Syrian Memory in the Archive
Guide to Digital, Oral, Legal, and Cultural Archives in Syria
In 1975, an Italian archaeological mission at Tell Mardikh, in northwestern Syria, uncovered the archive of the kingdom of Ebla: thousands of cuneiform tablets preserving details of the kingdom’s administration and daily life in the third millennium BCE.
Today, Syrian initiatives, using different tools and working toward different aims, preserve documents, photographs, testimonies, and cultural material recording what Syrians have lived through, including the violations they have suffered.
These materials are spread across digital archives, human rights databases, oral history projects, and media and cultural platforms. After the fall of the regime in December 2024, documents and records tied to state institutions and their security apparatus also emerged. Collecting, organizing, and making them accessible continues to pose challenges.
This guide uses “archive” broadly to describe sources that preserve material related to Syria, although they differ in what they hold and how their material can be accessed. Some allow journalists to browse images, videos, and documents directly. Others gather recorded testimonies or document violations in databases. The guide also includes media and cultural platforms that preserve their own work, as well as institutions whose original data is not public but whose reports can be consulted or whose staff can be contacted. Each entry explains what the source holds, what it makes available, and how journalists might use it.
The guide aims to help journalists find sources relevant to their stories, understand what material is available and how to access it, and recognize the limits of its use. It is a selection of sources across different fields, rather than a complete list, and can be expanded as new material becomes available.
Before using archived material in a story, journalists should establish its source and context, verify what it shows, and consider any risks that publication may pose to the people involved. The following points should be kept in mind:
- An archive can support research, but it does not replace independent verification.
- Wherever possible, trace material back to its source rather than relying solely on the copy held in an archive.
- Check when and where material was created, the context in which it was produced, and its chain of custody: who collected it, when, and how it reached the archive.
- The presence of a testimony or document in an archive does not necessarily mean the person involved can be named or identified. Some material is made available under conditions intended to protect those concerned.
- Images of victims or detainees and sensitive personal data require careful handling, regardless of an archive’s access policy.
- Check the archive’s requirements for citation and reuse, including copyright restrictions.
- Figures published by human rights organizations generally reflect the cases they have been able to document and verify, rather than the total number of cases.
- Distinguish between the original material, the copy held in the archive, its metadata, and any analysis or classification added by the organization. Each layer may contain different information or reflect different assumptions.
Each entry in the guide also explains how its material can be accessed. Some collections are public and searchable. Others require an access request, particularly when they contain sensitive material or personal testimonies. Internal databases may not allow direct access, but journalists can consult their published reports or contact the organizations that hold them.
Part One: Digital Evidence Archives
1. Syrian Archive
The Syrian Archive was founded in 2014 and is run by the Mnemonic organization to preserve and document digital material related to human rights violations and crimes in Syria, drawing on sources from all parties to the conflict. The archive holds more than six million records and relies on 5,024 sources; roughly 650,000 pieces of media have been processed through its workflow, of which 8,249 have been verified, while in-depth investigation has covered 2,069 incidents, according to the archive’s own data.
Content passes through stages of collection, preservation, processing, and verification, with collection sources kept separate from verification sources, and metadata added to help track a piece of material and its context. This methodology gives journalists access to digital material preserved before it disappeared from internet platforms, as well as a record showing the material’s source and the verification process it went through. The archive’s value stands out especially in investigations that require linking images, videos, and documents to the place and time of an event and the parties involved.
- Type of material: Open-source images, videos, and digital documents, categorized and verified to varying degrees.
- Time / geographic scope: From 2011 to the present, covering conflict areas across Syria involving all parties.
- Access: Open to the public; the site allows full browsing of and searching within the database, and the verification methodology is published publicly in the Methodology and Tools section of the Syrian Archive site.
- Search & download: Advanced search is available directly through the Syrian Archive’s data archive. Browsing material and metadata is open to everyone, while requests for bulk data downloads or original full-format stored copies require direct contact, for reasons of legal protection and the security of victims and sources.
- Languages: The site fully supports both Arabic and English, and users can switch easily between them to browse investigations and databases.
- Contact: The platform and its parent organization can be reached via the Syrian Archive’s email for general requests, or through secure encrypted channels (PGP keys) for sensitive material (a digital security method that encrypts the content of sensitive messages and files so no third party can read them, protecting the identity and safety of activists and witnesses).
