Abat-Baitak

Abat-Baitak is a cemetery, a religious burial complex in West Kazakhstan. In addition, it is the mausoleum located within the cemetery area, 12 kilometers from the village of Taldysai in Kobda District of the Aktobe region of Kazakhstan.

Description

The cemetery is splendid – it consists of various memorial structures distinguished by planned and artistic solutions. In the center of the cemetery stands the Abat-Baitak mausoleum, an 11‑sided dodecagonal and conical dome structure measuring 9.52 × 9.8 m, composed of two parts. The mausoleum is built of fired brick. In the interior, the finished floors use solid brick. Near the mausoleum, another structure built of unfired, unburnt brick with a niche, similar to the Abat-Baitak mausoleum of the 18th century, is located. Among the people it is called “Kyz Molasy” or “Aulie Kyz”.

To the west of the mausoleum, there are 200 stone steles with carved inscriptions, erected in the 18th–20th centuries. The steles differ in compositional and decorative solutions. In this regard, a stele erected in 1848 impresses with its carving skill. Some large decorative elements are made by wood carving techniques. A stele carved in 1893 from famous sand‑clay blocks belongs to a rare type. In the Abat-Baitak monument there are Arabic graphic inscriptions and seals carved in Kazakh language.

Research and Protection

The Abat-Baitak mausoleum was first mentioned in the 18th century by the sub‑prefect and engineer Rigelmann. In his records and in the data of historian P.I. Rychkov, the mausoleum was called “Baitan”. The monument was fully described by members of the Orenburg scientific archival commission of Y.Y. Polferov and the scholar Joseph Kasten.

In recent times the monument was completely destroyed and remained in a permanently lost state for scientific research. Only at the beginning of the 1980s, within the expedition of the Minister of Culture of Kazakhstan, archaeologist Serik Azhigaliev actually reopened it.

In 1982 the cemetery was included in the list of state-significant historical and cultural monuments and the state took it under its protection.

After the studies, the reconstruction work on the Abat-Baitak mausoleum began. For this, under the “Cultural Heritage” program, 30 million tenge were allocated from the state budget and 3.5 million tenge from the local budget for the construction of a brick‑burning furnace. To fully restore the mausoleum, 32 thousand bricks had to be assigned to the craftsmen.