Public raises issue of preservation of ancient monuments on the eve of Derbent jubilee

Dagestani society activists try to attract the attention of controlling bodies to the damage caused to the walls of the ancient Naryn-Kala fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The message that in Dagestan they joined two marketplaces at the expense of a historical monument was received on July 23 by the SMS-service of the "Caucasian Knot". According to the author of the message, in the city wall of Derbent they broke through a pass to interconnect both marketplaces.

The same information with photo appeared on the Facebook. In one the comments, the user under the nickname Pro Svet pointed out that the passage in the wall appeared in the early 2000s.

The ancient Naryn-Kala fortress belongs to the Sassanid epoch; and its destruction was treated by Zurab Gadjiev, a candidate of historical sciences and the author of the study "On Issue of Age of Derbent", as barbarism.

In the opinion of Amil Sarkarov, a member of the Presidium of the Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus and Assistant to the President of the Federal Lezgin National-Cultural Autonomy (FLNCA), the problem of preservation of the ancient monument is an all-Dagestan and all-Russian issue.

According to his version, the activation of initiative groups, which demand to pay attention to the destruction problem of the monument, has to do with the upcoming jubilee of the city.

"Here, we have a real fact, when the monument was severely damaged," said Sarkarov, adding that the activists' logic is that "on the eve of the jubilee, the public will pay more attention to the issue."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.