Merv
Merv
A significant capital for 2,500 years, Merv was one of the most important oasis cities of the Silk Road, and is among the major archaeological sites of Central Asia.
It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. Merv first became a significant centre under the Achaemenian Empire, and across the millennia which followed was a regional capital for a succession of controlling dynasties. It was from Merv in the 8th century that Abu Muslim proclaimed the start of the Abbasid revolution. At the height of its importance as the eastern capital of the Seljuk Empire in the 11th and 12th centuries, it was a vital centre of learning. Here Omar Khayyam worked on his celebrated astronomical tables. Merv was sacked by the Mongols in 1221 in devastating fashion, and although archaeologists now question earlier figures of a million or more people massacred in this single event, it was undoubtedly one of great brutality. But the city of Merv was to rise again, albeit never reaching its earlier prominence. It remained in occupation during the Mongol period and later, under the 15th-century Timurid leader Shah Rukh, a new city was established here.
Erk Kala
With walls some 25m in height, the structure resembles the crater of an extinct volcano, 500m in diameter. Erk Kala is believed to have been the centre of Achaemenid rule over the oasis.
Gyaur Kala
Merv later fell to the forces of Alexander the Great, after whose early death Hellenistic control was retained, under the Seleucids. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus I built a new city here, which he termed Antiochia Margiana. Now known as Gyaur Kala, this city was roughly square in plan, with each wall running some 2km. Its streets would have been laid out in a grid pattern. The imposing walls of the city aside, no monuments remain standing within Gyaur Kala, though there are some remnant structures of interest. The existing city of Erk Kala was retained as the citadel of the Seleucid city, and is embedded into the north wall of Gyaur Kala. From the remains of a lookout tower which form the highest point of the walls of Erk Kala, you are given an excellent view across both Erk Kala to the north of you and Gyaur Kala to your south.
Gyaur Kala and its northern citadel formed the city through the subsequent Parthian and Sasanian periods, and into the early Islamic one. Take the road from the base of Erk Kala due south, into the centre of the Gyaur Kala site, and park at the central crossroads. Just to the northeast are the hard-to-make-out remains of the 7th-century Beni Makhan Mosque, which was rebuilt in the Seljuk period. The most impressive remains here are those of a fired-brick cistern, or sardoba. This would once have been a domed, subterranean structure, and now forms a brick-walled pit, 8m deep and 6m in diameter.
The city site of Gyaur Kala features evidence of a range of faiths, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. But perhaps the most interesting religious building here is the remains of a Buddhist stupa, thought to be the westernmost Buddhist monument yet identified. The stupa sits in the southeast corner of Gyaur Kala, accessible along a track running here from the central crossroads. The stupa itself is a mound, on which the main features of the religious building are only vaguely discernible. To the south, a pock-marked terrain marks the adjacent Buddhist monastery. Among the finds made at the stupa were the beautifully decorated vase now displayed at the National Museum in Ashgabat, and a clay head of Buddha, which archaeologists believe would have been part of a massive statue, more than 3m high.
The archaeologists of the International Merv Project have excavated a cross-section through the southwestern walls of Gyaur Kala. This beautifully demonstrates how the city walls were built up through the centuries: relatively modest and narrow Seleucid walls, of around 280BC, form a core around which extensions were built upwards and outwards, reflecting the more sophisticated threats posed by advances in artillery. Several distinct further phases of wall construction can be identified, including the addition of bastions in the 4th century, which would have provided platforms for defensive artillery pieces, as well as strengthening the walls.
Mausoleum of Hodja Yusup Hamadani
Hodja Yusup Hamadani, one of the most important places of shrine pilgrimage in Turkmenistan. Hodja Yusup was a Sufi scholar of the 12th century, whose teachings formed an important element in the development of Sufism in Central
Asia. He studied theology in Baghdad, and later settled in Merv, where he enjoyed the patronage of Sultan Sanjar. He was buried in the city on his death in 1140.
The mosque here was one of the very few in Turkmenistan allowed to operate, albeit under tight control, during the Soviet period. The open-sided square mausoleum, towards the rear of the complex, is a modern reconstruction. A group of buildings along the west side of this, around a central iwan, were probably originally built in the Timurid period.
