AKTC Work in the world

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kmaherali
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Development is a walk in the park...

The rehabilitated Forodhani Park.

By FRED OLUOCH (email the author)

Posted Monday, August 10 2009 at 00:00

Sandwiched between the historic Stone Town and the Indian Ocean, Forodhani Park in Zanzibar is an excellent blend of old and new.

The park was rehabilitated recently by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture at a cost of $2.4 million.

It is now a good blend of modernity and history. The success is hinged on the historical houses and cultures that are Zanzibar’s main attraction.

Ever since Arab traders arrived on the island using monsoon winds in the 8th century, the island has been a hub of commerce and culture — a melting pot of African, Arab, Indian and European influences.

Most of the houses were built in the 19th century when Zanzibar was one of the most important trading centres in the Indian Ocean region.

Now the enhanced aesthetics of Forodhani Park will boost tourism, the backbone of Zanzibar’s economy.

The opening of the park coincided with the advent of the tourism high season that begins in August.

Forodhani Park lies at the foot of the Old Fort — also known as Ngome Kongwe — and the former palace of the sultans, which was also used by European colonialists. It is now the Beit El-Ajaib National Museum.

In the old days, the park hosted the main port and was a landing point for former sultans of Zanzibar. It has remained a central meeting place for leisure and entertainment.

More exciting to local people is the fact that the park will provide many employment opportunities not only to those in charge of its maintainance but also those who engage in small businesses such as food vending.

They will be catalysts of social, cultural and economic development of the area.

Already, some 75 vendors have been registered and trained in hygiene and customer service, bringing more people into the formal economy.

They are expected to boost their earnings fourfold.

While opening the revamped park, President Amani Abeid Karume said it was important to Zanzibar not only for its aesthetic beauty but also for its impact on the country’s growth and poverty reduction plans.

The supply chain has also been expanded, with each vendor dealing with at least four suppliers.

The idea is to demonstrate that if countries invest more in cultural programmes, the ripple effects will improve lives and alleviate poverty.

Restoration of the park goes hand in hand with expanded micro-credit facilities to vendors and other small scale enterprises.

The Aga Khan announced that the micro-financing institutions of the Aga Khan Development Network recently launched a programme in Zanzibar that will extend some 1,000 loans in the coming year, totalling $500,000.

He said his interest in Zanzibar goes back beyond his own lifetime. “My grandfather helped build schools here a century ago.

“Our Aga Khan Development Network and its precedent institutions have been operating hospitals and clinics here for over 50 years. Community health programmes, early childhood education and programmes to strengthen civil society continue to be important areas of emphasis,” he said.

As part of its multi-sectoral programme that involves health, education and culture, the Trust will spend $40-50,000 annually to maintain the park.

In addition, repair of the entire 315 metre seawall is going on and will cost $600,000.

The project will prevent the sea from encroaching the Forodhani shoreline and will also protect the Stone Town.

The Trust has also worked with the government and international partners — such as the government of Sweden and the Ford Foundation — to provide workshops on conservation and traditional construction methods for craftsmen, building professionals and government officers.

Other countries where the Trust has restored and rehabilitated public spaces and historic buildings to spur social, economic and cultural development are Egypt, Kenya, India, Mali, Pakistan and Tajikistan.

The aim is to enable the rehabilitated public places to sustain themselves in the long run.

In Cairo, the Trust’s construction of a 35-hectare park on top of a rubble dump in the poorest part of the Historic City now draws 1.5 million visitors a year, employs over 1,000 people and pays for its own upkeep.

The project's impact has since extended to revitalisation of the entire district adjacent to the park.

In Delhi, the gardens of Humayun’s Tomb — an overgrown, rundown and underused green space — were restored to their original Mughal splendour.

Now, they generate more than enough funds for their maintenance.

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazin ... index.html
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MCD school does a U-turn, NGO helps
Ruhi Bhasin, TNN 17 August 2009, 03:14am IST

NEW DELHI: Shahdaan loves going to school these days. His classroom has recently been jazzed up with multi-coloured chairs and tables, besides a new blackboard. He joined the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) school for girls and boys in Nizamuddin basti in July. And the school saw many new enrolments like him from the basti area after it got a much-needed facelift.

According to basti residents, the school was in a bad condition earlier but could easily pass off for a public school now. Said Shahdaan: "I used to study in DPS Mathura Road's Ibtida Shiksha Kendra. But they weren't providing me with a certificate. I joined the MCD school recently and love it here. I get to act in plays and learn computers.'' His mother Saira pitches in, "His Hindi has also improved tremendously. I'm so proud of what my son achieves here every day. We interact regularly with his teachers.''

The work to revive the school has been undertaken by Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Aga Khan Foundation in partnership with MCD as part of the Humayun's Tomb-Sunder Nursery conservation project. The education initiatives in the basti are co-funded by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust.

Councillor of the area, Farhad Suri, said: "This should be seen as a model school. Building As a Learning Aid (BALA) components have been introduced in the school. A number has been engraved on each step for children to learn counting as they take the stairs. Different types of sandstone boards around the school will enhance their learning. Personality development and hygiene training have been made part of the curriculum, and basic amenities like drinking water, toilet blocks, etc, have also been taken care of.''

Principal of the school, Syed Ali Akhtar, said: "The enrolment has gone up from 250 to over 450. We're teaching children how to manage stress and anger. These concepts are new to us as well. We hope to get DDA's permission to improve the surrounding parks.'' The attendance of teachers also improved after the school's renovation that cost Rs 50 lakh and has been going on for over a year now.

A summer camp was also organized by the Aga Khan Foundation in which teachers from the school and community were provided external support to chalk out a lesson plan and reinforce difficult concepts in maths and languages. The assessment of performance of children from Class IV, V and VI by comparing it to a baseline showed improvement in their learning capacity. Art education has also been introduced through theatre and arts and crafts.

There are now plans to have different themes such as air, earth, water and fire for the four floors of this school. Suri added, "Around 25 people from the basti, who are school passouts, are being taught English at the British Council so they can train other children and even work as tour guides during Commonwealth Games 2010.''

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/arti ... page-1.cms
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Post by kmaherali »

Festival of Kabir in Film and Song

Friday September 4, 2009 at 6:30pm
India International Centre

IIC Annexe, 40, Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Estate
Delhi, Delhi 110003 Get Directions

Festival of Kabir in Film and Song. A journey into the contemporary spaces touched by the music and poetry of the 15th century mystic weaver-poet, Kabir. The festival includes screening of documentary films; discussions; and concerts. Organised in collaboration with the Kabir Project, Ford Foundation, Ambedkar University, Aga Khan Trust for Culture and Aman trust Conceptualised and presented by Shabnam Virmani. Inaugural Concert: By Prahlad Tipanya, one of the most compelling folk voices of Kabir in India today who combines singing and explanation of Kabir in the Malwi folk style of Madhya Pradesh.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/4368772/
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from the August 31, 2009 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0831/p17s01-algn.html
In Syria, delicate preservation work is pushing against profit-driven speed.
Damascus is rediscovering its architectural gems, but hasty restoration puts history at risk.

By Frederick Deknatel | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Damascus, Syria

It claims to be the world's oldest capital city, outlived only by Aleppo, Syria; and Jericho, on the West Bank. The proof is there, in Mesopotamian texts that mention Damascus and in a deep urban foundation of streets, houses, and sewers from every civilization, piled on top of one another.

The fairly straight street that cuts across Damascus's Old City was once a colonnaded Roman road: the Via Recta or "Street Called Straight" from the Bible. After the Muslims conquered Syria, then ruled by the Byzantines, Damascus became the capital of the first great Islamic empire. At its peak in the 8th century, the Umayyad dynasty spread from North Africa across Asia, its center at the sparkling Great (Umayyad) Mosque, a former pagan temple, then a church, that claims to house the head of John the Baptist.

But it is the city's more recent history that is reshaping contemporary Damascus. As Syria slowly opens its socialist economy to tourism and development, scores of traditional Arab houses from the 17th to 19th centuries have been restored and reopened as boutique hotels and restaurants in the capital's UNESCO-protected Old City.

Three late-Ottoman era houses south of Straight Street – Beit Nizam, Beit Sibai, and Beit Kuwatli – that were once the residences of Damascene notables and later, European consuls, are at the center of an increasingly frenetic pace of development often motivated more by profit than good preservation practice. The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which promotes historic preservation and development projects throughout the Muslim world, has invested $20 million to restore and reopen the three houses as a boutique hotel.

The scheme is far better funded and staffed than other restorations in the Old City, which – along with Aleppo – has the highest concentration of preserved, traditional Arab residential architecture in the Middle East. The AKDN aims to set standards in preservation practice, expand the shrinking number of traditionally skilled craftsmen and carpenters, and produce what it calls "a model for cultural and tourist development."

"We think of the revitalization of cultural assets in order to use them as a catalyst for development," says Ali Esmail, CEO of Aga Khan Cultural Services in Syria. "And we want others to copy what we are doing."

Whether or not private investors will follow AKDN's model is another question. Investments have boomed in the Old City and throughout Damascus in the last decade. Yet many developers use cheap, damaging materials like concrete and cement plaster instead of traditional wood and mud brick in order to speed up conversion work and maximize returns.

Concrete and cement cannot breathe the way wood and mud brick do in the hot Syrian summer. Nor do they trap heat as effectively during damp winters.

Today, such commercial and inattentive restorations threaten the area's unique architectural heritage.

"We should keep considering Old Damascus as a living city," says Naim Zabida, "not as a place only for visitors." Mr. Zabida is a Syrian architect with the government's Municipal Administration Modernisation, a group funded by the European Union that oversees urban planning and preservation in the Old City.

Wealthy Damascenes first began abandoning their old courtyard houses in the mid-20th century in favor of Western style, open-plan apartments outside the walls of the Old City.

"Until very recently, little attention was paid [to] the usage of these houses," Mr. Esmail says. "Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a good number of these houses were used as warehouses after being deserted by their inhabitants because of the problematic issues of maintenance and the lengthy government approvals required for restorations."

While Cairo's historic center has crumbled under the weight of population and pollution, Damascus faces a different set of preservation problems. Thousands of houses are still standing in an Old City relatively removed from the traffic and congestion of modern Damascus. The issue is how to control ever-growing investments that see in the city's architecture and heritage only an opportunity for tourism and commerce.

"What is missing in these restorations are new ideas and innovation," says Daniela Gurlt, an architect and adviser at German Development Services, which cooperates with German Technical Advising and the Syrian government on rehabbing the Old City. "As a business model, as long as tourists are paying to get into the Old City, fine.... But for the architecture I don't know how sustainable it is."

Reuters recently quoted Syria's tourism minister saying that he expects the number of hotel beds to double to nearly 90,000 in the next three years. The number of hotels could grow from around 15 today to more than 50 in the half-square-mile Old City, according to an Associated Press report on the number of government-issued licenses. Restaurants could grow from a few dozen now to 120.

"We always wanted to keep Damascus a city of inhabitants, not a Disneyland city for visitors," says architect Zabida.

On a recent visit to Beit Nizam, the house – a palace, really – was hosting another TV soap opera. The rear courtyard, in another century reserved for relatives of the family, was full of camera crews. Like its 18th-century neighbor, Beit Sibai, Beit Nizam is currently an informal museum and occasional set for Syrian soaps and films, most of which tell dramatic tales of the past, often set during the tumultuous years of the French Mandate (1923-43).

Across the street is the empty Beit Kuwatli, currently sheathed in scaffolding. The late 19th-century house has a varied history, from opulent residence to school to refuge for Palestinian refugee families who fled after the 1967 war with Israel.

The families carved makeshift bathrooms in the stone floors and painted over 19th-century murals of Istanbul that had once signaled outward allegiance to the Ottoman capital and its sultan. The families were evicted when the Syrian government bought the house in the last decade to begin a modest restoration.

While the properties will reopen as a luxury hotel, many of the ornate first-floor rooms will remain open to the public as cafes, galleries, and "showrooms," according to Aga Khan's Esmail. Beit Kuwatli will not have guest rooms. A structural review determined it could not support them without major layout changes. This is a shift from other commercial and tourism conversions that quickly resize rooms and fit bathrooms into every available space, despite the burden on centuries-old wooden floors and foundations.

"There was a fear from residents and others of a pure commercialization of these cultural assets," Esmail says. "The intention is actually to do a major restoration that would entitle these houses to be present 30, 40, 50 years from now."

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Post by kmaherali »

Q&A: Ali Esmaiel

Chief executive officer of the Aga Khan Cultural Services in Syria

Words Francesca de Châtel
Photo Bridgette Auger

altIn your view, what are Syria’s tourism strengths? Where does its potential lie?

Compared to other countries like Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon, Syria is one of the less explored countries in the region. People in Syria are very friendly and first-time visitors often comment on the warm welcome they receive, both in cities and rural areas.

In terms of sights, Syria has a lot to offer tourists: the diversity of landscapes and sites and its rich culture make it a very attractive tourist destination. Syria has a large number of historical sites, many of which have not even been excavated yet. Most tourists from Europe and the United States want to visit the big names like Palmyra, Krak des Chevaliers and Aleppo Citadel, but there is actually a lot more. Syria has more than 10,000 historical sites, of which only 3,000 have been uncovered.

