Shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portal facade with the stumps of the two minarets from the east, 2001

The shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa ( Persian مزار خواجه ابو نصر پارسا, DMG Mazār-i Ḫ w āǧa Abū Naṣr-i Pārsā ), today Khwaja-Parsa Mosque , is a mausoleum and a mosque in the northern Afghan city ​​of Balch . The mausoleum was founded a few years after the death of the Sufi scholar Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa († 1460/61) in the Timurid period in the historical region of Khorasan . This mausoleum, which was first built by the patronage of General Mīr Sayyid Mazid Bahadur Arghun, was probably in a poor structural condition in the middle of the 16th century. The domed building preserved (Persian Gonbad , Arabic qubba ) over an octagonal base with a monumental Ivan -Portalvorbau ( pischtak ) and two minaret was written stumps according to sources and stylistic features late 16th century under the rule of Shelbanides , an Uzbek built Dynasty, . This corresponds to the oldest building inscription dated 1597/98 by the Scheibanid prince and founder ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, who presumably planned the mausoleum as a burial place for himself and his family. From the end of the 16th to the end of the 17th century, six madrasas were built around the mausoleum , making the district a center for religious education. An earthquake at the end of the 19th century could have caused the partial collapse of the dome and the two minarets. The building was restored in 1975–76 and after 2002 and is now a cultural monument and mosque in the city's central park.

The epithet Green Mosque ( Persian مسجد سبز Masdschid-i sabz , DMG Masǧid-i sabz ) received the sacred building in the 19th century.

history

The chronological, functional and art-historical classification of the shrine has long been contradictory and divergent. Both the historical sources and the travel reports from the 19th century based on them and the scientific investigations in the 20th century refer to the building as a mausoleum or shrine ( mazār ), a mosque , and occasionally an Islamic college ( madrasa ) or a Sufi center, depending on the context ( chāneqāh ), and had long disagreed over the construction time in the 1460s, late 15th century or late 16th century. In addition, the name Abu Nasr was often confused and the question was asked whether he was buried in this shrine at all.

Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa

Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa was a sheikh of the Naqschbandīya order and was in the spiritual tradition of his father Khwaja Muhammad Parsa († 1420), from whom the spiritual chain of descent ( silsila ) via Ala ad-Din Attar († 1399) to the founder of the order Baha- ud-Din Naqschband (1318-1389). Like the founder of the order, Muhammad Parsa, a recognized scholar, worked in Bukhara to spread the order. In contrast to his father, the contemporary sources only mention Abu Nasr as the heir of this tradition, but no independent literature is known from him. According to two historians from the end of the 15th century, Abu Nasr had an important role as a religious leader and political mediator, which explains the construction of such a magnificent mausoleum.

In connection with succession disputes after the death of the Timurid prince Ulugh Beg (1394-1449), Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza (ruled 1447-1457) captured Balch in 1447. When he arrived at the city gate, he was received by Abu Nasr, as stated in a report written between 1465 and 1471 by the Persian historian Abd-ar-Razzagh Samarghandi (1413–1482). Accordingly, Abu Nasr, whom the historian calls Shaykh al-Islam , seems to have been the leading figure in the city at that time. Apart from Abd-ar-Razzagh, who describes another incident, and Muʿin ad-Din Isfizārī, who wrote a chronicle of Herat in 1491/92 , only one other source on Abu Nasr from the end of the 15th century has come down to us. At least Abu Nasr's esteem at the time emerges from these almost contemporary sources. For two and a half centuries until the end of the 17th century, the management of the mausoleum remained in the hands of the Parsa family in a succession of eight generations.

Mīr Sayyid Mazid Bahadur Arghun

The Herat-born Persian historian Chwandamir (1475-1535) reported shortly before 1497 about the presumably influential feudal lord and general Mīr Sayyid Mazid Bahadur Arghun, who supported the Timurid ruler Abu Sa'id around the middle of the 15th century . The ethnonym " Arghun " refers to the special Mongolian origin of the Timurid general, briefly called Mir Mazid, who is mentioned in connection with a number of military conquests. In the winter of 1458/59 he was involved in the capture of Herat by Abu Sa'id, a little later in the same year he conquered the insurgent fortress of Nirah-tu east of Herat and in 1460 he came as an observer on behalf of Abu Sa'id or more likely as a longer term administrator according to Balch. Mir Mazid could therefore only have met Abu Nasr in Balch in the year of his death. Robert D. McChesney (2001), however, thinks it is quite possible that the two had met before in Bukhara, because Abu Nasr from Balch is likely to have maintained various contacts to Bukhara. Mir Mazid is said to have stayed at least temporarily in Balkh between 1462 and 1468. It was probably during these years that Mir Mazid had a Tschahār Bāgh (Persian garden) laid out in Balkh , which must have been of considerable size. After a lost battle against the Turkmen Aq Qoyunlu in 1469 , Abu Sa'id was executed. Mir Mazid, who was also arrested at first, was freed and went to Badakhshan . There are various reports about his political activities there, until he died a few years later.

As to the extent to which the Naqshbandīya sheikh and the Timurid general were in a personal relationship in 1460, two sources can be used, which date from the end of the 15th century and shortly after the middle of the 16th century. In Chwandamir's work Maʿāschir al-Mulūk , written shortly before 1497, it is said that Mir Mazid had a spacious building and a madrasa built at the shrine ( mazār ) of Abu Nasr. McChesney deduces from this that Abu Nasr was first buried in an open tomb ( hazira , usually a raised platform in an enclosed area), which was replaced a short time later by a shrine. By the time Mir Mazid died around 1470, a kind of mausoleum with a madrasa should have been built, or at least a religious foundation for the establishment of a grave complex was brought into being.

