Malik Tower / Timurid Tower restoration funded by UNESCO

A petty adventurer

Ivan Hurst Trans Asia 1977 - Eastbound 26 November 1977 Hits: 1314

I don't think that petty adventurer is an appropriate turn of phrase for the particular person under consideration. However that is the phrase used in the Herat guide book.

According to the guide book of the time, Herat Fortress was built by the son of the petty adventurer Genghis Khan. Alexander the Great is also part of it's history, ranging from the 4th Century, B.C, with further works between the 13th to 15th centuries. Genghis Khan a petty adventurer? I don't think that is the description used in other histories. More a case of 'Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire and became one of the most feared conquerors of all time.' He did some good things as well. Alexander the Great is also associated with the Fortress, from the earlier time of 330BC.

The Herat Fortress is also known as the Citadel of Herat, the Citadel of Alexander, and as Qala Iktyaruddin. Read someone else's experience of the Citadel here.

When we visited it was undergoing a UNESCO funded restoration. Just in time by the look of it. Then the Russians came. It has since been restored / rebuilt again.

We were very fortunate, effectively being allowed to wander around a very large building site, unaccompanied, with very few restrictions. I think these days they would just close the place to visitors for a few years.

Can I suggest that you search the internet to see images of the latest restoration / re-build. It looks new. The Malik Tower / Timurid Tower restoration, the tower with the Timurid inscription and mosaic facing, some of the latter can be seen in the header photo, now appears immaculate and not 11 to 15th century.

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A entrance to Citadel of Herat being repaired by local workmen. Overlooked by spectacular tall towers of the external wall.

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Herat town and mosques from Herat Fortress. Paye Hisar Great Mosque obsucred by the fortress tower and the Herat Central Mosque in the distance.

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Workmen restoring the Herat Fortress

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Overlooking the city towards the Minarets of Herat, and hills, from Herat Fortress.

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Minarets of Herat, and hills in the background.

This historic citadel was saved from demolition in the 1950s, and was excavated and restored by UNESCO between 1976 and 1979. Our visit was in November 1977.

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Change of host Sept 2023

In the begining of August 2023 I transfered my ivanhurst.me.uk sites, including this one from 123-reg to IONOS. It was meant to be a simple task. However, that was to to be the case. The reason for the move was primarily the hugh increase in price that 123-reg was applying regarding email boxes. Previously, the upto 500 of the boxes were included in the various hosting packages I had. Now they were going to charge for each mailbox based on size, and as far as I could make out, this was going to cost me nearly £2,000. This was not acceptable, and I did not get satisfactory answers from support. So I turned of all the auto renews and stated to move sites and domains accross to IONOS.

Travel data problems

This is where it starts to get a little technical.

The site is built on a content management system, CMS, using Joomla. Joomla is moving forward and version 3.10.?? is being discontinued. Future developments are for version 4.??

Similarly, PHP 7 is being replaced with PHP 8.

Part of the migration is relatively simple, I have already changed to a new template which works on the new platforms.

However, some of the helper applications, which work within Joomla are not yet ready.

Fabrik is one of those applications, if fact a significant 'Joomla Custom Website Application Builder'.

Site refresh Easter 2021

I decided to give the site a bit of a refresh over Easter 2021 and install a new template and some additional functions. One of the things I didn't like about the old site was the delay in text appearing which probably meant some people left before the content appeared. This has been corrected now.