Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria with Prof. Nasser Rabbat, Prof. Heghnar Watenpaugh, Rim Lababidi

Reconstruction As Violence In Assad’s Syria

Nasser Rabbat is the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT.  His interests include Islamic art and architecture, urban history, heritage studies, Arab history, contemporary Islamic art, and post-colonial criticism.  He teaches lecture courses on various aspects of Islamic architecture and seminars on Orientalism and colonialism; Issues in Islamic Urbanism; Colonial Cities; Historiography of Islamic Architecture; Late Antiquity and the foundation of Islamic architecture; Reading Ibn Khaldun; (Re)constructing Memory; Urbicide; and Balancing Globalism and Regionalism in the Arabian Gulf.

Professor Rabbat has published numerous articles and several books on topics ranging from Mamluk architecture to Antique Syria, 19th century Cairo, Orientalism, and urbicide.  His most recent books are Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria, co-edited with Deen Sharp (2025); Turathuna: Nazarat wa-Araa’ fi al-‘Imara wal-Tarikh (Our Heritage: Viewpoints on Architecture and History) (2025); Taqiy al-Din al-Maqrizi: Wijdan al-Tarikh al-Masri (Taqiy al-Din al-Maqrizi: The Soul of Egyptian History) (2024); Nasser Rabbat: Critical Encounters (2023); Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project (2023), which won the 2024 British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies; and ‘Imarat al-Mudun al-Mayyita (The Architecture of the Dead Cities) (2018).  He is currently writing a history of Mamluk Cairo, a historical novel situated in 13th-century Damascus, and editing a book on the cultural history of Syria, tentatively entitled, Syria: The Land Where Cultures Met.

He has previously published: an online book co-edited with Pamela Karimi, The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From Napoléon to ISIS,  (2016); al-Naqd Iltizaman (Criticism as Commitment) (2015); Mamluk History Through Architecture: Building, Culture, and Politics in Mamluk Egypt and Syria (2010), which won the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies, 2011, Thaqafat al Bina’ wa Bina’ al-Thaqafa (The Culture of Building and Building Culture) (2002), and The Citadel of Cairo: A New Interpretation of Royal Mamluk Architecture. He edited The Courtyard House between Cultural Reference and Universal Relevance (2011), co-edited Making Cairo Medieval (2005), and co-authored Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (2001).  

Prof. Rabbat was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2025 and has received various recognitions the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property-Sharjah (ICCROM), UAE; the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society, London; the J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles; the Villa I Tatti, Florence; the American Academy in Rome; the Institut d’études avancées, Paris; the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, University of Bonn; the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge, MA; the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE); the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (IFAO), Cairo; and l’Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA), Paris.  Professor Rabbat served as a member of the 2019 and the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Steering Committees.

He worked as an architect in Los Angeles and Damascus and held several academic appointments at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich; École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris; New York University in Abu Dhabi, UAE; and the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco, Rabat.   He contributes to several Arabic newspapers, serves on the boards of various cultural and educational organizations, and consults with international design firms on projects in the Islamic World.  

A History of Cultural Heritage In Aleppo: A “Paradoxical Patrimony”

Heghnar Watenpaugh is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis. She researches the visual cultures of the Middle East, including architectural preservation, museums, and cultural heritage.  Professor Watenpaugh was the Aga Khan Career Development Professor at MIT in 2001-2005. Her first book, on the Ottoman architecture of Aleppo, Syria, received the Spiro Kostof Award for urban history from the Society of Architectural Historians. Her second book, The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice, published by Stanford University Press in 2019, is the only book to win awards from both the Society for Armenian Studies and the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. The book also won the Gold Medal in World History from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and it was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing (non-fiction). She is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation as well as a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar. Professor Watenpaugh has served on the board of the Syrian Studies Association and is the President of the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus. 

Abstract:

Cities that have experienced war and atrocities symbolize violence, but also survival and resilience. Although the destruction of cultural heritage in Aleppo has reverberated around the world, similar practices have a long and fraught history in the Middle East. In the past, they have been entwined with practices of colonialism, empire-building, and nationalism. These episodes still cast a long shadow. We not only have to come to terms with the immediate implications of the destruction of heritage in our own time, but we also have to grapple with the long-term consequences of the destruction of culture and its many afterlives. In the case of Aleppo, the urban geographer Jean-Claude David spoke of a ‘paradoxical patrimony: claimed by some, ignored or refused by others, looted by all and destroyed by the war.’ Post conflict design proposals for cities that have experienced atrocities and civil war need to take stock of the past, but they also have to face forward, towards the needs and rights of future urban dwellers and citizens. 

Old Aleppo Post Assad, A situation Analysis 

Rim Lababidi is an architect and a researcher who investigates the preservation and safeguarding of built heritage in times of peace and crises, with a special emphasis on first aid practices. She has been mapping and analyzing the damage to Syrian heritage, specifically in the old city of Aleppo. Her research interests include broader issues of practices of preservation and valuation of material culture, as applied in the Islamic world, and the compatibility of Western practices with Islamic and local values.

Abstract
Following the recapture of Aleppo by the Assad regime in 2017, post-conflict reconstruction efforts targeted the city’s ancient center, which had suffered extensive damage during years of urban warfare. While framed as heritage preservation, these projects drew criticism from cultural heritage specialists, architects, and human rights advocates, who argued that they served to consolidate regime control and entrench discriminatory practices. In December 2024, the political landscape shifted when a rapid offensive by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham overthrew the Assad regime, ushering in an interim government that pledged nationwide reconstruction. However, the transition period remains marked by political instability, sectarian and communal tensions, economic collapse, and severely degraded infrastructure. Against this backdrop, Aleppians—like many Syrians—harbor cautious optimism amid formidable challenges. This study examines the present condition of Old Aleppo, mapping the range of actors involved in its rehabilitation and evaluating the strategies guiding these restoration initiatives.