions which have to be identified as transmittable; it mobilises a human group, a society able to recognise such possessions as its own, to demonstrate their coherence and to organise their reception; finally, it outlines a set of values which make it possible to join the legacy of the past to the expectation or the shaping of a future, so as to promote, at the same time, certain mutations and to affirm a continuity. The various configurations, little by little outlined by these devices of framing artefacts, places and practices, unfold through the sociabilities they cultivate, the attachments they nourish, and the changes and knowledge which are experienced within them.

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The formation of a canon The subject of heritage was first of all a celebratory category belonging to artistic literature, in the form of ‘the enhancement of a city or of a nation vested in their traditions and in their works’, as André Chastel summarised it, following Julius von Schlosser (von Schlosser, 1996). Consequently, this particular commerce with ‘memories’ outlines cultural forms which they bring into aesthetic and political resonance, from the sublime to nostalgia, giving way to multiple statements of the in situ (Marchand, 1996; Butler, 1935). This is a key element in the relations between art historiography and heritage constructions. Historical monuments are inscribed in a place – an environment – to which they do honour and which engages them simultaneously in a claim for autochthony and in a cult of national transmission. Archaeology, notably, gives rise to several enunciations of in situ values, reinvested in multiple demonstrations at the mercy of traditionalism or revivals.6 The evocation of Pharaonic Egypt is an outstanding example of the crisscrossing of issues and the complexity of revivals. The Egyptian Museum opened in Cairo in 1902 was the heir of a first, entirely European Egyptology. The great men it paid tribute to were the French, British, German, Italian, Danish and Swedish pioneers of the discipline. The attempts made by the Khedive Ismail in the 1870s to open an archaeological school had not in fact met with success.7 But between 1851 and 1900 world trade fairs and industrial exhibitions were held in Europe and the United States: More than anything else it was these exhibitions which exposed Pharaonic-style buildings to a wide international audience. While it is true that Egyptian rule played an active role in the design of the pavilions, the majority were planned by Western architects and displayed exhibits that fell into line with the expectations of the European audience. (Taragan, 2009, p. 45). Matasek who, together with Max Hertz, had designed the ‘Cairo street’ for the 1893 Chicago World Fair, applied Pharaonic-inspired motifs to the decoration of the synagogue’s facade8 in Cairo. We must emphasise how close the Ottoman Empire seemed to be, when more or less at the same moment, as Wendy Shaw explains: A growing literature began to appear concerning the artistic patrimony of the Ottoman Empire and the notion of the arts in general. In 1873, a set of volumes concerning Ottoman costume and architecture

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were prepared simultaneously in French, German and Turkish for the Vienna World Exposition. (Shaw, 2007) Ultimately: The Egyptians quickly realised that archaeology could serve their quest for a national identity. If we seek a watershed at which Pharaonism was perceived as representative of Egyptian nationalism, it was the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 (Goode, 2007). In the wake of this event, the Egyptians began asking European museums to return their antiquities. It must be pointed out, however, that the use of the Neo-Pharaonic style for Egypt’s own nationalist purposes (Egyptian Egyptology or ‘indigenous Egyptology’, as Donald Malcolm Reid terms it) is totally different, as we can see from the example of the mausoleum of Sa‘ad Zaghlul, leader of the nationalist movement, the Wafd party and the 1919 revolution.9 The recent revival of the image of the Alexandria Library is in return a remarkable example of the use of another historico-aesthetic image, but above all of another stage in the evocation of a heritage (Tocatlian, 1991; Butler, 2008). In this new period, the issue of the Bedouin figure is particularly significant, even if traditionally overvalued in the conception of Islamic art.10 A Bedouin heritage is constructed, including coexisting ‘segmentation, markets, states, and Islam, with class divisions now becoming predominant’. It involves a ‘Bedouin involvement in tourism and the manufacture of Bedouin heritage for sale as a commodity and as a component of (some) Arab national heritages’ (Cole, 2003), from Algeria to Saudi Arabia. Bedouin theme parks are springing up. In 1997 a ‘Dubai heritage village’ was constructed, with scenes of old Dubai town, of mountain village houses, and of Bedouin tents. The site also incorporates Dubai’s diving village, and there are shops, exhibition halls and theatrical stages. The motives behind the village are concern for Dubai’s ‘national heritage and its preservation’, and also promotion of its tourism industry by stimulating travel and shopping. The village sponsors shopping festivals, and is a ‘living museum’ where the United Arab Emirates’ history is performed by ‘living actors’. Other relevant cultural events that began in the 1960s include the initiation of horse and camel races in Riyadh and other Arabian cities: That modern camel racing, functioning as a cultural museum, provides an ideological link with the past and serves as an inspiration for patriotic loyalty, and that camel racing embodies values for the

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political enculturation of younger generations are themes frequently repeated by the media. (Khalaf, 2000) This is at first glance an invented tradition, that is to say, in the classical definition, a set of practices, accepted rules and rituals, which ‘seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible they normally attempt to establish continuity with a historic past’ (Hobsbawm, 1992). Attention thus shifts from the documents themselves towards the intentions and practices of their authors, or towards the dynamics of the multiple readings elaborated around on them in search of ‘depth’ (Cook, 1997). The recent evolution of museums of anthropology similarly focuses on the significance of their collections for communities, in relation to their activities and their traditions, at times running counter to the scholarly values of collective heritage-building.11 As Appadurai sums it up: As group pasts become increasingly parts of museums, exhibits and collections, both in national and transnational spectacles, culture become less what Pierre Bourdieu would have called a habitus (a tacit realm of reproducible practices and dispositions) and more an arena for conscious choices.12 One of the issues in the history of heritage is thus the place between the individual or community heritages, in their significance and intensities, and the intentions of collective heritage-building. Stuart Hall said some years ago:

Museums have to understand their collections and their practices as what I can only call ‘temporary stabilisations’. What they are – and they must be specific things or they have no interest – is as much defined by what they are not. Their identities are determined by their constitutive outside; they are defined by what they lack and by their other. The relation to the other no longer operates as a dialogue of paternalistic apologetic disposition. It has to be aware that it is a narrative, a selection, whose purpose is not just to disturb the viewer but to itself be disturbed by what it cannot be, by its necessary exclusions. It must make its own disturbance evident so that the viewer is not entrapped into the universalised logic of thinking whereby because something has been there for a long period of time and is well funded, it must be ‘true’ and of value in some aesthetic sense. Its purpose is to destabilise its own stabilities. Of course, it has to risk saying, ‘This

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is what I think is worth seeing and preserving’, but it has to turn its criteria of selectivity inside out so that the viewer becomes aware of both the frame and what is framed. (Hall, 2001) The crisis in a representation of universality identified with national or European history has translated into the impossibility of going back to the traditional image of a standard heritage. It is therefore not only a question of considerably extending the notion of monuments, or of pleading for an international dialogue, but one of abandoning the image of a heritage confused with the Western reading of history, to the advantage of an inventory of the variations in artefacts of humankind in space and time (Rouland, 1988). Thus, a world heritage marked by notorious post-colonial controversies, was opened up, by Léon Pressouyre’s report, to a new reflection on its composition and its usages.13Apart from the criticism of sincere fictions or dishonest inventions, it is necessary to question the production and consumption of heritage evidence itself, which is both visionary and institutional. ‘The vocation of the World Heritage’, writes Michel Parent, ‘lies in making the states subscribe to the notion of the universality of culture through the respect for specific cultures’ (Parent, 1987). In the overlapping of political and cultural frontiers, however, the confrontation of nationalisms linked to movements of community, ethnic or religious claims, on the one hand, and state patriotisms on the other makes it difficult to put such issues into writing (Smith, 1986; Shils, 1981). The theme of collaborative archaeology – which, it is emphasised, is not only a question of an ethical need, but which says that ideally ‘community involvement has the potential to transform our approach to, and understanding of, the archaeological evidence’ – is today regularly stated, in opposition to the treatment of this ‘heritage’ in terms of developing tourism, which has led to a degraded form: ‘modern mass tourism can have the effect of forcing a nation to become a parody of itself. This is particularly evident in Egypt, where the manufacture of souvenirs is focused on reproducing age-old stereotypes of the Pharaonic period’.14 It is that, notably, museums have in certain cases been divided between an internal function and a tourism function. Both practically and conceptually, the division between culture and tourism in Egypt has a problematic effect on museum practice. There are effectively two separate museum publics in Egypt – tourist and non-tourist – and a museum’s public profile in part determines its operation (Doyon, 2008). Apart from this division, certain categories of museums, like those devoted to modern art, are suffering from a lack of interest. Low-profile policies for public museums might be held responsible for this situation: modern art in the Arab world does not attract tourists from abroad.15

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During the 1980s, at a global level, major international charters introduced litle by little the notion of ‘cultural significance’, in particular taking natural and autochthonous heritage into account. Consequently, the categories outlined – historical, aesthetic, commemorative, etc. – are regularly indexed in a concern to widen both the heritage field and the population of players within it – aborigines, first nations, and so on. Within the international institutions (Unesco, ICOMOS, Getty Conservation Institute), the imperative of a heritage managed according to set values therefore demands the precise identification of the values recognised for this or that heritage by their interpreting communities.16 In concrete terms, heritage management in numerous countries in the world attempts to make an exhaustive list of the values to be claimed for a site or an object among different populations. This uniformity of values enables a common standard, if necessary, in reconciling divergent interests and in demonstrating the legitimacy of public intervention. This view is today increasingly holistic, and sets out to include the need for lasting development. In Damascus, Copertino shows that: Local experts are trusted by AKAFA as authorities of authentic Damascene building tradition. They are in charge of digging up historical associations – or memories – of that tradition through the reproduction of a certain image of local architectural history. Owners of Old City haunts draw on such images and memories to restore their premises.17 Keith Sutton and Wael Fahmi therefore consider, in a recent article,18 that: Old Cairo should be rehabilitated according to certain postulated priorities. Firstly, it should be rehabilitated for its own present residents who should be consulted and who should be encouraged to participate in specific local projects. Secondly, this medina quarter should be rehabilitated for the rest of Great Cairo’s citizens because it represents their built environment heritage, albeit not always appreciated as such. Lastly, Old Cairo should be rehabilitated for visiting tourists, both Egyptian and foreign, who want to visit the main Islamic monuments but also may want to experience the ‘real’ Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz in Midaq Alley or the ‘quartier du prix Nobel’.19 During Ramadan, the large hotels organise spaces (baptised with toponyms which are the titles of works by Naguib Mahfouz featuring reproductions of the landscape and surroundings of an old villa

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becoming decor and scenery). This phenomenon, which appeared in the early 1990s, is now generalised.20 In Damascus one of Copertino’s informants, interviewed in 2005, confided: ‘People looking for ancient lifestyle in those venues don’t simply find fake tourist places; they sit down, eat, smoke narghile, look at the supposedly ancient stones, and then they go away’.21 In their discussion of what they call the ‘Heritage City’, Gregory Ashworth, Brian Graham and John Tunbridge see the ‘Islamic City’ found in the Middle East and North Africa as a variant of what they refer to as ‘the tourist-historic city’.22 For in our consumerist and mass-culture societies, the Islamic house is today part of the world geography of heritage, and figures in a particular type of urban tourism.23 Thus the form of Arab houses during the last two decades has become a mix of traditional and development strategies which breaks with historical forms: ‘This has led to fragmentation and discontinuities, creating a hybrid place in which old and new, modern and traditional, authentic and artificial elements are combined together in one form’ (Galal Abada, 2008). In the Gulf, the unprecedentedly rapid urban growth after the 1970s provoked the destruction of many historic urban centres, replacing them with a wide range of modern buildings devoid of links to the local cultural heritage. Generally speaking, according to Tadmoury’s formula on the subject of cultural heritage in the Lebanon, we have moved ‘between the War of the Past and Future Urban Development’.24 The current situation shows, as can be seen regarding another central city, Jerusalem, that: ‘What works is what attracts donors or investors, or attains preservation from official bodies, against the opposition of those who want a site for something else’ (Sharkansky, 2004; Salenson, 2005). In Damascus, gentrification and the demand for cafés or facilities for tourists causes prices to rise and arouses ambitions: ‘As in other sites where cultural heritage is being developed, in Damascus the development field is held mainly by privates (new residents and entrepreneurs), favoured by economic laissez-faire’.25 While in classical Marxist analysis such transformations are interpreted in terms of the objectivising and merchandising of space, places and human relations, Unesco, other international organisations and ministries in various Arab countries adopt a different reading, in terms of assessing a capital to improve it. Anti-colonial rhetoric, which the Ottoman Empire had outlined from the late nineteenth century, seems to be conjugated in the vocabulary of development and entrepreneurial laissez-faire. For Lafrenz Samuels, the translation of management procedures from the national to the global stage highlights the emergence of economic

