Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi

Khoja Ahmed Yasawi was a Sufi teacher and poet of the 12th century, traditionally said to have died in 1166, who preached in Turkic rather than Persian or Arabic and whose verse collection, the Divan-i Hikmet, made him one of the founding figures of Turkic Islam. His small tomb in the town of Yasi, today's Turkestan, became a pilgrimage centre. In 1389 Amir Timur ordered a vast new building over it, and work continued until his death in 1405. It was never completed, and it stands today much as the builders left it. UNESCO listed it in 2003, noting it as one of the largest and best-preserved Timurid constructions.

Architecture

The building is a single great rectangle of fired brick, about 46 by 65 metres, containing more than thirty rooms. The main hall, the kazandyk, is crowned by a dome around 18 metres across, often described as the largest surviving brick dome in Central Asia. Behind it, the burial chamber of Yasawi lies under a ribbed outer dome sheathed in green-blue tiles. The outside walls are clad in glazed bricks forming geometric patterns and huge Kufic inscriptions. The main portal on the south-east, facing the town, was never faced with tiles: its bare brick, with the holes left by the builders' scaffolding beams still visible, is one of the best places anywhere to see how a Timurid monument was built.

In the centre of the kazandyk stands a bronze cauldron about 2.2 metres across and weighing around two tonnes, cast in 1399 from an alloy of seven metals and used to hold water for pilgrims. It was taken to the Hermitage in Leningrad in 1935 and returned to Turkestan in 1989. Other rooms include a mosque with a tiled mihrab, a library and the tombs of Kazakh khans and nobles who chose to be buried near the saint.

Around the mausoleum

The complex sits inside the walls of the old citadel of Turkestan. Nearby stand the reconstructed mausoleum of Rabiga Sultan Begim, daughter of Ulugbek and wife of the Uzbek khan Abul-Khayr, and the Hilvet, an underground retreat where, according to tradition, Yasawi spent the last years of his life in prayer.

How to experience it

A popular saying holds that three pilgrimages to Turkestan equal one to Mecca, and you will share the shrine with families from all over Kazakhstan. Pilgrims customarily visit Arystan Bab, Yasawi's teacher, first. Dress modestly; women usually cover their hair. Come in the late afternoon and stay until the building is floodlit.