- Usage restrictions: Published material is subject to specific usage policies consistent with data-protection standards and human-rights archiving ethics; direct contact with the platform is advisable before any extensive journalistic use or legal application, to ensure proper attribution and avoid harming victims and sources.
2. Lost & Found
A campaign launched by the Syrian Archive to document and track the impact of content-moderation policies and the removal of digital human-rights material at risk of disappearing from social media platforms.
The campaign has succeeded in restoring 350,357 videos to public platforms after they were taken down, ensuring that journalists and researchers can access these visual materials and that they remain in their original digital space as legal and historical evidence.
Type of material: Human-rights and documentary videos that social media platforms were forced to reinstate after being arbitrarily removed.
Time / geographic scope: Tied to material documenting violations of the Syrian conflict since 2011.
Access: Open; restored material is returned to its original links and accounts, publicly available on social networks.
Search & download: The project has no independent search engine; its efforts and statistics are presented on the Lost & Found page of the Syrian Archive, while the material itself can be searched in the site’s general data archive.
Languages: Fully supports both Arabic and English.
Contact: Through the shared official contact channels of the Syrian Archive and its parent organization, Mnemonic (via general email or encrypted PGP keys).
Usage restrictions: Material is subject to data-protection policies and the security of victims and the sources of the content.
3. The Daraa Archive and Syrian Oral History Project
The Daraa Archive began with material filmed by Syrian photographers and activists in the early days of the 2011 Syrian revolution, and later developed into a research project at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR), bringing together the footage with testimony from those who shot it. Alongside the videos, the project includes oral history interviews with photographers from Daraa, Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, and Raqqa, recovering the circumstances and motivations behind the filming and the experience of the camera operators themselves.
Type of material: Hundreds of hours of live recordings documenting the early days (demonstrations, shelling, funerals), plus recorded oral-history interviews with the photographers.
Time / geographic scope: From early 2011, covering Daraa and the Syrian provinces mentioned above.
Access: Closed/restricted; the raw material and full recordings are not published online, to protect the identities of activists and their families. The public can access the project’s artistic and cultural output; this archive formed the foundation for the international co-production documentary Our Memory Project.
Search & download: Not available to the public; accessing the database or obtaining copies of material for research or human-rights purposes requires direct coordination and a special request to the supervising academic centre.
Languages: English (for research studies and the platform) and Arabic (the language of the original interviews and testimonies).
Contact: Through direct coordination with the research team at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR) at Birmingham City University, via the official research email: admresearch@bcu.ac.uk.
Usage restrictions: Strict; requires review by the academics and filmmakers running the project to ensure the ethical and legal use of personal testimonies.
Part Two: Syrian Press Archives
4. Syrian Print Archive
The project began in 2013 as an initiative of the Enab Baladi foundation to preserve collective memory and protect Syrian journalism from being lost, and its dedicated website was officially launched in December 2014.
The archive today holds 307 publications and 8,918 archived issues, totaling more than 142,000 pages drawn from newspapers, magazines, and periodicals of varying political leanings and places of publication.
The archive turns this scattered print material into an advanced, searchable database, classifying publications by place of issue, frequency of publication, and political orientation, and enabling full-text search within PDF files.
Type of material: Print newspapers, magazines, and periodicals fully digitized and converted into readable, text-searchable PDF files.
Time / geographic scope: From 2011 to the present, covering media outlets and publications issued inside and outside Syria by various parties to the conflict.
Access: Fully open and free to the public online.
Search & download: The advanced search engine on the Syrian Print-Media Archive site allows filtering by publication, author, or date range, with direct, free download of the original PDF files for all archived issues.
Languages: The content and archived issues are primarily in Arabic, with a full browsing interface available in English.
Contact: Via the official contact information listed on the archive’s page, or through the general management of the Enab Baladi organization overseeing the project.
Usage restrictions: Intellectual-property rights belong to each publication and its original publisher; clear attribution to the source (the Syrian Print-Media Archive / the original publication) is required when quoting or using the material for journalistic or human-rights purposes.
Part Three: Oral History
5. Syrian Memory
A non-profit research project founded by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in 2019; its comprehensive digital platform was officially launched to the public in May 2024 to build a reliable national archive of events since March 2011.
