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Главная » Shakhi-i-Zinda street of mausoleums of Samarkand. Masterpieces of architectural skill of Central Asia.

Central group monument of Shakhi-i-Zinda.

Group tours on archeologic places of interest of Samarkand.

“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior” 

 Confucius.

Side trip in Samarkand.

By the end of the 1380s - 1390s, the pre-Mongolian structures at Shahi - Zinda had been completely demolished. Two mausoleums were constructed on the place of Tomgach Bogra-khan madrasah - the mausoleum of Emir Burunduk and “Nameless - 2".
Southward from them there is another anonymous mausoleum built by Usto Alim Nesefi.
The mausoleum of Emir Burunduk represents a single-chamber tomb built of bricks from Qarakhanid madrasah. The external decorative dome has been lost and now the building has just internal dome on 16-hedral drum.
Available front pylon is decorated by stamped terracotta and relief majolica. Brick mosaics decorate the portal niche. The cross-shaped burial chamber has two through manholes. There are nine depositions, one of which is in a wooden coffin.
One of the depositions belongs to a child "shahid" (martyr), buried in a robe. Inside the mausoleum, the alabaster panels keep names of Muhammad, Abu-Bakr, Umar, Hasan and Hussein with best wishes “So be Allah pleased with all of them”.
The mausoleum "Nameless - 2" formed a single-chamber mausoleum. Just the portal has preserved. When it was built, the façade of the madrasah of the XI century was built into its wall.
The interior stroke with splendour. The panels were made from large hexahedral majolica tiles “chequerwise”, the upper parts of walls were decorated with painted majolica, mainly dark blue. The cross-shaped burial chamber was installed later.
The mausoleum had ruined by the mid-XV century. The inscription on the left pylon reads: “The Earth [is] the burden for people, and people [are the burden] for the earth… “.  Mausoleum by Usto Alim Nesefi. The internal and external domes on 16-hedral drum crowned the cubic building.
Relief painted majolica, which entirely superseded carved terracotta, decorate the mausoleum. Semi-underground burial chamber is roofed over with "balkhi" dome. The octagonal stars decorate both sides of the portal.
The upper star contains the text: “There is no safety, except for the pious person. There is no affinity, except for the adherent. There is no creation, except for to be disappeared. There is no friendship, except for in a dream”. In the oblongs, between the upper and middle stars, there are lines: “This world the pleasure for the people of sin, the future world is bitter for the people devoted to this world, and both these worlds [are] pleasure for divine people”.
In the middle octagonal star there are names of 12 Shiite imams, and in the lower one there are lines from Koran’s "Throne", spirally written. 

Authority:
Alexey Arapov. Samarkand. Masterpieces of Central Asia. Tashkent, San’at.

Photos
Alexander Petrov.