The Persimmon Bearer’s Mausoleum

A surprise after our visit to Otrar was a stop at the mausoleum of Aristan-bab a preacher who is said to have been active in this region in the 12th century CE. I could discover very little history about the person. There are myths. The rather bitter water from a well outside the structure is said to have miraculous curative properties because of his influence. He is supposed to have lived 400 years, so that he could transmit a miraculous persimmon from the prophet Muhammad to his final student, Khoja Ahmed Yasawi. In the early days of Islam tombs were frowned upon, and even gravestones were seldom used. If Aristan-bab died four centuries after the prophet, then simple gravestones had just started being used. The oldest structure on this site is a raised block over the grave. It is said that there are writings on it that date from the 12th century, but that first mausoleum to him was not erected till the 14th century by the order of Timur. This structure was repaired and rebuilt many times.

The current structure, which joins a mausoleum (the part with two domes) with a museum and a small mosque, was built in the 1970s after demolishing a precarious 18th century mausoleum. It has an interesting doorway: quite like a north European monumental gateway. We couldn’t see his grave, since it was locked up behind golden gates when we reached. So we went into the museum to see the only remnant of the 14th century structure: the two carved wooden columns which you see in the gallery above.

The museum also had a few other things on display which were interesting. The two Korans which you can see in the photos above had beautiful calligraphy. Arabic calligraphy took root in this part of the world long ago, and produced many wonderful artists.

oplus_0

Outside, it was clear that the early Islamic ban on elaborate tombs and mausoleums was no longer heeded. A necropolis had come up around this place. Several tombs had the dome-over-cube structure in fired bricks which seems to have been common here in the last three centuries or so. Among these was a very visibly different structure in whitewashed plaster topped by a golden dome and minarets. It turned out to have been built by a recently deceased politician for himself.

I wandered over to the well nearby from which all the pilgrims were busy drawing water. I looked down and saw that the water level was not very far down. The Syr Darya is not too far off, and must be charging aquifers here. The water was bitter. So I splashed a little over me; it had been a hot day. The Family was admiring an arrangement of coloured stones nearby. I took a photo, but forgot to ask whether it was just a decoration or meant something.

The birthplace of Central Asian architecture

Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (1093-1166 CE) is a name to remember. He was a mystic, the first poet to write in Khaqani Turkic, the language of the silk route (speakers of modern Hindi will recognize one word in five), and the founder of a Turkic Sufi order called the Yeseviye which strongly influenced the Islam of Central Asia. In 1389 his mausoleum in Yasi (currently called Turkestan) was ordered to be rebuilt by Timur. Yasawi was born in the nearby silk route town of Sayram, now a suburb of Shymkent, and his family’s tombs are scattered across a few streets in that town. He moved to Bukhara, rose to prominence and moved back to Yasi to preach.

When we walked up to the mausoleum it was immediately apparent that it was unfinished: the immense arch over the entrance had no mosaic work on it. But that was interesting in itself, as the citation in the UNESCO World Heritage listing points out. We could see that the structure was made from bricks of fired clay. Far above us, construction beams were visible: each was the trunk of a tree. It is said that Timur was obsessed with this structure and took part in its design. The work was abandoned for lack of funds on Timur’s death in 1405. We found that you could not enter the structure from the front.

So we walked around to the back and gasped at the beautiful tile work on the facade. We admired the tile encrusted Thuluth style callgraphy across the top of the facade. If our guide Devlet hadn’t mentioned it, I wouldn’t have noticed that the repeating tile work all across the facade just says “allah” over and over again in Khufik script. The structure with its thirty five rooms functioned as a khanaqah, and contained both a mosque and the mausoleum. We first entered the mosque (see the detail of the mihrab in the photo above), and then went round to see the grave of the poet-preacher. This was crowded and I could only get a restricted view of the jade covered sarcophagus. The ribbed dome that you can see in the featured photo lies directly above it.

The architecture of Yasawi’s mausoleum was innovative. It was later copied across Central Asia and become the style which is today known as Timurid. It is said that Timur himself took part in the planning of this structure. Whether or not you believe that, Timur was interested enough in the progress of the construction that he returned fairly often to Yasi. Even though Samakand, Bukhara, and Tashkent have better known Timurid structures, this one is preserved much better, and, being unfinished, let us in behind the curtains to see how it was made. It was also interesting to see features like the alabaster muqarnas (stalactites) adorning the vaults above us, and the profusion of tiles inside. It is said that Timur brought mosaic workers from Shiraz and tile workers from Isfahan to participate in the building of this mosque. We had assumed that centuries later the making of blue glazed tiles would be a local handicraft, but it wasn’t.

The kazandyq, the main hall, was closed off for repairs. This lies under the primary dome: with its diameter of 18.2 meters, it is the largest brick dome in Central Asia. Even now it is an architectural marvel. In the 15th century it must have seemed miraculous. This room had a large bronze cauldron. Devlet told us that it had been taken for an exhibition to St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, and had not been returned for decades. It was only in the years of Perestroika that it was returned. It was a pity that I couldn’t get closer to it. But there was more to see around the grand structure.