Gonbad-e Qabus – Gorgan, Golestan Province, Iran
Photo by Ahb1989 via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

In the 10^th century, the construction of quadrangular dome mausoleums became a favorite plan of making monumental tombs. in Iran however, the architects couldn’t be satisfied with just one plan and started making changes and creating new plans; that’s how the ridged plans came to being and the Kavus Dome in Gorgan is the first example, and most well-known of buildings made with this plan. The Tower was built by the order of Kavus (Qabus) the Ziarid ruler in the city of Gorgan. The construct has three main sections: foundation, stem, and dome.

The Tower was built by the order of Kavus (Qabus) the Ziarid ruler in the city of Gorgan.

The foundation was built on a 15-meter mound from brick and in form of a vertical cylinder. The 15-meter excavations of 1899 by a Russian mission proved the absence of tomb or a body in the foundation. The later excavations by the Archeological Survey of Iran recorded the foundation to be around 9.8 m.; the foundation’s decrease in size as it approaches the surface of the land where the stem is built; around 1.45 m of the foundation is above the ground. The stem is surrounded with 10 ridges that both strengthen the construct, and acts as ornamentation and reduces the simplicity of the façade. They are 37 m tall and end at the base of the dome made with yellow bricks.

The dome is conical and about 18 m, the bricks become smaller near the center and a simple window adorns the dome that was probably used for air circulation. The arched entrance is in the eastern side of the construct, it is 1.6 m wide and 5.5 m tall. The interior of the mausoleum is simple with no decoration which is a trademark of the monumental tombs of the northern part of Iran. The façade is not that different either, beside the 10 ridges and the inscriptions nothing else adorns the construct. The inscription is a combination of 10 bricked platforms placed in the spaces between the ridges and naming the person who the mausoleum belongs to (Kavus or Qabus) and the date of its construction based on Solar and Hijri Calendar..

The constructs like Gonbad-e Qabus show a tendency to Iranian identity, culture and Tradition.

After two centuries of silence in art and science that took over Iran after the invasion of Arabs, Iranian began their artistic productivity. However, the aesthetic of the time has changed and under the influence of Islam, simplicity has become the key factor of people’s life and belief. Everything built in this period of time is simple in both plan and decoration. But slowly movements began on obtaining a national identity that opposed the Islamic one, Iranian weren’t satisfied with tasteless works of the day and were eager for a return to the glory of their past. The constructs like Gonbad-e Qabus mark the beginning of such returns, not only it adds elements to the simple quadrangular plan of the time, but also by adding the Solar date to the Hijri date, they showed an attempt in highlighting Iranian culture and tradition. So the building’s significance is not just the ingenuity of its construction, it is the attempt of achieving an Iranian identity that matters most. The construct was inscribed in UNESCO World Heritage List in 2012.

The constructs like Gonbad-e Qabus show a tendency to Iranian identity, culture and Tradition.

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