42 SMITHSONIAN.COM | December 2019
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TURESworld. Through most of Myanmar’s independence,
“the city attracted zero interest” from historians or
preservationists, says Leider, who heads the École
Française d’Extrême-Orient in Yangon.
Now, as the United Nations focuses attention on
a city once known for its harmony and religious tol-
erance, Mrauk U has become a fl ash point amid the
ethnic struggle raging in Rakhine State. A bloody
rampage by the army in August 2017 against the
stateless Muslim minority known as the Rohingya
left thousands dead and drove 700,000 out of the
country—most to Bangladesh. (The killings occurred
after a Rohingya rebel group had attacked the army.)
Long shunned as illegal migrants, the Rohingya now
wait in exile, while the international community
attempts to negotiate their return to Myanmar. The
emerging understanding of Mrauk U, whose history
refl ects Islam’s long presence in the region—a histo-
ry that some Buddhists continue to deny—has given
powerful momentum to the Rohingyas’ demand for
citizenship and equal rights.
Rakhine’s Buddhists also claim ties to the ancient
capital. Mrauk U was the center of their unique
heritage, violently extinguished by the Burmese
conquerors. A separatist group called the Arakan
Army has declared war on the Myanmar military.
Bloody clashes have erupted near Mrauk U town
and the temples, disrupting eff orts by international
researchers to survey the priceless evidence of the
people who fl ourished here some 500 years ago.
ANY EFFORT TO RAISE the global profi le of Mrauk
U entails a grueling slog through equatorial heat.
One December morning, Zaw Myint and I followed
a caravan of four-wheel-drive U.N. vehicles down
dusty roads to the northern edge of the city. Elderly
men wearing conical straw hats, herding their cattle
through pastures, stopped to watch the convoy roll
past. We parked the cars by the side of the road. Un-
der a blazing sun, we trailed a Unesco team on foot
over narrow dikes crossing dry and fallow paddies,
then hiked down a dirt trail past betel nut fi elds and
chili plantations. A drone whined and darted like
an outsized insect overhead. Somewhere above us,
a single-engine plane was using LIDAR technology
to penetrate patches of forest and capture images of
structures that have long lain undetected beneath
the dense foliage.
After a 45-minute trek, we arrived in front of a
30-foot-tall square brick platform rising over the
lush fi elds. “We think that this dates to the 16th cen-
tury,” said U Than Myint (no relation to my guide),
a local historian and director of the Mrauk U Heri-
tage Trust, a private restoration group. He explained
that the kings of Mrauk U, constantly worried about
attacks from Mogul governors of Bengal across the
bay and the Burmese to the east, built ramparts be-
tween the hills that ringed the city, along with for-
tresses and guard posts fortifi ed by cannons. They
further protected their city with a network of reser-
voirs, sluices, spillways, canals and moats—used for
irrigation and fl ood control during peaceful times,
and for military defenses in war. In the 16th century,
Man Pa opened sluices in the reservoirs and allowed
water to gush through spillways, drowning Burmese
assailants and turning back an attempted invasion.
Much of those waterworks are gone now, the old
ramparts hidden by jungle growth or buried under
cultivated fi elds; the canals silted over long ago.
But international eff orts have been gradually peel-
ing back the layers, exposing the structures and
describing the scale of the city. “There are pagodas
and stupas, ancient wells, ceramic kilns, walls and
water gates, and canals and lakes. All these belong
to the Mrauk U culture,” Sarti told me, consulting a
topographical map tracing the ancient ramparts and
waterworks in diff erent colors. “We’re building up aMrauk U resi-
dents live amid
ancient splen-
dors. Myanmar
seeks Unesco
designation for
the site, unlikely
to be granted
until the
violence ends.Monks follow
a path near
Kothaung tem-
ple. Canals that
once carried
people and
goods across
Mrauk U deterio-
rated over time.