Sultan Kala
The road heads westwards, entering the third and most extensive of the walled cities of Merv, Sultan Kala. The Abbasid commander Abu Muslim promoted urban development around the Majan Canal, a kilometre to the west of the walls of Gyaur Kala, possibly because of growing difficulties over access to water in the existing city, as the ground level rose with each new phase of building. The old city of Gyaur Kala gradually declined in importance, and the archaeological evidence suggests that it became an industrial suburb of Sultan Kala. The new city reached its peak under the Seljuks. It was walled in the 11th century under Malik Shah. During the reign of Sultan Sanjar, when Merv was one of the most important cities of the world, further northern and southern suburbs were walled, giving the city a total area of some 600ha.
The city had declined by the time of the arrival of a large Mongol force in 1221, but its walls still posed a formidable obstacle for the invaders. The Mongols did not, however, need to attempt to breach them: the defenders of the city negotiated a surrender under which they would be spared, and opened the gates to the Mongol army. The latter promptly forgot about its deal, and massacred everyone. Not much is yet known about the nature of occupation of Merv in the Mongol period, though there is evidence that the city remained in use and even minted its own coins.
To the east side of the road, after passing into Sultan Kala, is a walled citadel known as the Shahriar Ark, built in the 12th century to enclose a palace and administrative complex, and the residences of the urban elite. The ruins of the palace are close to the centre of this site: the building was based around a central courtyard, surrounded on each side by iwans. The best preserved building in the Shahriar Ark, however, stands to the northeast of the palace. It is a rectangular building some 20m long, and surviving to around 8m in height. Its external walls have a distinctive design of vertical corrugations. The interior is distinctive too, with many square niches. The building is known as a kepter khana, or ‘pigeon house’, based on one theory as to the use to which the niches were put, but there is no academic consensus as to the purpose of this unusual building.
Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar
The road continues southwestwards to the centre of the Sultan Kala site, where stands the single most impressive building at Merv, the Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. Recently restored with finance from the Turkish government, the mausoleum has a square base, with walls 27m in length, and is topped with a double dome, rising to a height of 36m. The original covering of turquoise tiles, visible to the Silk Road traveller when still a day’s caravan ride from the city, is, alas, no more. Around the exterior, the base of the dome is surrounded by attractive vaulted arcades. These present five arches along each side of the building, containing latticed balconies with designs based around eight-pointed stars.
The interior of the building is decorated with white stucco, across which red and blue geometrical designs run along the borders of the walls. Most of this is newly reconstructed: the designs are extrapolations from small fragments of original stucco. There are tall niches in the centre of each wall. The transition between the square plan of the mausoleum and the domed roof is achieved by four large squinches, supporting the roof, between which sit niches. Each of these contain small latticed windows. The name of the architect, Mohammed Ibn Aziz of Serakhs, is found high up on the east wall of the mausoleum. One local legend runs that the man was killed by Sultan Sanjar, to prevent him from designing another building to rival the beauty of this one. The cenotaph on the floor of the mausoleum was a 19th-century addition, and is not the tomb of Sultan Sanjar.
The construction of the mausoleum pre-dated Sultan Sanjar’s death in 1157. The building would have originally stood, not in its current isolation, but as part of a complex of religious buildings, including the city’s main mosque. The reconstructed bases of the walls of some of these structures surround the mausoleum.
Kyz Bibi
From the Sultan Sanjar Mausoleum, drive due west, leaving Sultan Kala through the western Firuz Gate. South of the road, the small reconstructed square mausoleum, open on all sides, is known as Kyz Bibi. Some scholars have suggested that this may be the burial place of Sultan Sanjar’s wife, Turkan-khatun. Who was not a fairy bird, then.
The Kyz Kalas
The Greater and Lesser Kyz Kalas are two isolated buildings known as koshks, which have distinctive corrugated exterior walls. The Greater Kyz Kala is rectangular in plan, with a length of 45m and width of 38m. Its corrugations are well preserved on the eastern and southern sides of the building, protected against the prevailing wind. The interior of the building preserves squinches and traces of different kinds of vaulting. The Lesser Kyz Kala stands a couple of hundred metres due south: it is roughly square in plan, with sides 20m long, and is more poorly preserved than its neighbour, though does retain the remnants of a stairway in its southeast corner. ‘Kyz Kala’ means ‘Girls’ Castle’: one story runs that forty girls hid in the Greater Kyz Kala at the time of the Mongol invasion. When they saw what the Mongols had done to the inhabitants of the city of Merv they committed suicide byjumping from the roof. Another local tale identifies the Greater Kyz Kala as the castle for the girls; its smaller neighbour as the boys’ castle. It is said that young men wishing to marry the girl of their dreams should fire a projectile from the southern castle, to land in the northern one. Given the distance between the two, there are presumably many local bachelors.
