Key Takeaways:
- The essay presents Morocco-chaired Bayt Mal Al-Quds (BMAQ), the OIC Al-Quds Committee’s operational arm since the 1990s, as “heritage diplomacy”: pairing Old City restoration with housing, health, schools, crafts, and olive-farm aid so residents stay and transmit traditions.
- UNESCO listing of the Old City (1981; in danger since 1982) and the 2003 intangible-heritage convention are used to argue that walls, embroidery, markets, and olive landscapes only survive if families, artisans, and youth can live and work there.
- Cited tools include Bayt Al-Maghrib, digital archives, e-commerce for producers, summer camps in Morocco, an Al-Quds University Moroccan-studies chair, and startup support—judged by whether they keep Jerusalem a living city rather than a museum.
Introduction — al-Quds al-Sharif (Jerusalem): A City Where Heritage Becomes a Historic Responsibility
Al-Quds Acharif, or Jerusalem, occupies a place in the religious, cultural, and civilizational history of humanity that extends far beyond the geography of a city. Jerusalem is simultaneously a city of faith, a historical palimpsest, a repository of memory, a cradle of civilizations, and a territory where spiritual, identity-based, political, and heritage dimensions overlap with exceptional intensity. For Muslims, it is particularly associated with Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey and Ascension; for Christians, it remains the center of the memory of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ; and for Jews, it is intimately connected with biblical history and the Temple. UNESCO consequently recognizes the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls as a site of exceptional significance to the three monotheistic religions and as a concentration of historic monuments, religious quarters, sacred places, and cultural traditions. The Old City was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1981 and on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1982 (UNESCO, 1981–2026). (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
In such a context, protecting Jerusalem does not mean merely maintaining ancient stones, restoring historic buildings, or financing infrastructure. Safeguarding the Holy City also means preserving the community that gives it meaning, protecting knowledge transmitted from generation to generation, supporting families, young people, women, artisans, farmers, merchants, and educational institutions, and ensuring that heritage does not become a museumized reality detached from those who inhabit it. The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines intangible cultural heritage precisely as practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills that communities recognize as part of their heritage and continually recreate in response to their history and environment (UNESCO, 2003).
It is within this dynamic conception of heritage that the work of the Bayt Mal Al-Quds Acharif Agency (BMAQ) acquires its full significance. As the executive institution of the Al-Quds Committee, an institution operating within the framework of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Agency has become a distinctive instrument of solidarity, human development, heritage protection, and cultural diplomacy. Its action is not confined to the conservation of monuments; rather, it seeks to create the social, economic, educational, and cultural conditions that enable the inhabitants of Jerusalem to continue living in their city, transmitting their traditions, and participating themselves in the preservation of its plural identity. The Agency officially describes its mission as implementing social projects in Al-Quds in order to contribute to the protection of the Holy City, the preservation of its religious and cultural heritage, and support for its inhabitants (Bayt Mal Al-Quds Acharif Agency, 2026). (بيت مال القدس)
The importance of BMAQ lies precisely in this articulation between heritage and population. It transforms heritage from an isolated aesthetic objective into an instrument of human resilience. It connects architectural restoration, education, health, agriculture, youth, culture, research, crafts, solidarity-based commerce, digital documentation, and social assistance. Its dynamism can therefore be understood as a genuine form of “heritage diplomacy,” whereby cultural preservation simultaneously becomes an act of solidarity, memory, institutional presence, and development.
The Al-Quds Committee and the Institutional Genesis of Bayt Mal Al-Quds (BMAQ)
The establishment of the Al-Quds Committee in 1975 reflected recognition of Jerusalem’s exceptional character in the collective Arab and Islamic consciousness. The institution was established within the framework of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and entrusted with following developments concerning Al-Quds, defending its special status, and mobilizing political, diplomatic, and material means for its protection. The Committee was placed under the chairmanship of Morocco, first during the reign of the late King Hassan II and subsequently under King Mohammed VI. Institutional Moroccan documents and those of the Agency present this continuity as one of the foundations of Morocco’s action in support of the Holy City.
The creation of Bayt Mal Al-Quds corresponded to a fundamental evolution in this institutional architecture. Political declarations and diplomatic initiatives were not sufficient; there was a need for an operational instrument capable of transforming solidarity into concrete achievements. At the initiative of the late King Hassan II, the Agency was established in the mid-1990s, and its institutional framework was consolidated toward the end of that decade. Decisions taken during the Al-Quds Committee’s Casablanca session in 1998 notably contributed to structuring its supervisory arrangements and launching its activities.
