Khiva - Uzbekistan: Being an Architect

Being an architect in the earlier days could be tough. Most clients were as difficult as now. The Khiva Khan threw one of them from the top of the 56m high minaret because he designed a better one in Bukhara. Another one got impaled because he did not want to commit himself to finish a palace within 2 years. It is not good to say no to power. However there are some few instances of lucky architects I know of. One of them married the Egyptian queen Hapshepshut. More recently Geoffrey Bawa of Sri Lanka is famous among any local person as a national celebrity. So does Louis Kahn in Dhaka, Bangladesh. But the number one remains A Tumanyan who is the national hero of the unnamed city of Yerevan, Armenia with his statue and the main avenue named after him.