THE DAYAHATYN CARAVANSARY: THE RESTORATION TO BE CONTINUED

The Museum of Visual Arts of Turkmenistan hosted the award ceremony of regular winner of annual programme “The Fund of the USA Ambassador for Protection of Natural Heritage”. Project of Turkmenistan National Department for Protection, Study and Restoration of Historical and Cultural Monuments was recognized as the best.

Unique architectural monument of XI – XII century – the Dayahatyn Caravansary, which is located on the left bank of Amudarya River in Lebap Velayat, is a subject of Turkmen – American cooperation. This is the most preserved facility of such kind in Central Asia. Nevertheless, many construction units and its magnificent decoration are in bad conditions for thousand years of existence and need to be restored.

As per tradition, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USA in Turkmenistan Mathew Climow presented a congratulation letter to the Head of the Department Muhammed Mamedov who manage this project.

The USA Embassy has started financing of restoration works at Dayahatyn in 2012. Two grants have been issued for the last seven years, which allowed making urgent operations for prevention of collapse of the most dangerous parts of the building and partially restoring lost parts of entry portal and arch gallery in one of the façade in inner yard of the caravansary.

Managed by architects and restoration specialists from Turkmenistan National Department for Protection, Study and Restoration of Historical and Cultural Monuments, personnel of Kerky State Historical and Cultural Reserve, which is in charge of all monuments of Lebap Velayat, has successfully completed the task. In addition, several options of dimensional reconstruction of the image of the caravansary in different stages of its existence have been made.

Under the third stage of the project, Turkmen specialists had to restore inside southeaster walls of the caravansary, arch galleries and domes, ornaments as well as exterior walls located on both sides of the main portal. Due to big volume and complexity of set objectives, the third stage of the project realization will take not less than three years. However, there is an opportunity today for tourists to visit Dayahatyn and in future it will be accessible for deeper archaeological study.

Results of the project will be published in scientific publications and mass media and undoubtedly, its practice will enrich the world practice of restoration and conservation of medieval architectural monuments of Turkmenistan.

As is known, the Ambassador’s Fund for Protection of Cultural Heritage, which was funded by the USA Congress in 2001, is a programme of American Government providing support to the projects for conservation of archaeological excavations, restoration of historical buildings, museum collections, ancient manuscripts and rare printing media, documentation of traditional forms of music, dance and language.

For the last 18 years, the Ambassador’s Fund provided support to 26 different projects to total amount of more than 1.6 million US dollars. It is worth mentioning that our country takes leading positions by number of projects accomplished by this programme.

Ambassador Mathew Climow highlighted at the ceremony that Dayahatyn is a national heritage of Turkmenistan and he is glad that the United States are able to play its role in protection of this important part of the Silk Road. I hope that our joint efforts will make the beauty of this historical monument to be available for bigger number of local and Turkmen tourists.