This institutional evolution is significant because it marked the transition from an essentially political logic to an operational one. The cause of Al-Quds was no longer expressed only in diplomatic forums; it became embodied in schools, housing projects, cultural centers, agricultural initiatives, programs for children, health projects, architectural restoration, and social and economic initiatives. In other words, Bayt Mal transformed proclaimed solidarity into solidarity that was administered, financed, implemented, and assessed on the ground.
The Agency’s institutional structure reflects this ambition. Its governance involves Morocco and Palestine, alongside several member states of the Al-Quds Committee. Morocco occupies a central position in its governance and has remained its principal financial supporter. This characteristic has provided BMAQ with a degree of financial and operational continuity that is particularly significant in an environment in which international funding can be irregular.
Such continuity is one of the major characteristics of the Bayt Mal model. It enables the Agency to conceive its action over the long term and to move beyond the logic of isolated intervention. Heritage, by definition, requires time: an ancient house cannot be restored in a few weeks; a traditional craft cannot be preserved through a single subsidy; and collective memory cannot be safeguarded merely through the publication of a book. Conservation therefore requires patient, cumulative, and intergenerational policies.
From the Monument to the Inhabitant: A Comprehensive Conception of Heritage
One of BMAQ’s most significant contributions lies in its broad conception of heritage. Under a strictly monumental approach, heritage would consist of mosques, churches, walls, historic houses, markets, gates, and other architectural structures. Such a conception is indispensable but insufficient. As critical heritage studies have demonstrated, heritage does not simply consist of inherited objects from the past; it is continually selected, interpreted, transmitted, and used by contemporary societies (Smith, 2006; Harrison, 2013).
BMAQ’s strategy fits precisely within this living conception. The Agency considers the preservation of Jerusalem’s identity inseparable from improving the living conditions of its inhabitants. Its portfolio encompasses education, health, housing, reconstruction, culture, commerce, agriculture, youth, sports, and social assistance. Between 2000 and 2020, the Agency reported allocating substantial resources to youth, sports, culture, social assistance, education, health, housing, and the restoration of historical heritage.
This diversification is far from incidental. It reveals a philosophy according to which a city cannot preserve its heritage if its inhabitants are economically weakened, if its young people are deprived of opportunities, if families cannot maintain their homes, or if cultural institutions lose their capacity to act. Material heritage therefore depends upon a human ecosystem.
This approach also corresponds to the evolution of international thinking about heritage. The UNESCO World Heritage Convention of 1972 emphasizes the identification, protection, conservation, presentation, and transmission of cultural heritage to future generations, while contemporary heritage policies have increasingly integrated community participation and the social dimension of heritage (UNESCO, 1972).
The restoration of a historic house, for example, acquires much deeper significance when the house remains connected to a family, a neighborhood, a craft, or a commercial activity. The preservation of an old market also means preserving economic practices, social relationships, vocabulary, commercial knowledge, culinary traditions, and forms of sociability. Restoring an urban space without maintaining its social function may lead to purely aesthetic conservation. Conversely, maintaining the social function of a historic place allows heritage to remain part of the living city.
Restoring the Built Heritage: Preserving Stone, Preserving Memory
Architectural restoration constitutes one of the fundamental areas of BMAQ’s work. The Agency has developed projects involving the restoration, reconstruction, and improvement of historic buildings in the Old City and surrounding neighborhoods.
Such interventions must be understood in light of the particular vulnerability of Jerusalem’s heritage. UNESCO considers the Old City and its Walls a site whose authenticity, integrity, and cultural heritage require continuous vigilance. Its inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger underlines the fact that preserving Jerusalem is not merely a national or regional concern but an issue of international heritage significance. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
Restoration therefore acquires a meaning that goes beyond technical work. An old house carries the traces of several generations; an alleyway preserves an inherited spatial organization; a market maintains a commercial geography; and religious architecture preserves the material traces of a long spiritual history. Restoration consequently means preserving temporal continuity.
BMAQ’s approach is particularly significant when restoration is associated with development. A restored building can once again function as a residence, commercial space, workshop, cultural center, or community facility. Conservation thus becomes productive: it enables heritage to contribute to the economic and social life of the city.
The wider Palestinian experience confirms this logic. UNESCO-supported programs have rehabilitated historic buildings and transformed some of them into community centers, schools, women’s spaces, youth clubs, and cultural facilities. Such projects demonstrate the possibility of linking heritage conservation, local development, and the strengthening of collective identity (UNESCO, 2023).
