Maqbara-i Muhammad Ghazi
Zindajan, Afghanistan
The tomb is located in Zindajan, a modern town marking the location of medieval Fusanj. Art historian Bernard O'Kane has dated the structure to the fourteenth century; it was most likely built in the third quarter of the century prior to Fusanj's destruction in 1381 by the Timurid army. There is no evidence confirming the tomb's popular attribution to Muhammad Ghazi; O'Kane's reading of the Persian inscription on the cenotaph suggests that it was built for a Kartid ruler.

The tomb is a square chamber measuring 8.5 meters per side on the exterior. It is entered from a five-meter wide pishtaq projects half a meter beyond its west façade. Its single dome reaches up to eleven meters on the interior carried on corner squinches in an octagonal transition zone. The pishtaq recess is covered with a semi-dome resting on squinch arches and has an open staircase built alongside it for roof access. A single arched window is centered on the north, east and south façades; additional light is brought in with four clerestory windows pierced into the dome's drum. The baked brick construction is exposed on the interior and the exterior.

The cenotaph, built at the same time as the tomb, is aligned north-south at the center. It has a unique four-tiered structure made of baked bricks, and covered entirely with molded and glazed terracotta tiles. The lowest tier is enveloped by Persian verses written in pale turquoise nakshi script; the letters are set in high relief on a darker background of floriated spirals. A greater range of colors are used on the second tier, which features a series of quatrefoil and lobed cartouche frames carved with floral and vegetal scrolls. Small colonettes mark the corners of these two lower tiers. The narrower third tier contains the second inscriptive relief, written in medium turquoise letters. The prism that formed the top tier is now on display at the Herat Museum; its sloping sides are decorated with light turquoise flowers on a dark turquoise spiral. Remnants of the kufic borders of its arched end panels contain the words "he is the amir... the great... the just, the victorious, the triumphant."

Sources:

Bosworth, C. Edmund. "Fusanj," Encyclopedia Iranica, Vol. X, Fasc. 3, pp. 229-230; available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/fusanj [Accessed October 1, 2013]

O'Kane, Bernard. "The Tomb of Muhammad Gazi at Fusang." Annales Islamologiques XXI (1985): 114-28.
Location
Zindajan, Afghanistan
Events
3rd quarter of the 14th c.
Style Periods
Variant Names
Mausoleum of Muhammad Ghazi
Variant
Tomb of Muhammad Ghazi
Variant
Building Usages
funerary