UAE to rebuild Mosul’s Al Nuri Mosque and historic minaret

Dubai : The UAE will fund the rebuilding of the Great Mosque of Al Nuri, which was last year destroyed by ISIS in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The Ministry of Culture has funded the UN’s heritage agency, Unesco, in a US$50.4 million (Dh185.1m) plan to rebuild the mosque, which was where ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi announced in 2014 that he had established a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.

The 800-year-old mosque, with its famous leaning minaret, was destroyed by the extremists as one of their last acts before Iraq’s second-largest city was liberated in June.

Its five-year restoration will be the UAE’s first major reconstruction project in Iraq and the flagship of Unesco’s Revive the Spirit of Mosul plan, announced in February, to rebuild the Old City.

The UAE will work closely in Mosul during the five-year process of restoration, which is expected to produce 1,000 jobs.

UAE Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development Noura Al Kaabi signed two memoranda of understanding in Baghdad, one with the Iraqi Ministry of Culture for Advanced Cultural Cooperation, and another with Unesco.

After touring the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, she said this project and the expanded cultural collaboration stems from strategic and historic ties with Iraq, adding that the revival of the Al Nuri mosque is part of “humanity’s heritage”.

Giovanni Antonelli, a senior consultant for Unesco, said that the first year of the mosque project would be used to clear rubble and any bombs left inside by the extremists, document the area and conduct archaeological surveys.

Design and reconstruction afterwards will take four years.

“At the end there will be the creation of a memorial and the establishment of a museum to narrate this episode of destruction,” Antonelli said.

In December 2016, at a conference hosted by Abu Dhabi at the Emirates Palace hotel, the UAE, France and Unesco announced a $100m fund, now called Aliph, to help to preserve endangered cultural heritage.

The first intentions for the fund were protecting heritage in the middle of conflict. But now that ISIS has been driven from most of Iraq and Syria, rebuilding the great sites of Mosul, Aleppo, Palmyra, Ninevah and others can begin.