The work of BMAQ therefore fits within an international trend: the most sustainable heritage is heritage that remains useful to communities.
Bayt Al-Maghrib: When Moroccan Presence Becomes Heritage Memory
Among the most significant initiatives is the Moroccan Cultural Center—Bayt Al-Maghrib—located in the Old City of Jerusalem. Its purpose extends beyond that of a conventional cultural center. It functions as a space of memory, research, exhibition, documentation, and transmission concerning the historical relationship between Morocco and Jerusalem.
Moroccan presence in Al-Quds possesses particular historical depth. Generations of Moroccans have maintained religious, intellectual, commercial, and family links with the Holy City. The historic Mughrabi Quarter, situated near the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque, constitutes one of the most visible expressions of this presence. The memory of this Moroccan settlement is now part of Jerusalem’s historical heritage.
BMAQ’s contemporary strategy seeks to document this memory rather than leave it dependent exclusively upon oral tradition. The development of the Bayt Al-Maghrib digital platform is particularly important in this regard because it seeks to document and archive the human and cultural heritage of Jerusalem.
This orientation is especially significant in the digital age. Digital archives can preserve photographs, testimonies, documents, maps, narratives, objects, biographies, traditions, and artistic productions that may otherwise become dispersed or vulnerable. Heritage consequently becomes accessible to a new generation that cannot always encounter it directly in the places where it was created.
Digital technology can also democratize access to memory. A young person in Jerusalem, Rabat, Casablanca, Paris, or Montreal can now access elements of this history without necessarily being physically present in the Old City. The memory of Al-Quds thus acquires a transnational dimension.
Preserving Intangible Heritage: From the Memory of Stones to the Memory of People
Perhaps BMAQ’s deepest contribution can be found in its support for intangible cultural heritage. This includes oral traditions, traditional knowledge, crafts, agricultural practices, celebrations, artistic expressions, culinary practices, narratives, and forms of sociability. UNESCO emphasizes that intangible cultural heritage is living precisely because it is constantly recreated and transmitted by communities (UNESCO, 2003).
The Palestinian case offers a particularly powerful illustration. The art of embroidery in Palestine was inscribed in 2021 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. UNESCO describes embroidery as a practice widespread among Palestinian communities and the diaspora and as a body of knowledge transmitted across generations, particularly among women.
Preserving such skills requires more than symbolic recognition. It requires creating economic opportunities, supporting artisans, facilitating intergenerational transmission, documenting techniques, and involving younger generations in learning. This is where BMAQ’s programs acquire a particularly important heritage dimension. Its digital and solidarity-commerce initiatives seek to enable Jerusalem-based associations, artisans, institutions, and producers to market their products through electronic platforms.
The logic is remarkable: heritage becomes an economic resource without being reduced to a commodity. Craftsmanship is no longer regarded merely as a folkloric survival; it becomes a sector of creativity, employment, transmission, and economic empowerment. This approach is consistent with broader international reflections on the ability of traditional knowledge and crafts to contribute to social inclusion, employment, and cultural entrepreneurship when communities remain at the center of the process.
Preserving intangible heritage is therefore also a policy of dignity. It tells communities that their knowledge, techniques, and everyday practices possess historical and cultural value. Heritage thereby becomes a form of social capital.
The Olive Tree, Agriculture, and Cultural Landscape: Protecting the Land to Protect Memory
BMAQ’s action in agriculture reveals another essential dimension of heritage preservation: the protection of cultural landscapes. Olive cultivation, for example, is not merely an economic activity. It is deeply connected to Palestinian social history, the relationship with the land, and the transmission of agricultural knowledge.
UNESCO has recognized the exceptional value of the cultural landscape of Battir, south of Jerusalem, where agricultural terraces, paths, and traditional irrigation systems testify to a long history of human adaptation to the environment. The site is inscribed on the World Heritage List and is also associated with international concern for heritage protection. UNESCO emphasizes the importance of local community participation in the conservation of such landscapes.
Within this framework, the “Aouna” campaign supported by BMAQ has a significance extending beyond agricultural assistance. The Agency has provided tools and equipment to farmers in villages and localities within the Jerusalem Governorate.
The olive tree thus becomes a particularly powerful symbol of the relationship between material heritage, intangible heritage, and resilience. The tree belongs to the landscape; cultivation techniques belong to intangible heritage; olive oil belongs to the family economy; the harvest constitutes a communal event; and the land itself carries the memory of generations.
