귈뤼스탄 영묘

The tomb stands near Gulustan village in Julfa district, Nakhchivan, in a reserve on the left bank of the Araz, about 30 km from Nakhchivan city^1,3. It has no documented date, and its builder and occupant are unknown³. Azerbaijan’s 1998 UNESCO Tentative List entry dates it to the 12th century⁵. The Presidential Library of Azerbaijan and a Soviet art encyclopedia of 1986 date it to the early 13th century, the Library seeing in it the influence of the Momine Khatun tomb of 1186^1,2,3,4. Shchetnikov places it in the second half of the 12th century, before the Mongol invasion, and attributes it to Ajami ibn Abi Bakr or someone from his school³.

Medieval sources call the tomb Kəsik günbəz¹. The Presidential Library treats it and the remains around it as one archaeological complex, and the Gulustan Historical-Cultural Reserve was set up to protect the area¹. In 1998 Azerbaijan included the tomb, with the other Nakhchivan mausoleums, on its UNESCO Tentative List^1,5. Its tent roof was completely destroyed: the Tentative List entry calls it pyramidal, while the Library finds its original shape, pyramidal or conical, hard to establish^2,5. On 7 October 2015 the chairman of the Supreme Assembly of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic ordered the tomb’s restoration and study¹. Writing in 2026, Shchetnikov describes the tower with a restored pyramidal roof³.

The base, of dressed stone, is square in plan (6.6 × 6.6 m) at ground level and narrows as a truncated pyramid to a regular twelve-sided top; inside it is cylindrical^1,2,5. Unlike other tombs in Azerbaijan, whose crypts lie underground, this one has its crypt inside the raised base². On the base stands a twelve-sided upper chamber of red sandstone^1,2,5. Carved bands of muqarnas (“stalactite” work) mark the junction of the body and the base and the start of the roof².

Each of the twelve faces has an arched frame around a recess filled with finely carved geometric ornament, and the designs are placed so that neighbouring faces differ: only three patterns repeat in turn around the tower^1,2,3. Shchetnikov identifies them as ten-petal rosettes framed by five-pointed stars, eight-petal rosettes with octagons, and twelve-petal rosettes with hexagons and an octagon³. The eight-petal pattern appears, turned through 45 degrees, on the entrance side of the Momine Khatun tomb, and the twelve-petal rosettes recur there too³. The Presidential Library compares the tomb with the stone tombs of Seljuk Anatolia and relates its ornament to the work of Ajami’s school^1,2.