How the restoration of a warrior emperor’s 16th-century garden is helping to secure Afghanistan’s heritage
Robin Lane Fox for Financial Times – February 5, 2016: he role of cultural heritage is a hot topic. Can it unite a nation shattered by war and civil strife? Can it become a rallying point only if a sense of nationhood already exists? In what sense is it “heritage”, if at all? Even those bent on destroying it are proof that monuments, sculptures and art have heritage power.
The most successful heritage project in a war-torn land is not the restoration of a statue or a building. It is the restoration of a garden in the urban heat of Afghanistan. In Kabul, the recently restored Garden of Babur, the Baghe Babur, has just attracted its three millionth visitor since the beginning of its restoration in 2008. Until then, I and others had viewed the project with misplaced doubt. This year the plan is to achieve world heritage status.
[…] In the civil wars of 1992 the garden was on one of the front lines. Trees were cut down, waterworks were ruined, buildings were burnt by mujahedin and landmines were not removed from the site until 1995. After the Taliban were forced out of Kabul in 2001, the Aga Khan and his Trust for Culture guided plans for a full restoration of Babur’s garden, seeing it as a focal point for a city which badly needed a new start. Funds from Germany, the US and other governments have helped the ambitious project, which has been a triumph and a multinational success to a degree that is not always realised.
Source: Financial Times, fetched via Google
Header image caption: (L) Babur oversees work on a Kabul garden; (R) The emperor visiting another garden
Ismailimail 