GHAZNI PROVINCE, Afghanistan - Ghazni Texas Agribusiness Development Team-IV and Ghazni Afghan National Police officers provided security for the U.S. Heritage Documentation Program from the U.S. National Park Service as they surveyed two historic minarets in Ghazni City July 5-6.
Three members from the program with Hamidullah Sarwari, Ghazni Director of Information and Culture, conducted a detailed survey of the towers to lay the foundation for future preservation work on the monuments. The two days of laser scan data measured the structures and created an archival set of architectural drawings which will support the efforts for future preservation.
Dr. Laura Tedesco, the Cultural Heritage Program manager, said the minarets are historically significant.
“The Ghazni minarets are among the last vestiges of the great Ghaznavid Empire, which ruled an area from the Caspian Sea to the Ghanges Delta during the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D. Commissioned during the reigns of Masud III (A.D. 1099- 1157) and Bahram Shah (A.D. 1118-1157), the flanged towers are built of fired mud brick faced with elaborate terracotta decorations which form geometric designs and Kufic inscriptions.”
These two towers are located just east of Ghazni City and are approximately 600 meters apart. For more than 700 years, both minarets stood over 44 meters high, but in 1902 an earthquake destroyed their cylindrical upper halves. In the 1960s some limited conservation was conducted and iron conical roofs were built to protect the structures from the elements. The remaining towers now extend more than 20 meters in height.
Paul Davidson, a National Park Service surveyor, said, “The thorough planning by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, as well as Texas ADT-IV who provided security at the site, allowed us to focus on those challenges relevant to our survey work. This project would not have been successful otherwise. After meeting with Musa Khan, the governor of Ghazni, and Hamidullah Sarwari, the Ghazni director of Information and Culture, it was enlightening to find that the people of Afghanistan have many of the same wishes to preserve their cultural heritage as we do in the United States. Our hope is that this project will promote greater preservation awareness of not only the towers but also the vast cultural heritage of Afghanistan.”
Very few archeological sites remain in Afghanistan; for example, the relief statues of Buddah in Banyian were destroyed, along with many other archeological treasures, by the Taliban in the early 2000s.
The minarets of Ghazni are nearly 100 percent ornately carved stone or terracotta. Inscriptions include multiple Kufic writings with the four lower panels having a continuous band containing the Victory sura (Sura al-Fath, 48) from the Quran, written in cursive script on a floral background.
Tedesco said, “This initial documentation will lay the foundation for future conservation of the towers and support efforts to prevent further looting, pending stable security conditions and funding. This project also coincides with events surrounding Ghanzi as the Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s City of Islamic Culture for the Asian Region in 2013.”
| Date Taken: | 07.06.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 07.24.2011 17:26 |
| Story ID: | 74235 |
| Location: | GHAZNI PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: | 195 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, US agencies seek to preserve Ghazni Minarets, by 1LT Laura Childs, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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