The archive holds a vast library of Syrian oral history comprising more than 2,500 hours of recorded testimony, alongside 900,000 video clips and roughly 50,000 official documents, in addition to detailed databases covering 10,000 entities and 6,000 key figures, along with a verified day-by-day chronicle of the Syrian revolution and its geographic and temporal context.
Type of material: Audiovisual oral-history recordings, documents, photographs, archived videos, data on entities and figures, and a verified day-by-day chronicle.
Time / geographic scope: From March 2011 to the present, covering all Syrian provinces, with the day-by-day chronicle focused on the pivotal 2011–2015 period.
Access: Fully open and free; the platform allows researchers and the public to browse the databases, listen to testimonies, and read the daily chronicle directly.
Search & download: The site has its own advanced search engine enabling cross-referenced tracking through multiple entry points (by event, figure, date, entity, and geographic location), with integrated browsing of materials and documents.
Languages: Primarily Arabic, for all content, testimonies, and the chronicle.
Contact: Directly through the contact page on the Syrian Memory site, or via the headquarters of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Usage restrictions: Material is available for research and academic purposes; testimonies and sensitive material are subject to national-memory protection policies, and explicit attribution to the project is required when quoting or publishing.
6. Syrian Oral History Archive (SOHA)
The archive program was established in 2016 by the Dawlaty organization, with technical support from HURIDOCS; its public digital platform was officially launched in December 2023 to build a comprehensive Syrian narrative grounded in transitional justice and collective memory. The archive brings together more than 400 oral testimonies documenting the experiences of marginalized groups — particularly women from the families of the missing, detained, and forcibly disappeared, and young Syrians aged 18 to 24 — to preserve the details of daily life and violations away from official narratives.
Type of material: Oral-history recordings (audio testimonies and lived experiences) accompanied by descriptive metadata and advanced human-rights classifications.
Time / geographic scope: Documents oral accounts from the start of the peaceful movement in 2011 to the present, with general coverage of Syrian provinces and areas of refuge.
Access: Tiered; the platform allows the public to browse descriptive metadata and written excerpts, while full audio recordings and sensitive material are subject to security controls to protect sources.
Search & download: Available directly through SOHA’s digital platform (Uwazi), where the search engine offers precise filtering by category, gender, geographic scope, and type of violation. Direct download of the full raw audio material is not available to protect privacy.
Languages: The site’s interface and content are fully available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: For access requests: through direct coordination with the Dawlaty organization for dedicated research and human-rights requests.
Usage restrictions: Extremely strict; protecting the identities and safety of testimony-givers and their families is an integral part of the platform’s policy, and republishing material or quoting it out of context without attribution and adherence to agreed confidentiality and security standards is strictly prohibited.
The Syrian Oral History Archive
7. Oral History of Syrian Women (Badael)
The Badael organization launched the Oral History of Syrian Women project in 2018 to document and preserve collective memory and women’s experiences during the years of conflict — from siege, detention, and displacement to civic activism and daily life. The project comprises more than 250 audio and video interviews, totaling over 300 hours of recordings, with women from diverse backgrounds and regions.
The project follows a participatory methodology, in which displaced Syrian women in Turkey conducted the interviews and gathered the testimonies themselves, to ensure local ownership of the resulting body of knowledge.
Type of material: Recorded oral-history interviews (audio and video) with descriptive metadata and thematic/interpretive classification of the testimonies.
Time / geographic scope: Since 2018 (covering events and shifts since 2011), with interviews focused on displaced women originally from various Syrian regions.
Access: Closed/restricted; the full testimonies and recordings are not published publicly, to protect the privacy and safety of the speakers. Outputs and research papers drawing on the archive are published in the Memory and Oral History section of the Badael website.
Search & download: Not available to the public; the material is used internally and within the research of the regional Sard oral-history network, which Badael co-founded.
Languages: Primarily Arabic for the testimonies and interviews, with descriptive and research outputs available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: Research inquiries can be submitted via Badael’s official contact page.
Usage restrictions: Extremely strict; protecting identity and confidentiality is a core consideration given the sensitivity of detention and violation cases; any use or publication without prior coordination and explicit consent from the organization and the participants is prohibited.
Memory and Oral History — badael.org
8. Syrian Oral History Project (Sites of Conscience)
In 2014, Syrian members of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience — including Enab Baladi and the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies — gathered more than 50 oral testimonies from Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey and from people displaced inside Syria.