Safeguarding the olive tree therefore means safeguarding an economy, a landscape, a body of knowledge, a social calendar, and an ancestral relationship with the land.
Youth: Transmitting Jerusalem to Those Who Will Carry Its Memory
No heritage policy can be sustainable if it does not address young people. A generation that does not know its history risks inheriting an already fragmented heritage; a generation that understands it can become its most effective guardian.
BMAQ has consequently developed several programs for children and adolescents. The Jerusalem Children’s Club, summer camps, cultural activities, youth publications, and digital initiatives all contribute to this strategy of transmission. Its annual summer camp brings children from Jerusalem to Morocco and introduces them to Moroccan history, culture, and the longstanding links between Morocco and Al-Quds.
Such initiatives possess a particular cultural value. The children of Jerusalem are not merely beneficiaries of social action; they are the future custodians of the city’s memory. Enabling them to discover Morocco, its history, traditions, and relationship with Al-Quds helps strengthen a shared memory.
The digital strategy reinforces this dimension. Digital educational tools are increasingly used to familiarize children and young people with the values, history, and cultural significance of Al-Quds. The Agency’s broader digital strategy also includes distance-learning initiatives, demonstrating its effort to adapt heritage transmission to contemporary modes of education.
This digital transformation is fundamental. Heritage preservation can no longer be conceived exclusively in terms of physical archives. It must also involve audiovisual content, digital archives, educational applications, electronic libraries, interactive exhibitions, and virtual historical maps. Memory becomes mobile, accessible, and participatory.
Education, Research, and Knowledge Production: Safeguarding through Knowledge
Authentic heritage preservation requires the production of knowledge. What is not documented risks disappearing; what is not transmitted risks becoming incomprehensible; and what is not contextualized can be reduced to a superficial representation.
The Bayt Al-Maqdis Center for Research and Studies, based at the Agency’s headquarters in Rabat, represents an important institution in this regard. It supports research, studies, publications, competitions, and scientific initiatives and contributes to the preservation of documentary resources devoted to the history of Al-Quds and Palestine.
This scientific dimension has been strengthened by the establishment of a Chair of Moroccan Studies at Al-Quds University. Created through cooperation involving BMAQ and Bayt Al-Maghrib, the Chair seeks to deepen the study of Moroccan history and heritage and to document the historical and cultural relationships between Morocco and Palestine.
This initiative is particularly relevant from a heritage perspective. Memory should not merely be celebrated; it should also be studied. Academic research makes it possible to distinguish historical evidence from retrospective myth-making, highlight archives, identify endangered forms of heritage, and develop scientifically grounded conservation methodologies.
Intellectual production therefore participates directly in the protection of Al-Quds. It transforms memory into knowledge and knowledge into the capacity for transmission.
Women, Social Economy, and Empowerment: Heritage as Human Development
The role of women represents another essential dimension of heritage revitalization. In many traditional societies, women are the principal bearers of knowledge related to crafts, embroidery, cuisine, domestic practices, family narratives, and cultural transmission.
BMAQ’s action in support of women and vulnerable groups therefore makes it possible to approach heritage from a human-development perspective. Its social programs include initiatives benefiting women, children, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups.
This approach is fundamental because social vulnerability can produce a rupture in heritage transmission. When a family faces severe economic hardship, the transmission of traditional knowledge may become secondary. When an artisan can no longer find a market, a craft may disappear. When young people leave traditional occupations without opportunities to modernize them, part of the intangible heritage may vanish.
Heritage policy must therefore make transmission economically and socially viable. Solidarity-based commerce, vocational training, digital platforms, and cultural entrepreneurship are consequently heritage instruments as much as they are economic ones.
Health and Housing: The Material Conditions of Cultural Continuity
Heritage cannot be separated from living conditions. A historic city remains alive only if its inhabitants can live there, receive healthcare, educate their children, and pursue economic activities.
This is why BMAQ’s interventions in health and housing have an indirect yet decisive heritage significance. The Agency has devoted substantial resources to these areas since the beginning of its activities.
Housing is particularly important. Restoring a historic house while displacing its inhabitants risks turning a living space into a heritage façade. Conversely, rehabilitating housing while enabling families to remain in their neighborhoods helps preserve the social continuity of the city.
BMAQ’s recent reports demonstrate the importance it attaches to social assistance and human development in Jerusalem, particularly in a context of serious economic and security difficulties. Its interventions in health and education likewise reflect an understanding that cultural continuity requires viable social conditions.
