Rare Kabul exhibition brings taste of Mughal art back home
KABUL (Reuters) – An exhibition that reproduces the precious treasures of Mughal art in it original setting in Kabul’s Babur Garden opened this weekend, bringing a rare moment of cultural relief to a city pounded by war.
“King Babur’s Kabul: Cradle of the Mughal Empire” displays a selection of high-quality reproductions of some of the masterpieces of the Timurid and Mughal periods from the mid-16th century, one of Central Asia’s richest cultural eras.
At the Kabul exhibition’s launch on Saturday, Michael Barry, the curator and a world authority on Afghan art and culture, reminisced about a visit to the city at the height of the brutal 1990s civil war.
“Here in the Bagh-e Babur, what we saw in 1994 was wreckage, broken trees, shells fired. The beautiful 17th century marble mosque here was full of bullet holes. All we saw was despair and ugliness.”
The Bagh-e Babur or Babur’s Garden, one of the oldest Mughal gardens, was named after the first emperor of the Mughal dynasty, which came to rule over much of India.
Babur loved Kabul and was buried in the garden that he ordered to be created after he conquered the city in 1504. It was largely destroyed in the 1990s but was restored with the help of the Agha Khan Foundation in 2008.
Barry said he was determined to bring not just humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but to help restore some of the cultural heritage lost to the country through years of war.
“In this garden, we will bring back the magnificent paintings which so influenced world civilization, back to the Afghans, right here in this historical environment,” he said.