The Restoration and Critical Reconstruction of Two Historic Mosques Severely Affected by Armed Conflict in Mosul (Iraq)

Abstract

This contribution aims at illustrating different approaches for the “reuse and regeneration of cultural religious heritage” in a post-conflict context. After three years of ISIL/Da’esh occupation (2014–2017), and related cultural diversity and heritage cleansing, the historic town of Mosul, in Iraq, witnessed one of the harshest warfare of modern times (2017), resulting in the severe loss and damage of its diverse religious historic heritage. The case-studies presented in the paper epitomize the main trends in architectural restoration (conservation and/or vs. reconstruction), which pose, unaltered, the same questions that are being debated by architects and art historians since the eighteenth century: what is ‘authenticity’ and how to approach cultural heritage post-conflict reconstruction? The winning proposal of the “International Architectural Competition for the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of the Al-Nouri Complex”, organized by UNESCO in cooperation with the UAE Ministry of Culture, is compared with a more ‘historicist approach’, which is being adopted for the reconstruction design of Al-Raabiya Mosque, built in 1766 a few hundred meters away from the Great Al-Nouri Mosque, dating back to the twelfth century. This approach stems from the philosophy that guided one of the best fifteen proposals, as evaluated by the International Jury of the UNESCO competition.KeywordsIraqMosquesReconstructionUNESCOAl-Nouri MosqueMemoryReconciliation