At the dawn of the 20th century, Ottoman conscripts began construction of a train line between the cities of Damascus and Medina, located in what are now Syria and Saudi Arabia, respectively. It was called the Hejaz Railway. By 1908, there were 800 miles of narrow-gauge track laid through mountains and desert. Within a decade, however, the Great Arab Revolt destroyed the original ambitions of the project. Its infrastructure, like the empire that commissioned it, began to disintegrate. Ottoman troops retreated. As they did, many buried stashes of gold coins along the train tracks, planning to return to collect them at a less chaotic time.
At least, that’s the powerful myth that has endured. There is little evidence to support it, and most experts agree that anything of value would have been found long ago. But, for decades, looters along the entirety of the Hejaz line have tried their luck. Now, after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, the security void in the country has presented an opening for treasure hunters to ransack the Ottoman railway, as well as many other heritage sites.
“You have to look for symbols,” Abu Ali told me. We stood together above honeycombed basalt rock, our backs turned against a cold January wind. Behind us were the remains of a small station from the Hejaz Railway, just a few miles from Syria’s southern border with Jordan. There were a handful of young men around, deferring to Abu Ali, an expert treasure hunter in his early 60s.
Ottoman soldiers, he said, marked points on the rails with a nick or bullet hole, then selected a memorable rock nearby. “It could resemble a turtle, or a snake,” he said. Once he believes he has found the symbol, Abu Ali uses a divining rod to determine exactly where to dig. He lets the metal rod guide his hand. “If my small finger moves, it means there’s water underneath,” he said. The thumb and second fingers indicate different metals, while the third signals nothing. The fourth is gold.
The area was pot-marked from previous unsuccessful attempts. Beside us, a teenager worked a pickax in shallow ground. The floors of the Ottoman station had been hacked to pieces; bricks pulled from the walls. Entire sections of the track embankment were dug out, leaving rails hanging like skeletal ribs.
Abu Ali has not yet found treasure. But a cousin told him that two boxes of gold were found in this very location in the past by a worker laying a power cable. “And I have a map,” Abu Ali said. It had been sent to him on WhatsApp by an unknown broker in Istanbul. The sender required payment to help decode it, but whatever he was charging was expensive enough that Abu Ali asked for our help instead. “I’ll split the gold with you,” he offered, hopefully, before we drove away.
I arrived in Syria in early January to research a book on the Hejaz Railway. Of the 14 Ottoman stations that I visited, all either had prospectors actively digging or very recent signs of activity. The same was true at the ancient city of Bosra, the capital of Roman Arabia and home to a remarkably well-preserved 15,000-seat amphitheater. There, on a colonnaded street, I watched a father and son scraping under the cobbles for coins.
In Damascus, Humam Saad, the director of excavations at the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM), was clear about the scale of the problem. It was everywhere, he said, with digging happening “night and day.” If he had to assess the severity of the looting at this point, “it would be one of the most critical times in all of Syria’s history.”
Syria was once a crossroads of empires, the meeting point of three continents and the connection between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. The country is home to roughly 4,000 registered heritage sites, of which six are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. There are another 10,000 unregistered. Discoveries from Bronze Age sites on the coast show the development of some of the earliest forms of writing in the world. Details of pioneering methods of statecraft and governance were pressed into clay tablets at settlements along the Euphrates. Classical-era cities, like Palmyra and Apamea, flourished as fulcrums of the Silk Roads and other trading networks. Later, the Umayyads, with Damascus as their thriving capital, built grand palaces and mosques while their empire extended as far as Spain and India. Each layer of civilization left its mark, imprinted on the people and land alike. As Amr Al-Azm, co-director of the Antiquities Trafficking and Heritage Anthropology Research (ATHAR, which also means “antiquities” in Arabic) Project, puts it, “Every Syrian is either born on top of an archaeological site, next to an archaeological site, or within a stone’s throw of an archaeological site.”
