In a small concrete workshop in Damascus, 50-year-old Abou Ahmad sits surrounded by colourful glass, gathering dust. A thick black plume of soot creeps up the wall, serving as a reminder of the scorching kiln fire that once ran 24 hours a day.
“If the situation keeps like this, the crafts will disappear,” he tells The National, motioning to the stockpile of intricate glass vases, bottles and ornaments in shades of blue, yellow and green surrounding him. “We craftspeople will disappear.”
Descending from a long line of artisans, Ahmad has spent the past 30 years laboriously melting shards of recycled glass, from items like beer bottles and medicine glass, in brick ovens that reach 1,200ºC, then blowing the molten glass into shape with a metal rod. “It's our tradition … a heritage,” he proudly says about the delicate cultural practice, thought to date back centuries. But such artistic practices are fading fast across Syria.
In Damascus, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, artisans are important custodians of Syrian heritage and the city's aesthetics – a place where wooden mosaics adorn cafe tables and colourful brocade decorates old city hotels. But despite recent progress to lift sanctions and trade embargoes after 14 years of devastating civil war ended in 2024, the artisans of Damascus are uncertain about the future.
The Alhallak family workshop is one of the last in Syria producing glassware through traditional techniques, but there’s little demand for the work Ahmad dedicated his adult life to. The business previously relied on large international orders, but such requests have dried up. Even being added to Unesco’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2022, Ahmad says, “doesn't change anything”. Daily power cuts and dwindling demand mean he has little reason, or even ability, to power the kilns.
“Before the war, the visitors would come,” he reflected about buses of tourists that marvelled at his family’s work. “If each tourist bought one piece, that means 120 pieces a day. Nowadays, one, two, or three pieces – it’s nothing.”
Data from the Syrian Crafts Council found more than 400,000 people worked in the country’s handicraft sector at its peak, including roughly 80,000 sheikh kar (master artisans) around 2009. But today, the workforce has contracted by around 62 per cent, according to their surveys. One of the main reasons for this is displacement. More than half of senior craftspeople fled the country during the conflict. A further 60 per cent of workshops were destroyed or abandoned. Experts say that Damascene glassblowing, in particular, is at risk of extinction.
Other ancient crafts are also reckoning with a similar fate. But it’s not just due to a lack of demand. George Khoury, 63, recently reopened a small workshop after years of closure. He makes intricate mother-of-pearl inlay boxes and wooden mosaics from different coloured woods. But he’s returning to a new reality: 80 per cent of the raw materials he relied on were lost in the war – predominantly the wood integral to his designs. During years of fighting, at least 250,000 trees were destroyed in the Ghouta region, once referred to as the green halo of Damascus. It has left Khoury with little choice but to import materials from further afield at a higher cost.
In December 2025, the US repealed the Caesar Act, which sanctioned various Syrian entities to deter foreign investment and reconstruction. But hesitation remains among local Syrians for what lies ahead amid violent sectarian clashes and instability. Economic changes are yet to be felt by small and informal business owners, such as the artisans.
“The economic situation nowadays is not good,” Khoury adds. His industry relies heavily on local and international tourism, which is yet to recover. There’s also a generational issue. Khoury doesn’t have any apprentices to pass on his knowledge to. The Syrian Craft Council found that the average age of a Syrian artisan is now 55.
Archeologist Dr Hazar Alahmar says losing the artisans of Damascus as a result of this would be devastating. “If we lose those crafts, we lose a part of our history,” the cultural heritage specialist says. “We lose our memory, our culture, our history, our atmosphere, what we are surrounded with.”
Supporting the city’s locally run workshops isn’t just about preserving Damascene heritage, as Dr Alahmar points out, but also about the commercial and social importance of the artisanal sector. “This interaction between people, this discussion to sell, buy, and produce … it's a part of the social cohesion,” she explains. Craftspeople, she continued, “can help us to revive the economy, cultural identity, and country identity.”
Despite challenges, a deep sense of resilience remains. There are even signs of hope. Antoun “Tony” Mezannar’s family has been weaving silk brocade for more than 140 years and produced the loom-woven silk used in Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding dress in 1947. Like many remaining artisans, Mezannar is convinced that his craft is vital to the Syrian identity and must survive. “It's part of my body,” he said. “I cannot stay without silk brocade, that's why I'm making something new – new designs, new loom.”
Demand for silk-woven products remains lower than before 2011, but Mezannar believes there are some signs of recovery. “We used to sell 8,000 metres a year,” he says. “Now it's about 1,000 metres.”
Improving international relations seems to be helping, he says, adding: “Under the previous regime, we had a very bad relationship with the rest of the world, especially with Europe, the UK, and the States. Now we start to have a good relationship.”
Beyond diplomacy, the survival of the artisanal community may hinge on building confidence in Syria’s collective future and, in turn, attracting more tourists.
“It's not easy to restart and build trust between us before building trust with others,” says Dr Alahmar. “Maybe soon we can see tourists, why not?”
Mezannar echoes similar sentiments: “We are speaking about rebuilding trust between us as Syrians and between other countries,” he says. “We had a very bad regime, but we are different.”
