Tiles from the Buyan Quli Khan Mausoleum

The founder and first director of the Hamburg Museum, Justus Brinckmann, obtained these tiles in 1895 in Paris through the art dealer Siegfried Bing. The tiles came onto the international market following an earthquake in 1894 that caused serious damage to the mausoleum. The dealer M. Yahtadjian, from Batum, had offered them to the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) which bought some of them. The Hamburg museum in turn acquired a larger collection of tiles. The remaining fragments are dispersed among the collections of various museums.

The mausoleum’s two-part structure is readily apparent from the ground plan. The exterior of the building is rectangular (11.2×9.9 m). The interior comprises two areas: a square memorial room (ziyarat-hona) beneath a cupola, and a rectangular burial vault (gur-hona) where the tomb of the khan is situated with a tombstone placed over it. The tripartite façade, which boldly emphasizes the portal, reflects the interior division of the building.

A raised turquoise-and-white brick band on the façade surrounds ornamental tile panels executed in relief technique and lines of inscriptions. The portal inscriptions quote suras from the Koran, as well as giving the name of the person buried there. The Mongols, originally Buddhists, converted to Islam around 1300. At that time, as the Persian language was used in Bukhara as an official and literary language, quotations from the Koran and the historical inscription were written in Arabic.

The decoration of the façade consists predominantly of vegetative motifs, whereas the interior exhibits geometrical patterns. Of particular note are the exquisitely rendered spiraling vines, and intertwined ornaments that look like a spider’s web and are reminiscent of carved plaster.

The collection of tiles from the Buyan Quli Khan Mausoleum has been on display since 2015 as part of the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, trying to recreate the mausoleum’s general outward appearance for visitors, but it cannot fully reflect the true magnificence of the original construction.

You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "Collections of the Federal Republic of Germany" (volume XI) in the series "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections".

The main sponsor of the project is the oilfield services company Eriell-Group.