Kunya Urgench – a modern city that emerged in 1831 beside the ruins of Gurganj, the renowned capital of the state of the Khorezmshahs Anushteginids – is famous for the greatest concentration of sacred sites in the region. Among them are the northern and western gates of the fortress wall dating back to the Golden Horde period. The gates themselves have long since disappeared, and the rampart is barely discernible, yet two revered mazars (places of pilgrimage) have been well preserved. The Ibn Hajib complex stands near the western gate, while a mazar associated with the name of the great Sufi sheikh Najm ad Din al Kubra, founder of a khanaqah and the Kubrawiyya brotherhood, lies on the northern side.
This area forms the core of a memorial complex located near the historic Dash Mosque, which nowadays houses a local museum. Just a few metres away stands the mausoleum of Matkarim ishan (1821–1889), a well known akhun (head of the local clergy) and mudarris (teacher at a madrasa) in Khorezm. It is from this monument, erected at the end of the XIX century, that ziyarat (pilgrimage) customarily begins, since the path to the principal shrines starts from here.
“Uch yuz altmysh” (three hundred and sixty) – this is how the inhabitants of Kunya Urgench refer to this sacred enclave, surrounded on all sides by urban quarters and representing an ancient cemetery covering about one hundred hectares. According to one legend, it once served as the necropolis of the Khorezmshahs. Another, the most popular, tells that when Mongol invaders stormed the defiant Gurganj in 1221, Sheikh al Kubra, together with his 360 disciples, courageously rose to defend the city, and all of them perished in an unequal battle. It is said that the cemetery was founded at the site of their death, which is now marked by the mausoleum of al Kubra and, directly opposite it (in a kosh composition, that is, facing one another), the later mausoleum of a local khan named Sultan Ali, who lived in the sixteenth century. On the western side, there is a very small and even more modest mausoleum of Piryar Wali and a separate sagana (a stepped tomb marker) above the supposed grave of the legendary Jewish youth Jamiljan – the sheikh’s beloved disciple. According to the local legend, he was killed on the order of the Khorezmshah. All these monuments together form the most frequently visited memorial ensemble of the reserve.
But why, after all, 360? Clearly, this number is a hyperbola signifying multiplicity, as this is not the only place in Central Asia bearing such a name. A more famous folk toponym of the same designation exists in southwestern Kazakhstan, on the Mangystau Plateau. Moreover, the number itself is endowed with particular meaning in Islamic tradition, especially in Sufism. According to the hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad, it corresponds to the number of joints in the human body. It also symbolizes wholeness, a complete life cycle, a sense of completion – like a circle consisting of 360 degrees.
This, in turn, evokes the Sumerian Akkadian world, where the sexagesimal system was invented and became the universal basis for timekeeping: the number 360 was chosen for its divisibility and astronomical significance, according to which a year consists of approximately 360 days, an hour of 60 minutes, and a minute of 60 seconds. Although classical Islam denounces numerology, in Sufism the symbolic meaning of the number 360 has long been firmly established, especially in Khorezm and Mangyshlak. Possibly, this echoes pre Islamic pagan beliefs of nomadic Arab tribes, who worshipped this number of idols in Mecca. In the folk Islam of Central Asia, this number came to signify a sacred space endowed with the mystical power of three hundred and sixty saints. Finally, it also serves as a reminder of the need for daily devotion to holy places throughout the year.
Indeed, not a single day passes without pilgrims visiting the “Uch yuz altmysh” necropolis. As a rule, they are familiar with the legends that have enveloped the figure of the site’s principal protagonist – Sheikh al Kubra – over the past eight hundred years. Yet beyond legends, quite a great deal is known about his remarkable personality. He is commonly regarded as the creator of the “ten foundations of Sufism”, a powerful spiritual movement that serves as a link between Sunnis and Shiites. He also became an exponent of the central aspiration of Sufism – the impulse of the human soul to rise above the physical existence of the mortal body and centuries old dogmas, and to merge with the source of Goodness, Truth, and Love. Much here appears similar, even closely related to the bhakti movement in Hinduism and to Christian mysticism. It is symbolic that Najm ad Din al Kubra was an elder contemporary of Saint Francis of Assisi.
The Khorezmian sheikh was born in 1145 in Khiva, which at that time was a small town called Kheyvak. He was named Ahmad, and his father’s name was Omar. However, he is known by several epithets in popular tradition and in medieval literature. It was said that even in his youth he prevailed in any dispute, and for this he received the laqab (nickname) of at Tammat al Kubra (the Greatest Calamity).
He developed an early interest in theology. Having studied the Koran, the hadiths and kalam (rationalist theology), he embarked on the path of mysticism. Popular tradition tells that in his homeland he could not find a worthy mentor in the Sufi path, and therefore set out for distant Egypt, where he joined a Sufi club and gained such authority that he received the laqab of Najm ad Din (Star of the Religion). Over time, the two epithets merged, producing the name Najm ad Din al Kubra. He is also still known among the people as Shikh Kabir (Great Sheikh) or Shir Kabir (Great Lion [of Allah]), the latter being a folk distortion of shikh (sheikh). There also existed a custom of addressing a man by the name of his son or by his defining qualities, inherited from Arab culture by the peoples of Central Asia. Such a name is called kunya. The sheikh’s kunya was Abu l Jannab, which in this case literally means “Father of Ascetics.” After the laqab and kunya, another important element of a name is nisba, indicating place of birth or residence. Thus, the sheikh’s full name took shape as Najm ad Din al Kubra Abu l Jannab Ahmad ibn Omar al Kheyvaki al Khorezmi, the last two elements indicating his birthplace and his native land.
