The Samanid Mausoleum, Bukhara

The Samanids were a Persian dynasty who ruled much of Central Asia and eastern Iran in the 9th and 10th centuries, nominally on behalf of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad. Under Ismail Samani (ruled 892–907) Bukhara became their capital and one of the great cities of the Islamic world, a centre of trade, scholarship and Persian literature. The physician and philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna), born near Bukhara, studied in the Samanid royal library; the poet Rudaki, father of Persian poetry, worked at the court. In Tajikistan today Ismail Samani is honoured as a founding national hero.

The mausoleum was built as a dynastic tomb. It is traditionally associated with Ismail, and an inscription found on the building names his grandson Nasr; historians believe it held the remains of Ismail, his father Ahmad and Nasr.

The building is a near-perfect cube, about 10 metres on each side, crowned by a hemispherical dome and four small domes at the corners. Its walls, nearly 2 metres thick, slope slightly inwards, giving it a feeling of great solidity despite its small size.

Its glory is the brickwork. Instead of covering the walls with tiles, as later builders did, the architect made the bricks themselves the decoration. They are laid horizontally, vertically, diagonally, in relief and recessed, forming basket-weave, chequerboard, circles and lattice patterns that differ on each part of the wall. The brick seems to be woven like a textile. Because the patterns are created by relief, the building changes with the light: in the morning and late afternoon the sun strikes the walls obliquely and every brick casts a shadow, so the surface seems to move; at midday it looks flat. Inside, the play of light through the arched openings repeats the effect.

Each side has an identical arched entrance, and a gallery of small arches runs around the top. The transition from the square to the round dome is achieved with squinches, arches across the corners, an important step in the development of Islamic domed architecture.

Scholars see in the building a combination of old Sogdian and Iranian traditions with new Islamic forms. The cube and the dome may stand for the earth and the heavens. Circles in the brickwork have been interpreted as sun symbols, and the plan with four identical entrances recalls Zoroastrian fire temples. Whatever the intended meaning, the mausoleum shows that the builders of Samanid Bukhara drew on a long local heritage.

When the Mongols destroyed Bukhara in 1220, the mausoleum escaped, probably because it was already partly buried in the earth of a cemetery that had grown up around it. Over the centuries it disappeared under soil and sand almost to the dome, and it was largely forgotten. In the 1930s Soviet archaeologists, among them Vasily Shishkin, cleared and studied it. The cemetery around it was later removed and the area turned into a park. The building has since been restored with great care, and it is considered one of the best-preserved monuments of its age anywhere in the Islamic world.

Location: in Samanid Park on the western edge of the old city, about 10 minutes’ walk west of the Ark.

Tickets: a small fee to enter the interior; the exterior can be seen from the park.

Time needed: 20–30 minutes.

Best light: early morning or late afternoon, when the low sun brings out the relief of the brick. It is also beautiful after dark when lit.

Local custom: some visitors walk around the mausoleum three times, anticlockwise, and make a wish.

Nearby: the Chashma-Ayub shrine is a few minutes’ walk away in the same park, the Bolo-Hauz mosque faces the Ark, and the Kolkhoz bazaar lies just to the north. Fragments of the old mud-brick city walls of Bukhara can be seen along the edge of the park.