The first post-Assad International Damascus Book Fair brought crowds to Damascus and, with it, a new visibility for titles that publishers said had previously faced bans or tight security screening. Abdul-Razzaq Ahmad Saryoul, who began publishing in Syria in 2003, said he had avoided the annual fair in the past because Syria’s security agencies imposed strict measures and prohibited many books under Bashar Assad’s rule. This year, he said he applied to participate and was issued a permit the same day without being asked what his books were about.
Saryoul said the wide range of titles on offer made the fair “unprecedented.” Another publisher, Salah Sorakji, said he was proud to offer Kurdish books in the Syrian capital for the first time in decades, pointing to discrimination against ethnic Kurds during the Assad era, including bans on their language. The fair, held about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the city center, also drew a high turnout shortly after Assad was unseated in December 2024.
State media reported that 250,000 people attended on the first day, Feb. 6, according to the report on the fair. Ahmad Naasan, the fair’s director, said about 500 publishing companies from some 35 countries took part. Organizers and publishers also credited shuttle buses between the fairgrounds and central Damascus with boosting visitor numbers.
At the same time, participants said the return of previously forbidden works prompted anxiety among some religious minorities. Religious books had been among the best sellers at earlier fairs in Syria, a majority Sunni Muslim country, but this edition included openly sold religious works tied to Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyya, who lived in Damascus seven centuries ago and whose teachings are followed by Sunni jihadi groups.
A bearded man who identified himself by the nom de guerre Abu Obeida bought a copy of “Al-Aqida Alwasitiyeh” — “The Fundamental Principles of Islam” — at a stand selling religious books. “Before liberation this book was banned in Syria,” Abu Obeida told The Associated Press, standing at the stand. “Anyone who had such a book used to be taken to jail.” He later added, “Now it is available, thanks be to God,” and said that previously people read “what the state wanted them to.”
The report also described a separate case from this fair: the only known book to be banned this year, “Have You Heard the Talk of the Rafida?”, which included audio addresses by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. strike in 2006. Iraq reportedly asked Syrian authorities to remove the book because it incites hatred against Shiite Muslims.
Publishers said the fair’s openness did not arrive all at once, and that it reflected changes underway in public life after Assad’s departure. The book fair, first held in Syria in 1985, had been suspended for several years after the country’s civil war began in March 2011. Hala Bishbishi, director of the Egypt-based Al-Hala publishing house, said she was surprised by the number of people showing up, even as she said the Damascus fair could not yet be compared to those held in oil-rich Gulf states.
Bishbishi said shuttle buses helped bring visitors to the fairgrounds, and Atef Namous, a Syrian publisher who had been living abroad for 45 years, said he was participating for the first time because books could now be sold at the fair, including imported titles from Western countries. He framed the shift as a change in what publishers and attendees could access publicly.
The exhibition also came weeks after intense clashes in Syria’s northeast between Kurdish fighters and government forces, with a ceasefire deal reached afterward. The Damascus government, the report said, sought to reassure Kurds they would be equal citizens in the new political order. Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued a decree last month giving Kurds rights unseen in decades, including restoring citizenship to Kurds stripped of it under the Assad dynasty, making Kurdish one of Syria’s official languages, and recognizing Newroz as a major holiday.
Sorakji, the Kurdish publisher, said people were “very happy” with what he described as a positive step for Kurds who, he said, had been deprived for more than 60 years of practicing Kurdish culture. He said most of the people buying Kurdish books were Kurds but there were also Arabs interested in learning more about their compatriots, and Sorakji said, “We are all Syrians but what caused all the differences was the (Assad) regime.”
Other publishers described the fair as a chance to reach younger Syrians with access to information after years of war, injustice and oppression. Mayada Kayali, an owner of a publishing company, said the most important thing to offer the younger generation “is knowledge — knowledge that is accessible to them, without placing restrictions on their ideas or their opinions.”
Mroue reported from Beirut.