Momine Khatun Mausoleum — mausoleum
Fuad2006 · CC BY 2.5

Momine Khatun Mausoleum

  • 1 min read
  • 39.205° N 45.406° E

Interesting facts

  • Every one of the ten faces is bordered by the text of Surah Ya-Sin from the Qur'an.
  • The epitaph band near the top is 98 cm high, its letters picked out in blue.
  • The original tent-shaped roof that brought the tower to about 34 metres has been lost.
  • The crypt's vault rests on a single mushroom-shaped central pillar from which pointed arches spring outward.
  • Inside, four round medallions some 1.5 metres across combine the word Allah with six-, eight- and ten-pointed stars.
  • The tower sits on a plinth of red tufa, and its platform was paved with large polished diorite slabs.
  • The lost royal complex once included a Friday mosque and a portal crowned by twin minarets.
  • Its builder, Ajami Nakhchivani, had earlier built the mausoleum of Yusuf ibn Kuseyir in the same town.

Why it is worth it

Ten flat faces of brick, each one entirely covered in interlocking geometric patterns, rise from a stone plinth on the edge of old Nakhchivan. The Momine Khatun Mausoleum was raised in 1186, and even without its lost upper part it still stands about 25 metres tall; originally the tower reached roughly 34 metres. It is the single survivor of a larger royal complex of the Eldiguzid atabegs, the Turkic dynasty that ruled much of Azerbaijan and north-western Iran in the twelfth century.

The tomb was commissioned by the atabeg Jahan Pahlavan for his mother, Momine Khatun, and the name of its builder is preserved on the monument itself: Ajami ibn Abubekr Nakhchivani, one of the leading builders of twelfth-century Nakhchivan. The plan is a decagon outside and a cylinder inside, with a burial crypt below ground and a domed chamber above. Every face is framed by a pointed arch and filled with a different lattice of stars and polygons laid in finely cut brick, with touches of turquoise glazed tile picking out the lines. Near the top, rows of small niches step outward like honeycomb, and a band of angular Kufic script runs around the tower, repeating verses from the Qur'an and naming the patron.

Nakhchivan, the capital of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, is the main town of an Azerbaijani exclave separated from the rest of the country by Armenian territory and bordered by Iran and Turkey. Its medieval monuments, this mausoleum above all, are the town's emblem and appear widely as a symbol of Azerbaijani architectural heritage.

Getting there

The mausoleum stands in Nakhchivan, about 0.7 km from the town centre. Nakhchivan International Airport (NAJ) lies about 5 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Azerbaijan 8The Most Beautiful Mausoleums 36The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

Momine Khatun Mausoleum is a mausoleum, also known as the Atabek Dome, located in the city of Nakhchivan of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in Azerbaijan. It was built in 1186 by the architect Ajami ibn Abubekr Nakhchivani. The ten-sided mausoleum reached a height of 34 meters. Today its height is only 25 meters. The mausoleum, built and named after the mother of one of the local rulers of Azerbaijan, Atabek Jahan Pahlavan of Ildegezid dynasty, is masterfully decorated with complex geometric ornaments and inscriptions from Koran.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

39.20501, 45.40617per Wikidata