Jomard Gassab’s Tomb: A Seventeenth-Century Mausoleum in Azerbaijan
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Azerbaijan
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Safavid
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Tomb
On this page7 sections
History
Jomard Gassab’s tomb is a seventeenth-century mausoleum in Old Ganja, Azerbaijan. Known locally as the Comərd Qəssab Mausoleum, its name means “the mausoleum of the noble butcher.” The tomb is associated with Comərd Qəssab, although his historical identity is not directly documented.
Legends of Comərd Qəssab
One popular tradition describes Comərd Qəssab as an honest and just butcher who lived during the caliphate of Ali ibn Abu Talib, the fourth caliph in the Sunni succession and the first imam in Shia Islam. According to this account, he earned the respect of Ganja’s inhabitants and was buried at the site after his death.
Another tradition presents him as an early convert to Islam who introduced the religion to Ganja before Muslim armies entered the city. It says that he died while defending the city during an attack. A separate folk tradition, recorded by the Soviet archaeologist Ivan Shcheblykin, describes the mausoleum as a ninth-century memorial to a butcher-hero who died defending his native city.
Dating and historical changes
Shcheblykin later proposed that the surviving building might date from the eleventh or twelfth century, drawing on the burial tradition. The art historian Abdul Wahab Salamzade instead assigned the existing mausoleum to the seventeenth century. He based this view chiefly on its large entrance openings and its compositional similarities to other mausoleums of that period, including the Yanıklı Mausoleum in Tovuz District. Salamzade also considered that an older mausoleum may have stood on the site before the present building was erected.
Shcheblykin stated that the building had undergone repeated repairs and may have been rebuilt several times. The mausoleum was heavily damaged in the 1139 Ganja earthquake. During the first archaeological excavations in 1940, Ishak Jafarzade uncovered the grave associated with Comərd Qəssab among finds dated to the seventh century.
The mausoleum was destroyed in the 1960s and remained in ruins for an extended period. In 2004, the building and its associated grave were restored through the initiative of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, using old bricks brought from Nakhchivan. In 2001, the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century mausoleums in the Old Ganja cemetery were placed on Azerbaijan’s state-protected list and declared architectural monuments of national significance.
Remains
Plan and setting
The mausoleum stands in Old Ganja, about one kilometre south of the former fortress walls, south of the railway line and on the right bank of the Ganjachay River. Its plan is octagonal both outside and inside. Square fired bricks laid with gaj, a traditional gypsum-based mortar, form the main construction. A single dome completes the building.
Every exterior face contains a rectangular decorative niche, while pointed-arch niches, formed by two curved sides meeting at an apex, articulate the interior walls. Projecting elements mark each corner inside and out. On the exterior, these projections are arranged in two stages, creating the characteristic octagonal form with recessed niches.
Dome and openings
The dome rises from a circular base into which the octagonal lower structure transitions. Its walls and dome use square brick in ordinary masonry, while the outer dome surface is covered with flat-laid brick over the main structural layer. Inside, the walls and dome were coated first with thick plaster and then with a thin layer of alabaster.
A low-arched doorway opens through the north wall. Further openings are positioned along the axes of the south, west and east walls. Together, these openings give the building the partly open character of a rotunda, a structure organized around a central circular or polygonal space, while solid wall sections remain between them.
Burial place
The grave associated with Comərd Qəssab lies inside the mausoleum. It was restored at the same time as the building in 2004, preserving the burial place within the reconstructed brick structure.