The buildings were elite rural residences, and probably date from the 8th or 9th centuries. There remains much debate about the purpose of their distinctive corrugations: theories include helping to keep the interiors cool, ensuring the rapid run-off of potentially destructive rainwater, and simple decoration.
Mausoleum of Mohammed Ibn Zayd
This is one of the most atmospheric shrine complexes in Turkmenistan. Ibn Zayd was a Shia leader, killed in 740 while leading an uprising against the Umayyads in the city of Kufa in present-day Iraq. The mausoleum at Merv is probably simply a symbolic construction, built by his followers.
The mausoleum at the core of the complex dates from the Seljuk period. It has a square, domed chamber, the dome supported by four squinches, separated by niches. An inscription running around the top of the walls records the date of construction of the mausoleum as 1112. The cenotaph in the centre of the chamber is carved with inscriptions. Unusually, the chamber contains a mihrab, a niche in the west wall with a scalloped design. Around the Seljuk mausoleum, two more recent rooms have been added. To the east of the mausoleum, and providing access to it, is a square-domed anteroom. Access to this in turn is through a mosque, which runs along the whole north side of the complex. One of the walls of the mosque comprises what was originally the external north wall of the mausoleum, revealing fine decorated Seljuk brickwork. The complex was much restored in the early part of the 20th century.
Around the mausoleum are several large saxaul trees, considered sacred, from which hang hundreds of strips of material, representing prayers.
The Timurid Monuments
Abdullah Khan Kala
In the southern part of the Merv site, a group of monuments linked to the Timurid rule in the 15th century make for an interesting supplementary itinerary for visitors with the time available for a more in-depth programme. Begin at the city site of Abdullah Khan Kala, immediately across the road from the central market of Bayramaly. This is roughly square in plan, its city walls of crumbling mud brick the most prominent surviving feature. The moat surrounding the walled city can also still be easily discerned. Abdullah Khan Kala, which lies some 3km to the south of Sultan Kala, was built in 1409 by Shah Rukh, who had taken control of the empire of his late father Timur, known as Tamerlane in the West. Covering 46ha, Abdullah Khan Kala was by many standards a sizeable town, but not by those of the great cities which preceded it at Merv. Bar a few short stretches of wall, little remains of Bairam Ali Khan Kala, the 18th-century western extension to the Timurid city.
The ice-houses and Koshk Imaret
Around 13m in diameter, this is a now roofless building of rounded conical form, its interior walls pierced with many beam-slots. Continuing eastwards, you will reach, north of the track, a better preserved ice-house of similar diameter, its form recalling an overturned bowl. The interior of this structure is enlivened with bands of diagonally set bricks. Most archaeologists believe that the buildings were indeed used for the storage of ice, though some sources argue that they may have been water cisterns.
Some 100m to the southeast of this second ice-house is a building known as the Koshk Imaret. This is a Timurid pavilion, which would once have lain in the heart of gardens. It is rectangular in plan, with its main, arched, entrance on the west side of the building, flanked by arched niches. Traces of plaster found on the inside of the building preserve the pink colour in which the pavilion was originally decked out.
Another ice-house comes into sight, due south of Gyaur Kala. This is rather different in form to the others, with a taller, steeper design. Fragments of wooden beams survive in many of the slots around the internal walls. Some researchers believe that the building may date from the Seljuk rather than the Timurid period. The presence in this structure of ventilation shafts have led some to question whether it is an ice-house at all.
Mausolea of two Askhab
The most impressive of the Timurid monuments are part of an important place of religious pilgrimage at the southern edge of Sultan Kala. You are making for a reconstructed complex centred around the mausolea of two Askhab, or companions of the Prophet. The two black marble cenotaphs mark the tombs of Al Hakim Ibn Amr Al Jafari and Buraida Ibn Al Huseib Al Islami. They lie in modern brick-built mausolea, with low domes. Behind the two mausolea are a pair of heavily reconstructed Timurid iwans, built to honour the tombs of the Askhab. The mausolea are beautifully framed by the arched iwans behind them. The internal walls of the latter are pleasantly decorated with blue and turquoise tiles, in geometric designs.
In front of the Askhab complex is a water cistern, probably built at around the same time as the iwans, but still in use. Above ground, only a shallow dome and a large arched doorway on the western side are visible. Uneven stone steps lead down to the water. The doorway, decorated with floral-patterned stucco, dates from the 19th century.
