Mausoleum van Buyan Quli Khan

Buyan Quli Khan was a Muslim descendant of Genghis Khan who became the nominal ruler of a large part of Central Asia in 1348, while real power lay with the region’s warlords^1,2. Encyclopaedia Iranica counts him among the last Chaghatayid khans of Transoxiana⁵. When he tried to assert his own authority he was killed by one of those warlords, in 1358 according to some V&A records and in 1359 according to others^1,2. The murderer was soon driven out by his rivals, who raised the tomb over the khan’s grave in a cemetery at Fathabad, on the outskirts of Bukhara^1,2,3.

The tomb stands next to the shrine of Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, a shaykh of the Kubrawi Sufi order who died in 1261; Iranica names the two as the monuments of Bukhara that survive from the Chaghatayid period (1227-1370)^5,6. In 1899 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London acquired sections of the tomb’s inscription friezes, a tile with the khan’s name and a column capital; several pieces were bought from a seller in Batumi, Georgia, and one frieze section is recorded as taken from the facade^1,2,3,4. The V&A calls the tiles from this tomb the most important surviving examples of a technique used in Central Asia only from about 1350 to the early 15th century^1,4.

The V&A describes the tomb as a square, domed building with a monumental entrance, sheathed inside and out with tiles that were deeply carved with inscriptions and ornament and covered with coloured glazes before the final firing^1,2. A long frieze with an Arabic inscription, which named the khan, ran round the outer edge of the entrance arch; its words were picked out in white glaze against arabesques in blue-green^1,4. An engaged column stood beside the entrance; its capital, with two faces set at a right angle, is carved with leafy scrollwork glazed white, turquoise, blue and black³.

Iranica reports that panels of richly carved glazed terracotta decoration have survived in the tomb chamber⁵. The V&A records that the interior, like the exterior, was originally covered with these carved tiles¹.