This orientation illustrates a particularly modern conception of heritage: preserving a city requires preserving its community.
Heritage and Cultural Diplomacy: Jerusalem as a Space of Dialogue
BMAQ’s diplomatic dimension should not be understood solely in terms of interstate relations. The Agency also develops cultural diplomacy through academic exchanges, publications, exhibitions, youth programs, institutional cooperation, and the promotion of Jerusalem’s cultural diversity.
The “Al-Quds Call,” launched in 2019 by King Mohammed VI and Pope Francis, provides a particularly significant reference in this respect. It presents Jerusalem as a shared heritage of humanity and as a place of encounter, peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, and dialogue among the three monotheistic religions.
This conception allows heritage protection to be understood in broader terms. Preserving Jerusalem does not merely mean protecting one identity against another; it also means safeguarding the city’s historical plurality. The city possesses its exceptional significance precisely because it is a place where memories, traditions, and communities have historically intersected.
From this perspective, heritage preservation can become a language of diplomacy. Monuments speak, but libraries also speak; artisans speak; students speak; children speak; archives speak. Heritage becomes a form of dialogue when its purpose is to illuminate history rather than erase it.
This dimension corresponds with UNESCO’s international approach, according to which safeguarding intangible cultural heritage should contribute to respect for cultural diversity, transmission, and mutual understanding (UNESCO, 2003).
The Digital Revolution: From Physical Conservation to Digital Memory
One of BMAQ’s most remarkable developments has been its entry into a new technological phase. Its digital strategy includes several pillars: heritage documentation, start-up incubation, solidarity-based e-commerce, distance education, and applications targeting young people.
This evolution profoundly transforms the very notion of heritage. A manuscript can be digitized; a photograph can be restored and archived; an oral testimony can be recorded; a traditional craft can be filmed; a historic building can be digitally modeled; an exhibition can become virtual; and a historical itinerary can be mapped.
Digital technology does not replace physical conservation. Rather, it complements it. A digitized photograph cannot replace a historic house, just as a video recording of a ceremony cannot replace the ceremony itself. The value of digital technology lies in its ability to document, disseminate, educate, and transmit.
The Bayt Al-Maghrib platform, conceived as a mechanism for documenting and archiving Jerusalem’s heritage, is particularly revealing of this philosophy. It places heritage preservation firmly within the twenty-first century and connects physical conservation with durable digital memory.
The Agency’s support for Palestinian start-ups and innovation initiatives likewise demonstrates that digital technology is not conceived merely as a documentary instrument. It is also viewed as a vehicle for economic development, youth empowerment, and innovation.
BMAQ and Resilience: Rethinking the Protection of al-Quds al-Sharif (Jerusalem)
The concept of resilience has become central to contemporary policies for the conservation of historic cities. It refers to the capacity of a community to absorb shocks, maintain essential functions, and rebuild its capacities for action.
In the case of Jerusalem, this resilience has social, cultural, economic, and heritage dimensions. The Agency does not merely seek to repair the consequences of a crisis; it seeks to strengthen the capacities that will enable the population to face future crises.
BMAQ’s recent approach demonstrates this logic: the Agency increasingly relies on observation, assessment, and data to identify areas requiring support and adapt its priorities accordingly. Such an approach brings heritage action closer to contemporary forms of evidence-based public governance.
Resilience thus becomes an institutional architecture. The Agency observes, identifies, finances, implements, evaluates, and readjusts. It therefore operates not merely as a philanthropic mechanism but increasingly as an instrument of territorial and human development.
This transformation is particularly important in a city where heritage is subject to multiple pressures. Sustainable protection requires coordination between architectural, economic, social, educational, environmental, and cultural dimensions. BMAQ is progressively constructing this form of institutional transversalism.
BMAQ at the Intersection of Tangible and Intangible Heritage
One of BMAQ’s major achievements is precisely its refusal, in practice, to artificially separate tangible from intangible heritage.
A historic house belongs to tangible heritage; the construction techniques that made it possible belong to intangible heritage. An olive grove constitutes a cultural landscape; the agricultural knowledge necessary to maintain it belongs to intangible heritage. Embroidery is an object; the embroiderer’s knowledge and skills constitute intangible heritage. A library is a building; the narratives, manuscripts, and knowledge preserved within it belong to collective memory.
The 2003 UNESCO Convention emphasizes precisely this interdependence between cultural practices, communities, and their material and environmental contexts.