Merv
A significant capital for 2,500 years, Merv was one of the most important oasis cities of the Silk Road, and is among the major archaeological sites of Central Asia.
It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. Merv first became a significant centre under the Achaemenian Empire, and across the millennia which followed was a regional capital for a succession of controlling dynasties. It was from Merv in the 8th century that Abu Muslim proclaimed the start of the Abbasid revolution. At the height of its importance as the eastern capital of the Seljuk Empire in the 11th and 12th centuries, it was a vital centre of learning. Here Omar Khayyam worked on his celebrated astronomical tables. Merv was sacked by the Mongols in 1221 in devastating fashion, and although archaeologists now question earlier figures of a million or more people massacred in this single event, it was undoubtedly one of great brutality. But the city of Merv was to rise again, albeit never reaching its earlier prominence. It remained in occupation during the Mongol period and later, under the 15th-century Timurid leader Shah Rukh, a new city was established here.
Erk Kala
With walls some 25m in height, the structure resembles the crater of an extinct volcano, 500m in diameter. Erk Kala is believed to have been the centre of Achaemenid rule over the oasis.
Gyaur Kala
Merv later fell to the forces of Alexander the Great, after whose early death Hellenistic control was retained, under the Seleucids. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus I built a new city here, which he termed Antiochia Margiana. Now known as Gyaur Kala, this city was roughly square in plan, with each wall running some 2km. Its streets would have been laid out in a grid pattern. The imposing walls of the city aside, no monuments remain standing within Gyaur Kala, though there are some remnant structures of interest. The existing city of Erk Kala was retained as the citadel of the Seleucid city, and is embedded into the north wall of Gyaur Kala. From the remains of a lookout tower which form the highest point of the walls of Erk Kala, you are given an excellent view across both Erk Kala to the north of you and Gyaur Kala to your south.
Gyaur Kala and its northern citadel formed the city through the subsequent Parthian and Sasanian periods, and into the early Islamic one. Take the road from the base of Erk Kala due south, into the centre of the Gyaur Kala site, and park at the central crossroads. Just to the northeast are the hard-to-make-out remains of the 7th-century Beni Makhan Mosque, which was rebuilt in the Seljuk period. The most impressive remains here are those of a fired-brick cistern, or sardoba. This would once have been a domed, subterranean structure, and now forms a brick-walled pit, 8m deep and 6m in diameter.
The city site of Gyaur Kala features evidence of a range of faiths, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. But perhaps the most interesting religious building here is the remains of a Buddhist stupa, thought to be the westernmost Buddhist monument yet identified. The stupa sits in the southeast corner of Gyaur Kala, accessible along a track running here from the central crossroads. The stupa itself is a mound, on which the main features of the religious building are only vaguely discernible. To the south, a pock-marked terrain marks the adjacent Buddhist monastery. Among the finds made at the stupa were the beautifully decorated vase now displayed at the National Museum in Ashgabat, and a clay head of Buddha, which archaeologists believe would have been part of a massive statue, more than 3m high.
The archaeologists of the International Merv Project have excavated a cross-section through the southwestern walls of Gyaur Kala. This beautifully demonstrates how the city walls were built up through the centuries: relatively modest and narrow Seleucid walls, of around 280BC, form a core around which extensions were built upwards and outwards, reflecting the more sophisticated threats posed by advances in artillery. Several distinct further phases of wall construction can be identified, including the addition of bastions in the 4th century, which would have provided platforms for defensive artillery pieces, as well as strengthening the walls.
Mausoleum of Hodja Yusup Hamadani
Hodja Yusup Hamadani, one of the most important places of shrine pilgrimage in Turkmenistan. Hodja Yusup was a Sufi scholar of the 12th century, whose teachings formed an important element in the development of Sufism in Central
Asia. He studied theology in Baghdad, and later settled in Merv, where he enjoyed the patronage of Sultan Sanjar. He was buried in the city on his death in 1140.
The mosque here was one of the very few in Turkmenistan allowed to operate, albeit under tight control, during the Soviet period. The open-sided square mausoleum, towards the rear of the complex, is a modern reconstruction. A group of buildings along the west side of this, around a central iwan, were probably originally built in the Timurid period.
