Mausoleo di Yusif ibn Kuseyir

The tomb dates from the rule of the Eldiguzid atabegs (1136-1225), whose capital, Nakhchivan, flourished in the later 12th century^2,3,7. A three-line brick Kufic panel over the door calls the building the mashhad of Yusuf ibn Kuthayyir and dates it to Shawwal 557, that is September-October 1162^3,5. It gives him the titles khwaja, ra’is, “beauty of Islam” and “leader of the shaykhs”, and Jacobsthal suggested from them that he was a minister of state of high standing^3,5. A second panel, at the top of the face to the left of the entrance, names the builder as Ajami ibn Abi Bakr of Nakhchivan^1,3. In 1186 Ajami signed the Momine Khatun tomb in the same town³.

In the mid-19th century Nikolai Khanykov studied the inscriptions from squeezes and drawings sent to him; he noted that the tallest letters of the door panel were about 35 cm high and those of the builder’s name about 90 cm⁵. Jacobsthal (1899) and Friedrich Sarre studied the tomb, and a figure in Sarre’s work shows it much as it is today, apart from strapwork then missing from the lower walls^3,5. Known locally as Atababa, the tomb was restored in the mid-20th century, when damaged parts were rebuilt¹; McClary notes that most faces were restored up to about one metre³. In 1998 Azerbaijan put it on its UNESCO Tentative List with the other Nakhchivan mausoleums^2,6.

The tomb has a crypt below ground and, above it, a tower that is octagonal inside and out, with walls 80 cm thick of fired bricks measuring 20 × 20 × 4.5 cm^1,3,6. Unlike many tombs of the period in Iran and Anatolia, it has no stone foundations³. The corners of the octagon project as plain brick piers, and the seven blind faces between them hold rectangular recesses, each filled with a different geometric strapwork design^1,3,6. The designs were made on the ground as panels of small bricks and mortar and then fixed to the walls; a thin skim of plaster over the joints carries incised curving patterns, best preserved at the top of the face opposite the entrance, under the overhanging lip^1,3. The west face holds the entrance: a pointed-arched recess framing a flat-arched door^1,3.

A Kufic band in brick runs round the top of the walls on eight panels: after the basmala it gives Qur’an 3:17-18 and the start of 3:19, with knotwork rising over words such as al-‘Aziz, al-Hakim and al-Din³. The roof is double, a pointed dome inside and an eight-sided brick pyramid outside^1,6. McClary judges the outer roof original from the patina of its bricks and, following Schroeder, calls this the earliest surviving tomb with a pointed octagonal roof, the type later common in Anatolia³; the Presidential Library of Azerbaijan calls it the only tower tomb in the country to keep its pyramidal roof¹. McClary finds the Mengücek Gazi tomb at Kemah in eastern Anatolia, of about 1190-1191, very close to it in form, scale and decoration, and both have hexagon-based strapwork with bow-tie forms over the door³. Shchetnikov points out one pattern that sets six-pointed stars on a square grid, although such stars normally go with grids of equilateral triangles⁴.

The chamber is octagonal inside like the exterior but plain: its walls have pointed-arched recesses outlined in lighter brick, which gives a two-colour effect, under the inner dome^1,3. The floor is of bricks laid in herringbone, with an octagonal opening at the centre over the crypt³. Steps on the west side lead down to the crypt¹. Its walls rise straight to about mid-height and then curve inward as a half arch to carry a flat ceiling with a central octagonal oculus^3,6; the Presidential Library of Azerbaijan describes a cylindrical opening in the middle of the crypt roof that keeps out damp¹. On the north side an outer brick wall below ground encloses a light shaft³.