The later source is Sultan Muhammad bin Darwish Muhammad al-Balchi's work Majma 'al-Ghara'ib. Sultan Muhammad was a Mufti of Balch and died in 1574. A version of his work from 1561 and a second version completed after 1577 are known, both of which have come down to us in partially different copies, mainly from the 19th century. The second version mentions the construction of a large mausoleum ( gonbad ) for Abu Nasr in 1462/63 and the existence of a madrasa. The name mazārāt (plural of mazār , "shrine") is an indication that at the end of the 15th century there were several holy tombs around the tomb of Abu Nasr, which were the destination of pilgrimages ( ziyāra ). The buried were probably successors of Abu Nasr or other people who wanted to show their religious ties to him. In addition, Sultan Muhammad reports on the renovation of the entire complex, which had suffered in the previous century, and of a newly built madrasa in its vicinity. Before Sultan Muhammad, Abd ar-Razzagh mentioned that Mir Mazid had a gonbad built. According to McChesney's reading, Abd ar-Razzagh's chronicle does not refer exclusively to a mausoleum for Abu Nasr, but to a family tomb.

Only one manuscript of this chronicle, which is kept in the Eton College Collections , mentions that Mir Mazid had a mausoleum built in Balkh for his late father Pir Muhammad. It is unclear whether this is a different mausoleum or whether this mausoleum was rededicated to Abu Nasr for the father at an uncertain time before the 1490s. Conversely, McChesney concludes, Mir Mazid probably had a domed structure built on the existing tomb of Abu Nasr, in which his father and later his brother were buried. In the years that followed, the late Abu Nasr's fame appears to have grown considerably, while the name Mir Mazid and the function of the mausoleum as his family's burial site faded and entirely disappeared.

Subsequent administrators in the 16th and 17th centuries

Portal and tambour with dome. Condition shortly after the most recent restoration, 1977.

From 1506 the Timurids were followed by the rule of the Uzbeks from Bukhara over Balkh, which lasted with short interruptions until the 19th century. Since the middle of the 16th century, the mausoleum has been known to the population exclusively as the tomb of Abu Nasr, around which the legends of his work as a saint are entwined. The place became a pilgrimage destination in earlier times, albeit less important than the tombs of Baha-ud-Din Naqschband in Bukhara, ʿAbdallāh al-Ansārī in Herat or the Ali mausoleum in Mazar-e Sharif . After all, for many believers, some of whom were high-ranking, Balch appeared to be a worthy place to be buried there near Abu Nasr. The members of the Parsa family associated with the shrine received the right to the honorary title of Sheikh al-Islam as descendants of Abu Nasr well into the 18th century . It is unclear what rights and functions were associated with the title, which has been used by the subsequent administrators of the shrine since Abu Nasr. Presumably, the Parsa heads of families in the 16th and 17th centuries were not only respected religious figures, but also held a certain official position, which was comparable to a Qādī or Mufti .

Abu Nasr's direct successor could have been his son named Khwaja al-Malik († around 1491). The names of the other successors in the course of the 16th century are more reliably known through the work ʿAbdullāh-nāma by the historian Hāfiz Tanisch (Hāfiz bin Muhammad Buchārī, 1549 - after 1588). The son of Abu Nasr II in the fourth generation after Abu Nasr was Khwaja ʿAbd al-Hadi, who is mentioned by Khwaja Hasan Nithari Buchari in his anthology of poets, Mudhakkir-i ahbab , which was completed in 1566/67 . According to Nithari, ʿAbd al-Hadi was - without specifying a specific date - the Sheikh al-Islam of Balkh "for a long time". According to the Tārīch-i Rāqimī by the Persian chronicler Sharaf ad-Din, written in the early 18th century, he is said to have initiated major renovations to the tomb or a new construction of the mausoleum. ʿAbd al-Hadi is the first member of the Parsa family mentioned in writing in connection with construction work on the mausoleum. Sharaf ad-Din quotes a text from Sultan Muhammad of Balch, probably from his Majmaʿ al-gharāʾib , which does not appear in the surviving manuscripts of this work. Sultan Muhammad's work, written in Persian between 1650 and 1660, offers further information that is missing in later adoptions.

ʿAbd al-Hadi, who probably died shortly after 1552 (and died when Nithari wrote about him in 1566), was succeeded by his brother ʿAbd al-Wali as Sheikh al-Islam and administrator of the tomb. He had the mausoleum and madrasa renovated and another madrasa built nearby. In the second edition of the Majmaʿ al-gharāʾib , which was written after 1577, ʿAbd al-Wali, († after 1587) is mentioned with honorable words. In some other sources his role as the civil head of Balch is also emphasized. He is also said to have had considerable influence in the city of Bukhara, which his family had conquered in the fight against a Scheibanid group. At the end of 1577, ʿAbd al-Wali was in Bukhara for a family celebration. His most notable politically role, reported by Hāfiz Tanish (literary name: Nachlī), the historian of the Sheibanid prince Abdullah Khan , in his Sharafnāma-yi Shāhī (1584), was played by ʿAbd al-Wali, as the Balch in June 1579 of a coalition of Sheibanid princes and the Timurid ruler Shah Ruch of Badachshan was attacked. He was one of the leading personalities in the city who set up a defense army that managed to push back the attackers from Badakhshan. In addition to his military leadership role, ʿAbd al-Wali is also referred to as muhtasib at this point , which means that in addition to his religious function, he was also responsible for controlling market transactions. Haafiz Tanish last mentioned Shaykh al-Islam at an event in 1586. He must have died after that year and before 1606.