Sultan Kala
The road heads westwards, entering the third and most extensive of the walled cities of Merv, Sultan Kala. The Abbasid commander Abu Muslim promoted urban development around the Majan Canal, a kilometre to the west of the walls of Gyaur Kala, possibly because of growing difficulties over access to water in the existing city, as the ground level rose with each new phase of building. The old city of Gyaur Kala gradually declined in importance, and the archaeological evidence suggests that it became an industrial suburb of Sultan Kala. The new city reached its peak under the Seljuks. It was walled in the 11th century under Malik Shah. During the reign of Sultan Sanjar, when Merv was one of the most important cities of the world, further northern and southern suburbs were walled, giving the city a total area of some 600ha.
The city had declined by the time of the arrival of a large Mongol force in 1221, but its walls still posed a formidable obstacle for the invaders. The Mongols did not, however, need to attempt to breach them: the defenders of the city negotiated a surrender under which they would be spared, and opened the gates to the Mongol army. The latter promptly forgot about its deal, and massacred everyone. Not much is yet known about the nature of occupation of Merv in the Mongol period, though there is evidence that the city remained in use and even minted its own coins.
To the east side of the road, after passing into Sultan Kala, is a walled citadel known as the Shahriar Ark, built in the 12th century to enclose a palace and administrative complex, and the residences of the urban elite. The ruins of the palace are close to the centre of this site: the building was based around a central courtyard, surrounded on each side by iwans. The best preserved building in the Shahriar Ark, however, stands to the northeast of the palace. It is a rectangular building some 20m long, and surviving to around 8m in height. Its external walls have a distinctive design of vertical corrugations. The interior is distinctive too, with many square niches. The building is known as a kepter khana, or ‘pigeon house’, based on one theory as to the use to which the niches were put, but there is no academic consensus as to the purpose of this unusual building.
Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar
The road continues southwestwards to the centre of the Sultan Kala site, where stands the single most impressive building at Merv, the Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. Recently restored with finance from the Turkish government, the mausoleum has a square base, with walls 27m in length, and is topped with a double dome, rising to a height of 36m. The original covering of turquoise tiles, visible to the Silk Road traveller when still a day’s caravan ride from the city, is, alas, no more. Around the exterior, the base of the dome is surrounded by attractive vaulted arcades. These present five arches along each side of the building, containing latticed balconies with designs based around eight-pointed stars.
The interior of the building is decorated with white stucco, across which red and blue geometrical designs run along the borders of the walls. Most of this is newly reconstructed: the designs are extrapolations from small fragments of original stucco. There are tall niches in the centre of each wall. The transition between the square plan of the mausoleum and the domed roof is achieved by four large squinches, supporting the roof, between which sit niches. Each of these contain small latticed windows. The name of the architect, Mohammed Ibn Aziz of Serakhs, is found high up on the east wall of the mausoleum. One local legend runs that the man was killed by Sultan Sanjar, to prevent him from designing another building to rival the beauty of this one. The cenotaph on the floor of the mausoleum was a 19th-century addition, and is not the tomb of Sultan Sanjar.
The construction of the mausoleum pre-dated Sultan Sanjar’s death in 1157. The building would have originally stood, not in its current isolation, but as part of a complex of religious buildings, including the city’s main mosque. The reconstructed bases of the walls of some of these structures surround the mausoleum.
Kyz Bibi
From the Sultan Sanjar Mausoleum, drive due west, leaving Sultan Kala through the western Firuz Gate. South of the road, the small reconstructed square mausoleum, open on all sides, is known as Kyz Bibi. Some scholars have suggested that this may be the burial place of Sultan Sanjar’s wife, Turkan-khatun. Who was not a fairy bird, then.
The Kyz Kalas
The Greater and Lesser Kyz Kalas are two isolated buildings known as koshks, which have distinctive corrugated exterior walls. The Greater Kyz Kala is rectangular in plan, with a length of 45m and width of 38m. Its corrugations are well preserved on the eastern and southern sides of the building, protected against the prevailing wind. The interior of the building preserves squinches and traces of different kinds of vaulting. The Lesser Kyz Kala stands a couple of hundred metres due south: it is roughly square in plan, with sides 20m long, and is more poorly preserved than its neighbour, though does retain the remnants of a stairway in its southeast corner. ‘Kyz Kala’ means ‘Girls’ Castle’: one story runs that forty girls hid in the Greater Kyz Kala at the time of the Mongol invasion. When they saw what the Mongols had done to the inhabitants of the city of Merv they committed suicide byjumping from the roof. Another local tale identifies the Greater Kyz Kala as the castle for the girls; its smaller neighbour as the boys’ castle. It is said that young men wishing to marry the girl of their dreams should fire a projectile from the southern castle, to land in the northern one. Given the distance between the two, there are presumably many local bachelors.
