Al-Youm newspaper reported last week that, while working on some water projects in Al-Ahsa, municipality workers demolished several historical sites. The department in charge of monuments in the region complained to the water department about the loss of a 500-year-old place, known as Ibrahim Palace, and several other sites. A week later, the municipality’s workers in the same area started demolishing an old souk called Al-Qaisariya. The Monuments Department says that it also is of historic value and that there are several alleyways and rooms buried under the souk that are worth preserving. The workers destroyed the roof of one of those rooms and, later on, heaped sand on the demolished area. The only thing the Monuments Department can do is to complain to the deputy minister for museums and archaeology. The gentleman was quoted in the paper as saying that thanks to the municipality actions, all that remained of those historical sites is now history.
It is a tragic fact that historical sites do not attract anyone’s attention in our country. We tend to forget and dismiss as of no value everything what does not benefit us directly and materially. The historical value and meaning of old buildings and streets and cities do not occupy any part of our officials’ minds. We behave as though we grew out of nowhere, or from those ultramodern glass and concrete buildings that speak of money and wealth.
How many schools in this country organize trips to historical places and museums? Very few, if any. We are very proud of our Islamic heritage, yet we seem to have lost all traces of it. What have remained of the early Muslim structures and buildings? If we go to Makkah and Madinah now, we are struck by their modern look. But in the process, they have lost something that a lot of us consider precious — the touch of history that connects us to every person who lived on these lands before we came into this world.
Our lack of interest in history is extremely shocking to people who come to visit our country. A visitor who was in Jeddah recently said she could not see the old side of Jeddah. She wanted to know where the old houses were that any other city in the world would preserve. The few houses that we still have in the Balad area could not be all that there are, she kept insisting. I had no answer. I just felt mortified at what we have lost so far and are continuing to lose.
Some time ago a well-known religious scholar wrote an article in a monthly magazine denouncing the preservation of old mosques and buildings saying that the practice was un-Islamic. Maybe to him it is, but to all other Muslims in the world, the old mosques of Morocco and other ancient Muslim cities are important. Cairo’s old fortresses, mosques and pyramids are still on top of a visitor’s list. Syria’s great heritage and Jordan’s Petra are places that are still alive, telling us stories of civilizations and lives that are no more but still enrich our minds and souls.
Yet some of us tend to think they are useless. That attitude scatters our heritage to the wind.
