Mausolée de Gawhar Shad

Gawhar Shad, wife of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh (r. 1405-1447), laid the foundations of a large complex outside Herat in 1417². Her madrasa was built between 1417 and 1438, according to its foundation plaque, and her congregational mosque, or musalla, probably followed in 1426^2,5. The researchers Sandra Aube, Thomas Lorain and Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento call the complex one of the major foundations of the Timurid capital³. The mausoleum, at the madrasa's western corner, was completed in 1432, and her son Baysunghur was buried there a year later⁵. Gawhar Shad herself and seven other Timurid princes are believed to have been buried here too⁵.

In 1863 artillery fire destroyed the tops of the minarets, and in 1885 Amir Abdur Rahman had the ruins razed so that a Russian army could not use them; only the minarets and the mausoleum were left standing². Two of the mosque's minarets fell in an earthquake in 1932². The mausoleum was damaged in fighting in the early 1990s but kept its ribbed, tiled dome¹. In 2001 the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage (SPACH) built protective walls around it and replanted its garden, and in 2003 a UNESCO project tied the leaning madrasa minaret with cables^2,5. In October 2014 an Italian-funded UNESCO mission began conserving the mausoleum's remaining Timurid tilework⁴.

The mausoleum stood in the westernmost corner of Gawhar Shad's madrasa and now stands alone, in a garden south of an irrigation canal that crosses the Musalla site^2,5. Its chamber is cruciform, about 9.5 m on each side, with a five-sided qibla bay projecting to the south-west⁵. The ribbed dome is covered in tiles and rises on a high drum also covered in tile decoration, both carrying Quranic inscriptions and abstract patterns¹. To the east stands the madrasa's last minaret, with two balconies on muqarnas supports and a brick shaft faced with a diamond pattern of blue tiles, floral bands and Kufic inscriptions^2,5.

North of the canal, four minarets mark the corners of the madrasa built by the Timurid sultan Husayn Bayqara, most likely around 1493, and the small domed tomb of the poet Mir Ali Shir Nava’i stands near the entrance to Gawhar Shad's mausoleum². Aube and her colleagues published recent surveys of the site and a first study of the ceramic tiles collected there, which were moved to the National Museum of Herat in 2015³. UNESCO's 2014 mission chose original tiles from the mausoleum, kept in Herat's citadel, for analysis in Italy so that matching tiles could be made⁴.

Inside, four arched niches fill the recesses of the cruciform chamber, set within four great arches that meet at the corners of the dome chamber⁵. Squinches lead from the corners to an eight-pointed star, then to an octagon and a sixteen-pointed star, rising to a thirty-two-sided star at the apex; this squinch-net vault is painted with floral motifs and inscriptions picked out in gold⁵. The madrasa's foundation plaque is kept in the mausoleum⁵. UNESCO's tentative-list entry of 2004 says the tombstones of Gawhar Shad, Baysunghur and other members of the family survive here, while Archnet reports that the queen's own tombstone, seen by the Russian agent Nicholas de Khanikoff before 1860, is now missing^1,5.