THE TOMB OF ULJAYTU AT SULTANIYYA Figure 4.26 Relief-carved dragon from the west wall at Viar. The main iwan at Viar is flanked by panels (now, unfortunately, covered with glass). The panels show striding dragons like the ones depicted on the tiles from Takht-i Sulayman. Figure 4.27 Isometric reconstruction of the ruins at Viar. This drawing shows a possible reconstruction of the ruins at Viar, including a monumental entrance and arcaded forecourt. This content downloaded from 84.51.41.198 on Sat, 18 Apr 2020 13:39:52 UTC All use subject to BLAIR 9780748655786 PRINT.indd 145 BLAIR 9780748655786 PRINT.indd 145 145 28/11/2013 11:48 28/11/2013 11:48 146 BLAIR 9780748655786 PRINT.indd 146 BLAIR 9780748655786 PRINT.indd 146

TEXT AND IMAGE IN MEDIEVAL PERSIAN ART most likely possibility is that the complex was intended as a Buddhist monastery.117 The name of the nearby village may be a corruption of vihara, the Sanskrit term for a Buddhist monastery. If this is the case, it would probably date to the reign of Arghun, who is said to have had Buddhist priests brought from India and who selected the area for a summer capital.118 His son Ghazan, following his conversion to Islam, is said to have destroyed most Buddhist temples, and the ruins at Viar would be the rare remains of a Buddhist structure in Iran to survive. Whatever its ultimate purpose, the size and scale of the ruined structure at Viar show that it, like Takht-i Sulayman, provided a comparable scale for Uljaytus monumental tomb at Sultaniyya. The tomb as inspiration for later Mongol rulers

Not surprisingly, the enormous tomb at Sultaniyya also served as an inspiration for other buildings constructed by the later Mongol rulers, who wished to see themselves as heirs to the Ilkhanids, who in turn provided a direct link back to Genghis Khan. Various features of Uljaytus mausoleum are echoed in at least three Central Asian tombs connected with the warlord Timur after he had occupied Sultaniyya in 13856.119 One is the so-called tomb of Turabeg Khanum in Kunya Urgench, south of the Aral Sea in present-day Turkmenistan. The name refers to the wife of Qutlugh Timur, governor of Khurasan from 1321 to 1336 for Uzbek Khan of the Golden Horde, but Lisa Golombek has argued persuasively that the renovations to the tomb must post-date the arrival of architects from Iran under Timur in 1388 and that the building may even have been the laboratory for his architects at the shrine of Ahmad Yasavi.120 As at Sultaniyya, the shrine of Turabeg Khanum shows the same progression of portal, gath

Golombek noted that bicameral mausoleums became common in Central Asia in the late fourteenth and fteenth centuries, as in the two tombs in the suburb of Fathabad east of Bukhara for the Su Sheikh Sayf al-Din Bakharzi and his disciple, the Chaghatayid Buyun Quli Khan (d. 1358), and that the second chamber was often added.121 This was exactly what had happened at Sultaniyya, but there both parts were the work of the same patron. The main room in the tomb at Kunya Urgench, however, is dodecagonal, perhaps derived from that of Uljaytus predecessor Ghazan in Tabriz. Assuming that the building actually marks the burial of the princess Turabeg Khanum, Timur may have been inspired to renovate it to enhance his Mongol afliations, for she was a Chinggisid princess descended from Genghis Khan.