Khaled Mohamad al-Asaad (Arabic: خالد الأسعد, Arabic pronunciation: [ɐlʔæsʕæd], January 1932 – 18 August 2015) was a Syrian archaeologist and the head of antiquities at the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He held this position for over forty years.^[6] Al-Asaad was publicly beheaded by the Islamic State on 18 August 2015, at the age of 83.^[6]

Al-Asaad was born in 1932 in Palmyra, where he spent most of his life.^[7] He held a diploma in history and was educated at the University of Damascus.^[8] Al-Asaad was the father of six sons and five daughters, one of whom was named Zenobia after the well-known Palmyrene queen.^[8]

In May 2015, Tadmur (the modern city of Palmyra) and the adjacent ancient city of Palmyra came under the control of the Islamic State.

Al-Asaad helped evacuate the city museum prior to the Islamic State's takeover,^[8] but was himself captured by the terrorist organisation. The Islamic State then tortured Al-Asaad in an attempt to discover the location of the ancient artifacts that he helped hide.^[15][16] He was murdered in Tadmur on 18 August 2015 at the age of eighty-three.^[17]

The New York Times reported:

After detaining him for weeks, the jihadists dragged him on Tuesday to a public square where a masked swordsman cut off his head in front of a crowd, Mr. Asaad's relatives said. His blood-soaked body was then suspended with red twine by its wrists from a traffic light, his head resting on the ground between his feet, his glasses still on, according to a photo distributed on social media by Islamic State supporters.^[18]

Following al-Asaad's death, the Islamic State hanged a placard on his corpse listing his alleged "crimes": being an "apostate", representing Syria at "infidel conferences", serving as "the director of idolatry" in Palmyra, visiting "Heretic Iran", and communicating with "a brother in the Syrian security services".^[18]

His body was reportedly displayed in the new section of Palmyra (Tadmur) and then in the ancient section, the treasures of which the Islamic State had already demolished.^{[16][18][19][20][21]}

In February 2021, Syrian state sources reported the discovery of al-Asaad's body in the countryside 10 km east of Palmyra.^[22]

Along with al-Asaad, Qassem Abdullah Yehya, the deputy director of the DGAM Laboratories, also protected the Palmyra site, and was murdered by the Islamic State while on duty on 12 August 2015. He was thirty-seven years old.^[23]

• Asaad, Khaled (1980). Nouvelles découvertes archéologiques en Syrie [New archaeological discoveries in Syria] (in French). Damascus: Direction générale des antiquités et des musées. OCLC 602249622.; 2nd edition 1990.
• Asaad, Khaled; Bounni, Adnan (1984). Palmyra. Geschichte, Denkmäler, Museum (in German). Damascus: Direction générale des antiquités et des musées.
• Gawlikowski, Michael; Asaad, Khaled (1995). Palmyra and the Aramaeans. ARAM periodical. Vol. 7. Oxford: The ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies. OCLC 68075497.
• Asaad, Khaled (1995). "Restoration Work at Palmyra". ARAM Periodical. 7 (1): 9–17. doi:10.2143/ARAM.7.1.2002213. OCLC 4632456923.
• Asaad, Khaled; Yon, Jean-Baptiste (2001), Inscriptions de Palmyre. Promenades épigraphiques dans la ville antique de Palmyre (= Guides archéologiques de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie du Proche-Orient Bd. 3). Institut Français d'Archéologie du Proche-Orient, Beirut 2001; ISBN 2-912738-12-1.
• Asaad, Khaled; Schmidt-Colinet, Andreas (eds) (2013), Palmyras Reichtum durch weltweiten Handel. Archäologische Untersuchungen im Bereich der hellenistischen Stadt. 2 vols. Holzhausen, Vienna 2013; ISBN 978-3-902868-63-3, ISBN 978-3-902868-64-0.

• Destruction of cultural heritage by ISIL
• Syrian Archaeological Heritage Under Threat
• Syro-Palestinian archaeology
• Virtual visit of Palmyra dedicated to Khaled al-Asaad