The interviews were conducted to preserve civilian accounts of the war and feed them into documentation and memory-preservation efforts. The recordings were later used for awareness-raising and research, and could serve as evidence in legal proceedings as well as memorials preserving the stories of those who gave them.
Type of material: Recorded oral testimonies with Syrian refugees and displaced people.
Time / geographic scope: 2014, with refugees in Jordan and Turkey and displaced people inside Syria.
Access: Not clearly stated on the project’s page; direct contact with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience is advised.
Search & download: Not stated.
Languages: Likely Arabic and English, depending on the language of the testimonies.
Contact: Via Sites of Conscience or the participating Syrian members (Enab Baladi, the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies).
Usage restrictions: Not stated; the fact that the material could be used as legal evidence means prior coordination with the owning body is needed before any journalistic use.
Syrian Oral History Project — Sites of Conscience (project announcement video and project page)
Part Four: Human Rights and Documentation Databases
9. Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR)
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has, since June 2011, been documenting violations and building ongoing databases covering extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture.
The network bases its data collection on victims’ testimonies, field sources, and open-source visual material. It publishes its methodology in detail, grounded in international law and specialized international protocols such as the Berkeley Protocol on digital investigations, the Minnesota Protocol on unlawful deaths, and the Istanbul Protocol on documenting torture.
Its reports treat the figures they cite as a minimum count of documented violations, not a final, exhaustive tally.
Type of material: Periodic and thematic human-rights reports, statistical data, and qualitative databases on violations and victims.
Time / geographic scope: From June 2011 to the present, covering all Syrian territory.
Access: Open to the public; all reports, data, and interactive maps are available directly on the official website.
Search & download: The site offers a search-and-filter engine for reports and data by perpetrator, date, or type of violation, with direct download of reports in PDF format.
Languages: The platform’s content is fully available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: Via the website, or by emailing the Research and Documentation department directly at the official address: info@snhr.org.
Usage restrictions: Clear attribution to SNHR is required when quoting or using its statistics, bearing in mind that the figures represent a minimum count of violations verified under the organization’s strict documentation standards.
Syrian Network for Human Rights
10. Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC)
The center was founded in June 2011 as an extension of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), and was among the earliest and most prominent human-rights initiatives to build organized, reliable records of violations from the start of the Syrian revolution.
The center worked to document the names of victims, the killed, the detained, and the forcibly disappeared, independent of which party committed the violation.
Its databases are regarded as a key reference relied upon by the United Nations and international courts, and the Syrian Memory platform has hosted part of its historical records as part of the ongoing digital documentation of events.
Type of material: Statistical records and databases containing the full names of victims and detainees, medical documents, and specialized periodic reports on killings and enforced disappearances.
Time / geographic scope: From 2011 to the present, covering all Syrian provinces and regions and violations committed by all parties to the conflict.
Access: Fully open to the public; the independent platform and live database can be browsed directly to search for names and incidents.
Search & download: Not available to the public as an open database; the general, direct search engine for names and detailed data has been discontinued for security and technical reasons related to the safety of victims and sources. The alternative available to the public is browsing and downloading the periodic statistical reports and monthly tolls published through the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM). Access to advanced raw data for accountability and justice purposes, or for intensive human-rights research, requires a formal application and special coordination with the center’s project management.
Languages: Primarily Arabic and English.
Contact: Direct contact with the archiving and documentation management is via the platform’s official contact channels, or through coordination with the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), as the project’s current legal and administrative umbrella.
Usage restrictions: Full, explicit attribution to the VDC is required when using or quoting its data; requests for bulk data for criminal-accountability purposes are subject to privacy-protection policies and security vetting, to ensure the safety of sources and victims’ families.
Violations Watch Archives — Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression
11. Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC)
The Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) develops digital programs to document and analyze violations in the service of justice and accountability efforts.
Chief among them is the Bayanat system, a database designed by the center to organize and connect scattered information — such as people’s names, types of incidents, geographic locations, and the military and political bodies responsible — turning it into an interlinked information network that helps journalists and researchers build strong investigative reporting.
Because the database contains confidential and sensitive information, the center keeps it closed to protect the safety of victims and witnesses and to preserve the legal integrity of the evidence before courts, limiting public release to general studies and statistics.
