Irag’s prime minister presided over the official reopening of the historic al-Nuri Mosque and its leaning minaret in the heart of Mosul’s Old City on Monday, eight years after the site was destroyed by militants of the Islamic State group.
According to “Tehsil365”, citing the Associated Press, the mosque’s leaning minaret had stood for nearly 850 years as a landmark. In 2014, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the group’s so-called “caliphate” there, delivering a Friday sermon and leading prayers.
The militant group later demolished the mosque in 2017 by detonating explosives inside the structure as Iraqi forces closed in to retake the city. UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency, worked alongside Iraqi heritage authorities and Sunni religious bodies to rebuild the minaret using traditional techniques and materials salvaged from the rubble. UNESCO raised $115 million for the reconstruction project, with major contributions from the United Arab Emirates and the European Union.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the mosque’s reconstruction would remain “a milestone reminding all enemies of Iraqis’ heroism, their defense of their land, and their restoration of everything destroyed by those who sought to obscure the truth.”
“We will continue to support culture,” he added, “and we will keep working to highlight Iraq’s ancient heritage as a public necessity, a gateway for the world to our country, an opportunity for sustainable development, and a space for youth to innovate.”
At its height, ISIS controlled territory across Iraq and Syria roughly the size of half of Britain and became notorious for its brutality. It beheaded civilians, enslaved and abused thousands of women from the Yazidi minority, one of Iraq’s oldest religious communities.
As part of the wider reconstruction project, churches damaged during the war have also been restored, with the aim of preserving the heritage of Mosul’s dwindling Christian population. Sudani stressed that the project encompasses all of Mosul’s communities and “embodies all the characteristics of Iraq’s diverse society.”
UN investigators have reported that ISIS committed war crimes against Christians in Iraq, including property seizures, sexual violence, enslavement, forced religious conversions, and the destruction of cultural and religious sites.
When ISIS launched its offensive in 2014, the majority of Mosul’s small Christian population fled. In 2003, the city’s Christian community numbered about 50,000. Today, fewer than 20 Christian families remain permanent residents, though some displaced to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq still return to Mosul for church services.
The Mosul reconstruction project may serve as a model for the restoration of cultural sites in other war-torn areas, including neighboring Syria, which is emerging from nearly 14 years of civil war following the uprising against former president Bashar al-Assad.