After Abdullah Khan's death in 1598, his son ʿAbd al-Muʾmin reigned. ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, born in Bukhara in 1568, came to Balch as a young prince in 1583 at the latest, where he first found a confidante in ʿAbd al-Wali and is said to have sponsored the renovations of the mausoleum and other public buildings later. In the manuscript Tārīch-i Muqīm Khāni from the beginning of the 18th century it is stated that ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, who died shortly after his father in 1598, had the entire shrine built. The ruler of Balch, Subhan Quli (ruled 1651–1681), is said to have commissioned the construction of a madrasa opposite the main entrance of the shrine. According to this source, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin had the monumental entrance portal of the shrine built, while the historian Hādji Mir Muhammad Salim three decades later, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, did not attest the construction of the portal itself, but only its design and the renovation of the entire mausoleum. In view of his other traditional architectural measures that he had carried out in Balch - typically wall cladding with blue tiles, Robert D. McChesney considers this contribution by the Scheibanid Prince for the mausoleum to be at least given. One of his sons, Qasim Khwaja, is mentioned for the first time in 1606 as the successor of ʿAbd al-Wali in the office of mausoleum administrator. His name is mentioned as one of the defenders of Balkh in 1579. Until his death in 1624/25, Qasim Khwaja maintained good contacts with Nasr Muhammad († 1651), the son of the Janid ruler Din Muhammad.

Qasim Khwaja, who presumably did not have a son entitled to inheritance, was succeeded by his son-in-law and nephew Padschah Khwaja in the office of Sheikh al-Islam. The active political role played by Padschah Khwaja in the 1630s is mentioned several times, most recently in 1639 when the Scheibanid ruler Imam Quli Khan (ruled 1611–1642) paid an honorary visit to Balch and met two Uzbek military leaders and Padschah Khwaja. Between 1639 and 1646 the office was transferred to another ʿAbd al-Wali (II), who was also called Hazrat-i Ischan. After a brief and apparently inconsequential occupation of Balchs by the Mughals under Aurangzeb , the Janide Subhan Quli (1624 / 25–1702) took over the city in 1647. ʿAbd al-Wali rose to the inner circle of beneficiaries around the Sultan and married one of his sisters. Their son Salih Khwaja was driven into exile in India in 1696 after a year in office. After 1700, the management of the mausoleum seems to have been passed on within the Parsa family, but possibly not in the direct line of descent from ʿAbd al-Wali (II).

The neighborhood around the shrine in the 17th century

In the 16th century, Balch consisted of the fortified inner city ( bala hisār ) north of the ancient citadel ( arg ) with an oval area of ​​around 1500 × 1000 meters, which has been surrounded by an "old" earth wall ( hisār-i qadīm ) since the Middle Ages was, and several quarters in a much larger, by a "new wall" ( hisār-i dschadīd ) bounded area in the south. A large residential area with several Islamic schools was built around the mausoleum in the middle of the extensive lower town from the end of the 16th century. In the middle of the 16th century only two madrasas belonged directly to the mausoleum, towards the end of the 17th century four more were added in the vicinity. The six madrasas, of whose existence today, apart from the remains of a building, only provide written evidence, were:

The Abdullah Khan Madrasa or Madrasa-i ʿAliya , the first Islamic school near the mausoleum, was completed by Abdullah Khan by February 1584. Exactly where it was is not known; only that opposite it stood the Nasr-Muhammad-Khan-Madrasa , built around 1612 , a few 100 meters west of the mausoleum. A source from the end of the 17th century (Muhammad Amin Buchari, Ubaydullah-nama ) gives a date for the start of construction, which corresponds to September or October 1612. The names of three experts responsible for the construction have been handed down, as well as some details about the shape: the entrance portal was higher than that of the first madrasa, the building consisted of vaults ( tāqā ) and arcades ( riwāq ) and the walls were made of turquoise tiles ( kāschī ) decorated. There were four classrooms, a mosque, a library with 2,000 works and several bedrooms. The description of the location of these neighboring madrasas shows the approximate extent of the entire complex in the 17th century, the area of ​​which was approximately three hectares.

The Allah Yar Bi Qataghan Madrasa , built shortly before 1616, is named after its founder Allah Yar, an emir of the Uzbek Qataghan tribe (in northeastern Afghanistan). The scope of the foundation included two posts for teachers, one post for an Islamic preaching ( chatīb ) and further posts for Koran reciters (plural huffāz ).

By 1635 there were at least five madrasas around the shrine. The Subhan Quli Khan Madrasa was the only one east of the mausoleum. Construction of this sixth madrasa began in April 1660. The laying of the foundation stone was not carried out by a member of the Parsa family, regardless of this, that family must still have been influential. The madrasa's namesake, Subhan Quli Khan, went to Bukhara in 1681 to succeed his brother, the Janid ruler Abd al-Aziz, in the office of Great Khan. In 1686 at the earliest, five years after Subhan Quli's departure, the madrasa was completed, of which only remains have survived to this day. The deed of foundation is dated to this year, stating that the two-story building had 75 rooms on each floor and 24 paid employees, including 12 Koran reciteers, were employed. The arch of the great Ivan and other remnants of the outer walls at two-storey height have been preserved. The inner wall surfaces of the Ivan are still partially covered with small blue tile patterns. The foundation ( waqf ) of the madrasa included a primary school for Koran lessons ( maktab ), a covered market ( tīmcha ) and a public toilet ( mustarāh ). The shrine and the six madrasas were close together in the 17th century in the middle of a residential area with markets along the main streets.

Colonial reports from the 19th century

Gur-Emir mausoleum (1404) with a double-shell dome. Photo taken around 1870.

