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DECONSTRUCTING
BEIRUT'S RECONSTRUCTION: 1990 - 2000 Coming to Terms with the Colonial Heritage An essay on a public lecture presented by Robert Saliba at Darat al-Funun, Amman on April 19, 2000. --continued-- EXPANDING THE NOTION OF HERITAGE When dealing with the issue of heritage in a post-war context, one needs to address the dialectics involved in the process of conservation itself. In fact, much of the controversy that has accompanied reconstruction efforts in Beirut has concentrated on this matter. The issue of conservation can be addressed at three levels. On the first level, one needs to decide what to preserve. On a second level, one needs to determine an approach or philosophy of preservation, and the quality of preservation to be achieved. On a third level, one needs to decide on an implementation process for the preservation work. From Second- to Firsthand Modernization The following are a few remarks about Beirut's historical background and the remaining urban features related to the evolution of the city. These features physically translate into two layers, the underground archaeological strata and the visible surviving townscape. Beirut was an important city during two periods of its history. The first was the Roman period, when it was a Roman colony with a famous law school; the second was during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Beirut emerged as a colonial outpost. Between these two periods, Beirut was a secondary coastal town surpassed in importance by other Lebanese coastal towns such as Sidon and Tripoli, both of which had strong economic ties with the Syrian interior. However, with the opening of Beirut-Damascus road and the upgrading of Beirut's port facilities during the second half of the nineteenth century, Beirut started its ascent as a late-Ottoman colonial gateway city. Furthermore, it evolved between the two World Wars into a showcase of the French Mandate in the Levant. Consequently, Beirut underwent two successive phases of early modernization. The first phase, under the Ottomans, can be described as an example of secondhand modernization since Western urban concepts were first imported to Istanbul and then applied to provincial cities like Beirut (figure 1). The second phase can be described as an example of first hand modernization since the French mandatory authorities directly implemented French urban models in the city. The first and second phases of Beirut's early modernization led successively to the destruction of the northeastern and southeastern sections of the pre-modern intramural town. Moreover, the French mandatory authorities managed - in less than three decades - to impose a Beaux-Arts / Haussmanian scheme on the city's medieval fabric (figure 2). Such a pattern of early modernization contrasts with French colonial planning policies in North Africa and in other cities in the Levant, where the "European city" usually was built adjacent to the medieval one. In the case of Beirut, the colonial geometric grid was superimposed on the more organic medieval fabric. Consequently, when tourists visiting Lebanon wish to view a medieval Islamic city, they do not visit Beirut, but are directed to Tripoli or Sidon, where one can observe both the medieval core and its modern extensions. Accordingly, the urban identity of Beirut after the 1930s was restricted to the developments of the colonial period and to an evolving modern townscape. A Tradition of Destructive Construction? With the beginning of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, Beirut already was a predominantly modern city that had preserved very few traces of its medieval past. As such, the Hariri Solidere project constitutes the second wave of modernization to affect Beirut, after the first wave of modernization that took place under the Ottomans and the French. The two waves are tied to strong rulers. The first wave was tied at a certain stage of its evolution to an Ottoman Sultan, Abd al-Hamid II (r. 1876 - 1909), who had a traditional power base, and the second wave is connected to Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, a self-made entrepreneur with considerable financial power. The first wave of modernization had raised controversy related to destroying the city's medieval fabric, and the second wave has raised controversy related to destroying the city's late-Ottoman and early-modern fabric. In this context, Saliba referred to the writings of the French journalist Francoise Sueret, who addressed in an article for the French daily Le Monde the issues of conservation and reconstruction in Beirut as being tied to a "tradition of destructive construction," to a "political will to modernize," to an economic will to join the world economy, and to the personal will of rulers to "access history." Saliba adds that another interesting correlation between the two phases of modernization is that, at the beginning of the French Mandate in the 1920s, the debris resulting from the destruction of the medieval core was used to extend the port area. In the 1990s, the debris resulting from the destruction of the modern city center has been used to reshape the new waterfront. Colonial Heritage as National Patrimony According to Saliba, one should no longer ask: "Should we preserve historic Beirut?" Medieval Beirut already had been wiped out by the first wave of modernization of the late Ottoman and French Mandate periods. Instead, one should ask: "Is the heritage of the recent past worth preserving?" and "Should the colonial townscape be embraced as an integral part of the national patrimony?" Before the civil war, almost no mention was made of Beirut's recent history, i.e. the formation of modern Beirut under the Ottomans and the French. It is only during the past twenty years that a new generation of historians who are trying to investigate the recent historical evolution of the city has emerged. These historians have been redefining and expanding our understanding of the concept of heritage and patrimony. Another consequence of the war and of the post-war reconstruction is that colonial architecture has been far more emphasized during the 1990s in Beirut than in other major cities of the region such as Cairo, Damascus, or Aleppo. This is in spite of the fact that the colonial heritage of a city such as Cairo is by far more extensive and diverse than that of Beirut. In fact, Cairo and Istanbul, the two metropolises of the colonial period in the region, provided the architectural and urban models that were followed in smaller provincial cities such as Beirut. However, the absence of an old historical core in Beirut and the reconstruction process itself have brought forward the colonial heritage as the only remaining townscape expressing a historical dimension of the city center beyond its archeological strata. |
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