He wasn’t an ordinary man, and neither was his life. Even though Nasreddin Murat-Khan is largely acknowledged as the ‘architect behind Minar-e-Pakistan,’ his story goes beyond the minar, and far beyond Pakistan.
Born in Daghestan in 1904 to a father who was an Imperial Russian Army officer and a mother who died when Murat-Khan and his siblings (a brother and a younger sister) were very young, Murat-Khan and his family, Meral tells me, were deeply involved in the resistance movement to free the Caucasus from the then USSR; a movement that first began as the Caucasian War, led by Imam Shamil in the 18th century against the Tzar-controlled Russian Empire.
Graduating with triple degrees in Architecture, Civil Engineering and Town Planning from the Leningrad State University (now known as the Saint Petersburg State University) in 1930, Murat-Khan enjoyed a thoroughly successful career in the capacity of both a Chief Civil Engineer and Chief Architect involved in a number of projects in the former USSR such as the National Theatre in the city of Derbent (for which he won first prize), a Polytechnic Institute for 800 students in Makhachkala (the capital city of Daghestan), a 600-bed General Hospital (in Makhachkala), town planning and designing for a new township of 60,000 families in Makhachkala, A V.J. Lenin memorial and numerous other projects.
However, due to his involvement in the movement, Murat-Khan had to flee Daghestan with the German retreating army for fear of his life between the years 1943-1944. “He had to leave,” Meral states, “Forty members of his family were massacred right before his eyes. He lost everything.”
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