Although numerous sources on the political events under the Janids have come down to us from the first half of the 18th century, in contrast to the two centuries before, the shrine is hardly mentioned in the 18th century. It is only known that the shrine continued to exist, but not whether the Parsa family still played a role, because they no longer appear in the reports. It is also not known how the changes in rulers affected the shrine during this period. The name Parsa does not appear again until the beginning of the 19th century. A dignitary of the Naqschbandīya order named Ishan Sayyid Parsa Khwaja Naqib (known as Ishan Naqib, † 1838) was appointed governor of Balch in 1817 with the support of the Mangit emir of the Bukhara Khanate . He ruled more or less independently over Balkh until 1837, when Emir Nasrullah (Nasrullah Khan, ruled 1827-1860) conquered the city, destroyed it and kidnapped Ishan Naqib along with many residents to Bukhara. According to an informant who was questioned by Jonathan Lee in 1993, Ishan Naqib is said to have belonged to a "Gauhari" line of the Parsa family, which is traced back to an - apparently fictional - founder Mir Haydar Qutb ad-Din from Medina . He married a daughter of Timur, unknown in history, with the eponymous name Gauhari. McChesney considers the connection with the family name Parsa to be questionable, but recognizes in the mention of the name a possible connection between the Parsa family and the shrine in the 18th century.

Such meager references to the Parsa family had completely disappeared by the mid-19th century. Instead, during the British colonial conquests, the shrine came under the spotlight of employees of the East India Company . The first European traveler to reach Balch and leave notes about the shrine was the veterinarian William Moorcroft (1767-1825). On his way back from Bukhara in 1824 he and his companions came through Balkh in search of horses. Before he could reach India again, he died of a fever the following year and was buried in Balkh. However, Moorcroft's travel records were preserved and were published in 1841. Moorcroft wrote of Balch that there were neither ancient remains nor any remarkable building except the mausoleum of Khwaja Abu Nasr, whose portal was decorated with elegant glazed tiles.

The next Briton in Balch was Lieutenant Alexander Burns, who stayed in the city for three days in 1832, but only had three large school buildings in the state of disintegration, by which he could have meant three of the madrasas built between 1594 and 1684. It is unclear whether he also counted the mausoleum among these buildings or did not know at all.

The international geostrategic vision Balch came on July 6, 1886, when the British and from Russians composite Afghan Boundary Commission , whose job it was in the years 1884 to 1886 to determine the northern border of Afghanistan, opened their camp outside Balch. Three of the participants took the opportunity to visit the old town of Balkh, about which they later published different reports. One of the participants remarked in a magazine article that the mausoleum was in a half-dilapidated state, had quite nice tiles, but otherwise not worth the trip. He considered a pair of spiral columns on each side of the portal and large Arabic characters on the tiled walls to be worth mentioning. The tiles on the flanks of the ivans were not recognizable because of the dirt. Another visitor to the city thought the mausoleum was the only building in the city worth seeing. He describes it as completely preserved and the walls covered with tiles, but the adjoining madrasa largely in ruins. According to the third description - by Major CE Yate (1849–1940) - there were two outstanding buildings in Balch in 1896: the Masjid-i Sabz ("Green Mosque") and the Madrasa. In the mosque, Yate suspected the tomb of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa and of the madrasa, whose name he gave as Madrasa-i Syad Subhan Kuli , he saw only ruins apart from the portal arch. The three Englishmen did not dwell on detailed considerations and dating questions, as they had hoped to find less Islamic architecture in Balkh, but rather ancient remains from the time of Alexander .

Research history in the 20th century

During the First World War , an Austro-Hungarian delegation came to what was then the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1916 and tried to win Habibullah Khan (ruled 1901-1919) as an ally of the Central Powers and to incite them against the British. This Niedermayer-Hentig expedition did not achieve its political goal; On the trip through Balch, however, one of their participants, the officer Oskar von Niedermayer , made notes for a book on the architecture of Afghanistan, which was published in 1924 with the assistance of the art historian Ernst Diez . Although Diez recognized the architecture of the building as a "grave dome" ( gonbad ), it was referred to as before by Yate and probably following the information of the locals as a "mosque". Diez was the first to give an art-historical description of the shrine.

At the request of the Afghan government under Amanullah Khan , a French archaeological delegation ( Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan, DAFA) stayed in Balch for about 18 months in 1924/25, primarily looking for remains of Hellenism in Afghanistan . Under Alfred Foucher, who was its leader from 1922 to 1945, the group also examined the shrine of Abu Nasr and other historical buildings from the Islamic period. Numerous photos of general views and building details were taken that are of particular value for research.

The English travel writer Robert Byron (1905–1941), an autodidact in art history who ridiculed the classical European view of art, gave detailed descriptions of Islamic architecture in his travelogues. One of his photographs shows the building inscription ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, which has now disappeared due to renovations / redesigns of the shrine, above the top of the portal with the date 1005 AH (1597/98 AD). In a short article about the shrine published in 1935, Byron published more photos and tried to place the shrine in the temporal context of the sequence of Sufi sheikhs that began with Khwaja Muhammad Parsa († 1420) from Bukhara.

In the wake of increasing nationalist endeavors worldwide in the early 1930s, the Afghan government planned to restore the city of Balkh using antique models. The ideology of ancestry from an Aryan people, through whom the Afghans believed they were connected to Germany, was propagated. In the case of the “new balch” to be built, the shrine should be in the center of a radiant street plan. On the prescribed in this connection by the Afghan government expulsion of Jews Byron reported in his travelogue of November 1933. In the semi-state, on Dari wrote literary magazine Salnama-yi Majalla-i Kabul ( "Kabul Yearbook") of the same year, the Ministry of the Interior planned projects. In it, the city of Balkh is stylized as the cradle of the nation and even the place of origin of the majority of the Aryan race and its glorious history is highlighted, especially in the Islamic period from the 12th century. Balch never recovered from the destruction under Genghis Khan, which is why it is important to create a new Balch from the historical legacy with a modern city map. According to the plan, the streets radiating away from the shrine should have been connected by a ring of ring roads, probably to create residential and business districts. Byron is not very confident about the feasibility of the plan: one could just as easily try to rebuild ancient Ephesus to replace Izmir . The French ambassador René Dollot (1875–1962), who stayed in Balch from the end of 1934 to mid-1936, reported in 1937 about the "first steps towards the rebirth of the ancient capital of Bactria" in the form of a newly created market district. The photos show that work on the mausoleum was also carried out at this time. Aerial photos from the 1970s show a street system around the mausoleum in the center that partly corresponds to the plan. This was created by the end of the 1930s, when a lack of investment gradually dashed hopes for a newly created cradle of Aryan civilization. What remained was the central position of the shrine in the city complex. The free space created around the shrine emphasized its new function as a national architectural monument and at the same time made the traditional meaning of saints memorial, cemetery and pilgrimage site disappear for the population.

