The approximately US$45,000 grant from the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP) was awarded to the Bukhara State Architectural Museum, which will use the funds to restore the intricate calligraphy and paintings on the interior walls and ceilings of the mosque. A new heating system also will be installed to better preserve the interior and manuscripts that are displayed there.

The Friday Palace Mosque was built in the 18th Century on the site of the first mosque in Bukhara, which was built in the year 713 but later destroyed. The mosque is located within the Ark Citadel, a mud-walled fortress complex that has served various functions in Bukhara for about 1,200 years. The area is part of the historic center of Bukhara, which is listed on the United Nations’ List of World Heritage sites as the most complete example of a medieval city in Central Asia.

Visitors to the mosque can view a wide variety of paintings, wood and stucco decorations and about 60 manuscripts dating from the 9th to 20th Centuries.

In his grant proposal, Robert Almeev, the Director of the Bukhara State Architectural Museum, wrote that the decorations in the mosque were in need of urgent assistance.

“The unique examples of wall paintings from the 18th Century are fading away. Pest insects are damaging the beautiful carved wooden columns and internal and external closures of the mosque,” the proposal states. “The lack of proper climate control … and proper museum equipment is preventing the access of the general public to the building to admire the unique collection of manuscripts.”

The AFCP was created by the US Congress in 2001 to help countries preserve historic sites, artifacts, manuscripts and museum collections, as well as preservation of traditional forms of expression such as music, dance and language.

With the latest grant, the AFCP has contributed about US$165,000 to preservation projects in Uzbekistan. These include:

• A 2001 grant for preservation and microfilming manuscripts at the Abu Raykhan Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent;
• A project in 2002 to preserve and better display 20 Korans dating back to the 11th Century at the Samarkand Cultural History Museum;
• A 2004 grant to equip workshops in Tashkent where master potters share techniques of traditional pottery making;
• Support for a project in 2005 to protect excavations at Kampir-Tepe, a desert fortress dating to the 4th Century B.C. near the Amu Darya River near Termez;
• A 2006 grant to the Afrosiab Museum in Samarkand to preserve and better display artifacts taken from excavations at Afrosiab, a major trading city near Samarkand that was destroyed around the time of the Mongol invasions in the 12th Century.