Syria

With its iconoclasm, ISIS has devastated irreplaceable cultural treasures. Michael Sommer bridges the gap between the present and antiquity: he narrates and interprets the tumultuous history of a unique cultural space that continues to shape our identity today. Almost weekly, we witness how ISIS destroys ancient heritage. At the same time, it shatters the order established by the victorious powers after World War I. Yet history only quotes itself. ISIS does what anti-imperial actors have repeatedly done: overturn order and erase memory. Will the self-proclaimed caliphs of ISIS also rise as masters of a new empire? And what does the world lose with the eradication of central places of memory such as Palmyra and Hatra? Michael Sommer illustrates how the people between the Mediterranean and the Tigris navigate through these great changes.