Gaza’s First Digital Archive Documents Rich Cultural History

GAZA STRIP (Al Jazeera) – With years of war, humanitarian crises and a continuing Zionist blockade, the Gaza Strip’s rich cultural heritage has largely gone unnoticed.
But a few years ago, Nisma al-Sallaq, a local architect and a passionate advocate for the Palestinian enclave’s cultural history, set out to change that.
Along with a growing team, al-Sallaq, 27, set up Gaza’s first digital archive of historical buildings and heritage sites when she launched a multi-dimensional platform called Kanaan in 2019.
With a website, mobile application and Instagram page, the project provides visitors with information in text and video format in English and Arabic, and offers a virtual tour of Gaza’s centuries-old cultural history.
Named after the Canaanites who first settled Gaza thousands of years ago, Kanaan has so far documented 311 historical buildings and 76 archaeological sites on the Strip.
These include the Tel Umm Amer or Saint Hilarion Monastery, which dates back to the late Roman Empire and is considered an important Christian heritage site. The archive also documents the Al-Omari Mosque, a church built by the Byzantines, and transformed into a mosque by the Muslim Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab.
"People think Gaza is just a humanitarian issue linked to wars and a 13-year Israeli blockade and many see nothing but painful scenes of killings and the Israeli siege topping news bulletins,” said al-Sallaq, who hopes the initiative can draw attention to a different side of Gaza.
"They don’t know that Gaza has archaeological treasures, both above and below the ground. Gaza is a gate connecting Asia and Africa. It has witnessed many historical developments through a series of civilizations,” she told Al Jazeera.
As one of the most ancient cities in the world, Gaza was ruled by the pharaohs, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines before Muslims conquered it in 635. It became part of several Muslim empires including the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth century until 1917.
The 1948 war that established the occupying regime, transformed the Gaza Strip from a minor port and agricultural hinterland into one of the most overcrowded places on Earth.
The blockade imposed by the Zionist regime on the coastal enclave since 2007, high unemployment rates and UN funding cuts have exacerbated conditions for Gaza’s nearly two million residents.