Pulat Zakhidov

Pulat Shahidovich Zakhidov was born in Tashkent on 16 December 1932. He graduated in architecture from the Central Asian Polytechnic Institute in 1956 and joined a restoration workshop the same year; his whole career has since been tied to the study and preservation of architectural monuments.

Over the years he was deputy director for research at the Special Scientific Restoration Workshop (1956–1958 and 1980–1993) and head of the Main Directorate for Fine Arts and the Preservation of Monuments (1966–1973 and 1993–1995). At the Institute of Art Studies he headed the architecture department in 1958–1980 and again from 1995.

Zakhidov was regarded as one of the leading specialists in the history, theory and restoration of Uzbek architecture. In 1990 he received the degree of Doctor of Architecture (the defence took place in Baku). He wrote more than twenty books and booklets, among them “Traditions of the Folk Architects of Uzbekistan” (1964), “The Samarkand School of Architects” (1965), “Masters of Uzbek Architecture” (1967), “The Art of the Architects” (1978), “Shahi-Zinda” (1979), “Foundations of the Canon of Harmony in Architecture” (1982), “The Man of Architecture” and “The Architectural Galaxy of Timur’s Era” (both 1996).

He took a distinctive position in the debate over Ishratkhana in Samarkand: in the 1970s he argued that it was not a mausoleum but a country palace of Timur built in 1397, contrary to the interpretation of the scholar Galina Pugachenkova. He set out his case in, among others, the article “Mausoleum or Palace?”.

In 1976 he was named Honoured Architect of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1998 he received the “Shuhrat” medal. According to one source, in 1993 he was elected a full member of the International Academy of Architecture of the Eastern Countries.