Secondly, there is the geographical diversity, with very varied landscapes in a small area. From the desert in Palmyra you can be on the coast and in a Mediterranean environment within two hours. The country also has a good infrastructure; all major cities are connected to a good road network and more airports are opening up around the country.

Syria has not yet reached its saturation point in terms of visitor numbers, which means that tourists can come here and move around with ease. They can visit historical sites without having to deal with crowds and they can really live history here.

How can Syria best develop its tourism potential? What elements need to be taken into consideration when developing the tourism sector?

Countries with a rich cultural heritage need to develop a reasonable and sensible form of tourism. I think several top officials in the Syrian government are aware of this. Tourism development is still in its early phases in Syria and an appropriate structure still needs to be put in place. We hope that by working with experienced partners and seeking professional advice from within the country, the region and beyond, decision makers will be able to develop a set of guidelines that will encourage reasonable tourism development in Syria.

What policies need to be put in place to develop a sustainable tourism sector, one which will create jobs for the local population, but at the same time not damage the historical and natural heritage?

As we are not policy makers we can only share our point of view, which is based on the Aga Khan Development Network’s (AKDN) experiences in other countries.

Firstly, we believe that all key stakeholders need to be involved in the planning process. This means not just government representatives, but also local society. The latter forms a key partner in the planning process because local players are aware of their needs and know what will harm their environment. Furthermore, in terms of long-term sustainability of the project, the local population is very important.

Of course not every society is equipped with the tools, but this is where the AKDN can participate by working with different partners, both governmental and from society, to build capacity. At the same time, we also learn from the local stakeholders because they know what the needs on the ground are.

Secondly, it is crucial to build on the competitive advantage of each area and of the country in general. So if we are talking about cultural heritage, we should look at how we can preserve that asset in the long term so that it continues to be the catalyst for development.

We believe in an approach in which development is a key factor; not just economic development, but also social and cultural development. This will allow for the creation of sound policies that can be applied on the ground. We don’t want to build fancy policies which have no relevance to the local needs. On the contrary, we need the policy to be built from the bottom up.

Which tourist markets should Syria focus on, Europe or the Arab world?

I think there are several answers to this question. Last year, 76 percent of tourists came from Arab countries which suggests that one should focus on this area. At the same time, other markets such as Europe, the United States and Asia have not been fully exploited and have great potential.

Regardless of where the focus lies, I think one should try to attract tourists who are keen to participate in the development of the country. Not all tourists contribute positively to the development of a country, so it is important to focus on the segment that values what this country has to offer.

Jordan and Egypt, for example, attract many more tourists than Syria every year. Why is Syria’s brand weak?

There are different factors that will attract tourists to a country. They include everything from good infrastructure and facilities, which is something the government and society can work on, to external factors such as the international image of a country.

For years, foreign media has classified Syria in a certain segment and it is very challenging for a developing country to change this. We all know that visitors change their opinion as soon as they arrive in Syria. The challenge is to get them here in the first place. We believe that an improvement in the political situation in the region and increased coverage by Western media will enhance the country’s image. It is also a question of increasing awareness of Syria’s cultural assets among the major global tourism companies.

What projects is the AKDN currently working on and how do they exemplify the AKDN’s particular development ethos?

We signed two contracts with the Syrian government in August 2008 for the development of two hotels in Damascus and Aleppo: Beit Nizam, Quwatli and Sibai in Damascus and the New Serail in Aleppo. Our approach is to involve different stakeholders. We are working with the government and local inhabitants to develop and share our plans so that we all have the same understanding of the project. This means that we are taking all the sensitivities and special needs for the sites into account. We are also drawing up a database of historical documents for each site, something which has never been done before.

In what ways does Syria distinguish itself from other countries where AKDN has worked on tourism projects?

What makes our experiences in Syria different is the historical value of these projects. We are dealing with a cultural wealth that is unique in the world and we are very aware of the fact that we are working on two projects in two of the longest continuously inhabited cities in the world.


The Aga Khan Development Network


Founded and guided by His Highness the Aga Khan, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) brings together a number of development agencies, institutions, and programmes that work primarily in Asia and Africa to promote economic, social and cultural development. The AKDN works as an umbrella for various entities such as the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the Aga Khan University, the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance and the Aga Khan EducationServices.

In Syria, the AKDN works in six provinces (Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, Lattakia,Suweida and Tartous), serving both rural and urban populations. Current priority areas include rural economic development, employment and enterprise development, enhancing the quality of services, strengthening civil society organisations, protecting cultural heritage and developing sustainable tourism.

http://syria-today.com/index.php/march- ... s-in-syria
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Cairo Islamic monuments and tourist attractions launched
By Thomas Steinmetz

Topic:
Islam Tourist Attractions
Author:
Hazel Heyer, eTN Staff Writer

On September 17, five Islamic monuments were officially inaugurated in the Al-Darb Al-Ahmar area of Cairo. The Al-Imam mosque, the Al-Laythmosque, the Al-Set Meska mosque, the Ali Labib house and the well zone of Youssef at the Salah El-Din Citadel have all been undergoing restoration work, which cost around LE 9.5 million. These monuments including the first phase construction of the new lighting system of the Salah El-Din Citadel were inaugurated at the ceremony. The ceremony took place at the Salah El-Din Citadel.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Dr. Hamdi Zaqzouq, the Minister of Endowment, and Cairo Governor Abdel Azim Waziri inaugurated the special ceremony along with top governmental officials.

The restoration of these important historical edifices is a part of the Supreme Council of Antiquities' dedication to preserve Egypt's Islamic heritage.

The most outstanding restoration-conversion attraction, amid the decrepit villages of the Egyptian capital unfamiliar to visitors, one extremely ambitious project has been undertaken with the creation of a vast, green open space in a once run-down area of Cairo. Interestingly since the project was started, another dimension has been added –a rehabilitation of the surrounding residential district called Darb Al Ahmar, so impoverished it needed the Aga Khan to give it a facelift.

For years, tourists have long been kept off the area by the virtually unofficial wasteland or rubbish dump lying alongside the derelict eastern rim of old Cairo’s medieval city walls. From its early beginnings as the massive wastebasket to a gigantic mountain pile of dirt, it ended up obscuring residents' views of the fortress wall and pretty minarets nearby through the years. It has become, in a sense, irreverent that it lies beside the walled old cemetery known as the City Of the Dead, where scores of homeless Cairenes have found shelter in tombs housing urns of the more-privileged.

In 2004, on the metropolis shared by the living and the dead, where dust, debris and garbage have collected through the millennium, arose a $45 million project the Aga Khan Development Network designed to complete in 7 years to uplift the destitute.

Four years after unexplained shoveling, digging and earth-moving the contractors were doing much to the perplexity of locals, the project finally took shape. Out of the barren 30-hectare Darassa Hills came a lush, green park overlooking Cairo’s Islamic city. It would bring hundreds of jobs, a place for the busy Cairenes to de-stress, open views of the Citadel never there before; notwithstanding, give people hope in a hometown that had never produced them profits.

Opened to the public end on a trial basis, it welcomed the first guests. Once the city built in ancient times by the Fatimids and named Al Quahire or the victorious, the previous 20 percent devoted to open space now had tourists flocking to it. From Easter till end of September, for about 5 and a half weeks, the park construction concentrated on the finer details of what would become an interesting rehab site inaugurated September 17 during a special event at the Citadel.

http://www.eturbonews.com/print/11757
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj

* SEPTEMBER 17, 2009, 5:53 P.M. ET

Restoring Afghanistan
A tour of Asheqan wa Arefan.
By BY ANN MARLOWE

Afghanistan is not quite ready for tourists. But when it is they will stand here, at the edge of Kabul's Old City, preparing to explore the area of a couple of square miles known as Asheqan wa Arefan. Though from a distance Asheqan wa Arefan looks downtrodden, on closer inspection it contains many lovely 18th- and 19th- century wooden houses, sensitively renovated over the last seven years by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

Home to about 22,000 mainly poor Afghans, the neighborhood in central Kabul, like much of the city, has ancient roots. It bears the name of two brothers whose grave dates from the ninth century. On the steep hillside above is an old Islamic period mausoleum and, higher still, the remnants of a Buddhist stupa.

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Marlowe
Associated Press

The Allam Qandahary House: Back to its former glory, courtesy of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
Marlowe
Marlowe

"The municipality thinks it is a slum," says Jolyon Leslie, the head of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). In the absence of tourism in the Old City, the AKTC, a nonprofit founded by a hereditary leader of one of the largest Shia Muslim sects, is working to preserve Afghanistan's heritage for those who live among it. Afghan architects have done the design work, supervising Afghan artisans.

The AKTC is best known for its restoration of Baghe-Babur, or Babur's Gardens, now once again a popular Kabuli park with as many as 60,000 visitors monthly in the summer. This high-profile project provided one million man days of labor and trained 100 skilled workers.

But the AKTC has been working quietly south of the Kabul River on projects that few besides the residents of the neighborhood see. After the artisans finish, the houses are simply returned to their owners, with the stipulation that they take care of them. This is more radical than it sounds, for Afghanistan is a low-trust society where no one gives—or expects—something for nothing.

The AKTC has installed, for instance, five kilometers of semicovered drains to replace fetid open sewers, renovated 12 historically significant houses in full and 70 more lightly, and rehabilitated two parks. All of this has cost less than three million dollars.

A few days after the Afghan election, Mr. Leslie showed me around Asheqan wa Arefan. "This is probably the poorest area in the city, and also probably the most surveyed area," he said. The AKTC has produced an extraordinarily detailed map of the neighborhood—this in a country that hasn't had a population survey in 40 years.

Inhabited by low-grade civil servants up until the 1980s' civil war, the area is now much less prosperous. Perhaps half the residents are renters, doubling or tripling up in what used to be single-family houses. Many are new to the area, or even to Kabul.

The houses in the Old City were built of wood, the better to withstand earthquakes, such as the massive quake of 1842 that destroyed the Bala Hissar, or High Fortress, Kabul's ancient citadel. They often incorporated pieces of older buildings (I saw some Mogul marble column bases) and were "not intended to last forever," in Mr. Leslie's words.

One restored house, the Akram house, which boasts an 18th-century wing with juniper woodwork, houses sewing classes for women, sneaking in literacy training on the side. ("They won't come just for that, there has to be some immediate economic benefit," Mr. Leslie explained.) At the six-acre Bagh-e-Qazi, or Garden of the Judge, one of two parks AKTC has worked on in the Old City, AKTC removed hundreds of trucks of waste which had been dumped illegally, filled in with agricultural soil and planted trees in rows, all at a cost of about $100,000. Work has been guided by a photograph of the area in the 1980s.

The houses surrounding the park are mainly two- and three-story concrete structures from the 1950s and 1960s. "What constitutes a historic building?" Mr. Leslie continues. "It should be architecturally or socially interesting, or have the support of locals. For example, that pink-colored mosque over there. It's not very old, but for the locals, it's a monument."

Within the Old City, families take pride in their renovated dwellings. Unfortunately this doesn't extend to the littered alleyways outside. Municipal garbage pickup is only once every two weeks, and there are no municipal garbage cans on the street for trash (though where the AKTC has provided them, they are used and the street is noticeably cleaner). And there's a cultural habit of seeing the street as no one's responsibility.

The AKTC has also been active in Herat's Old City, 400 miles away. Herat has the greatest concentration of historic buildings in Afghanistan and was a popular traveler's destination along the '60s and '70s hippie trail. The AKTC has restored 13 historic houses and portions of one important site, the Gozargah Shrine, on the outskirts of the city, and the enormous 14th century Citadel, or Arg. But its civilizing mission can be fully appreciated in the group of more modest projects in the Old City, including two centuries-old underground water cisterns, a shrine dating from 846 A.D., two synagogues, a covered bazaar and several houses.

On a scorching August day, AKTC engineer Daud Sadiq and Herat project manager Habib Noori took me on a tour from the secluded Old City residential neighborhood to the public buildings they worked on. I saw how traditional Afghan architecture must have provided a cloistered but gracious way of life. Dalats, or long covered arcades, together with the tall walls of family compounds, shade parts of the street from the summer sun, much as they do in Tuscan hill towns. The Old City was degrees cooler than the concrete of the newer parts of town, and since the winding narrow streets discourage car traffic, it was quiet and free of diesel fumes. For the first time in 12 visits to Afghanistan, I saw that there might be homegrown solutions to the country's urban woes.

Ms. Marlowe writes frequently about Afghanistan. She is also the author of two memoirs including "The Book of Trouble" (Harcourt, 2006).
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ddc and aga khan foundation beautify al azhar park

Posted: 28-09-2009 , 13:39 GMT


The American University in Cairo’s Desert Development Center (DDC) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, part of the Aga Khan Development Network, created a cooperative partnership to grow plants for Al Azhar Park in Cairo. The collaboration began when the foundation approached the DDC to grow plants at its South Tahrir agricultural research facility.
“Working with the trust we learned a lot of techniques we could apply here on the new campus,” said DDC Director Rick Tutwiler. As a result, Al Azhar became a model for the New Cairo Campus. The landscape for both the campus and the park was designed by architect Maher Stino of Sites International, who was adept at finding plants that had appealing colors and aromas while being mindful of the limitations that the climate imposed.