Type of material: A comprehensive digital database of violations (kept confidential and internal), plus published reports and analyses, and the software system itself, made available as an open-source tool.
Time / geographic scope: Covers the Syrian conflict period since 2011, with comprehensive coverage of all Syrian provinces and all parties to the conflict.
Access: The core database is closed and confidential to protect people’s lives, while all reports, research, and explanatory maps are freely available to everyone via the website.
Search & download: Human-rights reports can be browsed and downloaded directly from the site. The software system itself is available for organizations to download and develop for free through the Bayanat platform on GitHub.
Languages: The site fully supports both Arabic and English for all material and publications.
Contact: Via the site’s contact page, or by emailing the center directly at the official address: info@syriaaccountability.org.
Usage restrictions: Clear attribution to the center is required when quoting its published reports; requests for raw data to support international prosecutions are handled exclusively through strict official legal channels.
12. Syria Registry
An independent public-records platform designed as public-information infrastructure, working to document public authority and public finance in Syria by tracking institutions, positions, officials, appointments, economic entities, and contracts.
The Syria Registry‘s methodology starts from the source: records are built and linked to a precise, verifiable documentary evidence trail before publication, allowing journalists and researchers to trace the origin of data and examine its institutional context, rather than treating it as isolated data points.
Type of material: Digital records and organizational structures of institutions and officials, appointment decisions, public procurement contracts, and official documents linked and attributed to their sources.
Time / geographic scope: Focuses on documenting public authority and public finance, and current laws, decrees, and appointments within Syrian state institutions.
Access: Fully open and free to the public; records are presented with a neutral description, without adopting political judgments.
Search & download: Available directly through the Syria Registry platform’s search engine, which allows filtering results by institution, individual, contract number, or document type.
Languages: Fully available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: The editorial team can be reached for institutional inquiries or evidence-backed correction requests via the official email: contact@syriaregistry.org.
Usage restrictions: Material is subject to the platform’s published editorial and review standards; explicit attribution to the platform is required, along with verifying the nature and source of every original document linked to the record before using it in security- or economy-related investigations.
13. Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ)
Since its legal establishment in 2016, Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) has worked to document human-rights violations in Syria and record them in a dedicated database.
Its material includes testimonies from victims, survivors, and their families, as well as field and open sources, alongside in-depth investigations tracking patterns of violations and how they evolve over time. The organization uses this material to identify potential parties responsible, and applies it to justice, accountability, and strategic-litigation efforts.
Its investigations rely on cross-referencing information and digital verification, with strict protocols in place to protect witnesses and safeguard data.
Type of material: Testimonies from victims, survivors, and their families, field and open sources, analytical reports and investigations, and legal papers.
Time / geographic scope: Since 2016 (covering the conflict period and political and security shifts since 2011), with broad coverage through a network of researchers and field correspondents across most Syrian cities.
Access: The core database is internal and not directly accessible to the public, to protect victims’ safety; hundreds of reports, thematic investigations, testimony stories, and fact-finding material are published and freely available to everyone on the platform.
Search & download: Reports and legal research can be browsed and downloaded directly in PDF format from the site. Access to specific records or requests for additional documents from the internal database is subject to direct coordination and a special request.
Languages: The site fully supports both Arabic and English for all material and publications.
Contact: For additional material: via the site’s contact page, or by emailing the organization directly — editor@stj-sy.org for editorial and research matters, and info@stj-sy.org for general inquiries.
Usage restrictions: Clear attribution to STJ is required when quoting its reports; the terms for sharing internal data are subject to strict privacy-protection and digital-security policies agreed between the organization and participants.
Part Five: Cultural and Social Memory
14. Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution
The project was founded in May 2013 through the efforts of researcher Sana Yazigi and an independent team, as a digital platform specialized in archiving and documenting the forms of creative, popular, and cultural expression that accompanied the Syrian revolution.
The archive began with just 200 items and today holds more than 27,000 attributed artistic, intellectual, and cultural works, drawn from the output of roughly 3,200 artists, writers, and unidentified contributors.
The Creative Memory project aims to protect cultural production from being lost, and to link each artwork to its historical, geographic, and temporal context, so that it functions as a living historical record documenting the social and political experience of the Syrian people.
Type of material: Political posters, graffiti art, cartoons, songs and chants, poetry and short stories, visual and sculptural works, films, and visual and theatrical material.
