SHARE
[/vc_column_text][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-fb-icon4.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”https://www.facebook.com/ASOResearch/” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-tw-icon4.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”https://twitter.com/ASOResearch?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-in-icon4.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-schools-of-oriental-research” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-ml-icon_7.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”mailto:asor@bu.edu” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/blog-icon3.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”http://asorblog.org/” margin_bottom=”0″][/vc_column][vc_column border_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0.01)” width=”1/6″ css=”.vc_custom_1496683923840{margin-right: 20px !important;border-left-width: 2px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;border-left-color: #99422f !important;}”][mk_divider divider_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0.01)” thickness=”1″ margin_top=”3″ margin_bottom=”3″][vc_column_text] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column border_color=”rgba(170,170,170,0.01)” width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1487276122024{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-bottom: 30px !important;border-right-width: 2px !important;border-bottom-width: 2px !important;padding-top: 30px !important;padding-right: 30px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;border-right-color: rgba(227,228,228,0.75) !important;border-bottom-color: rgba(227,228,228,0.75) !important;}”][vc_column_text responsive_align=”left”]A REFLECTION ON THREE YEARS OF OCCUPATION BY ISIL
By Dr. Ali. Y. Aljuboori
Dean of the College of Archaeology, Mosul University
Sr. Cultural Heritage Adviser, ASOR CHI
June 10. 2017
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]I am writing this article on June 10, 2017. Exactly three years ago, Mosul fell into the hands of ISIL.
On June 10, 2014, Mosul University was in the middle of final exams. At noon, the University ordered everyone to go home before the army and police began to enforce a curfew. At that time we heard that ISIL had entered western Mosul. By midnight they controlled the mayor’s office, the central bank, and all of the other major government buildings.
Over the course of the next morning, I saw many people leaving, including soldiers from the local military base who had thrown off their military uniforms and equipment in order to blend in with civilians. I told my son to flee with his wife and two children. My wife and I stayed behind.
At first, ISIL did not change much. Then, around a month after the conquest, they began to impose Shari’a law. ISIL treated different faiths in different ways. Sunni Muslims had to pay new Islamic taxes while Shi’a Muslims were killed. Other religious groups had three choices: convert to Islam, pay special taxes, or be killed. Every Friday at noon ISIL held public executions by decapitation or hanging as punishment for any resistance or disorder. In this cruel way, they controlled the people of Mosul.[/vc_column_text][mk_image src=”http://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ali-juboori-map-destruction2.jpg” image_width=”800″ image_height=”534″ hover=”false”][vc_column_text]
Density of Cultural Heritage Sites in Nineveh Province (Susan Penacho, ASOR CHI)
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Under ISIL, education and culture in Mosul and Nineveh Province suffered terribly. Shortly after they took over, ISIL began to blow up mosques, churches, and Yezidi shrines. This included Nebi Yunus Mosque, which they destroyed with explosives in July 2014.
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]In 2015 they started to erase our ancient heritage. In addition to the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian palace at Nimrud, they demolished the Nergal, Adad, and Mashki gates in the city wall of Nineveh as well as looted and smashed the collections of the Mosul Museum. They also started to dig tunnels into the mound below Nebi Yunus Mosque, which contained the remains of a Neo-Assyrian palace. In these tunnels they discovered inscribed stone reliefs of the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon, a relief depicting a series of ladies, bull colossi, and other small finds from the Neo-Assyrian period.[/vc_column_text][mk_image src=”http://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ali-juboori-ratio-destruction2.jpg” image_width=”960″ image_height=”540″ hover=”false” margin_bottom=”5″][vc_column_text]Ratio of Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq and Syria (Susan Penacho, ASOR CHI)
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]ISIL also attempted to eliminate access to any knowledge that they considered un-Islamic. Schools and universities remained closed after the conquest. They burned the collections of the Public Library of Mosul and the Central Library of Mosul University.[/vc_column_text][mk_image src=”http://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ali-juboori-map-destruction-1.jpg” image_width=”919″ image_height=”652″ hover=”false” margin_bottom=”5″][vc_column_text]Damage to Cultural Heritage Sites in Mosul (Susan Penacho, ASOR CHI)
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]However, knowledge persevered. Many teachers and professors fled to Dohuk, Erbil, and Kirkuk. Once there, they began to teach again. By October 2014, Mosul University had secondary locations in Dohuk and Kirkuk so that students could continue to learn.Since January 15, eastern Mosul has been free from ISIL control. Life is beginning to gradually flourish once again. In February, the University of Mosul began classes for those who live in eastern Mosul. By July 1, all staff and faculty in the territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government will be back in Mosul and the secondary locations of Mosul University will be closed. The University intends to begin regular classes in October.