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significance in international heritage management (Samuels, 2009). She suggests that archaeological practice and heritage management are one and the same, and both capable of producing value.26 For new citizens in the ancient centres, and above all the heritage militants, as Copertino again underlines, the claim rests on a bookish, scholarly discourse. New residents own a specific capital of area studies, orientalistic readings, historical knowledge. ‘Arab home’ is for them the seat of history, of building traditions, of the balance between man and nature. According to them, traditional materials are essential media to improve relations between men and their living environment.27 This insists, rightly, on the fact that heritage enterprises are becoming more and more homogenous in the context of state and national organisations. In certain Arab countries, administrative and legislative texts may be considered by international experts as occasionally too attached to old concepts, which might penalise the heritage policy. The establishment of the system of definitions is therefore a liminal process to remove the ambiguities or gaps in the cultural heritage: A 2006 assessment of the Palestinian cultural heritage sector conducted by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency affirmed that the major challenges facing heritage management in Palestine were outdated laws and particular classes of cultural materials that were neglected by these laws (Sauders, 2008, 476). In particular, the legislation referred to – which largely dated from an ordinance on antiquities dating from 1929 – did not cover the new types of heritage. Since then the work of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage would replace the concept of ‘antiquities’ and its associated definitions with a more broadly construed concept of ‘cultural heritage’, which would be defined as the ‘movable and immovable heritage of historical, architectural, archaeological, religious, artistic, aesthetic, scientific, technical, social, folkloric, ethnographic, anthropological, political, military, literary, bibliographical or documentary significance, which are more than fifty years old’. Nevertheless, it is not a question of opposing a delay or a decline, with modernity to follow.28 This heritage modernity is itself a concept negotiated during transfers of a very different nature, and the interest aroused today by the analysis of periods traditionally kept mostly ‘dark’ in the Ottoman

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world, for example, clearly proves this. The case of world heritage evidently constitutes the archetype of this evidence.29 In Morocco, multi-cultural heritage modernity involves collaboration between a Foundation30 and the Ministry of Culture with the World Monument Fund, as well as the ability to set up, in 1999, a synagogue – Danan, in Fez, a ‘historic monument’ which takes advantage of the city’s listing, in 1981, as a Unesco world heritage site.31 In this case, the global agenda for cultural treasure may coincide with a policy essentially developed to meet domestic ends. In this volume Tahan speaks of her wish for a Lebanese museum system capable of bearing what she calls ‘the establishment of harmonious, yet heterogeneous museums displaying the multicultural wealth of Lebanon’.32 At another level, Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels outlines a knowledge scheme for heritage-makers: that of grasping the circulation of their objects, in a perspective close to Appadurai’s theses on the circulation of objects and trajectories of values – ‘it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context (Appadurai, 1986, 5)’. ‘Given the travelling nature of expertise in development, and in this case specifically the development of material heritage, one approach archaeologists could profitably contribute is to follow how material heritage travels through the vectors of heritage-management expertise and regimes of material value (Samuels, 2009)’.

The civilities of heritage The private issue, both in the ‘private passions’ of the collector, the man of science, the archaeologist of autochthony, and in the registers of dwelling, occupation and the path to follow, is broadly represented in this volume. This piece responds to a historiographic topicality which has only recently restored a large measure of autonomy to the players and to their personal, affective and, if needs be, pecuniary and professional investments in the construction of knowledge, as well as that of cultures. The amateur and expert are today the two central figures in the new history of heritages, bring with them learned knowledge, or the following of serious pastimes, or even scientific mono-manias (Stebbins, 1992). The ‘friends’ of heritage objects, whether amateurs or professionals, polygraphs or experts, militants, civil servants or members of interpreting communities, set themselves up as spokespersons or advocates for innovations, appropriations and assignments.33 Some of these figures – the antiquary and his ruin, the conservator and his museum, the folklore expert and his fieldwork – have little by little moved to the status of almost anthropological stereotypes, beyond the register of literary cliché. They comfortably embody the identities constructed by the recycling of images, objects and practices simultaneously escheated to the heritage

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and ‘given’ to it. The colonial variation is a particular characteristic of this general approach. On this subject, it is interesting to note that the involvements of these friends of monuments may, in the same way, turn to the heritages of the mother country and to those of her colonies (Turgeon, 2003) or her different zones of influence. Logical in the case of state continuity, or strictly dependent on it, this simile of investment is more singular when it is applied, for example, to both Paris and Cairo at the end of the nineteenth century. This is notably the case with Arthur Rhoné (1836–1910), the archaeologist and a correspondent of the Institut archéologique d’Egypte, who was also an active member of the Société des amis des monuments parisiens. At the close of his first journey to Egypt in 1864, he published some works on picturesque topography34 and denounced vandalism in Cairo. We find him at the setting-up in 1881 of the Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe.35 Of this contribution intimately joining Europeans and Egyptians in heritage protection, and mindful of the controversy associated with the 1926 competition of the Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe for the reconstruction of Cairo’s ’Amr ibn al-’As mosque, Alaa El-Habashi wrote with finesse that the ‘Egyptian members of the Comité felt they had the right to preserve a living and an intimate portion of their heritage, while foreign members claimed to possess the knowledge and the expertise to do so’.36 Competing interpretations of Egyptian cultural heritage provide the best illustrations of the conflicting identities of native and foreign experts. Apart from an always essential geography of the heritage project, the activities of friends of objects outline an economy of flair and chance, which is the basis for well-prepared discoveries and, through them, for a hierarchy of collectors or archaeologists.37 An entire economy of archaeology, from the ancien régime right down to the densest networks of nineteenthcentury poligraphy is outlined, between chance discoveries, ‘inventions’ by local antiquaries and reconnaissance within national or international erudition, in which archaeologists get mixed up with diplomats (Vernoit, 2000). This was the case of Henry Layard, a national celebrity, when in 1849 he published the two volumes of Niniveh and Its Remains, ‘one of the greatest archaeological bestsellers’.38 In relating the progress of his excavations, Layard described the extravagance of his workers, yelling like warriors, and displaying the backwardness of their tribe, eternal prisoners of superstition regarding the archaeological undertaking. To this picture of ‘primitive’ tribesmen he added that of a chaotic modernisation, denouncing the inconsistency of the Ottoman leaders towards the excavations and their discoveries, unable to decide whether or not they had ancestors who

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were infidels (Layard, 1849, 65, 137). The subject of the inferiority of the local populations, unable to conserve the antiquities in their region, appears throughout the literature of the nineteenth century, justifying the competition of European nation-states to set themselves up as the emblematic guardians of civilisation (Diaz-Andreu, 2007). The forms of appropriation move through different degrees of social intimacy with the material past, and through unequal distributions of ‘grandeur’ – between collections and museums (Weight, 1996; Coombes, 1988). One of the central questions in the cultural history of heritage seems to be that of knowing if and how the ancien régime of objects, of memories and of their civilities has faded, giving way to new references and new apportionments.39 For many friends of objects seem to be, materially and symbolically, dispossessed of their individual propensities to the historical experience when a collective movement devoted to ‘heritage’ takes shape. But different ways of experiencing heritage-building have been felt, in a simultaneous fashion – one object relating to an intense public heritagemaking and another which is part of an idiosyncrasy – and have been able to exchange their positions in one generation, or at a faster rate, or again to co-exist according to multiple social identities. During the twentieth century, the agencies of conservation were connected in an increasingly visible fashion with the vicissitudes of national stereotypes, in the construction of identity accounts and the constitution of civic rituals. In the early twentieth century the Arab world saw the founding of early museums in Egypt, Iraq and Syria, which became compulsory places of passage as much as monuments and sites for the population of tourists and amateurs, equal to the Grand Hotels, cafés, public parks and other places solicitously listed in international guides. These museums, in a semi-permanent way, mark the colonial monumental landscape, even if, as Christel Braae shows, the notion of the museum was widely accepted, while at the same time becoming a contested ground between different parties each aiming to control the ‘policy of the past’ (Braae, 2001). The proliferation of heritage objects which one enjoys or for which one fights – or not – poses in different terms the question of citizens’ adherence to a deposit of values, to a shared interest in imagination and art: all this makes up what one might call the ‘morality’ of heritage. Thus the colonial museums founded by the French in the Arab world, for example in Morocco, are archaeological and to a certain extent ethnographical museums which totally ignore the Jewish world, unlike the situation at the end of the twentieth century with private museums being able to integrate judaica.40 With due proportion, this is the same phenomenon found in the development of the private collections in Jordan which Irene Maffi has studied (Maffi, 2004).

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But the situation of heritage-building elites in the Arab world appears, in some cases at least, different from the European heritage-builders, in that the former cannot appeal to the same register of autochthony. Thus, Wendy Shaw’s portrait of the court painter Huseyin Zekai Pasha, author of a 1913 book, Holy Treasures (Mubeccel Hazineler), is remarkable. While the book is constructed from anecdotes put together, in a way which evokes both the writing of antiquaries in the reviews or catalogues of Western artistic literature and the ego-histories of erudite amateurs, he also exhibits in this case a considerable fellow-feeling with the general public likely to read his book. ‘Rather than being attracted by intrinsic, pre-existing values that were becoming materially embodied in new practices of preservation, Ottoman subjects were rarely exposed to the notion of preservation, and on the rare occasions they were exposed to it, saw it as a puzzling command to preserve old objects of little apparent worth’.41 Huseyin Zekai Pasha is less original in his appeals for the fight against vandalism: like his European colleagues in this respect, ‘his subject is the lack of recognition of this heritage rather than an exposition of the history behind it’, the principle motive for writing many heritage histories – actually chronicles of loss. But apart from a formal sharing of principles, Wendy Shaw shows in this volume that, by remaining attached to the principles of fine arts, and to the postulate that a drawing apprenticeship is the best tool for the progress of the general good taste on which heritage interest is based, the artist does not construct his representation of the heritage as an agent of national construction. With him heritage is not invested ‘with intrinsic worth related to the collective identity of a people. Rather, his work reflects an understanding of heritage reflective less of an integration of history with modern identity than as an anti-colonial reflex and as a habit of the modern’. This perspicacious reading of the difference in the issues lying behind a common sharing of the word ‘heritage’ throws light on the colonial specificity of heritage construction in the early twentieth century. It invites us to conceive in terms other than of failure or delay an acculturation which we suppose to be founded on the same relation with historicity and on the same need for sharing the collective value as those who created the European national buildings in the second half of the nineteenth century. We must recognise that there are many possibilities of having a culture of antiquaries without a regime of national historicity and a collective belonging to historical monuments.42 As ‘the most established genres of traditional Arabic historiography are the biographical dictionary and the historical topography’, consequences are, for example – for this kind of erudition – that the knowledge accumulated ‘privileges information on the social use of buildings rather than their visual character’ (Watenpaugh, 2004).

