Mausoleo di Bibi Maryam

Qalhat, about 20 km north of Sur, developed between the 11th and 15th centuries into a major port of the east Arabian coast under the princes of Hormuz¹. Around 1300 the governor Ayaz divided his time between Hormuz and Qalhat, which his wife Maryam ruled in his absence; she went on ruling after his death, until at least 1319^2,5. A note in the Hakluyt Society edition of Ibn Battuta dates Ayaz's death to 1311/12⁶. Ibn Battuta described Qalhat's mosque, its walls tiled with qashani, and wrote that it was built by 'the saintly woman Bibi Maryam'⁶. Excavations in 2008-2010 uncovered this Great Mosque and dated it to around 1300⁵.

Rougeulle's study makes the mausoleum contemporary with the Great Mosque: Bibi Maryam commissioned it for her own remains and perhaps Ayaz's, a reading supported by a 14th-century incense burner shaped like the building and inscribed with her name^3,4. Its date, about 1300-1320, is thus estimated from the mosque's date and her years of rule^2,5,6. ICOMOS notes a report that she built it for her late husband². The Portuguese sacked and burned Qalhat in 1508; the city was abandoned later that century^1,2,5. In 1835 J. R. Wellsted found only this building, which he took for a small mosque, in tolerable preservation^3,7. Oman's heritage ministry restored it in 2005-2006; UNESCO inscribed the city in 2018^1,3.

The mausoleum stands at the foot of the mountain beside the old coastal track from Sur to Qurayyat, a stop for travellers on that route; the ruins of the city stretch from it to the shore, and an inner wall separates it from the rest of the site^3,4. It is built of coral blocks, with plaster and ornamented stucco decoration inside⁸. Rougeulle stresses its unique character: a stone building whose design draws on Iranian or Central Asian models of a relatively late date⁴. Photogrammetry by Iconem, published in her book, records the facades and a crypt beneath the chamber, and drawings by P. Anselm propose a tentative restitution of the facades and of the inner decoration³.

A 14th-century incense burner made in the shape of the mausoleum carries the name of Maryam on its dome³. A review of Rougeulle's book describes it as probably an Iranian piece in siliceous paste (stone-paste), made to commemorate a pilgrimage to the tomb or intended for distinguished visitors⁴. In 2018 ICOMOS judged the mausoleum's condition fairly good, while criticising the reconstruction of two smaller mausoleums elsewhere on the site².

In 1835 Wellsted found the interior covered with glazed tiles of several colours bearing Qur'anic phrases in relief, and noted writing that suggested visits by Indian Muslims^3,7. Rougeulle records remains of this decoration on the south wall: a vertical frieze of star and cross tiles on the east jamb of the door and, west of the door, the imprints of a star-and-cross mosaic under a horizontal frieze of square tiles³. The photogrammetric east-west section in her book shows the inner north wall and the crypt below the chamber³.