In the first three months of this year, I visited around 40 heritage sites in 11 Syrian governorates. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the places that had fared best were those built to stop invaders. Structures like the citadel at Aleppo, the Krak des Chevaliers Crusader fortress and the medieval Saladin Castle in the forests above Latakia were all well protected by their defensive walls. Some had sustained significant damage during the war — their ramparts could not save them from airstrikes and shelling — but the historic fortifications are still effective at deterring looters.
Elsewhere, Saad’s assessment was accurate. Many of the hundreds of early Byzantine villages and towns in Idlib and Aleppo governorates, known collectively as the “Dead Cities” — abandoned en masse between the eighth and 10th centuries — had already been extensively looted during the conflict, which saw the areas in question fall under rebel control. Monitoring groups have shown how churches and graveyards were dug up and damaged in the search for gold and other treasures, and that groups active in the area — including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — facilitated systematic excavation and smuggling routes to Turkey. Now, at the handful of locations I visited, new hunters had arrived, looking for what others might have missed.
Forty miles south of Aleppo is ancient Ebla, where 17,000 clay tablets and fragments from one of Syria’s earliest known kingdoms were discovered in the 1970s. After 2011, the area saw heavy fighting and military fortifications were built on top of the archaeological site. There were accounts of sporadic looting throughout the conflict, and on my visit I saw dozens of freshly dug earthen pits and clear bulldozer tracks. Throughout Daraa and Sweida, archaeological tells and other sites known to be of historic interest were busy with activity. Motorcycles and pickup trucks arrived loaded with digging tools and generators, and groups of men excavated with shovels and pickaxes, bent double and scattered across the hillsides. Some were happy to talk and none hid their purpose. During the time that I was in the country, only those living in coastal areas reported active police protection of sites. In the Damascus suburb of Jobar, close to the ruins of a medieval synagogue and amid total devastation of the urban landscape, families gathered around deep holes bored into the ground.
I interviewed dozens of these treasure hunters. Alongside their shovels, they carried stories, from relatives and neighbors who had seen or heard of great discoveries of artifacts. Some claimed specialties like divining or the ability to identify rocks that looked like animals. But few had any real knowledge of the areas they worked in. What united them was desperation. “We do this because we don’t have a job,” one man told me. When I asked what type of work it would take to pull him away from treasure hunting, he replied, simply, “Anything.”
These were not organized crime gangs. Instead, they are what might be described as subsistence looters. The poverty rate in Syria has reached almost 90% since the start of the war, and 3 out of every 4 people rely on humanitarian aid. Almost one-third of all housing units have been destroyed, and 5.7 million Syrians need shelter. It is no wonder that the idea of unfathomable riches lying under the ground holds so much appeal. Most of these hunters dig not out of greed but for survival. “Syrians want three things,” said Al-Azm. “Economic security, physical security and accountability. Right now, they don’t have any of those.” Across the country, I heard a similar refrain. Any solution to the treasure-hunting epidemic must first address basic needs.
In the meantime, subsistence diggers are causing catastrophic damage. The method of a treasure hunter, even one as convoluted as Abu Ali, is very different from that of an archaeologist. Archaeologists look for layers and excavate slowly, thoroughly, horizontally. Looters go straight down. In a few hours, a group of men with shovels can destroy hundreds of years of history, often without even realizing. It is less dramatic than the smuggling of precious antiquities, but entire sites in the country are being obliterated by the unwitting swing of a pickax.
In February, I traveled along the Syrian coastline to Amrit, once a Phoenician port in the third millennium BCE. It is close to the city of Tartus, and between the two is a less well-known area which was, until recently, the municipal garbage dump. In the 1960s, an employee found a cleanly cut sandstone block under the trash. A little more digging unearthed several tombs, some with clay coffins inside. Investigations revealed an important Roman cemetery, hidden from view for the best part of 2,000 years.
