Mausolée de Yunus Khan

Yunus Khan (1416-1487) descended from Chaghatai, Genghis Khan’s second son, and ruled Moghulistan, the eastern part of the old Chaghatai realm^4,6. In 890 AH (1485), amid quarrels among the Timurid princes, Tashkent and its district passed to him⁵. According to Tukhtabekov, the settlement that gave him the city was brokered by Khwaja Ahrar, the Sufi master whose disciple Yunus Khan had become⁴. His daughter Qutlugh Nigar Khanum was the mother of Babur, the future founder of the Mughal dynasty in India^4,7. Yunus Khan died in 892 AH (1487), two years after taking the city, and his son Sultan Mahmud Khan succeeded him there^4,5,6.

According to Tukhtabekov, he was buried with Khwaja Ahrar’s consent in the cemetery of Shaykh Khawand-i Tahur, a 14th-century Sufi of Tashkent who was Khwaja Ahrar’s ancestor on his mother’s side^1,4. He adds that his son Mahmud Khan built a large mausoleum over the grave, which people called the Khan mozori, “the Khan’s tomb”⁴. WOSCU dates it between 1487 and 1502³. In 1503 the Uzbek ruler Shaybani Khan took Tashkent⁵. Uzbekistan’s official tourism portal lists it as one of the three mausoleums of the Sheikhantaur ensemble, with those of Shaykh Khawand-i Tahur and Kaldyrgach-biy, and says it has been restored many times¹. Tashkent’s city administration, however, states that the building holds no burial and that the grave’s location is unknown².

Uzbekistan’s official tourism portal describes the building as a rare type of T-shaped khanaqah (a lodge for Sufis) with a high arcaded gallery, or ravak, along the top of its façade¹. It has a pointed portal and a double dome, and dervishes and pilgrims once lodged in its cells². The entrance portal carries calligraphic inscriptions and a carved door, and a hadith in thuluth script runs across the panels of the door’s right and left leaves^2,3. WOSCU counts it as one of only two monumental buildings of the 15th century that still stand in Tashkent³.

The same portal describes its neighbours in the ensemble: the two-domed tomb of Shaykh Khawand-i Tahur, said to have been built on Timur’s initiative and reshaped in the early 19th century, and the 15th-century tomb of Kaldyrgach-biy, whose pyramidal dome resembles the tombs of the Kazakh steppe¹.