Nasrullo Sohibnazarov

Nasrullo Sohibnazarov was born on 9 January 1944 in the Romit district of Tajikistan; his later life and work are tied to Samarkand. He began working early: from 1958 he was a builder on the “O‘zbekiston” collective farm in the Samarkand district.

From 1967 he worked as a wood carver at the special scientific restoration workshop in Samarkand. There he learned the methods of traditional carving and refined his craft; restoring old wooden pieces and recreating lost ones became his main line of work.

Carved doors made by him were installed in the Tillya-Kari madrasa, the Registan hotel and the Sadriddin Ayni house-museum. In Tashkent he took part, with his apprentices, in the carved decoration of the “Square of Memory and Honour” memorial complex, alongside masters from other regions of the country.

One of his most demanding commissions is said to be the restoration of the old wooden doors of the Abdumanon madrasa in Bukhara: it took about eleven years, one leaf was restored from the original material and the master made the other anew. For the international conference marking the 615th anniversary of Mirzo Ulugbek he made new doors for the mosque in the courtyard of the Ulugbek madrasa on the Registan, and he also helped revive in Samarkand the tradition of crowning wooden iwan columns with carved stalactite capitals.

For his contribution to preserving and developing the national culture he was given the honorary title People’s Master Craftsman of Uzbekistan. Sohibnazarov passes his experience to apprentices, some of whom work beside him while others practise on their own.