Afghan Cultural Heritage Consulting Organization (ACHCO)

KOHANDIZ

In June 2016, ACHCO published a bilingual account of conservation work at the Mausolea of Shahzada Abdullah and Abdul Qasim at Kuhandiz, Herat. The aim of this publication is to provide Afghan and other practitioners with technical details of the research that took place to inform the conservation and the rationale behind decisions that were made, as a reference for future initiatives. Printed copies of the publication have been made available to our partners in Afghanistan and both the English and Dari versions are also available in the library section of this website. Financial support for preparing this publication came from the US State Department. In October 2013, a Federal Assistance Award was made by the US State Department to ACHCO to enable the documentation of the mausolea of Shahzada Abdullah and Shahzada Abdul Qasim in Herat, and priority conservation of the former. Situated in Kuhandiz, which is thought to be the site of a settlement dating to the Achaemenid period, the mausoleum of Shahzada Abdullah dates from 1487 and is one of a number of religious buildings constructed by the members of the Timurid court. Typical of elite funerary architecture of that period, the building suffered damage as a result of conflict in the 1980s. The immediate focus of the conservation will be on structural stabilization of the brick masonry structure, in parallel with documentation of surviving Timurid glazed tilework and painted internal decoration.

Starting Date : 2013-10-01

Completion Date : 2016-03-03