Two men share the responsibility for guarding Amrit and the Azar cemetery. Like many people I interviewed for this story, they preferred to only share partial identities. I met them by a rickety iron gate beside the main road, and we sat together on cracked plastic stools.
They described the days after the fall of the Assad regime. As state employees of the old government, both men had to relinquish their weapons when the regime was toppled in December. This was true for security guards all over the country. “It was lawless,” Abed said, lighting a cigarette. The sites were looted by groups with bulldozers and metal detectors. There was someone digging every hour of the day, Abed told me. “I told them that the [archaeological] missions in the past were looking for signs of civilizations, not for gold, but they threatened me and kept destroying things.” One of the groups had a religious sheikh with them, said the other man, Abu Khedr. This is another common technique in Syria and elsewhere in the region. Religious leaders, or men claiming to be them, give instructions on how and where to dig, and if there are any jinn (spirits) present, they will scare them off — for a fee.
Abed led me along a path through a grove of olive trees. In the distance, the crashing waves of the Mediterranean blended with the drone of the coastal highway. As with many largely unexcavated archaeological sites, there was not much to see on the surface. But as we walked, shapes of tombs started appearing, as depressions in the ground. Then, beside them, I saw bulldozer tracks. When I looked at my feet again more closely, I realised I was standing on a bed of smashed pottery. The earth was carpeted with thousands of shards of pots and jugs, dug out and raked over by looters. I did not find a single complete piece. Abed shook his head in disbelief.
A short while later, five soldiers in uniform came bounding across the graveyard toward us, weapons in hand. Their patches showed the logo of the Salvation Government — the name given to the rebel-linked authorities ruling parts of northwestern Syria prior to Assad’s fall — and there was a moment of uncertainty before we showed our press passes. The man in charge was Mohammed Sheban, whose jurisdiction covered the coastal side of Tartus, including Amrit and Azar.
Sheban had been in Tartus for 15 days, having arrived from Idlib to take up the position. During that time, he had already arrested 10 people for looting. Only the previous night, they had picked up three men close to the cemetery. “As we captured them, another car drove past and shot at us,” Sheban said. In the forest on the far side of Amrit, close to a Phoenician temple that still stands elevated in the middle of a large courtyard, Sheban showed me more bulldozer tracks. When the highway to Tartus was built, decorated tombs had been found in this same area. It seemed that the treasure hunters here knew what they were looking for. Later, he took me to visit the central police station in Tartus, where there were 20 more men in custody for treasure hunting. They would be tried when the courts were operating, Sheban said, although it is unclear when that might be.
Syrian law is robust when it comes to looting. The challenge is in its enforcement. Legislative Decree No. 222 prohibits all excavations without a permit from DGAM, the antiquities directorate. This includes private property. Sentences range from 10 years for illegal digging to 25 for smuggling. Under the Assads, subsistence hunting was largely curtailed by the same iron fist that ruled — and devastated — the rest of the country. But trafficking gangs thrived. In regime areas, those with connections exploited rampant corruption within the government. In rebel-held territory, the gangs were generally made up of those who learned their trade under the Islamic State group. Just as they did in the past, these same criminal groups are again adapting and expanding as the situation in Syria unfolds.
For weeks, meeting anyone from such organized groups eluded me. Either they worked at night or were too dangerous to approach. Site guards told me that they rarely stopped anyone anymore because of the likelihood that they will be carrying weapons. Archaeologists from DGAM said that even they didn’t risk going to certain areas. We had already had close calls. At Apamea, the Roman crossroads city on the Orontes river, a local resident told us the hunters were firing warning shots at anyone approaching. My colleague Wasim had previously been threatened there, and we didn’t risk it. At Deir Ali, close to Damascus, we were detained for a couple of hours by a militia group who found us interviewing treasure hunters at an Ottoman railway station.