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The case of heritage-territory A scientific point of view had been spread by the accounts of exploration during the Enlightenment, by narratives of discoveries and by travel illustrations (Stafford, 1984; Leask, 2002). The scholarly view saw an original heritage-territory, to which, in a parallel manner, the sense of the sublime granted a status. In the nineteenth century, simultaneously with the setting-up of different national archaeologies on the model of classical archaeology, consecrated to the study of literature and the arts in each country and leaning on university chairs and conservation institutions, Europe saw a museum-based approach to the natural landscape.43 The aesthetic territory, that is to say the collection of picturesque views and tourist sites, mobilised the attention of guides and travel literature (Adler, 1989). Local communities, on the other hand, tended to react to ‘the increasingly prominent role of people practising archaeology – archaeologists, diplomats, explorers – through the lens of the antiquities trade’.44 Wendy Shaw shows the difference at that moment between European territorial constructions and those of ‘archaeology on Ottoman land which was perceived by many as an incursion on imperial territories’. ‘The collection of antiquities in the empire was informed not by metanarratives such as classical studies and aesthetics, but by those of territorial control. This can most easily be seen in the organisation of displays in the museum. As early as 1868, when the French scholar Paul Dumont catalogued the collections housed at the former church, the poorly documented antiquities were labelled only in terms of their provenance’.45 The catalogues thus focus on the acquisition process for the items, in that they display the loyalty of the Sultan’s servants in enacting the prohibition of illegal excavations and a respect for protective measures. In this way, the author writes, ‘works in the Imperial Museum stood in a syntagmatic relationship for Ottoman territory rather than for Ottoman patrimony’. We may here quote Ernest Renan’s correspondence with the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1884, deploring the measures taken with respect to the Ottoman heritage: The concentration of antique objects in a national museum is conceived (although it may have serious disadvantages) for a country of mediocre size, and having in some fashion its own archaeological unity. But what can we say about a museum which contains a jumble of objects, from Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, the Yemen and many other

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countries, over which the Porte will think fit to claim who knows what fantastic sovereignty? The confusion and mistrust to which this unnatural assembly will give rise will introduce a profound trouble into archaeology, especially now that we are coming to see an archaeological object knowing the conditions it was found in, the objects which were discovered with it or near to it, etc.46 What Renan deplored was the adoption of Western institutions, transformed for the worse by a process of cultural selection and political negotiation. Between 1876 and 1909, the Sultan in fact discovered that museums might be an instrument of the state, reinforcing its image – both within the Empire and abroad – through international exhibitions, the enactment of protective legislation against pillaging, and the development of an official policy on archaeological excavations. Generally speaking, in fact, the history of heritage in the Arab world was notoriously marked, especially in archaeological work, by developments which revealed how intertwined the field had become with the broad agendas of the nationalist elites of the day. For Western archaeologists the interwar years would prove remarkably different from what had gone before. Prior to the first World War archaeologists in the Middle East operated with a minimum of regulation. Even where a strongly-worded antiquities law existed, as in the Ottoman Empire after 1906, local officials rarely enforced it, especially at the distant perimeters of the realm. This prewar period, then, became the great age of collection building, when the museums of the West were built and filled with wonderful antiquities from every corner of the world. The Middle East, given its relative ease of access and profusion of ancient sites, contributed more than its share to public exhibition halls and private collections in Europe and the United States.47 Ultimately, the inter-war period became for foreign archaeologists what some have characterised as the years of negotiation with nationalist elites. The stake was to establish, or not, a national art on display in the new museums, given the assumption that ‘each nation should have a distinct and recognizable style of art’ (Watenpaugh, 2004). But this mobilisation of archaeology for national aims was never either general or instantaneous, as Goode has shown. Nadia Abu El-Haj discovered a similar phenomenon among Jews in Mandate Palestine, where ‘there seemed to be very little widespread popular regard for such an archaeological or national heritage project’ as that proposed by Zionist leaders. ‘Lack of interest in archaeology’, she concluded, ‘may not indicate a disregard for one’s history but rather preference for other ways of relating to it’.48 This is a very important remark, which makes us understand that while there may be a general phenomenon of relying on the past, memory and

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heritage, practices are very different from one country to another. Until the 1950s, in fact, as in Egypt, ‘responses to the West’s appropriations of Arab art were diffuse and sometimes contradictory at first, like the nationalist movement generally’ (Reid, 1992). On this subject, the early museums of antiquity, from Cairo and Istanbul to Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad, were supposed to play a role in national education – but did they really create a modern public sphere in which modern citizenship was staged, as in Carol Duncan’s model, where a visit to the museum is a ‘ritual of citizenship’? (Duncan, 1995). The unfolding of the twentieth century saw here and there in the Arab world the construction of a national territory on the Western model, and the working-out of a heritage on territorial bases. It is clear that the new historiography attempted to distort Ottoman history and culture to support a modern nation-state ideology (Abu-el-Haj, 1982). In the Iraqi case, for example, it was able to show ‘the cultivation of the European concept of territorial nationalism by the modernising, secular ruling elite of Iraq through the introduction of a Mesopotamian component into the National Iraqi pantheon, focusing predominantly on the manipulation of history’ (Baram, 1994). On the fall of the Ottoman Empire, in fact, the Iraqi elites, faced with the need rapidly to construct a new identity, were divided between the supporters of a territorial model in the French or British style, and those of a pan-Arabism based on the German model of nationality – language and culture. The progressive triumph of the former between 1930 and 1950, due to the failure of attempts at pan-Arabism, added to the glorification of Mesopotamia, which was able to fall back on the reception previously offered in the West to its pre-Islamic antiquities. A number of archaeological museums came into being; students were sent abroad to study archaeology and Assyriology; and in government schools Mesopotamian history ranked progressively higher in the curriculum. This was both the result and the driving force behind a metamorphosis with respect to the connection between ancient Mesopotomians and modern Iraqis (ibid, 314). But from the intellectual viewpoint, as from the political and social angle, the Mesopotamian campaign never actually took off, and the same applied to the effort to territorialise nationalism – it was swept away in the fall of the regime. Irene Maffi’s demonstration of work on Jordanian archaeology, first under the colonial regime and then in the post-colonial period, is a remarkable illustration of the process of nation-building. She deconstructs the entire legacy of biblical archaeology, taken up, appropriated and also contested by the new archaeology, and works through a fruitful comparison with archaeology in Israel.49 The history of heritages thus become one of a journey displaying the hazards of political mobilisation, according to a schema, well-known in

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Europe, where the past is put to political use.50 The critical fate of those dismembered, recomposed, disputed heritage territories which give rise to confrontation and claims (and also to voluntary amnesia) may give rise to other approaches – of toponyms, site-visiting and visual culture. The nature of the accounts is different, even though the archaeological heritage is regularly and directly mobilised to serve as a factual guarantee for historiographic scenarios, this time spread in leaflets and tourism brochures – obliging tourists in Jordan to choose between ‘a holy land without Jewish people’ and the opposing Israeli construction.51 In similar perspectives, the heritage is recorded between history and memory, in fact evoking a set of values which, like memory, reveals a more or less deep-rootedness in the ‘sensitive’ areas of personal and social personalities – religious affiliation, popular culture and even mythology. In this, it stands out from professional historiography, whose interests are exclusively critical. It takes part in a sort of re-enchantment of the material past, engaging history to shape its form and ratify its authenticity. It may therefore accompany the role played here or there by that appeal to memory otherwise known as a counter-history of modernity – at least as an expression of marginal groups. Sophie Wagenhofer thus evokes the place of the Jewish heritage within a Morocco which may henceforth claim cultural plurality for itself: this is linked to the arrival of Jewish tourists first moved by religious concern, and takes on breadth with the economic development of Moroccan tourism in the 1990s. The opening of a Jewish museum in Casablanca in 1998 – the only one in the Arab world – marks a political desire in the present (‘a vivid museum of a vivid community’52) as well as or even more than bearing witness to a memory. Here we find the theme of inclusion, which today largely dominates professional literature. In the Lebanese case, Tamima Orra Mourad shows why, and the way in which, Orientalism has constructed a Lebanese historical identity, contributing to a selective preservation of the sites and museumbuilding tools responding to these views, and why this historical identity must be revised. ‘This approach to heritage has since contributed to the manipulation of heritage for political objectives, and has precipitated a schism between how local communities perceived their heritage and how heritage is conceived following a Western model’ (Mourad, 2008). Moreover, the increase in power of a social construction of the heritage – thanks to a specific administration, and to the progressive constitution of a corpus – at times coincides with a progressive detachment of citizens from their historic and natural heritages, as they pass into the domain of tourism. When the heritage is ‘naturalised’, to commemorate the vitality of all culture, the territory thus figures as the shared place of this detachment (Newcomb,

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1967) Here Jean-Claude David approaches the question of domestic heritage, bringing into play both the dialectic of the private and the public and that of world heritage and appropriate heritage, to best express the limits of the heritage rupture.53 The interests of a modestly-sized urban fabric are supposed to provoke interventions in various ways and various levels of intensity. A consideration of the anthropological problem posed by inhabiting the heritage demonstrates the issues of domestic architectural heritage, as well as the question of a non-material heritage still in the process of being defined (Mursi, 2008; Abdellatif, 2008). The next step would be a turn from archaeology to ethnology, in the name of a better local understanding of heritage, more concerned with the present than the past.54 Heritage does not thereby cease to be the fruit of a conscious process of selection, as it has always been, but in this perspective it is founded on particular judgements. In order to become a heritage, cultural monuments or sites must first be marked with a positive sign by individuals or groups, for, as a recent Quebec report notes: ‘It is no longer only a question of protecting objects but also of enabling a population to interiorise the cultural wealth of which it is the trustee’.55 In the contemporary universalist discourse (Appiah, 2006), the question of the heritage of others has often been summed up in what the French anthropologist Gérard Lenclud calls ‘a universal repertoire of responses on which, over several centuries, men were to draw according to their inclination’. He adds, ‘This is posing the question back to front’, allowing people to think that the historian, the archaeologist ‘each proposes a solution to resolve ... an eternal problem of human diversity, considered as a natural object defying comprehension and which would provoke ... variable answers’. Now, The diversity of peoples and cultures is clearly not a problem in itself, observable independently of the subject making it happen; or then it is one of these problems whose pertinence is only tautologically assured, measured by the same standard which it itself established. The problem does not lie in the differences but in the countless ways in which men, here and elsewhere, institute differences regarding thought and pretexts for actions, contributing to giving them, at the same time, a very real and assuredly not timeless existence (Lenclud, 1991). It is in this sense that the ‘diversity’ of the Arab heritage, notably in the different perspectives of the Arab and European worlds, must be understood, and it is indeed in this sense that the different contributors to this volume have generally seen it. The construction of heritages, above all of colonial ones, is henceforth placed in the frame of different histories, making

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it possible to highlight the processes marked by interaction at the mercy of networks and circuits (Shelton, 2007). The cultural theorist Homi Bhabha sought ‘to question the homogeneous and horizontal view associated with the nation’s imagined community’. He asks whether the emergence of a national perspective – of an élite or subaltern nature – within a culture of social contestation, can ever articulate its ‘representative’ authority in that fullness of narrative time and visual synchrony of the sign that Bakhtin proposes [in his] attempt to read the national space as achieved only in the fullness of time.56 The Arab heritage is an area of contested territories, of many cultures and countries – an area of colonial mapping, a landscape renowned for its ancient material culture – inspiring modern explorers, archaeologists and artists, both locally and from the West. In this perspective, the Tate Papers of Spring 2009, considering a programme called Nahnou-Together, quotes the artist Walid Sadek: I suggest that a distinction be made between charting possible ‘territories of difference’ and interrogating the dismissal or at least avoidance of such territories. The latter direction requires a critique of the lingering and still dominant cautionary rhetoric of Pan-Arabist discourse, now overlaid by Pan-Islamist edicts. In the face of totalising discourses and edicts, art practices carry the responsibility of challenging identity-based politics. The issue is to critique identity and consequently representation as the act by which a combat of wills is played out . . . I find the list of denominable names such as Arab world, Pan-Arab Nation, Islamic World, Middle East, Near East, Orient, Levant, MENA, quite significant in its attempt to baptise a region. The mere repetition that defines this growing list of names is indicative, on the one hand, of a lacuna that occupies the centre of a wilful act of representation. On the other hand, I take this list to be connotative of a certain thickness, an insubordinate material presence that persists in exceeding that same act of representation. This is again an invitation to reconsider the role of institutions as actions which, necessarily, seek to fold the multiple material presence of a terrain within the baptismal moment of their own geography.57 In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of considering patrimony in the Arab world is perhaps the rethinking of the links between heritage and the nation. It seems that the national heritage is only of secondary interest for

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the nation itself – as in the Egyptian case, where protecting the monuments is not directly linked to any special enthusiasm for the Pharaohs. On the other hand, the patrimony has no special need of the nation in the sense that it exists without it, or perishes with it. The stakes in protecting or conserving monuments seem to be weak in the political realm. But the universal impulse to build on a conservative imperative is powerful enough to constrain the Arab countries to elaborate a newly adequate definition of a totalising ‘heritage’ on the national-state model. The two processes, one bottom-up, to differentiate and to articulate distinctions, and the other top-down, from the globalisation of imperatives, seem to complicate the question of identity, which is a result of a large number of components. ‘Far from saving tradition from the modern and/or authenticating the modern with reference to tradition’, nationalism’s body of invented heritages constitutes a modernisation programme, begun in the crisis opened at the end of the First World War.58

Notes 1. Benedict Anderson (2nd rev. edn. 2006), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Almost all the authors collected in the present volume make direct reference to this work. More generally, see Israel Gershoni (1997), ‘Rethinking the formation of Arab nationalism in the Middle East, 1920–1945: old and new narratives’. In Jankowski, James and Gershoni, Israel (eds) Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press. 2. See Bazin, Jean (2002), ‘N’importe quoi’. In Gonseth, Marc-Olivier, Hainard, Jacques and Khaer, Roland (eds), Le Musée cannibale. Neuchâtel: Musée d’ethnographie, pp. 273–87 ; see also two articles in L’Homme, No. 170 (February): Jamin, Jean (2004), ‘Espèces d’objets: “La règle de la boîte de conserve”’, pp. 7–10; Fabian, Johannes (2004), ‘On recognizing things: the “ethnic artefact” and the “ethnographic object”’, pp. 47–60. 3. Arjun Appadurai (1990), ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’. Public Culture, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp 1–24. ‘In the anthropology of globalization, the suffix “-scape” signifies transnational distributions of correlated elements whose display can be represented as landscapes. For example, transnational arrangements of technological, financial, media, and political resources can be seen, respectively, as technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes’ (p. 3). 4. ‘The Belle Epoque in Egypt’, this volume. 5. Porteous, John Douglas and Smith, Sandra E. (2001), Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001; this work provides the geography of areas where the deliberate destruction of houses and built areas has taken place.

