Friday Mosque of Shamakhi: A Historic Congregational Mosque in Azerbaijan
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Azerbaijan
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Safavid, Shirvanshah, Umayyad
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Mosque
On this page12 sections
History
The Friday Mosque of Shamakhi is a historic congregational mosque in Shamakhi, Azerbaijan, established during the Arab period, traditionally in 743 or 743–744. Its foundation is attributed to Abu Muslim and is also associated with Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, an Arab commander and governor who chose Shamakhi as his residence. The mosque is regarded as one of Azerbaijan’s earliest Islamic monuments and as the second-oldest mosque in the Caucasus after the Friday Mosque of Derbent, built in 734.
Arab-period foundation
The mosque stood on Shamakhi’s central market square, close to the city’s former commercial and public center. A madrasa, an institution for Islamic religious learning, formed part of the wider complex. Nearby buildings contained numerous rooms and passageways, while a courtyard served the mosque grounds. The tenth-century geographer Shams al-Din al-Muqaddasi mentioned the mosque on the city’s market square.
An Arabic inscription gave the foundation date as 126 AH. Prince Shahgulu Qajar identified the inscription in 1902 while investigating the mosque after the earthquake that devastated much of Shamakhi. The building’s three-part arrangement is associated with its Arab-period origins. Each section had its own mihrab, the prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca. One interpretation holds that the central hall was used by the elite, while the side halls served the wider population, including separate areas for men and women.
Medieval and Safavid transformations
The mosque was repeatedly damaged and rebuilt during the medieval and early-modern periods. Imadeddin Isfahani’s chronicle states that attackers demolished the mosque and its minaret and plundered Shamakhi during conflicts that began in 1123. Archaeological evidence points to major structural and architectural changes in the late twelfth century, when the Shirvanshahs, the hereditary rulers of Shirvan, strengthened their authority and the city’s walls.
Another rebuilding phase took place in the seventeenth century under the Safavid dynasty, which ruled Iran and adjoining regions and influenced religious architecture in Azerbaijan. Evliya Çelebi, an Ottoman traveler and writer who visited Shamakhi in 1656, described the mosque as the city’s largest religious building.
Earthquakes and twentieth-century rebuilding
The mosque was repaired after earthquakes in 1859 and 1887. An extensive reconstruction attributed to the provincial architect Qasim-bey Hajibababeyov followed in 1870. The earthquake of 1902 severely damaged the building and destroyed much of Shamakhi. Because the remaining structure was unsafe, it was dismantled and replaced by a new building between 1905 and 1910.
The first post-earthquake reconstruction proposal came from Ziverbey Ahmadbeyov, an Azerbaijani architect born in Shamakhi. His design sought to preserve the mosque’s exterior, but the committee rejected that condition, and the work passed to Józef Plośko, a Polish-born architect active in Baku. Plośko’s 1909 project substantially altered the facade and exterior while retaining the earlier plan and the results of the unfinished construction. D. Sadykhbeyov was assigned the construction, but shortages of funds resulted in the omission of the central dome, side minarets, gallery, portal, and central stair platform.
The new mosque was burned during the violence of March 1918. Rare inscriptions and books were reportedly destroyed, and traces of the fire remain visible on the walls. During the Soviet period, the mosque was not used for worship and faced deterioration. Excavations began in 1971 and continued during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980, the building was repaired on the instruction of Heydar Aliyev, an Azerbaijani Soviet and post-Soviet political leader.
Archaeology and restoration
Excavations revealed several cultural layers, a medieval madrasa, cell-like rooms, graves, and the remains of an ancient portal that served as the principal entrance to the mosque courtyard. These discoveries supported the antiquity of the mosque and clarified the development of the wider complex.
The mosque became a state historical and architectural monument of national significance in 2001. A governmental restoration order followed in December 2009, and major reconstruction took place from 2010 to 2013. The work restored the mosque’s earlier appearance while retaining surviving older fabric, including the side and rear walls and columns incorporated into the facade. The historic cells, madrasa remains, and graves found during excavation were preserved in their original form. Because Shamakhi lies in a seismically active zone, the foundation was reinforced with reinforced concrete. The restored mosque formally opened on 17 May 2013 and remains an active Sunni Friday mosque.
Remains
Prayer building
Three connected halls
The mosque occupies a complex covering almost 1 hectare. Its present rectangular plan measures approximately 46 by 28 metres. Before the twenty-first-century reconstruction, the building was described as an elongated rectangle measuring 38 by 12.8 metres. The principal prayer space consists of three connected square halls, linked by broad open apertures. Each section has its own entrance opening and mihrab, and archaeological research indicates that this basic three-part plan survived successive reconstructions.
Each hall was covered by a dome. In the earlier arrangement, the central hall was larger and more prominent. Plośko’s project instead envisaged three halls of equal size within a more unified monumental composition. The plan, central pointed dome, pillars in the side sections, and elongated interior have been compared with the Friday Mosque of Derbent, earlier Arab-period mosque plans, the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and the eighth-century Friday Mosque of Aghsu.
Facade, walls, and minarets
The 1905–1910 building used white stone and reinforced concrete, with iron domes whose frameworks were ordered from Warsaw. Plośko’s design incorporated Eastern Islamic architectural elements, open balconies with light pavilions, decorative minarets, ornamental details, decorative columns, and shebeke window frameworks. Shebeke is a technique using patterned, interlocking window frameworks instead of ordinary solid glazing. The planned central dome was to rest on a high structure with numerous windows, while the removal of side supports was intended to give the prayer hall a solid interior form.
The restored minarets rise 36.4 metres. Older external columns were incorporated into the new facade, and the side and rear walls were retained because they had suffered less damage in the 1902 earthquake and the events of 1918. Their masonry preserves a distinctive historic bonding mortar based on eggs. The positions of the windows were also kept, following an arrangement designed to admit sunlight regardless of the sun’s position. Restored ornamental designs appear on the interior and exterior, together with a restored wall and ceiling fresco executed by foreign specialists. The central prayer hall accommodates approximately 1,500 worshippers.
Courtyard archaeology
Ancient portal
In the courtyard area, excavations exposed the remains of an ancient portal interpreted as the former principal entrance to the mosque grounds. The portal belongs to the archaeological evidence for the earlier organization of the complex, which also included the medieval madrasa, cell-like rooms, and graves. These remains were preserved in their original form during the restoration carried out between 2010 and 2013.
Cultural layers and water installations
The earliest cultural layer reaches up to 1 metre in thickness and dates from the eighth to tenth centuries. It contained fragments of glazed pottery decorated with slip and manganese painting. Remains of buildings in the layer above date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with blue tile fragments comparable to tiles from other medieval religious buildings in Azerbaijan. This material supports the existence of a religious structure on the site no later than the twelfth century.
An upper cultural layer, also approximately 1 metre thick, dates from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. It contains the remains of a stone-lined pool and water pipes extending in different directions. Together with the lower deposits and building remains, these features preserve evidence of the site’s long use and repeated rebuilding.