In the early 1940s (probably 1943), the young American orientalist Richard Nelson Frye (1920–2014) came to Afghanistan on a mission as an intelligence officer. His report on the trip, published in 1946, contains a photograph of the mausoleum, which shows a fully restored dome and no longer the scaffolding that existed in photos from the 1930s. Frye wrote the entry Balkh in the Encyclopaedia of Islam New Edition (Volume 1, 1960, p. 1001), in which a Green Mosque in the Timurid style, built by ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, opposite the mausoleum of Khwaja Abu Nasr and from in near the portal arch of a madrasa, i.e. three buildings on the central square. This description is wrong, because there were only two buildings in photographs from the mid-20th century, and Frye's dating of the buildings to the 16th century is also incorrect. The erroneous assumption of three buildings was passed on in later representations. For example, Donald N. Wilber (1962) states that there is a dome building (“tomb”) by a person named “Khwaja Aqa Shah”, the outer dome shell of which has collapsed, and a part of a building (“part of a complex”) in honor of "Khwaja Abu Nasr Muhammad Parsa", who died in Balch in 1460. Arcades and a portal to a large courtyard are also preserved. The correct naming of the mausoleum and the opposite madrasa can already be found in an archaeological publication by Rodney S. Young from 1955. From the description there it becomes clear that the “portal to a large courtyard” is the pishtak the madrasa acts. Young rightly found the "Masjid-i-Sabz" and the monumental portal of the former madrasa of "Seyed Subah Kuli Khan" in the center of the small village of Balch, both of which he describes as monuments from Timurid times.

The entry on Balch in an illustrated book on Islamic architectural decoration published in 1964 by the photographer Derek Hill and the art historian Oleg Grabar contains a few but correct lines . Grabar mentions the shrine of Khwaja Akash from Timurid times ( Khwaja Aksha Wali Ziyarat on the northeastern outskirts) and the shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa, "built shortly after 1460-61", as the only standing ruins of buildings from the old city.

The most accurate account of the historical development of the shrine up to the 1960s comes from Galena A. Pugachenkova (1963). Nevertheless, two guides to Islamic art in the 1970s again confuse the names, function and construction time of the buildings. Alfred Renz (1977) also confuses the name of Abu Nasr with that of his better-known father Khwaja Muhammad Parsa and again gives an incorrect construction time:

"In what is now a somewhat dreary little town, in addition to the ivan arch of a medrese, the“ Green Mosque ”, the tomb of Kwaja Mohammed Abu Nasir Parsa from the end of the 15th century (1497?)."

In a Russian publication from 1980, the Tajik historian Akhror Mukhtarov for the first time brought the written sources and the architectural studies into closer context and explains: The mausoleum was built a few years after the death of Abu Nasr in 1460/61. According to Sultan Muhammad (in Majma 'al-ghara'ib, 1577) this happened on behalf of Mir Farid Arghun in 1462/63. In contrast, Muhammad Yusuf Munschi bin Khwaja Baqa states in his Tazkirah-i Muqim Khani that the mausoleum was built on behalf of the Sheibanid ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, who died in 1598. Mukhtarov describes the latter dating to the end of the 16th century as incorrect and suspects that Frye probably relied on ʿAbd al-Muʾmin for the same period.

Mukhtarov's contribution was hardly received outside the Soviet Union, nor was it used for the extensive two-volume catalog of Timurid Architecture ( The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan ) published by Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilber in 1988. The authors refer to the Persian historian Chwandamir (shortly before 1497), who called the shrine a takyah (Sufi center, Tekke) and suspect that the dome structure ( gonbad ) was not built over the grave of Abu Nasr but behind it. Instead, they assign an unmarked, simple tomb at the entrance of the building to St. Abu Nasr and the tomb in an underground room under the dome of another, unknown person, possibly the donor. The mausoleum thus becomes a religious assembly room.

McChesney cites the Islamic architecture of Balch, which travelers and researchers always regarded as secondary to the Hellenistic period, as one reason for the different functional ascriptions of the building, which is why the latter has only been archaeologically investigated to a limited extent. The city was famous in the early Middle Ages - from the 10th century it was called umm al-bilād ("mother of cities") because of its age . After the devastation by the Oghusen in the 12th century and the Mongols in the 13th century, a nearly deserted place was left of Balch, which was only rebuilt under the Timurids at the beginning of the 15th century. This heyday also disappeared when the general importance of Balkh - not just the shrine - faded in favor of the new urban center Mazar-e Sharif . This resulted in an inconsistent oral transmission, which is reflected in the researchers' records. Lisa Golombek, for example, found what is probably the oldest mosque ruin in Afghanistan from the Abbasid period ( Noh Gonbad , end of the 8th or beginning of the 9th century) outside of Balch in 1966 .

architecture

Shrine of Sheikh Zayn ad-Din in Taybad (Northeast Iran) from 1444/45. The arrangement of the prayer room, side rooms and the ivan facade are similar to the shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr.

