{"id":2575,"date":"2025-10-02T18:11:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/?p=2575"},"modified":"2025-10-02T18:42:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:42:01","slug":"exhibit-ink-stone-and-silver-light-a-century-of-cultural-heritage-preservation-in-aleppo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/2025\/10\/02\/exhibit-ink-stone-and-silver-light-a-century-of-cultural-heritage-preservation-in-aleppo\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibit: Ink, Stone, and Silver Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Century of Cultural Heritage Preservation in Aleppo<\/h3>\n

October 1, 2025 – December 11, 2025<\/h4>\n

Maihaugen Gallery, MIT<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ink, Stone, and Silver Light<\/em>, an exhibition curated by Rami Alafandi<\/a>, is now on open to the public in the Maihaugen Gallery<\/a> of the MIT Libraries.\u00a0 Drawing on archival materials from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT<\/a> (AKDC) to explore a century of cultural heritage preservation in Aleppo, Syria<\/a>. It takes as its point of departure the work of Kamil al-Ghazzi (1853\u20131933), the pioneering Aleppine historian whose influential three-volume chronicle,\u00a0Nahr al-Dhahab fi Tarikh Halab<\/em>\u00a0(The River of Gold in the History of Aleppo<\/em>), was published between 1924 and 1926.<\/p>\n

Al-Ghazzi\u2019s scholarship emerged during a time of profound political and social transformation\u2014from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the rise of the French Mandate. More than being a chronicler, al-Ghazzi held civic and institutional roles that gave him intimate access to Aleppo\u2019s\u00a0waqf\u00a0<\/em>(endowment) records, neighborhood demographics, and urban economy. For al-Ghazzi, preserving the city\u2019s architectural legacy meant safeguarding the social and financial systems that sustained it. He understood cultural heritage not as a fixed set of monuments, but as a living, evolving framework of community resilience.<\/p>\n

Ink, Stone, and Silver Light<\/em>\u00a0presents three modes of documentation\u2014manuscript, built form, and photography\u2014through which Aleppo\u2019s urban memory has been recorded and preserved. The exhibition features figures such as Michel \u00c9cochard<\/a> and Yasser Tabbaa<\/a> alongside al-Ghazzi,\u00a0 tracing overlapping efforts to capture the spirit of a city shaped by commerce, craft, and coexistence. Also featured are examples of scholarship from a new generation of Syrian scholars, artists, and archivists who, working across distances, carry forward this legacy, using every tool to safeguard the memory and heritage of their homeland. At a time when Syria again confronts upheaval and displacement, these archival approaches offer models for preserving the past while envisioning futures rooted in dignity, knowledge, and place.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Century of Cultural Heritage Preservation in Aleppo October 1, 2025 – December 11, 2025 Maihaugen Gallery, MIT Ink, Stone, and Silver Light, an exhibition curated by Rami Alafandi, is now on open to the public in the Maihaugen Gallery of the MIT Libraries.\u00a0 Drawing on archival materials from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC) to explore a century of cultural heritage preservation in Aleppo, Syria. It takes as its point of departure the work of Kamil al-Ghazzi (1853\u20131933), the pioneering Aleppine historian whose influential three-volume chronicle,\u00a0Nahr al-Dhahab fi Tarikh Halab\u00a0(The River of Gold in the History of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":2576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_this_an_event":false},"categories":[562,273,556],"tags":[292,302,564,318,358,563,412,500],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collections","category-events","category-exhibits","tag-aga-khan-documentation-center","tag-akdcmit","tag-aleppo","tag-archives","tag-cultural-heritage","tag-heritage-conservation","tag-islamic-art-and-architecture","tag-syria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2589,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/akdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}