45 International Journal of Islamic Architecture Volume 8 Number 1 © 2019 Intellect Ltd DiT Papers. English language. doi: 10.1386/ijia.8.1.45_1 ELI OSHEROFF The Hebrew University, Jerusalem DOTAN HALEVY Columbia University, New York Destruction as Layered Event: Twentieth Century Ruins in the Great Mosque of Gaza Abstract The destruction of architectural and archeological sites by ISIS in 2014–2015 exposed conflicting, yet co-constitutive, perceptions of the historical past, its mate- rial remains, and the relevance of both for modernity. This claim is valid for ISIS’s destruction campaign, as it took place in sites already celebrated for their former ruination. Destruction emerges out of these sites as historically multi-layered, just like the loci it is inflicted upon. In this paper we thus argue that events of destruction should be similarly excavated to reveal their historical stratigraphy and to illumi- nate critical aspects not obvious to the first, shocked, glance. We demonstrate this argument through two events of destruction that occurred in the Great Mosque of Gaza in the twentieth century. Firstly, we examine the shelling of the mosque during the First World War to show how debris of war may be transformed into artistic and literary displays. Secondly, we analyze an intellectual debate over a Jewish candela- brum engraving on one of the mosque’s pillars and its later defacement. By so doing, we question the motivations preceding acts of destruction, especially in relation to their portrayal by the destructors themselves, and expose the making of historical relics into evidence of violence. After the ancient city of Palmyra-Tadmur was recaptured from ISIS in March 2016, several newspapers ran articles featuring ‘before and after’ pictures of Keywords destruction ruins mosque First World War ISIS Gaza