Remembering Khaled al-Asaad, the Palmyra Archaeologist: Martyr of Our Valued Heritage

 

Two Martyrs and a Heritage Site

In 2015, when ISIS took control of major parts of Syria, along with millions of people killed, one major casualty was the ancient ruins of Palmyra. As it became clear that the city was going into the hands of ISIS, Qassim Abdullah Yehya and Khaled al-Asaad, the custodians of the archaeological artefacts of the city, evacuated the city museum and shifted many of these valued objects of heritage to another location. When ISIS took over, these two archaeologists were in the city, as they wanted to protect the monuments of great historical value. They paid in their blood for that decision.

Khaled al-Asaad was 82 years old, and Qassim Abdullah Yehya, 37, when their lives ended abruptly in a violent manner. When the ISIS fighters executed Asaad by decapitation, and as they hung his headless body from a traffic light post in Palmyra, the world mourned the loss of two selfless martyrs who made the ultimate sacrifice for humanity. A few days before the execution of Asaad, Qassim Abdullah Yehya was killed in a rocket attack by ISIS on the Damascus Citadel.

The Death of the Two Archaeologists

Franklin Lamb, a former Assistant Counsel of the US House Judiciary Committee at the US Congress and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, had worked with these two archaeologists when he went to Syria to study the endangered heritage of Syria. Both archaeologists worked at the Directorate General of Antiquities & Museums (DGAM) Syria. Lamb met them in 2013. He wrote an article about them soon after their death.

Lamb remembers that at that time, Qassim supervised the restoration of ancient mosaics damaged in war as they were collected from different parts of Syria. War with ISIS was raging. Piles and piles of mosaics in broken and burnt condition kept coming to the facility headed by Qassim. His team worked on each of these mosaics with ultimate care, remembers Lamb. Franklin Lamb is currently doing research in Lebanon. He works with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon and the Sabra-Shatila Foundation.

In the above reminiscing, Qassim comes across as a professional dedicated to preserving one’s country’s heritage. His expertise was in ancient mosaics. All the knowledge and experience he had accumulated in his specialised domain was meaninglessly destroyed by ISIS as they never understood or tried to know the importance of the work. Qassim left behind a young wife and three children.

The Execution of Khaled al-Asaad

Khaled al-Asaad’s murder was more gruesome as his body was hung from a traffic light post. According to reports from Palmyra, the ISIS militia had asked him to disclose the location of the artefacts evacuated from the Palmyra city museum just before ISIS took control of the city. Despite knowing that he could be murdered, Asaad refused to do so, and he was brutally beheaded for that.

Before executing Khaled al-Asaad in the city square, amid a crowd of onlookers, ISIS read out loud the accusations against him, reports Lamb. He was branded the “director of idolatry” and accused of overseeing and hiding idols. Another 'crime' was that he attended “infidel conferences”. 

Human history is also the history of objects and edifices that we create. The name, 'director of idolatry', ironically, fits the job description of this renowned archaeologist, as his job was to hold in respect everything that the human civilisation created and study and preserve them for posterity.'

On the night after his murder, a few brave people from his village took his head, which was placed by the murderers at his feet. They buried it in an unmarked grave and gave his glasses, which were still on his head, to his family. His son later wrote that after this event, ISIS stood guard over his body for 3 days and then cast it away in the desert. Again, the villagers found it and buried him.

Franklin Lamb remembers that when he visited Palmyra, al-Asaad had taken him around to show him the monuments and ruins and confidently remarked that the iron gates and bars put in place to protect the monuments were formidable. Lamb had doubted the protection value of those iron gates and wanted to ask him if they would stand a major assault. He did not ask that question because Asaad was exuding confidence.

It was 2013, and the ISIS offensive in Syria had begun in 2011. Two years into the war, the monuments were under the shadow of the looming threat.

An Oath of Silence, Even When Facing Death, To Protect The Monuments

Lamb also reports that in Palmyra, he heard that many employees in charge of the Palmyra Museum and artefacts had taken an oath of silence about the hidden locations of the artefacts, which were shifted from the city. They already knew that the cost of that silence could be death.

Human courage has no bounds, just as vileness too has. On both sides of this fight, one side showed nobility of courage, whereas the other was equally qualified to represent immeasurable vileness. The archaeologists raced against time to shift the artefacts to a safe location. The sword and gun-wielding ISIS fighters wanted to crumble to dust every memory of the civilisation and plunder the gold that they imagined was buried under it. Khaled al-Asaad reportedly told them that the monuments they were hell-bent to destroy were "the real gold". He knew that they were the real assets of his beloved country.

