01587nas a2200133   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002100002200043245004500065856006200110300001200172520125500184022001401439       2016                            d1 aJean-Claude David00aDécrire la ville, écrire le patrimoine  uhttps://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/extart?codigo=5750563  a193-2043 aIn the context of the Middle East, at least since the eleventh century, “city narratives”, a common literary genre, have been used as a way of substantiating individual and collective identity links with the living and changing urban entity, in this way giving the city a form of global identity beyond what might otherwise amount to a mere collection of isolated monuments or spatial constructs. Thus, with an urban heritage that is both an affirmation and expression of a periodically renewed lifestyle and an integral part of a shared local identity, Arab historians and geographers search for traces of the past, seeking to understand the appearance, persistence and disappearance of this past through narrative. The co-existence in contemporary Aleppo of various conceptions of “heritage” could explain the population’s apparent indifference to the destruction of historical monuments qualified as official heritage. On the other hand, the populations of the historical and unincorporated neighbourhoods suffering in the violence of the civil war are precisely those heirs of traditional society for whom the memory of lifestyles and routine practices form a basis for heritage and confirm the written narratives of the ancient cities?  a0997-1327