schools, if the decision as reported by Syrian media is accurate, is not merely a transient administrative change on a school sign under Ahmad al-Shara’s government. Names in cities are not just linguistic decorations but public memory. When the name of a man who was killed because he refused to hand over Palmyra’s memory to the Islamic State organization is removed, the issue goes beyond the school to a deeper question: what kind of memory does the new Syria want to build? The memory of scholars, or the memory of fleeting loyalties?
According to reports published in 2026, the “Palmyra Area Administration” issued a decision to change the names of a number of schools and educational facilities, including replacing the name of the “Khaled al-Asaad School” with “Palmyra Secondary School.” (0) However, for professional accuracy, it must be said that an official published version of the decision has not yet appeared in the open sources we reviewed, so the information is strong and circulated in more than one source, but it still requires the decision’s image or an official statement to confirm it definitively. What does not need confirmation, on the other hand, is Khaled al-Asaad’s own status as “the man who turned his name into a global symbol for defending heritage against barbarism.”
Khaled Muhammad al-Asaad was born in Palmyra in 1932 and studied history at Damascus University. Since the 1960s, his name has been linked to the city of Palmyra and its antiquities. He managed Palmyra’s antiquities and its museum from around 1963 and remained for many decades one of the most prominent figures in Syrian archaeological research, not merely as an administrative employee but as a preserver of the memory of a city considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. He worked with archaeological missions from France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, Poland, and Italy, and his name became scientifically associated with the history of Palmyra, its inscriptions, and its architectural heritage. (1)
For him, Palmyra was more than Roman stones or basalt columns or the ruins of an ancient commercial city. It was evidence that Syria was never a closed identity but a nexus of communication between East and West, between Persians, Romans, and Arabs, between trade, culture, religions, and languages. Therefore, it was not strange that he dedicated more than half a century of his life to protecting, explaining, restoring, and introducing this site to the world. One who knew him described him in The Guardian as a scholar without whom one cannot write about Palmyra because he was part of the site’s own history. (2)
Why did the Islamic State kill him?
In August 2015, after the Islamic State took control of Palmyra, Khaled al-Asaad was arrested; he was over eighty years old. International reports stated that he was detained and interrogated, and that the organization wanted information from him about the locations of artifacts that had been moved or hidden to protect them from looting and destruction. But he refused to cooperate. The result was that he was killed brutally in Palmyra, the city he had devoted his life to serving. (3)
The importance of this incident lies not only in the brutality of the crime but in its symbolic meaning. The Islamic State was not just killing a person but trying to kill an idea: that Syrian memory is older than today’s authorities, broader than sects, and richer than narrow religious discourses. At the moment of his death, Khaled al-Asaad was not just defending a statue or stone but the Syrians’ right to a past that cannot be reduced, sold, or handed over to killers.
UNESCO’s director-general at the time, Irina Bokova, condemned his killing and expressed “sadness and anger” over the crime, affirming that he supervised the antiquities of the Palmyra site listed as a World Heritage Site. In another statement related to the destruction of Palmyra’s antiquities, UNESCO described the targeting of heritage as a crime beyond stone because it is an attempt to deprive a people of their past and future. (4)
Why did Italy honor him?
The paradox may seem painful: in Syria, it is said that his name is removed from a school in his city, while in Italy his name is written on a museum, an award, a square, and public memory. But this Italian honor was not accidental. Italy, with its great archaeological history and academic presence in the archaeology of the ancient East, understood that Khaled al-Asaad was not just a local Syrian scholar but a global symbol for protecting human heritage.
