MOSUL, Iraq – The palm trees were the last straw. In a UNESCO competition for the restoration of Mosul’s most famous landmarks, they were part of the winning design. Iraqi architects complained that neither the palm trees nor the golf-style design are at home in the historic city.
Not only was the $ 50,000 price tag at stake and the contract for a final design – which was funded by the United Arab Emirates and went to an Egyptian architectural team – but apparently also the pride of Iraq’s second largest city being made the rubble of the struggle against the Islamic State four years ago.
“It’s a fiasco, to be honest,” said Ihsan Fethi, one of Iraq’s most famous architects, of the competition for the Nouri mosque project. “The whole thing was a terrible tragedy for us.”
Mr Fethi and the Iraqi Architects’ Union had more substantial complaints about the winning entry for a new mosque complex than about transplanted trees, including items they considered anti-Islamic and a lack of parking. They say it betrays the architectural legacy of the historic city.
In a country with a proud architectural history, produced by Rifat Chadirji, the father of modern Iraqi architecture, and the design icon Zaha Hadid, this resentment is all the more palpable. In the past few decades, architecture was so important to Iraq that he commissioned buildings from Le Corbusier and plans from Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Iraqi engineering company that oversees the architects’ union issued a statement against the project. The Iraqi Architectural Heritage Preservation Society rejected the winning design of the 123-entry competition as seriously flawed. The design was said to introduce numerous “alien” concepts that would change the place beyond recognition and called on the Iraqi Prime Minister to intervene.
It is not the location of any mosque. Formally known as the Great Mosque of Al-Nouri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then leader of ISIS, proclaimed the caliphate in 2014 after the fighters of the Mosul group joined almost a third of Iraq and parts of Syria. Three years later, when the US-backed Iraqi forces were fighting to defeat the terrorist group, ISIS fighters blew up the mosque and an even more iconic minaret as they retreated.
Air strikes and explosives flattened large parts of the old city of Mosul, killing thousands of civilians and hundreds of Iraqi security forces. The rebuilding of the mosque complex is seen as essential to the idea that the destroyed city has gone beyond ISIS despite its losses.
The Al-Nouri Mosque, named after Nur al-Din Mahmoud Zangi, the ruler of Mosul and Aleppo, dates from the 12th century but was completely rebuilt in the 1940s.
The $ 50 million project will also restore two badly damaged churches nearby and a 12th century brick minaret.
When the architecture competition was announced, the UN cultural authority said the new design should promote reconciliation and cohesion in the city.
But in many circles it has fared from doing, causing an uproar among architects, city planners and some Mosul residents who say it ignores Iraqi heritage. Perhaps nodding to the United Arab Emirates taking that into account, the award-winning design features cream-colored bricks and straight angles found in the Gulf – a contrast to the arches, blue-veined local alabaster, and limestone of traditional Mosul buildings .
“The local architectural language is not there,” said Ahmed Tohala, lecturer in architecture at the University of Mosul, especially given the city’s history. “The materials, colors, elements, proportions, rhythm, relationship between the elements – it’s another strange language.”
“It looks a lot like the Emirates,” said Mr. Fathi.
To be fair, some of the requirements have been mandated by the Iraqi Sunni Foundation Office that oversees Sunni mosques in Iraq. On a recent day at the construction site, over the roar of a generator, Maher Ismail, the project leader of the Sunni foundation, declared it “a beautiful design”.
The expanded mosque complex will include a public park, religious high school and cultural center, while the mosque and minaret will be restored and architecturally unchanged.
Mr Ismail said criticism of the complex design came from jealous architectural firms.
“Some of the people who wanted to work on the mosque and didn’t get a chance to do so caused a lot of problems in stopping the work,” he said.
After the outcry, UNESCO held a meeting with the Iraqi architects’ union, which claimed it should have been consulted from the start. Among the main complaints, besides aesthetics, were competitive demands calling for an open courtyard next to the mosque for the public and a separate area for dignitaries on a balcony of the prayer room.
“A VIP area is anathema to Islam,” said Mr. Fathi. He said the jurors, including the chairman of the jury, his former student, lacked the necessary background in Islamic architecture to properly select a winning design.
There were also practical concerns – in a city without public transport, only 20 parking spaces were planned for use by the complex’s staff.
Mr. Ismail said that instead of installing a VIP area in the prayer hall itself, they were planning a VIP hall next to the mosque for the visiting officials.
UNESCO also notes that the competition rules were developed in coordination with the Iraqi Ministry of Culture. Winners are expected to provide a more detailed final design, with construction scheduled to begin this fall.
Paolo Fontani, UNESCO’s Iraq director, said changes could be made to the final plans, as is customary in a first draft competition. He said UNESCO would consult with local experts and architects.
The main partner of the victorious Egyptian company, Salah El Din Samir Hareedy, died shortly after the results of the competition were announced. Mr Hareedy died of complications from Covid-19, but common Iraqis joked on social media that it was the curse of Mosul residents who were upset about his draft that killed him.
At the construction site in the heart of the historical part of Mosul on the west side of the Tigris, the crews removed nearly 6,000 tons of rubble from the bombed site and recovered and cleaned 45,000 bricks that will be used to rebuild the minaret. Pieces of marble and stone from the severely damaged mosque were cataloged and sorted for restoration.
Local carpenters, working under the supervision of an Italian expert, restore damaged woodwork in the mosque.
Across the street from the proposed complex, a new coffee house, founded by local activists, flanks a series of brightly colored shops designed to help bring the devastated area back to life.
“It’s too modern,” says Mobashar Mohammad Wajid of the complex design. But Mr Wajid, who was standing in his tiny art studio across from the coffee house with his calligraphy designs, said that once the complex was completed, Mosul residents would likely be satisfied.
“When you see buildings being rebuilt,” he said, “you will be so happy.”