The realities of seasonal high temperatures, low humidity, scant rainfall and desert winds imposed severe conditions on the park’s plants and trees. To combat that, the Aga Khan Foundation focused on growing ornamental plants such as bushes, shrubs and trees that could be sustained in even the harshest of environments. Originally, the DDC incubated more than 50 acres of such plants, and currently houses a remaining 10 to 12 acres to be used for future park expansion.

The park, which opened to the public in 2005, included the excavation and restoration of the 12th century Ayyubid wall, the creation of three large fresh water reservoirs, and the implementation of an extensive social service program that includes healthcare and micro-credit facilities.

DDC is currently in negotiations with the Egyptian Ministry of Housing, Utilities, and Urban Development to build two new parks-one in Sadat City and another one in New Cairo–each of which would be twice the size of Al Azhar Park. “We wouldn’t have been able to do the new campus and certainly not these other parks if we didn’t have the relationship with the Aga Khan people or the prior experience of working on such a large project,” added Tutwiler.

The Desert Development Center is a non-profit, applied research institution established by AUC in 1979 that focuses on the ecological, social, and economic sustainability of communities in Egypt's arid lands through agricultural and socioeconomic research, training programs, and community service. It conducts its programs at two research stations located in South Tahrir in Beheira Governorate and Sadat City in Minufiya Governorate.

The American University in Cairo (AUC) was founded 90 years ago and is major contributor to the social, political and cultural life of the Arab Region. It is a vital bridge between East and West, linking Egypt and the region to the world through scholarly research, partnerships with academic and research institutions, and study abroad programs. An independent, nonprofit, apolitical, non-sectarian and equal opportunity institution, AUC is fully accredited in Egypt and the United States.




© 2009 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
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Post by kmaherali »

Unesco award for ancient Hunza house
By Zulfiqar Ali Khan
Friday, 02 Oct, 2009 | 03:10 AM PST

HUNZA, Oct 1: An ancient house in Hunza has received the Unesco’s Heritage Award for 2009. Ali Gohar House, a 400-year-old architectural masterpiece, formerly used by envoy of Mir of Hunza to Kashgar, Sinkiang, was selected by a panel of international conservation experts in architecture, urban planning, heritage conservation and landscape design from among the 52 entries from 14 Asia-Pacific countries, including Australia, China, India, Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand and Thailand. The historic house has been restored by the Aga Khan Cultural Service.

The award distribution ceremony is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2010 at Ganish, Hunza, and will be attended by the representatives of Unesco, ministries of Culture and Tourism, community and foreign embassies.

Being involved in the rehabilitation of Ganish old settlements since 1998, the Aga Khan Cultural Service, Pakistan on the request of the Ganish Khun Heritage Care and Social Welfare Society (GKHC & SWS), initiated the physical conservation of the house in 2004. ‘Reusability’ being the core component for restoration, Ali Gohar House was intended to be used as a community centre, providing working space to the Ganish society, encouraging women to congregate and work, and to be a centre for arts, crafts and documentation of Ganish culture in consultation with the community. The House has now been leased by the owner to the community, setting a strong example of community based management system.

During the restoration, AKCS-P ensured minimising the appearance and unseen presence of all modern elements. The insertions needed for the adaptive reuse were designed in such a way that it permits, if necessary, their removal or alteration in future without damaging the adjacent original fabric. Minor modern materials such as the addition of basic electric and plumbing services were part of the new material incorporated in the historic building’s fabric. All such insertion were undertaken to retain authenticity and integrity of the original house. During the whole process, three missing historic wooden stairs were replaced by new ones to meet modern safety standards, whereas the rest of the house remains in its original form.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/daw ... -house-209

Photos at:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IsmailiM ... 2kv9RYw7w/
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Post by kmaherali »

AKTC Involved in the Restoration of Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo

After years of restoration work on its fine neo-Mameluke buildings and exhibitions of Islamic art, Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art is close to reopening to the public. Nevine El-Aref took a tour

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On Port Said Street in the Bab Al-Khalq area of Cairo stands the lofty, honey- coloured edifice of the Museum of Islamic Art, its neo-Mameluke architecture and luxurious façade featuring the rich patterns and elaborate decoration of the Islamic style.

However, inside the institution the picture that greets visitors will soon be far less familiar. Following years of restoration work, visitors to the museum will soon be able to roam around spacious galleries showcasing the museum's collection of rare wooden, metal, ceramic, glass, rock crystal and textile objects from across the Islamic world.

Following years of negligence, the Museum of Islamic Art has finally been undergoing comprehensive rehabilitation not only of its building and interior design, but also of its exhibition design and displays.

"Restoring the Museum of Islamic Art is an ambitious and challenging task that illustrates Egypt's commitment to preserving one of the country's Islamic institutions, in addition to its Pharaonic and Coptic heritage," Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly.

Hosni added that over the last five years, renovation work to the tune of LE85 million had been carried out at the museum, with work continuing until December 2009 when the institution will celebrate its official reopening.

First planned in 1869 even before the establishment of a committee of Arab antiquities dedicated to building a national collection of Islamic art, the Museum of Islamic Art first opened in 1881 with an initial display of 111 objects gathered from mosques and mausoleums across Egypt, these being exhibited in the arcades of the mosque of the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim.

Owing to a rapid increase in the size of the collection, a new building was constructed in the courtyard of the mosque in 1883 to house what had now become a considerably enlarged museum. In 1899, the government began construction work on the present building, and in 1903 the Islamic Museum opened with a display of 3,154 objects originating from Egypt and other countries.

While the museum's name has been changed over the years, in 1952 the museum's trustees settled on the institution's present name, the Museum of Islamic Art, in recognition of the contributions of non-Arab Muslims. Since then, the museum has become the main repository for the national collection of Islamic art, and, owing to new discoveries, purchases and donations, this now boasts some 100,000 objects.

Nevertheless, by the time renovation work started on the museum in 1999, the Museum of Islamic Art had become beset by negligence. In all the 100 years or so of its existence the museum had never once been renovated, except for an attempt to clean the institution's walls and renovate the displays in 1983, and attempts at a more comprehensive renovation were frustrated in part by the building's upper floor being occupied by a separate institution, the Dar Al-Kotob Al-Masreya.

In 2003, the Ministry of Culture launched a comprehensive restoration project for the museum in an attempt to reinstate its original function and splendour.

The masterplan for the renovation work and the new exhibition design was drawn up by French designer and museographer Adrien Gardère in cooperation with the Islamic Department of the Louvre Museum in Paris, which has advised on the reorganisation of the museum's collections.

According to Iman Abdel-Fattah, an Islamic art historian at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in Cairo and the coordinator of the Islamic Museum project, the renovation masterplan puts the museum's main entrance on Port Said Street, as it was originally, and from here visitors will first encounter an introductory gallery that will present Islamic arts and the Muslim countries and their locations in the world in a mixed display made up of panels, maps and objects from the collection. Visitors will also gain an idea of the geography of historic Cairo and the early Islamic city of Fustat, the oldest Islamic settlement in Egypt.

The renovated museum is divided into two large wings, Abdel-Fattah explained, with the wing on the right-hand side being devoted to the chronological exhibition of Islamic artefacts taken in the main from monuments in historic Cairo just a few steps away from the museum. This wing of the museum will follow a broadly chronological approach in its presentation of the collection, Umayad, Abbasid, Tulunid, Fatimid, Ayubid, Mameluke and Ottoman, while also including various thematic displays.

"This museum for me is a site museum," Abdel-Fattah commented, adding that it will serve as an ideal introduction to the magnificent Islamic edifices in neighbouring historic Cairo. The museum's collection includes a lamp taken from the neighbouring Ibn Barqouq Mosque, for example, together with a minbar from the adjacent Al-Sultan Hassan Mosque.

The other, left-hand wing of the museum will display materials from other countries besides Egypt, including calligraphy, manuscripts, ceramics, mosaics, textiles, grave stones, mashrabiya, woodwork, metal and glass vessels, incense burners and caskets, pottery, metalwork and glass lamps dating from different periods in Islamic history. These objects will be displayed both according to chronology and according to theme, provenance and material.

The renovated museum will have state-of-the art security and lighting systems, as well as a fully-equipped restoration laboratory, a children's museum and library.

According to Abdel-Fattah, one of the most impressive items to be displayed in the new presentation will be a Mameluke water fountain restored by Spanish restorer Eduardo Porta, who was also a member of the restoration team working on the tomb of Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens at Luxor.

The fountain, made of semi-precious stones, green onyx and coloured mosaic pieces, was originally bought for the Museum of Islamic Art in 1910 and placed in the museum's garden. Owing to ill use and faulty restoration work carried out in the 1960s and 1970s, the fountain fell into decay and it is only now being properly restored. According to Porta, the fountain "is unique in the world, and it will be one of the most important objects in the museum."

"One challenge that faced Porta and his team from the SCA and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture was how safely to dismantle the fountain from its cement base and transport and relocate it at the restoration lab at the Citadel without further destruction," Abdel-Fattah said. During the dismantling and restoration process, Porta and his team removed almost three tonnes of material used in earlier attempts to restore the fountain and corrected the harmful effects of previous attempts at restoration.

According to Abdel-Fattah, the overall museum restoration project has achieved three goals. It has brought light into the museum's galleries by enlarging the size of the windows, and it has replaced old display cases with new state-of-the-art ones providing a far better display environment for the artefacts. Thirdly, the project has reorganised the display of the collection and highlighted a successful example of international cooperation, with work being carried out jointly with the Islamic Department of the Louvre in Paris and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which helped in the restoration of several larger items.

Inevitably there have been some delays. When Hosni and Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the SCA, embarked on an inspection tour of the museum last August, they found work that needed to be corrected in order to meet international standards, and this delayed the inauguration until December.

However, the newly renovated museum, in addition to having restored buildings and renovated displays, will also have new facilities designed to reach out to every kind of public. The renovated Museum of Islamic Art will have a curatorial training programme organised by the Friends of the Museum of Islamic Art for the general public, for example, as well as education programmes for children and young adults.

The renovation project has been a lengthy and dedicated one. "The restoration of the Museum of Islamic Art is an extraordinary achievement, executed by some 15 specialists, 20 SCA restorers and 150 workmen," Hawass said in an interview with the Weekly, with all the work executed to the highest international standards.

"Now that the Museum of Islamic Art meets the international standards set out by the International Committee of Museums, it is in a position to compete with its counterparts in Europe and America," Hawass said. "Following its reopening in December, the museum will once again stand as proudly as it ever did."

C a p t i o n : Restoration work at the Museum of Islamic Art: conservators cleaning the mosaic of the museum's main fountain, others displaying some of the objects on show

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/967/heritage.htm
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Post by From_Alamut »

Islamic treasures go on show in Italy


Palazzo della Pilotta displays 170 works from collection of Prince Aga Khan as part of cultural programme.



PARMA, Italy - The Italian city of Parma, better known for its fine foods and tradition of opera, is for two months hosting an exhibition of some of the finest Islamic art collection of the Aga Khan, the spiritual head of the Ismaili sect and international businessman.

"Splendours of the Court" which opened Friday is being housed in the Palazzo della Pilotta and contains the basis of what will be displayed in a new museum to be built in Toronto, Canada in 2009.

The show in Parma is part of a wider cultural programme "Arts and Music from the Islamic World" which runs through May.

The exhibition, which contains some 170 works from the collection of the Aga Khan is divided into two sections.

The first, dedicated to "The World of God", will display exquisitely decorated editions of the Koran from the 8th to the 18th century.

The second, "The Power of the Sovereign" re-evokes the grand Islamic courts of the dynasty of the Fatmidi in Egypt and the Qajars in Persia, examining the education of the Sovereign, poetry and literature, how he exercised his immense power and also his favourite pastimes, hunting and riding.

The masterpieces on show include manuscripts, paintings, ceramics, objects in metal and wood, as well as textiles coming from a vast Muslim area running from China to Andalusia.

The art exhibition will be flanked by a series of concerts "Music from the Oriental Courts" which will highlight musicians and musical experts from Central Asia.

It is organised by the Aga Khan Music Initiative for Central Asia and the Teatro Regio Foundation of Parma.

Reference
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=20120
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Post by kmaherali »

Walled City rehabilitation to take 20 years

Thursday, October 22, 2009
By By Our Correspondent

LAHORE

WITH the political will and support of the Punjab government and the technical assistance by the Aga Khan Cultural Service, the rehabilitation of the Walled City will be completed within the 20 years under the ongoing Walled City Project.

This was stated by Masood Khan, the technical director Aga Khan Cultural Service, Pakistan, (AKCSP) during a briefing on the Cultural and Sustainable Development Project being executed in the Walled City at Sahahi Hamam, inside Delhi Gate here on Wednesday.

Masood Khan said about 12 per cent work had been completed on the Walled City Project. He said the AKCSP had initiated the project back in 2007 and a considerable amount of work had been done. He said it was a public private partnership project for the preservation, rehabilitation and development of the Walled City. He said the worldís biggest GIS (Geographical Information System) which had 172 attributes to provide all the details about the Walled City, was a result of the detailed surveys conducted about the plots, buildings, streets, roads, historic monuments and places.

