Samanid Mausoleum

The Samanid Mausoleum stands in a park on the western side of Bukhara, in Uzbekistan, close to the old city. It was built as the family tomb of the Samanids, the Persian dynasty that ruled Khorasan and Transoxiana from Bukhara in the ninth and tenth centuries, and it is often called the tomb of Ismail Samani, the emir who reigned from 892 to 907. It is generally dated between the late ninth century and the 940s, which makes it one of the oldest surviving monuments of Islamic architecture in Central Asia. It is part of the Historic Centre of Bukhara, inscribed by UNESCO in 1993.

The building is small, a cube about ten metres across, crowned by a hemispherical dome with four small domes at its corners. Its glory is its brickwork. Baked bricks of a warm honey colour are laid in basket-weave patterns, roundels and lattices over every surface, inside and out, so that the walls seem woven rather than built. As the sun moves, the shadows in the brick change, and the pattern seems to shift through the day.

Scholars have noted that its plan, a square domed chamber open on all four sides, recalls the chahar taq of Iranian fire temples. The Samanid court was where New Persian literature first flourished, under poets such as Rudaki. Over the centuries the mausoleum was buried in the earth of a cemetery, which helped it survive. It was uncovered and studied by Soviet archaeologists in the 1930s and is now visited by many people from across the Persian-speaking world.