Hidden Cities

Hidden Cities

Home Again in Aleppo

On finally returning to Syria from exile to rebuild the house we lost.

Oct 01, 2026
∙ Paid
My family’s courtyard house in Qadi Askar, in Aleppo’s Old City, 2010. (Photo by Alhakam Shaar)

Alhakam Shaar

Alhakam Shaar is a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy focusing on participatory urban reconstruction in Syria. An interdisciplinary conflict researcher and social anthropologist from Aleppo, he is a co-founding member of Liqa al-Umran (The Urbanism Gathering), a platform for connection and dialogue on reconstruction in Syria. He holds graduate degrees in teaching English from the University of Aleppo and sociology and social anthropology from the Central European University.

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