Masood said one of the parts of the historic Walled City, Shahi Guzar Gah, starting from the Delhi Gate to the Fort, had been rehabilitated partially. He said it was the work of some eight to nine months and the community and the local residents had also been involved in the project. He said the state of the affairs was very dismal in the Walled city, especially due to the poor distribution system of the utility services and the transport system. He said that the General Bus Stand and its surroundings were the biggest devastating factor for the destruction of the grand cultural heritage and its monumental architectural heritage. He said that Mian Shahbaz Sharifís personal initiative and a strong political had made a lot of difference and made the work easy.

Earlier, the Director General of the Walled City Project Oriya Maqbool Jan told the representatives of the media that the Shahi Hamam at Delhi Gate was the biggest Spa and Royal Baths in the entire central Asia and it had the biggest dome.

He said that the Walled City had been subjected to many atrocities, including fires at the time of independence, especially in the Rang Mehal area, the post-partition scenario even brought the walled city to the brink of extinction with the conversion of a vast area into markets. He said that the General Bus Stand at Badami Bagh was the cancer of Lahore which had eaten up the glory of the Walled City. He said the Walled City project would bring back the lost glory of the Walled City.

Its pertinent to note that the former Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif was also given a similar briefing on the Walled City Project at the Lahore Fort by Masood Khan and Oriya Maqbool Jan.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=204514

*****

Walled City to be restored in 2 decades

* Surveys conducted to facilitate renovation projects
* Lahore Fort, Badshahi Mosque set to receive facelift

Staff Report

LAHORE: The Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Sustainable Development of Walled City of Lahore (SDWCL) have announced to completely restore the old city of Lahore over the next two decades.

Aga Khan Trust Director Masood Khan and SDWCL Chairman Oria Maqbool Jaan said this at a press briefing on Wednesday.

While talking to reporters, they said the conservation project meant restoring the old city to its original state, with slight changes in the sanitation system and the electricity supply. They said experts were working on a strategic plan for the conservation keeping in view the strategies of urban heritage conservation, infrastructure development and land-use planning.

Surveys: They said the experts were also conducting surveys such as the physical sociological continuum. A complete topographical survey has already been conducted, which was previously conducted by the British rulers in the1940s. The experts were also mapping different historic buildings and houses situated in the Walled City as well as surveying the socio-economic conditions for the renovation work.

They said famous Australian and South African firms had been engaged in the engineering work of the renovation and conservation. The plan was meant to restore all the streets, houses, buildings, sewerage system and decorations to their original form as much as possible, they added. The sewerage system of the Walled City would be made underground and the old drains would only be used to drain rainwater, thus adding to the original beauty of the city.

Renovation projects: Other projects would be established to ensure a smooth supply of clean drinking water to the residents. The authorities would also ensure a visual clean up of the space around various heritage assets such as the Lahore Fort, the Badshahi Mosque and the Wazir Khan mosque.

The experts said the projects included the restoration of the Shahi Guzargah by eliminating the encroachments and restoring the historic places around Delhi Gate, Wazir Khan Mosque and the market adjacent to the mosque.

Similar surveys and development projects would also be launched for other monuments like the Begum Shahi Mosque, Sonehri Mosque and its neighbouring Baoli Bagh. The experts have also chosen the Soorjan Singh Street as a model street for the renovation of the Walled City.

The reporters were also taken on a visit to a 150-year-old house that had been renovated to its original shape at the cost of $10,000. Architect of the plan Salman Muhammad told Daily Times that it took 10 months to renovate the house.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.as ... 09_pg13_10
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Post by kmaherali »

Friday, 23 October, 2009
The most peaceful place in Kabul

Kabul is a chaotic capital, but at the heart of the city is a rebuilt garden where noise and guns don’t permeate. Reporter Alex Helmick takes a walk through maybe the most peaceful place in Kabul.
— Alex Helmick, World Radio Switzerland

Kabul is a chaotic city… from construction to the traffic to the occasional bombing.

But in the heart of the city is peace and tranquility: A garden with trees and flowers and green, green grass.

AJMAL MAIWANDI: It’s probably one of the most tranquil places in the city if not the most tranquil space in the city.

A little girl has a close call with a passing van on one of Kabul’s busiest and chaotic streets. (Wrs, Alex Helmick)

Ajmal Maiwandi is deputy program manager for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Headquarters for the Shia Ismaili Muslim spiritual leader the Aga Khan and his many charities is in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Trust for Culture spent nearly 7 million U.S. dollars restoring a once sacred place in Kabul.

The first Mughal emperor Baghe Babur built the 11 hectare garden in the 16th century.

MAIWANDI: He laid out this garden with his own hands and before he died he stipulated that he would want to be buried here.

Babur was a brutal and violent conqueror though.

HELMICK: I find it kind of ironic that such a peaceful place is built on a man who really wasn’t that peaceful.

MAIWANDI: It’s true. Babur’s memoirs are filled with his conquests and his pillaging and military campaigns. But it seems that at that time, at that era, that was what was expected of a king.

It’s probably one of the most tranquil spaces in the city, if not the most tranquil space in the city. After the Mughal empire fell, the garden went with it. The garden had a brief revival in the mid 20th century, but then war once again came to Afghanistan: First the Soviets in the late 70s, then Civil War in the 90s, and then the Taliban years. The garden was a front line for battles, especially ethnic clashes. The trees were chopped down for fire wood and the land was baron.

HELMICK: This was a war zone
AMANULLAH SAHIBZADA: This was a war zone, yes.

Amanullah Sahibzada was part of the reconstruction started in 2002 after the end of Taliban rule here. He now is garden manager.

SAHIBZADA: First of all, I think of it as my home because it has been almost seven years that I spend more time than my home here.

Sahibzada worked with many others to get the garden back into shape. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture says the rebuilding of the garden put hundreds to work and still employs 75 people regularly.

But for Sahibzada it is more than just about numbers.

The Baghe Babur Garden was built in the 16th century but fell into disrepair over the years. The Swiss-based Aga Khan’s Trust for Culture gave 7 million U.S. dollars to rebuild it. (WRS, Alex Helmick) SAHIBZADA: So for me each stone, each tree, each flower has a memory because I was in the garden during the time when these stones and these trees were planted or the stone was placed. So I know when I look at all these things, I remember the first day to how this tree was and by who it was planted in the area.

GARDENER VOICE

Nearby, one of the workers is giving a tour to young school girls. Aurjura is their head teacher.

AURJURA VOICE

She says the children need to know the history behind Babur. It is part of their culture. And for her, she says this is a nice escape from war outside the garden walls.

Sitting on one of the smaller brick walls, looking far away in thought is Zanamilack. He is a young man with a tidy beard and he’s wearing ultra-clean, cream-colored trousers and matching shirt.

ZANAMILACK VOICE

He says he thinks this is a great place to mediate and that maybe one day this country, his country, could reflect this garden and be peaceful.

Alex Helmick, World Radio Switzerland from the Baghe Babur Garden in Kabul, Afghanistan.

http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/special/a ... html?16426
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Post by kmaherali »

AKTC provides resources for The Book of Omens exhibit

Site also has a video

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/w ... 321663.stm


For the people of Iran and Turkey during the 16th and 17th centuries, trying to predict the future produced some incredible works of art.

The illustrated texts known as Falnama: The Book of Omens are being displayed together in a new exhibit at the Sackler Gallery in Washington.

The artwork on display has come from: Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul; Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Geneva; The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

Matt Frei reports on what the omens reveal.
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Post by kmaherali »

14th century Cairo mosque restored to glory
By JOSEPH FREEMAN (AP) – 7 hours ago

CAIRO — Developers unveiled the restoration of a 650-year-old mosque in Cairo's old city, part of an effort to revitalize the impoverished district and boost tourism to the country's treasure trove of Islamic sites.

The three-year, $1.4 million project restored the Aslam al-Silahdar Mosque, built in 1344-1345 by Aslam al-Bahai, an amir or nobleman who rose to the position of "silahdar," or "swordbearer" for Sultan al-Nasir Mohammed, one of the most powerful of Egypt's Mamluk rulers.

It is tucked into Cairo's al-Darb al-Ahmar district, a dense warren of narrow, dusty alleyways. Many of its 92,000 inhabitants are among the poorest in Egypt, living on less than $1 a day, according to the Canadian Development Agency, which works in the community.

The neighborhood is also packed with antiquities — an Islamic monument about every 20 yards (meters), ranging from Cairo's early days in the 11th century to more modern times.

The area is "comparable to Rome" in terms of monuments, said Luis Monreal, the general manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network, which directed the renovation of the Aslam Mosque, unveiled on Wednesday.

A handful of American donors contributed to the conservation efforts, including the American Research Center in Egypt with a grant from USAID, and the U.S. Ambassador Fund.

The Aslam Mosque was redone from floor to ceiling. Hanging lamps illuminate Islamic-style archways and smooth stone floors. On the exterior, elegant green and black Arabic calligraphy scrolls around the base of the mosque's prominent dome. A square adjoining the mosque was also renovated.

Many of the mosques, mausoleums and Islamic schools in the district are delapidated and crumbling after decades of neglect. Until recently, the Egyptian government also did little to encourage tourism to the area, and most foreign visitors ignored the rich area in favor of pharaonic sites such as the Giza Pyramids.

Dina Bakhoum, conservation programs manager for AKTC's Egypt branch, said al-Darb al-Ahmar has "great potential to become one of Cairo's major attractions."

The agency — funded by the Agha Khan, hereditary leader of the Nizari branch of Shiite Islam — is carrying out a wider urban renewal project in al-Darb al-Ahmar. In recent years, the Egyptian government also has carried out extenstive renovations on mosques in the area and has sought to increase the amount of tourism to Islamic sites.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... wD9BLVG0G1

*****
There are photos at:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/1 ... -in-cairo/
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Post by kmaherali »

AKTC partly funded project

A Legacy in Danger

Two lesser-known Egyptian legacies have been put on the World Monuments Fund watch list

Two of Egypt’s heritage sites — a 50-year-old village built by a famous architect, and an 800-year-old mosque built of mud and salt — are in danger of decay, according to the World Monuments Fund (WMF).

The WMF releases a biennial watch list of the 100 most endangered sites worldwide. This year, the Old Mosque of Shali Fortress in Siwa and the New Gourna Village, occupied by residents for only the past two and a half years, were named as endangered monuments where protection is both needed and possible, if conservation authorities take the necessary steps.

The New Gourna Village

The New Gourna Village, an earthen settlement on the West Bank of the Nile near Luxor, is remarkable for being designed by late architectural guru Hassan Fathy, who later documented the village in his famous book Architecture for the Poor. The village is also historically significant as it was built to house families being relocated by the government away from sensitive archeological sites and tourist locations.

Erica Evrami, director of research and education at the WMF, explains that Fathy has influenced architects and communities around the world who feel that, as a classic example of his work, the New Gourna Village deserves to be protected. The WMF says that Gourna is a “testament to how the relationship between heritage and society is often fraught with multiple meanings and conflicting values.”

The village was built in the late 1940s as an alternative home for 20,000 Gournawis who were being relocated to enable excavations of, and prevent theft from, tombs thought to lay below the original Gourna village. Although the site was completed in 1949, Gournawi residents refused to leave their homes for the newly-built village; they resisted government relocation until early 2007.

The new village was built so as to preserve the feel of old Gourna with facilities including schools, a theater, a market and the Khan, where Fathy built his house. Fathy wrote Architecture for the Poor, in which he discusses solutions to rural housing problems in Egypt and tells the story of New Gourna, a project that served as the perfect place to implement his theories.

According to the WMF, Fathy was commissioned to build the new village because he was renowned for intergrating traditional materials and technology with modern architectural principles; it turned out to be one of his greatest achievements. “Fathy’s philosophy and vision derived from humanistic values about the connections between people and places and the use of traditional knowledge and resources in designing the built environment,” says the WMF.

Today, however, nearly half of the village is suffering from poor maintenance, says the WMF. Increased urban pressure and an expanding tourism sector are compounding the situation.

The Old Mosqueof Shali Fortress

In a country with such a plethora of ancient monuments, and a rumored 1,000 minarets in Cairo alone, the Old Mosque of Shali Fortress is often overlooked. Dating back to 1203, the mosque is situated on an elevated site to defend against attacks from nomadic raiders. It is the oldest monument in Shali, part of Siwa Oasis, and is the oldest mosque in the world constructed using karshif, a naturally-occuring mixture of mud and salt found in the oasis’ dry lake bottoms.

Gaetano Palumbo, WMF program director for North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, says the mosque was included on the watch list because “it represents a peculiar type of construction in earthen material [] This traditional method of construction is disappearing, and we hope that the listing of the mosque will attract national and international attention to this unique heritage.”

Floods, World War II bombing and the abandonment of the karshif tradition in favor of concrete developments have endangered the Shali heritage that distinguishes Siwan architecture. Yet, according to the WMF, “the mosque has remained a perpetual and unremitting symbol of the history and community of Siwa Oasis. Despite its small size and state of dilapidation, the mosque remains an important symbol of the community and a place of religious rituals and celebrations.”