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6. Two highly significant examples are Hutchinson, John (2001), ‘Archaeology and the Irish rediscovery of the Celtic past’. Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 505–19; Bertho, Catherine (1988–9), ‘La géographie symbolique des provinces: de la Monarchie de Juillet à l’entre-deux-guerres’. Ethnologie Française, Vol. 28, pp. 276–82. 7. See Colla, Elliott Hutchinson (2008), Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press; Celik, Zeynep (1992), Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam in the NineteenthCentury World’s Fairs. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, esp. pp. 95–137. The author quotes Charles Edmond, the commissioner general of the Egyptian display, in L’Egypte à l’Exposition universelle de 1867, p. 111: ‘We would be impetuous to look for a rule or a law in the development of Arabic architecture; it does not exist. The Orient lacks this ordering spirit that our Occident has brought to everything it has created since the Germanic invasion; in its place, the arbitrary and the capricious reign. Therefore, we are not trying to describe the architectonic system of Arabs; they don’t have anything like it; and just as the diverse elements of their buildings are disconnected, the history of their art is also disjointed’. 8. For information about Max Herz Pasha (1856–1919), the chief architect of the Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe (1890–1914), who was in charge of conserving monuments of Islamic and Coptic architecture in Egypt and became the first director of the Arab Museum (now the Museum of Islamic Art), see Ormos, István (2001), ‘Max Herz: his life and activities in Egypt’. In Volait, Mercedes (ed.), Le Caire – Alexandrie, Architectures européennes, 1850–1950. Cairo: IFAO/Cedej, pp. 161–78; and a monograph Ormos, István (2009), Max Herz Pasha (1856–1919): His Life and Career. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2 vols. 9. Taragan, ‘The “Gate of Heaven”’, p. 45. See also Reid, Donald M. (1985), ‘Indigenous Egyptology: the decolonization of a profession?’. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 2 (April–June), pp. 233–46; Clément, Anne (2005), Sa’d Zaghlûl, lieu de mémoire du nationalisme égyptien. Cairo: CEDEJ. 10. Mehmet Aga-Oglu (1954), ‘Remarks on the character of Islamic art’. Art Bulletin, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 175–202, here quoting Richard Ettinghausen (1944), ‘The character of Islamic art’. In Faris, N.A. (ed.), The Arab Heritage. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 251–67), himself following Massignon in asking ‘Is it correct to minimise the role of urban Arab society and to emphasise rather the Bedouins and their artistic heritage, alleged to have been “handed down to the Prophet”?’. For the state of the field today, see Blair, Sheila and Bloom, Jonathan M. (2003), ‘The mirage of Islamic art: reflections on the study of an unwieldy field’. Art Bulletin, Vol. 85, No. 1, pp. 152–84. Significantly, the authors write (p. 176): ‘It is a truism of postmodernism that everything the historian studies has as much, if not more, to do with the present than the past, yet the intrusion of contemporary religious

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12. 13.

14.

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and political issues into the study of Islamic art seems more difficult to ignore than in other fields of art history.’ In a rich bibliography, see Gosden, Chris and Knowles, Chantal (2001), Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change. Oxford: Berg; Kaplan, Flora E.S. (1994), Museums and the Making of ‘Ourselves’: The Role of Objects in National Identity. London and New York: Leicester University Press; Karp, Ivan, Lavine, Stephen D. and Kreamer, Christine Mullen (1992), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press; Kreps, Christina (2003), Liberating Culture: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation. New York and London: Routledge; Peers, Laura and Brown, Alison K. (eds) (2003), Museums and Source Communities. New York: Routledge; Sandell, Richard (2002), Museums, Society, Inequality. London and New York: Routledge; Taffin, Dominique (ed.) (1998), Du musée colonial au musée des cultures du monde. Proceedings of a conference organised by the Musée des arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 3–6 June 1998. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2000. Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and difference’ (see note 3). Pressouyre, Léon (1993), La Convention du patrimoine mondial, vingt ans après. Paris: Unesco. Alongside the already dated disputes on restitution, Moira G. Simpson (1996) has provided a picture of the current debates on the restitution of sacred objects and human remains, in Making Representations: Museums in the Post-colonial Era. London and New York: Routledge; for an exemplary analysis, see Le Fur, Yves (1999), ‘Europe chasseuse de têtes en Océanie, XVIIIème– XIXème siècles’. In Le Fur, Y. (ed.), La mort n’en saura rien. Reliques d’Europe et d’Océanie. Paris: Musée national des arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, pp. 59–67. Moser, Stephanie (2002), ‘Transforming archaeology through practice: strategies for collaborative archaeology and the community archaeology project at Quseir, Egypt’. World Archaeology, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 220–48, here p. 241. On the same issue see Loosley, Emma (2005), ‘Archaeology and cultural belonging in contemporary Syria: the value of archaeology to religious minorities’. World Archaeology, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 589–96. Community themes meet those of sustainable development, as in Helmy, Eman and Cooper, Chris (2008), ‘Sustainable tourism planning in the Arab world: the Egyptian case study’. In Fekri Hassan, Fekri, de Trafford, Aloisa and Youssef, Mohsen (eds) (2008), Cultural Heritage and Development in the Arab world. Alexandria: Bibliotheca Alexandrina, pp. 175–204. Silvia Naef, this volume. See also Heyberger, Bernard and Naef, S. (eds) (2003), La multiplication des images en pays d’Islam: de l’estampe à la télévision (17e–21e siècle). Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, Orient-Institut Istanbul, 2003; Dakhlia, Joscelyne (ed.) (2006), Créations artistiques contemporaines en pays d’Islam: des arts en tension. Paris: Kimé. Avrami, Erica, Mason, Randall and de la Torre, Marta (2002), ‘Values and Heritage Conservation: Research Report’. Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage,

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19.

20.

21. 22.

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Vol. 8. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute; de la Torre, Marta (ed.) (2002), ‘Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage: Research Report’. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute/J. Paul Gerry Trust. The issue is henceforth to know who in the community decides what has to be protected, and what choices are made. ‘Al-Madina al-Qadima’, Damascus, this volume. Ibid. Comparison may be made with the modelling of a strategic schema referred to in Rhei, Amer S. and Nelson, J.G. (1994), ‘The conservation and use of the Walled City of Tripoli’. Geographical Journal, Vol. 160, No. 2, pp. 143–58. This formula comes from Madoeuf, Anne (1997), ‘Image et pratiques de la ville ancienne du Caire: les sens de la ville’. Lettre d’information de l’Observatoire urbain du Caire contemporain, Vol. 47, pp. 6–15. On another process, see Cattedra, Raffaele with Bennani, Hicham Dakhama (1998), ‘L’invention patrimoniale de la médina de Casablanca: de la ville indigène au centre historique’. In Dakhlia, Jocelyne (ed.), Urbanité arabe: Hommage à Bernard Lepetit. Arles: Sindbad-Actes Sud. Madoeuf, Anne (1996), ‘La ville ancienne, espace de tous les patrimoines’. In Le Caire. Paris: Collection Mutations, No. 26, pp. 59–78. See also Aboukoura, Omnia (2007), ‘Un Caire chaque jour un peu plus “historique”, une institution patrimoniale chaque jour un peu moins garanti de sa sauvegarde’. Chroniques égyptiennes 2006. Cairo: Cedej, pp. 239–73. Copertino, this volume. Sutton, Keith and Fahmi, Wael (2002), ‘The rehabilitation of Old Cairo’. Habitat International, Vol. 26, pp. 73–93, which refers to a work of these two authors (2002), Geography of Heritage. London: Arnold, pp. 207–19. See also, by the same authors (2007), Pluralising Pasts. Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies. London, Pluto. On the definition of the Islamic city as largely a ‘French affair’, see Raymond, André (1994), ‘Islamic city, Arab city: orientalist myths and recent views’. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1994), pp. 3–18. The idea of racial segregation sustained in Abu-Lughod, Janet L. (1987), ‘The Islamic city: historic myth, Islamic essence and contemporary relevance’. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 18, pp. 167–71, is today contested: many medinas were transformed by European intervention, and the segregation was a social one. See Jelidi, Charlotte (2007), La fabrication d’une ville nouvelle sous le protectorat français au Maroc (1912–1956): Fès-nouvelle. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Tours. See for example the analysis by Öncü, Ays¸e, ‘The politics of Istanbul’s Ottoman heritage in the era of globalism: refractions through the prism of a theme park’. In Drieskens, Barbara, Mermier, Frank and Wimmen, Heiko (eds), Cities of the South: Citizenship and Exclusion in the 21st Century. London and Beirut: Saqi Books. Tadmoury, Khaled (2008), ‘The cultural heritage of Lebanon’. In ibid, pp. 75–88. See also the general survey of 22 cities by Tung, Anthony M. (2001),

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27. 28.

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31. 32. 33.

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Preserving the World’s Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis. New York: Clarkson Potter, pp. 413–31; in the perspective of planning history, Jerusalem, with Charleston, is for Tung ‘the city as a living museum’. On the other hand there are cities which, like Cairo, have almost entirely lost their historic quarters – illustrating the ‘tragedy of the megacity’ (Tung, pp. 96–130). Another brief international survey is Steinberg, Florian (1996), ‘Conservation and rehabilitation of urban heritage in developing countries’. Habitat International, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 463–75. Copertino, this volume. For her, the Middle East and North Africa are a ‘prototype for poverty reduction through material heritage … The connection between archaeology and poverty is nowhere made more evident than in World Bank projects that seek to develop material heritage for the reduction of poverty and economic growth’ (p. 72). Copertino, this volume. A very good discussion of modernity as a historical problem is provided by Watenpaugh, Keith David (2006), Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 11–19. Reference may be made to the excellent study by van der Aa, Bart J.M. (2005), Preserving the Heritage of Humanity? Obtaining World Heritage Status and the Impacts of Listing. Groningen: University of Groningen/Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, which shows the reluctance of Arab countries to ratify the convention and, significantly, to name religious constructions. Levy, S. (2001), ‘Pour répondre à l’urgence: la Fondation du patrimoine culturel judéo-marocain’. In Les patrimoines dans la ville: de la construction des savoirs aux politiques de sauvegarde (Exemples marocains, libanais, égyptien, suisse). Texts gathered by Volait, Mercedes, Garret, Pascal and Cattedra, Raffaele. Rabat: Centre Jacques Berque, pp. 123–30. Wagenhofer, this volume. Tahan, this volume. There are multiple studies on micro-societies and informal exchange within them in modern and contemporary history. Some very evocative insights in Tamen, Miguel (2001), Friends of Interpretable Objects. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, may help as a methodological base for this subject. Rhoné, Arthur (1877), L’Egypte à petites journées: études et souvenirs: Le Caire et ses environs. Paris: Leroux; (1882), Coup d’œil sur l’état du Caire ancien et moderne. Paris: Quantin; (1881), ‘Auguste Mariette: esquisse de sa vie et de ses travaux, avec une bibliographie de ses œuvres’. Gazette des beaux-arts (September); (1910) L’Égypte à petites journées: le Caire d’autrefois. Paris: Jouve. For a study of Arthur Rhoné’s Cairo itinerary; see Volait, M. (2006), ‘Arthur-Ali Rhoné (1836–1910); du Caire ancien au Vieux-Paris, ou le patrimoine au prisme

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36.

