Opening Rozana Crafts and Handicraft Exhibition in Old Aleppo

With the participation of 22 civil and student bodies representing professions, handicrafts and heritage, the activities of the Rozana Crafts and Handicrafts Exhibition opened on Saturday in the old city of Aleppo.

The exhibition was held by Aleppo University branch of the National Union of Syrian Students, in cooperation with the Syrian Professional Center. The professions varied between engraving on wood, stone, and  copper, Arabic calligraphy, glass making, metal forming, carpets, hand loom, hand embroidery, fur and leather.

Head of the National Union of Syrian Students, Darin Suleiman, said in a statement to SANA that the exhibition reflects the culture and civilization of an ancient and large city like Aleppo that has a long history in the cultural heritage. The exhibition also constitutes a message to the university youth generation to raise awareness of the importance of heritage and the need to preserve it after terrorism targeted it during the years of the war on Syria. The partnership today between craftsmen and their young generation is a call to the need to protect this heritage over generations.

The head of the Syrian Professional Center Association, Mustafa Al-Nou, stated that the exhibition aims at reviving and preserving these crafts, underlining the importance of providing support to their owners to preserve these professions across generations. He pointed out that the professions and crafts embodied works of heritage such as the Ugarit alphabet, cuneiform letters, paintings of ceilings and woodwork, and the ancient loom for archiving cultural heritagewhich terrorism sabotaged and destroyed.

A number of craftsmen stressed that the exhibition is an important opportunity to promote and shed light on  these crafts and help their owners to continue with them.

A number of the exhibition’s visitors expressed their admiration for its pavilions, which contained ancient and folk crafts that expressed the ancestral heritage and high professionalism in the manufacture of products and the ingenuity and craftsmanship of the Aleppian manufacturer throughout history.

Inas Abdulkareem