The WMF decided to call for the preservation of the mosque in order to maintain the town’s link with the karshif tradition, once a distinguishing feature of the region. Palumbo says, “more attention is required to regulate the growth of the inhabited sector of the village in order to avoid unsympathetic developments that may spoil the character of the site.”

How it Works

Evrami explains that the watch list is composed of sites nominated by individuals and organizations; the WMF itself does not nominate sites. “Anyone can nominate a site, and site owners need not endorse a nomination for it to be considered,” says Evrami. This process ensures diversity and openness, bringing lesser-known sites to the WMF’s attention. The WMF and outside professionals review the nominations and a panel of international experts makes a final selection. According to Evrami, the selection is based on four main criteria: significance, urgency of action, viability of saving the site and relevance. The site’s significance can be historical, artistic, social, civic, spiritual, religious, research, natural, economic or symbolic, and the panel determines if the site is informative to the heritage field at large.

Sites identified by the WMF are not necessarily dealt with in a uniform way. In some cases, WMF can provide technical and/or financial assistance for watch sites, but the projects to which these resources are applied are determined in cooperation with the authorities responsible for the site, according to Evrami. Palumbo adds that the WMF has already helped to preserve several sites in Egypt — on and off the list.

Some of the sites that received grants for preservation included Aqsunqur Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque) Khasekhemwy, the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III, Qaitbay Sabil, Shunet el-Zebib, Tarabay al-Sharify and Valley of the Kings. “We also financed a series of projects at sites that were not listed, but for which we received requests for assistance that we deemed important to support,” said Palumbo, citing their work on Karnak Temple in Luxor, the Luxor Temple and two minarets in Darb Al-Ahmar in Cairo.

The WMF’s newest project is the Blue Mosque in Cairo. Built in 1347 by Amir Aqsunqur, it is the largest mosque in Bab El-Wazir and an exceptioanl example of early Mamluk religious architecture. During restoration in 1652, the mosque’s sanctuary was redecorated with blue Iznik tiles, hence the name the Blue Mosque. Parts of the mosque were endangered after the 1992 earthquake and the building was in a general state of disrepair. Moisture around the foundation, corrosion on the decorations and theft of tiles from the qibla all threaten the site. The project, funded in part by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Historic Cairo, is expected to be completed by 2012. et

http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=8721
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Guidebooks Available for Three Historic Syrian Citadels

Revitilisation projects are currently underway in Syria at Masyaf Citadel, the Castle of Salah ad-Din, and Aleppo Citadel through the efforts of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). Guidebooks providing visual and textual documentation for each of these prominent architectural sites are now available on ArchNet.

Published by the AKTC, the three guidebooks are all 45-50 pages long and include a description, history, site plan and visitor tour. Each is helpfully illustrated with rich color photographs, drawings and maps depicting the site and its place in the region. Elevation, section, and axonometric views are also included, providing a heightened sense of the architecture of these historic citadels.

Click below to download the guidebook for:
Aleppo Citadel
Masyaf Citadel
The Castle of Salah ad-Din

Contributed by Jared Eisenstat

http://archnet.org/news/view.jsp?news_id=17381
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http://www.akdn.org/aktc_museums.asp

Spotlight: Exhibitions in Spain

Following Geografías del Islam: Obras de arte islámico del Museo Aga Khan, which ran from October through January in Toledo, Spain, two new exhibitions will be mounted in Spain:

Madrid: at CaixaForum, 3 June 2009 to 6 September 2009
Barcelona: at CaixaForum, 1 October 2009 to 17 January 2010

For more information, please see the brochure.

****

Museums & Exhibitions: Introduction

Detail from the Akhlaq-i Nasiri (Ethics of Nasir),
one of the paintings on display at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian
14 March to 6 July 2008. "Currently, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) is in the process of establishing three new museums in Cairo, Toronto and Zanzibar, as part of the Trust’s programme of cultural initiatives aimed at revitalising the heritage of communities in the Islamic world and contributing to their social and economic development.

Within these broader objectives, the museums are dedicated to presenting Islamic arts and culture in their historic, cultural and geographical diversity. Their aim is to foster knowledge and understanding both within Muslim societies and between these societies and other cultures.

At the same time, a series of travelling exhibitions and a programme of assistance to museums in developing countries are under way.

For more information, please see the current brief in English and Portuguese (A3 format, PDF).

News Archives
Museums as Educational Institutions

01 August 2008 - Museums are no longer merely repositories of culture, but vital educational institutions that can have a profound effect on public discourse. Museums can testify to the existence of other cultures and faiths in ways that go beyond the written or spoken word. They provide evidence of other realities, other histories and other influences beyond the ones we might have learned or perceived.

Exhibition from Aga Khan Museum Collection Inaugurated by King of Spain and Aga Khan in Madrid

04 June 2009 - His Majesty the King of Spain and His Highness the Aga Khan inaugurate Madrid exhibition: "The Islamic Worlds in the Aga Khan Museum Collection" at CaixaForum in Madrid.

“Masterpieces of the Aga Khan Museum” Opens at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon

13 March 2008 - "The Path of Princes: Masterpieces of the Aga Khan Museum Collection" exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon was officially opened today by Emílio Rui Vilar, President of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Prince Amyn Aga Khan, who was representing his brother, His Highness the Aga Khan.

View all articles


Aga Khan Museum (AKM)


The Aga Khan Museum, due to open in 2011 in Toronto, Canada, will be dedicated to the acquisition, preservation and display of artefacts - from various periods and geographies - relating to the intellectual, cultural, artistic and religious heritage of Islamic communities.

An architectural rendering of the future Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.Planned as a venue for large international exhibitions, the 10,000 square meter building designed by the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki will house its permanent collection as well as major temporary exhibitions. Surrounded by a large landscaped park, the Museum will provide a forum for permanent exchanges between the Islamic and Western worlds. It will also be a major centre for education and research and for the discovery of the musical heritage of the Islamic world.

The Museum’s collection contains some of the world’s most important masterpieces of Islamic art, including the famous collection of miniatures and manuscripts created by the late Prince Sadruddin and his wife Princess Catherine, and objects in stone, wood, ivory and glass, metalwork, ceramics, rare works on paper and parchment. Covering over one thousand years of history, they create an overview of the artistic accomplishments of Muslim civilisations from the Iberian Peninsula to China. His Highness the Aga Khan’s personal commitment to the objectives of the Museum will keep the collection growing in size and importance.

Specific educational programmes on Muslim history, arts and culture will make the Museum a unique space in North America. It will be an institution dedicated to disseminating knowledge of Islamic civilisations through outreach to the widest public - school children, students, adults and families, as well as researchers, including educational resources via the web. The building will house a large auditorium with lecture, film and concert programmes, as well as a library offering direct access to specialised documentation and information from virtual sources.
The Museum’s temporary exhibitions, which will be developed in partnership with key international partners, will spotlight the diversity of Islamic arts and cultures. They will be major events that will attract the public from the densely populated areas in a 300-mile radius of Toronto. This area contains more than 76 million people.

Beyond the traditional presentation of major periods of Muslim history, original approaches will include, for example, the relationships between Islam and other cultures and the evolution of arts, sciences, religion, literature, or music in a Muslim context.

Museum of Historic Cairo

At the north end of Al-Azhar Park - which AKTC spent two decades building on a 30-hectare (74-acre) site - AKTC is now building a Museum of Historic Cairo, in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt. The Park site, bordered by 1.5 km of the old city’s Ayyubid wall on one side, and the Mamluk “City of the Dead” on the other, was a rubble dump for 500 years. Inaugurated in 2004, Al-Azhar Park is today a major attraction for tourists and Egyptians alike.

The Museum’s 2,500 square meter building will be situated at the entrance to the historic city. It is designed to give both Cairenes and foreigners insights into the amazing cultural and architectural heritage of the Egyptian capital’s historic area. The Museum will be complemented by exhibition spaces within the neighbouring Ayyubid wall and within major restored cultural buildings in the historic city, which visitors will be encouraged to discover, following special itineraries, as they leave the Museum.

Art and architectural elements from Heliopolis, the early settlements of Cairo, and the City’s major historical periods will be on show, including the Fatimid Golden Age, the periods of the Ayyubids and Mamluks, and the era of Ottoman rule. Special rooms will recreate the atmosphere of nineteenth century Cairo. The Museum will house some of the great wealth of art and artefacts of Cairo’s mediaeval heritage that are not currently on display to the public.

To conserve and restore the artefacts and artworks which will be shown in the Museum, AKTC has set up a conservation laboratory which is training young local technicians in this field. At the same time, important art and architectural elements for the Cairo Museum of Islamic Art are being restored in the same facility.

Indian Ocean Maritime Museum, Zanzibar

As part of long-standing revitalisation work in Zanzibar’s Stone Town, AKTC has restored several landmark buildings, one of which - the Old Dispensary - will house a museum dedicated to the Indian Ocean as a maritime space in which, since prehistory, the exchange of goods, ideas and myths took place between its diverse coastal civilisations.
The museum space will cover two floors of the building and include sections on various aspects of Indian Ocean geography, trade and culture, including the role of monsoons and ocean currents, the evolution of Arab navigation, and the travels of Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Ibn Majid, Zheng He, and others, from the Mediterranean, the Middle East and beyond. Other sections will recount the incursions and eventual domination of the ocean by European powers, the exploits of pirates and privateers and the importance of the great trade companies.

Historical spaces will highlight the transformation of Zanzibar as the propeller replaced the sail and cloves replaced the slave trade. Models of naval vessels, old navigation instruments and maps and other original artefacts that illustrate the history of the commercial and cultural contacts between Africa, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and the Far East will be featured. Indian Ocean ecology and the effects of human activity on local ecosystems will also be highlighted in interactive models and displays.

The ground floor of the Indian Ocean Maritime Museum will have educational and vocational training facilities, a cafeteria and shop, and an aquarium. The celebrated Sultan’s Barge, a nineteenth century vessel complete with canopy, oars and gilded decoration, will be a major attraction for visitors, following a full restoration undertaken by AKTC.

Exhibition Programmes

In the period leading to its official opening, selections from the Aga Khan Museum’s collections are being shown in different European locations. They allow the public in this part of the world to have a glimpse of what the Museum will contain, and at the same time bring public attention to the creation of a new institution of international standing.

Exhibitions have taken place in the following venues:

Splendori a Corte, Palazzo della Pilotta, Parma, 31 March to
3 June 2007;
Spirit & Life, The Ismaili Centre, London, 14 July to 31 August 2007;
Chefs-d’œuvre islamiques de l’Aga Khan Museum, Louvre, Paris,
5 October 2007 to 7 January 2008;
The Path of Princes, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon,
14 March to 6 July, 2008.
Further exhibitions will take place in Toledo, Spain; Berlin, Germany; and Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2008 - 2010.

Support for Developing World Museums

The Museums Projects unit also provides support services for museums in the developing world, including the National Museum of Mali, where it is helping upgrade information technology systems, improve the conservation facilities, reorganise the Museum’s reserve collections of archaeology and textiles, and assist with the construction and equipping of a new building earmarked for conservation and restoration work.
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Reconstruction works in Djennè

In early November 2009, exceptionally strong rain fell on Djenné. At first the mosque, whose superstructures were drenched, seemed to hold up well. However on 5 November, the upper part of the South tower of the East façade collapsed, leading several tons of laterite mud to slide onto the East terrace. The organization Aga Khan Trust for Culture is leading its reconstruction with the support of international experts and local workers.

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Humayun’s tomb to get back its crown jewels
Richi Verma, TNN, 31 January 2010, 12:48am ISTText Size:|Topics:humayun
Archaeological Survey of India
Humayun’s Tomb

World heritage site Humayun’s Tomb is all set to regain its lost architectural marvels. The eight canopies on the dome of the 16th century monument — which originally had striking blue, yellow and green colour tiles — will be restored as per the original Mughal design and architecture.

Experts said that the process of rebuilding the tiles was a very long process and involved detailed studies aimed at understanding the original design and composition of the Mughal-era tiles.

Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) director-general K N Shrivastava said: ‘‘We are going to reconstruct the original blue tile work on the canopies of the monument. Since the monument is a world heritage site, we will have to keep Unesco updated about the plan and also about the progress of the conservation work. Under the principles of conservation, monuments have to be conserved according to the original design and shape. Reconstructing the lost blue tile work is a structural requirement of the tomb.’’

According to ASI officials, the smaller canopies on the roof of the tomb were originally decorated with ceramic tiles in lapis blue, turquoise blue, green, white and yellow as was the tradition at that time. ‘‘These striking colours were highlighted by the contrasting milky whiteness of the marble dome in the background. During the early 19th century, most of the original tiles started peeling off. Only traces of them remain today,’’ said a senior ASI official.

Experts said that traces of tile work that remained have helped reveal the original pattern, and laboratories in Roorkee, Oxford and Barcelona have tested the tile samples. ‘‘An international workshop — co-sponsored by Unesco and ASI — on conservation of Humayun’s Tomb tile work was held in April 2009 to discuss, debate and find possible solutions for conservation of tiles on the tomb’s canopies, including restoration of the missing tile work,’’ added officials. About 40 participants from nine tile producing countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan participated in the workshop.

