Remembering Khaled al-Asaad, the Syrian archaeologist who dared to stand up to Isis

Erudite and bespectacled, he was the sort of Arab the Islamic State loathed. Khaled al-Asaad, an 81-year old archaeologist, was for the past four decades inseparable from Palmyra’s ancient ruins.

Beheaded in part for his role shielding them from the militants, they strung his headless body up on Graeco-Roman columns he once restored. His remains dangle there still.

On the coat-tails of a pornography of violence which saw the immolation of a captured pilot and the sexual enslavement of a captured aid worker before her murder, Isis still found, somehow, a way to shock.

Four army lorries left Palmyra for Damascus the night before the town fell, evacuating as many objects as possible from its museum, says his friend Dr Abd al-Razzaq Moaz, Syria’s deputy culture minister from 2000 to 2007 and former director of its antiquities and museums. Mr al-Asaad assisted.

‘He had a vast knowledge about Palmyra and its ruins, after being involved in so many aspects of its administration, excavation, and restoration,’ said Dr Amr al-Azm, who worked alongside him in Syria’s General Department of Antiquities and Museums.