It was in Nawa, a rural part of Daraa governorate, 60 miles south of Damascus, that I finally met a professional treasure hunter. On a barren hillside, next to the remains of a sprawling Assad-era military base, four men watched as an excavator threaded its teeth between two long, flat rocks, slowly separating them. When it was finished, they turned to a man who had asked me not to use his name and suggested that he could be referred to simply as the boss. “It’s a grave,” he told the men. “Use the screwdrivers.”
Over the next hour, small clumps of clay and soil were levered out. One man found a rusted nail. The boss told them it was from the lid of a coffin. More nails appeared, then a tooth. Slowly, the lower half of a skeleton emerged.
It was not the first skeleton I’d heard about hunters finding, though it was the first I’d seen myself. In a country where over 130,000 people are still estimated to be missing, with regular discoveries of mass graves, that is no surprise. One man had said that the worst thing about treasure hunting was the risk of stumbling upon a shallow grave of body parts from the conflict.
This skeleton, however, was much older, its bones brown and faded. When someone tried to lift out a brittle femur, it broke in two. A thread spooled out from inside the hollow bone as he pulled it away; it was a thin root from a distant tree. The light began to fade, and the rest was left for another day.
According to the boss, he has 60 people working for him across various locations. He spends $250 a day on excavator fuel — a small fortune in this area. Like Abu Ali at the railway, he uses a divining rod, and demonstrated how he pressed his elbow tight to the hip. All of this might have seemed whimsical had I not just watched him identify a graveyard on a featureless hillside. He expected the skeleton to be from the Byzantine era and hoped it would lead to gold.
At one point, he scrolled through the photo gallery on his phone. He showed me 16 gold coins, each the size of the base of a teacup, with Latin script and the face of an emperor. They were a recent find, he said. Next, he played a video of an erotic mosaic. On it, a topless woman reached to the sky as a man held her arched back. The mosaic had been laid flat inside a home, with a gas heater visible behind. Someone off-camera used a spray bottle on the tiles to make the colours pop. It was exquisite, perhaps half a square meter in size. “I’m an expert,” said the boss, smiling at my obvious surprise.
There are fewer obstacles to digging now, said the boss. The smuggling routes are likely the same as before the fall of the regime; either via the Lebanese coast, or through Idlib or the Kurdish northeast to Turkey, or occasionally south through Jordan. These days, many of his sales begin on Facebook. He had recently sold a collection of coins for $3,000 to an online buyer. He also uses TikTok, just like anyone else trying to generate interest in their business.
Part of Al-Azm’s work with ATHAR monitors online activity of antiquities trafficking. “The main take-home of this time,” he told me, “is the phenomenal increase in material and activity in Syria.” While researching this story, I joined around a dozen Facebook treasure-hunting groups, some of which have upward of 500,000 members from Syria and elsewhere in the region. According to a 2019 ATHAR report, these groups contain a mixture of “average citizens, middlemen, and violent extremists.” Amateurs ask for help with symbols. Professionals solicit buyers for everything from coins to sarcophagi. Some users offer cautionary tales. One post I saw paid tribute to three men who were killed when their metal detector led them to dig up a landmine. Other messages gave instructions on how best to attach a ladder in a tunnel, or methods for bracing walls so they don’t collapse.
An advertisement for a newly opened store in Damascus selling metal detectors and ground-penetrating radar devices caught my attention. The pieces on offer ranged from around a thousand dollars at the lower end to 10 times that number, explaining why so many were using other methods to discover things under the soil. When I visited, the owner told me he had returned from Dubai after the fall of Assad. He had faced no challenges opening the store — it was not illegal to sell or buy the devices, even if using them to look for treasure was. Business was great. Equally thriving are those renting out excavators and bulldozers. One owner said the three machines he owned were booked up for the next two months.
Treasure hunting has moved out of the shadows. In an antiques store in Damascus, a seller showed me a handheld Roman mirror, recently acquired. It was $5,000, he said, and he could get it anywhere a buyer wanted. If they said Beirut, for example, he could have it there by the afternoon. Later, I sent pictures to a specialist who said it was likely fake. But regardless, the lack of discretion showed no concern for authority.
Part of the solution to the crisis will come from enforcing the law. But this will be almost impossible until the government asserts greater control over the country in general. Aside from Mohamed Sheban in Tartus, I met few other police actively protecting heritage sites elsewhere. It was also true that the coastal area had a more visible security presence in general, and tighter control of archaeological sites there may have been symptomatic of this. Maamoun Abdulkarim, who oversaw DGAM during the time of the Islamic State, said that it was the role of that institution to push the government. It had not been easy for him to do his job under Assad, he said, but he was outspoken. Others attest to the bravery he showed during his tenure. His successors must do the same, he said. “This is the time to do something. We need mobilization now.”
One evening, at the start of Ramadan, I joined the new director-general of DGAM, Anas Hajj Zeidan, for iftar in Damascus. He had held a similar role in Idlib and said he knew the scale of the challenge. “We will be firm,” he answered when asked about security. He had commissioned a digital map to show the status of all registered heritage sites in Syria, based on reports gathered from regional colleagues. There would be investment in equipment and personnel, and training for new recruits. For the next three years, his focus was on consolidation, repair and establishing new relationships with foreign missions.
He just needs time, he said. But time is not an available luxury. The success of Zeidan’s work will require smart strategy and outreach, but it is also heavily dependent on the willingness of the government to support DGAM. The most urgent need is security for the sites, which, by the time I left in early March, did not seem to be much improved. Zeidan and his team can advocate for that, and should do so vociferously, as Abdulkarim suggests, but beyond that, the ultimate action must come from the government. Given the scale of the rebuilding project in Syria, and the scant resources, it is currently hard to see Zeidan’s cause being prioritized.
There is a psychological element to mitigating the crisis, too. “We need to rebuild people’s relationship with their heritage and culture,” Al-Azm told me. Abdulkarim said that, in the past, the local community had been a great asset to the authorities. If Syrians can be reminded of their role as guardians of history, then they could become stakeholders in the effort to protect it. This must come hand in hand with other solutions that alleviate the desperate situation for so many Syrians, but I had seen some small examples myself. At Palmyra, a trinket seller by the Greco-Roman theater told me he patrolled the site at night by motorbike. “We need this place ready for when visitors come back,” he said. He would protect it because tourism seemed a more sustainable business. All over the country, I had conversations with Syrians who spoke of their great pride in living near archaeological sites.
In early March, I visited the vaults of the National Museum. Under the main halls, which remain largely closed to the public, I was shown the Palmyrene storage rooms. Inside were intricate busts and reliefs that had been retrieved by DGAM from illegal excavations during the conflict. Most sat loose, or still packed in the Russian ammunition cases in which they had been transported. Many had been looted by the Islamic State and were recovered during the tenure of Abdulkarim, who oversaw their transportation back to Damascus. He estimated that more than 35,000 pieces had been rescued from traffickers. These artifacts that had lain under the earth for hundreds of years were now back underground, albeit in a different situation, in boxes in basements rather than under dirt, waiting for the next chapter.
Syria’s cultural heritage has endured a war, just as its people have. The two are intrinsically connected and the conflict is not over. But for all the destruction and loss, much has also been saved. There is still an opportunity to safeguard what remains, and evidence suggests that, with improved circumstances and support, there would be more widespread support for the work. I thought back to a visit I made to a lonely two-story Hejaz station called Jbab, just visible from the M5 highway midway between Damascus and Daraa. Beyond, railway tracks disappeared into a patchwork of beige fields. A farmer called Subhe Jamat lived inside the Ottoman building with his family. “This place is a part of my own body,” he said. “I cannot be without it.” He described the shock and joy of seeing the regime overthrown. Now, every day, he chases away those who come to dig for gold. “Why would we go through all of this, just to destroy the country again ourselves?”
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