The central part of the complex, begun in the 1460s in Timurid times and rebuilt under Uzbek rule in 1596/97, is the dome (Arabic qubba , Persian gonbad ). This consists of a two-storey, unevenly octagonal structure, above the center of which a high circular drum with a double-shell ribbed dome rises. The main entrance in the northeast is a powerful portal wall ( pischtak ) with a central pointed arch Ivan presented and flanking two-storey niches. The two round minarets on the sides, raised directly behind the portal frame, have been preserved to just above the upper edge. A nameless tomb outside the portal is believed to be the burial site of Khwaja Abu Nasr. The interior with the Qibla wall in the southwest is square and has niches in the middle of each side of the wall. In the crypt below there is also an unnamed burial place, which could have been laid out for the family of the founder Mir Mazid. Accordingly, the room served as a mausoleum ( mazār ) and , according to the mihrāb (the prayer niche), equally as a mosque ( masjid ).

Origin and style

The oldest preserved and most important starting point for the development of Iranian-Central Asian tomb architecture is the Samanid mausoleum in Bukhara, which was built in the 10th century (probably before 943). From the basic shape of a square structure with a hemispherical dome on top, which itself goes back to Sassanid fire temples ( Tschahar Taq ) and develops a monumental effect despite its small dimensions, the multi-storey, tiered central buildings with an octagonal plan - while the parallel shape of the tomb towers with it The pyramid roof of Gonbad-e Qabus, built in 1006 in the Iranian province of Golestan, started out. The tambour used between the upper end of the building and the dome offered a possibility, used from the 14th century onwards, to stretch the domed structures like the grave towers upwards . Examples of a greatly elongated drum can be found in Shohizinda in Samarqand. This necropolis also indicates that in the later 14th century the focus of Iranian architecture and thus also of the tombs shifted to the northeast of the Iranian highlands and to Khorasan . Around this time, another characteristic architectural feature developed, especially in the case of mausoleums: the melon-shaped dome that bulges over the drum. This mostly double-shell construction principle with a solid inner and a towering, thin-walled outer dome is illustrated by the Gur-Emir mausoleum (1404) and the Bibi-Chanum mosque (1404) in Samarqand, the mausoleum of Gauhar-Schad in Herat (1432) and subsequently the shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr. The Gonbad-e Qabus tomb tower is considered to be the main forerunner of this structurally advantageous construction . The high domes reinforce the centrality of the monumental building and, in their symbolic meaning, following Timur's striving for world domination and in the flowery language of contemporary chronicles, should reach for the stars.

Mosaic on Ivan of Madrasa Madar-i Khan in Bukhara from 1567.

The central domed hall is extended on both sides by a row of four single-storey domed rooms. The shrine has this and the three-part ivan facade in common with the mausoleum of Sheikh Zayn ad-Din in Taybad ( Razavi-Khorasan province in northeastern Iran), which was built in 1444/45 . In both buildings there are no connections from the central domed hall to the side rooms. Bernard O'Kane (2000) mentions the statement by the historian Chwandamir (shortly before 1497) that one could overhear the conversations in the main room from the side rooms and concludes from this that originally there must have been open passages. This is an architectural confirmation for the later renovation of the building. Some art historians accused the Uskebs of having uninspired the architecture of the late Timurids and copying it on about the same scale. This similarity is shown by the comparison of the madrasa-i Ghiyathiyya in the village of Chargird (150 kilometers southwest of Mashhad ), which according to the inscription was completed in 1444, and the madrasa Mīr-i ʿArab in Bukhara from 1535/36. For a long time, the shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr could be mistaken for a Timurid building from the middle of the 15th century.

Apart from stylistic features in the ornamentation, the size of the dome also speaks for the later dating under ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, who probably had more financial means than the Timurid general Mīr Mazid. The Madrasa Madar-i Khan in Bukhara from 1567 and the assembly center ( chāneqāh ) of the necropolis Chor Bakr near Bukhara, which dates from 1562/63, offer a comparably limited choice of colors (blue, blue-green, black and white) and design of the mosaic tiles is. The tile ornaments and stylistic features of the mihrab also point to the 16th century. The niche field above the mihrab arch is painted with irregularly distributed geometric figures as in Chor Bakr.

Gonbad-e Jabalieh near Kerman from the Buyid period (945-1055).

A row of 16 pointed arch windows surrounds the tambour in the lower area. The wall surfaces in between are filled with grid-shaped and other geometric tile ornaments. Above that, two broad bands with Kufi inscriptions cover the wall surface up to the dome, to which a frieze with miniature muqarnas leads. The portal is framed by wall columns that rest on onion-shaped bases and form a splendid conclusion with spiral beads ( rope rods ) clad in mosaic tiles . The upper part of the portal wall has collapsed. The back wall of the portal contains a large square field above the door, which is filled with square kufi.

The other outer walls next to the portal facade are unusual. The walls of the main axes have floor-high pointed arch niches with straight back walls. From the double niches on the side of the portal, stairs lead eleven meters up to the flat roof. Bernard O'Kane (2000) deduces from the missing upper wall endings that essential parts of the building were never completed. Presumably, the original plan included Iwane on all four main sides of the octagon and double niches in the narrow walls between. As a forerunner of an octagonal ground plan with two-story niches in the smaller outer facades, for example the Gonbad-e Jabalieh near Kerman from the time of the Buyids (945-1055), which is said to go back to a Sassanid fire temple, or the Öldscheitü mausoleum, come into question in Soltaniye (1312). The symmetry of the reconstructed complex leads to comparisons with Mughal Indian mausoleums such as the Humayun mausoleum in Delhi (around 1560) and the Taj Mahal (1648).

