في الحلقة الثانية من "عَ بساط سوري" نحاورالكاتب والباحث علاء السيد في مكتبته في مدينة حلب، لنتحدث عن دور المبادرات الأهلية والمحلية في إحياء التراث المعرّض للتهميش

كيف نهمّش تراثنا.. أو نحييه؟

صباح فخري || من بطن مكة جاء البِشر مبتسمًا (في مدح الرسول)

صباح فخري || لولا الثغر (موال)

One of the most famous Levantine folk songs, A Rozana is a simple melody arranged for SATB. Bishr Issa cleverly uses theme and variation style to bring the text to life. Using Gibran Khalil Gibran’s poetry, humour, love and lightness are central to this arrangement.

A Rozana - SATB

نار وقصف والتحام

As Syrian rebels advanced on Damascus in a surprise lightning offensive, the Rojava Kurds seized territory from the Bashar Assad regime, and the Druze took up arms in their own region. After years of the lines in the conflict being frozen and the genocidal Assad dictatorship being "normalized," on Dec. 8 the unthinkable happened and the dictator fled. Suddenly the 13-year aim of the Syrian Revolution has been realized—the fall of the regime. But the lead rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has an ugly past, its partner the Syrian National Army (SNA) is in the political orbit of Turkish aspiring dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the threat of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria looms closer. Amid a conflict now dominated by armed actors, can the unarmed civil resistance that began the revolution 13 years ago re-assert itself, and revive the secular-democratic spirit of 2011? In Episode 255 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes a hard look.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

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Production by Chris Rywalt

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CounterVortex Podcast

Syria: after the fall of the regime

I left my heart in Aleppo

ماضون على العهد

Matjar Adib interprète en live le mawwal « Alloulou al-Mandoud » du roi du tarab, Sabah Fakhry. Une magnifique pièce semi-improvisée du patrimoine Alépin, dont les paroles ont été écrites par Jalal Al-Dahan.

اللؤلؤ المنضود في فمك الجميل فيه السعادة للشقيّ وللعليل
« Les perles que recèle ta jolie bouche, sont le bonheur des misérables et des malades. »

Georges Camil Abdallah, chant
Baptiste Frelat, oud
Amin Al Aiedy, nay
Iyad Haimour, qanun
Ismaïl Mesbahi, percussions

Mixage et mastering : Benoît Villemont

Enregistré le 7 mars 2025 à la Maison Folie Wazemmes de Lille, durant le festival Le Temps d'une Lune organisé par Attacafa. Merci au public venu nombreux ce soir-là pour célébrer ensemble la beauté de la musique arabe. ❤️

Matjar Adib متجر أديب aime tisser des liens. Entre le passé et le présent, entre les répertoires savant, sacré et populaire du Proche-Orient, entre le public et les musiciens. Son nom, « Magasin d'Adib », provient d'un rêve : redonner vie aux cassettes autrefois vendues dans le magasin d'Adib Al-Dayekh, célèbre chanteur Alépin.

Merci pour vos partages ! 🎉

Matjar Adib - Mawwal Al-Loulou Al-Mandoud, Sabah Fakhri | متجر أديب - اللؤلؤ المنضود، صباح فخري

Zoya Masoud (BEYONDREST / Forum Transregionale Studien) talk “Dislocation and Heritage: On Radical Hope and Experiences of Loss in Aleppo/Syria” was held in the framework of the EUME Berliner Seminar on 04 June 2025. The talk was chaired by  Çiçek İlengiz (BEYONDREST / Forum Transregionale Studien).

Centered on individuals from Aleppo, this seminar explores how the extensive destruction of urban heritage affects the sense of belonging and self-identification(s) with urban or built heritage. The old city of Aleppo, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986, became a focal burning point during the war between 2012 and 2016. In this period, the inhabitants of Aleppo were dislocated from the center by military interests of the warring parties who regarded them as dispensable. For the local population, the experience of loss became a daily routine, manifesting in the loss of friends, family members, property, and cultural heritage. Throughout these years, individuals found themselves in a perpetual state of exception and vulnerability. Through my research, I identified various patterns of belonging and self-identification tied to built heritage, which emerged in response to the experience of loss and the processes of understanding that loss. These patterns indicate my interviewees’ attempts to reach an understanding of their reality during the war, particularly as their state of exception became normalized, while standing continuously on the brink of the abyss of many discourses they adopted. The fugitivity of their own agency became evident and influenced their interaction with their (host) communities. 

This seminar is part of the open lecture series “Syria at a Crossroads”, organized jointly by the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg, the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) in Tunis, and Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe (EUME). It is also part of the conversation series “Restitution and its Vantage Points: Beyond the Preservation Paradigm” of the ERC-project “Beyond Restitution: Heritage, (Dis)Possession and the Politics of Knowledge” (BEYONDREST).

For more information: https://www.eume-berlin.de/veranstaltungen/kalender/details/dislocation-and-heritage-on-radical-hope-and-experiences-of-loss-in-aleppo-syria

Zoya Masoud: Dislocation and Heritage: On Radical Hope and Experiences of Loss in Aleppo/Syria

The recent political reversal in Bolivia raises the question of whether the advances of nearly 20 years of rule by the indigenist left will survive—including a constitution that refounded the state as a "plurinational" republic. In Episode 299 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores how the lessons of the Bolivian experience can be applied to Syria, where the new revolutionary government faces a challenge in Kurdish and Druze demands for regional autonomy.

New fighting in the Kurdish district of Sheikh Maqsoud in Aleppo city between government forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), armed wing of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration that still controls much of the country's northeast, points to the continued threat of ethnic war. Results in Syria's first post-revolution parliamentary elections (carried out in a controlled process by the central government, not popular vote) were tilted to the Sunni Arab majority. Exiled left-dissident Joseph Daher sees a consolidation of power by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the ostensibly disbanded Islamist formation that led the rebel offensive that toppled the old regime last December, and whose leader is the current interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa. Can the current transition process in Syria return to the secular-democratic values of the 2011 Arab Revolution without a rethinking of nationalist precepts?

 In Episode 299 of the CounterVortex podcast

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon -- or $2 for our new special offer! We now have 61 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 62!

Bolivia, Syria & the challenge of plurinationalism

Musician, oud player
Arabic Ottoman music Lover
Groups : Matjar Adib, Qatifa, Qalban and Majnoun et Leïli - Chants d'outre-tombe

We talk about Syrian culture and heritage
بودكاست عن التراث والثقافة من سوريا

turath.masmou3@gmail.com

Support my work on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

The Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien is a platform that promotes the internationalization of research in the humanities and social sciences. It is dedicated to a research agenda that systematically links disciplinary approaches and the expertise of area studies by focusing on entanglements and interactions across national, cultural or regional borders. The Forum invites scholars from all over the world for fellowships and develops transregional communication formats.

The Forum provides scope for collaboration among researchers with different regional and disciplinary perspectives and appoints researchers from all over the world as Fellows. In cooperation with universities and research institutions in and outside of Berlin, it carries out research projects that examine other regions of the world and their relationship to Germany and Europe systematically and with new questions.

The Forum and its research programs, Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe (EUME), Prisma Ukraïna—Research Network Eastern Europe and re:constitution - Exchange and Analysis on Democracy and the Rule of Law in Europe publish audio recordings of selected events like conferences, workshops, lectures and academies. 

Visit us on www.forum-transregionale-studien.de.

New tracks tagged #Aleppo