Tony GERROUGE
(DAI Stunde Null-Project, GHS scholarship, Berlin, Germany)
Keywords: Syria, Cultural Heritage, Hauran, Interactive Media
Abstract:
Among the international and regional efforts to protect and preserve the endangered cultural heritage in Syria, the project “Stunde Null: A future for the Time after the Crisis” by the German Archaeological Institute comes as one of the valuable steps to complete the Institute’s highly significant targets.
The need for documentation projects is evident, particularly for urgent regions like Palmyra and Aleppo, as World Heritage sites. Moreover, there is also a need for the documentation of other important regions like Hauran, South of Syria, to form a source of information for the restoration experts and decision makers when the crisis is over.
With the vast areas of endangered sites of cultural heritage in Syria, any given attention by organizations, initiatives and individuals seems to be very important to cover a part of those areas.
This “The Annotated Atlas on the Architecture of Hauran, Syria” is a 2-year project, as a scholarship by Gerda Henkel Foundation in Düsseldorf, Germany that aims to produce a restricted-access online database to experts and researchers, containing the available materials in the library of the Orient Department of DAI, related to the archaeology and historical architecture in Hauran, Syria.
Targets:
Due to the fertile soil in Hauran, the people of this region have had through history enough resources to build and maintain their architectural monuments.
During the 5th and 6th centuries, the region of Hauran had about 30 parishes to cover all the villages of the region, each of which has had at least 1 church.
This project has the following targets:
• Shedding light on the importance of Christian architecture of the region of Hauran in the Near East,
• Supporting researchers, restoration experts and decision makers by building an online interactive database.