A joint Iran-Georgia research project will be conducted on the Georgian section of Doulab Catholic Cemetery, a historical graveyard on Tehran’s eastern flank.
Giorgi Sanikidze, director of Giorgi Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, held talks with Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti, head of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, affiliated to Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization.
The meeting was held to prepare a memorandum of understanding for the research project at the cemetery, with the purpose of identifying the buried, ISNA reported.
“Based on preliminary surveys, 40 Georgians were buried at Doulab Cemetery in different periods,” Sanikidze said at the meeting.
Some of the Georgian graves belong or are related to those brought to Iran in the aftermath of Krtsanisi Battle fought between the Qajars of Iran and the Georgian armies at Krtsanisi near Tbilisi on September 8-11, 1795. Their first burials took place at Vanak Graveyard in north Tehran, but the graves were transferred to Doulab because of the urban development projects replacing Vanak Graveyard. Beheshti, a former deputy chief of the ICHHTO, expressed support for the research project and said his organization would do its share to promote research collaboration between the two sides.
“There are many other cultural areas for joint cooperation between our two countries, including anthropology, linguistics, preservation and restoration,” he was quoted as saying. He referred to the collection of manuscripts in Persian, Turkic and Arabic at Georgian libraries which can be used for research projects in comparative linguistics.
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