Khaled al-Asaad was a native of Palmyra, and he loved the history of his city. He even named his daughter Zenobia after the ancient queen of Palmyra, who challenged the Roman Empire. He dreamt of finding a statue of this mighty queen, or the tomb of the royal family, in one of his future excavations.

He had dedicated 50 years of his life to Palmyra to study its history, monuments, and artefacts. He was the director of that archaeological site for 40 years and refused to flee the city when ISIS took over. When his friends advised him to leave for a safer place, he was reported to have said, ‘I was born in Palmyra and will stay in Palmyra and will not leave even if it costs me my blood.” Now, his name has become synonymous with Palmyra and its historical legacy.

Khaled al-Asaad: The Person

Amidst war and conflicts, facts about his death become muddled with rumours and assumptions. There is so little information available about how Khaled al-Asaad met his fate. One account says that as ISIS entered the city of Palmyra, “Khaled al-Asaad was frantically loading artefacts from the museum onto trucks, which left the city from the other side.” (Peter Hughes, 2021). If he was ready to, he could have been transported to safety in one of those trucks. He chose otherwise, and the motive was to protect the monuments as far as he could or simply the love for his birthplace.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museums Department, Damascus, described Khaled al-Asaad as “one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the twentieth century.” (Peter Hughes, 2021). Another Japanese archaeologist, Prof. Saito Kiyohide, of the Institute of Kashihara, Nara, described him as a great archaeologist with a wonderful sense of humour. Khaled al-Asaad had been reportedly influenced by the famous quote of Cicero, the Roman philosopher, “To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.”

To be able to translate the ancient texts of Palmyra, Khaled al-Asaad studied the Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic. Between 1962 and 1966, he headed the Palmyra Development Project, which excavated and brought to light the largest extent of land of the ancient city. The cemeteries around the larger monuments were Khaled al-Asaad's own discovery.

Publications by Khaled al-Asaad

Khaled al-Asaad had several scholarly publications to his credit. The most significant were:

• Welcome to Palmyra: the First Tourist Guide of Palmyra, co-authored with Ubaid Taha, published in 1966.

• Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi (Eastern al-Hayr Palace or the “Eastern Castle”): a City in the Desert, in cooperation with the American mission, Palmyra, and Michigan University, 1978.

• Asaad, Khaled; Bounni, Adnan (1984). Palmyra. Geschichte, Denkmäler, Museum (in German).

• Necropolis 36 (in German), co-authored with Andreas Schmidt-Colinet, The German Mission, Palmyra, and University of Vienna, 1994.

• Syria in the Byzantine and Islamic Periods, co-authored and published in German, 1993.

• Palmyrene Sculptures (in French), co-authored with Anna Sadowska and Adnan Bounni, supported by the Polish mission, in 1994.

• Palmyrene, Greek and Latin Inscriptions in Palmyra Museum (in English), co-authored with Michael Gawlikowski, 1997.

• Studying Palmyrene Embalming and Quarries (in German), coauthored with Andreas Publications 11 Schmidt-Colinet, 2000.

• Asaad, Khaled; Yon, Jean-Baptiste (2001), Inscriptions de Palmyre. Promenades épigraphiques dans la ville antique de Palmyre, Institut Français d’archéologie du Proche-Orient, Beirut, 2001.

• Palmyra’s Agoras (in French), 2005.

• Zenobia: Queen of Palmyra and the East, 2006.

His work was acknowledged and awarded by 3 countries other than his own. He was the recipient of-

• The National Order of Merit (France) (Chevalier Class)

• The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland

• The Order of Merit of the Republic of Tunisia

Qassim Abdullah Yehya

It is a sad fact that there is little known about the last moments of Qassim Abdullah Yehya except the news that he was killed in a rocket attack. It is unknown why he remained in Palmyra. He assisted in evacuating the artefacts but could have fled in the trucks that carried them.

Biography of Khaled al-Asaad

Khaled was born in 1934 in Palmyra. His home stands very close to the temple of Bel, an ancient pagan temple in Palmyra. His childhood memories intertwined with the pillars, pavements, and broken walls of the ruins of this city. Sixty people lived in his house, members of his extended family. A love for history could have been infused into him at a very young age, as anecdotes and cultural memories from all these people surrounded him. His amiability and gentleness towards others are attributed to his upbringing in a large family.

