Two ways of straightening it were offered. Engineer B.N. Kastalsky offered dismantling the minaret brick by brick and restoring it in the original form. The district architect M.F. Mauer said such “restoration” would kill the historical monument as it would be replaced by a construction with no historical meaning which might turn out to be ugly. The second way offered by M.F. Mauer was to “tear” the minaret off the building, swing it, then straighten and leave it on its place.
As the dispute between B.N. Kastalsky, his supporters and M.F. Mauer continued on every commission meeting, authoritative technical consultants were invited from Tashkent and the center. They became more and more inclined to accept the solution of M.F. Mauer. The latter held a fundamental research, studying and gathering all materials on the madrasa. He even started learning Persian to better understand the meaning of historical texts. 
“On the Registan Mikhail Fyodorovich personally held detailed architectural measurements of the madrasa in question and thoroughly observed the state of the minaret supported by the steel ropes”, says M.E. Masson, recalling those years.
Based on M.F. Mauer’s solution a project to straighten the monument was twice drawn up in Moscow. The first was dismissed due to inconsistencies with the building specifications, and the second one was prepared by an outstanding Russian engineer Vladimir Grigorievich Shukhov, who was visited by Mauer to discuss the project details.
As usual, the author of the Shabolovka radio tower, laced domes of GUM (central mall), Metropol, Petrovsky Passage and other unique constructions came up with an original solution. His idea was amazingly simple. In a nutshell, strong rolled beams should be inserted under the basement of the minaret – a large building weighing around 2.5 thousand tons, 35 meters in height. 
The lose ends of the beams near the tilted side of the tower should be lifted like a lever. The voids at the minaret basement that emerge after it is put straight should be filled with concrete. And that was it. According to professor A.V. Kuznetsov, at first the thought seemed too unexpected and impossible. But Shukhov proved that lowering the minaret is much easier than lifting it up, at least because it can be put down due to its own weight, and not with the force of a lifting mechanism. There was a second important advantage of the solution – the less the minaret mass is moved, the easier it is preserved against possible tremors during the reconstruction works. The idea was accepted for use.
In 1927 the Moscow-based plant Mosmet manufactured the metallic construction under the guidance of V.G. Shukhov in line with M.F. Mauer’s project and sent it to Samarkand. According to the plan it was to be installed and fixed in the minaret basement. During an inspection M.F. Mauer was horrified to find some drawbacks, which “could cause destructive effects in the practical phase of the project.” As a result he had to return to Moscow together with the construction and prove the miscalculations. By 1931 the minaret’s tilt increased to 5°1’ which opened a threat of collapse. The projection of minaret’s gravity center on the horizontal surface shifted from the basement axis by 1055 mm. There was no more time to lose. So reconstruction began under Shukhov’s project.
Several days before cutting a slot for the first of fifteen beams, the lower part of minaret masonry, just above the planned cutting level, was embraced by a reinforced concrete cage. The possibility of using the material was tested in advance. The beams were perched against a box-shaped construction called “crossbeam”.
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Registan | Saving the Minaret |
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