According to historians, tile work is a significant element in several Lodhi and early Mughal period structures and remnants of tile work can be seen on several monuments in Delhi. However, the tile-making traditions followed by the Mughals have been lost over the centuries and hence very little in conservation terms could be done when the tiles have fallen, vandalised or simply gone missing.

Tile work is a significant architectural element, and it also protects the underlying surface. The loss of tile work severely disfigures the historic architectural character/integrity of the monument.

‘‘Conservation of existing tile work should be a priority at all sites and efforts should be made to minimise further loss of the original tiles. Any new tile work that will replace missing tiles should match the original ones in colour, texture, composition and other physical and chemical properties and the conservation work should respect the original patterns,’’ said Ratish Nanda of Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC).

AKTC will also train youths of Nizamuddin Basti to produce Mughal-style tiles and to preserve tile-making traditions in the country.

The conservation work at the Humayun’s Tomb is part of a public-private partnership between the ASI, AKTC, Central Public Works Department (CPWD), Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Aga Khan Foundation.

Some months ago, ASI and AKTC officials had removed a thick layer of cement concrete from the roof of the mausoleum. The concrete was putting a pressure of about 10 lakh kilos on the structure. This layer that had been added to the monument during the British rule to prevent water seepage also blocked the water drainage channels on the roof, leading to accumulation of rainwater causing considerable damage to the monument.
richi.verma@timesgroup.com

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Ansari vists Ghalib tomb, appreciates restoration work


New Delhi, Feb 2 (PTI)

Vice President Hamid Ansari today visited the tomb of revered poet Mirza Ghalib here to witness the conservation work and landscaping that has been carried out at the site.

The conservation work on the tomb and the surrounding areas, a heritage site, had begun in early 2009 by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

Hundreds of skilled and unskilled craftsmen and master craftsmen were employed for restoring the tomb and landscaping works including replacing the concrete pavement with marble inlay and hand-chiselled sandstone paving to reproduce the Mughal-era look.

Ansari visited the restored site of the tomb and also witnessed the renovation of an MCD Primary school in the Nizamuddin Basti and was "visibly impressed," the Aga Khan Trust said in a statement.

The conservation work is part of the Humayun's Tomb- Sunder Nursery-Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti Urban Renewal project.
http://www.ptinews.com/news/497285_Ansa ... ation-work
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Heritage for the future

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture is restoring historic buildings in cities across the Muslim world. While culture can be a catalyst for development, urban poverty remains a massive challenge.

February 04, 2010 Jurjen van der Tas and Ellen Lammers

What is the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and where does it work?


The Aga Khan Trust for Culture is part of the Aga Khan Development Network. This network, founded 50 years ago, brings together 80,000 people working for many private and non-profit organizations. It is headed by His Highness the Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. The member organizations carry out their work without regard to faith, although most projects aim to improve the quality of life in societies where Muslims have a significant presence.

About 90% of the Trust for Culture’s work goes into its Historic Cities Programme. It was started in 1992 to promote the conservation and re-use of buildings and public spaces in historic cities. Of all UNESCO’s world heritage sites, one-third are located in the Muslim world. That says a thing or two about its incredibly rich heritage. But for decades, and sometimes centuries, many of these sites have been succumbing to decay. Countless old mosques, palaces and town houses, city walls and gardens are in a dismal state. The sad fact is that culture becomes a luxury when social and economic needs are not met.

In other words, you have no shortage of work ...

Indeed. We have so far had extensive projects in eight very different settings – from Mali to Pakistan, from Bosnia to Zanzibar. In 2002, we started on the rehabilitation of the old Asheqan-i Arefan neighbourhood of Kabul. A cluster of beautiful houses, some 300 years old, has since been restored. Elsewhere in the Afghan capital, the 16th-century Baghe Babur, the oldest Mughal garden, has been cleared of debris and other remnants of war. The shrine and water channels have been restored, the terraces planted, and it is now once again a place where people come for leisure or cultural events.

Our first landmark project was in Egypt, where we helped create a city park on a 30-hectare mound of rubble that for 500 years had been a rubbish dump. Al-Azhar Park is now a popular open space in this frantic city. Moreover, it has proved a powerful catalyst for urban renewal in the neighbouring district of Darb al-Ahmar, once one of the poorest districts of Cairo.

Does your approach differ from those of other organizations involved in conservation efforts?

In most of our projects we work with national and local governments, local investors and international organizations such as UNESCO or the World Monuments Fund. One way in which we have distinguished ourselves is through our holistic view of the importance of cultural heritage. Restoring cultural sites is extremely valuable in and of itself, as these sites are the tangible markers of our history. As such, they play an important role in raising people’s self-awareness and shaping their identity.

Yet for us the relationship between culture and development is just as important. We believe that conservation and restoration projects will only succeed, and prove sustainable, if they tackle socio-economic development at the same time. Our projects therefore go beyond mere technical restoration. We take on the rehabilitation of a building or historical site in ways that spur social and economic benefits for the people living in its vicinity.

This means that we try to involve local people in the work, which is not always easy. They are often very poor, living in run-down old parts of town. Their vulnerability makes them suspicious, and they often feel threatened by the prospect of change. Sometimes we resort to ‘goodwill gestures’, such as organizing solid waste collection and sewage systems, to get them on board. The reason we want them on board is that we want to sustain the social fabric of an area. What you often see is that after renovation, wealthier people move in, pushing out the original inhabitants. Market forces are strong, but we try hard to avoid this ‘gentrification’.

How else do you try to make a difference?

By not limiting our focus to the specific monument that needs conservation, but including the built area that surrounds it. We usually make a long-term commitment to the areas where we work and help people renovate their houses, even if they have no particular historical value.

When restoring Baltit Fort in Hunza, Pakistan, for instance, we used the restoration to generate new employment opportunities. Of course the specialized restoration work is carried out by experts, but at the same time we set up vocational training to remedy the lack of good craftsmen, such as carpenters, plumbers and electricians. Once the restoration projects in Hunza were completed, Town Management Societies were charged with defining future strategies and creating local institutions to operate and maintain the restored landmark buildings. The same process is now under way, but on a much larger scale, in places such as Cairo’s historic Darb al-Ahmar quarter, Districts 1 and 7 of Kabul and the Nizamuddin area of Delhi, India.

In Mali, the restoration of the famous Great Mosque in Mopti (see photo) included on-the-job training of craftsmen and apprentices in traditional earth-building techniques and in new restoration methods. Since then the programme has grown to encompass a water supply and sanitation programme. We also helped set up a brick manufacturing facility to produce street paving blocks made of sand and recycled plastic bags. For such efforts we link up with other organizations and sometimes bilateral donors.

What questions does your work raise for researchers?

My questions relate to the issue of urban poverty. We have built up a reputation in the field of conservation and restoration, and we know our trade. But what often proves much harder to get a grip on is the often desperate situation of people who live in the neighbourhoods where we work. It seems to me that many of the interventions in cities are in fact based on the accumulated wisdom of rural development. But the problems of urban and rural areas hardly compare. We believe that culture can be a catalyst for development also, or especially, in urban areas.

But that clearly is not enough. Urban unemployment will be one of the most pressing problems of this century. Again and again, we find that people want jobs, to feel useful and ‘in the game’. But mostly this is because, unlike in rural areas, everything in the city needs money. Especially for urban migrants, the loss of family and social networks means they have no one to fall back on. All services must be paid for in cash, and in overcrowded slums and neighbourhoods there is no space for growing even basic vegetables.

One question that researchers should tackle is the difference between urban and rural poverty. How do poor people in the city generate an income, and how do they spend it? Such questions have been largely ignored because they are so difficult to answer when dealing with people who operate in the messy and elusive realities of cities in developing countries. But we need answers if we are to get a better understanding of the conditions of urban poverty – and better solutions.

We try to help a little by revitalizing old city areas and making sure that the restored buildings are re-used. We believe that these cultural centres must become an active part of the community, not simply serve as isolated tourist attractions. In Egypt, we managed to get approval from the Supreme Council of Antiquities to establish a medical clinic in a restored Ottoman palace that is located right next to Cairo’s Khayer Bek mosque. We have a vocational training centre in the madrassa of the Um Sultan Sha’aban complex. Both of these monuments are now serving the local community in several ways, as well as helping to enhance a local sense of pride in the cultural heritage.

http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/en/articl ... the-future
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February 2010 • Metropolis Observed
Spirit of Community
A mosque in Cairo is restored for—and by—locals.
By Cathryn Drake

http://www.metropolismag.com/story/2010 ... -community
Posted February 17, 2010

Five years after opening, Cairo’s Al-Azhar Park has surpassed all expectations. Built by the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) on top of an ancient dump, the miraculously lush 74-acre park is among the biggest in a city with 18 million people and one of the world’s lowest ratios of green space per inhabitant. It is also the linchpin of an extensive historic-preservation and community-development effort in Al-Darb al-Ahmar, the vibrant, impoverished neighborhood just across the ramparts of the newly excavated medieval Ayyubid wall. Its projects include the restorations of several mosques, mausoleums, and 17th-century Ottoman houses, most of which were completed by the end of last year. But work on the 14th-century Aslam al-Silahdar mosque, which reopened last October along with a renovated public square and ten rebuilt shops, only began at the urging of local residents.

Dina Bakhoum, the project’s preservation manager, says residents approached AKDN’s team of restorers as they were working on the Umm al-Sultan Sha’ban and Khayer Bek mosques to ask if theirs could be spruced up too. “It was just a natural process,” she says. “We were finishing up and had already trained a lot of people. Plus, we realized that Aslam al-Silahdar contained a number of elaborate decorative elements, such as the marble carvings at the entrances.” As a training ground for local artisans, the restorations are encouraging a revival of traditional skills. “We don’t go out of the area for resources,” says Sherif Erian, CEO of Aga Khan Cultural Services Egypt. “Most of the wood and marble workshops come from the community, as do the brass-lantern producers and the workers. So the project involves a heavy economic advantage for the area.” Local participation also increases the likelihood that the buildings will be well cared for in the future.

As the mosque approached completion, it became clear that its dilapidated public square and the shops opposite it also needed help. But convincing the suspicious shopkeepers that nothing would be demanded in return for rebuilding their stores took at least a few meetings. “We asked them to estimate their monthly income and gave them the cash to cover the three-month construction period,” Erian says. “Now they want to sell touristic stuff, which will be more profitable.” The influx of visitors will be another economic boost to the area, now a treasure trove of pristine historic monuments and a link to the key sights of Islamic Cairo.

“The opening of Aslam Square caught the attention of government officials, and they are encouraging us to do more,” Erian says. “So our focus in the coming year will be more public spaces and shops.” The next phase of the ambitious neighborhood project, which has included new health and community centers, is the Museum of Historic Cairo and a commercial complex to sustain the park economically. A plaza will connect to an illuminated promenade along the top of the historic wall, overlooking both the park and the teeming quarter on the other side. But the modest Aslam al-Silahdar—the legacy of a mere emir rather than a sultan—stands as a symbol of the true strength of AKDN’s Historic Cities program, which is transforming Muslim urban centers as diverse as Zanzibar, Delhi, and Khorog, Tajikistan. “One of the big successes we have had in Cairo,” AKDN’s Sam Pickens says, “was to convince city authorities not to clear the poor people away from the medieval wall and to let us restore their housing so that they could have a stake in the benefits coming out of the ensuing revitalization.” In other words, the greatest thing AKDN has done is to prioritize the city’s human assets over its enduring monuments.

Read more about this story on the February 2010 Reference page.
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AKTC Collaborates with Germany in Cultural Preservation Projects

Cultural preservation work builds ties to war-torn countries, says expert

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: A lot of work has been put into restoring Herat

Germany is contributing to civil aid projects in Afghanistan - with schools, police training and better streets, but also with money for the maintenance of Afghan cultural heritage sites.

Since 2002, the German Archeological Institute in Afghanistan has been busy with projects to help preserve culturally significant sites. Archeologist Ute Franke proposed this idea to the Department of Foreign Affairs and has worked on location in Afghanistan. Her contribution includes leading the research into the history of the city of Herat and supervising the excavation of the Bagh-e Babur park in Kabul.

Deutsche Welle: Isn't it more important for the people of Herat to have fresh water and jobs than to know what their old town once looked like?


Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Ute Franke is very involved in Afghan cultural reconstruction
Ute Franke: These two things are not mutually exclusive. Also, this project had very concrete, everyday-life effects. For example, as part of the old town restoration work by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture - which was financed by Germany's Department of Foreign Affairs - the sidewalks in certain areas were asphalted. The canalization has been redone; the sewers and stale water have disappeared and new water reservoirs have been excavated. Thanks to this, the living standard in this area has increased.

But isn't the maintenance of cultural sites an excessive measure when one considers the problems that many Afghans have due to the invasion and civil war?

If I had to decide whether to improve the water supply or carry out an archeological excavation, it would also be very hard for me to say that we should do an excavation. You have to assess what should be financed first, but the maintenance of cultural sites should not be left out altogether. The UN Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property states that this is a part of humanitarian aid. It can be questioned, but I believe that it's justifiable.

Why are the cultural preservation projects important then?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Restoration projects create many jobs, says Franke
Firstly, they are important because they create jobs and income for many people. Also, we offer training opportunities - for excavators, restorers, bricklayers and carpenters, among others. In this way, old artisan skills are developed - skills that have almost disappeared but that are useful for the people.