Time / geographic scope: From 2011 to the present, tied to the Syrian revolution and its major turning points, spanning 50 key geographic locations where activism and culture have been tracked, inside Syria and beyond.
Access: Fully open and free to the public; all digitized material and its analytical descriptions can be browsed directly on the site.
Search & download: The site offers an advanced search engine, categorized by artistic style, creator, date, or geographic scope. Browsing material is available at medium resolution, while using or downloading high-resolution files for exhibitions or research requires direct coordination to protect intellectual property rights.
Languages: Fully available and translated in three languages: Arabic, English, and French.
Contact: Through coordination with the editorial team via the site’s contact page, or by emailing them directly at the official address: info@creativememory.org.
Usage restrictions: Intellectual-property rights belong to the original artists and creators, or to the collective initiatives that produced the work; the platform follows a policy of clear source attribution and IP protection before any republication or journalistic or commercial use of the material.
Syrian Revolution Archive — Creative Memory
15. Syrian Heritage Archive
The project began in 2013 as a close collaboration between the German Archaeological Institute and the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, to preserve the architectural and archaeological memory of Syria. The archive documents historical sites and buildings by digitizing and preserving more than 350,000 items, including photographs (from the early twentieth century to today), maps and architectural plans, and archaeological reports. This material provides a foundation for investigations into the destruction of historic cities (such as the old souks of Aleppo), for comparing damage before and after the conflict, and for establishing property and location rights.
Type of material: Historical and contemporary photographs, geographic maps and architectural/engineering plans, postcards, and digitized archaeological reports.
Time / geographic scope: Spans from the early twentieth century to the present, geographically covering thousands of archaeological sites and old cities mapped on Syria’s virtual map.
Access: Partially open; the site allows the public a free exploratory journey through the heritage material and maps, while the full raw academic data (around 115,000 items) is preserved in the German Archaeological Institute’s academic digital databases.
Search & download: The search engine on the Syrian Heritage Archive site allows searching by the name of a site or historic city, through an integrated interactive map. Direct download of high-resolution files requires a formal request for restoration or research purposes.
Languages: Fully available in three languages: Arabic, English, and German.
Contact: Through direct contact with the project and research management at the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, via the official email: info@syrian-heritage.org.
Usage restrictions: Material is subject to the ownership rights of the institutions, photographers, and researchers who collected the data; permission and precise source attribution are required before any republication or journalistic use of high-resolution plans and photographs.
16. Modern Art of Syria Archive (MASA)
The Atassi Foundation launched the Modern Art of Syria Archive (MASA) as a digital platform and non-profit research initiative aimed at protecting Syrian cultural and artistic heritage and encouraging international interest in it. The archive preserves a diverse range of visual and historical material documenting the trajectory of the visual arts, the biographies of artists, and their cultural networks. It includes prominent dedicated collections, such as the archive of artist Leila Nseir alone, which contains 478 published items out of roughly 700 that reached the project, in addition to other complete collections such as the archives of Burhan Karkutly and Ahmad Madoun.
Type of material: Digitized artworks, photographs of historical exhibitions, documentary correspondence, critical essays, press clippings, invitation cards, and handwritten notes by artists.
Time / geographic scope: Covers the history of modern Syrian art across several decades (from the early twentieth century to contemporary art today), including the work of artists inside Syria and in the diaspora.
Access: Partially open; hundreds of documents and materials related to the core collections (such as Leila Nseir, Burhan Karkoutly, and the Atassi Gallery archive) are published and freely available to everyone, while the remaining collected material undergoes ongoing sorting and documentation before being fully published.
Search & download: Advanced browsing and search are available directly through the MASA search engine, covering published material, documents, and the digital library.
Languages: The site’s interface and descriptive material are fully available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: For researchers: to request additional material or contribute to the archive, contact the Atassi Foundation directly at: info@atassifoundation.com.
Usage restrictions: Intellectual-property rights to the artworks and personal documents belong to the original artists or their legal heirs; coordination with the foundation and precise, clear attribution to the source (MASA / Atassi Foundation) is required before any republication or journalistic use.
17. Syrian Cassette Archives
The project was founded as an independent research effort in 2018 by researchers and archivists Mark Gergis and Yamen Mekdad, and its digital platform was launched to the public in 2022 to preserve the sounds and stories of Syria’s prolific cassette era (from the 1970s to 2010).
