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The latest issue of Change Over Time, the Department of Historic Preservation’s journal, explores the challenges of protecting cultural heritage sites in the Arab Region. In an essay excerpted here, Ammar Azzouz, a lecturer and British Academy research fellow at University of Oxford, examines the recent boom in new institutions dedicated to cultural heritage and art in the Arab Region.
The Arab Region is witnessing the construction of a wide range of buildings dedicated to cultural heritage, art, and culture. Across several countries such as Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia, museums, libraries, and art and cultural centers are being built on a monumental scale in an attempt to give cities a new narrative and identity. In the process of making and remaking this identity, “star” architects, often not from the Arab Region, have been chosen to imagine and design these new mega projects. In Abu Dhabi, UAE, at least three such star architect–designed museums have been built or are in various stages of construction. They include a Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry twelve times the size of its New York flagship; a Louvre designed by Jean Nouvel; and the Zayed National Museum by Foster & Partners. In these projects and others, power and wealth are demonstrated through monumental architecture and the global profile of their star architects. But why not draw on the talents of local architects to design monuments of cultural and national importance?
Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Doha, Qatar. (Photo by author, 2023)
Constructing sites of memory and remembering has become the feature of many cities in the Arab Region. Through these new architectural projects, states are writing and rewriting their history. In Saudi Arabia, efforts are being made to reveal different layers of history through cultural heritage sites. In Al Aula, for example, local, regional, and international teams are working on thousands of archaeological sites. Efforts are being made to change the country’s global reputation from a conservative state into a “liberal” state. This process is part of the government’s vision to attract more investors and tourists and to move away from its oil dependence. Cultural heritage sites have been part of this transformation, as tourism is seen as one of the tools to diversify the economy. Destruction, however, has been integral to this process of change. For example, in Mecca at the location of the Kaaba, Islam’s most sacred site, Ajyad Fortress, an eighteenth-century Ottoman citadel, was demolished to make way for the Clock Towers, a new architectural development that included seven skyscraper hotels, as part of a wider urban planning project to “modernize” Mecca. The juxtaposition of one of Islam’s holiest pilgrimage sites where Muslims perform one of Islam’s five pillars (Hajj)1 to the commercial skyscraper development has the effect of damaging the spirituality of the place and its value as a site for prayers. With this new project, the holy site has been turned into an exhibition of money, wealth, and glamour. Today, the view from the Kaaba is skyscraper towers competing for attention; their shadows dwarf the Kaaba and the minarets of the Masjid al-Haram. In their Hajj and Umrah,2 all male Muslims wear the same clothes, which consist of two unhemmed sheets, and female Muslims wear loose, modest clothing (such as abaya), to symbolize modesty and simplicity. The holy site of the Kaaba that is supposed to reflect modesty, unity among Muslims, and spiritual renewal is now overlooked by luxury buildings only the rich and elite can afford. Local communities fear that the Saudi government would knock down more of the city’s urban fabric and natural topography to expand the Masjid al-Haram and for the development of new hotels, cafes, shopping centers, and restaurants.
Destruction of heritage in the Old City of Homs, Syria. (Photo by author, 2025)
While many cities in the Arab Region are constructing new architectural projects to celebrate their heritage and culture, and to write their own history, other cities are having their rich history destroyed. In the past two decades, cities in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen have been radically reshaped by the destruction of their everyday architecture and cultural heritage sites.3 In my city, Homs, Syria, more than half of the neighborhoods have been destroyed, including cultural heritage of the Old City. Years after the end of the battles in the city, Homs remains in ruins with no reconstruction projects. In Syria, destruction has been a military tactic to collectively punish civilian communities that opposed the government. Since 2011, architecture has been destroyed to make these cities uninhabitable for those who dared to dream of a free future.4 In a country of ruins and destruction, in the context of oppression and dictatorship, hope has been very hard to access. But on December 8, 2024, with the collapse of the Assad tyranny, a new landscape of hope and energy has emerged. This radical hope can be reflected in our ability to protect what remains of the country’s cultural heritage. Syrian architects, urban planners, and activists are now facing challenging questions about future reconstruction, such as, how do we deal with the country’s painful past? What do we do with sites of massacres, torture, and arrest? And how can cultural heritage contribute to the process of healing and recovery after war? These questions of reconstruction are the questions that will be dealt with in the years to come not only in Syria but in many countries in the region. Cities have become battlefields with homes, cultural, educational, and governmental institutions razed and infrastructure destroyed, and millions of people have been displaced. To where do people return? What remains of the places they left behind?
Read the full essay on Project Muse.
1) Hajj is the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and is a mandatory religious duty for capable Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime.
2) Umrah is an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca that may be taken any time of the year, in contrast to the Hajj, which has a specific date according to the Islamic lunar calendar.
3) Benjamin Isakhan and Lynn Meskell, “UNESCO’s project to ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’: Iraqi and Syrian Opinion on Heritage Reconstruction after the Islamic State,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 25, no. 11 (2019): 1189.
4) Ammar Azzouz, Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), xv.