His Bachelor’s Degree in History was from Damascus University, and then he served as the head of the Excavations Division of the Directorate of Exploration and Archaeological Studies, Syria. From 1963 onwards, he was the Director of Antiquities in Palmyra and curator of the Palmyra Museum.

The Department of Antiquities of Palmyra was established under his charge. As he worked in that capacity along with the foreign archaeological teams who frequented Palmyra, and given his experience with renowned archaeologists in Damascus as a young historian, Palmyra began to see constant archaeological excavations and studies under his leadership.

Khaled al-Asaad had ground-level local connections to pursue his goal of putting Palmyra on the world’s archaeological map as one of the most valued sites. He had infinite energy and good humour and was gentle and generous, as his local community, friends, and professional colleagues testify.

As excavations continued to unearth relics from different historical periods, the Palmyra National Museum was established to house and display them. The Museum of Folk Traditions of Palmyra was another feather in Khaled’s cap as he worked tirelessly to give these institutions shape and credibility. He also ensured that, simultaneously with the excavations, the possible scientific renovations commenced at the site.

As Khaled al-Asaad studied the Palmyrene Aramaic language to decode the ancient texts unearthed from Palmyra, almost all of them being in this language, he soon became an authority in deciphering Aramaic texts. He made sure that the archaeological community as a whole and the world paid attention to Palmyra by never missing a chance to participate in international archaeological conferences and seminars,

He had encyclopaedic knowledge about Palmyra and its history, enriched by the rich treasure trove of socio-cultural memories he gathered as a native. He was a constant presence in every cultural event in the city. Friends and colleagues remember him having an unquenchable appetite for books and reading. He had a rich book collection, a library he started by saving from his pocket money from his school days. In the community, he was viewed as an example of a true Bedouin, the native tribesman, marked by generosity towards others and always extending generous hospitality to everyone.

Waleed Khaled al-Asaad, son of Khaled al-Asaad

His son, Waleed Khaled al-Asaad, an archaeologist and author, took over as the Director of Antiquities and Museums, Palmyra, after his father’s death. He remembers Khaled telling him about his mission “to convey all I’ve learned to everyone: young, old, and everybody in between.” (Waleed Khaled al-Asaad, 2017, p.24).

Waleed also remembers that whenever a group of school kids came to Palmyra to see the monuments, his father readied himself, without even a moment’s hesitation, to take them around and explain everything. He saw everyone who visited him as “Ambassadors of knowledge”, disseminating whatever knowledge he had to them. A couplet that his son remembers him as citing often was this- “Ignorance ravages even the abodes of the noble, but knowledge builds houses that can never be destroyed” (Waleed Khaled al-Asaad, 2017, p.25).

When Artefacts Become Refugees

Waleed wrote about the eyewitnesses saying that when being led to his execution, Khaled al-Asaad was reciting verses from the Qur’an “in a loud and clear voice” (Waleed Khaled al-Asaad, 2017, p.27). He refused to kneel when asked to and said he wanted to die on his feet.

Khaled’s village was also destroyed by the ISIS occupation. In 2015, about 90,000 people lived there. Now, only around 1500 people are still there. Many were killed, and many became refugees in other parts of the world. Khaled’s family has also moved out to France. His son remarks that the relics of Palmyra kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in the city of Lyon, where he lives now, are refugees like him. He said in an interview that he felt sorrow and hurt when he saw them first in the museum but later accepted to himself that they were just refugees like him and found relief in the fact that they were safe there.

The only merciful thing that happened to Khaled al-Asaad in the end was that he did not have to witness the demolition of Palmyra’s monuments by ISIS. Only after his death did they blast the ruins and monuments. If he had lived to see this destruction, he would have died, heartbroken. In the final tragic turn that his life and work took, one would find some relief to believe that his God, Allah -he was a practising Muslim- spared him that sorrow and pain.

References

Two More ‘EverySyrian’ Heroes Murdered While Protecting Our Shared Cultural Heritage, Franklin Lamb, August 22, 2015.

A History of Love and Hate in 21 Statues, Peter Hughes, 2021, Aurum Publishers.

The Martyr of Palmyra: Khaled al-Asaad, Ministry of Culture, Directorate General of Antiquities & Museums, icomos.org.

A Tribute to the Late Khaled al-Asaad, Waleed Khaled al-Asaad, 2017, Palmyra: Mirage in the Desert Edited by Joan Aruz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Interview with Waleed Khaled al-Asaad by Ridha Moumni, getty.edu