Mausoleum der Momine Khatun

Nakhchivan was the capital of Shams al-Din Eldiguz, atabeg of the Seljuk sultan Arslan Shah, who held only the semblance of power; McClary dates Eldiguz’s effective control of Azerbaijan to 1172⁵. Eldiguz died at Nakhchivan in 1174-1175, and his son Muhammad Jahan Pahlavan ruled until his own death in 1186-1187⁵. The tomb honours Momine Khatun, Eldiguz’s wife and Jahan Pahlavan’s mother^2,4. Its Kufic frieze names Jahan Pahlavan as the ruler who ordered “this mashhad” for her; the Presidential Library of Azerbaijan adds that Eldiguz had chosen to build over her grave and that his son completed the tomb in Muharram 582 (March-April 1186)^2,4,6. The builder, Ajami ibn Abi Bakr of Nakhchivan, signed a panel over the door⁵.

Near its end the frieze carries a Persian couplet: “We pass on, and the world remains; we die, and this remains as a memorial”^4,6. The tomb belonged to a group of Eldiguzid buildings, among them a palace, a congregational mosque, a madrasa and a portal with twin minarets, none of which survives; a report published in 1836 still describes a half-ruined mosque and the remains of twin minarets about 21 m high^3,6. Christian Frähn of the St Petersburg Academy published the first reading of the frieze in 1837, from copies made by Frédéric Dubois de Montpéreux⁶. The crypt was restored in 2003². In 1998 Azerbaijan placed the Nakhchivan mausoleums on its UNESCO Tentative List^1,2.

The tomb has two levels: a crypt below ground and, above it, a ten-sided brick tower that is round inside^2,5. The tower now stands about 25 m high; with its lost pyramidal outer roof it reached about 34 m, and today an inner dome and a modern metal roof cover it^2,4. Each of the ten faces holds a tall recessed panel filled with a different geometric strapwork pattern, laid in projecting bricks with carved plaster between them; some are picked out with turquoise-glazed pieces^4,5. A Kufic frieze runs round the top of the shaft below the roof^4,6. The west face, with the entrance, is treated differently: a doorway in an arched frame below, ornament above, and the inscription naming the builder and the date over the arch^2,5.

Shchetnikov, who analyses the patterns face by face, notes that some Nakhchivan patterns are found nowhere else; one on this tomb, combining rosettes of 13 and 11 petals, is the only pattern of its kind in Nakhchivan⁴. Encyclopaedia Iranica treats the buildings of Maragha and Nakhchivan from the later 12th and early 13th centuries as a distinct regional group⁷. McClary sees the Nakhchivan tombs as the models for the brick tombs of eastern Anatolia, such as the Mengücek Gazi tomb at Kemah, built about 1190⁵.

The upper chamber is round inside, although the tower is ten-sided outside, and four round medallions in the dome carry the names of the caliphs². Below lies the crypt, whose vault springs from a central column, an arrangement McClary sees as the source of the crypt of the Mengücek Gazi tomb at Kemah⁵. The tombstones that stood in the crypt were robbed; the crypt was restored in 2003, and the Presidential Library notes that some researchers believe Eldiguz and Jahan Pahlavan were also buried here².