This perspective provides particular coherence to BMAQ’s different programs. Building restoration, support for artisans, documentation, educational programs, agriculture, cultural activities, summer camps, and digital initiatives may appear to belong to separate sectors; in reality, they form a single system: the system of cultural continuity.
True heritage revitalization therefore does not consist in preserving the past unchanged. It consists in enabling the past to continue producing meaning in the present and the future.
A Diplomacy of Proximity Based on Concrete Achievements
BMAQ’s action also illustrates a broader transformation of contemporary diplomacy. Alongside traditional state diplomacy exists a diplomacy of proximity based on populations, universities, municipalities, associations, cultural institutions, and professional communities.
In the case of Jerusalem, this form of diplomacy is particularly important. A political declaration may be necessary, but it remains abstract unless translated into a renovated school, a supported family, an assisted artisan, an equipped library, a farmer receiving support, a restored house, or a child becoming aware of his or her heritage.
Recent figures demonstrate this continuity. BMAQ’s activity reports indicate a substantial volume of projects and interventions in Jerusalem, together with humanitarian action and continuing institutional reforms designed to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of its programs.
This evolution suggests that BMAQ is gradually moving from a logic of intervention toward a long-term institutional logic. Its credibility increasingly depends not only on the number of projects it undertakes but also on their quality, governance, transparency, evaluation, and ability to generate durable effects.
Conclusion — Keeping al-Quds al-Sharif (Jerusalem) Alive in Order to Preserve Its Soul
The history of Bayt Mal Al-Quds Acharif can be understood as that of an institution that has progressively transformed solidarity with Jerusalem into a comprehensive policy of presence, protection, and human development. Emerging from the desire to provide the Al-Quds Committee with an institution capable of concrete action, BMAQ has gradually become a multidimensional instrument in which architectural restoration, social assistance, education, health, agriculture, culture, youth, research, and digital technology complement one another.
Perhaps its most important contribution lies in a simple but profound idea: one does not truly protect a city by protecting only its monuments. One protects a city by enabling its inhabitants to continue living there, working there, teaching there, creating there, transmitting their traditions there, and building their future there. Heritage is therefore inseparable from human dignity.
Restoring an old house protects material memory; housing assistance protects human continuity. Restoring a cultural center protects a space; educating children protects memory. Supporting an artisan protects a craft; a digital platform protects its transmission. Supporting olive cultivation protects a harvest; it also protects a landscape, a body of knowledge, a family economy, and an ancestral relationship with the land.
It is this interdependence that gives BMAQ its distinctive character. Its action participates in a form of heritage diplomacy in which heritage becomes simultaneously an object of conservation, an instrument of development, a repository of memory, and a language of solidarity.
From this perspective, the revitalization of Jerusalem should not be understood merely as a restoration of the past. It is an undertaking of historical continuity. The objective is not simply to preserve what once was, but to enable what once was to remain alive in the present and to continue being transmitted into the future.
UNESCO emphasizes that safeguarding tangible heritage requires its conservation and transmission, while the 2003 Convention defines the safeguarding of intangible heritage through identification, documentation, research, protection, promotion, transmission, and revitalization. BMAQ’s evolving practice moves precisely in this direction: from conservation toward revitalization, from stone toward people, from objects toward communities, from archives toward transmission, and from occasional assistance toward resilience.
Thus understood, the revitalization of Jerusalem is far more than a conservation policy. It represents a philosophy of continuity: to preserve in order to transmit, to transmit in order to keep alive, and to keep alive in order to ensure that the Holy City remains, for present and future generations, a spiritual, historical, and cultural heritage of universal significance.
The greatness of a heritage policy is ultimately measured less by the number of monuments restored than by its capacity to sustain a community capable of recognizing, inhabiting, transmitting, and renewing its inheritance. From this perspective, the work of Bayt Mal Al-Quds Acharif gives solidarity with Jerusalem a concrete and enduring dimension. It contributes to making the Holy City not a frozen memory, but a living heritage; not a museum of vanished civilizations, but a city where memory continues to produce meaning; not merely a symbol of the past, but a space where history, culture, spirituality, and human dignity can continue to engage in dialogue.
In this sense, BMAQ’s work may be regarded as an undertaking of comprehensive safeguarding: protecting walls, but also families; restoring buildings, but also skills; supporting institutions, but also young people; preserving archives, but also narratives; protecting landscapes, but also the practices that give them life.
Jerusalem is a city of memory. But genuinely living memory never merely looks backward. It builds the future.
References
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