Traces of empire: Architectural heritage, imperial memory and post-war reconstruction in Sarajevo and Beirut

ABSTRACT

Beirut and Sarajevo share a long Ottoman past followed by urban expansion under the protectorate of further imperial rule – of the French and Habsburg Empires, respectively, as well as a recent experience of urban warfare, segregation, and post-war reconstruction. This article examines how the architectural heritage of empires in the two cities has been transformed, reimagined and mobilized through urban post-war reconstruction by a number of actors: local authorities and politicians, architects, international organizations and investors. Discussing the tensions between the memory of empire and contemporary nation-building processes, the essay argues that the politics of memory and amnesia surrounding the recent wars shape and reconfigure the memory and heritage of empire. Moreover, it reflects how the reshaping of urban space acts both as an arena and as an enhancer of the politics and practices of memory and amnesia.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory of empire
• architectural heritage
• reconstruction
• Sarajevo
• Beirut

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the National Geographic Society for the Young Explorers Grant that facilitated the first research trips to Sarajevo and Beirut (2008–2009), the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation for the graduate scholarship to conduct PhD research at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research at the University of Cambridge, and the Eric Lane Fund of Clare College Cambridge that funded the return to Beirut. Special thanks to Jeremy Walton, David Henig, Miloš Jovanović, and the two anonymous reviewers for the engaging comments on this piece.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For an urban history of Sarajevo, see Donia (2006), while for Beirut see Kassir (2011). In addition, for in depth coverage of the urban transformation of particular periods of imperial rule, see Hanssen (2005), Saliba (1998), Sparks (2014).

2. For a discussion of the diverse demographic landscape of the two cities and the relationships between the diverse populations throughout time see Markowitz (2010), Greble (2011), Maček (2009), Salibi (1988).

3. For a discussion on wars and their effects on the two cities see Shwayri (2002), Fregonese (2009), Maček (2009), Andreas (2008), Walasek et al. (2015).

4. Memories of empire and former states often relate to group identity. In Lebanon, the Christian narrative has been traditionally more favourable to the French Mandate than the Muslim narrative (El Hibri 2009). In BiH, while there is generally a negative stance towards the Ottomans on the part of Bosnian Serbs, and a more positive stance on the part of Bosnian Croats towards the Habsburgs, the narratives of Bosniaks do not seem especially to have favoured Ottoman over Habsburg periods (Hartmuth 2011).

5. For more on the mahalla (Bosnian: mahala; Arabic: محلة /mahallah; Turkish: mahalle) in the (post-) Ottoman context see Lapidus (1984); Abu-Lughod (1987); Mills (2010).

6. As BiH entered the Habsburg sphere, similar trends of adopting Moorish references were starting to occur in the Ottoman Empire itself (see Çelik 1986; Ersoy 2017).

7. Further destruction occurred in South Beirut during the July War of 2006, when Israel bombed the area, targeted for being a Hezbollah stronghold.

8. For a discussion of the special status of Brčko district, see Jeffrey (2013).

9. In this paper, I discuss the heritage of empires in relationship to Federation Sarajevo, as the built environment dating from the period of empires lies on the Federation side. For a study of urban processes in both Sarajevo and Eastern Sarajevo, see Bădescu (2015).

10. This emerged for different reasons.: Iin Beirut, the agency of PM Hariri, a Sunni, with his entrepreneurial drive focused on reconstruction;- see Baumann (2017).; Iin Sarajevo, among the several parties taking part in both local, regional and national politics, often dominant has been SDA, a conservative Bosniak nationalist party.

11. For an exploration of the consequences of Habsburg-era ‘modernization’ on the practices and institutions of Islam in Bosnia, see Piro Rexhepi’s essay in this special issue.

12. Sead Gološ, interview.

13. For a discussion of the reconstruction of Hotel Europe and the erasure of other socialist-era structures in Sarajevo from the prism of the silencing of the Yugoslav period, see Bădescu (forthcoming).

14. According to George Arbid, Director of the Arab Center for Architecture in Beirut, the marginalization in contemporary Beirut of the modernism of the first decades of the Lebanese republic embodies the narrative of the Hariri family that everything coming from the republic’s beginnings would be flawed, as its unworkable framework led to Civil War, from which the new arrangements of power came to restore Lebanon’s glory (personal communication, February 2018).

15. See Walton (2017) for an analysis of this institution.

16. Neo-Ottomanism has been described both in reference to Turkey’s foreign policy (Yavuz 1998; Rüma 2010) and in relation to urban practices (Walton 2010). For a perspective on neo-Ottoman foreign policy in Kosovo, see Behar Sadriu’s contribution to this volume.

17. https://avaz.ba/vijesti/intervju/365332/latic-za-dnevnik-ba-izetbegovic-je-neuki-islamist-bosanski-hrvati-postali-obrano-mlijeko.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Geographic Society (Young Explorers Grant); Clare College, University of Cambridge (Eric Lane Fund).