In Herat, for example, there's a lot of building going on. The people who were trained and employed as part of this project have an easier time finding jobs later on because they can say, "I have learned this; I have work experience." It makes them more employable.

Advantages like this do mean a lot. But from your point of view, why is it important to maintain the cultural heritage of a politically unstable country?

I personally find it important, and not just from the point of view of a scholar. Afghanistan, for example, is a country with a big academic research past - in both archeology and history. This research has been strongly supported right up to this day by the Afghan ministry for culture. This is probably because cultural heritage is connected to national pride and identity.

The investment in cultural preservation is also a contribution to the restoration of the civil society, which is the foundation of a modern state. Maybe this is hard to understand at first, but I have experienced it myself - during the park project, for example.

I have participated in the restoration of the Bagh-e Babur gardens from the start. They were in ruins at the beginning, but now they are a blooming park landscape, and that's a positive sign for the people of Kabul. The park is full on weekends; on Fridays as many as 10,000 people go there because it's a beautiful place where they can relax and forget their daily problems.

Bildunterschrift: Thanks to restoration efforts, the people of Kabul can once again enjoy the Bagh-e Babur gardens

The Department of Foreign Affairs says that the preservation of cultural sites has the good side-effect of creating a positive relationship with the country that finances the projects. Does it really work this easily?

Definitely. For example, since 2002 we have developed close personal and professional relationships with Afghanistan. We are perceived as a positive factor; as a reliable contact.

When I see ISAF soldiers in Herat, they also evoke very mixed feelings in me. They all travel around in convoys, heavily armed, with armored vehicles and vests - that does not make a positive impression, but it can't be avoided.

However, when no one invests in cultural projects, it's a lost opportunity. It naturally costs money, but I think that thanks to the various projects Germans have a positive image in Herat - whereas a nation that has a military presence there is generally seen rather negatively.

Interview: Marlis Schaum (ew)
Editor: Kate Bowen
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5262587,00.html
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Jashn e Khusrau, A Festival of Poetry and Music as Part of Delhi Urban Renewal Rrogramme

http://www.akdn.org/Content/963
Please also see the festival calendar, the booklet and programme flier.

The Jashn e Khusrau, which celebrates the Sufiana kalaam (mystical poetry of Islam) of Amir Khusrau (1253-1325), rendered in the khanqah of his beloved pir, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (1238-1325), and which has been kept alive for over 700 years by khanqahi qawwali at sama-e-mehfil (Sufi music communion) of the Chistiya silsilah, will run from 4-14 March 2010.

Amir Khusrau (1253 – 1325) was a medieval poet, musician, courtier and historian par excellence. A disciple of Hazrat Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya, Khusrau was a devout follower of the Chishtiya order while being associated with the courts of at least seven kings of Delhi. His fluency in Persian, the language of the court, and Hindavi, the language of the common people, enabled him to compose poetry, riddles and historical treatises in both languages making his work accessible to all strata of society. A cultural figure without parallel, he holds an exalted position in international literary and cultural domains from Istanbul to Isfahan and Kabul to Rangoon.

The celebration has been organized by Aga Khan Trust for Culture in collaboration with the India International Centre, with co-funding from the Ford Foundation.

The festival forms a vital part of the Humayun’s Tomb-Sunder Nursery-Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti urban renewal programme being undertaken through a public private partnership involving the Archaeological Survey of India, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Central Public Works Department.

The Jashn e Khusrau brings together, for the first time, an exclusive assembly of khanqahi qawwal with different dargah affiliations, each performing a repertoire of Amir Khusrau’s kalaam in their distinctive style.

Besides the qawwali performances, the Jashn, in an integrated effort to showcase the Aalam e Khusrau project, includes several related events such as lectures, film screening, heritage walks and an exhibition on the Humayun’s Tomb-Sunder Nursery-Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti urban renewal project (please see the programme).

The Jashn e Khusrau is the first festival being organized through the Aalam e Khusrau project, which is co-funded by the Ford Foundation. The Aalam e Khusrau project seeks to document and revive the contribution of Amir Khusrau in the field of music – from the popular qawwali and folk genres to classical music.
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India, Pak qawwals join for music fest

Reviving the rich tradition of Sufi music and the legacy of Amir Khusrau, qawwals from across the subcontinent will render the compositions of the legendary scholar at the place where he lived and worked in the 13th century.

A 10-day long musical and literary festival, Jashn-e- Khusrau, will bring together over 50 qawwals from India and Pakistan -- an exclusive assembly with different dargah affiliations, with each performing a repertoire of Amir Khusrau's kalaam in their distinctive style.

Besides remembering the 13th century Sufi legend, the festival also aims to revive a monument, that has been recently restored and landscaped.

To be held at the Chausanth Khamba here -- the Mughal period tomb, the festival is the first event to be held at the complex that has been recently landscaped and restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

Jashn-e-Khusrau brings together authentic qawwali singers from India and Pakistan who traditionally perform in Chistiya dargahs across the Indian subcontinent and their repertoires for the festival are based entirely on the Persian and Hindavi compositions of the celebrated poet, musician and scholar.

"We could have done it anywhere -- there are so many monuments in the capital -- but the idea is to revive a dead monument by preparing it for performances that were once its tradition," said Ritish Nanda, Project Director at the Trust.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed ... 15440.aspx

*****

Humayun’s Tomb is ‘most tourist-friendly monument’
Hamari Jamatia Posted online: Friday , Mar 05, 2010 at 0109 hrs

New Delhi : For years, Humayun’s Tomb underwent restoration and conservation work and now the results are for all to see. Overcoming tough competition from Red Fort and Qutub Minar, the monument, signifying a wife’s love for her husband, won the award for the “Best Maintained Tourist-Friendly Monument” for 2008-2009, organised by the Ministry of Tourism.

The prize, which was shared with Bhima Devi Temple in Pinjore, Haryana, did not come as a surprise to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) officials, who received the award at a function on Wednesday. Superintending Archaeologist of ASI (Delhi) KK Muhammed said, “The monument had a huge potential to be developed into a heritage zone and we have been able to do so in collaboration with Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC),” he said.

The monument is now set to become bigger and better soon with the ASI having acquired the surrounding land. After a 12-year battle between the ASI and the Delhi State Bharat Scouts and Guides (BSG) over an 11-acre plot next to Humayun’s Tomb the Ministry of Urban Development handed over the land to the heritage body in January.

The plot houses two Centrally-protected monuments —- Bada Batashewala Mahal and Chotabatashewala Mahal.

It took ASI and AGCT around three years from 2000 to 2003 to restore the monument. The team planted trees all over the place and around 12 hectares of lawns were replanted.

They reinstated the walkways and reactivated water channels. After the conservation work, water began to flow through the water-courses and dried up fountains started functioning. The monument, said Muhammed, is very popular with foreign tourists and there are plans to develop the surrounding area.

The restoration work was done under the aegis of the National Culture Fund.

According to the AKTC website, “the objective of the project was to revitalise the gardens, pathways, fountains and water channels of the chahâr-bâgh, the four-part paradise garden surrounding Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi.”

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/587083/

******
Monumental advances

Suparna Bhalla / March 06, 2010, 0:22 IST

A lot has been said about the need to conserve the 5,000-odd monuments protected by the state and central governments. A lot is being done by the Archaeological Survey of India, along with agencies such as the World Monuments Fund, UNESCO, Aga Khan Foundation and several NGOs, to create awareness and protect the fast-disappearing heritage.

Whatever be the reason for their present state of neglect, these monuments are essential to our national identity. In this regard, the recent restoration of Humayun’s Tomb, Qutab Minar, the Rathas of Mahabalipuram, the Synagogue in Cochin, the buildings in Kala Ghoda in Mumbai, etc has not gone unnoticed. These projects may have attracted contradictory opinions from conservationists and archaeologists, but what does the common man care about such controversies? The matter of whose garden surrounds Humayun’s Tomb — the original or the one restored by Lord Curzon — is often not the reason a visitor enjoys the space. It is the symmetrical green lawns of the ‘char-bagh’, with its red sandstone water channels, the squirrels that hide behind the hedges, the sprawling banyans and swarms of parrots that make Humayun’s Tomb a destination visitors come back to again and again.

The question is, what is more important — the monument or its setting? Contemporary conservationists would say both. A monument must be connected to the cultural system of the city since it has the potential to inform and reinforce the patterns of civic society, not only through its historical references but also by the land it sits on.

Take the prominent monuments of Delhi, starting with the old cities and the central vista, add a few of the tombs and you arrive at a staggering 2,500 acres of land under these monuments! With the cost of land at an average of Rs 80 crore per acre, this adds up to figures that are best left to imagination. The economics makes it imperative, thus, to evaluate the use of these monuments. While tourists, both local and global, are the primary target audience, can our cultural landscape extend itself into the city as infrastructure rather than as merely ornamental as now?

At Delhi’s Lodi Gardens, the tombs are of less importance to the local community than the gardens; on the beach at Mahabalipuram, the Rathas dot the landscape and yet are not the prime reason for the recreational value of the seafront. The monuments here provide a unique ambience but do not overwhelm the space. Then there is the Taj Mahal. The most visited tourist destination in India is ironically a prime example of a monument whose beauty does not extend itself into either the river or the city that surrounds it.

India’s cultural heritage is priceless. Yet the priority of ‘use’ may overwhelm its physical or historical value. One way out could be to create a series of ‘democratic’ public spaces as an artery to the otherwise fragmented heritage structure. This artery could combine recreation, social and cultural activities and sports to become a platform to promote the sense of community.

We live today in a paradoxical moment when we are seeking our roots as differentiators and are also obsessed with global modernity. In such a scenario, the setting of the monuments, far more than the monuments themselves could act as links between the past and present.

The writer is a Delhi-based architect

http://www.business-standard.com/india/ ... es/387635/
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An incredible journey: Basti to heritage guide
Richi Verma , TNN, Mar 14, 2010, 02.08am IST

NEW DELHI: Eighteen-year-old Moninuddin was born and brought up in Basti Nizamuddin. But it's been just 18 months since he learnt about the area's historical and cultural sigificance.

Moninuddin is one of 15 teenagers from the Basti who have been trained to impart local knowledge as tourist guides.

After nearly two years spent identifying the tangible and intangible heritage of the Basti, the young people were trained to conduct heritage walks. It's part of a project launched during the ongoing Jashan-e-Khusrau festival here. The project, called the heritage volunteer programme, is part of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture's (AKTC) urban renewal plans.

The teenagers have formed a self-help group — Sair-e-Nizamuddin — which aims to share the Basti's cultural heritage with visitors.

More....

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/arti ... ?prtpage=1
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Money for Nothing, a Reno For Free
by Deborah Campbell

image courtesy of Aga Khan Trust for Culture
From the November 2004 issue of The Walrus
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/ ... an-life/2/

Cairo— In Khan al-Khalili bazaar, near the two-hundred-year-old al-Fishawi café where the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz penned his magnificent sagas of Egyptian life, two tiny girls in ragged party dresses stomped joyfully through the puddles of a burst water main. Across the street in Darb al-Ahmar, middle-aged men were playing rapid-fire card games at one of the thousands of coffee houses where the Egyptian male measures out his life with coffee spoons. In the dusty shops and alleyways of this impoverished district at the heart of Islamic Cairo, the spirit of the medieval capital endures.

Change has come to Cairo, as evidenced by the forest of satellite dishes sprouting from centuries-old tenements, or the call to prayer from a far-off mosque, blaring through a sound system along with Jimi Hendrix-style feedback as the muezzin completes his sound check: “Allah . . . (tap tap) . . . Allah . . . (tap tap) . . . Allah . . . ” Yet rarely does progress improve daily life for most people who live in this polluted metropolis of seventeen million, and seldom does it help neighbourhoods such as this one.

It is something of an anomaly that Darb al-Ahmar—home to hundreds of historically significant buildings and to some two hundred thousand Egyptians who survive on a dollar or two a day — has become the site of a unique urban intervention designed to reconcile two goals that are typically in opposition in the modern world: development and conservation. At issue is the fact that many of Darb al-Ahmar’s derelict stone and brick houses have been built close to, or into, a historic twelfth-century wall constructed as a fortification against invaders by the great Sultan Saladin (best known for kicking the Crusaders out of Jerusalem). Saladin’s Wall remained largely forgotten for centuries, buried so deep under rubble that even Napoleon’s efficient team of experts omitted it from their early-nineteenth-century maps. The construction of a lush new park nearby has changed that.

The al-Azhar Park project was conceived twenty years ago by Prince Karim Aga Khan, the Geneva-born, Harvard-educated spiritual leader of the world’s fifteen million Shia Ismaili Muslims who is purportedly a direct descendent of the Prophet Mohammed. The idea was to create a park as a gift to the city of Cairo, which was established by his ancestors, the Fatimid caliphs. Built by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (aktc) through its Historic Cities Support Program, the park would act as the much-needed “lungs” of a metropolis that had less than a footprint of green space per person.