The buildings were elite rural residences, and probably date from the 8th or 9th centuries. There remains much debate about the purpose of their distinctive corrugations: theories include helping to keep the interiors cool, ensuring the rapid run-off of potentially destructive rainwater, and simple decoration.
Mausoleum of Mohammed Ibn Zayd
This is one of the most atmospheric shrine complexes in Turkmenistan. Ibn Zayd was a Shia leader, killed in 740 while leading an uprising against the Umayyads in the city of Kufa in present-day Iraq. The mausoleum at Merv is probably simply a symbolic construction, built by his followers.
The mausoleum at the core of the complex dates from the Seljuk period. It has a square, domed chamber, the dome supported by four squinches, separated by niches. An inscription running around the top of the walls records the date of construction of the mausoleum as 1112. The cenotaph in the centre of the chamber is carved with inscriptions. Unusually, the chamber contains a mihrab, a niche in the west wall with a scalloped design. Around the Seljuk mausoleum, two more recent rooms have been added. To the east of the mausoleum, and providing access to it, is a square-domed anteroom. Access to this in turn is through a mosque, which runs along the whole north side of the complex. One of the walls of the mosque comprises what was originally the external north wall of the mausoleum, revealing fine decorated Seljuk brickwork. The complex was much restored in the early part of the 20th century.
Around the mausoleum are several large saxaul trees, considered sacred, from which hang hundreds of strips of material, representing prayers.
The Timurid Monuments
Abdullah Khan Kala
In the southern part of the Merv site, a group of monuments linked to the Timurid rule in the 15th century make for an interesting supplementary itinerary for visitors with the time available for a more in-depth programme. Begin at the city site of Abdullah Khan Kala, immediately across the road from the central market of Bayramaly. This is roughly square in plan, its city walls of crumbling mud brick the most prominent surviving feature. The moat surrounding the walled city can also still be easily discerned. Abdullah Khan Kala, which lies some 3km to the south of Sultan Kala, was built in 1409 by Shah Rukh, who had taken control of the empire of his late father Timur, known as Tamerlane in the West. Covering 46ha, Abdullah Khan Kala was by many standards a sizeable town, but not by those of the great cities which preceded it at Merv. Bar a few short stretches of wall, little remains of Bairam Ali Khan Kala, the 18th-century western extension to the Timurid city.
The ice-houses and Koshk Imaret
Around 13m in diameter, this is a now roofless building of rounded conical form, its interior walls pierced with many beam-slots. Continuing eastwards, you will reach, north of the track, a better preserved ice-house of similar diameter, its form recalling an overturned bowl. The interior of this structure is enlivened with bands of diagonally set bricks. Most archaeologists believe that the buildings were indeed used for the storage of ice, though some sources argue that they may have been water cisterns.
Some 100m to the southeast of this second ice-house is a building known as the Koshk Imaret. This is a Timurid pavilion, which would once have lain in the heart of gardens. It is rectangular in plan, with its main, arched, entrance on the west side of the building, flanked by arched niches. Traces of plaster found on the inside of the building preserve the pink colour in which the pavilion was originally decked out.
Another ice-house comes into sight, due south of Gyaur Kala. This is rather different in form to the others, with a taller, steeper design. Fragments of wooden beams survive in many of the slots around the internal walls. Some researchers believe that the building may date from the Seljuk rather than the Timurid period. The presence in this structure of ventilation shafts have led some to question whether it is an ice-house at all.
Mausolea of two Askhab
The most impressive of the Timurid monuments are part of an important place of religious pilgrimage at the southern edge of Sultan Kala. You are making for a reconstructed complex centred around the mausolea of two Askhab, or companions of the Prophet. The two black marble cenotaphs mark the tombs of Al Hakim Ibn Amr Al Jafari and Buraida Ibn Al Huseib Al Islami. They lie in modern brick-built mausolea, with low domes. Behind the two mausolea are a pair of heavily reconstructed Timurid iwans, built to honour the tombs of the Askhab. The mausolea are beautifully framed by the arched iwans behind them. The internal walls of the latter are pleasantly decorated with blue and turquoise tiles, in geometric designs.
In front of the Askhab complex is a water cistern, probably built at around the same time as the iwans, but still in use. Above ground, only a shallow dome and a large arched doorway on the western side are visible. Uneven stone steps lead down to the water. The doorway, decorated with floral-patterned stucco, dates from the 19th century.
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