After returning to Khorezm, the forty year old sheikh settled in the capital city of Gurganj and began to spread the teachings of Sufism. It was there that he established his khanaqah and founded the dervish order of Kubrawiyya. He had many followers, not only in his homeland, who later themselves became renowned sheikhs in the Muslim world of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In addition to treatises on the theory and practice of Sufism, al Kubra composed rubai poems in Persian/Dari, which are scattered throughout medieval mystical anthologies (tezkire).
Like other Sufis, al Kubra turned to poetry to express the most complex aspects of his doctrine, as poetic form facilitated comprehension by appealing simultaneously to the listeners’ emotions – through rhythm and artistic imagery – and to their intellect. Melodic recitation of verse also helped to achieve more rapidly a special state of inner calm and mystical trance known in Sufism as hal. Al Kubra’s poems are finely wrought, rich in metaphor and hyperbolas, yet difficult to translate, like all poetry – especially Sufi poetry, which is replete with allegory.
Popular tradition and written sources of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries assert that al Kubra’s grave, over which his descendants later erected a mausoleum, was discovered through the sowing of a watermelon. The story goes as follows: a young man, a former neighbour of the sheikh, was deeply distressed that the mashhad (place of death) of the elder was unknown. The legend is long, but it culminates in the young man seeing the sheikh himself in a dream, who revealed the location of his body and his head, severed by a Mongol warrior. “As a farewell,” the sheikh placed a watermelon seed in the young man’s hand and instructed him to plant it in a specific place. The sheikh said that two shoots would grow from it, each bearing a single watermelon: beneath one lay his body, beneath the other – his head.
The mausoleum of Najm ad Din al Kubra that can be seen today was built during the reign of Qutlugh Timur and his wife Turabek Khanum, daughter of Uzbek Khan, ruler of the Golden Horde. When the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta visited Urgench in 1333, he already saw this structure. It consists of four domed spaces: a vestibule (dehliz), two side rooms for pilgrims (zawiya), and a central hall (gurkhana).
It is difficult to establish whether a khanaqah founded by the sheikh during his lifetime once stood here, or whether this was originally a memorial pavilion over his burial place. What is known with certainty is that the gurkhana was initially a single chamber, free standing portal domed tomb, to which a dehliz, zawiya, and a tall portal pishtaq clad in deep blue majolica tiles were added under Qutlugh Timur. In addition to ornamental panels, this cladding contains Arabic epigraphic inscriptions. Most of them consist of verses (qasidas) and rhymed prose (saj) composed in a mystical eschatological genre, as well as a text mentioning Qutlugh Timur, in whose name and at whose expense (as indicated by the dedicatory inscription on the portal) the mausoleum was constructed.
Inside the gurkhana, there is a cenotaph lavishly clad with glazed faience panels. It is one of the finest examples of Eastern majolica, which, as the orientalist Alexander Yakubovsky once noted, deserves separate study for its forms and ornamental compositions. Almost everyone who has written about the architecture of Kunya Urgench has remarked upon the artistic merits of this cenotaph. The most concise assessment belongs to the architectural historian Iosif Notkin: “The stylized painting of the tombstone reveals an entire world of vegetal motifs drawn from the flora of Central Asia. In the mausoleum’s cenotaph, Khorezmian ceramic artists demonstrated everything they had mastered in this art by the 1340s.”
Beside the cenotaph, placed according to legend where the sheikh’s body fell, stands an identically decorated four sided prism marking what is believed to be the spot where his severed head fell. This pillar, together with the cenotaph, was shattered when the dome of the gurkhana collapsed around 1950, It was only in 2012–2014 that both structures were reconstructed, with surviving fragments of the cladding returned to their places. Missing decorative elements are rendered in plaster, while only a few tiles were recreated according to old models. This meticulous work, carried out under a project of the National Administration for the Protection, Study, and Restoration of Historical and Cultural Monuments, was performed by architect restorer Meretgeldy Charyev and master ceramicist Bakhtiyar Khojaniyazov. The dome of the gurkhana was restored earlier, in the 1980s. At the same time, the exterior cladding of the building was renewed, and quite recently the reserve undertook restoration of the stalactite cornice above the mausoleum portal.
While recreating the missing ceramic tiles for the cenotaph’s cladding, Bakhtiyar Khojaniyazov became deeply interested not only in the technical secrets of his distant predecessors, but also in the meaning of the arabesques they created. Some compositions that particularly intrigued him he reproduced in his own artistic work. By copying these favoured forms onto his large serving dishes (lagans), the master seeks to grasp the mystery of Sufi art. In the continuous vine shoot depicted on two identical tondo of the four sided prism, he discerned an encoded message to future generations.
The twisted and interwoven leaves and branches curling within a circle and forming four knots, highlighted by turquoise accents, are not merely an intricate arabesque. They embody two poles of all embracing artistic expression in Islam: a sense of rhythm and the spirit of geometry. Such a composition requires no symmetry. To the artist, it appears as the most spiritually convincing form, for it expresses the idea of Divine Unity underlying the boundless diversity of the world.
After the restoration of Sheikh al Kubra’s mausoleum, the sanctity of this place for believers grew even stronger. The spirit of the “greatest of the righteous,” as Ibn Battuta called the sheikh, still rests where 360 of his disciples fell in an unequal battle.