Through a recent joint project that began in late 2023 with support from the British Council‘s Cultural Protection Fund, the initiative succeeded in preserving and digitizing more than 1,000 cassette tapes from private collections at risk of decay, and trained nine Syrian specialists in archive management.
The project focuses on the cultural and everyday memory of Syria’s diverse communities — Arab, Kurdish, Assyrian, Armenian, and Iraqi refugee — by preserving recordings of live concerts, dabke wedding celebrations, and street music.
Type of material: Digitized popular and folkloric music recordings from cassette tapes, digitized designed tape covers, and oral-history interviews and research articles with musicians and producers from that era.
Time / geographic scope: Covers the period from the 1970s to 2010, representing artistic production across various Syrian provinces and beyond.
Access: Fully open and free to the public; the platform lets the public dive into the Syrian sound scene and explore the material free of charge.
Search & download: The Syrian Cassette Archives site offers a search and browsing engine designed to mimic the shelves of old cassette shops, where a full tape can be listened to and users can switch between Side A and Side B. Direct download of the complete audio files is not available, in order to preserve rights.
Languages: The site’s interface and editorial articles are available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: Those running the archive can be reached for research inquiries or to contribute new tapes via the “Contact Us” page on the Syrian Cassette Archives site.
Usage restrictions: Rights to the recordings and compositions belong to the original musicians, producers, or distribution companies; any commercial use of the material without prior coordination is prohibited, and explicit attribution to the project and the source is required.
https://syriancassettearchives.org
18. Qisetna (“Our Story”)
The project was founded in 2013 through the efforts of visual artist and activist Juan Delgado and a volunteer international team, as a non-political cultural and social initiative aimed at preserving the oral memory and cultural identity of Syrian communities affected by the conflict and displacement.
Qisetna documents aspects of everyday Syrian life through food, crafts, customs, and folk music, turning the memories of ordinary people — from the alleys of old Damascus to the cotton fields of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa — into a living human record.
The project won a UK award for excellence and innovation as the best community archive in 2017, for its success in strengthening community resilience and documenting community heritage.
Type of material: Written personal stories and accounts, oral-history recordings, interviews with contemporary artists, and outputs of storytelling and creative workshops.
Time / geographic scope: Extends to cover memories and experiences of Syrian life before 2011 and during the years of conflict, covering various Syrian provinces alongside countries of refuge and diaspora in Europe and beyond.
Access: Fully open and free to the public; all stories and testimonies are published and available for direct reading, with the aim of introducing an international audience to Syrian culture.
Search & download: The site offers free browsing of stories by category. In addition, a permanent, protected digital repository of the testimonies has been built through the Qisetna digital archive at the Living Refugee Archive, to ensure sustainable data classification and research preservation.
Languages: Available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: The project welcomes contributions and research requests via its official email: qisetna@gmail.com, or through the “Share Your Story” page on Qisetna.
Usage restrictions: The stories express the individual memory of their owners and are subject to the project’s intellectual and moral-rights protections; explicit, clear attribution to both the platform and the narrator is required (or respecting a request for anonymity in sensitive testimonies) before any quotation or journalistic republication.
19. SyriaUntold
The project was founded in 2013 as a collective effort by a group of Syrian journalists, writers, and programmers to produce in-depth narrative coverage and journalistic stories focused on civil and cultural resistance. The site holds a very rich archive of material, initiatives, street movements, and human stories that accompanied the shifts of the conflict, preserving an important layer of Syrian digital memory that might otherwise be hard to reach through conventional search engines.
SyriaUntold’s importance lies in offering an alternative angle, moving away from purely political and military narratives to focus instead on the margins, civil society, and Syrian cultural networks.
Type of material: Narrative journalistic features, investigations, interviews and testimonies, visual material, posters, opinion pieces, and social-research blog posts.
Time / geographic scope: From 2013 to the present, covering the activism and civil experiences of Syrians inside the country and across various countries of refuge and diaspora.
Access: Fully open and free; all reports, material, and investigations are published and available for public reading directly on the site.
Search & download: The site offers a direct search engine covering its records and sections (Stories, Profiles, Testimonies, Investigations), with reading and viewing available without download restrictions.
Languages: Content is published in parallel in Arabic and English, in addition to material published in Kurdish.
