Bangladesh
15th-century city of Khan Jahan Ali and the Sixty Dome Mosque
The Mosque City of Bagerhat, in southwestern Bangladesh near the edge of the Sundarbans, was founded in the 15th century by the Turkic general Khan Jahan Ali. The city once held dozens of mosques, tombs, water tanks and roads, many of which survive. Its largest monument is the Shait Gumbad Masjid, the "sixty-dome mosque", a vast brick prayer hall whose roof is in fact covered by 77 small domes. Other monuments include the nine-domed mosque and the single-domed Chunakhola Mosque, built of brick in a distinctive local style. Bagerhat became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. Its low-lying setting leaves the monuments exposed to rising groundwater and salt damage.
In April 2019, CyArk worked with the Department of Archaeology of Bangladesh to document the Shait Gumbad Masjid, the nine-domed mosque and the Chunakhola Mosque, creating an accurate baseline of their condition to study water infiltration and plan conservation. CyArk and ICOMOS then led a workshop in Dhaka with the Department of Archaeology, Khulna University, the United Nations Development Programme and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development on how climate change will affect Bangladesh's heritage.
