Mausolées karakhanides d’Ouzgen

Uzgen lies on the right bank of the Kara Darya, on the eastern edge of the Fergana Valley^4,5. After the Karakhanid ruler Nasr ibn Ali took Bukhara in 999 and ended Samanid rule, Uzgen became the administrative centre of Fergana, and captive Samanid princes were held there^4,12. According to TDV, the sources describe it as the first capital of the Western Karakhanid state in 1046-47⁴. In 1141 Fergana came under Qara Khitai overlordship, but a Karakhanid khanate centred on Uzgen lasted until 1212^4,5. The three tombs stand in a row on a necropolis in the eastern part of the town’s fourth shahristan (walled inner town)¹.

Archnet and TDV date the middle tomb to about 1012-13 and link it to Nasr ibn Ali; UNESCO’s tentative-list text dates the earliest tomb to the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries^1,3,4. The northern tomb (547 AH, 1152-53) is associated with Jalal al-Dunya wa’l-Din al-Husayn; the occupant of the southern one (582 AH, 1186-87) is unknown to Archnet, and TDV suggests al-Husayn’s grandson Muhammad ibn Nasr^3,4,8. UNESCO’s tentative-list text says inscriptions show that Karakhanids of the Uzgen branch and their commanders lie in the northern and southern tombs¹. A 2023 archaeoseismological study proposes that two strong earthquakes, the first apparently between 1152 and 1187, damaged the northern and southern tombs and wrecked the middle one⁷.

The tombs stand side by side on a north-south line, each a square domed chamber of fired brick behind a large portal facing west^1,3. Their façades carry carved brick, terracotta (some of it incised) and carved plaster, with wide inscription bands in Kufic, naskh and thuluth scripts set among plant ornament^1,3. On the façade of the middle tomb, Archnet sees early versions of the patterns known as girih³. UNESCO’s tentative-list text calls the decoration an “encyclopedia of ornament” of the Karakhanid era and the group “a model of evolution of architecture in premongolian period”¹.

The middle tomb, the largest according to Archnet, is roofed by a dome on squinches, and its front portal carries dense geometric and plant ornament in carved plaster, an emphasis that Archnet calls new at the time^3,4. The northern tomb measures 10.2 by 12.2 m outside; lozenge-patterned brick colonnettes frame its portal, and incised terracotta covers the flanking columns, the inside of the portal and the underside of its arch³. The southern tomb is the smallest, and Archnet calls it the most ornate: its portal combines naskh and Kufic panels with stars, crosses and floral motifs, among them a winding vine³. The Center for Museum Initiatives, funded by the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, began conserving the roof of a twelfth-century Karakhanid mausoleum at Uzgen in September 2015 and completed it by October 2019⁹.

Each tomb is a square domed room behind a west-facing portal³. Archnet describes the room of the middle tomb as largely ruined, with doorways on three sides and a niche on the fourth, and notes carved plaques and inscription friezes inside it, some with pre-Islamic motifs³. Its dome rests on squinches, arches set across the corners of the square room⁴. According to a 2023 archaeoseismological study, an earthquake wrecked the middle tomb, which was later heavily renovated; the upper part of the northern tomb was shifted south off its base, and the south-west wall of the southern one is ruptured⁷.