Mohammad Fahim Rahimi, former director of the National Museum of Afghanistan, examines a marble artifact from Ghazni displayed at a museum in Stuttgart, Germany. The 12th-century marble panels from Afghanistan ended up in various museums in Europe, North America and Asia.FILM STILL COURTESY OF Aisha Jamal
Aisha Jamal is a filmmaker and college professor based in Toronto. Her latest documentary, The Theft, is now streaming on TVO.org.
When the Taliban took over Kabul, I stumbled upon a tweet by what is now the National Museum of Afghanistan. “Look out for these objects coming to an art market soon,” it said, accompanied by photos of various ancient Afghan artifacts.
The post was deleted hours later, but this serendipitous sighting ignited a spark of curiosity that grew into an obsession. What happens in wartime that puts these artifacts on the market? How do cycles of conflict affect a country’s cultural heritage?
To answer those questions, I traced the quiet disappearance of 12th-century marble panels from the Palace of Sultan Mas’ud III in Ghazni, Afghanistan. The pale, finely carved wall plaques, featuring floral, geometric patterns and Arabic script, originally numbered in the hundreds, and they started leaving the country illegally during the instability of the late 1970s and the subsequent Soviet invasion. Eventually, they ended up in various museums in Europe, North America and Asia.
Through these panels, I learned that war doesn’t just kill people – it also threatens the stories that make them a people.
The Iranian cultural sites damaged by war so far
In speaking to numerous curators, art dealers, and everyday museum visitors across North America, Germany, France and Pakistan, I discovered that most people tend to think of this kind of cultural theft as something from the colonial era – from a wilder past. But after the U.S. and Israel launched military campaigns against Iran and Lebanon in recent months, the Ghazni Marbles’ story resonated once again.
Growing up, I thought of Iran as intertwined in Afghan history and culture. The Persian Empire has at times incorporated present-day Afghanistan into its various iterations, and Iranian culture has deep roots spanning more than 10,000 years. Modern-day Iran was also the home to some of the world’s first cities, and it was more stable as a nation-state than Afghanistan – at least, until the American and Israeli strikes began. Bombs have not only killed scores of civilians, but they have also left ancient heritage vulnerable to looting, theft and illicit trade.
The historic Golestan Palace in Tehran, once a symbol of the power and splendour of Iran’s monarchy, was damaged after U.S. and Israeli strikes in the city.ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
For instance, Tehran’s Golestan Palace, which dates back to the late 18th century, was once a symbol of the power and splendour of Iran’s monarchy. Now, people armed with phone cameras tour the debris, broken windows, and shattered glass of what had housed a royal art collection. (The metaphor of its destruction is not lost on today’s Iranians.) And in April, in Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes razed the ancient shrine of Prophet Shamoun al-Safa, a figure of significance for the country’s large Christian and Muslim populations – even though holy sites are supposed to be protected under international law.
The wars have opened up two historically significant countries to increased subsistence looting – that is, theft committed by average citizens digging for and selling ancient artifacts to survive. When the local economy collapses, you sell whatever has cash value. War diverts the attentions of police, military and site guards, too, which lowers the risk of being caught. So people turn to nearby ruins for saleable goods to sell for quick cash to feed their families. Even small finds, like old coins, will do.
Local diggers typically don’t access global markets themselves, instead taking their wares to middlemen who pay them far less than what the item will ultimately sell for. The objects then rarely stay in the country of origin; they are typically shepherded through existing trade routes to art markets worldwide. The sales may happen directly or through auction houses, which are not supposed to sell items with questionable provenance (an unclear chain of ownership), but often do. This can stem from mix of systemic failures, such as inadequate vetting or the mistaken acceptance of falsified papers, or an active decision to operate in grey areas, in some cases using strategic ambiguity in their catalogue descriptions to hide how they were acquired. For the Ghazni Marbles, the historic bazaars of the Pakistani city of Peshawar served as a major trade route. Antique dealers there told me stories of receiving WhatsApp messages showing pictures of precious objects up for grabs.
The Ghazni Marbles are a powerful proof of a time before the Taliban and radical Islam, when Afghanistan welcomed different influences.FILM STILL COURTESY OF Aisha Jamal
Ancient artifacts are not inert things: They carry stories that allow a people to understand how they have come to be. For Afghans, the Ghazni Marbles lets us understand our own history as complex and multilayered, one that goes beyond today’s preoccupation with the Taliban and radical Islam. They are powerful proof of a time when Afghanistan welcomed different influences, with the panels’ designs combining Persianate and Islamic artistic traditions, and a time when the Ghaznavid dynasty was a major cultural capital. The plunder and destruction of culturally significant places and structures in Lebanon and Iran is not just collateral damage; it’s a weapon of war that attempts to destroy a collective sense of self. As Mohammad Fahim Rahimi, the former director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul, told me, these artifacts matter because “they are messengers of your ancestors.”
War’s damage to heritage sites in Iran raises alarm about impact on protected landmarks
Over the past half century, there has been a marked increase in the illegal export of artifacts, followed by their questionable acquisition by museums and collectors in the wake of wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen. Right now, as we witness war unravel cultural heritage in real-time in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and Sudan, what can be done to stem the losses?
Canadian institutions and collectors should do their part by refusing artifacts with dubious provenance. Governments, too, can set out a more preventative approach to dissuade people from purchasing such artifacts, thus enforcing international law. Canada has a reputation for post-facto enforcement that doesn’t actively monitor the market and begins only when other countries file a complaint, unlike in Italy, which has a specialized art police unit, or in New York City, where an Antiquities Trafficking Unit works on proactive investigations from inside the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
If we value history as a shared human inheritance, then we all need to make sure stolen history is not treated like some cheap bauble.
Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters