Dragging on for over two months now, the Marawi conflict has taken a staggering toll on the autonomous Muslim Mindanao city, with over 600 deaths, its population decimated, and its districts bombed out.
Adding to the residents’ and the regional government’s fear is the massive loss of priceless pusaka (heirloom) objects such as baur (storage chest), brass ware, langkit (malong), which form part of the city’s rich cultural heritage.
Bai Marites Maguindra, head of Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Bureau of Cultural Heritage, told the Inquirer that what was more depressing was the loss of ancient documents written in Jawi, a pre-Spanish form of writing derived from the Arabic alphabet then prevalent in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Islamic areas of the Philippines.
Recorded in these documents, which had been kept by leading Muslim families in Marawi, were various important occasions such as marriages, inter-marriages, contracts, clan-to-clan agreements, dispute settlements.
Kirims (family genealogies, documents of royal heritage also called tarsila) which are unique to the Muslims were also written in Jawi.
The languages could include but not limited to Malay, Cebuano, Iranun, even Tagalog.
“These are part of our cultural heritage, our history. These are writings, these are information, these are knowledge-based [sic] which give us traces of the people of the past,” Maguindra explained.
She added that while the damaged structures could be rebuilt, the documents that Muslims considered sacred could no longer be brought back.
Maguindra said that once the city was cleared of terrorists, she would push for the digitization of the remaining documents to ensure their preservation. She added she would inventory the extent of the losses in terms of built, movable and intangible heritage items.
She said that whatever was lost culturally would be even more than the initial P20 billion pegged by the national government for the rehabilitation of Marawi, “because our cultural heritage is more than that amount—it is priceless.”
“When we rebuild Marawi, we need to account the damage to cultural heritage,” she said. “We just don’t want to build buildings. We just don’t want to build bridges and roads. We also have to work
on cultural heritage itself.”—CONTRIBUTED