37.

38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

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de l’érudition dilettante’. Socio-Anthropologie, No. 19, Les Mondes du Patrimoine. At URL: http://socioanthropologie.revues.org/document543.html. See also Volait, M. (2007), Amateurs et curieux du Caire ancien et moderne (XIXe-XXe siècles): érudition dilettante, identités hétérodoxes et fabrications patrimoniales. Habilitation thesis, Université de Paris I, Vol. 1: ‘L’Odyssée égyptienne d’Arthur-Ali Rhoné’. Paris: Editions L’Archange Minotaure. El-Habashi, Alaa (2003), ‘The preservation of Egyptian cultural heritage through Egyptian eyes: the case of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe’. In Nasr, Joe and Volait, Mercedes (eds), Urbanism, Imported or Exported? Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans. Chichester: Wiley, pp. 156–7. See also Volait, Mercedes (2005), Architectes et architectures de l’Egypte moderne (1830–1950): genèse et essor d’une expertise locale. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. In 1962 Hans Moser raised the question of folklore in ethnological studies on tradition, distinguishing three types: the reproduction of folklore practices outside their context; the imitation of a popular folklore by other social classes; and the invention of a folklore without previous tradition. Cf. Newall, Venetia J. (1987), ‘The adaptation of folklore and tradition (Folklorismus)’. Folklore, Vol. 98, No. II, pp. 131–51. See also an analysis of the meeting of folklore and the ethnologist in Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (2000), ‘Folklorists in public: reflections on cultural brokerage in the United States and Germany’. Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 1–19. Bohrer, Orientalism and Visual Culture. Among many others, see Malley, S. (2008), ‘Layard enterprise: Victorian archaeology and informal imperialism in Mesopotamia’. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 623–46. Herzfeld, Michael (1997), Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-state. London and New York: Routledge, p. 27; (1991), A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wagenhofer, this volume. Shaw, this volume. For the general view, see Schnapp, Alain (1999), The Discovery of the Past: the Origins of Archaeology. London: British Museum Press; for the French case, see Poulot, Dominique (1997), Musée, Nation, Patrimoine, 1789–1815. Paris: Gallimard. On the unparalleled example of Switzerland, see the work of François Walter, from his (1989), ‘Attitudes towards the environment in Switzerland, 1880– 1914’. Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 287–99, to his (2005), ‘La montagne alpine: un dispositif esthétique et idéologique à l’échelle de l’Europe’. Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 64–87. Kersel, Morag M., Luke, Christina and Roosevelt, Christopher H. (2008), ‘Valuing the past: perceptions of archaeological practice in Lydia and the Levant’. Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 298–319. I will not consider here museification, as Agamben does, as ‘the separate dimension to

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47. 48.

49. 50.

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52. 53.

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which what was once – but is no longer – felt as true and decisive has moved’; see Agamben, Giorgio (2007), Profanations. New York: Zone Books, p. 84. Shaw, this volume. Quoted by Mourad, Tamima Orra (1884), ‘Near Eastern heritage and development’, pp. 53–73, art. cit. p. 63 (31 March), Archives du Quai d’Orsay, Turkey, archaeological excavations. Goode, Negotiating for the Past, ‘Introduction’. Goode, Negotiating for the Past. He alludes here to the research carried out by Nadia Abu El-Haj, whose book (2001), Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, aroused a lively polemic on the part of the Campus Watch organisation, characteristic of political life in the US, like the current issue in archaeology regarding Israel; see ‘Fracas erupts over book on Mideast by a Barnard professor seeking tenure’. The New York Times, 10 September 2007. Maffi, this volume There is today an ambition to write a new intellectual history in the field of Middle Eastern studies: see Gershoni, Israel and Singer, Amy (2008), ‘Intellectual history in Middle Eastern studies’. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 383–9. Maffi, Pratiques du patrimoine; Jacobs, Jennifer and Porter, Benjamin (2009), ‘Excavating turath: documenting local and national heritage discourses in Jordan’. In Mortensen, Lena and Hollowell, Julie (eds), Ethnographies and Archaeologies. Iterations of the Past. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, pp. 71–88; Silbermann, N.A. (2001), ‘Structurer le passé: les Israéliens, les Palestiniens et l’autorité symbolique des monuments archéologiques’. In F. Hartog, F. and Revel, J. (eds), Les usages politiques du passé. Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, pp. 99–116. Brochure of the Jewish Museum, cited by Wagenhofer, this volume. David, this volume. See also Farid Abachi, Farid (1998), ‘Histoires d’habiter: enquête sur des arabe. Hommage à Bernard Lepetit, textes rassemblés par Jocelyne Dakhlia. Arles: Sindbad-Actes Sud. About Jordan, Jacobs and Porter wrote (in ‘Excavating turath’, see note 51): ‘The kingdom incorporates the local antiquity site into a discourse aimed at national elites and tourists, crafting formal narratives that disregard local knowledge. Communities do not appear to mind this transference in the usevalue of antiquity sites and in fact desire the excavation and development of antiquity sites to stimulate stagnant economics. Similarly communities exhibit little fear that development will compromise local understanding of heritage ... restored Ottoman villages and museum displays can be enjoyed by all Jordanians rather than reserved as destination restaurants for the wealthiest. But ethnography, and the practices it employs, is that will seek out and document the most captivating stories of turath’ p. 87.

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55. Les arts et la ville: La création du patrimoine. Statement made to the Advisory Group on Cultural Heritage Policy, Quebec, 14 April 2000. 56. From ‘DissemiNation: time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation’. In Bhabha, Homi (1994), The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 139–70. The difficult relationship between making the heritage autonomous, independent of the political and administrative sphere, and its externalisation in the global sphere of international organisations, is one current example of that dilemma, as in the Morrocan example studied by Roussillon, Alain (2001), ‘A propos de quelques paradoxes de l’appropriation identitaire du patrimoine’. In Les patrimoines dans la ville, pp. 211–34. 57. Wright, Stephen (2006), ‘Excerpts from an email exchange between Tony Chakar, Bilal Khbeiz and Walid Sadek’. In Wright, S., Territories of Difference: Out of Beirut. Exhibition catalogue, Modern Art Oxford, p. 63, quoted in Allen, Felicity (2009), ‘Border crossing’. Tate Papers (spring), Tate online. 58. Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East, p. 15.

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Taragan, Hana (2009), ‘The “Gate of Heaven” (Sha’ar Hashamayim) synagogue in Cairo (1898–1905): on the contextualization of Jewish communal architecture’. Journal of Jewish Identities, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 31–53, here p. 45. Tocatlian, Jacques (1991), ‘Bibliotheca Alexandrina – reviving a legacy of the past for a brighter common future’. International Library Review, Vol. 23, pp. 255–69. Turgeon, Laurier (2003), Patrimoines métissés: contextes coloniaux et postcoloniaux. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. Vernoit, Stephen (2000), ‘Islamic art and architecture: an overview of scholarship and collecting’. In Vernoit (ed.), Discovering Islamic Art: Scholars, Collectors and Collections, 1850–1950. London: I.B.Tauris, pp. 1–62. Watenpaugh, Heghnar (2004), The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 17–18, 211–33 Weight, Gwendolyn (ed.) (1996), The Formation of National Collections of Art and Archaeology. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, pp. 29–39.

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INDEX

‘n’ after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page (e.g. 214n4 refers to note 4 on page 214).

7-Jar, 163 Abada, Galal, 303 Abbaseen (Damascus), 207 Abdali (Amman), 153–4, 173n6 Abdine Palace, 108, 117–18 Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, 30, 159, 162 Abdullah, Emir, 68, 69, 70–3, 75, 76, 97nn2,4, 98nn5,6 Abu Dhabi: museums, 270 Abu el-Haj, Nadia, 13–14, 17, 36, 67–8, 74, 78, 93, 94, 215n10, 310, 321n48 Abu Khalil, Ahmad, 164 Abu-Lughod, Janet, 6–7, 184, 185, 318n22 Abu Nuwwar, Ma’an, 71, 72, 76 Abu Ruqraiq river, Rabat, 153–4 ‘Abu Shar, Dawd, 198 Abu Shihab, Mohammed Nimr Mustapha, 197 Aclimandos, Tewfiq, 112 Adham, Khaled, 154 aesthetics cultural heritage, 43, 60, 64, 231 Aleppo, 222–3, 227, 229 Cairo, 119–20, 122 Damascus, 186 landscape, 309 Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 242

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‘ajaib, 8 AKAFA, 184–5, 302 Akka, 13 al-Ahram Weekly, 116 Al al-bayt Foundation, 88 al-Amiry, Suad, 166, 171 al-Ashkar, Nidal, 164–5 al-Berry, Beshr, 185, 196, 201, 211 Al-Kadi, Hasan, 114 al-Katib, Hasan, 75 Al-Khalifah, Sheikha Mai, 30 al-Mashreq al-’Arabi, 151–2, 156, 172n2 al-Rawi, Nuri, 280 Al Sa’id, Shakir Hasan, 279–80 Al-Sayyad, Nezar, 8, 17, 21, 24, 27, 32 al-Sibti, Qassim, 281 Al-Zahra, Fatma, 117 Alanen, Arnold R., 235 Alaoui, Brahim Ben Hossain, 283 Albright, William F., 78–9 Aleppo, 26, 28, 221–31 Citadel, 160, 223, 225 cultural stereotyping, 6–7 domestic heritage, 221–2, 228–31 master plans, 222–4 roads, 223–4, 225 violence, 225–6 Alexandria, 107, 108–9, 117, 119, 122 Alexandria Archive Institute, 281

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Algeria archaeology, French, 294 cultural heritage: colonial period, 17–18 monuments, 17–18 museums, 272 Ali, Wijdan, Princess, 279 Alliance Israélite Universelle, 253–4 American University in Cairo Press, 111 Amman, 6, 26, 30, 31, 77, 79, 89 Basilica Affair, 68–73 Citadel, 77, 79, 89, 163 creative class, 155 Darat al-Funun, 159 Hamzet Wasel, 163–4 Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, 279 oil boom, 152–3 urban art, 168 urban development, 154, 171, 173n6 urban research centres, 165–6 Ammon, 89, 91–2, 98n17 Andalusia (Amman), 154, 173n8 Anderson, Benedict, 13–14, 20, 21, 73, 74, 137, 143, 178, 296, 315n1 Annals of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, 77, 84 anti-Semitism: Morocco, 259, 262–3 antiquities lack of concern for: Ottoman Empire, 63–4, 309 legal framework Egypt, 115 Ottoman Empire, 62, 67, 310 Palestine, 304 Appadurai, Arjun, 296, 300, 305, 315n3 ‘Arab home’: Damascus, 190–205, 206–7, 208–9, 213, 214n9, 216n41, 304 Arab identity: Lebanon, 136, 137, 143 Arab-Israeli conflict, origins of, 84 Arab nationalism, 21 Arabism, 143, 145n7 Arar, 159 Arbid, George, 31 Archaeological Heritage of Jordan, The (Jordanian Department of Antiquities), 74