And so a massive rubble dump—“a monument in garbage to the endurance of Cairo,” as the writer Max Rodenbeck called its five hundred years of accumulated debris—was transformed into the mile-long jewel of green that is al-Azhar Park. Situated high on a hill next to the thousand-year-old mosque of al-Azhar, the world’s oldest university, are more than six hundred thousand plants, thriving in soil that previously had the salinity of the Red Sea. When construction for that project uncovered much of Saladin’s Wall, the aktc launched an archaeological restoration that led it to confront the many problems plaguing Darb-al-Ahmar, which borders the park beyond the Wall.

Egypt’s antiquities laws usually protect historic sites the old-fashioned way, by simply evicting nearby residents and demolishing their houses. Darb al-Ahmar has been through a round of such evictions, and its residents, faced with pending demolition orders, have had little incentive to prevent the area from sliding into decline. (Ironically, this has protected the area from overzealous developers who have effectively turned many historic areas of Cairo into interchangeable high-rise complexes.)

The aktc has taken a very different approach. “The Wall, being a monument, should not be a threat to the community,” said Dr. Mohamed El-Mikawi, general manager of the ambitious urban-development project. He explained in his office high atop al-Azhar Park that when residents are evicted to preserve monuments, most are uprooted to satellite communities around Cairo. Within months, many leave their new homes and head straight back to Darb al-Ahmar, where they take what meagre shelter they can find. “They live in a small room, sometimes with no running water,” he explained, “because . . . employment is nearby, the kids can play and are taken care of by neighbours, and people feel secure in their community.”

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities initially ordered the aktc to demolish all housing within thirty metres of the Wall. This would have involved relocating thousands of families, said Dr. Mikawi. “When we refused, they came back and said, ‘Okay, let’s demolish ten metres only.’ We held to our guns and said, ‘No, we won’t demolish any.’”

Thus began a pilot project to renovate some of the dilapidated tenements bordering the Wall. “At the beginning people were a bit suspicious,” Seif El Rashidi, a young Egyptian urban planner with the project, explained. Even where renovations were offered free of charge, only the boldest accepted. “People thought that what we wanted to do was just demolish the whole area.” Rashidi is one of many local professionals employed by the project, which has helped offset the chronic brain drain afflicting Egypt’s educated class. Indeed, many Egyptian professionals spend their careers working in the wealthy Gulf States or elsewhere, given the dearth of opportunities to employ their skills at home.

“When we said that we were creating a park on the hills behind, they didn’t believe us,” he continued. “It was only when we started doing work like restoration and employing local residents, and it started to become obvious that this was in fact a park and not some project we were trying to hide, that people became much more interested.” (Drawing on the philosophy that has made the Aga Khan a leader in international development—his philanthropic organizations have contributed significantly to the rebuilding of Afghanistan, for instance—the aktc has also extended micro-credit business loans, a third of which are directed to women, and instituted skills-development programs in order to contract sophisticated tilework and carpentry to local businesses, with the long-term goal of keeping traditional crafts alive.)

To date, nineteen dwellings, housing seventy families, have been transformed into modest Mediterranean-style townhouses. Another two hundred home renovations are envisaged. The aktc has established a community health clinic and employment program, partially restored two medieval mosques and a palace, and rescued a former school building, built into Saladin’s Wall, from demolition by transforming it into an elegant community centre. It includes two children’s libraries, a computer lab, an employment centre, and an outdoor community cinema.

The renovations have had some unforeseen effects. With tenants temporarily vacating their homes during renovations, at least one landlord, prohibited by law from hiking the rent (and perhaps resentful that the rental home is now nicer than his own), has tried to reclaim the property by deeming it abandoned. There are also concerns that while the renovations are intended to inspire further community development, future projects may not take as sensitive an approach. Egyptian elites continue to view the area as a crime- and drug-riddled slum. “If Darb al-Ahmar was totally destroyed,” Rashidi said, “not many people would care.” Where local authorities have begun to grasp the value of historic areas, he says they typically view them as a “cash cow.” Worse than gentrifying, he said, “they tend to work towards something more serious: Disneyfication.” They envisage the kind of “Oriental bazaar” that is a caricature of the neighbourhood, intended to attract tourists rather than serve residents.

In the meantime, to the surprise of locals, the construction of al-Azhar Park has brought many benefits, not least the park itself. Compared with the frenzy of life in Darb al-Ahmar — of life anywhere in Cairo — its hilltop vista is remarkably quiet. Orchards and formal gardens of native Egyptian plants are interspersed with sunken gardens that lead to a pavilion-café perched on a small lake. From there a promenade bordered by swaying royal palm trees ascends to the five-star Hilltop restaurant. Under the midday sun, a few employees are tending plants or sweeping the promenade, and a young man pauses to unroll his mat to pray.

Campbell is the author of a book on the Israel/Palestine conflict and an associate editor at Adbusters.
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heritage: nizamuddin
Play With The Khwaja
Humayun’s Tomb and Nizamuddin’s monuments are getting a shine. So are lives enmeshed in them.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264836

It’s a piece of detail only a loving eye would notice: the six-metre-long gold-plated finial rising from the marble dome of Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi shines brighter these days. Fortunately, this 16th-century monument, a UNESCO World Heritage site, attracts many loving eyes, and in the past two years, they’ve seen it blossom under the attention of squads of technicians, workmen and craftsmen. These drones have removed the dead weight of one million kilos of concrete from the mausoleum’s roof, mounted scaffolding to repair its splendid double dome and lifted giant quartzite stones to restore its imposing plinth.

Not far away, in Nizamuddin Basti, a boxy, four-storey municipal primary school, set not in pretty gardens but arid urban squalor, has been undergoing its own transformation: dilapidated toilet blocks have been replaced, collapsing water, sewage and electrical infrastructure overhauled. Bright furniture and computers have arrived in classrooms, there is a riot of colours on the walls—from paintings by Madhubani artists to art work by students, who include children of local ragpickers. Outsiders show up all the time, to train teachers and provide learning support to students. Principal Syed Ali Akhtar, pointing out sights with the aplomb of a tour guide, says triumphantly, “Our window panes are of no use now to all those stone-throwers below—look, unbreakable plastic!”

What’s remarkable about these two initiatives is that they belong to the same project. It is an ambitious exercise, unfolding over a 180-acre sprawl in the capital’s heritage-rich Nizamuddin area. Its prime mover, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), is on familiar ground, with a background of leading cultural and socio-economic renewal in historic Muslim neighbourhoods, like old Cairo and the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo. But in India, where heritage conservation rarely goes hand-in-hand with development (rather, often finds itself on collision course with the poor), it is charting new territory. Architect K.T. Ravindran, chairman of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission, confirms, “There is no precedent here for what they’re doing, and if anyone can pull it off, they can, with their track record.”


A more accessible Chaunsath Khamsa

The idea that drives this project, of regenerating Nizamuddin, home to about a hundred medieval monuments, is not a new one. But it has always been safer to talk about than implement, since it involves dealing with a press of humanity, conflicts over land and Kafkaesque negotiations with official agencies. “If it wasn’t tough, someone would have done it long ago,” says AKDN’s project director, Ratish Nanda. “The sense of opportunity is amazing, but daunting.” Appropriately, a veritable army was assembled: a multi-disciplinary team of 100, and three government partners, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the Central Public Works Department (CPWD). Many donors have also come on board, including two Tata trusts.

The relatively straightforward part of the exercise is the conservation work, and the reconfiguration of spaces in and around Humayun’s Tomb and its neighbour, the serene and lovely Sunder Nursery. The outcome will be 150 acres of scenic archaeological parkland, studded with restored monuments. “Straightforward”, though, is not a word that the ASI would want to use. It fought a court battle and filed police FIRs (this, against another government agency, Northern Railways!) to regain control of tracts of land abutting the tomb complex with neglected monuments on them.

For conservationists, the Nizamuddin basti has both delights and despair. Residents don’t just live with history but also under, over and in it.

But across the traffic-choked Mathura Road lies a decidedly more complex challenge: the teeming basti, a place that is many things to many people. For the well-heeled, it is an eyesore in a genteel neighbourhood. For dog-owners, it is a place to buy cheap beef; for penniless gourmands, a haven. For social scientists, it is a 97 per cent Muslim settlement that illustrates the community’s marginalisation—only 6 per cent of young women here work, compared to about 35 per cent in urban Delhi. For seekers of the currently fashionable Sufi encounter, the basti exudes “character”, with its shrine, its qawwals, its rose-petal vendors, tiled teashops, carcass-flaunting meatshops, its skullcaps and burkhas, its limbless mendicants. For historians, and the thousands who pour in to pray at the dargah of Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, the 700-year-old settlement is much more: a cultural and spiritual lodestar. It was to be near Nizamuddin, described by one of his most famous disciples, the poet Amir Khusro (also buried here), as “a king without throne or crown, with kings in need of the dust of his feet”, that tombs of rulers, generals, ministers and poets accreted here over the centuries.

For the conservationist, therefore, there are delights around every turn. Despair awaits him too, since residents don’t just live with history, they live under it (in the crypt of the stunning mausoleum of Akbar’s aide, Atgah Khan), over it, in tenements hugging the edge of a 14th century baoli (stepwell), and within the precincts of Tilangani’s mausoleum, Delhi’s first octagonal tomb. A local land mafia thought nothing of demolishing Lal Mahal, a 13th-century Islamic palace where the traveller Ibn Batuta once stayed.

Through a mirror of newness A more dignified setting for the tomb of Mirza Ghalib

Unsurprisingly, AKDN’s arrival on the scene in 2007, after the government cleared its project, generated an explosion of fear and insecurity. For the basti, this was another demolition squad (Delhi’s infamous one-time heritage czar Jagmohan had made an attempt earlier), and the project’s surveyors were roughed up and sent home. But nearly three years on, much water has flowed down the nullah; or, more aptly, quantities of murky, fetid liquid have been sucked out of the baoli, one of many places here where the project has made a sea-change. The tomb of the great Urdu poet, Ghalib, has had its shamefully shabby courtyard elegantly restored; and earlier this month, the sound of Indian and Pakistani qawwals singing Khusro’s famous Man Kunto Maula filled the newly landscaped forecourt of the beautiful 17th-century Chaunsath Khamba at the project’s first cultural festival.

Parallel makeovers of schools and health centres, laying of sewer lines and new toilets have helped break the ice. So have English lessons and a gym.

There is no doubt that the parallel makeovers of sarkari educational and health infrastructure, the connecting of homes to sewer lines and the building of community toilets have helped break the ice. So have English lessons, which the community was quick to demand, despite giving every impression of being trapped in a time-warp. Its women also petitioned, successfully, for a well-equipped gym. “So many of us are overweight, with nowhere to walk,” explains Shehzadi, a rickshaw-owner’s wife, and a mother of five. “The aspirations here are the same as everywhere else,” says Delhi’s ex-mayor and the area’s municipal councillor, Farhad Suri, who opened many doors in the community.

Continuous dialogue and negotiation remains crucial, though, whether for reviving community parks reduced to wastelands (it took two years to get permission from their owner, the Delhi Development Authority) or for finding homes for 19 families living precariously atop the baoli, on a cracked wall. The solution found within the framework of Delhi’s relocation laws is moving them 25 km away, to a resettlement colony, with AKDN buying and building their first legal homes. An equitable solution? “We have negotiated more with the Delhi government on this issue than any other, and done more for these people than anyone else has,” declares Nanda.


Facing page, students at the made-over municipal primary school

While the project is well-entrenched, with planned cultural and socio-economic tasks for the seven years it hopes to be around, its future course also remains, in many ways, open-ended. It depends, among other things, on more basti-dwellers joining the dots—that is, realising that these ancient buildings could well be their passport to a better future. As Ravindran puts it, “It’s about getting the people to believe in what you believe in, and making a narrative out of it.”

As the project’s newly trained heritage guides, basti-born and bred boys, take visitors around their neighbourhood, it seems some fragments of the narrative are missing, but others clearly in place, much like the tilework on medieval monuments. As we go past a tomb occupied by visitor-wary families, our poised guides advise us to speak softly “in a sensitive area”. As we turn a corner, sure enough, someone hurls an insult: “Yehudi (Jew)!” Not losing their stride, however, the young men carry on enthusiastically, explaining, in lesson-perfect English, the features of monuments that meant nothing to them a year ago.
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April 19, 2010, 5:00 pm
Aleppo, Syria, to Undergo Historical Restoration
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Descending the steps of the citadel, a 13th-century fortress in Aleppo, Syria.
In this ancient fortress city in northern Syria, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited settlements, an ambitious restoration project is near completion in the Old City. Bloomberg is reporting that a master plan for development has been laid out for the next 15 years.

The most spectacular renewal is the Citadel castle: Workers cleared its deep moat, cleaned its formidable walls and removed tons of rubble. The work is backed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, whose goal is to revitalize run-down communities and monuments.

Syria remains on the U.S. State Department list of terrorism sponsors, but new visa-free travel to and from Turkey has made Aleppo a way station.

The Mansouriya Palace boutique hotel, a combination of two houses set around a courtyard decorated by a rectangular pool and an orange tree, provides a preview of tourism in old Aleppo. Its nine rooms are done in styles reflecting parts of the city’s history, among them Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Hittite.

Related: Tourists Return to an Ancient Crossroads in Syria
http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2010 ... storation/
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