Gonbad-e Qabus

Gonbad-e Qabus is a single brick tower rising from a mound on the plain of Golestan, near the Turkmen steppe. Gonbad means dome or domed tower. It was built in 1006–07 for Qabus ibn Voshmgir, a ruler of the Ziyarid dynasty and a noted patron of scholars, and the town around it took the tower's name. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2012.

The tower is more than fifty metres tall. In plan it is a circle surrounded by ten sharp triangular flanges, which run from the base to the top and give the shaft a fluted, star-like profile. It is capped by a conical brick roof. There is almost no decoration: just two bands of inscription in Kufic script, an angular early Arabic calligraphy, near the base and the top, recording the patron and the date.

The brickwork is so precise that the tower has stood through a millennium of earthquakes. It is widely seen as the first great monument of the Iranian tower-tomb tradition, which later produced buildings across northern Iran and Central Asia. A story recorded by later writers says Qabus's body was hung in a glass coffin from the roof; it has never been confirmed. Inside, the tower is a hollow cylinder, and visitors standing in the doorway can hear their voices echo up into the cone.