Restorations and changes in the 20th century

South side of the shrine during restoration by the Archaeological Survey of India , 1976

Larger damage was probably caused by an earthquake at the end of the 19th century. The state of preservation of the mausoleum in the course of the 20th century can mainly be seen from contemporary photographs. The oldest known photographs have been preserved by a member of the Afghan Boundary Commission . On one of the two photos from July 1886 you can see the portal facade, which protrudes more than three meters above the top of the arch. Since the wall ends with an almost straight edge, this photo could show the original height of the facade from 1598. The condition of the facade is practically unchanged in the photos taken in 1916 of the Niedermayer-Hentig expedition. One difference is the in good condition surrounding wall with several archways, in which the crown of the recognizable wall segment was missing in the photo from 1886. The wall enclosed the cemetery with simple tombs ( hazira ) around the shrine. Photographs of the French Archaeological Delegation (DAFA) from 1925 show considerable eruptions of burnt bricks on the upper edge of the portal and from the facade as well as further flaking of tiles. Wall plaster has also crumbled off in other places compared to 1916. The cemetery wall, structured by vertical fields, has almost completely disappeared in the images from 1925 and has given way to a new, simple brick wall.

In a photo by DAFA, which shows the shrine from the southwest, the dome is badly damaged and half collapsed, while the portal in the northeast appears unchanged in its basic structure in the photographs from 1886 to 1934. Robert Byron wrote in 1935 that a restoration was being considered. A photo taken by Richard Nelson Frye of the portal in August 1943 shows, however, that the facility has not been restored in the meantime, but has been significantly redesigned and "modernized". One of the purposes of the redesign was obviously the gradual transformation of the mausoleum with its religious charisma into a national cultural object. In order to expose the building and present it more imposingly, the surrounding wall of the cemetery was completely removed and the area leveled. This endeavor was also followed by the redesign of the area into a park with borders and paths, as can be seen in photos from the 1940s. At the same time, the cemetery (which still existed at the end of 1934) was removed, which was possible without major resistance due to the low population in the 1930s.

A new phase of redesign followed after the middle of the 20th century. Two photos from the late 1950s show the low domed buildings connected to the shrine on the south side, which could have served as madrasa earlier. The recordings were released in 1958 and 1959. In a photograph published in 1961, the entire south wing is missing. A few years later, a park-like area can be seen in its place, only the roughly chopped off wall at the main building still reminds of the demolished extension.

In 1975, a group from the Archaeological Survey of India found considerable cracks in the outer dome, which could damage the statics. Its director R. Sengupta published numerous photos showing the condition of the building before and after the immediately necessary renovation. One of the causes of the damage could have been an earthquake in June 1956, the epicenter of which was 150 kilometers away. Safeguards carried out by artisans from the Archaeological Survey included three arches of brick inserted under the outer shell. They also filled the partly large holes in the masonry of the portal facade with mortar.

From 2002 the flat domed buildings adjacent to the cultural monument in the north and south were rebuilt in a modernized form with a fund from the Aga Khan Foundation . The complex now forms the largest mosque in the city. Since then, further international funding has flowed into the design of the 3.5 hectare park with footpaths, tree planting and electric lighting. The building is located on the edge of the park, which extends from the portal side to the northeast and forms a circle, from the center of which, a modern concrete fountain, radial main paths run. On the opposite edge of the park are the ruins of the Madrasa Subhan Quli with a preserved ivan arch. There is also the tomb of the famous Rabia Balchi (Rābi'a bint Ka'b al-Quzdārī, † 940), who is considered to be the first Afghan female poet, in a newly built mausoleum in the park . The park design continues the plans drawn up in the 1950s for a radial urban layout, in which the park now forms the geometric center.

