3840 x 5759 px | 32,5 x 48,8 cm | 12,8 x 19,2 inches | 300dpi
Aufnahmedatum:
22. Juli 2012
Ort:
Shah-i Zinda, Samarqand, Uzbekistan
Weitere Informationen:
BĪBĪ ZAYNAB, MAUSOLEUM OF, named after Bībī Zaynab, its legendary occupant, together with her mother Uljā Aīm, the wet nurse of Tīmūr (r. 771-807/1370-1405). This twin-domed mausoleum stands just inside the southern entrance to the Šāh-e Zenda necropolis in Samarkand (Cohn-Wiener, p. 38). Neither Bībī Zaynab nor her mother is mentioned in contemporary sources or on the building itself. The attribution of the mausoleum to them was common in the earlier part of the twentieth century, while its attribution to Qāżīzāda Rūmī, the astronomer of Uluḡ Beg (r. 851-53/1447-49), which became standard in Soviet publications from the 1940s onwards, equally was based only on tradition. With the more recent publications it is perhaps best to refer to the building simply as the “twin-domed mausoleum.” The form of the mausoleum is unique in the Šāh-e Zenda. It originally consisted of two cruciform dome chambers; the larger with four small corner rooms and two portals. The bigger portal was on the south, while a subsidiary one on the east led to the central axis of the main street of the Šāh-e Zenda. Each of the dome chambers was crowned by a high double dome. The most spectacular decoration is reserved for the interior of the smaller dome chamber, with four muqarnas semidomes leading up to the central stalactite dome, which still bears traces of delicate blue paintings, now over-restored. With the lack of any concrete historical references the building must be dated on stylistic grounds. The extreme elongation of the double domes is a pointer to a date later than the majority of the mausoleums in the Šāh-e Zenda, as is the finely painted moqarnas dome. Although a date in the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century cannot be ruled out on stylistic grounds, it is more likely that the mausoleum was erected not long after Uluḡ Beg’s nearby entrance complex of 838/1434-35, filling up the vacant site between it and the first group of mausoleums.