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archaeologists, local colonial period, 19–20 postcolonial period, 24 Palestine, 80–1 Transjordan, 80, 81 archaeology collaborative, 301 colonial period, 17, 18, 73, 294–5, 306–7 heritage management and, 304 Israel, 81, 82–3, 85, 93 Jordan, 76–85, 90–7 Lebanon, 137, 139–40, 142, 143–4 national identity and, 57 Ottoman Empire, 19, 57–8, 63–4, 66–7, 306–7, 309 postcolonial period, 22–3 Rome, 294 Archaeology of Knowledge (Foucault), 7 architectural heritage: colonial period, 25 Architecture Ottomane, L’ (Usul-u Mimariye Osmani), 59 architecture Amman, 165 Arabic, 316n7 Damascus, 183, 184, 185–6, 187, 191, 199–200, 201–3 Egypt, 114, 115, 116–19, 124 ‘Belle Epoque’ mythmaking, 107–9, 110, 119–20 Islamic, 184–5 Ottoman Empire, 12–13, 59, 61 Arseven, Celal Esad, 61 art, modern, see modern art art historiography and heritage construction, 298 art museums Alexandria, 277 Baghdad, 280–1 Cairo, 118–19, 274–5, 275–6 Doha, 271, 284 Dubai, 270–1 Jordan, 279 Kuwait, 281–2 art practices, identity and, 314 artists, urban, 166–9

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INDEX arts: Ottoman Empire, 59–65 Asar-ı Atika Encümeni, 59 Ashkal Alwan, 167–8, 171 Association Maïmonide, 255–6 Assyrians: archaeology, 79 athar, 8, 18 Audi family (Saida), 157 authenticity, 21, 42–3, 78, 163, 181, 204–5, 209, 228 Damascus, 182, 183–4, 186, 188, 204 Awad, Louis, 112 Ayidi Foundation, 160 Baalbek, 138 Bab Touma (Damascus), 192, 207 Babylonians: archaeology, 79 Baghdad Baghdadi Athar gallery, 281 Iraqi Museum of Modern Art, 280–1 Baghdad Group for Modern Art, 279–80 Baghdad Museum, 189 Baghdad-Paris exhibition, 281 Bahrein: urban development, 153–4 Bahsa (Damascus), 187 Ballu, Albert, 294 Bangkok, 36 Banshoya, Gyoji, 224 Baraka, Magda, 123 Baramki, Dimitri C., 79 Barbir, Karl, 12, 13 Barkan, Elazar, 295–6 Basilica Affair, 68–73, 75, 76, 96 Baydoun, Abbas, 167 Bayt al-fallah (Ebel-es-Saqi, Lebanon), 246–7, 249n4 Bayt al-Mamlouka (Damascus), 205, 206, 207 Bayt Jabry (Damascus), 160, 195–6 Bayt Montlucon (Damascus), 190–1, 197, 202, 203, 204 Béchard, Emile, 111 Bedouin heritage, 34, 299 Beidha, 80 Beirut, 26–7, 31, 164–5 neoliberalism, 173n4 oil boom, 152–3 urban development, 153–4

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Benvenisti, Meron, 93 Berbers, 260, 261 Berdugo, Serge, 257, 258 Berzeh (Damascus), 202 Bhabha, Homi, 314 Bible Came from Arabia, The (Salibi), 82 biblical archaeology, 58, 78–9, 81–2, 85; see also specific places Biblical Jordan, 89, 90 Biblical Pontifical Institute, 77, 78, 80 Biblical Sites of Jordan, 87 Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 31, 108–9 Bilad al-Sham, 13, 25, 29–34, 151–2, 172n1 Bilal, Abu, 197, 202 biodiversity, 239, 240, 242, 243, 246 bird migration: Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 244–5 Bissell, Cunningham, 192–3, 297 Bissell, William, 122–3, 124 Bonne, Emmanuel, 158 Bourdieu, Pierre, 2, 16, 124, 178, 191–2, 197, 214n4, 284, 300 Braae, Christel, 307 Brief History of Neoliberalism, A (Harvey), 173n3 Britain attitude to restoration of Holy Sepulchre, 76 attitude to Islam, 73 colonial relations: Jordan: Basilica Affair, 70–3 British School of Archaeology, 80 Bsous Museum, 157–8 building materials: Damascus, 188, 190, 191–2, 193–4, 197, 199, 200, 214nn7,9 buildings: heritage protection: Egypt, 115, 116–19, 125–9 built heritage, concentration on, 236 Butros, Raghda, 163, 171 buyut ‘arabin (Arab homes): Damascus, 190; see also ‘Arab Home’ (Damascus) Byzantine Empire: Jordan, 95

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Cairo, 104, 108, 109–10, 111, 114, 117–20, 302–3 Fine Arts School, 272–3 fire (26 January 1952), 113 Islamic art collections, 79 Khedival period, 105–6, 107–8, 111, 117–18 urban development, 153–4 Cairo Automobile Club, 120 Cairo Opera House, 108 camel racing, 299–300 Campus Watch, 321n48 Canaan, Tawfiq, 98n11 Canvas (magazine), 287n45 Casablanca: Jewish Museum, 258–9, 260, 261, 264 Casamémoire society, 31 Çatalhöyük, 34 cement: building restoration: Damascus, 188, 191, 192, 193–4, 198 Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (Egypt), 114 Centre for the Study of the Built Environment, 165 Certeau, Michel de, 1–2, 215n29 Chami, Joseph, 141 Chastel, André, 298 Chéhab, Emir Maurice, 139 Choay, Françoise, 228 Christian identity: Lebanon, 136, 137, 141, 142 Christian Jubilee (2000): Jordan, 85, 86, 87, 89, 96 Christianity: Jordan: 85–90, 91, 94–6 Islam and, 87, 88, 91, 94–6 cities, see also urban heritage marginalisation of cultural heritage, 6–7 citizen as bearer of history, 57 Clark, Eric, 216n33 Collart, Paul, 183, 188, 205, 210 collective action, decline in, 169–70 colonial period: cultural heritage, 17–21, 236, 293–6 Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe, 306, 316n8

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commodification of cultural goods, 189, 204–9, 213 community participation, decline in, 169–70 Concise Information about Antiquities in Istanbul (Ziya), 61 conflict, patrimonialisation and, 35–8 conservation, nature, 235, 237, 240, 244 conservation areas, 28 Constantinople: monuments, 294 contested heritage, 130n21 Copertino, Domenico, 302, 303, 304 Corm, Da’ud, 277, 278 Costumes Populaires de la Turquie en 1873, Les, 59 Council of Jewish Communities, 257 courtyards: Damascene dwellings, 187 Crang, Mike, 234 Crapanzano, Vincent, 178 CSBE, 165 ‘CultNat’ centre, 114 cultural diversity loss of, 28 role of creative class, 155 role of museums, 135, 136, 138, 144 Lebanon, 140–1 cultural goods, 182–3, 200 commodification, 189, 204–9, 213 cultural heritage, 151–72; see also heritage; urban heritage colonial attitudes, 16–21, 73, 227, 294–5, 307 Damascus, 178–216, 303 definition and scope, 3–4, 6, 8, 11–16, 24, 32, 34, 227; see also heritage: definition and scope Orientalism, 4–7 Ottoman Empire, 67 postcolonial attitudes, 21–8 public imaginary, 182–3 religion and: Basilica Affair, 71, 72–3 cultural intimacy, 15 cultural landscapes: definition, 234–5 cultural tourism, see tourism culture: de Certeau’s analysis, 1–2

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INDEX Dahan-Kalev, Henriette, 256 Daher, Rami, 29, 31 Dajani, Awni, 77 Damascus, 26–7, 160, 227, 303 cultural stereotyping, 6–7 cultural tourism, 33, 303 monuments, 188–9, 196, 205, 210 National Museum, 278–9 Old City, 178–216, 302 Danan synagogue, 259–60, 305 Darat al-Funun, 159, 171 Darwinism, resistance to, 58 Daughter of Damascus (Tergeman), 187 David, Jean-Claude, 313 de Certeau, Michel, 107 Debbaneh family (Saida), 157 Decapolis, 77, 98n9 Delpal, Christine, 222 Department of Antiquities (Jordan), 76, 77, 89, 91, 94, 96 Department of Antiquities (Palestine), 79 Dever, William, 77, 78–9 Dhakirat Misr al-Mu’asirah, 31 Directorate General of Antiquities (Lebanon), 137, 140, 142, 143 Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums (Syria), 187, 188–9, 224–5 dissonant heritage, 130n21 diversity, human, 313 Diwan al-Mimar, 165 DOA (Department of Antiquities, Jordan), 76, 77, 89, 91, 94, 96 Doha: urban development, 153–4 domestic heritage, 221–2, 228, 313 Aleppo, 221–2, 228–31 Douaihy, Saliba, 278 Doumani, Bishara, 12 Dreamland (Cairo), 153–4 Dubai Bedouin heritage, 299 museums, 270–1, 284 urban development, 153 Dughman, Moafaq, 179, 207 Duncan, Carol, 311

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Ebel-es-Saqi, Lebanon, 234, 241–7 Ecochard, Michel, 214n2, 222, 224 Efflatoun, Inji, 111 Efflatoun-Abdulla, Gulpérie, 111 Egy.com, 110 Egypt antiquity: definition of objects, 115 archaeology: national identity, 299 architecture; see architecture, Egypt ‘Belle Epoque’, 104–29 cultural heritage: colonial period, 17, 18, 20, 298, 306 heritage protection: buildings, 115, 116–17, 125–9 Khedival period, 106; see also Cairo: Khedival period modern art, 272–7 monuments, 125–9, 314–15 museums, 117–19, 131n28, 271, 273–7, 298, 301 nostalgia and imperial culture, 122–4 tourism, 121, 301 Egypt’s Belle Epoque (Mostyn), 105–7 Egypte d’antan, L’, 111 Egyptian Fine Arts Society, 273 Egyptian Gazette, 110 El-Habashi, Alaa, 306 El-Jisr, Bassem, 283 Elon, Amos, 94 Elsheshtawy, Yasser, 154 Esad, Mahmud, 60 ethnography: methodological tool, 15–16 European attitudes to Arab heritage, 293–6 to Arab-Islamic past, 10, 11–12, 17–20 Transjordan, 73–4 to archaeology, 57–8, 64, 67, 81, 294–5, 306–7, 309–10 European Landscape Convention, 240–1 Europeans: tourism, 23 eviction: communities: patrimonialisation, 35, 38 exchange value: Damascus Old Town, 182, 189, 205, 208, 209, 213 extended family, decline of: Damascus, 207

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Fahmi, Wael, 302–3 families: patrons and philanthropists, 156–63 Farag, Maged, 112–14 Faroqhi, Suraiya, 9, 11–12 Farouk, King, 105 Fez, 211 cultural stereotyping, 6–7 Danan synagogue, 259–60, 305 Jewish heritage, 257, 259–60 urban conservation, 27–8 Fine Arts School (Cairo), 272–3 folklore, 21, 73, 320n37 Fondation du Patrimoine culturel judéo-marocain, 252, 253, 258, 259–60, 264, 265n3, 267n21 Foucault, Michel, 73, 143 notion of power, 2, 7 Four Seasons Hotel (Damascus), 187 France attitude to restoration of Holy Sepulchre, 75 Damascus, urban planning in, 179 Lebanese identity creation, role in, 139, 143 ‘Malraux Law’, 28 Middle East cultural heritage, 17–18 free-trade agreements, 155 Friends of Damascus Association, 187, 193–4 Fuad, King, 105, 113, 118 Fuchs, Ron, 5 Fulbright Commission, 116 furniture derived products, 110 domestic spaces, 232n3 Aleppo, 230 Gadara, 36 Garstang, John, 71, 77 gentrification, 216n33 Damascus, 180–2, 188, 189, 200, 212 patrimonialisation and, 35 geopolitics: terminology, 151 Gerasa, 98n9 Gezira Museum, 276, 277

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Ghani, Muhammad, 281 Ghouta, 190 Giza (Cairo), 110, 119, 126, 127, 129 globalisation, 154–5, 209, 239 Glock, Albert, 78–9, 80–1 Glueck, Nelson, 77–8, 84–5 Goffman, Erving, 216n39 Graburn, Nelson, 22 Great Cairo library, 119 Green Land, Amman, 154, 173n7 Green March, 255, 266n12 Gsell, Stéphane, 294 Gutton, André, 222–4 habitus, 181, 214n4 habous, 9–10 Haddadin, Dina, 168 Hadidi, Adnan, 84–5 Halbwachs, Maurice, 14 Hall, Stuart, 300–1 Hallaj, Omar Abdulaziz, 226 Hama, 225, 226 Hamra (Beirut), 31, 164–5 Hamzet Wasel, 163–4, 171 Hariri Foundation, 158, 174n16 Harvey, David, 173n3 Hasan, Yusuf, 112 Hasan bin Talal, Prince, 85, 91, 98n12 Hasbani River, 241, 244 Hashemite dynasty, 69, 86, 87, 88, 94–5, 96, 97n5 Hassan II: King of Morocco, 255 Hassan, Prince Hassan, 111 Haussmannism, 26–7 Heliopolis, 107, 109, 119, 130n6 Herat, 38 heritage, see also cultural heritage; urban heritage definition and scope, 55–7, 64, 65, 235, 236–7, 239, 252–3, 296–315; see also cultural heritage: definition and scope dissonant, 130n21 private and public spaces, 221–2, 228 public recognition, lack of: Ottoman Empire, 61–4 religious and secular: conflicts, 9–10

