Preservationist doctrines as theological propositions in secular clothes

More than a decade ago – this would be prior to the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, and it seemed likely that rule would pass to his sons – I was in Cairo thinking about potential new archaeological projects. I spent some time with an Egyptian colleague who was the chief inspector for the archaeological preserve that encompassed what remained of the undeveloped urban space that was once Fustat, the early Islamic precursor to metropolitan sprawl that is today’s Cairo. Walking the site together, I quickly understood what it meant to do heritage work in an under-funded, authoritarian system where non-monumental ruins held little value as easily exploitable resources. Instead, the site attracted dead-of-night visits by construction firms that would punch through its retaining walls to illegally deposit their building refuse rather than pay fees at ex-urban landfills. Elsewhere, government contractors bulldozed debris from neighbouring hills that were being graded to build a new museum, sporting club and park into the ever-shrinking archaeological reserve, despite efforts by the state-employed inspectors to use dummy excavations to mark and police the boundaries. However, it was the story of the pile of marble columns, carved ashlars and other architectural fragments that most impressed upon me the challenges of translating the Western universalized doctrines of heritage that Rico discusses in this important essay to the realities of the modern Middle East. Adjacent to the Fustat archaeological preserve is the Mosque of ‘Amr ibn al-As, the first mosque to be founded on the continent of Africa, and one of the oldest still extant in the Muslim world. Administratively it is not part of the preserve today, yet it is historically and archaeologically connected to the site as the spiritual and cultural centre of what was a major new urban foundation – misr in Arabic – by the Muslim community that would settle in Egypt following the region’s conquest in the first half of the seventh century C.E. My colleague shared with me that the heap of marble fragments that now littered the site was the result of a recent renovation of this original congregational mosque. I use the term ‘renovation’ purposefully here as an alternative to ‘conservation’ or ‘preservation’, doctrines and practices which Rico cogently argues operate as core principles of universalized Western approaches to heritage. It turns out that the recent work done to the Jami’a ‘Amr was financed and overseen by Saudi Arabia working through the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments – about which I will offer a few remarks at the end of this commentary) and not the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). When I first learned of this situation, I was appalled at what appeared to be a Salafi-oriented programme to, literally, whitewash the historical fabric of this grand monument as a way to undermine its heritage value lest it become a distraction to the believer’s devotion according to the Islamic juridical principle of sadd al-dhara’iah (blocking the means to deviation from divine truth). This principle has been a hallmark of long-standing iconoclastic impulses among various Muslim (particularly Sunni) fundamentalist groups to legitimate the destruction and desecration of sacred and religio-historical spaces ranging from Shiite shrines to monumental Buddhist statues. Among those groups, the KSA, since the early 19th century,