Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi
Unfinished Timurid mausoleum of 1389-1405, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in central Turkistan.
The mausoleum was commissioned by Timur in about 1389 over the grave of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, the twelfth-century Sufi poet and teacher whose Turkic verse shaped Islam across the steppe. Work stopped when Timur died in 1405, leaving the main portal unfinished and its timber scaffolding sockets still visible. The rectangular brick building is roughly 46 by 65 metres, with more than thirty interconnected rooms arranged around a central hall known as the Kazandyk, which is crowned by the largest brick dome in Central Asia.
Craftsmen brought from Persia used the building as a testing ground for vaulting and tile techniques later repeated in Samarkand, and the exterior is faced with glazed blue, turquoise and white tilework in geometric and calligraphic patterns. The hall holds a two-tonne bronze cauldron cast in 1399 for ritual water. Restoration campaigns ran through the twentieth century, and UNESCO inscribed the site in 2003. It stands within the Azret Sultan reserve, alongside the Hilvet underground mosque, a medieval bathhouse and the Kultobe settlement.
Highlights
- Largest brick dome in Central Asia over the central Kazandyk hall
- Unfinished main portal left as it stood at Timur's death in 1405
- Two-tonne bronze cauldron cast in 1399
- Glazed tilework that prefigures the monuments of Samarkand
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