In the Italian city of Arona, the archaeological museum bears the name Museo Archeologico Khaled al-Asaad, meaning “Khaled al-Asaad Archaeological Museum.” This is not just a passing sympathy but a symbolic act linking the memory of an Italian city with the heritage of a Syrian city, as if the message says that Palmyra is not only for Syrians but for all humanity. (5)
In Pisa, a commemorative plaque for Khaled al-Asaad was unveiled in the presence of Italian President Sergio Mattarella, within the context of naming an archaeological site or space related to heritage protection after him. In Milan, a tree and a memorial stone were dedicated to him in the “Garden of the Righteous” in Monte Stella, a garden honoring figures who resisted evil, violence, and tyranny worldwide. (6)
Also, an international archaeological discovery award named after Khaled al-Asaad was launched in Italy. The organizing body says the award was named after him because he “paid with his life for defending cultural heritage,” and it is given for global archaeological discoveries with nominations involving European archaeological magazines and institutions. (7)
Intellectual and academic testimonies about Khaled al-Asaad
Among the most prominent testimonies showing his status is what the well-known Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae, the discoverer of Ebla and one of the most important specialists in ancient Syrian antiquities, said. He described Khaled al-Asaad as the “archaeologist of the city,” meaning that his relationship with Palmyra was not a job relationship with a site but one of identity, knowledge, and mission. Matthiae pointed out that he worked with missions from many countries and that he was a meticulous scholar and a figure linked to the culture of Syrian desert cities. (8)
Mamoun Abdul Karim, the former general director of antiquities and museums in Syria, described him after his assassination as the “martyr of Palmyra” and a symbol that should become a banner for the struggle against terrorism. This testimony is important because it does not speak only about an archaeologist but about a man whose death became a global moral stance. (9)
In The Guardian, researchers described him as a prominent scholar and global expert on the history and antiquities of Palmyra, noting that his book on Palmyra, which he co-authored with Adnan al-Bunni, became a fundamental reference for visitors and researchers of the city. This is not an emotional testimony but a scientific recognition of his status in the field of Palmyra studies. (10)
UNESCO also considered his killing a crime against human heritage, not just an individual murder. In UNESCO’s logic, protecting heritage is not a cultural luxury but part of protecting peoples’ identities and their right to memory. Therefore, for international cultural institutions, Khaled al-Asaad was a model of a scholar who did not limit himself to research and writing but paid with his life for what he believed in. (11)
Why does deleting his name provoke Syrian anger?
Because Khaled al-Asaad does not represent a party, a regime, a sect, or political propaganda. He represents something rarer: the Syrian who served his country silently, left a scientific legacy, and then died defending his country’s memory. Therefore, if the deletion of his name is officially confirmed, it cannot be justified by the logic of “removing symbols of the previous era,” because the man was not an authoritarian symbol, but an intellectual and human symbol.
The deeper problem is that Syria, after all it has endured, needs to rebuild a shared national memory. This memory is not built by removing the names of scientists and thinkers, but by freeing them from the captivity of political polarization. Khaled al-Asaad should be a unifying name because he was killed by an extremist organization that makes no distinction between stone and human, nor between civilization and life. When we keep his name on a school in Palmyra, we are not only honoring the past, but teaching students that heroism is not always in bearing arms; it may be in protecting a book, a statue, an inscription, a museum, or the memory of a city.
Between Italy and Syria: who preserves memory?
The painful part of the story is that Italy understood Khaled al-Asaad as part of the world heritage, while it seems that some Syrian administrations may treat his name as a detail that can be erased from a school sign. In Italy, his name has become associated with a museum, an award, and a memorial site. In Syria, the country where he was born, served its antiquities, and was killed on its soil, it is said that his name was removed from a school.
This is not a procedural paradox, but a harsh mirror. Countries are measured not only by the roads and bridges they build, but by the names they preserve. When the names of scientists are erased, public memory is emptied of its meaning, and schools become buildings without a narrative.
Khaled al-Asaad was not just an archaeologist. He was the guardian of Palmyra, and the guardian of Syria’s deeper meaning: a Syria that is diverse, ancient, knowledgeable, and open to the world. Therefore, honoring him is not just a moral duty towards a man who was killed, but a national necessity for a country that wants to rise from the ruins. Those who do not respect their scientists will leave their history to others to write, and perhaps to others to preserve as well.
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