The tombstones at the Ahlat Seljuk Meydan Cemetery in eastern Bitlis province – the world’s largest Turkish-Islamic cemetery on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Tentative List – will be introduced to the world as part of a new project by a team of 10, including restorers and art historians from Italy.
The project team will join excavations headed by Recai Karahan, a professor from Van Yüzüncü Yıl University, at the cemetery that has 8,103 tombs in a 210-decare (2.26-million-square-foot) area, as part of the project. Fragments of monumental tombstones buried under the soil in the Seljuk cemetery, located in the Ahlat district of Bitlis, will be erected. In addition, 100 broken and buried tombstones will be brought to light. They will be restored and cleaned of lichen, while the inscriptions will be read.
Exhibitions will be staged in Ahlat and Italy with an introductory film on the cemetery and photos of tombstones, each of which is a historical artifact.