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INDEX heritage management: legal obstacles, 304 heritage tourism, see tourism Herzfeld, Michael, 4, 15, 16, 35, 36, 182, 211 High Committee for the Writing of the History of Jordan, 83 hillulot, 257, 258 hima, 9 Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 244, 246 History of Art (Esad), 60 History of Jordan from the Islamic Conquest until the End of the Fourth Century of the Hegira/ Tenth Century CE (Khrayshat), 83 history cultural heritage and, 13–15 importance, 8–9 Hmoud, Noufan R., 69–70 Hobsbawm, Eric, 23–4, 300 Hodder, Ian, 34 Hodjat, M., 8–9 Holiday Gift (Pasha), 61 Holy Land, Jordan as, 81–2, 85–6, 87, 89–91, 94, 96 Holy Sepulchre: restoration, 74–6 Holy Treasures (Pasha), 61–5, 308 horse racing, 299 Horsfield, George, 76, 77 hotels, 33–4, 160–1 Damascus, 185, 187, 193, 205, 206, 207, 212 Egypt, 121 Hamra (Beirut), 31, 164 Saida, 158 Husni, Husayn, 112 Huyot, Jean-Nicolas, 294 Hyrcanus, 91, 92 Ibrahim, Prince, 111 Identité et Dialogue (group), 256 identity, art practices and, 314 IFAPO, 92 imagination: urban development: Damascus, 178, 181–2, 200, 213 Imperial Museum (Istanbul), 58–9, 67

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inheritance: distinct from heritage, 55–6 Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), 282 intangible cultural heritage, 15, 34 International Union for Nature Conservation, 244 Iran: cultural heritage: colonial period, 18 Iraq biblical archaeology, 82 Iraqi Modern Art Archive, 281 modern art, 279–81 museums, 271 Iraqi Museum of Modern Art, 280–1 Museum of the Pioneers, 280 Saddam Centre for the Arts, 280 National Archives of Visual Arts, 280, 281 national identity creation, 311 Iraq al-Amir, 91–2, 99n21 Irbid, 27, 159 islah (gentrification): Damascus, 200, 212 Islam Christianity and: Jordan, 87, 88, 91, 94–6 significance of the past, 8–11 Islamic art: Lebanon, 138 Ismailiya, 108 Israel archaeology, 81, 82–3, 85, 93 Jordan, relations with, 92–4 Palestine, attitude towards, 93–4 territorial claims, 84, 90, 93–4, 99n19 Israeli-Arab conflict, origins of, 84 Israelis: Founders and Sons (Elon), 94 Istanbul: modern art, 284 Istanbul Archaeology Museum, 58–9 Jabal al Qala’a (Amman), 163–4 Jabal Omar project, 153–4 Jabry family (Damascus), 160, 194–6 Jaffa, 94 Jericho, 79

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Jerusalem, 13, 36, 86, 91, 94, 98n7, 318n24 monuments, 75 Holy Sepulchre, 74–6 Jewish archaeology, 82; see also Israel: archaeology Jewish culture, revival of interest in, 254 Jewish heritage, 307 Eastern Europe, 266n10 Jordan, 90–4, 311–12 Morocco, 252–5, 256–64, 312 Jihad Museum (Herat), 38 Jizza (Amman), 154, 174n9 John Paul II, Pope: visit to Jordan, 85, 86, 87–8, 89, 96 Jordan archaeology, 76–85, 90–7 biblical, 81–2, 84–5, 91 Byzantine domination, 95 cultural heritage: postcolonial period, 23 Department of Antiquities (DOA), 76, 77 Israel, relations with, 92–4 Jewish heritage, 90–4, 311–12 Kan Zaman, 158–9 madafas, 38 modern art, 279 monuments, 71, 72, 85–6, 87 national identity creation, 83–97, 321n54 Royal Society of Fine Arts, 279 tourism, 86–90, 91, 92–4, 95–6, 99nn20,21, 158–9, 312 Umayyad conquest, 95 Jordan in the Prehistoric Era (Kafafi), 83 Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, 279 Josephus, Flavius, 92 Jour, Le (Lebanon), 141 Judeo-Christianity: archaeological research, 78 Kafafi, Zaydan, 83 Kafescioglu, Cigdem, 13 Kaika, Maria, 203

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Kamal, Ahmad, 20 Kamal, Yusuf, Prince, 272, 273 Kan Zaman, 158–9 Karzoun, Zoucca, 222 Katz, Kimberly, 86–7 khabur, 197 Khalid Shoman Foundation, 30 Khalidi, Mustafa, 141 Khalidi, Ola al, 168, 171 Khalil, Muhammad Mahmud, 273, 274, 276, 277 Khan, Fazlur, 184 Khan, Ismael, 38 Khan al-Franj, 158 Khatibi, Abdelkébir, 283 Khawas, Soheir Zaki, 114 Khazindar, Mona, 283 Khedive dynasty, 106, 108, 110, 111, 117, 118, 122, 123 Khrayshat, Muhammad, 83 King, Philippe, 82 kinship, 16 Kirkbride, Diana, 80 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 252 Kuwait: modern art, 281, 282 labour: exchange value of spatial objects, 208–9 landscape aesthetics, see aesthetics: landscape national identity, 239 rural cultural heritage, 233–48 specificity, 237 landscape architecture, 236 Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 241–7 landscape ecology, 237, 244 Lattakia, 27 Layard, Henry, 306–7 Lebanon cultural diversity, 136, 138 Lebanese Civil War, 135–6, 137, 139–40, 142, 145n3 modern art, 277–8 monuments, 236 multi-culturalism, 136, 138, 144–5

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INDEX museums, 135–45, 305 Lebanese Heritage Museum, 278 national identity creation, 138, 142 rural culture and landscapes, 235, 241–7 urban art, 167–8 Lefebvre, Henry, 182, 208 legislation: heritage management, 304 Lenclud, Gérard, 313 Lepetit, Bernard, 109 Levant: geopolitical description, 151–2 Levy, André, 254 Lévy, Simon, 255, 259, 260, 261, 265n3 Libya: monuments, 25 literature, Egypt: ‘Belle Epoque’ mythmaking, 109, 111–12 Lovejoy, Arthur O., 295 Lowenthal, David, 107, 297 Lucas, Russell, 92 Lufti Al-Sayyid Marsot, Afaf, 112 Luxor, 37 Lyautey, Hubert, 19, 27 Madaba Map, 91, 98n16 Madaba Zaman, 158–9 madafas, 38, 159–60 Madinat al-Uqsur, 37 Madrasat al-funun al-jamila (Cairo), 272–3 Maffi, Irene, 23, 159–60, 307, 311 Makan, 168, 171 Mameluke period reified, 205 Manama (Bahrain), 6, 30, 153–4 maquis: Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 243, 244, 245 Marche Verte, 255, 266n12 Maroc Hebdo International, 262 Maronite denomination, 137, 145nn1,5 Mashreq geopolitical description, 151 rural culture and landscapes, 235, 238–48 Masrah al-Madina (Beirut), 31, 164–5 Mastour, 164 material culture, 2–3, 28, 57, 143, 236, 314

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Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, 271, 284 Mattatias building, 108 MAWARED, 154, 174n11 Mecca. 26, 69, 97n5, 153–4 Hashemite dynasty, 69 urban development, 153–4 Méhémet Ali le grand (Ibrahim), 111 Mellah, 254, 265n8 Melnick, Robert Z., 235 memory and cultural heritage, 13–15, 162, 297, 298, 307, 311–12 Aleppo, 229, 231 Mercy Corps: Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 242, 246, 249n4 Merriman, Nick, 143 Mesopotamia: heritage, 81, 311 Metropolis: Cities Research Council, 165–6 Middle East definition, 4 geopolitical description, 151–2 Milošević Bijleveld, Sophia, 38 Miriel, Emile, 273 Misr al-mahrusa, 112–13, 121 Mkies, 36–7 MMQ (Damascus), 179, 187, 196, 202, 204, 211–12 enforcement of regulations, 188, 191–2, 201, 203, 211 Moabites, The (Van Zyl), 83–4 modern art, 270–85, 301 Egypt 272–7 Iraq, 279–81 Jordan, 279 Kuwait, 281, 282 Lebanon, 277–8 Syria, 278–9 Turkey, 284 United Arab Emirates, 281–2 modernisation, urban, 26–7 modernity: cultural heritage, 31 Mohammed VI: King of Morocco, 255, 260, 261–2, 266n11 monarchism: Egypt, 107, 111, 122 Montlucon, Jacques, 190, 191, 202

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monuments, 8, 213, 221, 298, 306, 308, 313, 314–15; see also specific monuments Algeria, 17–18 Constantinople, 294 Egypt, 125–9, 314–15 European attitudes to, 10, 23, 214n3, 222, 293, 294, 306 Jerusalem, 75 Jordan, 71, 72, 85–6, 87 Lebanon, 236 Saida, 158, 174n16 Libya, 25 Ottoman Empire, 39, 67–8, 75 Palestine, 161 Syria, 179, 183, 205, 222 Damascus, 188–9, 196, 205, 210 role of Unesco, 183, 213 Moroccan Jews identity, 256–7 right of return, 255 Morocco Arab Israeli conflict, mediation in, 255, 266n11 Arab-Muslim state, 260–1 Jewish heritage, 252–5, 256–64, 312 Jewish population mass emigration, 254, 259 social standing, 255–6 museums, 258–9, 260, 261, 264, 267n22 pluralism, 260–3, 263–4 terrorism, 261, 268n33 tourism: 256–8, 264, 267n18 urban planning, 19, 27 Mosaics of Jordan (Piccirillo), 90 Moslem Lebanon Today, 141, 145n5 Mosseri, Richard, 111 Mostyn, Trevor, 105–7, 121 Mount Nebo, 80 mountain landscape: Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 241 Mourad, Tamima Orra, 312 Moutia, Touria, 222 Mshatta Castle, 66, 68 Mubarak, Husni, 117–18 Mubarak Library, 119

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Muhammad Mahmud Khalil Museum, 118, 276, 277 Muharraq (Bahrain), 26, 30 Mukhtar, Mahmud, 272–3, 277 multi-culturalism Egypt: ‘Belle Epoque’ mythmaking, 108–9 Lebanon, 136, 138, 144–5 role of museums, 135, 138, 144 Musée des monuments français, 56–7 Musée du Montparnasse, 281 museum curators: colonial period, 19–20 Museum of Fine Arts (Alexandria), 277 Museum of Middle East Modern Art (Dubai), 270–1 Museum of Modern Art (Cairo), 274–5 Museum of Modern Egyptian Art, 275–6 Museum of the Pioneers (Iraq), 280 museums, 24, 135, 143–4, 300–1, 307, 309, 310–11 Abu Dhabi, 270 Algeria, 272 Dubai, 270–1 Egypt, 117–19, 131n28, 271, 273–7, 298, 301 Iraq, 271 Lebanon, 135–45, 305 Morocco, 258–9, 260, 261, 264, 267n22 Ottoman Empire, 58–9, 67, 309–10 Qatar, 270, 271 role of: cultural diversity, 135, 138 Syria, 271 western countries, 310 Muslim identity: Lebanon, 136, 137, 139, 140–2 Mustapha, Mohammed Nimr, 198, 199, 202 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 111, 122, 123, 276–7 nation-states: patrimonialisation, 13–14 National Archives of Visual Arts (Iraq), 280, 281