I have lived through many violent events in Iraq’s history. The destruction of the ancient and modern cultural heritage in Nineveh Province was an astonishing and sad moment that is impossible for me to describe. Now that ISIL is gone, my colleagues and I will do our best to restore what our nation has lost.
Editorial Comment: Dr. Ali Aljuboori is the Dean of the College of Archaeology of Mosul University and acts as a Senior Cultural Heritage Adviser for Iraq with ASOR CHI. Dr. Aljuboori is currently coordinating an ASOR CHI digital preservation initiative in the Mosul area to preserve textual collections. The project, funded by the Whiting Foundation, brings together the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) and the Centre Numérique des Manuscrits Orientaux (CNMO) to preserve thousands of years of writing, Dr. Aljuboori is an expert in the ancient languages of Iraq and has most recently published the first Arabic-Sumerian dictionary.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Sheila Bishop is Founder and President of The Foundation for Biblical Archaeology. She has been a member of ASOR since 1994 and is beginning a third term as an ASOR Board Trustee. She has spent more than 20 years “digging,” most recently at Mount Zion and Jezreel, as well as providing funding and support for various excavations and archaeology-related projects.
Vivian Bull, President Emerita of Linfield College and Drew University, has been involved with ASOR for more than six decades. She met her husband Bob in Jerusalem during her initial trip to the Middle East, and the two were married in 1959. In a story that parallels that of many ASOR members, Vivian and Bob were a team who led digs, taught and inspired hundreds of students, and served ASOR and its affiliated schools with distinction in myriad ways for more than half a century. They spent over 25 seasons in the field. In addition to serving as a trustee, and later Board Chair of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, she has served on the ASOR Board and numerous ASOR Committees (including Development, Officers Nominations, Finance, and Strategic Planning). Dr. Bull also serves on several investment committees mostly related to the work of the United Methodist Church worldwide with a special interest in social responsibility investing.
Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis is Assistant Professor of the Liberal Studies Program at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, where she is also Acting Executive Officer in M.A. in Liberal Studies and directs the M.A. in Liberal Studies concentration in the Archaeology of the Classical, Late Antique, and Islamic Worlds. She holds an AB from Cornell University in History, Archaeology, and Classics. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees in Classical Archaeology from St. John’s College, University of Oxford. Her research focuses the material culture of the Roman, Late Antique and Islamic worlds, with particular emphasis on Roman gardens and architecture, the reception of ancient material culture in the United States, and Islamic Architecture. She has conducted research in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Italy. She is the author or co-author of articles published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Classical Receptions Journal, Levant, and The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. She is currently the co-director of the Upper Egypt Mosque Project, which is documenting conversion sites. This project has been supported by the Barakat Trust (UK). She has served on the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America and on its executive committee. She also serves as Deputy Director of
Jeanne Marie Teutonico is currently Associate Director of Programs at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles. An architectural conservator with over thirty years of experience in the conservation of buildings and sites, she was previously on the staff of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and the Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) in Rome and later of English Heritage in London. Ms. Teutonico holds an A.B. (Hons) in art history from Princeton University and a M.Sc. in historic preservation from Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She is published widely and maintains research interests in the conservation and sustainable use of traditional building materials. She was a Resident of the American Academy in Rome in 2009, and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Association for Preservation Technology.
Jack was one of eight of us who entered a doctoral program at Harvard in the early 1960’s, under the direction of Ernest Wright and Frank Cross. The Fall Seminar met on Thursdays from 3 to 5. In the first session, Frank gave an overview of the literary sources for our knowledge of the “Near Eastern Languages and Literatures” (the Department in those days being known as NELL), and immediately we all were intimidated. The following week Ernest gave a similar presentation, I suspect (my brain had not sufficiently recovered from the previous week for me to remember clearly), on the material grounds. The third week, a grad student who was at the dissertation stage gave a presentation on that topic—as I recall, on the Hasmonean Priesthood. He sat at one end of the long seminar table, with Cross and Wright flanking him on his left and right shoulders like two seraphim. He began to read. Shortly one of the two seraphim broke in with a question. He responded and went on. Before long the other broke in with a comment. He responded, then went on. This cycle recurred several more times, by the end of which the student would read a sentence, pause, look inquiringly left, then right, and, if there were no interposition from either side, he would go on. The following week we had the first seminar paper by one of our own number (the eight of us, Virgil Rabe, and Merton Sherman). That fall, the seminar was devoted to “The Tenth Century.” The first of our number “up” was Jack, and his topic was “The Fall Festival.”