literature

Web links

Commons : Shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The glazed tiles on the outer walls of the mausoleum are predominantly turquoise , "Turkish-green". Walls of Islamic-Oriental sacred buildings with glazed tiles ( Persian كاشى kāschī , DMG kāšī , lit. "from [the city] Kashan ", the medieval center of tile production) often have turquoise, blue, black and white patterns, which is why several mosques are called that.
  2. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, p. 92
  3. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, p. 95
  4. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 97f
  5. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 99-101
  6. ↑ Vincent Fourniau: Balḵ. iii. From the Mongols to Modern Times. In: Encyclopædia Iranica , December 15, 1988
  7. ↑ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 102f
  8. ↑ Written as Abdschad , which means 959 AH and corresponds to 1552 AD
  9. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 104f
  10. ^ Yuri Bregel: Ḥāfiẓ Tani sh . In: Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition, Volume 12 (supplementary volume), 2004, p. 340
  11. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, p. 106
  12. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 107f
  13. ↑ See Kazuo Morimoto (Ed.): Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies. The living links to the Prophet. ( New horizons in Islamic studies, second series ) Routledge, London / New York 2012, p. 217
  14. ↑ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 112f
  15. ^ Rodney S. Young: The South Wall of Balkh-Bactra. In: American Journal of Archeology, Volume 59, No. 4, October 1955, pp. 267-276, here p. 267
  16. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 109f
  17. ↑ Mehrdad Fallahzadeh, Forogh Hashabeiky: Muḥīṭ al-Tavārīkh (The Sea of ​​Chronicles). By Muḥammad Amīn b. Mīrzā Muḥammad Zamān Bukhārī (Ṣūfīyānī). (= Studies in Persian Cultural History, Volume 4) Brill, Leiden 2014, p. 59
  18. ↑ Madrasah-i Sayyid Subhan Quli Khan. Balkh, Afghanistan. ArchNet
  19. ↑ Balkh: Sayyid Saubhan Quli Khan Madrasa. Cultural Property Training Resource, Colorado State University
  20. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2001, pp. 111f
  21. ↑ 1840 in Robert D. McChesney, 2002, p. 80
  22. ^ Christine Noelle: State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826–1863) . Routledge, London 1997, p. 79
  23. ↑ Jonathan Lee: The "Ancient Supremacy". Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731-1901 . (= Islamic History and Civilization , Volume 15) Brill, Leiden 1999, p. 119
  24. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, p. 80
  25. ↑ William Moorcroft, George Trebeck: Travels in the Himalayan provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir; in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara; from 1819 to 1825. Two volumes. John Murray, London 1841 (at Internet Archive ), foreword in Volume 1, pp. XLVII f.
  26. ↑ William Moorcroft, George Trebeck: Travels in the Himalayan Provinces ..., Volume 2, 1841, p 494
  27. ↑ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, pp. 80-82
  28. ^ Oskar von Niedermayer , Ernst Diez : Afganistan. Karl W. Hiersemann, Leipzig 1924. Niedermayer and Diez traveled together through Iran and Afghanistan from 1912 to 1914 ( Jens Kröger : Diez, Ernst. In: Encyclopædia Iranica , November 28, 2011), Diez himself never got to Balch (Robert D. McChesney, 2002, footnote 22 on p. 106)
  29. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, pp. 84, 94
  30. ^ Robert Byron, 1935, p. 13
  31. ↑ Ludwig W. Adamec: Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan . Third edition. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham (Maryland) 2003, sv "Afghan Yearbook", p. 19
  32. ↑ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, pp. 84-86
  33. ^ Robert Byron: The Road to Oxiana. Macmillan & Co., London 1937, p. 297 (at Internet Archive )
  34. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, pp. 88f
  35. ^ Richard Nelson Frye : Observations on Architecture in Afghanistan. In: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, March 1946
  36. ^ Donald N. Wilber: Afghanistan - its people - its society - its culture. Hraf Press, New Haven 1962, p. 104
  37. ^ Rodney S. Young: The South Wall of Balkh-Bactra. In: American Journal of Archeology, Volume 59, No. 4, October 1955, pp. 267-276, here p. 268
  38. ↑ Khwajah Aksha Wali Ziyarat . ArchNet
  39. ^ Derek Hill, Oleg Grabar : Islamic Architecture and its Decoration AD 800–1500 . Faber and Faber, London 1965, p. 57 (at Internet Archive )
  40. ↑ 1963 in Russian, summarized in: Galena A. Pougatchenkova: À l'étude des monuments timourides d'Afghanistan. In: Afghanistan, 23/3, 1970, p. 33f
  41. ^ Alfred Renz : History and Sites of Islam from Spain to India. Prestel, Munich 1977, p. 474
  42. ↑ Akhror Mukhtarov: Pozdnesrednevekovyĭ Balkh ( Materialy k istoriciheskoĭ topografii goroda v XVI-XIII vv. ), Dushanbe, 1980. English translation by Robert D. McChesney: Balkh in the late Middle Ages. （= Papers on Inner Asia, No. 24） Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1993, pp. 44f; according to Robert D. McChesney, 2002, p. 91
  43. ^ Lisa Golombek, Donald Wilber: The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1988
  44. ↑ Lisa Golombek, Donald Wilber, Volume 1.1988, pp. 295f, cited in Robert D. McChesney, 2002, p. 91
  45. ↑ Ludwig W. Adamec: Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan. Third edition. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham (Maryland) 2003, sv "Balkh", p. 54
  46. ↑ V. Fourniau: Balk Iii.. From the Mongols to Modern Times. In: Encyclopædia Iranica , December 15, 1988
  47. ↑ Lisa Golombek: Abbasid Mosque at Balkh . In: Oriental Art , Volume 15, No. 3, 1969, pp. 173-189
  48. ↑ Noh Gunbad Mosque, Balkh: Historical Background. Aga Khan Trust for Culture
  49. ^ Robert Hillenbrand: Islamic Architecture. Form, function and meaning. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1994, pp. 289f
  50. ↑ Robert Hillenbrand: The flanged tomb tower at Bastam . In: C. Adle (Ed.): Art et société dans le monde iranien. Paris, 1982, pp. 237-260, here p. 237
  51. ↑ Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb : Kubba. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition. Volume 5, Brill, Leiden 1980, p. 294
  52. ^ Robert Hillenbrand, 1994, p. 297
  53. ^ Maryam Ashkan, Yahaya Ahmad: Discontinuous Double-shell Domes through Islamic eras in the Middle East and Central Asia: History, Morphology, Typologies, Geometry, and Construction. In: Nexus Network Journal , Volume 12, 2010, pp. 287-319, here p. 290
  54. ^ Lisa Golombek: Discourses of an Imaginary Arts Council in Fifteenth-Century Iran. In: Lisa Golombek, Maria Subtelny (Ed.): Timurid Art and Culture. Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century. (= Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture. Supplements to Muqarnas, Volume 6) EL Brill, Leiden, 1992, pp. 1–17, here p. 3
  55. ^ Bernard O'Kane, 2000, p. 132
  56. ↑ See Bernard O'Kane: The Madrasa Al-Ghiyās̱īyya at Khargird In: Iran , Volume 14, 1976, pp. 79-92
  57. ^ Bernard O'Kane: Timurid Architecture in Khurasan. (Dissertation) University of Edinburgh, 1982, p. 222
  58. ↑ Bernard O'Kane, 2000, pp. 136, 138f
  59. ↑ Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa Shrine, Balkh, Afghanistan. kufic.info
  60. ^ Bernard O'Kane, 2000, p. 143
  61. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, pp. 93-97
  62. ↑ Kurt Ziemke, German ambassador to Afghanistan from 1933–1937 on his visit to Balch in October 1934: “Perhaps the building was originally a tomb, now it is used as a mosque. In front of the Eiwan is a cemetery with decaying graves, overgrown with greenery. ”In: Kurt Ziemke: As a German envoy in Afghanistan. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1939, p. 231
  63. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, pp. 99f
  64. ^ Robert D. McChesney, 2002, pp. 102f
  65. ↑ Philip Jodidio (Ed.), 2017, pp. 268–274
  66. ↑ Khwaja Parsa: Public Park, Access & Services . Aga Khan Trust for Culture
  67. ↑ Ludwig W. Adamec: Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan . Third edition. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham (Maryland) 2003, sv "Balkhi, Rabi'a", p. 55

Coordinates: 36 ° 45 ′ 29.6 ″  N , 66 ° 53 ′ 48.1 ″  E