Uch Monument Complex

Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan
ca. 2nd millennium B.C.--mid-16th century A.D.
The monuments of Uch evoke the many different roles the city has played through history. Uch is thought to be one of the Alexandrias founded by Alexander the Great; it was also a medieval refuge for displaced central Asian scholars and craftsmen, an independent seat of power during the thirteenth-century Mongol invasions, and a regional focal point for Sufi Islam. The surviving shrines, sanctuaries, cemeteries, and mausoleums, including the Bibi Jawandi tomb, incorporate glazed tile and brick revetments, lime plaster panels, terra-cotta embellishments, brick structural walls laid in earth mortars, and ingenious corner tower buttresses. Today Uch is stagnating, burdened by poverty, environmental degradation, and a breakdown of municipal management. Ad-hoc repairs using cement mortars in brick infill were made to two of the three most notable monuments, which disfigured them and also introduced structural hazards. A grant from American Express has funded documentation surveys and project planning and preparation, but additional financial resources are needed to halt further deterioration of the monuments and to implement a holistic conservation plan involving the local community.

Listed in 1998