Merağa Kümbetleri

Maragheh, about 140 km south of Tabriz, keeps four medieval tomb towers; a fifth, of Timurid origin according to Wolfram Kleiss, is lost^3,8. The oldest, Gonbad-e Sorkh (the Red Dome), was completed on 4 March 1148¹. Its inscriptions name the man who ordered it, Abu’l-Ezz Abd al-Aziz ibn Mahmud ibn Sa’d, titled Qawam-e Azarbayjan and possibly a member of the Ahmadili dynasty, and its builder, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Bandan¹. A round tower followed in 1167-68 and Gonbad-e Kabud (the Blue Dome) in 1196-97^2,3. Richard McClary counts these three among the Eldiguzid-era tombs of the region, with those of Nakhchivan and Urmia, and traces their forms and ornament in most early brick tombs of Anatolia⁴.

Gonbad-e Kabud is often attributed to the Christian mother of the Mongol ruler Hulagu, and the round tower is known as the tower of Hulagu’s sister^2,3. Archnet notes that the Qur’anic verses on Gonbad-e Kabud cast doubt on this, and the tower is older than Maragheh’s years as Hulagu’s capital, when he founded an observatory with Nasir al-Din Tusi as chief astronomer^2,5. Gonbad-e Ghaffariyeh followed in the early 14th century^3,7. André Godard read a pair of polo sticks in its decoration as the emblem of Shams al-Din Qarasunqur, governor of Maragheh under the Ilkhan Abu Sa’id, and Donald Wilber assigned it to the Ilkhanid period⁷. Gonbad-e Sorkh was registered as a national monument in 1931-32⁶.

Gonbad-e Sorkh is a square brick tower on a base of cut stone, with a crypt entered from the east and an upper chamber reached by steps on the north¹. The square body rises to an octagonal drum with triangular buttresses, which once carried an eight-sided pyramidal roof, now replaced by a low dome¹. Pairs of blind niches line three sides, engaged columns with carved stone capitals mark the corners, and the two columns flanking the entrance use twelve kinds of curved and rectangular brick¹. Turquoise glazed tile and carved stucco pick out the tympanum and spandrels around a dark blue glazed boss, and a band of carved terracotta and stucco carries an inscription and geometric interlace¹. An inscription around the tympanum on the north side names the patron and gives the date; the builder’s name is in another inscription, on the east side according to Iranica and on the west according to Iran’s official tourism portal^1,6. Iranica sees in it a blend of the two common Iranian tomb types, the domed cube and the circular or polygonal tower with a conical roof¹.

Gonbad-e Kabud is a decagonal brick chamber on a stone base, also over a crypt^2,5. Ten engaged columns mark its corners, and on each face a pointed arch springs about two-thirds of the way up². Below the arches the walls are covered with a brick pattern of interlacing pentagons; above them come three-tier muqarnas, spandrels filled with brick and mosaic faience, a Kufic Qur’anic band and a muqarnas cornice². The roof is lost: Archnet reconstructs a double dome with a polyhedral cone outside, and in 1937 Myron Bement Smith recorded evidence of a ten-sided pyramid faced with turquoise glazed brick^2,5. Archnet notes that it has the same plan as the tomb of Momine Khatun in Nakhchivan (1186), already in this atlas, and similar main ornament, and calls Gonbad-e Kabud a more developed stage of the same craft². Carol Bier notes that it has often been published as octagonal, and that its five-fold brickwork, first analysed by Emil Makovicky in 1992, was debated after a 2007 paper on quasi-crystalline patterns in Islamic architecture⁵. Over the entrance of the round tower are the Qur’anic words ‘Every soul shall have a taste of death’⁴. Gonbad-e Ghaffariyeh, near the Sufi Chay river, is a square tomb with a muqarnas front on the north and blind arches close to those of Gonbad-e Sorkh⁷.

Gonbad-e Kabud’s chamber is entered from the west, through a doorway about 2 m above the ground under a damaged muqarnas hood². Inside, the plastered decagonal room has deep pointed niches, and its zone of transition combines twenty small squinches with a band in naskh script quoting the opening verses of Surat al-Mulk². The crypt, entered from the east, has a cross-shaped plan, a groin vault and a carved plaster panel with verses 26 and 27 of Surat al-Rahman². Gonbad-e Sorkh is plainer inside: plaster over the walls, paired blind niches, and squinches formed of two intersecting arches framed by a third, a composition that Iranica thinks may have originated here; its crypt has a diagonal cross vault¹. In Gonbad-e Ghaffariyeh a blind arch on the south wall serves as a mihrab, and the plastered walls carry coloured decoration⁷.