Presidential team to help conserve endangered Minaret of Jam

Monitoring Desk

GHOR: A presidential delegation has arrived in North-western Ghor province to help conserve the endangered historic Minaret of Jam, the local officials said.

Abdulhai Khatebi, the provincial governor’s spokesman said a delegation from department of the Presidential Palace arrived in Ghor following President Ashraf Ghani’s commitments which he made during a video teleconference to the people of Ghor.

Khatebi further added that the delegation consists of a technical team which visited the site and assessed the damages. He also added that the delegation is expected to share its findings with the Ministry of Information and Culture so that appropriate steps could be taken to conserve the Minaret of Jam.

Meanwhile, the residents of Ghor province welcomed the deployment of the delegation to assess and respond to risks threatening the historic minaret.

Calling the Minaret of Jam a ‘National and Historic Identity’ of Afghanistan, Ramazan Nabizada, one of the civil society activists urged the government to take necessary steps to restore and renovate the minaret and prevent it from destruction and collapse.

The residents of Ghor are saying that the Minaret of Jam is in a bad condition, warning that the minaret is at the risk of destruction if the authorities did not pay necessary attention to conserve it. The Minaret of Jam is located around 200km east of Herat, at the confluence of the Huri Rud and Jam Rud rivers.

Probably built between 1163 and 1203 during the reign of the Ghurdi sovreign Ghyias-ud-Din, its first rediscovery dates back to 1944, when the Minaret is mentioned in an article published by the Afghan History Society in the journal Anis, according to UNESCO. The Minaret of Jam was included in the UNESCO List of World Heritage Properties in Danger since 2002. (Khaama Press)