Maamoun Abdulkarim

7 results

Syrians visit the pavilions at the Damascus International Fair in Damascus. Photograph: Youssef Badawi/EPA
Syria struggles to recover as it fights an economic war

This year’s Damascus International Fair – a commercial exhibition that resumed in 2017 after a five-year hiatus due to the Syrian civil war – was a gr(...)

Rubble where Isis explosives levelled walls and most of the Roman columns of the city gate in Palmyra. Syria’s director of antiquities said: “I can give you a promise that we can finish the maximum of the work within five years.” Photographs Bryan Denton/The New York Times
Plans under way to rebuild Palmyra temples destroyed by Isis

Syria’s director of antiquities Maamoun Abdulkarim is a happy, excited man. He asks me to step around the corner of his desk in his office in the Nati(...)

Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim at his office in Damascus. Photograph: Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty
‘We have to save Syria’s culture for all,’ says director of antiquities

Syria’s director of antiquities is a worried man. On December 13th, a mortar struck the garden of the national museum and a second shell hit the adjac(...)

An apparent screenshot from a video published by an Islamic State group allegedly shows smoke billowing from the Baal Shamin temple in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Islamic State shows images of ancient Syrian temple destruction

Islamic State militants published photographs yesterday purporting to show the destruction of a Roman-era temple in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra(...)

The temple of Baal Shamin in the historical city of Palmyra, which was destroyed by Islamic State. Photograph: Reuters/Stringer
Islamic State accelerates destruction of antiquities in Syria

Islamic State militants have razed a fifth-5th century Roman Catholic monastery and blown up one of the best-preserved first-1st century temples in Pa(...)

The ancient city of Palmyra. Photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Islamic State beheads leading antiquities scholar in Syria

Islamic State (IS) fighters have beheaded an 82-year old archaeologist in the ancient city of Palmyra and displayed his body on a column in the main(...)

Crac des Chevaliers, an 11th century crusader castle in Syria which has been reclaimed by the country’s department of antiquities, having been seized by insurgents in 2012. Photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Syrian authorities struggle to save antiquities from devastation by IS

Syria’s department of antiquities has reclaimed the vast 11th- century crusader castle Crac des Chevaliers from the army and taken charge of the si(...)