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INDEX national boundaries transcended, 25–6, 239 national identity archaeology, 57 landscape, 239 national identity creation, 20–1, 308, 311, 314–15 Iraq, 311 Jordan, 83–97 Lebanon, 138, 142 National Museum of Beirut, 137, 139–42, 143 National Museum of Damascus, 278–9 National Museum of Modern Art (Baghdad), 280 Nawar, Ahmad, 275 neoliberalism, 173nn3,4 urban restructuring, 152–5, 164, 168, 169, 171, 173nn6,7,8, 174n9,10,11 Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum, 277–8 Niniveh and Its Remains (Layard), 306–7 non-government organisations: urban heritage, 156 nostalgia, 192–3 Damascus, 182, 190, 192, 194, 197, 205, 212 Egypt: Belle Epoque, 106, 107, 109 imperial culture and, 121–4 post-nostalgia, 297 Nur al-Din wall (Damascus), 186–7 oil boom, 152–3 Old Istanbul, from Byzantium to Constantinople (Arseven), 61 olive groves: Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 241, 242, 243–4, 245 Omari Mosque (Saida), 158 One Dimension, The (Iraq), 279–80 orientalism, 4–7, 32, 236, 295, 312 Orientalism (Said), 4, 5 Ottoman Artists Association Journal, 60 Ottoman Empire archaeology, 19, 57–8, 63–4, 66–7, 306–7, 309

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architecture, 12–13, 59, 61, 298–9 arts, 59–65 heritage conservation, 13, 19–20, 67, 309–10 Holy Sepulchre, 75 monuments, 39, 67–8, 75 museums, 58–9, 67, 309–10 patrimony, 59, 60, 61 Ottoman legacy: definition, 11–13 Ottoman museology, 58–9 Ottoman period discredited, 22, 25 Oulebsir, Nabila, 10, 17–18, 19, 25 Outline of a Theory of Practice (Bourdieu), 2, 16 Palestine archaeology, 58 biblical archaeology, 82, 85, 295 cultural heritage colonial period, 18 legislation, 304 postcolonial period, 23 Department of Antiquities, 80–1 Israel, attitude of, 93–4 Jewish heritage, 310 memoirs, 112 monuments, 161 philanthropy, 161 Riwaq, 166 Palestine Exploration Fund, 78 Palestine Oriental Society, 81 Palestinian refugees: Damascus, 188, 210, 212 Palumbo, Berardino, 205, 209 Parent, Michel, 301 Paris Institut du Monde Arabe, 282–3 Musée du Montparnasse, 281 Pasha, Hüseyin Zekai, 61–5, 308 Pasha, Sakızlı Ohannes, 60 past: separated from present, 22 Past is a Foreign Country, The (Lowenthal), 107 patrimonialisation, 2–3, 13–15, 21, 24, 25, 28–31, 34–8 Mashreq, 152, 162

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patrimonialisation – continued Medina, 9 modern art, 271 Moroccan-Jewish heritage, 253, 264 rural landscapes, 233–4, 235–6, 239, 240, 247 Western and colonial influence, 11, 18–19 patrimony definition, 231 Ottoman Empire, 59, 60, 61 Pearce, Susan M., 144 Pearl Island (Doha), 153–4 Petra, 80 Petrie, Flinders, 63 Philadelphia, 89 philanthropy: urban heritage, 156 Philby, John, 68, 70–2, 76 Phoenician identity: Lebanon, 136, 137, 138–9, 141, 142, 143 Piccirillo, Michele, 90 Pini, Daniele, 187, 205, 210, 212 place, notion of, 162 Pom Mahakan, 36, 37 popes: visits to Jordan, 85, 86, 87–8, 89, 96 Port-Said, 114 Porter, Geoff D., 211, 214n3 postcolonial period: cultural heritage, 21–8 Potts, D. T., 67 Poulot, Dominique, 4, 13, 14, 16, 83 power relationships, 2 preservation: Ottoman Empire, 59, 61–3, 64–5 preservationism, 56–7 Pressouyre, Léon, 301 private and public spaces: heritage, 221–2, 228 privatisation, 153, 154–5 museums and the built heritage, 156 property development, 153–4 Prost, Claude, 139 public and private spaces: heritage, 221–2, 228 public imaginaries, 182 public sector, reductions in, 152, 154–5

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public spaces creation of, 152, 163, 165–6, 169, 170–1 private and: heritage, 221–2, 228 Putnam, Robert, 169 Qashla (Damascus), 194, 207, 212n36 Qasr al-Nil palace, 108 Qassa (Damascus), 207 Qatar: museums, 270, 271 qawmi, 8 Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities of Palestine, 80 Quran, Holy: focus on the past, 8–9 Jewish exodus, 90 Raafat, Samir, 110, 121 Rabat neoliberalism, 173n4 urban development, 153–4 Rabinow, Paul, 11, 19, 27, 179 Raif, Mehmet, 61 Rainbow Street (Amman), 165–6 Rajab, Luna, 193–4, 197–8 Rankin, Ian, 285 Rassemblement mondial du Judaïsme Marocain, 256 Reid, Donald M., 79, 295, 299, 311 Reid, Malcolm, 10, 17, 18–19, 19–20 Reilly, James, 25 religion and cultural heritage: Basilica Affair, 71, 72–3 religious tourism, see tourism Renan, Ernest, 14, 309–10 rent: Damascus, 180–1, 185, 207, 209, 212, 213, 216nn38,41 rent-gap theory, 216n33 restaurants Damascus, 160, 195–6, 212 Jordan, 158–9 restoration, building: Syria Damascus, 179, 181–2, 183–4, 185–6, 187–9, 190–204, 208–10, 213 wages, 199 working patterns, 200–4 lack of higher education, 197–8

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INDEX Rhoné, Arthur, 306 Ricca, Simone, 36, 190–1, 202 Riedlmayer, András, 75 Riwaq, 166, 171 Rogan, Eugene, 12, 22, 66, 69, 70, 72, 97n4 Rome: archaeology, 294 Rosemann, Jurgen, 155 Royal Albums (Farag), 113–14 Royal Society of Fine Arts (Jordan), 279 rural communities: empowerment, 248 rural cultural landscape, 233–48 Sadat, Anwar, 106, 118, 122, 123 Saddam Centre for the Arts, 280 Sadek, Walid, 314 Saghour (Damascus), 185 Said, Edward, 4, 5, 295 Saida, 26, 30, 157–8 monuments, 158, 174n16 Salamé, Ghassan, 142 Salibi, Kamal, 82 Salibi, Khalil, 277, 278 Salim, Jawad, 279–80, 281 Salon du Caire, 273, 274 Salt (Jordan), 97n4, 158–9 Samuel, Herbert, 71 Samuels, Kathryn Lafrenz, 303–4, 305 Sanbar, Elias, 112 Sandrine, G., 37 Sauvaget, Jean, 222 Sayegh, Selim, 89–90 Scharabi, Mohamed, 114 Schuster, J. Mark, 156 ‘secondary adjustments’, 210, 213, 216n39 sectarianism: Lebanon, 137 security: Aleppo, 223–4 Seeden, Helga, 135, 137 Selloun family (Damascus), 207–8 Serageldine family (Egypt), 111 Serji family (Damascus), 207 Serrageldin, Ismail, 31 Sèves, Colonel, 110 Sham, Paul, 92

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Shami, Seteney, 159 Sharjah Museum for Contemporary Arab Art, 281–2 Shatta, Michel, 185–6, 192, 198 Shaw, Wendy, 67, 298–9, 308, 309 Shoa, 254, 266n10 Shoman, Suha, 159, 162, 171 Shoman Foundation, 30, 159, 162 Sidon, see Saida Slousch, Nahum, 82 Slyomovics, Susan, 14, 34–5 Smith, Juliana, 168 Smith, Neil, 216n33 Soap Museum (Saida), 26, 30, 157–8 social capital, 169–70 Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, 244–5 Society of Friends of Fine Arts (Egypt), 273, 274, 276 Solidere Project, 154, 236 Sørensen, Marie-Louise S., 144 space, conflicts over, 35 spatial objects, 182, 215n10 exchange value, 208–9 St.Laurent, Beatrice, 75 state, reductions in role of, 154–5, 174n12 Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 78, 80 sublime, the, 298, 309 Suez Canal Company, 116 Sukenik, Eliezer, 82 Suq Sarruja, Damascus, 187 Sutton, Keith, 302–3 synagogues Egypt, 116 Morocco, 252, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259–60, 264 Fez, 259–60, 267n26 Syria biblical archaeology, 82 modern art, 278–9 monuments, 179, 183, 205, 222 museums, 271 tourism, 160–1 Syro-Palestinian archaeology, 79

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Taher, Salah, 286n10 tangible cultural heritage, 15, 34 Tarih-i Sanayi (Ziya), 60 techno-cosmopolitanism, 27 Tell (Damascus), 202 Tell family (Irbid), 159–60 Tergeman, Siham, 187 terminology: cultural heritage, 8–11 terrorism: Morocco, 261, 268n33 Tobiads, 91–2 Tohme, Christine, 167, 171 tourism, 23, 32–4, 57, 301, 303, 309 Egypt, 121, 301 Luxor, 37 Jordan, 86–90, 91, 92–4, 95–6, 99nn20,21, 158–9, 312 Mkies, 36–7 Morocco: 256–8, 264, 267n18 Syria, 160–1 Aleppo, 222–3 Damascus, 179, 185–6, 205, 207, 208, 210, 227, 303 trab, 192, 198, 214n9 tradition commodified, 204–9 invented, 23–4 Transjordan, 66, 68–74, 76–8, 79–80, 81, 97n2 Trigger, Bruce, 73 Tuleilat al-Ghassul, 77, 80 Tunis: urban conservation, 27–8 turath, 8, 272 Turath (Architecture and Urban Design Consultants), 165–6 turath sha’bi, 8, 21 Turkey: modern art, 284 Ümraniye, 63 Üsküdar, 61, 62–3 Umayyad conquest: Jordan, 95 Unesco, 183, 236 Aleppo, 224, 225–6 Damascus, 178, 181, 183, 187, 188–9, 205, 209–10, 212–13; see also World Heritage List (WHL): Damascus Bayt Montlucon, 190–1

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Morocco, 259–60, 261, 305 Unesco Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, 15 United Arab Emirates: modern art, 281–2 universalism, 295, 301, 313 URBAMA, 17 urban artists, 166–9 urban cultural tourism, 33 urban disengagement, 169–70 urban heritage, 6, 14, 24–5, 26–8, 156–7, 161–2, 168–72, 303; see also cultural heritage; urban heritage role of families, 156–63 Jordan, 23, 25, 159–60, 165–6, 168 Lebanon, 31, 157–8 Morocco, 19 Ottoman Empire, 12–13 Palestine, 161, 166 Syria, 160 Damascus, 178–216 urban planning, 19, 26–7, 165–6; see also specific places exclusion, 154, 155, 169 urban rehabilitation, 28, 170–1 urban restructuring, neoliberal, 152–5, 164, 168, 169, 171, 173nn6,7,8, 174n9,10,11 Urry, John, 162 Van Zyl, A.H., 83–4 vandalism, 308 Cairo, 306 Lebanon, 140 Vienna World Exposition (1873), 59 Villa Delort de Gléon, 108, 116 Volait, Mercedes, 297 Wagenhofer, Sophie, 312 waqfs, 9–10, 11 Wassef, Wissa, 273 watani, 8 water resources, 239–40 Welfare Association (Jerusalem), 161, 175n21

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INDEX West, Paige, 212 Western Sahara, 255, 266n12 Wilson, Mary, 70, 71–2 Wonders of Istanbul (Raif), 61 woodland: Ebel-es-Saqi (Lebanon), 241–2, 243, 245–6, 249n3 World Bank, 284 World Economic Forum, 155 World Heritage List (WHL): Damascus, 179, 182–3, 186, 191, 198, 221, 226; see also Unesco: Damascus World Heritage status, 264 Aleppo, 225–6 World Monument Fund: Morocco, 259, 260, 305

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World Trade Organization, 155 Yadoudeh, 158–9 Yasin, Khayr, 83–4 Yusuf Kamal, Prince, 116 Zabiyta, Na’im, 198, 199–200, 201, 202 Zamalek (Cairo), 110, 111, 129 Zaman, 159 Zanzibar: nostalgia, 121–2, 193 Zarqa (Amman), 154, 174n10 Zionism: territorial claims, 84, 90 Ziya, Mehmed, 60, 61 Znad, Muhammad, 281

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