Latakia-SANA
Various old and diverse heritage collections, Uncle Ismail Mahmoud from the town of Dalia, in the countryside of Jableh in Lattakia, has been collecting them since childhood. Today, he chose the corner in his area to be a stop for his visitors on a journey through time and evokes the memories of fathers and grandfathers and the rural life at that time with its simplicity, spontaneity and the most accurate details.
Dozens of wooden, stone and pottery tools and equipment were held in the place that Ismail Mahmoud Abu Ali called “the Folk Heritage Exhibition”, whose walls resemble the walls of old earthen houses with the “column” wood in the middle of the distance, topped by a beacon.
Abu Ali explained to SANA reporter that some of the tools available for domestic use, such as the baby bed, the door of the water mill, the wooden chair, the dough bowl, the straw dishes, and others made of basil sticks, are used to provide meat, offerings, millstones, bulgur wheat, and a special wooden stone pestle for the manufacture of figs and ambers for storing grains, lanterns, lamps, and other tools for purposes Agricultural tools, such as the wooden yoke and samad for plowing, the sickle for harvesting wheat, the grasshoppers for collecting crops, the meadow for studying wheat, the pitchfork to separate the grain from the straw, thrushes, trowels, spindles, and other wooden tools used for raising silkworms and karaka to distill rose water.
“I have always been fascinated by the heritage pieces that used to decorate the house of my parents and relatives, and I am keen to acquire them when I know their desire to get rid of them because they no longer fit the designs of their modern homes,” according to Abu Ali, adding that the aim of the exhibition, which he founded with individual efforts, is to highlight the authenticity of rural heritage and introduce the way of life of the ancients and their tools. and preserved from extinction.
He points out that those who have neither a past nor a present have a future, and it is our duty to be the link between our fathers, our sons and our grandchildren, and to place in their hands this precious treasure so that generations can draw from it the experiences and experiences of the ancients and be a beacon for them to advance their reality, no matter how challenging the challenges.
Abu Ali’s hobbies were not limited to collecting heritage pieces, as he excelled in the field of drawing. The farmer’s life, simplicity and love for his land were a source of inspiration for many of his paintings, in addition to simulating the charming nature and its aesthetic elements that stimulated his abilities and unleashed his imagination to embody them in works of art, as he reserved a place for himself in the world of poetry. Especially improvisational and zajal, as well as in Arabic calligraphy and its various arts, as he is a calligrapher and painter for five decades, drawing on paper, walls, and canvas.
Rasha Raslan
