Ateshgah of Baku

The Ateshgah, from the Persian for “place of fire”, stands in Surakhani on the Absheron peninsula, east of Baku in the Republic of Azerbaijan. On Absheron natural gas seeps from the ground, and in places it has burned for as long as anyone has recorded, which is one reason Azerbaijanis call their country the land of fire. Such flames drew worshippers and travellers to the peninsula for centuries.

The temple as it stands today was built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, largely by Indian merchants and ascetics who travelled the trade routes between India and the Caspian. It is a five-sided walled courtyard lined with small cells, where pilgrims and holy men lived, around a central altar under a domed canopy open on four sides, with a fire burning at its centre and flames at the corners of its roof. Inscriptions over the cells are mostly in Sanskrit and in Punjabi written in the Gurmukhi script, with one in Persian.

The temple is often described as Zoroastrian, and Zoroastrian visitors, including Parsis from India, have revered it; scholars note that most of the inscriptions are Hindu and Sikh, and that the temple drew several faiths who honoured fire. The natural flame died out in 1969, after decades of gas extraction in the area, and the fire is now fed by piped gas. The Ateshgah became a museum in 1975, and its cells hold displays about the people who lived and prayed there.