Traditional and folklore products in the Castle and Valley Festival attract visitors

The historical heritage is important as it represents the primary incubator of national identity. It reflects the memory of the country and its historical legacy as well as it plays a major role in defining the State’s national identity at the local level and its mentality at the international one.

From this point of view, the Directorate of Tourism of Homs pays great attention to the historical heritage through the Castle and Valley Festival held annually in Homs, which shows this heritage in the establishment of the “Heritage Street” in Al- Hawash area within the activities of the Castle and Valley Festival this year.

Mr. Raafat Halawi, Director of Heritage Building on Al-Turath Street, said: “The Heritage Building includes many popular restaurants, heritage cuisine as well as a number of popular shops where antiques and diverse handicrafts and handmade folk food such as jam, pickles and juices are displayed. It also contains sports, commercial and tourist centers, as well as a swimming pool and park.

” Heritage Street is a public place for festival celebrations. This traditional street, which is teeming with artistic models from Syria’s cities and villages that were brought to life by a large number of artisans, popular vendors and artistic folk groups, who reflect the popular life and culture in Syria’s cities and villages,” Halawi concluded.

Mr. Ahmed Al-Kurdi, Head of the Artisan Association of Heritage Professions in Homs, said: “Artisans and traditional industrialists from the cities and villages of Homs formed the backbone of the festival as their participation was has increased over the years of the festival.

Heritage Street is teeming with a variety of cultural activities and events that represent a living heritage painting about the heritage of parents and grandparents and highlights the details of their lives, with the aim of reviving and preserving the cultural stock and popular heritage.”

Speaking about the most important exhibits of the association’s pavilion, Al-Kurdi said: “A number of skilled craftsmen display some of their products such as glass works, handworks including crochet embroidery, woodcarving, cuneiform-written tablets, stone sculptures and exquisite art sculptures using pumpkin plant, as well as various types of desserts and folk cuisine that characterize Homs and its countryside.”

To learn more about the association and how it preserved the heritage professions, Al-Kurdi clarified that during the unjust war against our country, Homs was greatly destroyed and many professions were disappeared by either the death of the artisans or their forced displacement. So, through our rather small association, we seek to attract the remaining of the artisans to work within the association. We are also currently working on an ambitious project to establish a Heritage Professions Market in Homs to make a heritage incubator with the largest share in the production and training departments for the martyrs’ families to help them have a career that enables them to earn their livelihood and be a source of income for them.

It is also within the association’s plan to move to the part of the countryside which is rich with its ancient heritage in an attempt to revive that heritage by attracting rural craftsmen to work within our association in an appropriate and comfortable working environment,” Al-Kurdi confirmed.

Sculptor Yassin Rustam, who has been passionate about art and especially sculpture from a young age, participated in this event by a collection of stone sculptures representing the successive civilizations on the land of Syria and a group of sculptures related to the art and civilization of Palmyra, as well as stone tablets inscribed with various texts of cuneiform writing. He has also adopted abstract art in some pieces of art that deal with some contemporary topics.

Rustam is the first artist in Syria and the second artist in the Arab world who writes in cuneiform as read texts on stone tablets,

Preserving heritage means the preservation of a national wealth that is not specific to a particular generation, but rather a right of different generations. The importance of preserving heritage increases during the current phase as globalization grows and the enormous challenges it entails for local cultures imposes the need to promote these cultures as a guarantee for the preservation of the State’s national identity.

Interviewed by:  Amal Farhat