Contact: Editorial pitches and ideas can be submitted directly to the editors’ email: editors@syriauntold.com, and general or institutional inquiries via the organization’s email: info@syriauntold.com.
Usage restrictions: Published material is subject to data-protection policies and the intellectual-property rights of its writers and photographers; explicit attribution to the site is required when quoting, and commercial use of the material without prior permission is prohibited.
Part Six: Prisons and Sites as Archives
The traces of detention extend beyond documents and testimonies. Buildings, cells, and marks left on their walls can also help reveal what happened inside. The following projects document these sites in the field or reconstruct them digitally. They bring together testimonies, documents, and investigations that journalists can use as starting points for further reporting.
ISIS Prisons Museum
The project began as a field effort in 2017, led by journalist Amer Matar and a team of filmmakers and activists, to collect evidence as soon as ISIS was driven out; it was officially launched as an interactive digital platform to the public in October 2024, under the broader human-rights umbrella of the “Prisons Museum.”
The archive combines forensic investigations with digital 3D architectural reconstruction of detention sites and mass graves. The museum holds a vast database of more than 70,000 original and translated administrative documents recovered from the group’s headquarters and its Hisbah (morality-policing) apparatus, along with roughly 500 in-depth interviews and testimonies with former detainees and survivors.
Type of material: Interactive 3D virtual tours of prisons, ISIS administrative and judicial documents, recorded survivor testimonies (audio and video), and forensic and spatial engineering analyses.
Time / geographic scope: Documents violations during the group’s period of control (2014–2017), and geographically covers hundreds of detention sites and mass graves in Syria and Iraq.
Access: Open to the public; the site allows browsing the investigations, reading translated documents, and taking virtual tours inside the group’s cells.
Search & download: The ISIS Prisons Museum site offers an advanced search engine categorized by topic, document, or geographic location and target prison. Direct download of raw material or advanced data is closed to protect privacy and is subject to judicial and human-rights coordination.
Languages: The platform’s interface and documents are available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: Human-rights inquiries can be submitted via the “Contact Us” page.
Usage restrictions: Strict; protecting the safety of survivors and their families from sleeper cells is a core consideration, so the identity of some witnesses is withheld. Coordination with, and explicit attribution to, the museum is required, and raw data is shared to support international prosecutions and the pursuit of perpetrators.
Syria Prisons Museum
The Syria Prisons Museum officially launched its interactive digital platform in September 2025 (as part of the parent Prisons Museum foundation, coinciding with international field exhibitions), to document the crimes and violations committed inside the cells and branches of the former Syrian regime. In its current phase, the project focuses on documenting notorious detention facilities such as Saydnaya Military Prison and Branch 215 (the Raid Company), relying on survivor testimonies, leaked documents, and architectural analysis to produce digital 3D reconstructions of the security structures before they are tampered with or demolished.
It offers an investigative model that turns the cell itself into physical and legal evidence supporting transitional-justice cases and the pursuit of perpetrators.
Type of material: Interactive 3D virtual walkthroughs of detention facilities and security branches, survivor testimonies (audio and video), in-depth investigative reports, official documents, and research articles.
Time / geographic scope: Documents an era of detention and violations spanning decades (with investigations focused on 2011–2024), geographically targeting the prisons and branches of the security services across various Syrian provinces.
Access: Fully open and free to the public; the platform allows the public to browse the investigations and take free virtual visits to the documented sites.
Search & download: The Syria Prisons Museum site offers a search-and-browse engine for branches, prisons, and investigative files, with the ability to take the 3D visual tours. Direct download of raw material and full victim records is restricted for reasons of privacy and legal confidentiality.
Languages: Available in both Arabic and English.
Contact: With the foundation’s documentation and legal team via the “Contact Us” page on the Prisons Museum site.
Usage restrictions: Strict and rigorous; protecting the identities and safety of survivors, witnesses, and the families of the missing is the project’s top priority. Direct coordination with, and explicit attribution to, the museum is required before any quotation, and raw data is used in coordination with international judicial bodies to support prosecutions.
No single archive holds the whole of Syrian memory. Its traces are scattered across documents, testimonies, photographs, and physical sites. Some are publicly accessible; others remain difficult to reach. This guide brings a selection of these sources together to help journalists find and investigate stories that no single record can tell on its own. As new archives emerge and previously inaccessible material becomes available, the guide can be updated and expanded.